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Before I start my writing for the book this morning I thought I’d clear my thoughts a little over here.  I am thinking about what happens when early stressful trauma changes development especially from conception to age two in environments that are unsafe and insecure and in which those who are supposed to meet all the needs of their little ones cannot do the job right because their OWN development was changed through stressful traumas during their own first 33 months of life.

Of course all trauma from neglect and abuse during childhood contributes to the longterm developmental changes a survivor faces, nearly ALL of those having affected the physiological development of the nervous system and brain — but it is always those first 33 months that build the platform and foundation — permanently — for ALL later human development.

I keep seeing two images this morning and as odd as it might seem, these two images are directly related.  The first one is of a funnel and the second is of the sinking Titanic as it was portrayed in the movie of the same name.

I am also thinking about what happens when early stressful trauma alters growth so that personality disorders and addictions end up the lines along which a body develops.  I think about ALL addictions as having a very similar end consequence:  Trauma altered development can create what I see as a funnel.  Everything and everyone in such a person’s life is ‘trapped’ at the top and the ‘relationships’ have no other end but to run through this funnel as experience becomes increasing narrower and more focused to one end and one end only:  Survival of the trauma changed person.

Of course it can be very hard for an outsider to this ‘system’ to understand how the usually very harmful behaviors of these people is possibly contributing to their survival.  But on the physiological level this route is exactly the one that early development of such an individual was forced to take if the body was going to survive the intolerable, overwhelming harm within the early environment.

Now, the Titanic image:  From the point of view of those whose body took this trauma altered developmental course that led directly to a ‘personality disorder’ and/or an addiction, life for them is absolutely NORMAL.  They have no choice (except when outside intervention forces consciousness) but to live their lives from the perspective their trauma-changed body-brain has given them.

No matter how terrible their life may be as they live it, no matter how the deck of the ship of their life is splitting and falling apart around them, no matter how tilted this deck — even to the point that the entire ship is sinking forever under the surface of a cold dark sea taking all on board to a certain death — there are trauma-altered individuals who will NEVER see the reality they are in and that they create for others in ANY OTHER WAY.

Everything about these people has been changed very early in their life to create for them a different ‘evolutionarily altered’ trauma built physical reality that does not allow them to see the world the same way as other people do.  These people do not have the same powers of conscious choice or of free will that other people do.

Expecting a different outcome from people, say, like my mother and father were — as trauma changed as I believe they both were in the direction of personality disorder — Mother with Borderline, Father with Narcissistic — both with terrible insecure attachment disorders that built their physiology from birth (or before) – my Mother with disorganized-disoriented insecure and my father with dismissive-avoidant insecure — lived their life in the only way that they could.

In these cases the dis-ease of the earliest life in malevolent infant/toddler/child/teen unsafe and insecure attachment relationships CHANGED these people.  They ended up with a survival funnel that all information in their life was channeled through and focused by — so at the end tip all that made it through was “I will survive at all costs and to hell with everyone else.”

Duh!  These people make TERRIBLE and very dangerous parents who in turn create so much traumatic stress for their offspring (and usually to their mates) — that there is no such thing as a normal life of well-being.  Yet on these people’s sinking Titanic all is normal and fine from their point of view.

The only hope that can come for those who are suffering from someone else’s terrible sickness has to come from OUTSIDE intervention!!  And in the end those who CAN survive long enough to begin to work toward their own healing must understand the nature of the funnel world and the Titanic world those that harmed them lived in — and dragged their children (and mates) through right along with them.

In most cases all that can realistically be hoped for is that other people be kept safe from the dangerous, destructive lifelong patterns of repeated trauma-drama that some early maltreatment survivors have very little (if any) choice over.  These most harmful patterns are manifestations of terrible  sickness — and in the big picture all of these harmful patterns are a symptom of how a person’s body took control over basic survival and left no possibility for anything else BUT survival.  When a human being is reduced to that one action — survival of self — nothing but a grim, grim life will follow.

Nature, pushed to its final edges for people with overwhelming infant/child trauma doesn’t care at all about quality of life.  All it cares about as it adjusts a human being’s development is that this person survive long enough to create offspring.  That’s it.  And in a natural world rather than a ‘modern’ one I am convinced that these survivors would only live that long.  They would NOT raise their own offspring.  Others would.  Others who had not been raised in hell, who had not had their physiological development so drastically changed.

That is where the picture of preventing infant-child abuse will ALWAYS lie.  With the OTHERS.  We are a social species and it is the loss of the power of OTHERS to take care of infants and young children that will be our society’s demise.  It is the regaining of this power OTHERS have to ensure adequate safe and secure beginnings for every human being that the hope of ending trauma-changed development lies.

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