CEU Test Questions on
The Nourishment Barrier:
The Shock Response to Toxic Intimacy
[Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies 15(2), Autumn 2012, 3-26]
Circle the correct answer and mail this answer sheet, with $50 payment, to:
The Wellness Institute, 3716 – 274th Ave SE, Issaquah, WA 98029
or FAX to 425-391-9737 and call credit card payment in to 425-391-9716
You will receive a certificate of completion by return mail
1. Some people have learned to be cautious about taking in nourishment that is available, whether it be
emotional or physical, because
a. their early life experience was that accepting nourishment carried a heavy price
b. they have masochistic tendencies, seeking self-punishment
c. either a or b
d. neither a nor b
2. For some, life may not feel real without large doses of emotional toxins, and so they seek high drama,
personal danger, and polluting habits or addictions. True or False?
a. True
b. False
3. Both sets of defense – sympathetic hyperarousal and hypervigilance on the one hand, and
parasympathetic mechanisms of shutdown, avoidance and dissociation on the other – are largely
determined by
a. left hemisphere systems in the developing brain
b. the limbic system in the brain
c. right hemisphere systems in the developing brain
d. either a or b
4. Dissociation
a. is a survival strategy, necessary to maintain the sense of intactness of the self by separating the
self from its noxious experience
b. may include the experience of the absence of the other
c. leaves at the core of the self a void where the dissociated experience ought to be lodged
d. all of the above
5. The fear of not enough often begins in ________________ where there may not be enough safety, love,
connection or nourishment, and continues on a profoundly unconscious level for a lifetime.
a. adolescence
b. infancy
c. the womb
d. the early school years
CEU Test Questions – page 1
The Nourishment Barrier
The Wellness Institute  800-326-4418
6. Prenates as early as _______________ learn intonations, rhythms and other speech patterns of the
mother’s voice, demonstrated in matching spectrographs.
a. 20 weeks
b. 26 weeks
c. 30 weeks
d. 2 weeks before birth
7. _______________________ is our nervous system’s attention to what is happening in our
environment.
a. Neuroception
b. Neuroperception
c. Vigilance
d. none of the above
8. The Vagal Paradox (Porges, 2011) provides the mechanism for the nourishment barrier. The vagal
parasympathetic response puts a “brake” on sympathetic activation. The paradox is that
a. it is the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system that also activates a fight or flight
response
b. it is virtually the same nervous system “brake” that allows a person to be vulnerable when it is
deemed to be safe to do so as that which instills death feigning as a last desperate bid for
survival
c. it is the sympathetic nervous system that initiates both the fight/ flight response and social
engagement system
d. none of the above
9. When aggressive or violent individuals regress to the prenatal period, they frequently go to the time the
pregnancy was discovered, and experience that they were unwanted. Typical responses to being
unwanted are
a. to collapse into helplessness and hopelessness
b. to rage at others and the world’s injustice
c. to refuse to engage in life
d. all of the above
10. When the baby has matured to the point of being ready to move out of the womb, there may be
several signs of the vagal brake happening even before birth:
a. the cord wrapped around the baby’s neck
b. meconium poisoning
c. difficulty breathing (i.e., a blue baby)
d. all of the above
11. The nourishment barrier is complicated at birth by the chemical ____________________ .
a. anesthetic
b. ether
c. Pitocin
d. narcotics
CEU Test Questions – page 2
The Nourishment Barrier
The Wellness Institute  800-326-4418
12. The “delivery self-attachment” is every newborn baby’s instinctive and innate ability to find its
mother’s breast, latch on and suck. Delivery self-attachment is an integral part of the bonding and
attachment process, and the completion of the delivery self-attachment sequence at birth will have
long lasting positive effects on the baby’s _____________________________ .
a. outlook on life
b. neurological, somatic, and psychological development
c. sexual identity
d. intelligence
13. Immediately upon birth, the baby enters a prolonged quiet but alert state of consciousness, averaging
___________ minutes duration. In this quiet alert state, babies look directly at their mother’s or
father’s eyes and face, and can respond to voices. This is the most crucial time in the development of
a healthy mother-child connection.
a. forty
b. thirty
c. twenty
d. ten
14. Cesarean birth mothers have longer labors and more medication before, during and after delivery.
They are unconscious during the delivery, and suffer a period of amnesia after the birth as they
recover from major surgery. At one month, compared to vaginal delivery mothers, cesarean mothers
a. are more satisfied in their attitudes to the pregnancy and birth
b. are more depressed and more resentful of the father
c. show significantly less eye-to-eye contact with their baby
d. b. and c.
15. The social engagement system of the baby with ________________________ can dampen down the
defensive states, such as the nourishment barrier, to create enough safety to promote a loving
connection. So even though the baby may have had a difficult beginning, this can be repaired and, of
course, the sooner following trauma the better.
a. face-to-face interaction
b. an alternate caregiver
c. medication
d. isolation
16. Erecting a barrier against receiving nourishment is an innate instinctual response to trauma. The research
suggests that stressful feeding episodes in an infant’s first year of life create sympathetic circuits of
anxiety embedded in the amygdala, becoming
a. “failure to thrive”
b. generalized anxiety disorder
c. personality disorders
d. a long-lasting association between feeding and stress
17. In both food and sexual anorexia, the person is totally obsessed with ___________________. This is
the nourishment barrier in action.
a. self-image
b. reaching satiation of their unmet needs
c. what they deprive themselves of
d. none of the above
CEU Test Questions – page 3
The Nourishment Barrier
The Wellness Institute  800-326-4418
18. Need shock and the nourishment barrier go hand in hand. An example is a young child who screams
frantically at the smallest frustration of not having what she wants. In the DSM this child is often
diagnosed as __________________. In adults, it is diagnosed as _____________________.
a. ADHD, obsessive-compulsive
b. anxious, anger management deficit
c. Reactive Attachment Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder
d. Reactive Attachment Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder
19. People who have survived toxic nourishment
a. have been strengthened by the ordeal of tolerating a steady diet of toxins
b. have learned to endure
c. have learned to make the compromises necessary to eke out a subsistence level of nourishment
d. all of the above
20. Erecting a barrier around oneself to keep out healthy nourishing experiences, and to magnetically
draw the toxic experiences that feel so familiar is the pattern named nourishment barrier by
a. Fritz Perls
b. Ron Kurtz
c. Carl Jung
d. Erik Erickson
Circle the correct answer and mail this answer sheet, with $50 payment, to:
The Wellness Institute, 3716 – 274th Ave SE, Issaquah, WA 98029
or FAX to 425-391-9737 and call credit card payment in to 425-391-9716
You will receive a certificate of completion by return mail
CEU Test Questions – page 4
The Nourishment Barrier
The Wellness Institute  800-326-4418