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Never did I know about my psychotically abusive Borderline mother what I learned today.  My mother could do what she did to me because she lacked the normal human capacity to experience authentic embarrassment.

Evidently my own forensic autobiographical writing had to wait for very specific research to be done that could give me what I need to complete my journey.  And, yes, I am finding extremely important —  and surprising — clues in the book I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (2009) by Dr. Dacher Keltner.

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Keltner has carved himself a memorable niche in research on human emotion with his landmark discovery of the 2 to 3 second biologically hard wired human emotional display of embarrassment.  I had to read to page 74 of his book before I came to his description of what embarrassment is all about.

What Keltner has found in his continued study of this biological display of human emotion is directly connected to how my mother could treat me the way that she did from birth until I left home at 18.  Something was wrong with how the orbitofrontal region of her brain formed and operated.  My mother could not feel appropriate embarrassment, and did not have an appropriate social conscience.

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In the first pages of his book Keltner describes the history of the study of emotion from Charles Darwin forward.  He explains how researchers meticulously and accurately created a map of how all the muscles of the human face move and interact to express emotion.  Some of the combinations can be faked.  The most important expressions of prosocial human emotions, including embarrassment, cannot.  (Exceptions can occur with gifted actors.)

I am going to present to you here today excerpts from Keltner’s writing on embarrassment because I believe his thoughts are of central importance to those of us who suffered from severe infant-child abuse.  At the same time that I see how his work applies to my mother, I can also see how they apply to me.

Embarrassment takes place in the orbitofrontal cortex that has not matured enough before the age of 18 months to allow a human to experience it.  When I think about my mother and myself, I consider that the earliest forming right, limbic, emotional brain, built from birth to age one (at which point an infant CAN experience shame), I understand that when early caregiver interactions did not form this emotional brain foundation well, the future development of the orbitofrontal cortex will also be changed.

Unlike subjects in research studies who have damage done to JUST the orbitofrontal cortex region of their brain, severe infant-child abuse survivors are likely to have an entire combination of a series of ‘cascading’ brain changes that began at birth (or before).

Keltner is not talking about how infant-child abuse affects the developing foundation of the early brain.  Yet the more I read what he says about embarrassment the more I realized that he is talking about something that went fundamentally wrong with my mother.  He is also talking about something that went fundamentally wrong with me because my mother’s abuse of me formed my brain, though fortunately I did not end up with the exact same problems that she had.

For those of you who suffered from severe infant-child abuse, keep your abuser in mind as you consider the excerpts from Keltner’s book I present here below (I encourage you to read his book for the fuller, important context for all that follows).

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“What does embarrassment have to do with incivility, remoteness, and murder?  I trained my eye in the frame-by-frame view of human social life….  I slowed down the blur of two-second snippets of embarrassment and studied its fleeting elements – gaze shifts, head movements down, coy, compressed smiles, neck exposures, and glancing touches of the face.  At the time I began my research, the display of embarrassment was thought to be a sign of confusion and thwarted intention.  My research told a different story, about how these elements of embarrassment are the visible signals of an evolved force that brings people together during conflict and after breeches of the social contract, when relations are adrift, and aggressive inclinations perilously on the rise.  This subtle display is a sign of our respect for others, our appreciation of their view of things, and our commitment to the moral and social order.  I found that facial displays of embarrassment are evolved signals whose rudiments are observed in other species, and that the study of this seemingly inconsequential emotion offers a porthole onto the ethical brain….”  (page 76)

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I did not understand when I first read these words the full implications of what Keltner was saying.  Looking back on them now I can see here a description of what was so wrong with my mother.  My bet is if you read the second half of this paragraph again you will clearly see your abuser.  My mother had no “evolved force that brings people together during conflict and after breeches of the social contract.”  She had no ability to perceive when relations were adrift and “and aggressive inclinations [were] perilously on the rise.”  She certainly did not seem to have the ability to care that she continually and perpetually caused them.

She had no “respect for others” and had no “appreciation of their view of things.”  And she sure didn’t have any “commitment to the moral and social order.”  She lacked “this subtle display” of embarrassment, which was both the cause of her problems and a sign of their existence.  Something was terribly wrong with my mother’s “ethical brain.”

In my situation, it would be the study of the LACK “of this seemingly inconsequential emotion” in my mother that can show me “a porthole onto the ethical brain” whose development can go so terribly, terribly wrong through harmful and insufficient early brain-forming caregiver experiences.

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Keltner was doing research on the magnitude of subject’s 250-millisecond (a quarter of a second) startle response when he made his amazing discovery of the patterned embarrassment response.  He found something that no other researcher had ever paid attention to before and had completely ignored.

People who participated in his research were left alone to relax in an observation room.  Their startle response to an unanticipated loud “BAM!” was filmed.  Keltner describes what he found as he later examined the films frame-by-frame.

“And then I noticed something unexpected.  In the first frame after the startle response, people look purified, cleansed, as if their body and mind had been shut down for a second and then turned on – the orienting function of the startle.  And then in the next frame their gaze shifted to the side.  A knowing, abashed look washed over their faces.  People looked as if they had been goosed, or whispered to of something lewd.  And then a flicker of a nonverbal display that Darwin had actually missed.  Participants averted their gaze downwards, they turned their head and body away, they showed an awkward, self-conscious smile.  Some blushed.  Some touched their cheeks or noses with a finger or two.”  (page 80)

He was able to accurately show that young children under the age of 18 months did not show the embarrassment response.  Keltner then went on to devise experiments that were increasingly designed to embarrass people in settings where their facial reactions could be specifically filmed.  Subjects went through a regiment of having to make a specific (and difficult to accomplish) ‘weird’ face that had to be held for 10 long seconds.  At the end of this time, subjects were filmed in their ensuing embarrassment response.  Keltner then charted his frame-by-frame filmed observations in 20-millisecond (rate of 50 per second) segments that allowed him to map the patterns of the embarrassment response.

Keltner states:

“What I charted in the elements of the embarrassment display was a fleeting but highly coordinated two- to three-second signal.  First the participant’s eyes shot down within .75 seconds after finishing the pose of the awkward face.  Then the individual turned his head to the side, typically leftward, and down with the next .5 seconds, exposing the neck.  Contained within this head motion down and to the left was a smile, which typically lasted about two seconds.  At the onset and offset of this smile, like bookends, were other facial actions in the mouth, smile controls:  lip sucks, lip presses, lip puckers.  And while the person’s head was down and to the left a few curious actions:  the person looked up two to three times with furtive glances, and the person often touched his or her face.  This three-second snippet of behavior was not some bedlam of confused actions; it had the timing, patterning, and contour of an evolved signal, coordinated, brief, and smooth in its onset and offset.”  (pages 83-84)

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I want to mention here a profound connection between the findings of research on human emotion and the permanent, long-term consequences of severe early relational infant-child deprivation and trauma.  As you can see by Keltner’s research, this entire embarrassment display happens very fast.  From start to finish it takes two to three seconds.

Researchers have to use sophisticated photographic techniques in order to break this display down into its visual components.  The human emotional-social brain has built into it the capacity to send, receive, respond and act according to these nonverbal signals of communication.  Or it is SUPPOSED to.  If early deprivation and trauma interrupts the optimal formation of the brain circuitry and regions that accomplish these amazing feats of communication, all hell can literally break lose.

Most severe early abuse survivors, my mother and me included, did not have what we needed during our early brain developmental critical windows of growth so that these patterns of signaling could happen ‘normally’.  While my mother’s brain development and operation went off into a different direction than mine did, I still suffer very disturbing consequences from her abusive treatment of me from birth.

Here is a connection to aspects of the social difficulties autistic spectrum people face with their different emotional-social brain.  We do not and cannot ‘run the race’ of ‘normal’ human nonverbal communication equally with those whose early brains formed in the usual fashion.  While we CAN hopefully train ourselves to recognize what we are lacking so that we can compensate somewhat, we will always be at an emotional-social disadvantage in emotional-social interactions.  We do not read these cues or respond to them ‘normally’.

While Keltner does not address this fact, what he says about emotional display-cue expressions applies to what severe early abuse survivors need to consciously learn.  Keltner says about his work with embarrassment observation:

“…with careful frame-by-frame analysis a different picture emerged, and one in line with Darwin-inspired analysis of emotional displays as involuntary, truthful signs of our commitments to particular courses of actions.  Our facial expression of anger, for example, signals to others likely aggressive actions, and prompts actions in others that prevent costly aggressive encounters.  Within this school of thought, emotional displays are highly coordinated, stereotyped patterns of behavior, honed by thousands of generations of evolution and the beneficial effects displays have on social interactions.  Evolved displays unfold briefly, typically between two and three seconds.  The brevity of emotional displays is, in part, due to limits on the time that certain facial muscles can fire.  Emotional displays are brief, as well, because of the pressing needs facial expressions are attuned to – the approaching predator, the child catapulting toward danger, the flickering signs of interest shown by a potential mate amid many suitors.”  (pages 82-83)

Those of us who did not get to develop optimal early-forming (through interactions with our mothering caregiver) emotional-social brains will always be at a disadvantage in regard to the normal signaling Keltner is describing.  They WORK for humans because they are not voluntary.  They are automatic, very fast, authentic and cannot be mimicked.  They work because they are honest and truthful expressions of our intent to take action – one way or the other.  They are evolutionarily designed patterns of instantaneous communication that make twittering look like something out of the stone age.

My mother’s violence and abuse of me from birth stole these abilities from me, just as someone stole them from her.  This is NOT a minor or insignificant loss!

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Keltner continues:

“When I reviewed forty studies of appeasement and reconciliation processes across species, from blue-footed boobies to 4,500-pound elephant seals, the evolutionary origins of embarrassment became apparent:  It is a display that reconciles, that brings people together in contexts of distance and likely aggression.”  (page 86)

Keltner breaks down the individual segments of the embarrassment display according to what the behaviors are signaling:

“Gaze aversion is a cut-off behavior.  Extended eye contact signals continue what you’re doing; gaze aversion acts like a red light, terminating what has been happening.  Our embarrassed participants, by quickly averting their gaze, were exiting the previous situation.  They were signaling an end to the situation for obvious reasons:  embarrassment follows actions…that sully our reputations and jeopardize our social standing.

“What about those head turns and head movements down?  Various species, including pits, rabbits, pigeons, doves, Japanese quail, loons, and salamanders, resort to head movements down, head turns, head bobs, and constricted posture to appease.  These actions shrink the size of the organism, and expose areas of vulnerability (the neck and jugular vein, in the case of human embarrassment).  These actions signal weakness….  At the heart of the embarrassment display, as in other species’ appeasement behaviors, is weakness, humility and modesty.

“The embarrassed smile has a simple story with a subtle twist.  The smile originates in the fear grimace of bared-teeth grin of nonhuman primates….the embarrassed smile is more than just a smile; it has accompanying muscle actions in the mouth that alter the appearance of the smile.  The most frequent one is the lip press, a sign of inhibition….  Just as common are lip puckers, a faint kiss gracing the embarrassed smile as it unfolds during its two- to three-second attempt to make peace….

“The face touch may be the most mysterious element of embarrassment.  Several primates cover their faces when appeasing.  Even the rabbit rubs its nose with its paws when appeasing.  Face touching in humans has many functions….  Certain face touches seem to act like the curtains on a stage, closing up one act of the social drama and ushering in the next.  A psychoanalyst has even argued that we face-touch to remind ourselves that we exist, in the midst of social exchanges where our sense of self feels to be drifting away….

“In turning to other species’ appeasement displays, the social forces that have shaped this display during the tens of millions of years of primate evolution were there to see.  This simple display brought together signals of inhibition, weakness, modesty, sexual allure, and defense all woven together in a two- or three-second display.  The mission of the display is to make peace, to prevent conflict and costly aggression, and to bring people closer together, to reestablish cooperative bonds.  We may feel alienated, flawed, alone, and exposed when embarrassed, but our experience and display of this complex emotion is a wellspring of forgiveness and reconciliation.  The complement would also prove to be true.  The absence of embarrassment is a sign of abandoning the social contract.”  (pages 86-88)

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Now, HERE I begin to see the direct connection between Keltner’s work and my mother:  “The absence of embarrassment is a sign of abandoning the social contract.”  Someone ignored and abandoned any appropriate ‘social contract’ in the early treatment of my mother.  The ‘social contract’ was formed into my mother’s early brain in some strange and distorted manner that did not include what she needed to mother her own children – or even to allow her to interact appropriately with any other human in her lifetime.

Most fortunately, even though my brain formed differently from normal, I CAN feel embarrassment.  I do have a ‘social contract’.  My ability to experience how it operates is not ‘normal’, but I do have one.  My mother had one, too, in some ways – but when it came to her repeated explosions of violence and her chronic malicious intent toward me, she had none.  There was nothing prosocial about her relationship with me.

Infant-child abuse happens outside of “the social contract.”

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Keltner’s next description of his continued research brought my mother’s condition into even more clear focus.  He introduced a test, “designed to produce some failure in all children,” to groups of well-adjusted boys and compared their responses to groups of boys known to be prone to violence.  He states about his findings:

“I chose to study the other end of the continuum – people prone to violence.  My thesis was simple:  To the extent that embarrassment displays reflect respect for others and a commitment to the moral order, the relative absence of embarrassment should be accompanied by the tendency to act in antisocial ways, the most extreme being violence…..  Consistent with my moral commitment hypothesis, the well-adjusted boys showed the most embarrassment, and in fact this was their dominant response to the test.  They in effect were displaying concern over their performance, and perhaps a deeper respect for the institution of education.  The externalizing [violent, acting out] boys, in contrast, showed little or no embarrassment.  Instead, these boys erupted with occasional facial displays of anger (one boy gave the finger to the camera when the experimenter momentarily had to leave the testing room).  The fleeting, subtle embarrassment display is a strong index of our commitment to the social-moral order and the greater good.

“Neuroscientist James Blair has followed up on this work on embarrassment and violence by studying “acquired sociopathy,” that is, antisocial tendencies brought on by brain trauma….”  (pages 89-90)

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That is exactly what early relational deprivation and trauma does to an infant-child’s growing brain.  If ‘brings on’ changes in the developing emotional-social brain that end up creating very similar patterns – like in my mother – that is demonstrated in this “acquired sociopathy” research.  (Keltner describes some of this research in his writing here).

This research shows that damage to the orbitofrontal cortex brain region can lead to complete incompetence in experiencing embarrassment or in attributing the experience to others.  These people also show great difficulty in identifying anger and disgust expressions, “the kinds of expressions that often signal disapproval and trigger our embarrassment.”  Keltner observes about the findings related to deficits of orbitofrontal cortex damage that these people “are not wired to respond to the judgments of others.”  (page 91)

OK, Mommy – gotcha!  “Not wired to respond to the judgments of others.”  I can see in the hundreds of my mother’s letters that I have transcribed that my mother DID certainly respond by judging others herself, which certainly brutally and fundamentally included her judgment of me (which always triggered rage-attack)!!  But she seemed to be strangely and distortedly immune to others’ judgments of her.  As I can see in her letters, if she ever detected what she perceived as a judgment against her, she reacted with rage-attack.  Something was wrong with my mother’s orbitofrontal cortex.  (See search results for Borderline and orbitofrontal cortex HERE – lots to read)

Keltner’s descriptions of people who have suffered damage to the orbitofrontal cortex region of their brain from falls, blows, etc. can be summarized in this assessment of such a man:

“This damage had left J.S.’s reasoning processes intact, but it had short-circuited his capacity for embarrassment.  In actuality, he had lost something much larger:  his ability to appease, reconcile, forgive, and participate in the social-moral-order.”  (pages 91-91)

I would also make a note here that when brain developmental changes happen through the consequences of deprivation, trauma and child abuse, not even the “reasoning processes” develop normally, either.  When someone ends up like my mother did, MANY changes have happened in the developing early brain.  But this clear-cut link between my mother’s inabilities and Keltner’s research are irrefutable.

Keltner continues with this chilling observation about the findings from research on survivors of orbitofrontal cortex damage.  My mother eerily fit the profile these findings present:

“They have lost the ability to appease, to reconcile, and signal their concern for others…..  in judging the emotions of others, our orbitofrontal patients were inept at identifying embarrassment from photos, although they were quite skilled at judging other facial expressions, for example those of happiness, amusement, or surprise.  They resembled psychopaths, who prove to be unresponsive to the signs of suffering in others.

“Embarrassment warns us of immoral acts and prevents us from mistakes that unsettle social harmony.  It signals our sense of wrong-doing and our respect for the judgments of others.  It provokes ordinary acts of forgiveness and reconciliation, without which it would be a dog-eat-dog world.  Orbitofrontal patients, fully capable in the realm of reason, have lost this art of embarrassment.  They have lost the subtle ethic of modesty.”  (pages 93-94)

[my note:  again, not my mother’s brain did not develop normal reasoning abilities, either – See:  child abuse, brain development, reasoning ]

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Keltner completes his chapter on embarrassment by saying:

“Embarrassment is like an ocean wave:  It throws you and those near you into the earth, but you come up embracing and laughing.

The simple elements of the embarrassment display I have documented and traced back to other species’ appeasement and reconciliation processes – the gaze aversion, head movements down, awkward smiles, and face touches – are a language of cooperation; they are the unspoken ethic of modesty.  With these fleeting displays of deference, we preempt conflicts.  We navigate conflict-laden situations (watch how regularly people display embarrassment when in close physical spaces, when negotiating the turn-taking of everyday conversations, or when sharing good).  We express gratitude and appreciation.  We quickly extricate embarrassed souls from their momentary predicaments with deflections of attention or face-saving parodies of the mishap.

“Embarrassment is the foundation of an ethic of modesty….”  (page 95)

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Keltner is not talking about Victorian displays of prudish concerns.  My Boston-raised mother was an expert at these.  He is talking about ancient and authentic, automatic and essential patterns of negotiating ourselves as members of a socially-bonded species.  My mother could mimic ‘voluntary’ displays that parodied embarrassment, but she lacked the authentic, supposed-to-be hard wired neurological ability to respond normally regarding embarrassment.

It intrigues me that nowhere in Keltner’s writing have I seen the world ‘conscience’ appear.  He is not describing some philosophical, abstract process.  He is talking about a body-based, evolutionarily programmed, physiological response that my mother seemed to be entirely missing.

Keltner included small pictures in his text of a carved face of the Buddha, a picture of Gandhi and one of the Dalai Lama (page 90) that clearly show the embarrassment-spectrum facial expressions that I find so beautiful to look at.  Now that I have found this new information that lets me think about my abusive mother in a new way, I can realize that I NEVER saw my mother’s face take on any semblance of the expression of authentic, genuine embarrassment.  My mother was tragically missing this key component to being human.  She could never make this statement that Keltner describes:

“….the elements of the embarrassment are fleeting statements the individual makes about his or her respect for the judgment of others.  Embarrassment reveals how much the individual cares about the rules that bind us to one another.  Gaze aversion, head turns to the side and down, the coy smile, and the occasional face touch are perhaps the most potent nonverbal clues we have to an individual’s commitment to the moral order.  These nonverbal cues, in the words of sociologist Erving Goffman, are “acts of devotion…in which an actor celebrates and confirms his relation to a recipient.””  (page 89)

Keltner concludes that embarrassment offers transformation through reconciliation and forgiveness.  “It is in these in-the-moment acts of deference that we honor others, and in so doing, become strong.  It is often when tender and weak that we are alive….” and most closely connected to the fullest experience of living a meaningful life.

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Did something change inside of my mother when she was little that disallowed her from ever being able to tolerate the feeling of weakness — and thus vulnerability — that Keltner is describing?

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