Atlas of emotional experience

Consequences of psychological trauma and chronic stress tend to “settle in’ our body and then build up. Each of such experience has a corresponding set of sensations and levels of the body that it affects. As a response to the lack of competence, we get a lack of confidence; when a problem remains unresolved, we worry; when our future looks uncertain, we experience anxiety; and when we get frightened, we have fear. We feel annoyed because of someone’s constant moralizing; we feel offended when we are disappointed, and our expectations do not match the reality; we experience anger and rage when someone is rude to us; and we want revenge when someone betrays or cheats us.

Fig. 11. The head: anxiety in the forehead, irritation in the temples, control in the occiput; the shoulders: the burden of responsibility; the throat: resentment, self-pity in response to disappointment, deception; the chest: worry, indignation; the stomach: fear, anger.

Fig. 12. The direction of impact received during the trauma.

Traumas are the following: fright, disappointment, offence, betrayal, infidelity, and loss.

The tendency of its progression is the increase of tension till it reaches the level of “sympathoadrenal status’, which may even lead to “the syndrome of burnout’, a condition difficult and sometimes even impossible to restore from. A person gradually turns into a “squeezed lemon’, and in these circumstances, learning something new is absolutely out of the option.

Fig. 13. Gradual loss of balance, accumulation of stress in the course of life.