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Why do the ‘experts’ diagnose an individual while they ‘assess’ a family?  Is the distinguishing factor a cultural assumption-belief that a family is made up of autonomous individuals?  Wrong.  Everyone one of us is formed from our start within an environment that influenced our development, and in severely infant-child abusing families it is obvious to me that the abusing parent is ‘spilling over’ into their child’s ‘personal space’ as the autonomy of the child is left out of the developmental story.  If all children were treated like autonomous people all their universal rights would be respected and met, which is obviously so NOT the case when infant-child abuse happens.

I do not believe healthy autonomy exists within unsafe, insecurely attached abusive human relationships and environments that condone abuse.  If abuse is allowed to happen at all, as far as I am concerned it is being condoned:  Allowed = condone.

I do not believe that when considering and/or dealing with MOST so-called ‘mental illnesses’ that we can have it both ways.  We cannot ‘diagnose’ individuals without ‘diagnosing’ the family that formed that individual.  If we are not willing to accept THIS as reality, then we better ‘assess’ individuals while we ‘assess’ the family that formed them.

In my view, assessment is the direction that offers the most factual and realistic opportunity to affect true HEALING.  All other approaches to most ‘mental illness’ problems — which includes abuse because I believe abuse only happens as an expression of ‘mental illness’  — address ‘symptoms’ without assessing or addressing actual cause.

We can continue to believe the old myth and fallacy that ‘mental illness’ is genetic.  Genes manifest themselves through epigenetic processes that happen when our genetic-expression ‘machinery’ detects a need for a body to adapt to a particular kind of environment.  Our genetic well-being (and therefore our overall well-being) is thus directly tied to the conditions of ill-being or well-being of the environment that forms us – during every instant of our lifetime.

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If we were to listen to the best orchestra in the world play the most complex and beautiful song we can imagine (assuming the piece appeals to our cultural tastes), what we would be listening to in any ongoing instant of time is simply a reflection of what has ‘happened in the past’ as it transfers into ‘what is happening in the present’.  Because we would have no reason to be listening along as a part of this musical experience while at the same time anticipating any abrupt STOP in the music in the middle of the song doesn’t mean that all possibilities for what COULD or MIGHT happen in the future don’t exist.

If we included in our symphony experience a conscious awareness of the nearly unbelievable history that has led up to this moment in time, we would be overwhelmed.  All of the billions of decisions that led to our specific birth as listeners, the decisions that were made back in time that led to the existence of every musician, of everyone who made every instrument we are listening to, who wrote the songs, how this ‘event’ was able to exist because ‘it got put together’ is not something we often include in our conscious awareness.  Our excluding of these thoughts and the information they might relate to does not mean that ALL that information is not a part of what we experience.

If we are going to simply say that so-called ‘mental illness’ is a result of ‘bad genes’ we are excluding vast amounts of information related to what we think we are talking about in a very similar way.

If we think about information in a familiar framework today, we can think about binary code.  Because life as we know it, including our own, actually happens on an atomic and molecular basis where information is transmitted through electrical signals and pulses of information, all we come down to is the equivalent of binary code.

If we think about our entire history as a species, our entire specie’s story of our life here on earth as being contained within our DNA, we only have one part of the story.  Somehow this story is continuing on and we each have our part in it.

While DNA contains the story of our past, it is the DNA’s ‘middle people’ that transform the story of the past into the story of the present.  I don’t know exactly HOW this happens, of course.  In fact, there are probably only a very few researchers alive today who are beginning to detect the truth about how our epigenetic processes work.

Right now it is assumed that epigenetic mechanisms are able to detect conditions within the environment so that these mechanisms can tell our DNA genetic codes how to combine with one another, how to operate, and how to express the DNA information.

Right now it is assumed that even though the epigenetic changes that happen in one generation can be passed down through successive generations (and often are), it is believed that these changes are NOT changing our DNA – or our human story.

BUT it is also becoming known that it is probably true that if the conditions that created patterns of change in DNA expression — as contained in the epigentic changes of DNA communication about the environment and hence in our DNA’s expression — remain in existence long enough, our DNA might very well EVENTUALLY change in adaptation.

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This means to me that unlike my symphony image, being human means that the ongoing song-story that we are a part of CAN and DOES change as it goes along, and these changes can be passed down the generations through epigenetic processes that very well MIGHT and CAN change the very essence of our specie’s story within our DNA.

I am coming to understand that this ENTIRE PROCESS is about attachment.  In a great, safe and secure world full of plenty and without toxicity, our epigenetic ‘middle people’ do not have to instruct our DNA to make extreme changes to adapt to trauma.  This version of the picture happens when attachment can happen within a benevolent world.

On the other hand, when attachment is unsafe and insecure within a malevolent environment, our epigentic ‘middle people’ have a much bigger job to do.  They have to tell our DNA about these hostile and malevolent conditions in our environment so our DNA can change its expression to best ensure ongoing life IN SPITE of the traumas and difficulties present.

Playing in an orchestra with well constructed instruments that do not break to pieces in the middle of a song is one thing.  But if, all of a sudden, every instrument develops some kind of critical ailment, the song is going to CHANGE drastically as a result.

If all the instruments remain intact and fine, but suddenly some mysterious sneezing gas is released into the musical arena, the song that was playing is going to change itself, also.

We cannot afford to pretend that the exact conditions of our earliest developmental environment does not profoundly influence the way our DNA manifests itself.  Just because the potential exists of a beautiful song does not mean that within conditions of some environments that beautiful song will NOT be played.

Serious attachment difficulties in early human relationships are obviously far worse than sneezing gas sneezes.  But we have to realize that the nature and quality of our earliest attachment experiences directly communicate to the growing and developing human body-brain what the condition of the world ACTUALLY is – and what it is going to be like in the future.

Our entire physiological systems are designed to tell us – just as clearly as if they were receiving instructions in binary code – what is to be approached and included as life-sustaining in our lifetime along with what is to be avoided and excluded because it is NOT life-sustaining in our lifetime.

This is ATTACHMENT information:  Attach to the good and healthy, do not attach to the bad and unhealthy.

This all begins to be orchestrated (actually from before our conception) through our earliest HUMAN attachment interactions.  In environments of unsafe and insecure early attachment relationships the growing body-brain is fed the information that the world AS A WHOLE is not a good, healthy place to attach within or to!  Epigenetic changes then happen and development is correspondingly altered.  Our DNA code is told about these difficult conditions by our genetic ‘middle people’ – and VOILA!  Changes happen that are as difficult to live with as was the original environment that caused them to happen in the first place.

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Discovering what the range of these changes is can be done either through what we call ‘diagnosis’ or through what we call ‘assessment’.  In the end, we are talking about the same process of identifying what was WRONG in the earliest attach-to-the-world environment that led to these changes happening in the first place.

But we cannot POSSIBLY talk about either ‘diagnosing’ or ‘assessing’ any individual person while we separate their difficulties from the environment that influenced the entire development of all aspects of their body from the start.

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