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When life takes us on a wild and dangerous ride before we have the skills to handle it, is the choice for goodness erased from the picture?
Reading further in Keltner’s chapter on compassion my mind stumbled into its own thoughts – as it often does. Is this, again, simply a process of taking a detour through the memories of my own experiences so that I can begin to better understand both what Keltner is saying and how his research on ‘being good’ relates to the topic of my blog – the causes and consequences of early trauma and maltreatment in infant-childhood?
I am remembering a brief wonderful friendship I had with a woman who moved from New Mexico to this region of Arizona where I live for about a year. I first met Mary at a craft show in town. A tiny woman, with thick curly nearly white hair, Mary had a way with people coupled with a life force that made me feel – well – LIKED!
Mary came from a severely abusive childhood home, but if nothing else could be said about this woman, one could say that she flew out of that childhood with colors flying like a warrior from some ancient time. She was an attendee at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. And for the past nearly 30 years everywhere this woman moved to she brought along with her a sort of extended body that included 4 horses and a mule.
That might not seem like any particular accomplishment unless one knows that Mary was poor. She’d always been poor. Keeping livestock is not a cost-free endeavor. Mary’s love for those four-legged big animals was a joy for me to see.
During the months that Mary lived in Arizona, living in a camp trailer with her not employed husband, I was able to muck for her horses in exchange for Mary’s teaching me the fundamentals of riding. Saddling up, she took me on leisurely training rides through the native tall grass fields that bank the San Pedro River. We were never in a hurry. Mary showed me how to guide the horse I rode so gently that I felt a part of its great body. How sad I was the day she packed up her tack and moved back to their home in the Sandia Mountains above Albuquerque.
I stayed in touch with Mary for months after she left here, and was even able to go spend a week with her as we worked together to strengthen the fences that kept her small herd from running wild in the brushy mountains. One day we saddled the horses and went out for a ride. Perhaps Mary thought she’d trained me well enough that I could handle her big mare that day. Perhaps she was right.
That mare was in heat, and as soon as we headed away from the barn she took off running with me sitting on top of her like a gangling piece of fire wood. Up the rocky mountain trails and down she raced, mane flying in the wind. I did the only thing I could do, flying instant by flying instant. I hung on for dear life.
I can tell you for certain that horse didn’t care one bit that I was on her back. She had no concern for my needs as her rider. I was clearly the one with all of the needs for that full-run half hour that horse took off in the Sandia foothills like she owned them.
I think about that horse and Mary this morning because what Keltner really is describing next in his chapter on compassion is how human beings respond to the needs of others, a response that can be measured in the trunk of the body by the activity of the vagus nerve system that regulates breathing and heart rate in response to the environment around us. I think about humans’ ability to respond to the needs of others as a negotiation that involves resources.
When I remember my wild ride on the back of Mary’s gorgeous red mare, I think about how all of my attention – and I mean ALL of it – was solely focused on my own survival while I tried to ride her. There was no possibility until that horse slowed her gait (by her own free will) that I could either think about anything else, or could have responded to anything else in the environment around me. All of my resources were focused on my own one single need – remaining attached to the back of that horse.
For the duration of that ride there was no chance in hell that I had anything to give to anyone else. Nothing. My breathing and heart rate were in a pell-mell state of high gear gallop right along with that mare’s. That means that if someone had been able to measure the activity of my vagus nerve wandering nerve bundle the results would have paralleled that fact. During that ride I had nothing to give and could not possibly have been able to respond to anyone else’s need – no matter what.
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When I think about the results of the research study on Borderlines and their vagus nerve, and combine that thinking with the results of the compassion versus pride research Keltner describes (in his chapter on compassion from his book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life), I come up with the idea that at no time when we are in a fight/flight condition because our own survival is threatened are we free to worry about what others might need. At those times we simply do not have any extra resources available to offer to anyone else.
At those times when we are most intensely focused on keeping ourselves alive we don’t even have the resources available to pause to even think about anyone else. Any decisions we are able to make while we are in full fight/flight are made in the body, as quickly as possible, and are not the consequence of slow higher cortical thinking. As that red mare was in full flight mode, and I was in full fight mode to stay on her back, I did not have the ability to think about anything else.
However it actually happened in my mother’s earliest childhood that her body came to understand my mother was not any more safely or securely attached in the world than I was as I clung to that racing horse, her body made adjustments that meant forever more that the fight/flight state would be the main state of her existence, no matter what. That is what having an evolutionarily altered body and brain means to me.
If I had had more experience, better skills, more competence and confidence before I swung my leg over the back of that mare before the ride ever began, of course my entire ride would have gone differently. But a newborn, born into a traumatic and malevolent world, has no prior experience. Everything their body-brain comes to know about being in the world will be built into them through their earliest experiences in the world.
I understand, certainly, that people who have a body-brain built in early safety and security can still make terrible choices in regard to the needs of others. Again, the important word here is CHOICE. While I had the choice to climb onto that horse, while Mary had the choice, knowing my complete inadequacies as a rider, to let me climb onto that mare in her season, once those choices were made the rest of the ride was predictable.
I suspect that my mother’s unconscious state mirrored my own as she rode the horse she’d been placed upon from the time she was born. In a state of desperation, in a condition of emergency, my mother never wavered from the task she saw put before her in the beginning of her life. I’m not sure she ever had a choice to pause for a moment to consider the needs of anyone else because she was as fully occupied with her own survival throughout her lifetime as I was as I tried to stay safely and securely attached on the back of that footloose, headstrong happy horse.
This means to me that measurements of the operation of the vagus nerve within our body tells us not so much what our capacity for compassion is, but actually tells us how dangerous we feel the world is. Measurements of the vagus nerve’s response tell about a body’s perception of need to stay alive in a word of threat, danger and deprivation. Only when a person feels safe and secure enough in the world — because their own survival is assured — are they free to choose ‘be good enough’ to offer resources of caring compassion through kindness to somebody else.
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At the end of this story I will say that I have lost any hope of contact in the future with Mary unless she someday makes contact with me. Last I heard from her two years ago she and her husband had divorced, their home had burned to the ground, and Mary was living in the barn with her four horses and her mule. Her cell telephone number is no longer attached to her, and while Mary will always have a warm place in my heart, I don’t expect to ever hear from her again in this lifetime.
I feel sad, and I will always miss her. At the same time I know that if anyone can survive a merry romp through the tragedies of life it will be Mary. With the hundreds of miles of weathered wrinkles on her shining face, I have no doubt whatsoever that if Mary is still breathing air she is happy while she does it.
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MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER AND MY CHILDHOOD WITH HER, WITH THANKS TO:
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What You Need to Know About BPD Relationships
Borderline relationships are often tumultuous and chaotic. The effects of borderline personality disorder (BPD) on family members, friends, romantic partners, and children can be very broad, and are often devastating for loved ones.
Understanding Abandonment Sensitivity
A key symptom of BPD is fear of abandonment. This symptom may cause you to need frequent reassurance that abandonment is not imminent, to go to great lengths to try to avoid abandonment, and to feel devastated when someone ends a relationship with you.
The BPD Marriage – Can it Work?
Many different kinds of close relationships are affected by BPD, but perhaps none more than marriage.
Borderline Friendships
Must Reads
| What is BPD? | |
| Symptoms of BPD | |
| Diagnosis of BPD | |
| Treatment of BPD |
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| Living with BPD |
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Stop the Storm 