I am indebted to Kintree Schroeder for the inspiration for this article and for invaluable content and editing contributions.
Thank you, Kintree!
What to Know if You have Global High Participants in Your Groups
This article is for you if you value recognizing and accommodating the specific needs of vulnerable populations in your training programs and groups, and if you are not already explicitly aware of the presence and needs of a particular vulnerable group, people with Global High Intensity Activation in their nervous systems.
What does “Global High Intensity Activation” mean?
Global High Intensity Activation (GHIA) is a label used in the Somatic Experiencing® world to refer to the nervous system state of certain clients.
Throughout this article, I will alternately use the terms “global high” and GHIA to refer to this particular nervous system state and the people who live with it as I explain some of the ways you can improve your inner awareness and outer behavior to better support the GHIA people in your groups.
Who are Global High people?
Global high (GHIA) people are a subset of people with Complex PTSD (C-PTSD.) Briefly, a person with a global high nervous system is someone who never feels safe, settled, or ok. In fact they are unable to feel safe, settled or ok. The kinds of practices that support people with more typical nervous systems to settle and begin to feel safe often don’t work for people with global high systems. These are not people lacking motivation or willingness. They are people whose bodies
– don’t know how to feel safe or how to connect in a gentle and regulated way with themself or others
– do know that anything they try in an attempt to make it better doesn’t work at all or doesn’t reliably work, and they have tried a lot of things.
– know that it is inevitable that they will be misunderstood, and that it’s somewhere between possible and likely that they will be criticized or rejected.
Inside GHIA people, there is a lot going on that needs to be constantly managed. The baseline level of stimulation and demand that they experience within their body and nervous system is already “too much,” even before anything happens outwardly or socially. But since the global high person is disconnected from key feelings, wants, needs and/or memories within themselves [something that is true of all people with C-PTSD to some degree], they are often unaware of how bad they feel underneath it all. Or, if they do know how bad they feel, they may have explanations for feeling bad that don’t connect to their actual deeper hurts and needs. Due to the various kinds of internal disconnections that occur, global high people can appear incongruous or confusing and they often feel challenging to be around.
And here is where a really cruel irony kicks in. Everybody is walking around with unresolved trauma, hiding and managing uncomfortable feelings and reactions that many people don’t even know they have. A global high person is unable to mask or hide the amount of trauma they carry. So a “pretty ok” person who has successfully hidden and managed their own trauma becomes triggered by the presence of the global high person. Like a tuning fork, the presence of trauma in the global high person stirs up the hidden trauma in the “pretty ok” person. But that “pretty ok” person doesn’t realize that they are being triggered due to their own hidden trauma. They believe that there is something fundamentally distasteful in the global high person and they have a strong reaction and a compulsion to dismiss the global high person so that they can maintain their level of comfort.
The person with MORE trauma is dismissed by the person with LESS trauma because the person with LESS trauma is unwilling or unable to see, feel and address their own traumas, and has a safe and privileged enough life that they can manage the ongoing denial and suppression of their traumas.
Despite repeated rejections and judgments, the GHIA person often has no choice but to keep trying to heal their trauma. Many lack the privilege of social support/relationships because they are so marginalized by their presentation. Many lack the privilege of able bodies because the nervous system trauma and subsequent chronic lack of support and lack of being understood has hijacked their health. They’ve often been brutally abandoned & rejected by the very people who were supposed to help them, from family to therapists to support groups to spiritual communities.
So as you and your group can remain welcoming and curious rather than submitting to the temptation so dismiss or “school” your global high participants, you can make an amazing and important difference for a group of people who really need to be seen, accepted and respected.
How do Global High people present in groups?
GHIA people don’t have a common stereotypical presentation; there are quite a range of ways they might show up. They might try hard but still feel like they can’t fit in, or they might not bother trying because it never works anyway.
Some of your GHIA participants will show up as model students or model participants, exquisitely aligned with your program and agenda. Others will barely show up on your radar because they manage by dissociating and being as invisible as possible to avoid relational harm. Some may show up appearing excessively needy, high maintenance, attention seeking or never satisfied with any support given them, because the support they receive is not what they actually need.
When the presence of a GHIA person evokes discomfort in others, this can be interpreted as the GHIA person “spreading” their trauma in the group. While some group members can be highly disruptive and completely unable to engage or to hear any feedback, that is not the situation I am discussing here. What I’m discussing is a GHIA person whose emotional distress can be perceived by their presence and who might ask lots of questions about the content or might speak honestly and straightforwardly about the difficulties of their experience, either in their life in general or in the group itself. This kind of honest and authentic questioning or sharing does not equate to spreading trauma.
Let me explain: Trauma is not contagious
The population we are talking about here are people who are carrying way more than their share of suffering, pain, and dysregulation, through no fault of their own. And here’s what happens. People with a more typical load of personal trauma simply cannot imagine that others could be experiencing way more suffering that they themselves have encountered in the worst phases of their lives. There are many relatively privileged people – privileged in terms of financial resources, in terms of supportive community and relationships, in terms of physical health, and/or in terms of the relative level of calm vs chaos in their nervous system – who have done a lot of good healing work and who rightly feel good about the things they have learned and the progress they have made. There are many such privileged people whose view of the universe only makes room for people who are similar to themselves, people with a mix of trauma and resource who can find their way to relative safety and stability through intentional growth practices. They cannot imagine the existence of someone who could do all the same practices and make all the same efforts and who would still feel awful.
As a result, when these relatively privileged people encounter someone who experiences constant suffering, they conclude that the suffering person either:
– is not really suffering, but is putting on a performance and/or
– is not truly moved with compassion but is putting on a performance and/or
– is simply unwilling to take responsibility for their own experience and do their work and/or
– should not be here because they are pathological and need to find appropriate professional care or be institutionalized.
Here’s the thing.
There are people in the world who do performative suffering or performative passion and compassion.
There are people who are unwilling to examine themselves or do their work.
There are people who have severe biological or psychological conditions and who simply can’t be integrated into community.
However, most of the GHIA people who show up in your groups do not fall into those categories. They truly are suffering, they truly are willing to examine themselves and do their work, and they can be safely welcomed and included in community, despite the fact that their presence and presentation can evoke discomfort in other people.
And that is the crux of the matter. The presence and presentation of a global high person tends to provide discomfort in others. And it’s critical to understand why that happens. This discomfort is not the fault of the person who feels triggered by the GHIA person. It is also not the fault of the GHIA person, who is doing the best they can with what they’ve got to work with in both their inner and outer experience.
Here’s the thing. The discomfort that gets evoked in others by the presence of a global high person was actually already there in the discomfited person. Let me explain.
Every person has some degree of trauma. As I mentioned above, each of us is continuously working around and managing our own inner trauma, usually outside our conscious awareness. As part of that, each one of us is continually pretending that there is less trauma in our own body than is actually there, and less trauma in the world around us than is actually there. Our healing journey involves finding/creating enough safety and resource within and around us that we are able to accurately see increasingly more of that which is unpleasant, both within and without. Anyone and everyone can be forgiven for the blinders we wear, because that is what developmental trauma does to us. We have had no choice but to not see clearly. And our students and group members can be forgiven for being completely unaware of their blinders. But as teachers and leaders we cannot be forgiven for refusing to remove the blinders from our own eyes when we are made aware of them.
There are probably people in your groups who are suffering more than you might feel comfortable being aware of. There are flavors of suffering in the world that you do not yet fully understand.
When the presence of a GHIA person makes us uncomfortable, there are two key reasons this happens. First, the discomfort in the GHIA person resonates with our own hidden suffering, the personal pain that we’ve been successfully hiding from ourselves through all of our great practices and mindsets. Second, the presentation of the global high person contradicts our worldview. We don’t want to know the level of suffering that truly exists in others, and we want to believe that anyone can overcome their inner trauma the same way we did if they just put their mind to it and do the practices. We don’t want to admit that there is horrific suffering beyond our capacity to comprehend, hold, and heal. We want to be a healers, teachers, gateways and portals only for people similar to ourselves, not for people whose suffering is too much for us. [If that truly does not describe you, then congratulations and thank you for being you.]
All of that is under the surface. What happens on the surface is something like this: “Whenever I am around this person, I feel bad, so there is clearly something wrong with them; they are a negative influence on the community and either they should not be here or somebody should set them straight.”
Whatever the details of what the leaders and group members think and communicate, how this plays out is that the GHIA person’s suffering is disbelieved and minimized. A space that was meant to be a space of learning, growth and healing becomes one more gaslighting environment in their life, telling them, “You can’t possible understand your own personal experience.”
Choose to be welcoming, then create the conditions for relative safety through how you interact with GHIA participants
If you are holding a container that supports healing and growth, you need to make a choice. Either you can welcome anyone with the willingness, openness and basic skills you are looking for, or you can advertise the explicit inclusion of people whose nervous systems are too chaotic and demanding for you. If your message and belief about your program is that you welcome all qualified people, then you make yourself a liar if you fail to effectively welcome the global high members of your groups. Here are some important ways that you as a leader can shape your behavior in relation to GHIA people.
First, manage your inner reactions
If you feel a sense of judgement or aversion toward a group participant, acknowledge that reaction inwardly. Then, rather than speeding up trying to find some path to ending or resolving the interaction, instead slow down and get curious. In this moment, the most important thing is not the cognitive content that is on the table. Rather, the most important thing is the relationship between you and this participant. Your goal in this moment should be to ensure that as much as possible, they feel seen, heard and welcomed.
Second, don’t assume that you have important wisdom for the GHIA student
As teachers, leaders and even visionaries, we know a lot of great stuff. But in some moments with some GHIA people, there actually is nothing in our bag of wisdom and expertise that will give the GHIA student what they are looking for or longing for, because we actually don’t understand and appreciate their experience and needs. In these moments, our capacity for curiosity and humility is most important. We don’t have to solve or fix it for them. We don’t have to show the other groups members that we have the expertise to solve anything and everything. Instead, the most helpful and welcoming response might look something like this: Acknowledge that the person’s question or situation truly is difficult and challenging, offer gratitude and respect for their perseverance, effort, and growth to date, express the desire to expand your understanding and skills with respect to their situation or challenge, and offer to follow up with them one on one if that seems helpful to them (only if it is a sincere offer that you are comfortable with.) If such a follow up happens, it might be primarily an opportunity for you to respectfully witness and to learn more about an area in which you are not yet an expert.
Third, make an offer of what you have to offer
You might ask something like, “Would you like acknowledgment of your feelings?” And if yes, “What I think I am hearing/seeing is [name feelings], did I get that right?” And let the GHIA person clarify what feelings are actually present.
You might ask, “Would you like for some of the members of the group to share how your words are landing in them?”
You might ask, “Would you like to see if other members of this group have had a similar experience to yours?”
In all of this, we are primarily not seeking to distill or clarify any cognitive material. Rather, we are seeking to provide the GHIA person with the experience of being accurately seen and of being cared about. We are seeking to foster welcoming, connection, acceptance and respect.
Why should you care about the particular needs of the global high participants in your program?
By default, GHIA people will only attain a fraction of the potential benefit of any particular program because so much of their energy and attention goes toward surviving and navigating both internal and external stimuli. Even though much of this is happening unconsciously, it prevents the person from being fully available to engage and learn.
So, the first reason for you to care about the needs of this population is that doing so will increase their benefit and learning in your program.
If the group or program you are leading is designed to support the participants to do any sort of healing work in the world, then there is an even bigger reason to care about their needs. When GHIA people become proficient in healing modalities, they tend to be much better equipped than “internally ok enough” folks to meet the healing needs of the GHIA population out there in the world. Since this is a population that is chronically shunned and dismissed by healers who don’t understand their complexity, we desperately need to expand on the small population of healing practitioners who get them.
And the third reason sits at the intersection of the first two. If you design your program to be aware of and accommodate global high participants, there will be some spillover for your “internally ok enough” population. These more “normal” participants will gain some understanding and awareness of global high and will be better equipped to either effectively serve global high clients in the future or to identify those clients as outside their scope and refer them out appropriately.
Welcome everyone and do not call attention to their differences. Why things that seem like they ought to be simple and easy may not be simple and easy for a global high person
It’s ok for someone to be different; you don’t need to understand their difference to welcome them. Some of this content applies to anyone who is different, not just to GHIA people.
One useful thought question here is this: “I wonder what is going on under the surface inside that person, that might relate to these behaviors that are different.” And even, “I wonder if there is a lot going on in that person, more than they can comfortably manage.”
In response to a GHIA person, we may have the urge to try various approaches to get them to chill out, relax and feel comfortable. If there are ice-breaking activities as part of the group gathering, the GHIA person might choose not to participate or might limit their participation. We may think, “If only they would give these experiences a chance, they would discover that it really does feel good to connect with people in this light, casual and friendly way.” Much of the time, we would be wrong.
Whatever activity we believe is straightforward and easy for “anyone” to do may be neither straightforward nor easy for the GHIA person. There can be various reasons and explanations for this. For some GHIA people, myself included, the body’s perception is that all other humans are threatening. The mere proximity of another person or the requirement to socially engage can feel like a huge demand. There are parts or mechanisms in the person that strongly want to shut down or run away, and the person needs to override or work around those forces every moment that they are interacting with or even every moment they are present with a person or group.
The point here is that GHIA participants know their inner landscape better than you do. They themselves are best equipped to assess and determine their appropriate level of participation. They know how to manage their inner experience, in part by managing their outer experience.
Vet your group content
Aside from consideration of how the person is welcomed and responded to, even the content that is presented in a group can have welcoming or adverse impacts on global high people (and other people with differences.)
I recommend reviewing your spoken and written content to see if there is any content that might cause global high participants to feel excluded, dismissed or not seen. Here are some things to screen for in your content.
Predictions or generalizations about the impact that ideas or experiences will have on people.
If there is an activity that participants tend to enjoy, instead of saying, “I know you will enjoy this!”, you can say, “Most people enjoy this, and whatever experience you have is ok!” In general, try to use language that allows for the possibility that some people might not have the expected or typical experience.
Unclear or inconsistent content
GHIA and neuro-diverse participants may stumble or get stuck when content is presented where there are apparent contradictions that are not acknowledged or explained, or if the content is vague and the meaning is not clear.
Stereotyping content or comments
As much as possible, avoid content that states or implies that “‘This category of people’ tend to respond or behave in ‘this way’ in response to ‘this situation or stimulus.’”
References to shared experiences
Making references to shared past experience can certainly help to build camaraderie in a group. However, while those members of the group that have a common reminiscence may be drawn closer by the reference, those members of the group that do not share that past experience are excluded and are aware of being excluded in those moments.
Confusion about content
Even when your content is as clear as it can be, a GHIA person may still have questions or be confused by what seem like contradictions to them. Have patience for their learning style. They pay attention and engage with the material, but that can lead to them having more questions as the neural networks in their brains fire rapidly in all directions almost constantly.
The Value of Structured Social Engagement
These days it is common knowledge in many communities that social engagement is beneficial to people’s emotional and physical health. Social engagement has quite a positive effect on us when we feel relatively safe and when within that context, we are able to comfortably relate to others, both human and nonhuman (such as pets). A sense of connection and the physiological effects of engaging the ventral vagal branch of the nervous system that can result from effective social engagement will then tend to cause the participants to focus better and retain more during the more cognitive portions of the program.
Note that interactions between the presenter and the group – such as Q&A or group discussions – will tend to have some of the same effects, but these are likely to leave some participants feeling disconnected.
While attention to the experience of connection and social engagement for the participants will tend to benefit all participants, those who are global high or neurodivergent or who have social anxiety will be even more affected. These participants, who are perhaps most in need of the experience of connection and community, are also the ones for whom it is most difficult to find that sense of relatively safe connection. Many groups build in open social time to provide for networking and social engagement. But for people who both need connection and find it uncomfortable or difficult, being in open unstructured social situations often doesn’t lead to their feeling connected. They might back off and not engage, or they might engage superficially in expected social behavior but not feel any sense of bonding or attunement with the people they are engaging with.
Some people who are uncomfortable in unstructured social situations feel much more comfortable when the situations are structured. An example of this would be where the group is divided up into smaller groups of 3 to 8 people and within these small groups, people are invited to share about themselves and/or discuss a topic relevant to the group. These smaller group meetings could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more, depending on the overall schedule. Sometimes some of the key content can be delivered or key practicing or discussion can be done in these smaller groups.
Including small group structured social engagement opportunities can provide the chance for more of the participants to establish some safe and friendly interactions with others, which in turn causes them to feel safer and more connected within the larger group. Thus including well-formed structured social engagement can make a big difference to the overall tone and comfort level of the group and in particular for the global high and neurodivergent participants in the group.
Here are some considerations for setting up small group structured social engagement:
- Ensure that everyone is included in a group. If groups are self-selecting, monitor and support that process to ensure that no one is left awkwardly looking for a group to join.
- Ensure that everyone has the opportunity to speak and can opt out if they wish.
- Have a moderator who can gently intervene if one or two people are speaking at length and using up the majority of the group’s time, or who can gently moderate if conflict arises. Or if the group is only peers, with no moderator, provide instructions on how much time is invited for each person’s share.
- Offer a topic or prompt, but welcome sharing that is not on that topic if that’s what is present for a person.
- Model sharing that is authentic and a bit personal but not inappropriately personal, to invite real presence by the group members (rather than superficial commentary).
- The tone you want to set is that it is ok for each person to be who they are and to have the experience they are having.
Summary
The global high participants in your groups are interesting and complex humans who have a lot to offer. If your program is not intentionally designed to be safe and welcoming for these folks, most likely they are feeling unnecessarily unsafe, unwelcome or uncomfortable in your group. Some thoughtful adjustments can increase the comfort and learning of these members and can support the comfort and learning of your entire group.
Thank you for considering these ideas. I welcome any suggestions or feedback on this content.
I have written more here about Global High Intensity Activation (GHIA)