+ARTICLE LINK ON CHEMO BRAIN FOG

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Those of us who were severely abused as children are at highest risk for developing all the major illnesses that afflict adults, including cancer.

Because our early brain development was at extremely high risk of being interfered with, I know from personal experience that chemotherapy is especially hazardous to our fragile brain construction!  Now this from The New York Times.

It makes perfect sense to me, although they don’t mention it in this article, that chemotherapy designed to stop all rapid cell division in the body would of COURSE affect our memory.  The two brain areas identified as being the only ones known to grow new brain cells, the olfactory center (for the sense of smell so we can add new smells to our brain’s database) and the hippocampus, the part of the brain that processes incoming new memories.

If chemotherapy stops new cell division, it no doubt can (and does) affect the hippocampus.  What I know for myself is that all the ongoing work I put into making sense of the world and of finding my way around IN SPITE of the developmental changes my brain experienced due to chronic, severe early and long term child abuse were interfered with by chemotherapy.  I actually FORGOT all the intricate ways I developed to ‘hide’ my ‘dis-abilities’.

I mention this because those of us with extreme child abuse histories have a right to be heard, listened to, and respected when we tell ANY professional what we are experiencing.  I believe that if researchers knew to ask the right questions, they would find extreme child abuse survivors among the 15% this article mentions that have long term if not permanent brain alterations as a result of chemotherapy and other related cancer treatments.

Take a look at this article!

Chemotherapy Fog Is No Longer Ignored as Illusion

+BEING HUMAN, ANIMAL OR OBJECT?

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This is a complex article (link below) but concerns the important considerations about how does a severely abused young child build into its brain the correct ability to differentiate people from objects and animals if it is NOT treated as human?

Even though experts say, a young child before the age of two just IS and has not yet developed a Theory of Mind, this does not mean that all the underlying brain circuitry necessary for this ability to form after the age of two is not well in place long before that age.  If an infant and child before the age of two has been severely maltreated and does not have the benefit of a safe and secure attachment with an early caregiver, the faulty foundations within the brain will not easily – if ever – allow for an ‘ordinary’ Theory of Mind to form – at any age.

At age 58 I can clearly feel now what I believe is a major difference in the way my brain processes information from contact and experience with people from how I strongly suspect ‘ordinary’ people do.  I can become increasingly aware of HOW I operate in relation to people, but it is far too late for me to change the brain circuitry that formed during malevolent interactions with my mother and is the foundation for who and how I am in the world.

(I talked with a moose while I was visiting my brother last week in Alaska.  It came to graze under his deck and took a nap on my brother’s lawn.  Except for a very few special people in my life, I am far more comfortable conversing with a moose than I will ever be in the presence of humans.)

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Thinking About Actions:

The Neural Substrates of Person Knowledge

ABSTRACT:

“Despite an extensive literature on the neural substrates of semantic knowledge, how person-related information is represented in the brain has yet to be elucidated. Accordingly, in the present study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of person knowledge.

Focusing on the neural substrates of action knowledge, participants reported whether or not a common set of behaviors could be performed by people or dogs. While dogs and people are capable of performing many of the same actions (e.g. run, sit, bite), we surmised that the representation of this knowledge would be associated with distinct patterns of neural activity.  Specifically, person judgments were expected to activate cortical areas associated with theory of mind (ToM) reasoning. The results supported this prediction. Whereas action-related judgments about dogs were associated with activity in various regions, including the occipital and parahippocampal gyri; identical judgments about people yielded activity in areas of prefrontal cortex, notably the right middle and medial frontal gyri.

These findings suggest that person knowledge may be functionally dissociable from comparable information about other animals, with action-related judgments about people recruiting neural activity that is indicative of ToM reasoning.”

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Two other related article links:

Linking Form and Motion in the Primate Brain

And another related article:

The Representation of Object Concepts in the Brain

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+SHARING LAST NIGHT’S NATURAL WORLD ATTACHMENT DREAM

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I am thinking today about the ‘evolutionarily altered’ brain as Dr. Martin Teicher’s research group describes it, that those of us who were severely maltreated from birth may have developed.

I am thinking about the special gifts, abilities and wisdom (as well as the risks) that having such a brain has given us as we attempt to negotiate survival in the greater, wider world that we ‘hatched’ into once we left our abusive homes.

While I am not presently free to share with you the neighbor homesteader’s email that this one of mine is in response to, I am going to share what I wrote to back to him today (see below).

I am particularly thinking about any relationships with the natural world that those of us so abused might have had in our childhoods that built themselves particularly into our right brains as we grew up.  I am very clear, especially since my recent trip to Alaska, that my experiences with the wilderness were critically important to my development.  As my ‘evolutionarily altered’ brain was developing, information from the wilderness was able to build itself into me in such a positive way that I credit it to the largest extent with creating who I am today.

I suspect that childhood attachment experiences to pets, gardening, anything to do with the out-of-doors in any way fed us as abused children and as a result we have special gifts today that ‘ordinary’ safe and securely attached-from-birth people very possibly do not have.  We very well might have ancient DNA ancestral memories that were activated within us for our very survival that the ‘ordinary’ people did not have any particular use for.

While all people need air, water, food, shelter to survive, our circumstances as severely abused children very well pushed us toward the ‘evolutionary altered’ reality that Teicher’s group describes in more ways than our current thinking has allowed us to realize.

I believe it is worth our thought to consider how our childhood experiences with the natural world not only allowed us to survive, but helped us to do that in the best way possible.  I believe as we define for ourselves who we REALLY became, and shed the shallow half-truths of mental illness diagnostic categories, we will find within ourselves some powerful gifts that belong not only to us, but to the entire human race.  Do we, indeed know a more ancient human reality?

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My email today to fellow Alaskan homesteader who grew up on his family’s homestead at the foot of the mountain in the Eagle River Valley where I spent most of my childhood:

Dear Valley Brother,

Thank you for your words.  I absolutely hear what you are saying.

I went on a 8-mile hike to Rabbit Lake with my brother and his wife, a long one for me as I am out of shape and do not have my same body back from post-chemo.  My left foot has been sore and swollen ever since.  I rubbed an Arnica gel onto it last night, and the pain left instantly.  Yet I wonder if my foot didn’t talk to me in my dream last night.

I so rarely remember my dreams these past 12 years that it seems to me often that they have left me.  Last night I woke many times but could not leave this dream.

I heard that the pristine earth has a language that humankind once knew, but that now is all but forgotten.  I heard that the last person who spoke in that language passed away and I knew in the dream that the language is at present one of human’s lost ancient languages.

Yet in my dream I understood that the language is still spoken by the earth itself in certain places, and when we walk over that land that language speaks to us through our bodies with words that form themselves exactly as our feet touch the land as we walk over it.

I heard many forgotten words, for many aspects of the world.  As I walked in sleep over Alaska in my dream I heard many ancient words that spoke of the ancient world that is itself seeming to pass away as humans change the land in different ways in modern times.

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I am reminded of another dream I had 12 years ago when I lived for two years in Sioux Falls, SD.  The most beautiful black stallion came to me pleading with me to do something to help him and his People.

“We have always before now been able to run and sleep in quiet places on the land.  We can no longer find any place that is peaceful.  Everywhere the land is always noisy now.  It can find no rest and neither can we.  Please help us.”

I knew what the stallion was saying to me.  I felt his desperation and his sadness.  But I could think of nothing I could do to help him.

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My brother and I also went down to Seward while I was in Alaska, and walked down the path to Exit Glacier.  There is a sign post there for where the edge of the glacier was in 1951.  (I hear from your mom that you were born November of the same year that I was).  In my dream last night I knew that where the glaciers are leaving the land there is a quickly vanishing purity still held within the rocks themselves as they lay exposed to the sky, perhaps for the first time.  That is where the ancient words can most strongly be heard.

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I am happy to share these words with you because I know you will understand.

Again, thanks!  Linda

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+SOME FANTASTIC LINKS ON CHILD ABUSE AND BRAIN CHANGES!

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Greetings to each and every person who has visited this blog during the seven weeks of absence from writing here.  I am home now after more than 10,000 miles of traveling during the past seven weeks as I visited family and friends whom I love and who love me.

The time I spent in Alaska, the home of my heart, was everything I needed it to be in order for me to move forward with the writing of my book.

I will at this point be dividing my writing clearly between my book (which will not be appearing on this blog) and other assorted writing specifically for the blog.  As my precious Alaskan baby brother (now 44) told me, if it is my desire and my intention to write a book, then I need to do it.  He explained it to me this way:

A person might pick up tools and a block of wood intending to carve an image.  Perhaps they are not quite sure what image lies within the wood so they begin carving in process until that image becomes clear and the carving can then give it form.  If, however, that point never occurs where the image within the wood is found, shaped and born, all that will result from the effort of carving is a pile of wood shavings and dust.

I heard and understand the wisdom contained in my brother’s words, and I recognize that continuing to pour words out into my blog will not accomplish the creation of my book.  I will now separate the words that belong in my book from those that do not.

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As I continue through the process of getting my ‘home legs’ under me, I will at least post a few interesting links here for reader consideration!  Please follow some or all of these links – THEY ARE IMPORTANT!  Please also join me in my gratitude to every single person who is involved with this quality of work to further our understanding about the impact of severe child abuse on human development – and the work of everyone committed to ending child maltreatment around the globe.

Please also remember the abuse being done to the fragile web of life on our glorious planet and the suffering of so many species being caused by the thoughtless harm of all kinds caused by humans.

And, for a load of Alaskan MOOSE FUN….

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Back to School Tips: Parents Should Get Ready, Too!

Posted: 27 Aug 2009 08:21 AM PDT

Tips for parents on helping their kids succeed in school, adapter from information provided by our friends at Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey.

Amid the shopping trips for sharpened #2 pencils, crisp notebooks and new shoes, parents should start thinking about what they can do to become the best possible support system for their child this school year. The beginning of the new academic season is often the most important, as it sets the tone for a meaningful and successful year.  Research shows that students are more equipped to thrive academically and socially when parents are actively involved in their child’s education.

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Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW

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Going Big: Harlem Children’s Zone on This American Life

Posted: 18 Aug 2009 02:17 AM PDT

Hats off to This American Life for shining a spotlight on the solutions to the many problems that plague our nation’s impoverished families. Going Big, this week’s episode, profiles Geoffrey Canada, a pioneer in the fields of child and family support and poverty prevention. His organization, Harlem Children’s Zone, boasts tremendous outcomes for the families and community it serves, including:

  • l00% of students in the Harlem Gems pre-K program were found to be school-ready for the sixth year in a row.
  • 81% of Baby College parents improved the frequency of reading to their children.
  • $4.8 million returned to 2,935 Harlem residents as a result of HCZ’s free tax-preparation service
  • 10,883 number of youth served by HCZ in 2008.

Listen to the This American Life podcast.

Below is a five-minute video of moms talking about the challenges of raising children in Harlem and the difference HCZ is making in their lives.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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Brain Development Altered by Violence

By Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 1999; Page A3

LITTLETON, Colo.—More than a week had passed since Krystie DeHoff felt bullets and bombs explode all around her, since she ran in horror past young, dead bodies to safety. Now she was inching toward normality, shopping at King Soopers grocery, when the most innocent sound–a baby crying in his mother’s arms–set the Columbine High School massacre in motion again, this time in her mind. Her heart raced, her muscles coiled. She heard not a baby, but her classmates, shrieking. “All I could think was: MAKE HIM STOP!” she said.

READ MORE……

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Using Mental Strategies Can Alter

The Brain’s Reward Circuitry

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2008) — The cognitive strategies humans use to regulate emotions can determine both neurological and physiological responses to potential rewards, a team of New York University and Rutgers University neuroscientists has discovered. The findings, reported in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, shed light on how the regulation of emotions may influence decision making.

READ MORE….

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The Neural Self: The Neurobiology of Attachment

By Phil Rich, Ed.D., LICSW

It is its basis in biology that makes attachment theory unique among theories of psychology and child development. From the biological perspective, attachment is simply an evolutionarily-evolved process to ensure species survival, and is thus as much a part our biology as that of any animal.

From this perspective, cognitive schema and the resulting mental map is not merely a psychological phenomenon, but a physical entity, hard-wired into neural circuits and reflected in neurochemical and electrical activity within the central nervous system.

The mental map into which our experiences and memories are imprinted is thus a neurobiological structure, the result of synaptic processes, out of which human cognition and behavior emerges, resulting in LeDoux’s (2002) description of our “synaptic” self.

Siegel (2001) describes the pattern and clusters of synaptic firing as “somehow creat(ing) the experience of mind” (p. 69). He writes that “integration” reflects the manner in which functionally separate neural structures and processes cluster together and interact to form a functional whole – in this case, our selves.

READ MORE…..

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Child abuse marks genes, affects ability to cope: Study

By Margaret Munro , Canwest News Service

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Stress

Your Three Brains

The neurologist Paul MacLean has proposed that our skull holds not one brain, but three, each representing a distinct evolutionary stratum that has formed upon the older layer before it, like an archaeological site – he calls it the “triune brain.” MacLean, now the director of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behaviour in Poolesville, Maryland, says that three brains operate like “three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”.

READ MORE….

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+JUST A FEW MORE LINKS FOR THOUGHT!

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National Child Abuse Prevention Conference: Call for Workshop Proposals

Posted: 17 Aug 2009 07:24 AM PDT

Proposals are now being accepted to present workshops for Changing the Way We Think About Prevention: Making Children Our Priority, Prevent Child Abuse America’s National Conference, to be held May 17-19, 2010, in Jacksonville, Florida.

The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2009.

Conference Audience: Estimated 1,000 professionals and volunteers engaged in the prevention of child abuse and neglect, the promotion of healthy child development, and in support of strong communities in a variety of ways.

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Counting What Counts

Posted: 29 Jul 2009 10:19 AM PDT

The 20th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book provides a national and state-by-state look at the status of children in the United States. This year’s companion essay (pdf) outlines a series of action steps to improve the nation’s use of data in creating policies that improve outcomes for children and families.

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SOMETHING ON THE SOCIAL BRAIN!

I like this article (below) because it ties into how our social (right limbic) brain is SUPPOSED to operate!  If we do not get the mimicking from our early caregivers we need as infants while our social brain is developing (and we get a different brain as a result of this lack), the kinds and quality of social interactions the article (below) is talking about do not work right for us as adults.  This leads to all kinds of problems for us — including increased social interaction stress (and resulting risk for belly fat!).

Lack of adequate infant social interaction influences everything about how we later function in the world as members of a social species, including our ability to experience empathy and to communicate with others!

Monkey see, monkey do: Why we flatter via imitation

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THE BAD THING ABOUT OUR STRESS-RELATED BELLY FAT!

It turns out that the kind of belly fat I developed post-chemotherapy and cancer (steroid) treatment IS directly related to stress.  Reseachers are finding that post-menopausal women tend to gain that awful belly fat mostly because by that time of life our levels of responsibility and stress are often nearly ‘through the roof’.

Stress belly fat (causing the apple rather than the pear look) on both men and women is a DIFFERENT KIND OF FAT.  It turns out that those fat cells are hormone factories themselves, and have four times the number of cortisol (stress hormone) receptors.  These particular belly fat cells wrap themselves around internal organs and are directly responsible for signaling stress-related responses to our organs!  These are NOT the same kind of fat cells we carry on hips, thighs, arms, etc.!

Go figure!

This also relates to anxiety disorders such as depression and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)!  I am beginning to understand that when I encounter ‘belly fat’ people in public those people’s bodies are responding to those people’s life stress!  Talk about the usefulness of INFORMED COMPASSION for ourselves and for others!

(Read what fat-bellied monkeys tell us about our own social stress.)

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Tomorrow I leave North Dakota for Alaska.  Will be checking in here from THERE!

(Did you happen to read “My Stroke of Insight” yet I mentioned in my earlier post?)

ALSO – Look for the current TIME magazine special ($11.95) issue on the BRAIN on the newstand or in your local grocery store or book store!!

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+LINKS – A FEW THINGS TO THINK ABOUT!

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Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go: A Documentary of the Mulberry Bush School

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Children Need Real Health System Reform Now

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+SUGGESTED BOOK ON BRAIN HEALING!

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I am still in the middle of traveling (went 4-wheeling and horse back riding today), and leave northern Minnesota tomorrow morning for a night’s stay at my son’s in Grand Forks, ND and then back down to my daughter’s in Fargo for another ten days before heading ‘home’ to Alaska to see my brothers and the land.

I could write volumes about my experiences thus far, but there’s only one thing I really want to mention right now.  My youngest sister generously sent me a copy of a book she was reading on her Kindle when I visited her in Seattle recently, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Ph.D., Jill Bolte Taylor.  I want to mention it here so that any of you who might find her book of value will have time to get a copy to read before I finally get a chance (after my travels) to write here about my own perception of the value of this book.

Although I highly recommend Jill’s book, because of the specific issues I present on this blog regarding the life long consequences of early severe child abuse as it affects — and alters — the development of the young brain, I suggest that readers might wish to actually begin their reading of “My Stroke of Insight” with Chapter 15 that begins on page 138.  Of course it would be preferrable to begin at the beginning, but the information that the author presents beginning on the page I mention here is most specifically related to “our” topic.

I have never read in any single book so many clear and helpfully identified suggestions about how to manage one’s BRAIN and therefore one’s quality of life!  Jill’s descriptions about how the two hemispheres of the brain operate cannot be matched!  As you read this book you will come to understand how hard-won her suggestions about how to live a ‘better’ life are.  Yet while it is not my intention to in any way demean, belittle or criticize Jill’s perspectives, I do wish to urge this blog’s readers to practice what I call the ‘cautionary’ approach to her statements about her experience with healing her own brain post-stroke. 

Reading the latter chapters in Jill’s book provide an excellent experience in finding the middle road between what people might be able to know and understand about their brains when those brains were formed under benovolent conditions (as Jill’s seems to have been pre-stroke damage), and what those of us whose brains formed under malevolent severe child abuse and neglect conditions need to learn and understand about our altered brain and how to heal it.

Interestingly, Jill’s professional life as a neuroanatomist is intimately connected to Harvard, the same educational and research ‘facility’ that birthed the concept that those of us who were severely abused as children have a changed (‘evolutionarily altered’) brain as a result of our development under extremely adverse conditions.  While there is much in Jill’s writing that I can see as being of value to me (on the middle road) I do not get the sense that she knows about the ‘Martin Teicher’s Group’s’ research about child abuse and how it changes brain development.  Jill’s book does, however, give an impressive jump-start opportunity to learn valuable information about healing a wounded brain – and a wounded self – and that certainly includes me/us.

I won’t go into any more detail at the moment, but I wanted to get this information onto the blog about this book with the hopes that readers will take a little time to pop on over to amazon.com (at least) and explore the value of this book for themselves.  It is a very reasonably priced book and is worth much more for the dime than any book I could possibly recommend!!

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I am far from feeling comfortable using other people’s computers, so will wait for a better  and more appropriate time  to activate those parts of my own brain and being that wait for a future date — when my current play-visit-self-expansion-challenge time has drawn to a close.  I wish you all the very best — and suggest that you read My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Ph.D., Jill Bolte Taylor as soon as you can get your hands on a copy!!  I promise — you will be glad that you did!  Rarely, in my opinion, does a book appear that more than carries its own weight in VALUE such as this one does!! 

Be sure to post your comments here about what you think of Jill’s book once you read it!!

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 Who’s Mother of the Year? 

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Step-up to Prevent Child Abuse!Promising Practices for Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect

 

 

+PRACTICING PLAY

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Just checking in again.  I am back in Fargo until this weekend, and then head to northern Minnesota with my good friend who knows how to play — something I’ve always struggled with (an oxymoron!).  I loved the air flight in the Cirrus 4-seater plane from Seattle to the San Juan islands last week — something I’ve never done.  Couldn’t have had a better pilot or plane.  The Cirrus, made in Duluth, MN comes with its own parachute — for the entire plane!!

Next week comes the 4-wheeler and the kayak — never experienced either — either!!  Then the canoe, some horse back riding, mosquito swatting, woods walking, gabbing with friend, pigging out on fresh baked cookies, etc.  ANYTHING, really, at this point but WRITE!!

Tonight marks my first night playing trivia — am going with my daughter, her hubby, my son, their ‘group’ — I hope I know something COOL that makes me think for an instant I’m…….well, SMART!!

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+CHECKING IN FROM BEAUTIFUL SEATTLE

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Just stopping in to say hello!  Visiting family.  Touring around.  Going flying with my daughter and son-in-law’s friend tomorrow over water and forests.  Missing nearly 100 degree heat in Arizona without the arrival of monsoon rains.  All is well!

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+HOMESTEADING NEIGHBOR’S BOOK

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For those readers who are following my childhood Alaskan homesteading story that was as integral a part of my childhood as my mother’s mental illness and terrifying capacity for committing crimes of child abuse against her offspring was, I want to recommend the following book written by one of our neighboring homesteaders, Dorothy Pollard Price.

I was able to follow her story of homesteading in the Alaskan Eagle River Valley at the same time our family did from a ‘safe distance’ as I read this book.   I can picture this piece of history because I was very close to it.  Dorothy’s story contains the flavor of the homesteading experience minus our family’s additional experience of abuse, and gave me a small idea of what being in that place and time could have been like for me and my family had my mother (and really my father, also) NOT been so devastatingly mentally ill.

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Eight Stars of Gold: Notes from a Mid-century Alaska Homestead Journal by Dorothy Pollard Price (Paperback – Oct 6, 2008)

Buy new: $14.95 $11.66

12 Used & new from $7.95

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Another book that has been an important part of my traveling  reading material is Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel.  I discovered it in the local thrift store near the town where I live (and can be purchased very cheaply online used).  Combined with my own experience of homesteading and with the experience of homesteading that Dorothy describes, Schlissel’s book allows me to find both similarities and differences in the ‘wilderness experiences’ of women who traveled uncharted territory a hundred or more years ahead of my mother and Dorothy.

In the case of my mother, Schlissel’s book makes me think about the vestiges of Victorianism that remained firmly implanted in my mother’s experience of life because she was so affected by her Bostonian upbringing as it was transmitted to her through the important women in her life — her own mother and her grandmother.

I will be writing more about this in the future!

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