Tag: malevolent world

+ISOLATION AND BEATINGS

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I am moving very slowly through the article I cited in yesterday’s post.  The realization that I am better off as a result of my mother’s beatings than I would have been without them is a tough fact to understand.  I’ve heard that before, that abuse is not as bad as neglect, but only right now do I begin to realize why that is so.  This article I am reading documents research about what brain and nervous system changes occur due to isolation of rats after they are weaned — and the effects being seen parallel schizophrenia and depression, consequences that would not have occurred to these rats if the isolation had not occurred.

Beatings at least stimulate the brain, I guess.  Isolation has an entirely different effect.  In actuality, I had both……  these are not things any therapist has ever explained to me –unfortunately, I have to figure this out for myself….

I have been able at times in the past to read research articles and process the information intellectually while remaining detached from my feelings, from my memories, from what particularly my body knows about what I have experienced.  We are not trained in our culture to be able to process the information we hold personally about ourselves in our lives.  How do I combine the two ways of knowing?  Right now I cannot dissociate the two….

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+SOCIAL ISOLATION – Research on the Brain Changes

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I imagine that researchers can write about topics such as this one without being ’emotionally involved’ with their topic.  If so, then this is what makes my writing different from theirs.  The condition they write about is one I have intimate experience with — only my isolation began at birth, not at post-weaning.

What follows here are my ‘pre-notes’ for the following article that I will be considering in depth in following posts:

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PMID: 18423591 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez

Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2008 Aug;32(6):1087-102. Epub 2008 Mar 18.Click here to read

Behavioural and neurochemical effects of post-weaning social isolation in rodents-relevance to developmental neuropsychiatric disorders.

Fone KC, Porkess MV.

Institute of Neuroscience, School of Biomedical Sciences, Medical School, Queen’s Medical Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK. kevin.fone@nottingham.ac.uk

ABSTRACT:  Exposing mammals to early-life adverse events, including maternal separation or social isolation, profoundly affects brain development and adult behaviour and may contribute to the occurrence of psychiatric disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia in genetically predisposed humans. The molecular mechanisms underlying these environmentally induced developmental adaptations are unclear and best evaluated in animal paradigms with translational salience. Rearing rat pups from weaning in isolation, to prevent social contact with conspecifics, produces reproducible, long-term changes including; neophobia, impaired sensorimotor gating, aggression, cognitive rigidity, reduced prefrontal cortical volume and decreased cortical and hippocampal synaptic plasticity. These alterations are associated with hyperfunction of mesolimbic dopaminergic systems, enhanced presynaptic dopamine (DA) and serotonergic (5-HT) function in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), hypofunction of mesocortical DA and attenuated 5-HT function in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. These behavioural, morphological and neurochemical abnormalities, as reviewed herein, strongly resemble core features of schizophrenia. Therefore unravelling the mechanisms that trigger these sequelae will improve our knowledge of the aetiology of neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders, enable identification of longitudinal biomarkers of dysfunction and permit predictive screening for novel compounds with potential antipsychotic efficacy.

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First of all I will say that from my perspective as a survivor of severe abuse from birth, the consequences documented in this article go far beyond what the authors are describing.  While I cannot change the official diagnostic criteria for depression or schizophrenia, I can suggest that all these changes exist on a continuum rather than belonging simply to such ‘gigantic’ main categories.

I suspect that in 45 – 50% of cases infants and young children receive less than the optimal quality of caregiver interaction which leads to some form of ‘attachment disorder.’  Not only are these disorders empathy disorders, but they are  correspondingly reflected in alterations in the way young brains and nervous systems develop within these less-than-optimal environments.  Consequently these degrees of alteration will manifest themselves along the continuum of difficulties these authors are describing.

The process through which these alterations occur should be no mystery to us.  It simply reflects a flexible adjustment ability that allows an individual’s body to prepare itself for living in a less-than-optimal world as it develops in a less-than-optimal environment from its start.  We don’t get to have it both ways in life.  Tell a growing body that the world is hazardous and filled not with plenty but with deprivation, this body will change its developmental course to the best of its ability so it can survive in this same kind of world ‘later on.’

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My friends and loved ones tell me that I am happier when I am not working on my research or writing.  They are right because I can live in a different ‘space’ that I can create that is separate from the truth.  But my being happier does nothing to help anyone else.  It takes willingness, fortitude and courage — as well as an abiding faith that my interpretation of current research can help someone else with a background similar to mine at least understand why they’ve never seemed to reach ‘the top of their game’.

As it is this ‘work’ wakens the darkness inside of me, wakens my woundedness, hurts me.  I cannot be detached, objective, scientific or write from some remote place where this subject matter cannot reach or touch me.  I have to write from a place of reality within myself, a place where I know — personally — what these authors are talking about.

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Practically speaking, I don’t believe that nature ever means for those of us who suffered in a malevolent environment from birth to do much more than survive until we can reproduce offspring.  In the time of our harshest ancient history this is all that a member of our species could hope to accomplish.  How can we wonder or be surprised when these abused infants grow up and recreate the same kind of environment for their offspring?  They never knew any other kind of world, and even if they have experienced ‘better’ in their older years, ‘better’ is not what built their brains or their bodies in the first place.

I suspect that the DNA memories and their expression machinery that built us is far more ancient than the ‘happy, safe and secure memories’ that we expect in our supposed modern life. Those of us who were battered, beaten, neglected from birth had a very ancient set of DNA mechanisms activated because the very ancient memory of our species about how to endure and survive in a malevolent, hostile world is what we desperately needed in order to survive and endure ourselves.

So ours is not some long ago forgotten memory about being here on earth when hardship and trauma is all that there is.  Ours is not only recent memory, but constant memory as this ancient survival genetic code is activated continually throughout our lifespan.

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But sometimes this ancient survival memory does not manifest in a smooth useful transition into the relatively benign world most others live in.  As a species we survived the hardest times of our history by taking the most extreme measures possible to do so.  If rape, pillage, murder and mayhem was what was needed to guarantee our survival, then that’s exactly what we did.  If times were truly harsh and there were not enough resources for a mother to ensure survival for herself and all of her offspring, very tough choices have always needed to be made.  When we see those same ancient genetically-linked behavior choices being made by over-traumatized women today we are puzzled if not appalled.

And, yes, I am including my own mother — ALL abusive mothers — in this descriptional category — though the choice is not usually conscious and is based on information their own bodies received in their early lives about the condition of the world and how best to survive in a dangerous one.  Certainly my mother was beautiful, if that’s what we choose to measure reproductive fitness by.  She was voted the most beautiful girl in her high school graduating class.  She had, when young, an hour glass figure, thick wavy auburn hair, emerald bedroom eyes, a perfect complexion, full lips and a ‘vivacious’ personality.

But if someone had paid attention and known what to look for, the indicators were there of terrible trouble in the long term in her own stories written when she was 10 and 11 years old.  SEE:  My Mother’s Childhood Stories.  It is obvious in these stories that she was creatively gifted, that her mind at that time was processing complex interactions as she tried to build a working ‘theory of mind.’  But, then, read her last story and tell me what you think!

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The younger we are when traumas occur the wider the range of possible choices a developing organism has at its disposal.  As ‘windows of developmental opportunity’ close with age, the range of possible choices is equally diminished.  A physiological response to trauma at a very early age (which begins to happen at conception if needed), I believe, activates the ‘worst of the worst’ case scenario genetic interrelationships that an organism has in its arsenal/at its disposal.  Once these physiological choices have been made, a trajectory is established that is destined toward an ‘awful’ future.  To the extent that these choices are force-made early in development, human higher level choice options will be replaced by faster, more automatic survival-based patterns that have been recorded in our genetic memory from our ancient experiences in a very dangerous world environment.

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Windows of developmental growth opportunity are times of maximum flexibility and more open ended possibility.  As time goes on and these windows narrow and/or close, flexibility is exchanged for ‘what works’ based on the nature and quality of early experiences.

Because all growth and development occurs in an interactional way, it is not possible to protect a developing infant from the consequences of extreme stress and trauma during the period of these growth windows EXCEPT to not allow the infant to be exposed to these experiences in the first place.

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For those of you who detest the idea of playing a ‘blame game’, let me assure you that the consequences of keeping our heads buried in the ground of ignorance means that someone — meaning the victims of early neglect and maltreatment — will be paying the price of having an altered body and an altered life due to naturally occurring early developmental adjustments to exposure to a malevolent, hazardous and toxic world.  I believe that as time goes on and as we begin to  not only chew on but to digest the impact of trauma on developing people, we will find that about 85% of serious lifelong negative experiences in adulthood can be traced to adjustments bodies and brains were forced to make under stress of traumas experienced particularly up to the age of 2.  That fact would lead us to the startling realization that much of adulthood negative experience could be entirely prevented with completely adequate early caregiving of infants and young toddlers.

The problem is complicated by the fact that approximately 45% of our current adult population was forced to make adaptations within their own inadequate or partially (and yet significantly) inadequate years of development themselves.  That means these people often have no clue about what they missed because they don’t even know what they needed ‘back then’, and therefore cannot possibly know how to make it better for their own offspring.

It also means that trying to convince this 45% that there was and is a better way to build a human brain and body becomes an almost insurmountable task.  Adequate parenting has far less to do with what we might intend than it does with what we actually do.  Infants do not magically grow up and then receive the best human brain that our species’ advanced evolution might have to offer them.  These advanced brains are consequences of the best early infant interactions caregivers can provide.  And because we are a social species, the end product of our adult brain is formulated by our early social interactions.

To the extent and degree that ‘something is missing’ during these early growth windows of development, we are consequently ‘socially deprived.’  Believe me, when researchers translate their findings of any kind of animal research to the human realm, they are describing for us the possible (and probable) result of a range of isolation-based experiences and their resulting consequences.  For the fullest possible range of advanced human brain potentials to be realized, early infant and toddler experiences must be of the highest quality, taking place in a dependably safe and secure setting.  Anything less than this ideal will result in some form of genetic-memory alterations that are a depletion of the highest potential toward adaptation to life — in infancy and in the future — in a hostile world.

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We can boil all of this down to the simplest of statements:  Less-than-optimal infancy = less-than-optimal brain development in, by and for a less-than-optimal world = less-than-optimal adulthood.

Should all adults be equally free to tamper with the nitroglycerin-like explosive potential of genetic adaptations possible in our human gene pool?  Right now, our society answers that question, “Yes.”  At the same time we also say that we have no, or very little control over the societal ills of child abuse, domestic violence, rape, crime, addictions and the origination of a wide range of so-called mental illnesses.

Reproductive fitness indicators are NOT negative.  They exist on continuums related to every single vital aspect of our species including such things as creative expression in dance, art, music, humor, verbal ability, memory, perseverance, focus, stamina, exploration —  among all the others.

In my boiled down version of what ails adults I will simply state that all of the above merely represent degrees of well-being versus ill-being.  All of the above are simply manifestations of how fit the world is and how fit we are to reproduce in it because all of the above are specifically linked to our species’ ‘reproductive fitness indicators’.

Early interactions with the environment from conception particularly to the age of 2, signal our entire genetic makeup to pick a direction of development based on incoming information.  I see it no differently than if we were putting together a team to play a sport.  Finding the best talent for one sport is different than finding the best talent for a completely different sport, but the choices still have to be made from a pool of available talent.

Each of us has a unique array of  ‘reproductive fitness indicators”, but they are still linked to what is possible within our human gene pool.  The problem comes when enough traumatic stress is applied during the developmental growth window for any one of our indicators so that indicator becomes a signal not of health and vital well-being for the member of the species in interaction with its environment, but becomes rather an indicator of reproductive unfitness in a less-than-optimal world.

All of our so-called ‘mental illness’ genetic and gene expression combinations seem to be directly linked in their origin to reproductive fitness indicators.  Remember above when I mentioned that I believe 85% of our adult problems could be prevented if early experiences were optimal for optimal development of the individual before the age (at a minimum) of two?  That would leave what I would guess is a 15% group that would end up with some kind of reproductive fitness indicator deficit no matter what the quality of early care would be.  That is because we carry within our human genome a collection of fitness indicator genes that can appear and combine in such a way that results will never be optimal.  That still seems to be a fact of life, though genetic research may well be able to mitigate those factors in the future.

We can celebrate the amazing potential adaptive abilities that exist for us as a species.  At the same time we must realize that how we raise our offspring — in every way — affects how these abilities manifest and express themselves.  We cannot bear and raise our offspring with impunity.  The ability to flexibly adapt to our environment has always been our greatest asset.  We need to understand what reproductive fitness indicators are and how they were influenced during the crucial stages of our development so that they reflect not only our individual fitness for reproduction, but also directly reflect the fitness of the environment we are bearing our young in.

We can ‘zoom in, zoom out’ all we want to as we consider these factors, but we cannot escape the fact that how a fetus, an infant, and a toddler is treated on all levels will affect the trajectory of their development with the end result that a deficit of care will reflect a deficit in development.  The only way we can change our perspective is to admit to ourselves and accept the fact that if we allow deficits to occur in early development, we are perfectly willing to accept the lifelong negative consequences that originate as a result.  We can never completely isolate ourselves from our species or from the total environment we all life in.

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Your comments are welcome and appreciated.  Post to be continued….

+TRAUMA TRIGGERS and REACTIONS

alchemynow2 Comments

I wanted to write for a moment about trauma triggers from my point of view.  Part of what makes unresolved trauma such a problem in our lives is that not only do the triggers seem to have a life of their own, but our internal processing of these trauma triggers also seems to have a life of its own.

During my research I often encountered ‘helpful’ information on PTSD

(SEE: http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=22491)

that suggests one method of resolving the recurring problems of unresolved trauma is to work on the fear conditioning that traumas can create. From my own point of view, this suggestion seemed not only ludicrous but almost humorous.  This is an example of how vital it is that we  know our own experience and reality and honor this for ourselves.

In my case, my mother’s abuse of me was so chronic and pervasive that it INVADED nearly every corner of my brain and its operation from the time I was born.  Nearly every single USUAL ordinary experience was tied to my mother’s psychotic intervention within my reality.  The result is that nearly every single aspect of being alive in a body has a pathway and a track in my brain and nervous system back to a traumatic experience.  The only way that I can begin to separate the trauma from myself and from my life in the present is to be absolutely as conscious as possible of myself and my responses to these millions (yes millions) of triggers.

Nobody who grew up from birth (and before) in a safe and secure environment can really imagine what life in the world for the rest of us who were born and raised in a DANGEROUS world of constant terrorism was like.  Nor can they imagine what it’s like to live within our bodies with these brains.  I am hard pressed to think of one object or one daily activity that I participate in that doesn’t have a trauma memory attached to it like a gigantic monster fish at the end of every fishing line I throw out as I live my life.  This obviously means I am connected within myself not to a safe and secure platform of being in my body in this world, but rather that the platform of my being rests on terror, threat, and the threat of threat of danger.

I mean what I am saying literally.  I can’t touch a hairbrush or put on a belt (sometimes the trigger is noticing somebody else’s belt!), use a coat hangar, wash my hair, do the dishes, eat food, be in a car, put on my clothes, go to bed, wake up from a deep sleep, read a book, watch TV  — and on and on and on — without some part of my being having the job of blocking the traumatic reactions so that I can be here in the present having experiences without being caught in some version of a dissociative, trauma reaction  experience.

We are meant from birth to connect all of our experiences together both in terms of the feelings these experiences create in us (with their correspondingly crucial information about ourselves in the world – these being our immune system responses), and how we connect all of our experiences together in our memory systems — which are connected to our reactions.

Traumatic reactions to triggers in our environment are memory reactions.  My memories did not get linked together in a ‘normal’ way.  There was no order in my world from birth, only chaotic, unpredictable violence (with a few moments here and there of my mother being ‘nice’ to me, usually as they happened in some public situation).

When was my world rational and ordered?  Never.  Therefore most of my memories have a life of their own as if they swim randomly around in a gigantic guppy tank until one of them is caught in the moment by some experience that seems related to the information about life they hold within them.

I imagine it that the people who were raised from birth in predictable, safe and secure environments really had the opportunity to form a brain where all the separate experiences of their early lives became linked together HELPFULLY so that they just grew up with a whale of a body — one connected, competent system that lets them get around in the world pretty much just fine.

For those of us who formed brains while living in hell, we ended up with the guppy tank.  It is NOT that our way of being in the world isn’t HELPFUL, but it’s only helpful, really, if we live in a world today that matches the one our brain was built in, by and for in the first place.  Perhaps that’s part of the reason we survivors often find ourselves in all kinds of extraordinarily stressful and traumatic situations in our adulthoods.  Those really are the only kinds of experiences our brains were prepared to survive in.

But this is another example of how knowing our own pasts is our greatest asset.  The understandings of why and how I live in a state of constant foreboding makes perfect sense to me now.  My mission now is to make every choice I can to separate my reactions from what has been built into me so that I can try to live a different way today.

But it takes SO MUCH ENERGY, and so much attention.  It requires of people like me a constant monitoring of ourselves in the world that ‘normal’ people NEVER have to do.  That’s part of why their lives seem to be so much better than ours.

The human brain is an instrument of almost unlimited capacity for growth and change.  Knowing that fact allows me to focus my efforts not so I can ‘be like everybody else,’ but so I can use as much of my own potential for positive change as I can discover and use in the span of each day (and night).

Believe me, for all the thousands and thousands and thousands of hours I was made to stand like a statue in some corner — put there by my mother before everyone else got out of bed and made to stay there until everyone but her was sound asleep at night — some few times being allowed to leave it to go to the bathroom or eat or go to school…..

Or being made to lie in bed from the time I was very young as if I was in a coffin (SEE, for example, THE BUBBLE GUM), and when I was in a deep sleep in the middle of the night being yanked out of bed by my hair as I came awake in the middle of some violent beating because I had been sleeping on my back with both arms raised beside my head, which to my mother meant I was pretending to be a baby……..or just experiencing this kind of violent awakening just because she was in a rage and wanted to beat me…….  How do I overcome this ‘phobia’ or change lying in my bed so it’s NOT connected to these memories?  I tell you, lying in bed during chemo for my cancer had this horrible triggering attached to it!

These experiences and memories do not have any value to me today as some form of ‘sob story’, I assure you.  These kind of experiences do not belong in that kind of category for any one who have been in some way where I’ve been.  What is crucially important is that we recognize the pervasiveness of trauma triggers and recognize that they will follow us for the rest of our lives.  We will do battle with both the reality of what happened to us and the reality of what it did to our brains and our body reactions forever in this lifetime.

We cannot minimize this kind of impact.  We can never be ‘deprogrammed’ completely, not even for one single one of these triggers.  If abuse happens to children BEGINNING particularly after the age of one, and also importantly after another crucial brain-growing period that happens from age one to two, at least that older child has a platform within their bodies to stand on to fight back.  Very early abuse interferes with the development of our very essential self as it exists in our forming brain and body.  Do not underestimate the impact of infant and toddler abuse if you suspect you were its victim.  Please.

And the younger we are when we understand the platform within us that is the basis of our experience throughout our lifespan, the better chance we have of taking control of our trauma reactions and freeing ourselves to live a more positive life freer from our instinctive trauma reactions.

+FACING OUR OWN IDEAS ABOUT MONSTERS

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There’s a woman who comes to the small free art class I voluntarily teach on Saturday afternoons whose entire being lights up when she talks about gardens.  Not any old kind of garden, but rather truly beautiful ones, hidden ones, secret ones, places where people could come to find peace and beauty and untroubled sanctuary.

This same woman always thinks about gates and doorways at the same time.  The images are connected.  These gates are not ordinary, either.  Down here in the southwest we perhaps have more images in our minds about walled courtyards and gates that are sealed off from public view by all manner of creative and appealing gates.  Some have small windows in them up high where adults can peer through to see into the secret places.

This woman has never read the children’s story or seen the movie of ‘The Secret Garden,’ though I am recommending it to her as a homework assignment to discover this story.  While in art therapy graduate school we learned much about how the psyche of humanity communicates to us in and through image.  Neuroscientists are now beginning to suspect that our brains process all incoming information into memory storage in a poetic, metaphoric fashion.  All this information is stored in our limbic, emotion, right brain and is only available to our left ‘logical’ brain when we talk about something very specific that is in some way connected to our metaphoric memories.

In the case of secret gardens and private sealed off worlds, I think about the ‘bigger picture’ of the history of two things in our collective minds:  mazes and labyrinths.  Mazes are often about what amazes us.  This might be something that we have puzzled about and are at the edge of understanding but not quite there yet.  What kinds of things amaze us?  What things capture our imaginations and captivate our thoughts?  Things that we wonder about in the world.  Wonder is an amazing mental operation of its own, and something that I as a child abused from birth could not do.  I had no points of comparison so there was no wonder in my young life.

I think about Pelzer’s book, “A Child called It,” and about how he fought back against his abuse even in his mind.  One has to have some means to compare one’s own experience in their private world with what one knows others experience in the public world.  If a child is abused from birth and there is no reprieve, no opportunity to spend lengths of time in interaction with a sane caregiver, then that infant’s brain will simply accept as reality all that it has experienced and had built into its brain about what the world is like.  We never question a certain reality unless our minds have the freedom to reach toward and devour the possibility that there are worlds ‘out there’ that are different.

Along with this student’s delight in imagining secret gardens comes the collective imaginal idea of labyrinths.  If you do a Google search for “labyrinth minotaur” you will bring yourself face to face with a world of not only delightful possibilities, but also bring yourself to a place that presents a collective image of the monster within us.  At the center of the labyrinth our imagination holds there an image of the minotaur, a horrible creature that both scares us nearly to death and one that is also our strongest ally and protector.

Someone mentioned to me the other day that as I clarify and focus my blog and my thoughts about who I am really writing for, I will find that my section, + Art and Creativity, is out of place and does not belong on my site.  The brain of our species is the most complex and creative ‘object’ in existence on our planet.  I believe that to live our lives to the fullest we need to exercise our connection between the two hemispheres of our brain so that we know more and more about who we are and how we are in the world.

Through artistic exploration we allow the more hidden (in our American culture) aspects of ourselves access into our lives.  Most of us keep our own poetry, our own metaphor perspectives on our lives, sealed and walled off from the world in our internal secret gardens and labyrinths.  When we allow our images to come forth, even through the spoken word, we can honor ourselves by encouraging not only further and continued access, but also exploration of meaning for ourselves.

If a person has these particular hidden, secret garden and maze-labyrinth images popping around where they can actually recognize them consciously, then a further pursuit into the images can connect to all sorts of fascinating wisdom.

As the world acclaimed astrologer, Zane,’ (SEE: http://www.zanestein.com/CentaureanAstrology.htm) describes in relation to the asteroid Nessus, we all have a monster inside of ourselves that we usually cannot face.  In Carl Jung’s thinking, this monster lies sealed off in our personal shadow, a place that he says we put all that we are afraid of about ourselves — both the best of us and the worst of us.  If a student begins to allude through their art exploration to something like mazes and labyrinths, it becomes a fascinating study to encourage that student to pursue the images until they can present into consciousness the reality of whatever ‘mythological’ base they are connecting to.

Through the infant brain development and growth years a person learns what to do with the ‘devil and the angel’ within themselves.  Normally we make adjustments so that our mind knows (coming from the operation of our brain) how to live in a world of extremes.  An infant’s brain knows at a very early age, usually beginning clearly by the third month of life, who is safe to trust and who is not.  If an infant is growing in a malevolent world this distinction obviously becomes impossible to make in a useful and healthy way.

A growing child’s brain has to learn how to sequence and prioritize information — both what is coming in from the outside and what is accumulating in ever increasingly complex formats on their inside.  If an infant and then later a young child is being raised in an environment of conflict, torture, and terrorism, it is obvious that these processes are either aborted or completed in unhealthy and inadequate ways.

But we need to know that ALL of us have a Jungian shadow, and all of us have a secret garden and a secret labyrinth whose center contains a monster that we believe is us.  This monster has power — power to destroy and power to protect.  If our brains were allowed to at least develop a minimal pathway through our cortex that allows us to use our higher cortical thinking abilities, we do not allow the monster to wreck havoc in our own or anybody else’s life.  But because our relationship to these ‘states’ was set in motion from birth, we must work as adults to access all the information that we know about these things and bring them into consciousness as we learn who, in fact, we are, who we fear we are, who we fear we could become, who we hope we could become.

I don’t know what my student holds behind the secret door in her being.  If she chooses to explore through the images in art work what she knows ‘in there’ we will all be able to share in her process.  If a young child is being raised by monsters, the boundaries between one’s own monster/protector and the monster/protector of its caregivers will be all mixed together in some kind of very nasty and unpalatable soup.  But we can never just throw the whole pot out and start over.  We have to work with what we were given beginning at the time of our birth.

We have not only the ability to safely and wisely do this work, but we have the obligation and right to do it.  Safely is the key word here.  It is because we were not SAFE from birth that we have the nasty soup in the first place.  But even if we were safe, as social beings in a social world we all made distinctions between what was acceptable about us and what wasn’t.  Most of us never go back as adults and take a good, creative look behind the secret doorways.  We need to, because what motivates us and creates our highest priorities lies in there — whether we know it or not, or even WANT to know it or not.

Child abuse and the lifelong plague

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Child abuse is most often linked to a cycle, but when considering a cycle where do we break into the loop to start our investigation?

I want to make the point that what comes around goes around – but it all starts somewhere so can also end somewhere.

Before someone figured out that rats carried the plague nobody could attack the terrible problem at its roots. I believe that we have to, as parents and adults, recognize the true reality of our own childhood traumas so that we can understand how they have impacted us. Child abuse does not just hurt little people. When those little people grow up they carry those wounds with them for the rest of their lives. So far, I don’t see that we understand exactly how these consequences are all linked together. Advances in developmental neuroscience tell us that child abuse, especially to infants and the very young during brain developmental changes, in fact gives the survivor a brain built for a malevolent rather than a benevolent world.

Until we educate ourselves about this fact we are in effect killing the horses and sparing the rats that are the cause of the plague among us in the first place. A malevolently-formed brain is designed for a different world. If we don’t understand this we are screaming our loudest across a chasm trying to change those who hurt the little ones without realizing they truly aren’t able to hear what we are saying to them. Their brains hear and understand information differently. It’s our job to face this truth so that we can find a way to reach the abusers who were themselves abused. Otherwise – and obviously – the cycle is not only continuing but is growing in force and magnitude.

Most of the time we are ‘preaching to the choir’ about child abuse.  Those 50% at the top of the heirarchy who came from safe and secure childhoods are screaming to those down below about what to do and what not to do.  Those at the very bottom can never hear those words.  It’s time we empower those at the bottom, those who had truly horrific childhoods from birth, to know their own reality and do their own screaming from the bottom up.  Will those at the top hear us?