A comparative research note tracing the emergence of Raya Faith’s captivity-informed framework — distinguishing it from historical captivity studies and naming what is newly revealed through Incarnational Neurodivergence.

Raya Faith’s captivity-informed framework extends trauma research beyond regulation into reclamation — mapping how lifelong, domestic captivity imprints the nervous system, and how resurrection emerges through embodied, survivor-led neurodivergence.

Context (Historical Captivity Research):

Scholars and clinicians have long studied populations held in overt captivity—e.g., prisoners of war, enslaved persons, cult members, hostages, and survivors of sex trafficking. Those literatures document coercion, surveillance, forced dependency, identity erosion, and complex trauma sequelae. They are invaluable—and yet they largely describe time-bounded captivity in an identifiable site, with eventual extraction, negotiated release, or community rescue frameworks.

What’s Distinct About This Lens (Raya Faith — Incarnational Neurodivergence):

1. Total, Unbroken Domestic Captivity (Developmental Ecosystem Lens)
   • Focuses on a lifelong, site-diffuse captivity within overlapping family and religious ecosystems, where no neutral witness or day of reprieve exists.
   • Captivity here is not episodic but developmental — a shaping climate that imprints attachment, sensory processing, and identity formation from the first breath.
2. Somatic Architecture (not just symptoms)
   • Introduces the “Happy Baby Mask as Organ” and “Oceanic Containment” as bodywide survival architectures—full-system adaptations that distribute compliance, concealment, and co-regulation across the entire nervous system, rather than a set of discrete behaviors.
   • Names two enduring internal states that can co-exist: Collapse (shutdown) and Current (high-frequency vigilance), explaining why survivors may present as calm/organized while carrying catastrophic load.
3. Incarnational Neurodivergence
   • Centers AuDHD sensory empathy, interoception, and resonance as amplifiers of survival intelligence, not deficits—explaining “field effects” (what others feel in the room) and why lyrical/imaginal maps (water/sonar) are precise, not ornamental.
   • Adds the “Incubate/Fifth Response” (penguining) to classic fight/flight/fawn/freeze—sustained endurance that preserves love and meaning under total control.
4. Faith–Somatic Integration (non-bypassing)
   • Distinguishes faith rupture from general religious themes: when a survivor’s primary secure attachment to the Divine is severed, the result is neurophysiological dissonance (loss of the “attachment melody”), not mere theological distress.
   • Clarifies faith-somatic dissociation vs. clinical mutism: a protective, body-level shutdown of prayer/voice after annihilating spiritual harm.
5. Therapeutic Containment for Captivity (not classic trauma only)
   • Proposes shoreline holding: clinicians do not enter the survivor’s ocean; they hold the map on solid ground while co-regulating breath/rhythm.
   • Prioritizes witness over rescue, mirroring over relating, and “What are you noticing?” over “How do you feel?” to respect delayed processing and prevent reenacting control.

Why This Is Novel:

• Shifts from event-based trauma models to a climate-based captivity model where the “treatment target” is the survivor’s somatic architecture and resonant field, not just narratives or symptoms.
• Reframes AuDHD features as precision survival tools within captivity ecologies—expanding both neurodivergence and complex-trauma literatures.
• Offers a practice model (map-holding, pacing, two-stage grounding, faith-safe boundaries) that is specifically tuned to total captivity survivors.

Clinical Implications (Practical):

• First aim: safety and pacing; co-regulate breath and tempo before content.
• Language: mirror, name sensations, track micro-movements; avoid theological interpretation or “meaning-making” in early phases.
• Boundaries: keep faith practice client-led; treat Scripture as a private attachment channel unless explicitly invited.
• Assessment: expect high composure with high load; don’t use affect intensity as the barometer of severity.
• Outcome horizon: healing may look like floating/resting (stable respiration, lowered hum) rather than “walking on land.”

Limitations & Scope:

• A survivor-led framework grounded in lived experience; not a replacement for existing evidence bases, but a complementary lens where conventional models under-capture total, lifelong captivity—especially with faith entanglement and neurodivergence.
• Requires clinicians to tolerate vastness without intrusion, and to work collaboratively with the survivor’s language and pacing.

For Therapists (stance in one line):

“I’ll stay on the shore, hold the map with you, breathe with you, and reflect what I notice—so your body learns safety without surrendering its ocean.”

And when the research falls silent, the poetry continues its work — carrying what data cannot, translating survival into breath, and theory back into living water.

— Raya Faith

Author’s Note:

This framework arises from a survivor-informed body of research and language developed by Raya Faith within the Incarnational Neurodivergence paradigm. References to “total, unbroken domestic captivity” describe a theoretical category of trauma ecology — not an autobiographical disclosure. It names a lived pattern observed through embodied research and clinical collaboration, offered as a conceptual bridge between developmental trauma, coercive system studies, and somatic theology. All original terminology and model structure remain the intellectual property of Raya Faith.

Author’s Note (Expanded)

© 2025 Raya Faith. All rights reserved.

This article and the associated frameworks are original intellectual property by Raya Faith.

Protected terms include, without limitation: Incarnational Neurodivergence™ and Captivity-Informed Healing Framework™.

Permissions & Use

• No reproduction, adaptation, training use, or derivative works without written permission.
• Brief citations (≤250 words) are permitted with full attribution and a live link to the source page.
• For teaching, research, or clinical use, please request permission.

Suggested Citation

Faith, R. (2025). Research Note: How This Captivity Lens Differs and What’s Novel Here. Incarnational Neurodivergence / Captivity-Informed Healing Framework. Retrieved from RayaFaith.blog

Disclaimer

This work is a survivor-led research reflection. It is not medical, clinical, legal, or pastoral advice.