Tag: healing

{0} Feeling of memory

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recognize(v.)

early 15c., recognisen, “resume possession of land,” a back-formation from recognizance, or else from Old French reconoiss-, present-participle stem of reconoistre “to know again, identify, recognize,” from Latin recognoscere “acknowledge, recall to mind, know again; examine; certify,” from re- “again” (see re-) + cognoscere “to get to know, recognize” (see cognizance).

With ending assimilated to verbs in -ise, -ize. The meaning “know (the object) again, recall or recover the knowledge of, perceive an identity with something formerly known or felt” is recorded from 1530s. Related: Recognized; recognizing.

AI Overview:  The word “recognize” comes from Latin, combining the prefix re- (“back again”) and the root cognoscere (“to know”). It entered English in the early 15th century via the Old French reconoistre (“to know again”) and fundamentally means to know or identify something or someone from prior experience. 

Breakdown of the word’s origin:

  • Latin: The ultimate source is the Latin verb recognoscere, which means “to know again, acknowledge, or examine”. 
  • Old French: This Latin word was adopted into Old French as reconoistre, meaning “to know again”. 
  • Middle English: The word entered English through Anglo-French, initially as recognisen or racunnysen, which could mean to “resume possession of land” or to know something again. 
  • Modern English: The word evolved to the modern form “recognize,” with its primary meaning of identifying something or someone previously encountered

understand(v.)

Old English understandan “comprehend, grasp the idea of, achieve comprehension; receive from a word or words or from a sign or symbol the idea it is intended to convey;” also “view in a certain way,” probably literally “stand in the midst of,” from under + standan “to stand” (see stand (v.)).

If this is the meaning, the under is not the usual word meaning “beneath,” but from Old English under, from PIE *nter- “between, among” (source also of Sanskrit antar “among, between,” Latin inter “between, among,” Greek entera “intestines;” see inter-). Related: Understood; understanding.

That is the suggestion in Barnhart, but other sources regard the “among, between, before, in the presence of” sense of Old English prefix and preposition under as other meanings of the same word. “Among” seems to be the sense in many Old English compounds that resemble understand, such as underfinden “be aware, perceiver” (c. 1200); undersecan “examine, investigate, scrutinize” (literally “underseek”); underðencan “consider, change one’s mind;” underginnan “to begin;” underniman “receive.” Also compare undertake, which in Middle English also meant “accept, understand.”

It also seems to be the sense still in expressions such as under such circumstances. Perhaps the ultimate sense is “be close to;” compare Greek epistamai “I know how, I know,” literally “I stand upon.”

Similar formations are found in Old Frisian (understonda), Middle Danish (understande), while other Germanic languages use compounds meaning “stand before” (German verstehen, represented in Old English by forstanden “understand,” also “oppose, withstand”). For this concept, most Indo-European languages use figurative extensions of compounds that literally mean “put together,” or “separate,” or “take, grasp” (see comprehend).

The range of spellings of understand in Middle English (Middle English Compendium lists 70, including understont, understounde, unþurstonde, onderstonde, hunderstonde, oundyrston, wonderstande, urdenstonden) perhaps reflects early confusion over the elements of the compound. Old English oferstandan, Middle English overstonden, literally “over-stand” seem to have been used only in literal senses.

By mid-14c. as “to take as meant or implied (though not expressed); imply; infer; assume; take for granted.” The intransitive sense of “have the use of the intellectual faculties; be an intelligent and conscious being” also is in late Old English.

In Middle English also “reflect, muse, be thoughtful; imagine; be suspicious of; pay attention, take note; strive for; plan, intend; conceive (a child).” In the Trinity Homilies (c. 1200), a description of Christ becoming human was that he understood mannish.

Also sometimes literal, “to occupy space at a lower level” (late 14c.) and, figuratively, “to submit.” For “stand under” in a physical sense, Old English had undergestandan.

AI Overview:  The word “recognize”

  • Origin: It comes from the Old English word understandan. 
  • Components: The Old English under here meant “among” or “between,” not “beneath,” while standan meant “to stand”. 
  • Meaning: The literal meaning was to “stand among” or “stand in the midst of” something. 
  • Evolution: This metaphorical “standing among” the elements of a concept developed into the modern meaning of “to comprehend” or “to grasp an idea”

comprehend(v.)

mid-14c., “to understand, take into the mind, grasp by understanding,” late 14c., “to take in, include;” from Latin comprehendere “to take together, to unite; include; seize” (of catching fire or the arrest of criminals); also “to comprehend, perceive” (to seize or take in the mind), from com “with, together,” here probably “completely” (see com-) + prehendere “to catch hold of, seize.”

The (partial) range of senses in Latin prehendere was “to lay hold of, to grasp, snatch, seize, catch; occupy violently; take by surprise, catch in the act; to reach, arrive at;” of trees, “to take root;” of the mind, “to seize, apprehend, comprehend,” though this last sense is marked “very rare” in Lewis & Short.

It is a compound of prae- “before” (see pre-) + -hendere, found only in compounds, from PIE root *ghend- “to seize, take.” De Vaan regards the compound as Proto-Italic. Related: Comprehended; comprehending.

Compare the sense development in German begriefen, literally “to seize,” but, through the writings of the 14c. mystics, “to seize with the mind, to comprehend.”

AI Overview:  The English word “comprehend” comes from the Latin word comprehendere, meaning “to take together, unite, seize, or grasp”. This Latin verb is a combination of com- (“with, together”) and prehendere (“to catch hold of, seize”). The root prehendere itself comes from the Proto-Indo-European root ghend-, meaning “to seize, take”. Over time, the metaphorical sense of “seizing” information with the mind developed, leading to the English meaning of “to understand” or “grasp by understanding”. 

Here’s a breakdown of its etymology: 

  • Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root: ghend- “to seize, to take”.
  • Latin: prehendere “to catch hold of, seize”.
  • Latin: comprehendere “to take together,” combining com- (with, together) and prehendere.
  • Middle English: comprehenden mid-14th century.
  • Modern English: comprehend with the sense of understanding or taking into the mind.

know(v.)

Old English cnawan (class VII strong verb; past tense cneow, past participle cnawen), “perceive a thing to be identical with another,” also “be able to distinguish” generally (tocnawan); “perceive or understand as a fact or truth” (opposed to believe); “know how (to do something),” from Proto-Germanic *knew- (source also of Old High German bi-chnaan, ir-chnaan “to know”), from PIE root *gno- “to know.”

For pronunciation, see kn-. Once widespread in Germanic, the verb is now retained there only in English, where it has widespread application, covering meanings that require two or more verbs in other languages (such as German wissen, kennen, erkennen and in part können; French connaître “perceive, understand, recognize,” savoir “have a knowledge of, know how;” Latin scire “to understand, perceive,” cognoscere “get to know, recognize;” Old Church Slavonic znaja, vemi). The Anglo-Saxons also used two distinct words for this, the other being witan (see wit (v.)).

From c. 1200 as “to experience, live through.” The meaning “to have sexual intercourse with,” also found in other modern languages, is attested from c. 1200, from the Old Testament (Genesis iv.1). Attested from 1540s in colloquial phrases suggesting cunning or savvy (but often in the negative).

As far as (one) knows “to the best of (one’s) knowledge” is late 14c. Expression God knows is from c. 1400. To know too much (to be allowed to live, escape, etc.) is from 1872. To know better “to have learned from experience” is from 1704.

As an expression of surprise, what do you know attested by 1914. Don’t I know it in the opposite sense (“you need not tell me”) is by 1841.

know(n.)

“inside information,” 1883, in in the know, from know (v.) Earlier it meant “knowledge, fact of knowing” (1590s).

AI Overview:  The word “know” comes from the Old English word cnāwan, which meant “to know, perceive, or recognize”. This, in turn, derived from the Proto-Germanic knew- and ultimately traces back to the Proto-Indo-European root \`ǵneh₃-\`, meaning “to know”. The “k” was once pronounced, but the sound was lost over time, particularly during the Middle English period. 

Tracing the word’s path:

  • Proto-Indo-European (PIE): The original source is \`ǵneh₃-\`. 
  • Proto-Germanic: This PIE root evolved into \`knew-\` or \`knē-\`. 
  • Old English: The word became cnāwan or gecnāwan. 
  • Middle English: From Old English, it became knowen or knawen. 
  • Modern English: The word evolved into its current form, “know”. 

Cognates:

The same PIE root \`ǵneh₃-\` is the source of other words related to “to know” in different languages: 

  • Latin: gignōskein (Greek), noscere (Latin)
  • German: kennen and können
  • Sanskrit: jñātá

remember(v.)

mid-14c., remembren, “keep or bear (something or someone) in mind, retain in the memory, preserve unforgotten,” from Old French remembrer “remember, recall, bring to mind” (11c.), from Latin rememorari “recall to mind, remember,” from re- “again” (see re-) + memorari “be mindful of,” from memor “mindful” (from PIE root *(s)mer- (1) “to remember”).

The meaning “recall to mind, bring again to the memory” is from late 14c.; the sense of “to mention” is from 1550s. Also in Middle English “to remind” (someone), “bring back the memory of” (something to someone); “give an account, narrate,” and in passive constructions such as hit remembreth me “I remember.” An Anglo-Saxon verb for it was gemunan.

The insertion of -b- between -m- and a following consonant (especially where a vowel has dropped out) is regular: compare number (n.), chamber (n.), humble (adj.).

Remember implies that a thing exists in the memory, not that it is actually present in the thoughts at the moment, but that it recurs without effort. Recollect means that a fact, forgotten or partially lost to memory, is after some effort recalled and present to the mind. Remembrance is the store-house, recollection the act of culling out this article and that from the repository. He remembers everything he hears, and can recollect any statement when called on. The words, however, are often confounded, and we say we cannot remember a thing when we mean we cannot recollect it. [Century Dictionary, 1895]

In complimentary messages, “remember (one) to (another), recall one to the remembrance of another,” as in remember me to your family, is attested from 1550s.

AI Overview:  The word “remember” comes from the Latin root memor, meaning “mindful”. It evolved through Old French remembrer to Middle English remembren and entered English in the mid-14th century, with its meaning essentially being to “keep in mind” or “recall to mind”. 

Step-by-step breakdown:

  • Latin root: The core of “remember” is the Latin word memor, which means “mindful” or having a good memory. 
  • Late Latin rememorari : This verb means “to call to mind again” and is formed from re- (meaning “again”) and memorari (“to be mindful”). 
  • Old French remembrer : The Late Latin verb was borrowed into Old French as remembrer, also meaning “to remember, recall, or bring to mind”. 
  • Middle English remembren : In the 14th century, this Old French word was adopted into Middle English as remembren, retaining its original meaning of keeping something in mind or preserving it unforgotten. 
  • Modern English “remember”: Over time, the word has stayed remarkably consistent in its core meaning, with the “member” part of the word simply being the result of the full word’s historical development. 

memory(n.)

late 13c., “recollection (of someone or something); remembrance, awareness or consciousness (of someone or something),” also “fame, renown, reputation;” from Anglo-French memorie (Old French memoire, 11c., “mind, memory, remembrance; memorial, record”) and directly from Latin memoria “memory, remembrance, faculty of remembering,” abstract noun from memor “mindful, remembering,” from PIE root *(s)mer- (1) “to remember.”

Sense of “commemoration” (of someone or something) is from c. 1300. Meaning “faculty of remembering; the mental capacity of retaining unconscious traces of conscious impressions or states, and of recalling these to consciousness in relation to the past,” is late 14c. in English. Meaning “length of time included in the consciousness or observation of an individual” is from 1520s. 

AI Overview:  The word “memory” comes from the Middle English memorie, ultimately from the Latin word memoria, meaning “remembrance” or “faculty of remembering”. It derives from the Latin word memor, meaning “mindful” or “remembering,” which traces back to the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)mer- (1), meaning “to remember”.  

Detailed Breakdown:

  • Latin root: The ultimate source is the Latin word memoria. 
  • memor : Memoria is an abstract noun derived from the Latin adjective memor. 
  • memor: meaning: Memor means “mindful” or “remembering”. 
  • Proto-Indo-European root: Memor itself comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)mer- (1), which means “to remember”. 
  • Anglo-French Connection: The word entered English through Anglo-French memorie, and directly from the Latin memoria. 

This linguistic journey shows how “memory” has been a central concept across cultures, connecting words for remembrance, mindfulness, and the act of remembering itself. 

destiny(n.)

mid-14c., “fate, over-ruling necessity, the irresistible tendency of certain events to come about; inexorable force that shapes and controls lives and events;” also “that which is predetermined and sure to come true,” from Old French destinée “purpose, intent, fate, destiny; that which is destined” (12c.), noun use of fem. past participle of destiner, from Latin destinare “make firm, establish” (see destination).

The sense is of “that which has been firmly established,” as by fate. Especially “what is to befall any person or thing in the future” (mid-15c.). In Greek and Roman mythology, personified as the three Fates or powers supposed to preside over human life.

destination(n.)

1590s, “act of appointing, designation,” from Latin destinationem (nominative destinatio) “purpose, design,” from past-participle stem of destinare “determine, appoint, choose, make firm or fast,” from de- “completely, formally” (see de-) + -stinare (related to stare “to stand”) from PIE *steno-, suffixed form of root *sta- “to stand, make or be firm.”

From 1650s as “purpose for which anything is intended or appointed.” Meaning “predetermined end of a journey, voyage, or transmission” (1813) is short for place of destination (1787) “place to which a thing is appointed or directed.”

AI Overview:  The word “destiny” originates from the Latin word destinare, meaning “to determine” or “to decide,” and entered English in the 14th century via the Old French word destinée. It entered the language from the past participle of the verb destiner, meaning “to destine”. 

Etymology Breakdown

  • Latin Root: The Latin verb destinare means “to determine,” “to appoint,” or “to make firm”. 
  • Old French: The word moved from Latin to Old French as destinée, the noun form of the past participle of the verb destiner. 
  • English Entry: The word entered English in the 14th century. 

Meaning Evolution

  • Early Use (1590s): The earliest recorded use of the word was in the late 16th century, referring to the “act of appointing” or “designation”. 
  • 17th Century: By the 1650s, its meaning broadened to include the “purpose for which anything is intended or appointed”. 
  • Later Meanings: By the 18th century, it also referred to the “predetermined end of a journey or voyage,” which evolved from the idea of a place of destination. 
  • Modern Meaning: Today, “destiny” most commonly refers to a predetermined course of events, or fate

inspiration(n.)

c. 1300, “immediate influence of God or a god,” especially that under which the holy books were written, from Old French inspiracion “inhaling, breathing in; inspiration” (13c.), from Late Latin inspirationem (nominative inspiratio), noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin inspirare “blow into, breathe upon,” figuratively “inspire, excite, inflame,” from in- “in” (from PIE root *en “in”) + spirare “to breathe” (see spirit (n.)). ,

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. [Genesis ii.7]

The sense evolution seems to be from “breathe into” to “infuse animation or influence,” thus “affect, rouse, guide or control,” especially by divine influence. Inspire (v.) in Middle English also was used to mean “breath or put life or spirit into the human body; impart reason to a human soul.” Literal sense “act of inhaling” attested in English from 1560s. Meaning “one who inspires others” is attested by 1867.

Entry linked to inspiration

spirit(n.)

mid-13c., “life, the animating or vital principle in man and animals,” from Anglo-French spirit, Old French espirit “spirit, soul” (12c., Modern French esprit) and directly from Latin spiritus “a breathing (of respiration, also of the wind), breath;” also “breath of a god,” hence “inspiration; breath of life,” hence life itself.

The Latin word also could mean “disposition, character; high spirit, vigor, courage; pride, arrogance.” It is a derivative of spirare “to breathe,” and formerly was said to be perhaps from a PIE *(s)peis- “to blow” (source also of Old Church Slavonic pisto “to play on the flute”). But de Vaan says the Latin verb is “Possibly an onomatopoeic formation imitating the sound of breathing. There are no direct cognates.” Compare conspire, expire, inspire.

In English it is attested from late 14c. as “divine substance, divine mind, God;” also “Christ” or His divine nature; also “the Holy Ghost; divine power.” Also by late 14c. as “the soul as the seat of morality in man,” and “extension of divine power to man; inspiration, a charismatic state; charismatic power,” especially in reference to prophecy.

The meaning “supernatural immaterial creature; angel, demon; an apparition, invisible corporeal being of an airy nature” is attested from mid-14c. The word is attested by late 14c. as “ghost, disembodied soul of a person” (compare ghost (n.)). Spirit-rapping, colloquial for spiritualism in the supernatural sense, is from 1852. Spirit-world “world of disembodied spirits” is by 1829.

It is attested from late 14c. as “essential nature, essential quality.” The non-theological sense of “essential principle of something” (as in Spirit of St. Louis) is attested from 1680s and was common after 1800. The Spirit of ’76 in reference to the qualities that sparked and sustained the American Revolution of 1776 is attested by 1797 in William Cobbett’s “Porcupine’s Gazette and Daily Advertiser.”

It also is attested from mid-14c. in English as “character, disposition; way of thinking and feeling, state of mind; source of a human desire;” in Middle English freedom of spirit meant “freedom of choice.” It is attested from 1580s in the metaphoric sense of “animation, vitality,” and by c. 1600 as “frame of mind with which something is done,” also “mettle, vigor of mind, courage.”

From late 14c. in alchemy as “volatile substance; distillate” (and from c. 1500 as “substance capable of uniting the fixed and the volatile elements of the philosopher’s stone”). Hence spirits “volatile substance;” the sense of which narrowed to “strong alcoholic liquor” by 1670s. This also is the sense in spirit level (1768), so called for the liquid in the clear tube.

According to Barnhart and OED (1989), the earliest use of the word in English mainly is from passages in the Vulgate, where the Latin word translates Greek pneuma and Hebrew ruah. A distinction between soul and spirit (as “seat of emotions”) became current in Christian terminology (such as Greek psykhē and pneuma, Latin anima and spiritus) but “is without significance for earlier periods” [Buck]. Latin spiritus, usually in classical Latin “breath,” replaced animus in the sense “spirit” in the imperial period and appears in Christian writings as the usual equivalent of Greek pneuma.

in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit. [T. Browne, “Religio Medici“]

AI Overview:  The word “inspiration” originates from the Latin word inspirare, meaning “to breathe into” or “to breathe upon”. It carries the deeper sense of inflating with spirit and has both a physical meaning of breathing air into the lungs and a figurative one of receiving divine influence or a sudden creative impulse. 

From Latin to English

  • The word entered English through Old French and Late Latin. 
  • Its earliest meaning in English (around the early 14th century) was theological, referring to a divine influence on writers or people. 
  • The literal meaning of “breathing air into the lungs” only became common in the mid-16th century. 

Deeper Meanings

  • The Latin root spirare means “to breathe,” and it is also the root for “spirit”. 
  • This connection is reflected in the idea of inspiration as a “breath of life” or a divine animating force. 
  • The word also has roots in the Biblical Greek word theopneustos, which refers to something “given by the inspiration of God”

insight(n.)

c. 1200, innsihht, “sight with the ‘eyes’ of the mind, mental vision, understanding from within,” from in (prep.) + sight (n.). But the meaning often seems to be felt as “sight into” (something else), and so the sense shifted to “penetrating understanding into character or hidden nature” (1580s). Similar formation in Dutch inzigt, German einsicht, Danish indsigt.

AI Overview:  The word “insight” comes from Middle English and was formed by combining the prefix “in-” with the word “sight,” literally meaning “sight into” or “mental vision”. Its meaning evolved to describe a deep, penetrating understanding or a sudden intuitive grasp of something’s hidden nature.  

Formation and Meaning

  • In- + Sight: The word is a straightforward combination of the prefix “in-” and the noun “sight”. 
  • “Mental Vision”: The earliest sense of “insight” in the Middle English period (c. 1200) referred to “sight with the ‘eyes’ of the mind,” a form of inner understanding. 
  • “Penetrating Understanding”: By the 1580s, the sense shifted to describe a “penetrating understanding into character or hidden nature”

Cognates and Similar Concepts

The formation of “insight” is mirrored in other Germanic languages, including: Dutch: inzicht, German: Einsicht, Danish: indsigt, Swedish: insikt, and Icelandic: innsýn. 

hunch(v.)

“raise or bend into a hump,” 1650s; earlier “to push, thrust” (c. 1500), of unknown origin. Perhaps a variant of bunch (v.). Related: Hunched; hunching.

also from 1650s

hunch(n.)

1620s, “a push, a thrust,” from hunch (v.) in its older sense. The figurative meaning “a hint, a tip” (a “push” toward a solution or answer), is recorded by 1849 and led to that of “premonition, presentiment” (by 1904).

AI Overview:  The word “hunch” emerged in the late 15th century with the original meaning of “to push or shove,” possibly as a variant of the obsolete verb “hinch”. The sense of “to bend into a hump” appeared by the mid-17th century, and the noun meaning “a hump” or “a figurative push toward a solution” led to the final figurative meaning of “an intuitive feeling” or “presentiment” by the mid-19th century. 

Evolution of “Hunch”

  • To push or shove (c. 1500): The earliest known use of “hunch” as a verb was to mean “to push or thrust” something. 
  • To form a hump (mid-17th century): The verb and noun senses shifted to mean “to raise or bend into a hump” or simply “a hump”. This is seen in words like “hunch-backed”. 
  • A figurative push (mid-19th century): This led to the noun sense of “a push toward a solution or answer”. 

An intuitive feeling (mid-19th century): The figurative “push” then evolved into the modern sense of “a presentiment, intuition, or gut feeling”.

+WHAT MIGHT LOVE FEEL LIKE? A “RESILIENCY FACTOR” STORY FROM MY ABUSIVE CHILDHOOD

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Monday, April 6, 2015.  While I don’t understand my point exactly in writing this post it seems to be one that has moved past the perculation stage into WRITE ME NOW.  So here is a little more about my personal conflicts with the concept of “resiliency” as it may be achieving a generic standing within the “healing trauma” circles.

The adult human body is made up of about 37 trillion cells.  The United States Census Bureau estimates that the world population exceeded 7 billion on March 12, 2012.  To do research that tried to extrapolate meaningful information about ALL cells or ALL people based on a small sample of ONE would be ludicrous.

Nobody can determine each individual’s experiences with trauma in such a way that the data generated could be made useful to anyone, let alone everyone!  So naturally what I have lived through and what I know as a result of my studies about what happened to me and how I survived it will never fit into any clear “significant probability” statistic with meaning.  I can, however, share parts of my story to illustrate points important to me.

I am sharing a story included on this blog that I certainly am NOT going to read right now.  I may never return to read it again.  (This is often the case with my own childhood stories once written, which is why my ace professional researcher and writer daughter is my editor for our books.  She has not yet proofed the story at this link.)

*Age 8 – BLOODY NOSE

What I wish to say about the experience detailed in this story as it connects to my standpoint on “resiliency” is that had I NOT gone through this event I do not believe I would have come out of my childhood having ANY sense of what “feeling loved” felt like.

The story is of trauma, true, but for me having my family gathered around me as I was nearly bleeding to death was the ONLY clear time of my 18-year childhood that I felt I belonged to this family.  It was the ONLY time that the feeling I lived with all of rest of my childhood from birth that I was at any moment, out of nowhere (my mother was psychotically mentally ill with me as her abuse target as my book at link below describes) going to be brutally attacked was absent.

This event COULD have been a very low spot – what I call a risk factor moment —  in my horrifying childhood rather than being the powerful, necessary (to me) resiliency factor moment that I built upon to successfully raise my own children and to care about others.  (In my case, I believe in what I call “borrowed secure attachment” rather than in “earned secure attachment” – a online search of terms “stop the storm borrowed secure attachment” will highlight some related posts.)

There is no possible “resiliency measurement tool” that could capture what truly traumatic childhoods are/were like.  But in the interest of preserving the integrity of useful data through meticulous research what is found MUST be processed by thinkers steeped in the depths of what early trauma IS.  The impeccable artistry and beauty of individual survivor’s lives must not be lost in the mad rush to understand what numbers-only are telling us.

Only with this understanding can any useful thinking about a vague concept like “resiliency” be made to pull its weight in efforts to understand and stop trauma and to assist those who survive it to increase their well-being across their lifespan.

I learned all I was going to find out in the 18 years of my childhood about what love-of-Linda was going to feel like.  All I was going to learn about what love might be like PERIOD I learned during those moments.  I believe traumatized children notice every possible useful bit of information and make PROFOUNDLY amazing good use of those tidbits.  That kind of resiliency, if we are going to call it that, is to me nothing more or less than the will to survive coupled with accumulating the tools necessary to do so.

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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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+AVOID THE PRYING EYES OF CREEPY FAMILY: WRITE YOURSELF A PRIVACY-PROTECTED BLOG!!!

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I can’t stop thinking this morning about a commenter’s words written to my post of yesterday morning.  I also can’t stop thinking about an interview I read several days ago and dismissed.  This ‘can’t stop thinking about…..’ process is what I need to write about now.

The interview written January 18, 2010 was written on The Salon website by Thomas Rogers about the work of a controversial woman:

“The Trauma Myth”: The child betrayed

Susan Clancy discusses her controversial theory, and how an industry designed to help children may hurt them

As I read this interview I found myself struggling not only with the ideas Clancy has presented in both of her books AND with her use of degrading (swearing) language she evidently felt compelled to use in this interview.  I found that her overall concerns lost credibility to me because of her use of this (to me) inappropriate language.

Yet I haven’t been able to entirely dismiss what Clancy mentions (at the above link).  I know on some level there is truth in her words, but I also trust this ‘squirmy feeling’ in my gut that tells me, “BEWARE – be wary – all is not safe in her thinking.”

I do agree with two things Clancy is saying that match my inner understandings.  As an infant-child, and even as a teen, I had no perspective that would have let me even begin to know that all the torture, trauma, battering, abuse, and chronic misery I suffered during my life with my mother was not normal, was ‘wrong’, was not deserved, or even that it was possible that I could have my own reflective thoughts about ANY of my own experience.

While Clancy is talking specifically about sexual abuse of children happening in environments and within contexts that prevent the child from always being able to tell that ‘abuse’ is going on, I would NEVER say the child being sexually abused is not ‘being hurt’.  Clancy is not adequately describing what ‘being hurt’ is.

When researchers tell us that nearly 100% of people with Borderline Personality Disorder were sexually abused as children, that fact alone lets us know even within this limited population that the HARM to children from being sexually abused – and yes, betrayed – is currently beyond our abilities to measure.

When it comes to my own severe infant-child abuse history, even though I have no memory of overt sexual abuse, it wasn’t until the researchers began to discuss the permanent physiological changes that happen in a traumatized little one’s developing body-brain that I began to FINALLY begin to understand how HURT I actually had been by my mother’s torture of me.  In fact, I can hardly imagine a greater hurt to an infant-child than to create such terrible trauma in its life – during the most critical stages of its physiological development – that its entire growing body-brain has to change in its development to survive the abuse and trauma.

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However, it is Clancy’s OTHER topic that I am stuck ‘thinking about’ this morning.  Clancy does not believe in ‘repressed memory’, and I have to say on this subject that I agree with her.  Whether Clancy speaks of dissociation in either of her books I do not know – nor will I ever know because I already feel far too uncomfortable with her language and her ideas to ever read her books.

Researchers clearly know that severe abuse at ANY age can change the region of our brain that processes incoming memory:  the hippocampus.  (Google search ‘hippocampus child abuse’, for examples of the research)

Trauma and memory combine with one another in ways I don’t believe ANYONE yet fully understands.  When researchers such as Dr. Allan Schore describe how the stress hormone, cortisol can so ‘heat up’ the brain’s neurons in the hippocampus as trauma memories are being processed so that these neurons get so hot they FRY before the facts of memory are retained (emotional memory is stored in the body differently) – and that this ‘fried memory cell’ process can happen to BOTH a victim AND a perpetrator of abuse – lets me know that we have to be very careful about what we believe to be true about memory.

I have written many times on my blog that I don’t advocate ‘going after trauma memories’ for any general reason.  I believe extreme caution must be used any time we choose to deal with trauma memory.  On those occasions that ‘trauma triggers’ in our environment stimulate a memory that then appears where it seems we had no memory of this experience before the trigger happened, these memories (to me, in agreement with Clancy) are now NOT FORGOTTEN – in other words are now remembered.  This experience has nothing to do with them being so-called ‘repressed’ before we ‘un-forgot’ them.

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Now, in regard to the commenter’s words yesterday:  We have not only the right to tell our stories but also the right to write them.  In addition, I believe that WRITING our stories of abuse and trauma is VERY HEALING, just so long as we are wise and careful with our self as we go through this disclosure process.

Part of why I believe that wise disclosure is healing especially for those of us who are survivors of early infant-child abuse, trauma and malevolent treatment is that the treatment we received most likely changed our physiological development.  When this happens, we do not ‘get to’ process information in ‘normal ways’.

When researchers tell us that the development of our right and our left brain hemisphere can be altered due to adaptations to early trauma, and that the region of the brain between these two hemispheres, the corpus callosum, also changes due to trauma during development, it then becomes one of the primary needs of our healing to find out what this means to us in our everyday lives.

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Now comes the next part of my morning’s thinking.  I want all of this blog’s readers to know that WordPress hosts blogs for FREE, and their blog interface is nearly perfect!  Part of the perfection that WordPress has created within their blogging systems is a complete, thorough and very understandable HELP section.  There is also a way to contact tech support workers directly – and they are incredibly prompt and helpful in their replies.

MOST importantly, every single word a person writes on their WordPress blog can be published PRIVATELY and not publicly.  These private publications are password protected so that NOBODY without your permission can read a single thing you right.

As early trauma and abuse targets our boundaries to our body and to our self were breached, broken, invaded, violated, smashed-to-smithereens before they were ever formed.

I did respond to yesterday’s commenter that I didn’t begin to write my stories until both of my parents were dead dead dead.  BUT knowing what I know today about the power for healing that writing my stories has provided me, and knowing what I know today about the complete and total privacy that WordPress provides for its blog writers, I ALSO know that there is absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER for ANYONE not to take advantage of the healing powers of writing ANYTHING and EVERYTHING they want to on their private blog.

Now, my experience continues to me that the more I write the more I fine-tune my recognition of how my body-brain processes my LIFE in and out of the word-world.

Turning traumas into words is one of the most empowering things a survivor can do.  And, one of the most healing.

Writing builds connections between our changed-brain hemispheres in increasingly new and complex ways – something all early trauma survivors not only desperately NEED, but fundamentally DESERVE in our healing.

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Finding out HOW the ocean of trauma we were swallowed up in as little tiny people HURT us is OUR right of discovery.  Not Clancy, not anyone else can tell us what did or did not hurt us – or HOW.

Writing allows us to discover our self in ways that can cement the knowledge we gain into WORDS – even if what we write is never read by another soul.  We decide that.  Our privacy happens as we explore and define our own boundaries, as does our new levels of healing.

So even if your ‘messed up’ family would turn all shades of bruise-color should they discover YOUR truth about what YOU know about your family-of-origin experience, there’s no reason to let a single thought of THEM change how you process YOUR REALITY on your free (and completely private if you wish) WordPress blog!

And please also know that you can always use this blog’s ‘contact us’ button at the top of the site to leave me a comment with questions about your new process.  Ask in the comment that it not be published and it won’t be.  I will try to answer any questions if I can, and will certainly lend support and encouragement – ‘in-courage-ment’ – to any new blog writer survivor!  Good luck, have fun, and happier healing!

Go write your memories — good and bad — in any words you want to, as many times as you want to.  My experience has been that I am more free now from the power of my trauma because my memories are all clarified and locked-down in place so that they are OUTSIDE of me nearly more than INSIDE of me now.  I like that!

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GO HERE TO GET STARTED!

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/

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+THE TOPIC OF TEASING: TOO HARD TO CONSIDER?

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When I turned the next page after the chapter on laughter in Keltner’s book my first reaction was aversion.  This isn’t the aversion of disgust I would feel if someone handed me a white china plate with a serving of dog turds in the center of it.  It’s more the aversion I would feel to continuing down a path once I saw a large diamond back rattler stretched across it.  It’s like the aversion I would feel should I be asked to step up on stage to join a chorus line of showgirls scantily dressed and overly plumed in Las Vegas, or should I be asked to sing the national anthem from the center of a pro football stadium in front of thousands.

That’s a strong negative reaction to the single word that appears at the top of Dr. Dacher Keltner’s 2009 book’s (Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life) next page as the heading for his next chapter:  Teasing.

I am experiencing the ‘freeze, hide and flee’ half of the fight/flight stress reaction.  There’s no ‘fight’ for me here except for the fight I am experiencing inside my self about facing my fears by plowing through a topic that obviously makes me feel completely uncomfortable.  I am presented with a challenge here to which I respond with feelings of incompetence and un-confidence.  I KNOW I am an unequipped gladiator in the arena of normal human teasing.

It is only because of my commitment to reading Keltner’s entire book and to learning about my self as the severe infant-child abuse survivor that I am that I marshal my courage and willingness to pay attention both to the information that Keltner presents and to my own difficulties with it.  I know from my experience of aversion to the topic that there is something important here I need to understand.  I know from the start both that I am not going to like what I find here, and that what I find will reflect a truth about how the severe abuse I experienced from birth changed me into someone who is different from the person I could have become had this severe abuse not happened to me.

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Because my experience of severe infant-child abuse contained very specific, unusual, uncommon and unique patterns, I have found myself falling through nearly every single crack in the ‘psychological’ theories about how child abuse can affect adult survivors.  Because my abuse began at birth, I have had to learn that ‘recovery’ of abilities I supposedly ‘used to have’ before severe trauma happened to me is not possible.  My journey of healing is mostly about what I can uncover and discover connected to what was done to me rather than to recover anything.

I have to connect-the-dots of the information I uncover and discover about being myself in the world in far different ways than non-early severe infant-child abuse survivors might get to.  I cannot take for granted even the most basic facts about what it means to be a member of our social human species.  This is mostly true because my mother didn’t just use one massive club of abuse against me from the time I was born.  She had a second massive club that she wielded over me equally:  extreme social isolation.  Being bludgeoned from birth and for the next 18 years by one of these clubs would have all but obliterated me.  Being attacked on all fronts by a combination of the two clubs has made me into a person who very nearly fits the description of a nonsocial species of one.

I am left having to uncover and discover more of what is uniquely different about me from others than what is similar or the same.  Yet I was born a member of a social species.  Everything that is different for me happens according to categories of experience that I share with all others.  It’s just that within each of these categories of possibilities about what it means to be human and what it feels like to be human, I experience patterns of being-in-the-world that are different for me than for nearly all others.

As I encountered my aversion to Keltner’s chapter heading on teasing it didn’t take me very long in scanning the next pages to understand that the topic of teasing is about one of these socially-human categories.  Although Keltner does not make the obvious connection between teasing and attachment patterns, I do.  In fact, the connection is more than glaringly obvious to me.

I suggest that a clear appraisal of our competency of interactions within the arena of teasing activity can show us the kind of social brain we have.. At the same time this appraisal can tell us about the kinds of infant-child interactions we had with our earliest caregivers while the foundation of our emotional-social brain was built from the time of our birth.

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At the same time that I now want to turn to Keltner’s actual presentation of information on teasing, I am experiencing one of my own inner reactions I wrote about earlier in the week.  I hear that warning:  “Do not enter.  Past this point all angels fear to tread.”  I realize that if I cross this line, move past this point, I am at risk for inviting in The Furies.

At the same time I realize there is a second sign posted beside the first.  This one reads, “You cannot get there from here.”  I don’t even have time to consider what this second sign means before I notice a third one that reads, “What is true for most others is absolutely not true for you.”  Oh!  And a fourth sign!  “If you choose to follow down this pathway you must understand that none of what you will find here can be taken personally.  Whatever you are missing in regard to teasing did not come about through any fault of your own.”

If the presence of all those signs aren’t warning enough that I better consider carefully what I am going to choose to do next, I see a flash of yellow through the trees and underbrush just around a curve of the pathway ahead of me.  I walk toward it and see yellow crime scene plastic ribbons strung across the pathway and wound around the bushes on both sides of the pathway into the forest as far as I can see.  At the same time I see a gleaming silver pair of giant scissors lying on the ground in the center of the path right in front of the tape.

I am standing here thinking about this carefully.  What might the repercussions be for me if I pick up these scissors, snap through that yellow tape and continue forward down this pathway?  What might the ramifications be of gaining conscious knowledge about something my body already knows but has no words to describe?  Would I rather be skinned alive than uncover what I am going to discover about myself in this body-brain in this lifetime should I carefully read this chapter?

Believe me, readers.  This is turning into a really long pause here…….  There are more than a few parts of myself I have to consult with before I can make this decision.

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One thing I know today from the information Keltner presents in his book on this topic.  True teasing in the human social arena is NOT about aggression.  If there is aggression present, it is not teasing.  There is not supposed to be anything terrible — ‘terror able’ — about teasing.   Obviously, for me, there was in my “Something Wicked This Way Comes” version of a childhood.

I should not be surprised, given the continual reign of my mother’s verbal abuse of me (included within her unending repertoire of violence), that her so-called teasing was extremely vicious, hurtful and WRONG — from the time I was born.

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+IN THE PRESENCE OF LAUGHTER WE ARE SAFE, SECURE AND FREE

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The wind is back at dawn today, roaring around my house like a drunken clan of Cyclops giants.  The tall pine in my neighbor’s yard is dancing a wild, frenzied jig in fast motion.  The wind is trying to rip the leaves off the plum tree before they even come out.  The giants are bellowing at me down the water heater chimney in the corner of my kitchen.

The sky grows lighter with the sound of birds perched in the twigs of the quince tree above their pan of water outside my kitchen window.  The light is all gray today.  It seems to be within the clouds across the sky, even in all directions, masking the outlines of the mountains, yet here and there in the west the clouds are outlined with the faintest tints of peach, ecru and tan.

It looks like a day to stay indoors.  My cold has thickened and settled, making me feel feverish and queasy.  Sneezing, I watch droplets of rain appear on the outside of my window.  I am grateful for this roof and these walls of shelter (thinking about my study last weekend about the precuneus part of the brain and its connection to our human sense of shelter and to the self).  Protection for the body of the self and for the self of the self.

I am not so tough that I can’t appreciate these advantages I have being only one of billions who have so much less to keep them protected from so much more.  Without these protecting walls of shelter around me right now, without this sturdy roof, without some source of heat, I would experience this coming day differently.  It strikes me as I read a little more of Dr. Dacher Keltner’s 2009 book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, about laughter that the presence or absence of laughter seems to correspond to the nature of the protection we have inside our self for our self.

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Keltner and his colleague, George Bonanno, designed a long-term study to examine how laughter operated among 45 adults who were grieving for the loss of a much loved spouse who had died within the previous six months.  Here again Keltner does not include any assessment of previous traumas, child abuse or maltreatment, or to degrees of secure or insecure attachment.  By not collecting this information from his participants, he missed the opportunity to learn about how the presence or absence of laughter during a time of personal storms is directly connected to the nature of the sheltering protection a person has for their self.

Yes, he found that laughter appears as a resiliency factor in human grieving.  Yes, laughter appears to be a ‘fitness factor’ that corresponds to the ability to transcend one’s losses so they can flexibly resolve their traumas and move on into the next stages of life.  But I resist the intimation his writings leave with is readers, that there is plainly something innately superior about those who can laugh in the midst of their grief compared to those who cannot so easily access laughter’s power to heal.

My bet is that those who entered into the rooms of Keltner’s experimental laboratory to complete his interviews and have their most minute reactions critically examined brought with them the condition of the shelter of their self built within them through critical developmental stages of their infancy and childhood.  Those who were early traumatized were most likely to have soggy cardboard boxes to live in, if that.  Those who benefited during their development by being given good strong walls and a good strong roof, doors that sealed out the storms and tight, solidly placed windows of course had the corresponding ability to access their laughter within.

What did Keltner and Bonanno find among their 45 participants?

“Measures of laughter (and smiling) predicted reduced grief as assessed at six, fourteen, and twenty-five months postloss.  Duchenne laughter while talking about their deceased spouses were less anxious and depressed, and more engaged in their daily living, for the next two years.  Just as important, people who showed more anger were observed to be experiencing more anxiety, depression, and disengagement from daily living for the next two years.”  (page 142

These researchers continued to study how these grief-triggered reactions appeared in the body of their subjects and observed the following:

“…George and I went on a search for further evidence in support of the benefits of laughter.  Why did laughing while talking about the deceased partner relate to increased personal adjustment?  What we observed were findings very much in keeping with the laughter as vacation hypothesis.  Our first analysis looked at how bereaved individuals’ experience of distress tracked one physiological index of arousal – elevated heart rate.  The bereaved individuals who laughed showed similar heart rate arousal as those who did not laugh.  But whereas our nonlaughers’ feelings of distress closely tracked increases in their heart rate, our laughers’ feelings of distress were decoupled from this physiological index of stress.  Metaphorically, laughers were taking a vacation from the stress of their partners’ deaths, freed from the tension of stress-related physiology.

“We then transcribed their conversations and identified exactly what the bereaved participants were talking about when they laughed.  Here again, data suggest that laughter is not a sign of denial of trauma, as widely assumed, but an indicator of a shift toward a new perspective enabled by the imagination.  We coded participants’ references to several existential themes related to bereavement – loss, yearning, injustice, uncertainty.  We also coded for insight words that reflect a shift in perspective, phrases like “I see” or “from this perspective” or “looking back.”  Our participants who laughed were most likely to be talking about the injustice of death – the unfair termination of life, the difficulties of raising a family alone, the loss of intimacy – but they engaged in this discourse with perspective-shifting clauses.  Laughter was part of these individuals’ shift in viewing the death of their spouses.  It was a portal into a new understanding of their lives.  A laugh is a lightning bolt of wisdom, a moment in which the individual steps back and gains a broader perspective upon their lives and the human condition.

“Finally, our data speak to the social benefits of laughter.  Our bereaved individuals who laughed reported better relations with a current significant other.  They more readily engaged in new intimate relations.”  (pages 143-144)

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I believe that Keltner and Bonanno missed the most important fact that it wasn’t the presence or absence of laughter itself that mattered most in their study.  It was the presence or absence of a safe and secure attachment system, built into these individuals through the nature of their earliest caregiver interactions during their body-brain developmental stages, that either enabled laughter to exist as the resiliency factor it is, or did not.

Laughter is obviously connected to the benefits this research describes.  Yes, it does have the power to modulate the physiological stress response in the body.  Yes it indicates “a shift toward a new perspective enabled by the imagination” because it is a signal of fitness that reflects the conditions of the environment an individual was formed in, by and for.  Yes, laughter is included in autobiographical narratives when it appears in “perspective-shifting clauses” that are part of the telling of a coherent, continuous life story that is most likely to happen for a safe and securely attached-from-birth person.

Transitioning between contrasting mental states, processing information in insightful ways, being able to obtain shifts in perspective, having a “portal into a new understanding” of one’s life, having the capacity to experience “a lightning bolt of wisdom, a moment in which the individual steps back and gains a broader perspective upon their lives and the human condition” all are possible because of safe and secure attachment patterns built into a person’s body-nervous system-brain-mind-self from the start of one’s life.

And of course having these abilities, which stem from a safe and securely built body-brain, means that such a person will have the capacity also to report “better relations with a current significant other” and will be able to “more readily” engage “in new intimate relations.”

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This research is describing the differences between those who have and those who do not have the insurance-policy benefits of safe and secure attachment built into their early developing body-brain.  The presence or absence of laughter is the internal and external signal that clearly indicates the nature of a person’s attachment system.  Our attachment system is itself a signifier of the quality of the world that built each of us in our beginnings.

Our attachment system is about the quality of the protective structure within us that contains our self.  If I had to try to recover from this cold I have outside in the cold wind and rain of today, rather than trying to recover within the adequate home I have that keeps those stormy elements away from me, I would not be likely to recover as well, as quickly, or maybe even at all.  That’s just plain common sense.

So why do we continue to so stubbornly refuse to accept that the conditions of our inward attachment system that directly formed the who and how we are in this world don’t have an equally powerful influence on how we respond to and recover from the trials and tribulations, the storms that happen to us along the pathway of our lives?

If the presence of laughter signifies the existence of a safe and secure inner protective structure for the self, and its absence signifies that this inner protective structure is not safe and secure enough, then I know more about the meaning of laughter in my own life and in the lives of others.  Just as I would want to improve the physical structure of my dwelling if the rain was pouring in the roof and my siding was blowing off, I want to improve the structure surrounding my self.

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It is with this new “light of understanding” about the powerful signifier laughter is of the conditions of my inner shelter that I will share with you something that made me laugh so hard yesterday my sides literally hurt.  I haven’t laughed like that for a long, long time.

Our rural town weekly newspaper always includes a page called “The Police Beat” where the past week’s 911 calls are presented to the public.  I happen to live in this unincorporated outskirt town of 700 people that I found mentioned in the news yesterday.  I was trying to read this entire piece from start to finish over the telephone to my daughter last evening without laughing.  I couldn’t do it:

Jan. 7 –

“A Naco woman reported a large green half snake half something else was in her bathroom.  By the time deputies arrived, the creature was gone.

Of all the descriptions Keltner has presented (above) about laughter, it is his mention of how laughter is “an indicator of a shift toward a new perspective enabled by the imagination” that most caught my attention.  I thought to myself, “Hey!  I can do THAT!”

Reading this report from the sheriff’s call yesterday captivated my imagination.  The words in that report created for me a playground for my imagination – as I suspect it will yours.  Now, thanks to reading Keltner’s book combined with my own insights, I understand more than ever before the critical place that laughter has as a signifier of human well-being.

I will pay ever more close attention to finding the large and often very small places that humor, smiles and laughter might be hidden around me in my life – even if they are hidden in the words of a paper about something that first appeared in someone else’s bathroom – and then did not.  Now I understand more clearly that my attachment system, my home of my self in the world, will be better off for every instant of genuine laughter I can find.

Human laughter, older than words, might well be the most important language we have.  It tells the stories of the better side of life.  In laughter we share both the oldest and best of who we are and what we know.  In the presence of genuine laughter we are most present in the present because in its embrace we are most completely safe, secure and free.

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+GREAT BOOK ABOUT THE BEST IN HUMANS

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My book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life – Paperback (Oct 5, 2009) by Dacher Keltner has arrived.  I am eagerly embarking on its study about what’s best about humans.  My insanely abusive Borderline mother sure didn’t teach me anything about THAT!

Keltner resides in the camp of study about positive human emotions.  Interestingly, researchers could not really study what has always been termed ‘happiness’ equally with the survival emotions such as fear and rage until technology invented photographic equipment that operates as fast as our face moves when we express emotion.

The more survival-based emergency related emotions happen in bigger ways so that we can watch them happen more easily than we can (could) watch expressions related to happiness and well-being.  Just as we needed really FAST photography to accurately be able to watch the visual information transmitted and received between infants and mothers (that build our earliest fundamental brain regions), we also needed it to see what happens when we treat one another well and with kindness.

(For an example of how the extremely rapid fraction-of-a-millisecond mother-infant communication takes place please scroll down to page 22 in Dr. Allan N. Schore’s paper, EFFECTS OF A SECURE ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP ON RIGHT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT, AFFECT REGULATION, AND INFANT MENTAL HEALTH)

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Humans are born with the capacity to experience emotion.  We simply live them without thinking about what they are, what they mean, or what they are named.  In safe and secure infant-childhood environments we are helped by our caregivers to gradually learn about our emotions as we learn about our self and others in the world.  Eventually we learn what emotions are named and about how to ever more effectively regulate them.

Because this ability to regulate and differentiate emotions happens within our earliest infant-child attachment relationship environment, the process is either assisted or interfered with by our caregivers.  In my own case, as I study Keltner’s book, I doubt I will be able to think about very many instances from my infant-childhood at all where I would have even been allowed to experience the positive emotional states.

I find it interesting that even in the field of vastly expensive scientific research that the differentiation of ‘happiness’ and the study of this state had to wait until technology caught up with our desire and need to better understand the happiness aspect of who we are.

Dr. Keltner is at the cutting-edge of this research.  His study happens because he can use the new lens of sophisticated super-stop action photography to see our human finely tuned happiness communications in the same way that evolution of the lens allowed us to see new aspects of our world through microscopes and telescopes.

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Keltner states about the study of happiness in the first chapter of his book:

“The canonical [orthodox] studies of human emotion, studies of the universality of facial expression, of how emotion is registered in the nervous system, how emotion shapes judgment and decision making, had never looked into these states.  The groundbreaking studies of emotion had only examined one state covered by the term “happiness.”  But research is often misled by “ordinary” language, the language we speak rather than the language of scientific theory.  Happiness is a diffuse term.  It masks important distinctions between emotions such as gratitude, awe, contentment, pride, love, compassion and desire – the focus of this book – as well as expressive behaviors such as teasing, touch, and laughter.  This narrow concentration on “happiness” has stunted our scientific understanding of the emotions that move people toward higher jen ratios.  By solely asking, “Am I happy?” we miss out on the many nuances of the meaningful life.

My hope is to shift what goes into the numerator of you jen ration, to bring into sharper focus the millisecond manifestations of human goodness.  I hope that you will see human behavior in a new light, the subtle cues of embarrassment, playful vocalizations, the visceral feelings of compassion, the sense of gratitude in another’s touch to your shoulder, that have been shaped by the seven million years of hominid evolution and that bring the good in others to completion.  In our pursuit of happiness we have lost sight of these essential emotions.  Our everyday conversations about happiness are filled withy references to sensory pleasure – delicious Australian wines, comfortable hotel beds, body tone produced by our exercise regimens.  What is missing is the language and practice of emotions like compassion, gratitude, amusement, and wonder.  My hope is to tilt your jen ratio to what the poet Percy Shelley describes as the great secret of morals:  “the identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.”  The key to this quest resides in the study of emotions long ignored by affective science.”  (pages 14-15)

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My mother was extremely short on jen, as are all people who outright neglect, abuse and maltreat people – infants and children most included.  My mother’s experiences in her own abusive childhood seemed to completely obliterate any ability she was born with to understand what ‘being good’ was all about.  Certainly it was my experience with her that she was never able to ‘be good’ to me and in fact she did not believe I even had the capacity to ‘be good’ myself.

In fact, my mother projected her own ‘badness’ that she found intolerable inside herself out onto me and proceeded to spend the 18 years of my childhood ‘punishing’ me for being ‘that bad’.  This process was, I believe, entirely connected to abuse in her own childhood as she had been told her ‘badness’ made her unlovable, but if she could only be ‘good enough’ she would be lovable and loved again.  Something became permanently broken in my mother’s early ‘good-bad’ early forming brain, and it made her into a monster.

Knowing this about my Borderline mother makes me very curious about Keltner’s book whose very title —  BORN TO BE GOOD — addresses the underlying conflicts my entire childhood was consumed with:  Evil versus Good versus Evil versus Good……..  Every interaction I had with my mother from the time I was born was in reality a communication from her to me about how essentially and fundamentally un-good and totally evil I was.

The extremes of my mother’s psychosis were so severe that she literally believed I was satan’s child and was not even born as a human being.  I was condemned beyond salvation, though my mother believed through every word and deed she abused me with that she was doing her very super-human best to save me as she battled to accomplish the impossible task of turning me into ‘something good’.

Keltner’s book is about the best in human social interactions.  I want to know more about this because I certainly have vast personal experience about what the worst in human social interactions can be like.  I want to improve my own ‘jen ratio’.  What might this mean?

By first translating the broad term ‘happiness’ into the broader term ‘goodness’, Keltner then describes the kinds of minute human interactions that both communicate goodness and build it into self and others.  The term “jen ratio” is the kingpin of his writing    About jen itself Keltner states:

“…Confucius taught a new way of finding the meaningful life through the cultivation of jen.  A person of jen, Confucius observes, “wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others.”  A person of jen “brings the good things of others to completion and does not bring the bad things of others to completion.”  Jen is felt in that deeply satisfying moment when you bring out the goodness in others.

“Jen science is based on its own microscopic observations of things not closely examined before.  Most centrally, it is founded on the study of emotions such as compassion, gratitude, awe, embarrassment, and amusement, emotions that transpire between people, bringing the good in each other to completion.  Jen science has examined new human languages [My note:  New to scientific study, ancient to humans] under its microscope – movements of muscles in the face that signal devotion, patterns of touch that signal appreciation, playful tones of the voice that transforms conflicts.  It brings into focus new substances that we are made of, neurotransmitters as well as regions of our nervous system that promote trust, caring, devotion, forgiveness, and play.  It reveals a new way of thinking about the evolution of human goodness, which requires revision of longstanding assumptions that we are solely wired to maximize desire, to compete, and to be vigilant to what is bad.

“The jen ratio is a lens onto the balance of good and bad in your life.  In the denominator of the jen ratio place recent actions in which someone has brought the bad in others to completion….  Above this, in the numerator of the ratio, tally up the actions that bring the good in others to completion….  As the value of your jen ratio rises, so too does the humanity of your world.

“Think of the jen ratio as a lens through which you might take stock of your attempt at living a meaningful life.”  (pages 3-5)

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I haven’t seen these two words in Keltner’s book yet, hope and enthusiasm, but this is how I feel as I enter into this new journey.  For all my awarenesses about the differences between how my body-brain-mind-self was formed in comparison to others who benefited from having a safe and secure attachment foundation rather than one formed in, by and for trauma, I enthusiastically hope that by understanding how we ALL have a jen ration operating in our lives I can begin to make my own ration better.

I will keep you posted (literally!) about my experiences with the information contained within the pages of Keltner’s BORN TO BE GOOD book I was fortunate to discover!

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+EXCLUSIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OWNED BY SEVERE ABUSE SURVIVORS

alchemynow3 Comments

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I received this valuable comment about my blog writing through a ‘personal channel’ yesterday:

“YOUR WRITING IS SO INTELLECTUAL THAT I AM ALMOST OVERWHELMED.  YOU DON’T CONVERSE THAT WAY, I HOPE!”

There have been times in my life when such a comment would have stopped me dead in my tracks and I would not write another single word.

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Some time back I wrote a piece where I described the one thing from all the codependency jargon that makes sense to me.  When we find ourselves feeling like we have to explain and/or defend ourselves we are in a codependent stance.

So here I am today considering taking a dose of my own medicine.  What is happening inside of me that makes me feel defensive?  How is my writing tied into my own feelings of inadequacy?  Why is important to me that I please others, that I have something of value that is useful that I can offer to others?  It seems obvious that I am comparing and contrasting myself with those outside of myself – that the operation of assessment and judgment is going on within me.

I suspect that what is both my true underlying and the overriding concern is acceptance, which is an attachment issue.  Do I feel safe and secure enough inside myself to trust that what I write about and how I write is exactly fine with me?  Can I be open to feedback and think about it constructively in terms of what I might need to change to accomplish my goals more successfully?

What might it be in my writing that is either corresponding to Grice’s maxims of rational discourse – or not?  I am really not in conversation here because my approximately 70 readers a day are silent ones.  How confident do I feel inside of myself, how competent do I feel about what I write and how?

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When communication is taking place that allows for resonance and mirroring between people (and even between people and animals) there are patterns of ‘rupture and repair’ that guide the flow of discourse.  One person sends out signals and watches for how they are accepted or rejected, and pauses for response.  Patterning within the social-emotional brain govern how our verbal interactions take place between people just as they govern how our nonverbal communication does.

Researchers have found that Grice’s maxims include an accurate enough description of appropriate patterns of verbal communication that they lie at the foundation of all adult attachment research.  These maxims mirror safe and secure social-emotional brain operations as they appear in the behavior of verbal speech.

The response I received yesterday is partly about the differences between spoken and the written communication.  It brings to mind this philosophical riddle that raises questions regarding observation and knowledge of reality:  “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  The answer to this question is technically “No.”

I first encountered this question shortly after I finished Naval boot camp when I was 18 years old, and it fascinated me.  This was true mostly because I spent the better part of my childhood being bonded not to humans, but to the natural world surrounding me when I could escape from my mother and spend time outside on the mountainside of our Alaskan homestead.  My personal answer to this question has always been “Yes.”  I did not grow up with a social brain that put humans at the center of reality.

In the natural world all of existence is in intimate relationship with all of its members.  Everything is included.  Nothing is excluded.  Perhaps it was because I was excluded as a member of my family that being in the natural world meant so much to me.  I was included in that world and there was nothing my mother could do to change either that fact or my experience of it.

I met both of the requirements for complete acceptance and inclusion in the natural world:  (1) I was alive, and (2) I was there.  I didn’t need words.  I didn’t even need thoughts.  I simply needed to be in a body, to BE a body present WITH every possible part of life around me.  With the exception of one time, never were there any people in that natural world with me.

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On that one day, the summer after I graduated from high school but had still not reached my August 31st 18th birthday, a boy from my brother’s class (a year ahead of me) walked up the mountain to see me.  I had no idea why.  To my knowledge he had never noticed me before.  We had never spoken.  But this boy put forth a lot of effort to find me way up there on the mountain.

He did not arrive by car.  He walked.  How far I don’t know.

When this boy unexpectedly knocked on our door, I greeted him and went outside to visit.  It was a glorious mid-summer Alaskan afternoon.  The sky was that deep blue that I always called ‘postcard blue’.  There was no wind.  It was warm.  Wildflowers bloomed across the hillsides.  Tall emerald green grasses covered the fields.

Only on this day, with this boy, for the first and only time did I feel present in that natural world I loved with another person.  For perhaps two hours we walked the land.  I showed him the beauty that surrounded our home.  There was no physical contact as we sat at the top of the steep ravine that led down to the roaring tumbling creek.  After a time, this boy simply said good-bye and left.

I have never known why he came to see me, and I remain curious.  What I do know is that as soon as he was out of sight around the first bend of our road heading down the mountain, my mother attacked me like she had never done before.  You would have to imagine what it would be like to be attacked by a full grown rabid grizzly bear to begin to understand what that beating was like.  Only my mother included her words.

Up and down the length of our house she dragged, shoved, pushed and hurled me as she pounded my body and face with anything she could grab for hours.  I had seen my mother in her rages against me all of my life, but never had I seen her this angry.  I did not understand any of it.  Not that I had ever understood her attacks, but the power of this one put me into an inner state of shock it took me many years to even partially recover from.

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I came to understand that her entire violent and vicious rage against me that afternoon had been grounded in sexual fantasies within her mind about what had gone on between myself and that boy as soon as we crossed out of sight through the tall grass over to the edge of the ravine where she could not see us.  For many years one phrase that she had screamed at me hurt me as if I had been slashed head to toe with a razor sharp butcher knife:  “You are no better than a snake in the grass!  You are not fit to be a mother!  I hope God never sees fit to give you children!”

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Now if I return to the comment at the top of this post, I would say that if I were actually facing someone in person how I would tell the story about that summer afternoon might be different than how I write it.  It is certainly not a topic that would come up in ordinary conversation.  At present I cannot imagine a time, a situation, a place or a person that I would ever tell the entire story to on the deepest level.  And this would be only one of thousands and thousands of brutally violent and violating ‘encounters’ I had with my mother from the time I was born.

When it comes to Grice’s maxims I know that it is not humanly possible to follow those rules for rational discourse when attempting to talk about, or write about, severe experiences of trauma that happened to me in my childhood.  The rules for discourse require that an order be followed through a definable pattern that makes sense to the two (or more) people that are conversing TOGETHER.

Together means that there is an empathetic resonance happening between the people engaged in conversation.  Take another look at Grice’s maxims:

Maxim of Quantity:

1. Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as necessary.
2. Do not make your contribution to the conversation more informative than necessary.
Maxim of Quality:

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of Relevance:

Be relevant (i.e., say things related to the current topic of the conversation).
Maxim of Manner:

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary wordiness).
4. Be orderly.

This is NOT how I can verbalize my childhood.  Not in words, not in conversation and not in my writing.

These maxims apply to considered and considerate conversation.  It would not be considerate of me – toward me or to my readers – to delve into minute, graphic detail about the actual experiences of abuse I suffered from my mother.  To do so would overwhelm all of us – especially me!

Maybe if I only had ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred violent and violating experiences of abuse in my childhood I would have been able by now at 58 to converse ‘rationally’ with myself or with anyone else about the exact nature of those experiences.  Maybe if I had less than a thousand of them I could ‘tell the coherent story’ of my childhood.

As it is, my entire way of being in the world happens because I do not access the overwhelming memories of overwhelming childhood trauma I experienced.  I would be a fool to ever believe that these traumas can be integrated into who I am in the world in any better way than they already are.  Integrated trauma means that something useful has been learned from the experience that can facilitate a better chance of surviving a similar related trauma in the future.  The only thing to learn from the kind of terrible isolation and abuse I suffered during the 18 years my mother could hurt me was that child abuse survival has a high price, and that it SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AT ALL.

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I have upped the ante in what I think about, talk about, and write regarding my personal history of severe infant-child abuse.  Literal detailed disclosure of the specifics on separate incidents is NOT my concern.  Understanding what happened to me as a consequence of what my mother did to me is my concern.  This understanding has to be accomplished consciously, and therefore involves an intellectual process.

My mother’s abuse of me forced my body-brain-mind-self to change and adjust its development so that the actual body-brain-mind-self I am left to live my life with and AS is NOT the same one that I would have had should the abuse never have occurred.  These changes are not minor.  They are not insignificant.  And all of the fundamental changes my body-brain-mind-self had to make are permanent on the physiological level.

Time cannot run backward.  I cannot return to being a newborn infant so that I might receive different information from my caregiving environment that would give me an entirely different body-brain-mind-self through my developmental stages.  And just as I cannot RETURN to my infant-childhood for a better chance of developing a different body in a better world, neither can I TURN to any single professional expert source or resource for the information I most need in order to understand exactly how what my mother did to me changed me, and what that means.

Neither am I going to be content with a little piece of an answer, handed to me as a toothpick that relates to a much bigger living tree of information about who and how I really am in this world.  I realize that I join the ranks of those other people who also had extremely abusive infant-childhoods.  None of us have ever really been told the truth about how profoundly our human development was changed so that we could survive what was happening to us.

We will discover this truth within our own self, and as we do so and begin to use the words that matter most to describe the changes we experienced as a result of our abuse, we will be giving birth to our own intellectual property on the topic.   This intellectual property belongs to us because we have this information inside of us.  It is who we are because it is who we had to become to survive.  We are finding new words and new ways to tell our stories about what really happened to us.

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Maybe I am on a mythological quest to find this grand tree of knowledge that will give me the answers I need.  I guarantee if it ever falls I want to be among the first to hear the sound of its falling.  I find glimpses of its existence in the direction much seemingly unrelated research is going, and in its findings.  I had intended to present two specific examples in today’s post, but I have run out of………..

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+TRAUMA SIGNALS THROUGH ATTACHMENT

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Human attachment patterns exist within and are communicated by the body either through the use of words or not.  Degrees of safe and secure or unsafe and insecure attachment are physiological communications about either the presence of or the absence of unresolved trauma.  This is true for humans at every stage of our development from birth until death.

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The first thought that came to my mind the first time I encountered a description of the research strategies used to assess infant-mother attachment such as was presented in yesterday’s post was that under no circumstance can I possibly imagine my mother agreeing to participate in such an activity.

Nor can I imagine any severely abusive parent being willing to agree to participate in such research.  Nowhere have I seen a discussion in the research about this fact.  It is not the researcher’s concern.  Abuse is not what they directly intend to measure even though I believe it would clearly be seen in the patterns of attachment between an abused and maltreated infant and its primary caregiver.

As described in the 13 scanned pages presented yesterday about parent-infant attachment research, it is clear that attachment patterns cannot be shown to be related to either personality traits or to intelligence.  They have also found that a mothering caregiver’s attachment patterns are not formed directly in relationship with any particular personality trait of their infant, either.

Attachment patters are being shown to be transmitted from caregiver to infant as the research shows the remarkable fact that a pregnant mother’s attachment patterns have great power to predict and to form her infant’s attachment patterns.  Research is showing that these transmitted patterns of infant attachment are carried by her offspring through from infancy into adulthood.

One big hole in the research that I find when I look at it from my own point of view is that while researchers seem to clearly understand that an infant can have entirely different attachment patterns with different attachment caregivers, nowhere in the research do I see these experts talk about the fact that caregivers can have different attachment patterns with their different offspring.  This matters a great deal in cases where a parent singles out one of their offspring for severe abuse even though they do not abuse all of their children.  This was the case in my childhood.

Assuming that a severely abusive mother would ever show up in a research setting such as the ones used in these studies, has research ever been done that shows how any mother might interact differently with her different offspring?  Not to my knowledge.  (I will have to hunt for this kind of research).

I think the results of the adult attachment research being presented in Siegel’s writing makes the assumption that the adult’s attachment patterns are so formed within the caregiver that the operate consistently across relationships that adult has with everyone, including her offspring (any and all of them).

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When reviewing the findings presented in the comparison table about how a particular mother’s own attachment patterns correspond to her infant’s, the reason why the name of the attachment patterns are different between adult and infant seems to be that while the infant’s classification is based specifically on the mother-infant relationship, the mother’s is based on what researchers determine to be her attachment states of mind.

Researchers suggest that not until the age of 18 months does an infant-child’s brain have the capacity for form and use ‘mental representations’ that are required for it to have a ‘state of mind’.  This belief is reflected in the process used to determine attachment depending on age.  Infant attachment is based on observable body behavior.  Adult attachment is assessed on the basis of verbal communication patterns.

I am not clear as to why researchers do not assess a mother’s attachment to her infant by reproducing a clinical scenario like the one they used to watch how an infant responds in the Strange Situation.  I don’t think they watch the mother.  They are watching the infant.  If they DID watch the mother, what visible patterns would they see in the mother as she came and went from her infant?  How does she hold it?  How does she let go of it?  Does she reach for her infant?  What do her facial expressions communicate to the infant or the tone and pitch of her voice?

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Adult assessment of attachment is designed to notice patterns of communication and signaling used in a verbal interview.  These same patterns of communication happen between infants and their caregivers even though verbal communication is NOT what matters to the infant.  It is the patterns of communication signaling that is being assessed in both infants and adults.  The communication of emotion is at the core of these assessed signals for both.

Because of their youth, infants do not use clear mental representations or process their emotions through the filter of a clear state of mind.  What they feel is what they do, and what they do shows in the actions their body takes.  If you take a look at the information contained in the 13 scanned pages it is clear that because infants cannot yet use words, they are left still communicating with their body.

It is the nature and the quality of a mother’s ability to read, resonate with and to respond appropriately to all the body-based signals of communication her infant has expressed to her from the moment of its birth that create the bedrock of her infant’s social-emotional brain as they also steer and direct the development of her infant’s nervous system, immune system and body.  These patterns of interactions between a mother and her infant, the same ones that built the infant, show in the infant as it interacts with its mother during these attachment assessment experiences.

That the physiological, actual body-based actions of a one-year-old infant very accurately are reflected in how its mother TALKS about her own experiences of childhood fascinates me.  It shows me that words and the expression of them simply exist on the end of a physiological-response continuum that just gets more sophisticated in its expression the older we get – the more our brains develop – and according to the more options we have to express our emotions.

Language is body-based.  It happens through our body.  Infants use language from the moment they are born, certainly well before they can use actual words.

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My suspicion is that the farther down the attachment scale into insecure attachment patterns a mother might be appearing to slide — which researchers assess through verbal communication — the more she is communicating as she did when she was an infant.  I say this because as researchers watch a mother’s ability to follow Grice’s maxims disintegrate as she attempts to TALK about her childhood, the closer she is getting to body-based emotion that she cannot put into words.

We don’t expect an infant to be able to talk about its ongoing experience of trauma in words.  At the same time we also know that it is the nature of ongoing unresolved trauma to NOT be integrated into anyone’s ongoing experience of being a self in the world.  This is just as true when ongoing trauma exists in an infant’s reality as it is when it exists in an adult’s.

Experiences of trauma interfere with ongoing experience in a safe and secure world.  If trauma can be resolved, it becomes digested and integrated as safety and security return to the individual irregardless of a person’s age.  If trauma cannot be resolved, it is not integrated and it then shows itself in interruptions in patterns of signaling communication that can be seen in attachment relationships – again, irregardless of a person’s age.

Patterns of unintegrated and unresolved trauma are what researchers are ‘measuring’ in both infants and in adults while they watch and interpret movements of the body during these studies.  It just happens that words and verbal communication styles and patterns in adults are watched more closely than are their bigger bodily movements.

Unresolved and unintegrated trauma exists at the physiological level.  This trauma communicates its presence physiologically – even in words and in patterns of spoken communication.  It is not only the bigger the unresolved trauma is, but also the older it is that we can see in patterns of insecure attachment – at any age.

The older a trauma is, meaning the younger we were when it overwhelmed us, the more it appears body-based in its signals.  That is why an adult will appear increasingly inarticulate (does not follow Grices’s maxims) the more they approach their earliest traumas.  The more incoherent a mother’s attachment interview becomes, the more she is becoming her younger body-based (without words) self-in-the-world.  The memories the interviewer is asking her to access do not exist with words.  They do exist in her body.

The more insecurely and unsafely attached a mother was in her earliest body-brain formation stages of development, the more her early traumas actually changed the body-brain she lives in the world with.  Whether researchers are watching (listening to) body-based signals in words or not, in infants or in adults, they are watching degrees of safe and secure being in a benevolent world – or not.  They are watching early trauma changed body-brain development – or not.

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Actions are always body-based expressions.  The older we get the more options for actions we have.  As trauma-laden infants grow through their younger years into their adulthood, the more obvious the trauma drama patterns of communication become.  If we separate ourselves from our own experiences of trauma drama and picture them as occurring among actors on a stage, we can easily see that it is simply unresolved trauma itself that is communicating its presence.

If an infant that researchers watch behaves in a safe and secure manner with its mother, those researchers don’t see trauma drama.  If an infant behaves in ways that can be seen to represent increasing levels of unsafe and insecure attachment patterns with its mother, researchers can already watch trauma drama taking place.

We could ‘mute the sound’ for any trauma drama we might be watching, at any age, because words really tell us very, very little about the presence of trauma.  In fact, the older we get, the more present verbal communication according to Grice’s maxims is, the less trauma will be present!  Because unresolved trauma remains physiologically body-based, it best shows itself in the actions of the body.  Words themselves are the very, very tip of the proverbial iceberg.

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Speaking of attachment, trauma – resolved or not – I want to highly recommend a film to you.  My children gifted me with a Netflix subscription for Christmas, and I streamed this one and watched it last night.  It is a true story.

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The Children of Huang Shi (2008)

At is about young British journalist, George Hogg, who with the assistance of a courageous Australian nurse and a Chinese partisan fighter, saves a group of orphaned children during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937. Written by anonymous

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As you watch this movie notice that you would completely understand the entire story, including all the emotions of it, without listening to a single word of dialog.  It is a powerful portrayal of the human condition with nearly its fullest spectrum of relationship to, with and within trauma.

As you watch this film notice also that at the same time this entire story is about trauma it is also equally about attachment.  We can never consider one without the other – never.

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IN MEMORY OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER:

In the Spotlight | More Topics |
from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD
Here we are again, preparing to begin a new year. I’m not one for new year’s resolutions (most people don’t keep them anyway), but thinking of changes you’d like to make this year can help. Getting treatment, or working on particular skills, or committing to developing a life more worth living might be on your list this year.
In the Spotlight
Time to Find Treatment? Here’s How!
When you’re ready to make the move into treatment, this article will give you tips on finding a good therapist who treats BPD.
More Topics
Building More Meaning: A Values Exercise
The first step toward finding meaning in your life is to determine what aspects of your life are meaningful to you. This exercise can help you assess what is meaningful to you.
Training Your Skills: Active Problem Solving
Sometimes it’s more effective to focus on the problem at hand than to focus on trying to control your emotions about the problem. Tackling problems head on can help you feel that your life is more manageable and less stressful.

+TRAGEDIES OF CHILD ABUSE REFLECTED IN STORIES

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Something related to my abusive childhood experiences with Christmas stands out so clearly and powerfully I am not going to ignore it.  I can’t put bows or shiny tinsel or colored lights on this post to pretty it up.  I can only present what I know.

I have already written a holiday season post presented on December 8, 2009 – +CONSUMERS BEWARE OF TRAUMA TRIGGERS LURKING IN ‘HOLIDAY SEASON MAGIC’.  I would rather not write another one, but tonight is Christmas Eve, and in America it is hard to escape from the reality that the holiday season is often a complicated one for abuse survivors of any age.

How well does our internal experience of the holiday season match what we see mirrored back to us about what we think the holidays are SUPPOSED to be like?  How closely does our personal experience match other people’s?  How much mirroring and ‘reflecting back and forth’ actually goes between ourselves, our own reality, and the social environment we are immersed within?

How might our early infant-child experiences of maltreatment be influenced by our mirror neuron system?

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Much has been written in recent years about our brain’s mirror neurons which allow our brain to fire parallel patterns in the motor areas of our brain as the one’s that are firing in the brain of somebody we are watching perform an action.  Whether or not these mirror neurons operate in regard to empathy or not is still open to neuroscientific debate.

Do our mirror neurons allow us to predict the actions of others?  Are mirror neurons a part of what allows us to form a Theory of Mind because they help us to understand other people?  How do they operate in allowing us to learn actions that better facilitate our existence in the world?  How might mirror neurons interact with our ability to understand gestures and body movements as a part of human language and signaling communication?

We know that the patterns of signaling communication between a very young infant and its earliest mothering caregiver create the circuits, pathways and patterns of development within the human emotional-social limbic brain.  These patterns of communication are supposed to operate through a mutual reflective, attuned, mirroring process.  Trauma interrupts the optimal development of this early forming brain as it communicates a need to change development to match conditions in a malevolent world.

An infant-child’s experiences within an abusive, neglectful, malevolent world do not magically skip the holiday season even if and when, as happened in my childhood home, an infant-child’s parents PRETEND the holidays are a safe, secure, happy and wonderful time.  Patterns of trauma that built our body-brain in early malevolent conditions do not magically disappear from our adult body during the holiday season, either.

Trying to match ourselves to a HAPPY holiday reality that we see reflected within our culture and mirrored back to us can create an incongruous, dissociated experience.

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Song, music, story, dramatic expression, dance, movement, gestures, active story telling and eventually written literature and film carries power to invoke imagination through a sharing of experience between human beings.  Our mirror neuron system is involved in how we process information contained in these forms of expression.

As members of a social species, we respond to patterns that resonate with our own experience either because we can recognize ourselves within the messages being communicated, or because we have an active imaginal interaction with them.

I bring this up today because I am going to share with you a story that moved me as a young extremely abused child.  I didn’t read the story in print.  I watched the movie version.  Looking back, I now understand that my 6, 7, 8, 9-year-old experiences with this movie was not a ‘normal’ one.  I loved the story because it was the first time I ever saw my own inner experience as a child clearly and accurately mirrored and reflected back to me in the fullest possible way.

Of course as a child watching this movie on television I did not know that it was speaking back to me the reality of my own heart, mind and life.  I was simply mesmerized because I was involved with the story as if it was happening inside of me rather than on the outside.

I resonated with the story.  It and I were in harmony as if we were telling this story together as two people might sing a song together, perfectly matched either note for note or harmonizing together perfectly.  It was this TOGETHER-WITH feeling that I had never experienced before that tells me now that only in this movie did I experience a sharing of the emotions that had formed and filled my body-brain-mind-self from the time of my birth.

The little girl character in this story matched me.  I knew there was some matching between my experience and that portrayed in Cinderella, for example.  But I also knew inside the marrow of my bones that I did not match any chance of a happy ending like Cinderella had.  My story could only match one with a different kind of ending, and this story I am including the text of today more closely matched what might be my kind of happy ending.

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The Little Match Girl (or The Little Match-Seller)

Hans Christian Andersen wrote “The Little Match Girl” (Danish: Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne, meaning “The little girl with the sulphur sticks”).  The story was first published in 1845 and has been adapted to various media including animated film, and a television musical.

I don’t remember which movie version of the story I saw on television as I watched it over repeated holiday seasons of my young childhood.  Here is the text of the story.

The Little Match-Seller

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening– the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.

One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.

She crept along trembling with cold and hunger–a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!

The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year’s Eve; yes, of that she thought.

In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.

Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but–the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.

She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when–the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant’s house.

Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when–the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.

“Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.

She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love.

“Grandmother!” cried the little one. “Oh, take me with you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!” And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety–they were with God.

But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall–frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. “She wanted to warm herself,” people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year .

Literature Network » Hans Christian Andersen » The Little Match Girl

This translation posted on The Literature Network

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I can say what a terribly sad state of affairs it was that watching this story made me feel warm inside, and this is true.  I can also say what a miracle it was that I was exposed to an art form that allowed me to experience what it felt like to have my inner experience matched and mirrored back to me.  I finally felt that majestic feeling of mutual resonance that allowed me to know that someone out there knew my reality.

Although I wasn’t literally freezing or starving to death physically as a child, my world was that cold on the inside.  I knew what it felt like to be beaten.  I knew what it felt like to be alone.  I knew what it felt like to be unloved.  But I had no words for my own experience.  I did not even have the ability to think about my own experience or about my own feelings as I experienced my experiences.  All I could do was endure.

I had lost the only person who ever loved me when we left my grandmother behind in Los Angles the year I turned six when we moved to Alaska.

Did I empathize with the little match girl or did I simply completely know with the entirety of my being what her experience was?  I think what mattered to me most was that I knew that little match girl would know completely how I felt.  On a very deep unconscious level I knew that this little match girl was having my feelings.  I watched her have them in this story.

Is this experience what empathy is all about?  How starved I was for affection.  How starved I was for warmth and love.  How starved I was for understanding.  How fundamentally starved I was for a mutual experience of sharing my inner reality with any other single person in the universe.

How including rather than excluding is the human experience that I could feel this understood and connected to a century old story portrayed by an actress showing through the hard cold screen of a television set?

Others might have the luxury of being able to feel compassion for the girl in this story.  I certainly didn’t.  Others might pity her.  How many would experience harmonious, resonating empathy WITH her?

I never pitied myself as a child.  I did not experience anger or resentment.  I had no fight left in me because my mother had put the full force of her considerably powerful and successful efforts into obliterating any trace of Linda from my existence.  But she could not touch the warmth inside of me I felt watching that movie as the power it had to touch me reached out of that television like the light of that little girl’s shooting star.

I had no ability to imagine my life as being different or better.  I did not know how overwhelmingly sad I was.  I only felt the great sorrow of knowing that I could not die and be with my grandmother like this girl in the movie got to do.  I knew I couldn’t have this same happy ending to my story because my grandmother wasn’t dead yet.

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Before we moved to Alaska I had the opportunity to experience a little bit of an attachment relationship with my grandmother, but my mother was able to interfere with and mostly completely prevent my grandmother from having contact with me.  This experience of ‘feeling felt’ is SUPPOSED to build our early-forming emotional-social right limbic brain:

The feeling of being felt

“In The Developing Mind, Daniel J. Siegel uses the phrase “the feeling of being felt” to describe relationships that shape the mental circuits responsible for memory, emotion, and self-awareness. Brain-altering communication is triggered by deeply felt emotions that register in facial expressions, eye contact, touch, posture, movements, pace and timing, intensity, and tone of voice.”

Looking back I believe that being able to watch this movie changed my life.  It created for me one of the few times in the 18 years of my infant-childhood that I clearly experienced the feeling of ‘feeling felt’.  This is a critically important experience for us to have as members of a social species.  It involves looking out into our social world and seeing in other people our own experience mirrored back to us.

In today’s world of sanitized and ‘prettified’ young children’s stories, even to the outright fabrication of happy endings for stories like Andersen’s and the other old fairy tales, I would have been deprived of even having this single most significant self-building experience of being able to see my own reality mirrored back to me from the social human world outside of me.

I might wish to believe that infant-children are no longer suffering in the kinds of childhoods I had, that their lives have been sanitized and prettified right along with the stories they have access to through the media including books.  But I know this is not true.

I am not talking about monsters portrayed in imaginary form.  I am talking about the impact this movie had on me BECAUSE it involved a human girl in a human world with humans that ignored her, mistreated her, did not help her, and let her die.  HUMANS do this to HUMAN children, and we cannot pretend that they don’t simply because we have changed and banned the stories that might let these children see their own reality mirrored back to them so that they can have the feeling of ‘feeling felt’ which will be the most important experience humans can ever have.

It is only through having this experience of ‘feeling felt’ that we can ever truly know that we exist at all as an individual self, and that we are not here in this world fundamentally isolated and alone.  It is this feeling that lies at the heart of safe and secure attachment.  It is this feeling that is supposed to be at the basis of our early forming social-emotional brain and that directs our development toward life in a benevolent.   When it is missing in a malevolent world our development changes to help us survive.

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There is one other aspect of our humanity that I want to mention here.  There are times when we cannot use a mirroring, reflecting empathy process with someone else.  There are times when we cannot truly give back to someone else that feeling for them that they are being truly felt by us.  There are times when we reach a line we cannot cross in our own ability to feel what another person is feeling.

When we reach this line we cannot fake it.  It is at these times when we cannot share with another person our feelings that need to be shared — so that they can experience that we truly feel what they are feeling — we have something else to give them.  That something else is compassion.  Not pity, not sympathy, but a compassion that means we are WITH that other person with a genuine concern for their well-being that lets us both know we are not alone.

According to Dr. Dacher Keltner, there is an additional aspect to compassion that makes it different from empathy.  He states in his article, The Evolution of Compassion:

“Compassion has a biological basis in the brain and body. It can be communicated in the face and with touch. And when experienced, compassion overwhelms selfish concerns, and motivates altruistic behavior.”

As children, both the imaginary little match girl and me needed NOT to be left alone in a malevolent world.  We needed someone not only to empathize with our feelings; we needed someone to DO something to help us.  I never even knew as a child that I had this need.  Someone on the outside of my world needed to care enough to not only tell me I needed help, but to show me by actually caring enough to help me.

There never was anything about Christmas, or about any other holiday of my childhood that made this fact less true.  When I mirror back to myself my own memories of the holidays of my childhood, the memory of myself seeing myself reflected back to myself in the story of The Little Match Girl always stands out in stark contrast to all the phony, fake efforts at holiday cheer my abusive mother created in her pretend version of reality.

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Don’t forget to check out — Brain Facts – A primer on the brain and nervous system

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+GENDER AND THE BRAIN — DIFFERENCES AND EARLY TRAUMA

alchemynow1 Comment

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While severe early infant-child maltreatment will often cause Trauma Altered Development, those changes will occur according to our gender.  As we begin to understand how maltreatment of infants and children changes the way a body-brain-mind-self grows through adaptation to trauma, we must consider the physiological differences between the female and the male brain.

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I have been thinking about a man’s comment posted yesterday to +PTSD AND SEVERE ABUSE SURVIVORSHIP – CONCLUSION, which included the following:

“There are times when I am doing certain things that I have mastered so purely, that when I am in the middle of “being”, I am, whole, relaxed and alive.


There is no me and you, there just IS, if that makes sense.


This tells me that when we can let go of all the memories of pain, anger, abandonment, being on the defensive all the time, that WE can get for ourselves what was not there.”

This brings to my mind a topic that I haven’t included yet on my blog – physiological differences between a female and a male brain which affects how we receive and process information.  As we learn about how severe early maltreatment changes an infant-child’s growing and developing body-brain, we must also consider that gender differences occur every step of the way.

I replied to this comment in terms of the fact that memory not only builds an early forming body-brain, but also forms itself into that body-brain.  We cannot ‘let go’ of these memories.  They ARE integrated with who we are – body-brain-mind-self – from the time of our beginnings.

We continually make new memories into our body.  We can achieve amazing consciously altered changes in the present.  Yet we have no choice but to process our self in our lifetime with the structural foundation of the body-brain that was made for us – through secure and safe attachments in a mostly benevolent world, or through insecure and unsafe attachments in a mostly malevolent one.  Our fundamental physiology evolved in our infant-early childhood according to the signals we received from our environment so that we could adjust and alter our development accordingly.

BUT – I need to put the big BUT in here:  Male and female brains are different from our conception.  There is much yet to be learned about what these differences actually are and how they affect us.  When I talk about Trauma Altered Development, it is important to include the concept that our developing early brains are responding to input from the environment differently — according to our sex — from the start.

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What follows is a presentation of links to LOTS of information about the differences between the female and male brain, and about how severe maltreatment of infant-children during development changes them – each according to their body-brain’s gender.

As you read them, think “adult” rather than just “child” — if we survive our abuse, these trauma consequences do not simply disappear!

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Here is a link to an excellent (and readable!) article – highly recommended!

Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Early Brain Development
In Focus: Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Early Brain Development

“The effects of abuse and neglect on the developing brain during children’s first few years can result in various mental health problems. For example:

  • Diminished growth in the left hemisphere may increase the risk for depression (Teicher, 2000).
  • Irritability in the limbic system can set the stage for the emergence of panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Teicher, 2000).
  • Smaller growth in the hippocampus and limbic abnormalities can increase the risk for dissociative disorders and memory impairments (Teicher, 2000).
  • Impairment in the connection between the two brain hemispheres has been linked to symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Teicher, 2000).
  • Severely neglected children who have been deprived of sensory stimulation-including touch, movement, and sound-may be at risk for Sensory Integration Disorder (SID) (Parent Network for the Post-Institutionalized Child, 1999).
  • Children who have been raised in environments that totally disregarded their needs for comfort, stimulation, and affection may be at risk for Reactive Attachment Disorder (Parent Network for the Post-Institutionalized Child, 1999).

We are learning more about the serious, long-term consequences of abuse and neglect on brain development, and subsequent physical, cognitive, emotional, and social growth.”

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An interesting collection of information about sex differences in the brain is presented on the Medical Education Online website, I encourage readers to click on this link for a straightforward description of what some of these fundamental differences are.  Note the description of differences between the sexes in their emotional-social limbic brain structure and operation.
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Another interesting presentation of research related to this topic can be found at:

Female, male brain differences studied

BY: MELANIE MORAN

5/05/2006 – New research attempting to shed light on the age old question of how male and female brains differ has found that timing is everything.

I personally strongly suspect that a severely abused infant experiences brain developmental trauma-related changes as their brain-mind grows to experience TIMING.

My own experience through a severely abusive infant-childhood left me with permanent changes in regard to how I create, store, process and consider my own memory of myself in the world.  I suspect that because I am female my dissociation might have originated and therefore operates differently than it would if I had been born a boy.

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Sex Hormones Influence Human Cognitive Pattern

“There are consistent differences between men’s and women’s cognitive skills, indicating, whatever the source, that their nervous systems also differ. Cognitive sex differences appear well before puberty, are present across cultures, and to some extent parallel differences seen in nonhuman mammals. Nonetheless, we must keep in mind that in the larger comparative context, the similarities between men’s and women’s brains far outweigh the differences.”

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Here’s another great article that describes in part how women relate to young children differently than men do:

Understanding the Difference Between Men and Women

by Michael G. Conner, Psy.D,

“What is very interesting about the differences between men and women is their access to right brain. Women are more connected to their right brain because the connective tissue is greater. Men can access their right brain but they have to “listen” for the messages it provides. It is easy for most men to ignore what the right brain has to offer.

The right brain is focused, for the most part, on information that is not left brain. The right brain “makes sense” of the qualities of voice such as tone, pitch, volume. It also “makes sense” of facial expressions, gestures, body language and the feelings we get. In a sense, our right brain is our emotional radar. It picks up on information that is felt, perceived, heard or seen. This is one reason why women are so much more aware of how children and adults are feeling. This comes in handy to a mother because it allows a mother to “read” and understand an infant based on behaviors and sounds. That’s important because children can’t speak. It is also why women are usually much more attuned, sensitive and unable to ignore an infant who is upset. Mothers seem to know more for reasons that they cannot explain fully to fathers.”

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This Psychology Today article, The New Sex Scorecard by Hara Estroff Marano, about sex differences and the brain, states, “Males and females, it turns out, are different from the moment of conception, and the difference shows itself in every system of body and brain.”  It’s an excellent, easy to read description about our differences, and from here we can begin to think about how early infant-child trauma during our body-brain develop can affect us differently.

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Are There Differences between the Brains of Males and Females?

Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD

“The conclusion is that neuroscience has made great strides in the 90s, regarding the discovery of concrete, scientifically proved anatomical and functional differences between the brains of males and females.”

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Male brain vs. female brain I: Why do men try to figure out their relationships? Why do women talk to their cars?

“These sex differences emerged during the course of human evolution because men and women often faced different selection pressures. Men have come to acquire systemizing and mechanistic skills because such skills were necessary for inventing and making tools and weapons. At the same time, low empathizing ability was helpful for men in tolerating solitude during long hunting and tracking trips, and for committing acts of interpersonal violence and aggression necessary for male competition. (It is very difficult to kill other people if you strongly feel for them.) Similarly, women have come to acquire empathizing and mentalistic skills because they facilitate various aspects of mothering, such as anticipating and understanding the needs of infants who cannot yet talk, or making friends and allies in new environments, in which ancestral women found themselves upon marriage.”

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Differences in Male and Female Brain Structure

“… depression and chronic anxiety are diagnosed far more often in women; this may have to do with differences in the chemical composition of the brain, as one study has shown that women produce only about half as much serotonin (a neurotransmitter linked to depression) as men and have fewer transporters to recycle it.

Or, it may have to do with how the various sides of the female brain respond to emotions and pain. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to be diagnosed with autism, Tourette’s syndrome, dyslexia and schizophrenia, to name a few.

Additionally, disorders like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease can show up differently in men and women.

Based on the location of neurons, brain injuries may affect men and women differently.

This sort of knowledge could affect drug treatments, or at least explain why some drugs work differently in men and women. It extends beyond just drugs, though. One study has found that men and women’s brains fire differently when they do plan a visually guided action, like reaching for an object. This may necessitate changes in physical therapy after a brain disorder that affects one side of the brain, like a stroke.”

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Gender-Specific Differences Found In Human Brain

“Men and women’s brains are distinctly different. While men have more neurons in the cerebral cortex, the brain’s outer layer, women have more neuropil, which contains the processes allowing cell communication.”

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Gender differences seen in brain connections

“Human brains appear to come in at least two flavours: male and female. Now variations in the density of the synapses that connect neurons may help to explain differences in how men and women think.”

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The Effect of Childhood Trauma on Brain Development

“As recently as the 1980s, many professionals thought that by the time babies are born, the structure of their brains was already genetically determined. However, emerging research shows evidence of altered brain functioning as a result of early abuse and neglect. The key to why this occurs appears to be in the brain.”

The following studies highlight some of the effects of maltreatment on brain development:

Bremner, J. D., Southwick, S. M., & Charney, D. S. (1991, fall). Animal Models for the Neurobiology of Trauma. National Center for PTSD Research Quarterly, 2(4), 1-7. (PDF Format – Acrobat Reader required)

Clinicians will notice parallels between the behavioral and biological sequelae of inescapable stress and the phe-nomenology of PTSD symptoms in their patients. The animal model of inescapable stress parallels the experience of being pinned down in combat or being the victim of repeated assaults. Inescapable stress produces a variety of behaviors in animals including abnormal alarm states, aggression, sensitivity to stress, altered sleep patterns, deficits in learning and memory, and withdrawal. These behaviors resemble those seen in patients with PTSD. For instance, evidence from animal findings of alterations in noradrenergic brain systems is consistent with emerging findings of abnormalities in noradrenergic systems in patients with PTSD as evidenced by abnormal responses to the alpha-2 noradrenergic receptor antagonist yohimbine. The identification of specific neurobiological abnormalities may lead to the development of new psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments based on the pathophysiology of PTSD.

Bremner JD, Randall P, et al. (1997). MRI-based measurement of hippocampal volume in posttraumatic stress disorder related to childhood physical and sexual abuse: A preliminary report. Biol Psychiatry, 41, 23-32.

Bremner, J. D. (1999). The Lasting Effects of Psychological Trauma on Memory and the Hippocampus.

Childhood abuse and other extreme stressors can have lasting effects on brain areas involved in memory and emotion. The hippocampus is a brain area involved in learning and memory that is particularly sensitive to stress

Bremner, J. D. (2000). The Invisible Epidemic: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Memory and the Brain. (PDF)

The biology of soul murder: Fear can harm a child’s brain. Is it reversible? (Nov. 11, 1996). U.S. News & World Report

Excerpt: “Once viewed as genetically programmed, the brain is now known to be plastic, an organ molded by both genes and experience throughout life. A single traumatic experience can alter an adult’s brain: A horrifying battle, for instance, may induce the flashbacks, depression and hair-trigger response of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And researchers are finding that abuse and neglect early in life can have even more devastating consequences, tangling both the chemistry and the architecture of children’s brains and leaving them at risk for drug abuse, teen pregnancy and psychiatric problems later in life.“

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2008). The Effects of Childhood Stress on Health Across the Lifespan

This booklet summarizes the research on childhood stress and its implications for adult health and well-being. Of particular interest is the stress caused by child abuse, neglect, and repeated exposure to intimate partner violence. Intensive and prolonged stress can lead to a variety of short- and long-term negative health effects. It can disrupt early brain development and compromise functioning of the nervous and immune systems. In addition, childhood stress can lead to health problems later in life including alcoholism, depression, eating disorders, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. This publication provides violence prevention practitioners with ideas about how to incorporate information on childhood stress into their work.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/pdf/Childhood_Stress.pdf (warning large file)

Chamberlain, D.B. (1989). Babies Remember Pain. Pre- and Peri-natal Psychology, 3(4), 297-310.

We are still enthralled by popular myths that babies don’t feel, don’t think, don’t remember, and have no sense of self. Scientific research shows these myths to be false and calls into question painful procedures and rituals at birth that are both inhumane and unnecessary.

De Bellis, Michael D. (1999). Developmental Traumatology: Neurobiological Development in Maltreated Children With PTSD. Psychiatric Times, 16 (11),

Science shows that child abuse may be associated with alterations of the body’s major stress systems. These neurobiological effects may cause delays or deficits in a child’s ability to achieve age-appropriate behavioral, cognitive and emotional regulation.

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What about differences in brain between the sexes when it comes to Trauma Altered Development related to malevolent early treatment?

Here is an excellent article on differences in brain development between girls and boys:

Gender Differences in the Sequence of Brain Development

by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.

“The most profound difference between girls and boys is not in any brain structure per se, but rather in the sequence of development of the various brain regions. The different regions of the brain develop in a different sequence, and different tempo, in girls compared with boys.”

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Gender Differences in Dissociation:  A Dimensional Approach

From abstract:

“Considering that epidemiological research on dissociative disorders has suggested a 9 to 1 predominance of female cases, this study investigated the relationship between gender and dissociation using a dimensional approach. A total of 2,153 participants from different diagnostic groups completed the Dissociative Experience Scale. …. There were no significant sex differences in the distribution of high dissociators. Our findings suggest that men and women do not generally differ in dissociative psychopathology.”

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Sex differences in brain maturation in maltreatment-related pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder

“These data suggest that there are sex differences in the brain maturation of boys and girls with maltreatment-related PTSD.”

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Developmental traumatology part II: brain development

(study of 44 maltreated children and adolescents with PTSD and 61 matched controls )

“Results: PTSD subjects had smaller intracranial and cerebral volumes than matched controls. The total midsagittal area of corpus callosum and middle and posterior regions remained smaller; while right, left, and total lateral ventricles were proportionally larger than controls, after adjustment for intracranial volume. Brain volume robustly and positively correlated with age of onset of PTSD trauma and negatively correlated with duration of abuse. Symptoms of intrusive thoughts, avoidance, hyperarousal or dissociation correlated positively with ventricular volume, and negatively with brain volume and total corpus callosum and regional measures. Significant gender by diagnosis effect revealed greater corpus callosum area reduction in maltreated males with PTSD and a trend for greater cerebral volume reduction than maltreated females with PTSD. The predicted decrease in hippocampal volume seen in adult PTSD was not seen in these subjects.

Conclusions: These data suggest that the overwhelming stress of maltreatment experiences in childhood is associated with adverse brain development.”

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Brain Development:  Evidence of Gender Differences (text review page)

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(I couldn’t access the text of this online, but you can order it if you want)

Brain structures in pediatric maltreatment-related posttraumatic stress disorder: a sociodemographically matched study
Biological Psychiatry, Volume 52, Issue 11, Pages 1066-1078

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Developmental Problems of Maltreated Children

“Research has estimated that 10% to 61% of maltreated children have mental health problems….  Undoubtedly, differences in maltreatment status, duration, and severity as well as the way psychopathology was measured account for some discrepancies in prevalence.”

[Linda note:  Whether or not a child has a safe and secure adult attachment is a MAJOR factor that affects a traumatized child’s resiliency.]

“Maltreated boys display higher rates of aggression than maltreated girls whereas maltreated girls displayed higher rates of internalizing problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, somatic, etc.) than maltreated boys

“Health, Growth and Motor Delays, and Compromised Physiological Systems

These fast facts highlight key issues related to the occurrence of developmental problems for maltreated children younger than the age of 3:

  • Twenty-two percent to eighty percent demonstrate acute and chronic health problems
  • Eleven percent demonstrate failure to thrive
  • Twenty percent demonstrate growth delays
  • Four percent to forty-seven percent demonstrate gross and fine motor delays

The occurrence of developmental problems for maltreated children younger than the age of 3

  • Twenty-three percent to sixty-five percent of maltreated children demonstrate cognitive delays
  • Fourteen percent to sixty-four percent of maltreated children demonstrate speech and language delays

Common problems seen in maltreated children younger than the age of 3:

  • Poor emotional comprehension
  • Heightened arousal to negative emotions
  • Increased expression of negative emotion
  • Increased evidence of insecure attachment relationships
  • Poor peer relations and social competence

Diagnosable mental health difficulties in very young children. The occurrence of developmental problems for maltreated children younger than the age of 3 is summarized in these prevalence data:

  • Fourteen percent to thirty-seven percent of maltreated children demonstrate externalizing problems such as aggressive behavior and oppositional behavior
  • Approximately 11% of maltreated children demonstrate internalizing problems such as depression, anxiety, and somatic [physical] complaints
  • Maltreated children exhibit the following specific disorders:
    • Reactive Attachment Disorder — approximately 7%
    • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or the PTSD symptom of hypervigilance approximately 7%
    • Adjustment Disorders — 40%
    • Regulatory Disorders — 22%”

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