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Saturday, April 25, 2015. My intense involvement and investment of focused care for my little grandsons continues to occupy the majority of my waking time. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of what I am looking forward to come fall.
It will sadden me deeply to leave this North Dakota town to return to the small southeastern Arizona place that I call home probably in September. My leaving here, by all other considerations other than family, is a must. In between now and then I recognize that my thinking self is about as bound up as would be an eagle whose entire body was wrapped up with duct tape from below beak to above feet.
I can mentally hop around a little bit, but other than that I will not again be able to unfold my “hard study” wings for a few more months.
In the meantime, I did need to coalesce my thoughts today enough to dig out the following two measurement scales to pass over to my daughter who is about to direct data collection for her dissertation and for some other areas of research she is being asked to be a part of.
It will be entirely her decision whether or not to include the gathering of this information I am suggesting along with the ACEs questionnaire she will be using.
I did also manage this morning to write an informal treatise to her about how I view the relevance of adding these two measurement scales to her work. I will be THRILLED if she does so! In synopsis of my treatise I can simply report that in my thinking early traumatic experiences (Adverse Childhood Experiences) most likely impact “outcoming” adult attachment at the same time that attachment patterns are put into action and communicated for humans through empathy processes.
Empathy is the language of attachment. Both are fundamentally biophysical/physiological processes, and in the earliest most critical stages of body-brain development they DIRECT that development either in the direction of survival in a mostly benevolent safe and secure world or in the direction of survival in a mostly malevolent unsafe and insecure world.
It is through ATTACHMENT processes as they “speak” via the signaling language of empathetic processes (all physiological) that the conditions of the environment a new person is growing to be a part of are transmitted.
Most likely in nearly ALL cases I would conjecture that very high ACE scores correlate with corresponding degrees of insecure attachment and corresponding empathy impairment.
I believe that it is at this fundamental, most basic level of empathy communication between generations — through attachment interactions as they convey signals about the condition of the environment through the quality of empathy interactions (degrees of resonance, mirroring, attunement, etc.) — that the fullness of unresolved trauma is transmitted to, through and INTO successive generations.
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Advances in the technology of scientific exploration now allow us to SEE these processes in motion from the start of life, as these articles by Dr. Allan N. Schore describe:
Attachment and the regulation of the right brain
And here –
VIDEO: Dr. Allan Schore on Attachment Trauma and Effects of Neglect and Abuse on Brain Development (2014)
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The Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research has essentially begun to crack open the shell of the egg that will hatch out another stage of the evolution of humanity – in an unimaginably glorious new direction.
In the meantime, if there is indeed a strong link between (1) very high ACE scores, (2) insecure attachment disorders and (3) “empathy pathologies” research needs to and CAN find these connections. I believe that the ACE questionnaire used in research in a three-part combination with measurement tools such as the following, will bring out into the open what matters most.
From there we can take the new emerging light forward to discover solutions.
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SEE ALSO: ACEsConnection at this link http://www.acesconnection.com
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My recommendations to my daughter to include in her ACE-based research are the
Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ)
and the
Adult Attachment Scale (AAS) – revised
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Fyi NOTE: The information in this post came up in conversation recently:
+BRAINWASHING, MIND CONTROL – INFO RELATED TO MY MOTHER
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Here is our first book out in ebook format. Click here to view or purchase –
Story Without Words: How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?
It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.
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NOTE: I am still stuck with this new version of the blog’s posting page that I do not like and cannot get out of. It has refused to post or include my chosen tags:
adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame
Stop the Storm 
The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire link doesn’t land on the questionnaire. Could you fix? Thanks!
That was very strange! The link went to a page I’ve never viewed in my life!! So should be fixed to end up here
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775495/
the TEQ is at the bottom of that article:
Appendix
Toronto Empathy Questionnaire instructions
Below is a list of statements. Please read each statement carefully and rate how frequently you feel or act in the manner described. Circle your answer on the response form. There are no right or wrong answers or trick questions. Please answer each question as honestly as you can.
When someone else is feeling excited, I tend to get excited too
Other people’s misfortunes do not disturb me a great deal
It upsets me to see someone being treated disrespectfully
I remain unaffected when someone close to me is happy
I enjoy making other people feel better
I have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me
When a friend starts to talk about his\her problems, I try to steer the conversation towards something else
I can tell when others are sad even when they do not say anything
I find that I am “in tune” with other people’s moods
I do not feel sympathy for people who cause their own serious illnesses
I become irritated when someone cries
I am not really interested in how other people feel
I get a strong urge to help when I see someone who is upset
When I see someone being treated unfairly, I do not feel very much pity for them
I find it silly for people to cry out of happiness
When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards him\her Scoring Item responses are scored according to the following scale for positively worded items 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 13, 16. Never = 0; Rarely = 1; Sometimes = 2; Often = 3; Always = 4. The following negatively worded items are reverse scored: 2, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15. Scores are summed to derive total for the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire.
Apologies for the weird error and thank you so much for the ALERT!!