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In our so-called Western Worldview model of the universe (and of ourselves) with its reliance upon Newtonian-Cartesian thinking, we are most susceptible to perpetuating illusions (delusions) about how we grow a self IN A BODY that can be (is) influenced by the signals received from the earliest environment we are born into.  As long as we are considered to be nothing more than a collection of ‘parts’ in a universe that we do not conceive of as a living WHOLE we cannot possibly know the truth about the wide range of possibilities that in fact DO exist in interaction BETWEEN an infant and its caregiving-attachment environment.

We do not simply hatch into adulthood.  Our body-brain has been specifically created in response to the environment that made us.  This is an interactional process.  There are profound consequences within the body-brain of people whose earliest environments did little to HELP them toward well-being.

None of us live separately from our body.  There is no split between our body and our brain, either.  Nor do we have the power to escape how our environment influences how our genetic potential manifests itself.

We are not robots, nor are we a race of super-beings that are immune to the same natural patterns and processes that affect all life.  There is nothing magical about us.  Any one of us, challenged by a harsh and malevolent early environment, will come out at the end of our infant-childhood in a very different body (and with a very different brain) than we would have if we had been formed under the influence of a far better world.

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All this being said, what I want to mention is that I believe that the so-called ‘personality disorder’ spectrum includes people whose particular genetic potential was forced to respond in a survival-at-all-costs early environment in a particular way that changed their phenotype (what we ‘see’ of genetic combinations).  Very simply put an adequate early environment would NOT have triggered these ‘personality disorder’ patterns.

These patterns, I believe, lie squarely within the range of survival-based tools that our species’ genetic potential has retained for use under conditions of severe devastation.

If we have doubts about the power of our physiological make-up to adapt to a malevolent world in permanent ways, we need to take note of such sobering words as these:

Transgenerational Effects of Maternal Care

“The epigenetic modifications associated with maternal care illustrate the long-term effects of mother-infant interactions within one generation.  However, there is increasing evidence that maternal care can also shape the phenotype of future generations.  The transgenerational continuity of child abuse in humans is striking.  It is currently estimated that up to 70% of abusive parents were themselves abused, whereas 20% – 30% of abused infants are likely to become abusers…”  Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience (Oxford Library of Neuroscience) by Mark Blumberg, John Freeman and Scott Robinson (Nov 10, 2009), page 332)

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NOTE:  As I understand things, nearly every single one of the so-called ‘mental illnesses’ is a phenotype that resulted from undue stress during earliest development that triggered the particular genetic combinations (like a combination lock) so that these phenotypes manifested.  They were in most cases (my belief) NOT preordained in any way (unlike, say, our eye color), but are rather adaptive survival-under-desperate-conditions reactions to malevolent/toxic conditions during development.

The phenotypes then are actually reproductive fitness-unfitness indicators that signal the conditions within the earliest developmental phases of life.  SEE:  REPRODUCTIVE FITNESS INDICATORS.  That our species is losing the ability to ‘read’ the fitness indicators and to understand what they signal about the conditions of the environment-at-large puts us at great risk for continuing to suffer with a lack of well-being (as individuals and as civilizations).

That research is showing that epigenetic factors may pass on these adaptive conditions through the generations is frightening to me!  Nature does not take chances with our survival.  When future generations carry the epigentic information that guarantees manifestation of the trauma-reaction changes (in altered phenotypes) — so that the changes manifest in the future even if the individual DID NOT suffer trauma in their earliest development — we will have to look BACKWARDS to see where/when the trauma occurred in ancestral lines.

Researchers HOPE that epigenetic changes will dissolve over the generations if conditions within the environment that triggered them improve.  It is unknown at present if epigenetic changes can eventually alter DNA if environmental conditions remain troublesome to survival.

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+EARLY ABUSE SURVIVORS SUCH AS MY MOTHER WAS – PROGRAMMED TO SURVIVE AT ALL COSTS

+EARLY ABUSE SURVIVORS SUCH AS MY MOTHER WAS – PROGRAMMED TO SURVIVE AT ALL COSTS

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