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I have a lot of thoughts this morning as I wait out the dawn for the sun to rise.  I am thinking about the book that was recommended to me by a therapist nearly 30 years ago – the one I read that led to my finally being able to disown my mother.  In People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil by M. Scott Peck I found something I needed:  How to tell truth from untruth by listening to what my body tells me in my gut.

This morning I put this thought together with the concluding paragraphs Dr. Martin Teicher includes in one of his important articles about how the stress caused by infant-child abuse, neglect and trauma changes the development of the brain:

“In our hypothesis, postnatal neglect or other maltreatment serves to elicit a cascade of stress responses that organizes the brain to develop along a specific pathway selected to facilitate reproductive success and survival in a world of deprivation and strife.  This pathway, however, is costly as it is associated with an increased risk of developing serious medical and psychiatric disorders and is unnecessary and maladaptive in a more benign environment.”

I am questioning my own conclusion that I reached after discovering Teicher’s work.  “Who says that severe early abuse survivors hatch out from their first malevolent environment when they leave home into a “more benign environment?”  Does an environment that lacks direct assault constitute a benign environment?”

No.

I woke up this morning thinking about the interactions I had with my neighbor children yesterday (ages 6 and 12).  The 6 year old is still young enough to be oblivious to many of the stresses present in the world she is growing up in and for.  The child who just turned 12 two days ago is increasingly showing great signs of inner conflict and distress.  She is vastly overweight, receives blatant derogatory comments at school about her weight, and openly admitted to me yesterday that the teasing she receives at school makes her feel ‘mean’.  And mean she can be!  She is not a happy child.

I also think about a friend of mine (alcoholic/addict) who has the sweetest heart and who is running his body directly into the ground.  I hadn’t seen him for many months.  He stopped by this week for a visit and brought a friend of his who must have repeated to me six times that his ex-wife ‘ripped him off’ after 34 years of marriage, etc.

I found myself after he told the story once wondering why he repeated it again – and again – and again…..  Then I found myself completely without compassion realizing that I don’t give a hoot about what happened to him.  He is a complete stranger to me.  In my world if something that happens in your life continues to trouble you, deal with it!  Grapple with it!  Wrestle with it!  Examine the conditions surrounding the events that cling on and on and on – and get over it!

UNLESS!!!  I reserve for the category of ‘there’s no way this one will ever leave me’ for victims of early infant-childhood trauma and abuse the reality that because that trauma changed the course of our physiological development permanently so that we ended up with a different body-brain our trauma built us and built itself INTO us.  As long as we live in our body the consequences of our earliest traumas reside within us.  We cannot leave those traumas behind.

SO…..

I did ask both my addicted friend and the friend he brought with him what their childhoods were like.  The addict insists that his earliest years were ideal.  OK.  Addictions can hit without early trauma.  The other man admitted that his early years were awful.

OK

“So go back to the beginning,” I wanted to tell him.  “Go back there and find the beginning of your own path through life and follow it.  Untangle it where you can.  Expose your early sufferings where you can.  But what good will it do you — or others who are weighted down by repeated exposure to a boring story of ‘gee my ex was so mean’ – to hear about something that has nothing to do with us?”

Am I getting harsh in my aging years?  Probably so…..

But

These thoughts are connected for me today as I received a lightening bolt realization:  None of us – no matter what nation we live in – are living in a perfect ‘BENIGN’ world.  As long as anyone is suffering, the world is not benign.

But

We have to look at the biggest picture possible.  This world and the civilizations upon it are supposed to be maturing and advancing, evolving, growing up.  Once this process is complete, only THEN will this world be benign.

Even within the boundaries of our great (rich) nation nearly a quarter of our children go to bed hungry because they don’t have enough food to eat.  Forty percent of our nation’s children are living in unstable housing.  Never mind the numbers of our children that are obese, that don’t make it through high school, or the numbers who cannot read well or think for themselves even if they do graduate.

This is NOT a benign environment, Dr. Martin Teicher.

I have, on some profound levels, bought (as Mr. Peck would say) that lie!

This is not a world where every human being is cherished.  This is not a world that does everything possible to make sure everyone has what they need from conception onward to thrive as the best person they can be as they live a life of well-being.

This COULD be a different, benign benevolent world – but it ISN’T one yet.

Just because those of us who suffered terrible things during our earliest years might have escaped one level of trauma as we stepped away from our home of origin and escaped our childhoods does NOT mean that we entered a wonderful world!

If we are going to define what is good for us and what isn’t, we have to think about what the world COULD be like and not pretend that the world is REALLY that world we imagine.

And perhaps those of us who survived our terrifying and terrible earliest years happen to have a body that is not, as Teicher states, designed ONLY for living in a malevolent world.  Perhaps we have a body that craves that better world that isn’t here yet at the same time that we ALWAYS know that this world we are in is NOT the benign world that most people seem intent on believing it is.

Perhaps we WANT more, NEED more in more intense and direct ways because we have suffered so much already.  Perhaps we crave a truly peaceful, safe-and-secure, fair, just, compassionate and caring world because we know so well how bad things can be – and that stepping out of our home of origin was REALLY only one small step in perhaps a better direction – but NONE of us are ‘there’ yet!!  Making the world a better place is a mutual job that everyone has to work on together.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti

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I am up and wide awake (Such an odd expression – what exactly is the alternative to being ‘wide awake’?) at 4 a.m. this morning.  It is a perfect temperature outside.  I hear the first single rooster crowing up the sun across the border in Mexico.  A part of me is eager for the morning light to flood my yard so I can go rescue one of the native southwestern plants I bought that I know – of all of them – is NOT thriving where I planted it.  In fact, it is dying.

I don’t know what is troubling my Henry Eiler’s Quilled Black Eyed Susan, but it was supposed to be the showcase plant in the back yard!  It was supposed to grow into a thriving and glorious giant!  Nope.  Not doing that!  It is shriveling and losing all of its baby leaves as if it is sinking into the earth rather than growing in the opposite direction!

All I can think of is to carefully dig it out and put it back into a pot.  I need to move it where I can watch it carefully, like my precious grandson was watched in his intensive care neonatal environment after he was born six weeks prematurely.

Will it survive?  Can I provide for this little plant what it needs so it can grow past this life-or-death stage?  What am I doing WRONG for it?  Can I figure that out so I can do it RIGHT?

I am a complete newbie when it comes to drip irrigation.  I don’t understand the living complexity of this (for me) massive system I am still in the process of installing in my growing garden.  Only the RIGHT amount of water, at the RIGHT amount of pressure, streaming CORRECTLY through the RIGHT amount of line is needed.  If the ‘zone’ length is too long water comes out at the front end too MUCH and doesn’t make it to the back end of the line.  How do I adjust all of this so that I can guarantee every single plant, each with its own particular and special growth needs just the RIGHT amount of water at the RIGHT periods of time?

I don’t know.  And I hate to sacrifice the life of any individual plant as I work as hard as I can to figure all of this out!

We are evidently in a period of drought down here in southeastern Arizona.  I don’t actually understand what it is about ME that is stimulating me to work so hard to have a yard filled with living, thriving and blooming plants that will bring beauty to this piece of earth IN SPITE of the harsh conditions present here.

I am challenging myself.  I have a WANT and a DESIRE and the INTENTION of trying to cooperate within the limitations of this climate and of this soil and of these growing conditions on this little patch of ground I am living on to MAKE LIFE HAPPEN and to MAKE THAT LIFE BEAUTIFUL.  Of course that suggests (truly) that bare dusty reddish-brown soil on its own is not beautiful to me.  I am suggesting that THINGS CAN BE BETTER if I try hard enough, work hard enough, am determined enough, sacrifice enough.

I want to do something DIFFERENT and SPECIAL here in my little life, my little yard.  I want to figure all of this out!  At the same time, except for needing the vital resource of WATER to move around on this soil to bring life to these plants, I want the garden to be sustainable.  I desire that this garden find its own thriving balance point, its own ‘tipping point’ and stay there provided I can do my part to take care of it correctly.

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On the other hand as I look at my own situation as a human being I know that nothing was done for me during the first 18 years of life (other than being given the physical necessities of shelter, water, food, etc.) correctly.  Me, like the tiny Brown Eyed Susan in my yard spent my entire infant-childhood on the verge of dying.  Not only did nobody NOTICE, nobody CARE, but my parents continually cooperated with each other to make things WORSE for me, never BETTER.

So in a way I guess my gardening here in this arid high desert land is a sort of trauma drama reenactment for me, an effort to ACT out a way to create a beautiful, thriving garden IN SPITE of similar (parallel-symbolic) conditions to my own infant-childhood as they attack these plants.  Can I protect them?  Can I take adequate care of them?  Can I give them what they need?  Can I help them to thrive IN SPITE of all the detriments within this environment that are working against them?

And in the case of this single plant that seems to be losing its battle/struggle to remain alive let alone to GROW, can I-we win this battle?  Can I figure out what is WRONG and make it BETTER?  Can I ‘repair’ the ‘rupture’ in the patterns of this plant’s existence so that it can actually continue to BE on this earth?

Today I will try.  I will do everything in my power to help this plant.

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RECENT POSTS:

+ADOBE MOMMA NEWS: COOP WINDOWS (AND A FEW FLOWERS)

+’BAD MEDICINE’: PRETENDING EARLY ABUSE SURVIVORS HAVE AN ‘ORDINARY’ BODY

+AS DR. MARTIN TEICHER STATES — EARLY ABUSE, ALTERED BRAIN DEVELOPMENT AND THE SCARS THAT WON’T HEAL

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Sometimes I try to figure out how the kinds of altered brain development that happened to me through severe abuse and trauma especially during the early years of my growth actually FEEL like from the inside of me.  Today, as this poor parched and unusually dry earth sends back to me a dull hollow thumping sound when I send a stream of water from the hose upon it, I think about what it feels like to be that kind of thirsty.

I contrast that thought with the knowledge that too much water upon the earth is equally as harmful as too little is.  Then I find myself wondering, “Are the left brain hemisphere developmental changes abuse survivors experience a consequence of too much harmful experience or are they a consequence of too little positive experience?  Are the changes created by a combination of both, or are they created by something else entirely?”

Does anyone know?

While it might not be possible for the very earth that provides all life to experience both severe drought and severe flooding in the same place at the same time, as I read SCARS THAT WON’T HEAL: THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF CHILD ABUSE —By Martin H. Teicher I am beginning to understand that what he describes of the changes that happen to the developing brain of a traumatized infant-child in fact creates a similar – and therefore very possible – reality as the combined flooding and drought at the same time would be like.

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I encourage readers to please take a look at this entire article by clicking HERE.  (It includes a mention toward the end about Borderline Personality Disorder, as well.)  I am going to skip down to the end of the article to post today what Teicher says in conclusion [I added underlining for emphasis]:

Adaptive Detriment

“Our team initiated this research with the hypothesis that early stress was a toxic agent that interfered with the normal, smoothly orchestrated progression of brain development, leading to enduring psychiatric problems. Frank W. Putnam of Children’s Hospital MedicalCenter of Cincinnati and Bruce D. Perry of the Alberta Mental Health Board in Canada have now articulated the same hypothesis.  I have come to question and reevaluate our starting premise, however.  Human brains evolved to be molded by experience, and early difficulties were routine during our ancestral development.  Is it plausible that the developing brain never evolved to cope with exposure to maltreatment and so is damaged in a nonadaptive manner? This seems most unlikely. The logical alternative is that exposure to early stress generates molecular and neurobiological effects that alter neural development in an adaptive way that prepares the adult brain to survive and reproduce in a dangerous world.

“What traits or capacities might be beneficial for survival in the harsh conditions of earlier times? Some of the more obvious are the potential to mobilize an intense fight-or-flight response, to react aggressively to challenge without undue hesitation, to be at heightened alert for danger and to produce robust stress responses that facilitate recovery from injury.  In this sense, we can reframe the brain changes we observed as adaptations to an adverse environment.

“Although this adaptive state helps to take the affected individual safely through the reproductive years (and is even likely to enhance sexual promiscuity), which are critical for evolutionary success, it comes at a high price. McEwen has recently theorized that overactivation of stress response systems, a reaction that may be necessary for short-term survival, increases the risk for obesity, type II diabetes and hypertension; leads to a host of psychiatric problems, including a heightened risk of suicide; and accelerates the aging and degeneration of brain structures, including the hippocampus.

“We hypothesize that adequate nurturing and the absence of intense early stress permits our brains to develop in a manner that is less aggressive and more emotionally stable, social, empathic and hemispherically integrated.  We believe that this process enhances the ability of social animals to build more complex interpersonal structures and enables humans to better realize their creative potential.

“Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its children. Stress sculpts the brain to exhibit various antisocial, though adaptive, behaviors.  Whether it comes in the form of physical, emotional or sexual trauma or through exposure to warfare, famine or pestilence, stress can set off a ripple of hormonal changes that permanently wire a child’s brain to cope with a malevolent world.  Through this chain of events, violence and abuse pass from generation to generation as well as from one society to the next.  Our stark conclusion is that we see the need to do much more to ensure that child abuse does not happen in the first place, because once these key brain alterations occur, there may be no going back.”

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