Robert Blakey

Dr Robert Blakey is a Lecturer in Mental Health at Queen Mary University of London interested in the life that unfolds following trauma. Trauma is an experience that overwhelms the capacity to understand what is happening at the time it is happening. Everyone experiences some degree of trauma. In response to this fact of life, it may be worth developing a way of seeing through the complexity of trauma histories into the simplicity of the present moment. Trauma histories recreate themselves through the societal roles imposed upon the human. The problem is these roles disrupt the opportunity for connection.

Connection is crucial to life: unless people have opportunity to connect, shame takes the person out of social circulation. Shame is an understandable response to trauma because trauma feels targeted: why me? Social interaction may be avoided due to fear of blame and the capacity for blame to induce crumbling waves of shame. Trauma recovery, therefore, may be less about explaining what happened in the past – which can easily descend into endless circuits of justification – and more about believing in the continued existence of the present moment as a product of grieving the past. The present moment provides shelter from the recreation of history. Therefore, if trauma recovery exists, it is here and now.

Known as mindfulness, connection to the present moment offers a realistic aspiration for mental health. There will always exist the underbelly of life – bursts of anger, crashes into shame and the shadow of fear – and some need to hold this underbelly down during social interaction; generating tension and disruption to the opportunity for connection. However, the capacity to stabilise inner experience can emerge through repeated practice during chaos. In this way, hope exists.

However if you have not felt unsafe you do not value safety you are vulnerable to psychosis you dissociate–that becomes structural dissociation because it is not something that can occur in high-stakes environments. It is appropriate to say “No” to because dissociation only ends in trauma. The wish among people who have not felt unsafe to act out trauma will be reflected upon as a mentalising error that reduced cardiac interoceptive accuracy. Prior experience allows for mentalised affect in mentalisation of the present whereas absence of such leads to psychosis.

Dr. Robert Blakey is renowned globally for applauded lecturing in dissociative PTSD. However following the mentalizing error the need to differentiate dissociative PTSD from BPD symptomology grew. It is for this reason that Robert moved into criminological practice returning to neurolaw to mentalise from the gym outward a heightened level of dissociation among BPD-affected populations. It appeared that self-referential processing, anterior insula and heartrate variability were crucial to mentalising dissociative symptomology. The need for differential diagnosis remains because nonclinical understanding of cardiac interoceptive accuracy is astounding. Robert works to mentalise together with a large team of non-clinical mentalisers, budding criminologists and aspiring forensic psychologists. Together at RH we understand critical neurophysiological underpinnings of social disparities operationalising in scientific definition connection that considers cognitive mediators that are neurobiological.

Together we changed the Higher Education sector that you see today renewing the commitment to provide a trauma-free way to the future integrating mentalisation theory with non-clinical research. The conclusion is that in the military and other populations mentalisation capacity is well and healthy. There is clearly a need for attachment security to mediate dissociation to mentalising accuracy by interoceptive awareness–or to be scientific cardiac interoceptive accuracy. As the 16-year-old author of How to Achieve 100% in a GCSE there is no doubt about it–RHUL is the place to study if you want to get on with your work. Other places are growing in their mentalisation capacity–and we look forward to seeing the sector develop toward pragmatism rather than constant need to criminologically intervene to correct mentalising errors of scientific excellence in students to realise their potential.