Tag: mental illness

+DECEMBER 21, 1925 MY SEVERELY ABUSIVE MOTHER WAS BORN

alchemynow2 Comments

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My severely abusive Borderline mother died over seven years ago, but if she hadn’t, today would be her 84th birthday.  Given that without all the troubles my mother caused me through her severe child abuse of me for 18 years there would be no Stop the Storm efforts to understand her and what she did to me as well as what the life long consequences are to me from her abuse, I thought it is fitting that I write a post in recognition of her birthday.

I found an interesting section in my mother’s February 18, 1958 letter she wrote to her mother:

“As you know by now the Valentine Party was a success with JV running it all as usual.  I had some explaining to do to John.  He wanted to know how come ‘she has all the ideas’.  I slaved baking and decorating 40 heart shaped sugar cookies with red and white frosting but she made girl and boy faces on hers and had cute idea of decorating plates.

She’s so bossy and I don’t want a run in with her.  Everything has to be JV’s way or else.  You could tell her off but she’d ‘fix you’ and is respected and well liked (?) or to steer clear of doing things with her (which I’ll do in future) or to glide along with her and keep tongue in check (which I thought wise to do being new here).

I explained to John [my note:  2nd grade, age 7 – no doubt he received one of my mother’s infamous lectures] and I think he understood – we had a long talk about people – good and bad – etc.  Just hope he doesn’t carry story to the kids that I called her “bossy,”  He better not but she sure is!

As I said she’s just like Bill’s sister [my note:  my father’s sister whom my mother hated and frequently accused me of being like] but I see little of her and I’m not a close neighbor.  I bet she bosses the farm, her husband and the help.  I think underneath it all she has an inferiority complex which appears the opposite.  Right?  I’ll tell you more next summer.

I do like her though – a little goes a long ways.  Every community needs her type though.  She’s to be again in play put on by P.T.A., is treasurer of P.T.A. etc. etc.

She’s full of ideas, enthusiasm and means well though.  Is now starting sewing course Mon. nites at College.  She’s busy as a bee on farm, does all book-keeping, deliveries etc. + all the others SO I won’t see much of her!!”

See *February 1958 – Mother’s Letters

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This is just one snippet from my mother’s letters in which she discusses her ambivalent feelings about this woman, JV, who remained a friend to my mother for nearly 50 years.  JV is the woman who found my mother dying in her shabby motel room and got her to the hospital where my mother died in 2002.

My mother did not have the capacity to simply make Valentine sugar cookies and help in my brother’s 2nd grade classroom with his party ‘just because’ she was a mother and loved her son.  My mother was robbed of this capacity, I believe through deprivation-traumas in her own early childhood that changed her in her young development into a different sort of person that she could have been if her needs had been met as an infant-child.

I believe someone could have written my mother’s obituary by the time she was five years old because already by that age my mother’s Trauma Altered Development had sent her down an alternative pathway of development that robbed her of her life.  Sure, my mother walked around for another 70+ years, but who my mother COULD have been, and SHOULD have been, disappeared very early in her life.

While my mother’s words in her 1958 letter might seem innocuous and ‘ordinary’ upon surface reading, I don’t believe that they are.  My mother never had a truly satisfying relationship with a human being in her life.  My mother’s insecure attachment disorder was so severe that she NEVER found a way to shut it OFF.

Eighteen years of trauma and abuse I experienced at the hands of my mother from birth could never make me suffer to the point where my complete connection to the world outside of me was severed like hers was.  It’s as if my mother got turned inside out by the time she was five years old.  Nowhere could she look and not see her own suffering in front of her face, which blocked her from having any meaningful access to or connection with anything outside of herself.

I suspect that my mother’s childhood suffering was so great that it overwhelmed her – and in order to continue living from childhood on she had to make her own suffering invisible to her self.  She made awareness of suffering vanish.  Once this shift happened, she lost the ability to identify suffering – not only within her self, but within anyone else, either – especially within me.

Suffering.  I believe my mother suffered her entire life, though her entire body-nervous system-brain-mind operated continually in desperate ways to make her experience of suffering vanish.  If something so innocent and simple, so sweet and caring as making cookies for her 2nd grade son’s classroom Valentine party could present such a challenge to her self worth, concept, and well-being, what chance did she have of being an adequate mother at all?  To any of her children, let alone me, the chosen one for the target of her severe abuse?

None.  None at all.  Even though I am not convinced of the validity of ‘mental illness’, ‘mental disorders,’ ‘diagnostic categories’, etc., I also know that it wasn’t until 1984 that the category of ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ was even recognized and named according to patterns of being in the world for people on a spectrum to which I believe my mother belonged.

I never knew my mother was not a ‘good mother’.  I had no frame of reference to think about how she treated me or about what she did to me.  Neither did she.  Would anything be different in today’s world if I was born to her today and she was the same and did the same things to me?

I do not know.  I post this today in memory of her December 21, 1925 birth as I also wonder, would the same things happen to her today that so harmed her as an infant-child?  My mother, whose ashes are spread over our Alaskan mountain homestead, cannot ask these questions.

Adult severe insecure attachment disorders (from their infant-childhood) can create severe empathy disorders.  I have no doubt whatsoever that if current neuroscientists had been able to watch the operation of my mother’s brain, the patterns they would have found in the way her brain regions, circuits and pathways operated would have shown as clear as day what was WRONG with my mother.

We don’t need a diagnostic category of mental illness to understand someone like my mother.  We need realistic and factual information about how what happened to them when they were very young CHANGED THEM IN THEIR EARLY DEVELOPMENT and made them into the dangerous people they turned into.

But on this day 84 years ago my mother was born a beautiful and perfect infant with needs that were not met well enough so that she suffered too much — more than she could bear — until in desperation trauma itself turned her into somebody else.

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IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER – HERE’S INFORMATION FROM:

Borderline Personality Disorder

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD
There is a common misperception that all people with BPD are violent. This is simply not the case. That said, BPD is associated with an elevated risk of violence because there is a subset of people with BPD who act out with physical aggression– this week learn more about the connection between BPD and violent behavior.

In the Spotlight

Are People With BPD Violent?
No, but BPD does increase the risk of violence. Here are some reasons that BPD can elevate the risk of violent behavior.
More Topics

Other High Risk Behaviors: Self-Harm
Self-harming behaviors may seem like they have nothing to do with violence. But actually both are impulsive behaviors that are often related to intense feelings and poor emotion regulation.
Understanding Dissociation
Dissociation is one of the least understood symptoms of BPD, but researchers are beginning to understand what dissociation is and why it happens.

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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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+KIDS NEED TLC — NOT TRAUMA!

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I took the day off from writing a post yesterday and spent the afternoon hanging out in the local laundromat cafe visiting friends.   Even so, I sure didn’t take the day off from thinking about child abuse.  I find that I am asking questions about severe infant-child abuse survivors that there are no answers for — at least not yet.

I’m not even sure these questions could be asked until NOW — at this point in time — when the research is in full support not only of the questions themselves, but of what we will find in answer to them.  We can now see what happens to infant-children when they are given traumas instead of TLC.

I can find the new neuroscientific research about the links between infant maltreatment and life long adult ‘maladaptive’ conditions, but this research cannot possibly begin to tell me what the very real experience of living with the Trauma Altered Development survivors is like from the inside!

I have to ask questions for which there are no answers — yet — because so many people (including probably all the neuroscience researchers) just GOT their social emotional brain in the first place through their safe and secure early caregiver attachments, and therefore already have the answers built right into their body-brain from the start.  To them, there ARE no such questions as I have to ask – therefore, no answers.

Are we survivors supposed to continue to pretend that we don’t know the difference between ourselves and ‘them’?  Are we supposed to be content to have ‘them’ tell us we have a ‘psychopathology’, a disease, a dysfunction, a disorder, take our diagnosis and shut up about it all?  I don’t THINK SO!

I am working my way in my thinking through the most important mother-infant brain building article by Dr. Allan Schore that I introduced two days ago in my post.   In the meantime I am busy making Holiday cut out cookies, a task I haven’t done for 20 years, with the hopes of delivering them to people who have no home.

As I prepare to decorate these cookies, I think about the profound links between severe infant-child abuse and maltreatment and the long term health consequences to survivors – including homelessness.

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Maybe in part because I didn’t write a post yesterday, I dreamed on last night.  I was disappointed this morning when I woke up, opened my eyes, and realized the post I wrote while I was sleeping wasn’t available to ‘cut, copy or paste’ into my blog!

I do remember the very clear visual image that was contained in that dream post, though.  I was thinking about carnations, my grandmother’s favorite flower.  I saw this flower as a white one in a glass of pure water.  In a ‘good enough’ benevolent safe and securely attached infant-childhood body-brain-mind-self development naturally follows a ‘best’ pathway so the little one (in the image of a white carnation) is in no way changed in its development by trauma it suffered in its  malevolent early experiences.

Then I saw an image of a carnation (little person) who did have to go through Trauma Altered Development — and in the image there was the white flower in a glass of water that looked purple in my dream.  The stem of the white flower had to suck up all that purple up its stem — through wounds it received through its development in a malevolent hurtful environment.  In the dream I watched the injured flower turn from white into increasingly darker shades of purple.

First the outside ruffled edges of these traumatized flowers began to change.  According to how long the white flower was left in the wounding environment, the color of the flower was forced to deepen until all of the flower’s ‘development’ changed.

I might have lost all the words to the dream post I wrote, but I did not lose the image of the flowers which followed me into my waking day.

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I also thank ‘totanaca‘ for the comment posted today to CONTACT INFO in regard to work being done toward creating and implementing a national ban on corporeal punishment — of legalized physical assault — against children in our public schools.  Please visit this site dedicated to the banning efforts and make your voice heard:

Ways to ban Corporal Punishment of Children

If you haven’t already found them, please read related posts on this blog.

Corporeal punishment in the public schools creates an atmosphere of terror for our children.  Children form bonds with their teachers and school officials, and violence against children then forms a trauma bond where there should be safe and secure attachment.  Witness abuse is also fostered among all children in a corporeal punishment environment who are helpless to protect not only themselves from physical assault, but also cannot protect their peers.  These are human rights violation concerns.

Children have human rights.

CHILDREN ARE TO BE TREASURED AND PROTECTED!  THEY NEED TLC — NOT TRAUMA!

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Cookie baking note: I just ignored the timer that went off to remind me and warn me that the sheet I was baking of tiny little purple cookie people needed to be attended to.  I got preoccupied and busy doing other things until I smelled the burning cookies!

Sure enough, they are all burned to a crisp and I had to throw them out.  Children are not cookies!  When their needs are not met, when their human rights are violated, when they are maltreated in a malevolent environment so that they suffer Trauma Altered Development — and then have to suffer without a best-built social-emotional brain (and changed body, including nervous and immune system changes) for the rest of their lives — what do we do with them?  Throw them out?

Adult survivors of severe trauma in childhood are dying on the average 20 years earlier than non traumatized children (adults), fill our hospitals and clinics with severe adult onset disease, fill our prisons, our battered shelters, our ‘mental’ and ‘behavioral’ health centers and our streets.  We allow them to be traumatized when they are children and throw them out when they are ‘damaged’ as adults.

Our nation’s statistics are matching this dismal state of our national affairs.  We are ignoring all the warnings — are we going to let this continue?  Believe me, it was not my tiny purple cookie people’s fault they got burned!  The job of baking them right was MINE.

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+PRIMARY A-B-Cs — ATTACHMENT-BRAIN-CAREGIVER

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To begin to understand my mother, how she treated me, and how her treatment of me changed me, I need to understand the most primary A-B-Cs – The patterns of Attachment our forming Brain had with our earliest Caregiver formed the foundation of our brain from which our self-in-the-world originates.

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Babies are born with the basic ‘floor plan’ of their brain already laid out.  All the regions of every human’s brain are in the same place, just as our other organs and limbs are.  A baby is also born with billions more neurons, or brain nerve cells, than will actually be needed in the brain building stages that follow birth.

Genetics in interaction with the uterine experience have already influenced early brain development before birth.  If the infant has not suffered damage-changes within its mother, at birth it has more than enough neurons for what comes next.  I think about my son, who is soon to be 25.  He was a Lego maniac from the first time he picked up one of those bright plastic little pieces at the age of three.  He eventually ended up with a foot locker packed with thousands and thousands of individual pieces (which his mother is requiring him to keep forever).

If he was even now in a Lego playing mood, he would find enough variety and type of piece to create just about anything his imagination could design.  Tear them apart, make something entirely different.  Whatever pieces he might not use in one design can be kept in reserve, recombined, used later, or never used at all.  But he has the choice of keeping them all, and keep them he does.

An infant’s brain growth and development does not work in quite this same way.  Humans are born with far more than enough neurons, and most of them are not specified in the beginning as to what region of the brain they will go to or what kind of neuron they will turn into according to what job they will eventually perform.  This is because brain building is a flexible process.  While it is intended that some of the overly abundant neurons will die, the plan is that as many of them as possible find their way into use as a best possible brain is built.

The kind of interactions and the nature of experiences an infant has within the world it was born into direct the process of body-brain building so that the resulting brain will be adapted in the best way possible for the conditions of the world the infant was born into.  This adaptive brain building process is in full motion as soon as an infant is born.

As I have said, humans are designed to receive, understand and respond to signals from within the environment in the form of communications.  A growing human brain detects signals and builds itself in partnership with the environment itself, an environment that is presented to the infant through the kinds of interactions it has with its earliest mothering caregiver.

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Most of us probably think of a brain as a wrinkled, soft, squishy organ that we would not want to hold in our hands.  Because it is probably the most important organ we have, Siegel’s following description of it might give us a better idea about what we are talking about:

“The brain has an estimated one hundred billion neurons, which are collectively over two million miles long.  Each neuron has an average of then thousand connections that directly link itself to other neurons.  Thus there are thought to be about one million billion of these connections, making it “the most complex structure, natural or artificial, on earth.” [he gives a reference here to Green et al, 1998, page 427]  A neuron sends an electrical impulse down its long axons; this releases a neurotransmitter at the space at the end, called a “synapse,” which then excites or inhibits the downstream neuron.  A synapse is the connection that functionally links neurons to one another.  Because of the spider-web-like interconnections, activation of one neuron can influence an average of ten thousand neurons at the receiving ends!  The number of possible “on-off” patterns of neuronal firing is immense, estimated as a staggering ten times ten one million times (ten to the millionth power).”  (page 13 in the writings of Dr. Daniel J. Siegel in his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (The Guilford Press, 1999))

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The firing patterns in a mother’s brain specifically activate similar firing patterns in her infant’s brain as all the adaptive neurons within it are ‘learning’ what to do in relationship to being alive in a body in the world.  As an infant grows, and its newly forming brain gets up and running, the infant will be able to both receive the signals its caregiver is sending accurately, but will also get better and better at sending its own signals back to her.

A safe and securely attached infant will have its own signals received accurately by its mother and as she sends them back to the infant through am accurate mirroring process, the infant begins to clarify and BECOME ITS OWN SELF in the world.  This signaling happens with patterns and rhythms that are instructing the infant’s neurons where to go, what job to do, how to link them together into circuits and networks during this process that is designed to create brain.

An infant is born with a brain blueprint, but it is the experiences it has with its early mothering caregiver that make brain building happen according to emotional information the mother gives to her infant during the critical development stages her infant’s brain goes through.  Brain building happens in predictable stages.  Just as a Jacuzzi cannot be placed in a sky scraper’s pent house before all the steel structural components have been put into place, a baby’s brain cannot ‘think’ in the way we think about thinking from the start of its life.  A brain has to be built that an infant-child can do its thinking with.

The way an infant receives signals from its mother happen through its basic senses in the same way we receive signals from our environment during our entire lifetime.  It might be hard to believe, but at birth an infant already knows its mother.  It knows the feel of her, the rhythms of her, the sound of her and is tuned to her smell and her touch from the moment it is born.  If a newborn is removed at birth from its mother it will experience grief detectable in the physiological responses its body will demonstrate.  Foster and adoptive parents can be trained to recognize the ‘symptoms’ of a newborn’s grieving stages as it passes through and completes them.

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Beginning even before birth communication signaling between and infant and its mother is already taking place.  It is through the increasingly more complex abilities an infant comes to have, through the brain development it experiences in interaction with the mother, that the brain takes its genetic potential complete with the mechanisms that tell the genes what to do, combines it with information coming into the infant from its environment, and grows all the basic brain regions and the operational connections through them.

This early brain growth happens as mother-infant communication signaling involves emotion.  It is through emotional interactions in this dyad, this connection between the two – mother and infant – through smell, touch, rhythm (prosody or the music of speech complete with pitch, loudness and tone), and most importantly through facial expressions that human brains are extremely well prepared to receive, recognize and respond back to.  Nature has specifically designed women-mothers to participate appropriately in these early required emotional interactions with infants.

Siegel writes (in the above mentioned book):

“The primary ingredient of secure attachment experiences is the pattern of emotional communication between child and caregiver….The way the mind establishes meaning – the way it places value or significance on experience – is closely linked to social interactions.  This connection between meaning and interpersonal experience occurs because these two processes appear to be mediated via the same neural circuits responsible for initiating emotional processes.”  (page 6)

The foundation of an infant’s initial brain region growth and development happens through emotional communication with its mothering caregiver.  Done ‘best’ in secure attachment environments, a ‘best world possible’ emotionally regulated brain is built in, by and for a benevolent world.  In turn, a dysregulated, jumbled, mis-qued disorganized, disoriented pattern of instability, lack of predictability, without safe and secure emotional attachment experiences builds a very different infant brain that is adapted to a malevolent world.

All the early infant brain building that goes on is directed by the nature of its early emotional caregiver experiences.  The adaptive, growing brain slides its neurons around, tells them where to go, what to do, how to connect to one anther, where to build pathways, roads and superhighways in response to these early emotional interactions.  It is the critically important emotional-social area of the brain that grows first through these caregiver experiences.  It is this area of the brain, once built, that will primarily orchestrate how a person is in the world for their lifetime.  Remembering the importance of Siegel’s words from yesterday’s post about this area of the brain, I repeat them here:

“The centrally located “limbic system” … plays a central role in coordinating the activity of higher and lower brain structures.  The limbic regions are thought to mediate emotion, motivation, and goal-directed behavior.  Limbic structures permit the integration of a wide range of basic mental processes, such as the appraisal of meaning, the processing of social experience (called “social cognition”), and the regulation of emotion.  This region also houses the medial temporal lobe (toward the middle, just to the sides of the temples), including the hippocampus, which is thought to play a central role in consciously accessible forms of memory.

The brain as a whole functions as an interconnected and integrating system of subsystems.  Although each element contributes to the functioning of the whole, regions such as the limbic system, with extensive input and output pathways linking widely distributed areas in the brain, may be primarily responsible for integrating brain activity.

When we look to understand how the mind develops, we need to examine how the brain comes to regulate its own processes.  Such self-regulation appears to be carried out in large part by these limbic regions.”  (pages 10-11 – bolding is mine)

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If an infant’s earliest mothering-caregiver interactions happen through safe and secure attachment experiences, this area of the brain will organize, integrate and regulate emotion, social interaction, meaning and activity for a ‘best’ world.  In unsafe and insecure environments, this area of the brain will grow itself a different way.

The nature of these early experiences create patterns in the brain that appear as representations of experience, and these ‘mental models’ expand through associations and connections – or through patterns of dissociations and disconnections — to affect how a person is in the world.  Our emotional regulatory abilities, our mental processes, our states of mind, our ability to transition between states of mind, the way we remember ourselves in the world, are all connected in their roots to how our infant emotional brain was formed at the time of our beginning.

Sigel:

“…different mental processes are organized within a state of mind.  These states allow disparate [fundamentally different] activities of the brain to become cohesive at a given moment in time.”  (page 7)

Through our earliest mothering-caregiver emotional experiences, as this area of our infant brain is forming, the trajectory our self-in-the-world will take is determined and set into motion.  Understanding how early infant attachment experiences build our brain gives us an accurate way to look at our self and others in the world as we come to understand the fundamental and profound affect these early experiences have on forming the regions, patterns, circuits and operation of our core brain areas.

In cases such as my mother’s, I can begin to understand that who she was on the adult end of her development cannot be disconnected from how she was formed to operate in the world from her beginnings.  Her brain, as does all of ours, formed itself in response to the kinds of mothering-caregiver interactions she had and did not have.  Obviously, her brain did not form in the ‘best way possible’ for the ‘best world possible’.  Her brain formed in adjustment to deprivation-trauma.

My mother’s case is an extreme one.  Yet, again, we are talking about degrees of deprivation-trauma and degrees of ability to adapt to it.  Once we begin to understand the power safe and secure early attachment has to form a ‘best brain’ we can also begin to understand how degrees of insecure, unsafe attachment experiences change the growing infant brain’s foundation into ‘something else’.

My mother’s brain was not built by safe and secure attachment in a benevolent world.  My mother became a ‘something else’.  No doubt about it.  I know this because I am her daughter.

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+THIS HONEST TRUTH: ME, MY 6-YEAR-OLD SELF AND MY MOTHER’S 1958 LETTERS

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It takes courage for me to publish here this link (below) because I do not have any answers when it comes to my own ongoing, internal, personal experience with my childhood traumas with my mother.  I have returned to the task of transcribing my mother’s 1958 letters, a job that I left behind several months back.

My efforts TODAY to deal with further discovery in my mother’s letters of her beliefs about me as a six-year-old disintegrated me even further than they did last night when I first re-encountered her writing.  The internal process going on for me as contained here and in this link make me feel like I am dying, my guts torn out and strewn on the ground as Hitchcock’s birds fly at me to peck my eyes out.

I guess I could say, “This post may trigger” — it certainly triggered me:

*Age 6 – Jan. 1958 First Grade in Mother’s Letters

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background information:

Diagnosis of Trauma and Abuse-Related Dissociative Symptom Disorders in Children and Adolescents

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This is what I wrote when I found that the first words of the first 1958 letter of my mother’s that I picked up to work on transcribing last night was about me:

I feel icky and contaminated as I start back to work on my mother’s letters, a job I abandoned awhile back because I was SICK of the memory of my mother.  These are the 1958 letters from the year I was 6, in first grade, the first year we were in Alaska.  By August 31, 1958 I turned seven and started second grade that fall.

My mother – with her twisted, tweaked, twilight borderline distorted view of the world – the one I grew up thinking was normal because I had no frame of reference to the contrary.

As soon as I begin work again with my mother’s letters I can feel conflict between knowing the truth NOW that I didn’t know for the first 30 years of my life, and my feelings of what, fear?  That I ‘should’ respect my mother, and “Who am I to make up all these bad things about her and slander her good name?”  Bad Linda.  Bad, Bad Linda.

Horse pucky.

These feelings are difficult to identify and to face head on because I have spent most of my life avoiding them.  It’s like getting caught in a time warp, reading that my father in January of 1958 just went out the door to start the car to warm it up and is coming back into the house in a minute to get the note my mother is writing so it can be mailed to my grandmother.  All dead, all of them dead now.  How, really, can a person criticize a dead person’s life?

What values of my own do I confront here?  They certainly aren’t around to care what I say about anything.  Is all that I have here before me in these tattered and tanning envelopes really nothing but the passing of time – soon to be 52 years of it with this particular batch of mother’s letters.

Yet it does matter.  These people’s lives formed mine, and I in turn formed my children’s lives.  We all just march on down the road of our lives leaving one little tiny, miniature less than an ant sized footprint along the pathway after the other.

Yet I know I am not far away from my own deep sadness as I transcribe my mother’s letters:  I wanted my parents to love me and they did not.  I want to reach my hands back through the passage of all this time gone by, grab them each by the shoulders as the big person I am now.  I want to shake them, looking them each straight in the eye.  My face would follow theirs closely if they tried to look away from me when I ask them, “Why?  Why could you not love me?  I am your CHILD!  Why did you HURT me?”

I never really was my parents’ child.  I was their hated stranger.

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+TO BE OR NOT TO BE A TRAUMA-CHANGED HUMAN — THE QUALITY OF MOTHERING HOLDS THE ABSOLUTE KEY

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Early mothering-infant caregiver interactions build a human body-brain-mind-self from the foundation on up.  We cannot change the way Nature remembers to make a human being.  If Nature’s laws are broken, a surviving infant-child-adult will suffer the consequences from having to change its early physiological development in adjustment to deprivation-trauma for the rest of its life.

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I am again returning to the writings of Dr. Daniel J. Siegel in his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (The Guilford Press, 1999).

Siegel writes:

“What are the mechanisms by which human relationships shape brain structure and function?  How is it possible for interpersonal experience – the interactions between two people – to affect something so inherently different as the activity of neurons?”  (page 9)

I have already laid out in my thinking that human infant-children have basic needs that are met through having their Universal Human Rights met as described in the December 12, 1989 United Nations General Assembly document from the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Yesterday’s post describes my belief that mothers are ultimately responsible for the well-being of the children they bring into the world.  Just as mothers are biologically designed to carry and birth offspring, they are also biologically designed to provide all that is necessary for an infant to continue to develop in the best way possible most critically through the first year of an infant’s life.

If a mother cannot or chooses not to provide for the necessary memory-making processes her infant requires for its best development, another WOMAN can certainly provide these experiences to an infant under the age of one.  What an infant needs, as I will begin to clarify today, is MOTHERING.  I am not using the word ‘mothering’ interchangeably with ‘nurturing’, which is certainly something anyone can provide.  Mothering is based on the biological memory contained within our specie’s DNA that forms the structure of human-being-making.

An infant’s body, including its nervous system-brain, grows best under adequate care provided by its mother.  Next in line for an infant’s best care are other women who also have the ability to adequately meet the developmental needs of the infant.  As I will describe here, those needs are very specific.  The wonder of making a human from ‘scratch’ is that under ordinary circumstances, women have always known from the origins of our species how to meet the needs of infants.  It does not take a rocket scientist to tell us how to mother.  I believe if we have not experienced infant-child deprivation and trauma-related changes in our own development ourselves as women that we are automatically born with everything we need to raise our offspring right – and by right I mean in the best way possible.

Siblings and other children have, I believe, always been important in the early care of infant-children.  They can certainly be adequate for the job on some levels if they have also been built from conception in the best way possible.  But children cannot take over the job because it is an appropriately regulated brain within the mother than interacts with the developing brain of her infant that paves the way for all future development of her offspring.  It is the ‘interpersonal experiences’ an infant has with its mother (or other mothering female) that shape its early forming (foundational) body-brain.

Love between an infant and its father is no less important than mother-infant love.  Fathers are also important to the well-being of an infant’s development, but nature has designed their contribution (other than the obvious first one) to be in the role of provider and protector of the mother and the infant so that the earliest needs of growing humans can be met by women.  Men tend to excite and overstimulate infants.  They are not biologically designed for the early job of establishing all the nerve-growth factors that create a balanced, healthy brain and nervous system in a tiny person.

Fathers are naturally meant to participate actively with their offspring AFTER the first year of life at the time that an infant has grown a body-nervous system-brain (at about a year of age) that allows it to venture away from its mother further and further into the exciting, stimulating bigger world.  Before that time it is the primary safe and secure attachment an infant has with its mothering caregiver that builds the foundation for all growth and development that will follow.

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Over the millennia of human evolution mothering has always been a basic, critically important process that happened naturally.  Mothers were adequately mothered in their own development so that nothing interfered with their memory of how to mother, and they were naturally able to go on to have offspring of their own that they, in turn, adequately mothered.

I do not believe that women evolved to share the earliest infant interactional experiences with men.  Women evolved to share these experiences with other women.  Living in cultures that today isolate women from one another is contributing to the difficulties women are facing in being the best mothers they were naturally designed to be.  In today’s world it has become too easy for women to forget what mothering young infant-children is supposed to be like.  I think it is a pitiful symptom of the decline in the value our species has always placed on the mother-infant-child relationship that makes us now have to turn to neuroscience to tell us about the specifics of building a human being that we have always naturally known how to do.

Even though women are biologically prepared to mother, even those fundamental memories can be tampered with, changed and removed through interactions a human mother has with all those around her as her own DNA memories are telling her how to prepare herself for life in the world she is born into.  The more disconnected mothering becomes from its biological roots, the more complicated our return to mothering naturally becomes.

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It does no good whatsoever to sit around, whine and wring our hands when any problem appears that needs to be resolved.  If it takes an understanding of brain development to convince women that the mothering of their infant-child is the most important job they will ever do, then so be it.  If it takes an education in the importance of safe and secure attachment experiences before an infant is one year old to build a ‘best’ human body-brain, we better get to work.

If we were not adequately mothered ourselves, these regions that Siegel is describing (below) have already been altered during their early growth periods of our own infant-childhood in direct response to the deprivations-traumas we experienced during our own development.  Pay particular attention to the information Siegel is presenting on the limbic system.  This system is the main area of the brain being built by mother-infant interactional experiences from birth until age one – and is directed in its development by the degree of safe and secure attachment an infant has with its earliest, primary caregiver.

Siegel writes:

“The brain is a complex system of interconnected parts.  The “lower structures” include those circuits of brainstem deep within the skull that mediate basic elements of energy flow, such as states of arousal and alertness and the physiological state of the body (temperature, respiration, heart rate).  At the top of the brainstem is the thalamus, an area that serves as a gateway for incoming sensory information and has extensive connections to other regions of the brain, including the neocortex, just above it.” (page 10)

Pausing for a moment, I will note here that human infants are not developed enough when they are born to be able to regulate or modulate much about themselves at all.  Their body can regulate respiration and heart rate, but they are not yet developed enough to even control their bodily temperature.  An infant is born with more fat cells on its back side to keep it warm, which works fine because adults naturally remember that holding a baby close to one’s body keeps its front side warmest!  Adult caregivers, especially the mothering ones, provide all the interactional experiences necessary to ‘train’ a baby during its development so that it can increasingly regulate everything about itself in the world.  This happens through natural processes – we hope.

Siegel continues, and we have to remember that he is describing brain areas and functions that develop within an infant-child during a succession of growth and developmental windows over time (note:  He wrote the following as one paragraph that I am breaking apart for ease of reading):

“The “higher structures,” such as the neocortex at the top of the brain, mediate “more complex” information-processing functions such as perception, thinking, and reasoning.  These areas are considered to be the most evolutionarily “advanced” in humans and mediate the complex perceptual and abstract representations that constitute our associational thought processes.”

[My note:  These regions are formed later in an infant-child’s developmental journey.  The neocortex is not fully developed in humans until between the ages of 25-30.  However, as Dr. Martin Teicher notes, traumatized and abused children’s neocortex actually “atrophies early” and never finishes its course of development properly.  For these survivors, the best growth and development of their neocortex has been robbed from them during their Trauma Altered Development that also affected the development of all the other regions – and the nervous system and immune system – of the survivor during all their preceding critical developmental stages.]

The centrally located “limbic system” – including the regions called the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and amygdala – plays a central role in coordinating the activity of higher and lower brain structures.  The limbic regions are thought to mediate emotion, motivation, and goal-directed behavior.  Limbic structures permit the integration of a wide range of basic mental processes, such as the appraisal of meaning, the processing of social experience (called “social cognition”), and the regulation of emotion.  This region also houses the medial temporal lobe (toward the middle, just to the sides of the temples), including the hippocampus, which is thought to play a central role in consciously accessible forms of memory.

The brain as a whole functions as an interconnected and integrating system of subsystems.  Although each element contributes to the functioning of the whole, regions such as the limbic system, with extensive input and output pathways linking widely distributed areas in the brain, may be primarily responsible for integrating brain activity.

When we look to understand how the mind develops, we need to examine how the brain comes to regulate its own processes.  Such self-regulation appears to be carried out in large part by these limbic regions.”  (pages 10-11 – bolding is mine)

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If I cut the fluff, I can simply say that a screwed up, dysregulated mother will ‘download’ her screwed up, dysregulated limbic brain directly into her infant’s growing brain – especially the earliest forming limbic structures —  from birth to age one.  It is within the attachment, caregiving interactions a mother has with her infant that the infant’s brain is formed.  These interactions FORM the infant brain through the ongoing interactional experiences that an infant has with its mother.

Evolution has determined that this is the way growing a body-brain happens.  No infant is ever given the choice to say, “Gee whiz!  There’s something wrong with my mother!  She has an awfully dysregulated brain and she is forcing me to grow one, too!  Help!  Somebody get me a different mother NOW!”

Nope.  Doesn’t happen this way unless someone external to the mother-infant relationship is smart enough to helpfully intervene (and this usually means consciously informed in today’s world) because they know that a dysregulated-brained mother is creating a replica of her own brain as she builds the brain of her infant.

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Siegel continues, and this information is critically important.  Any of us who have ‘anxiety’ related disturbances in our body suffered changes in our Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA axis responsible for regulating the stress response), as it was formed in us through combinations of early deprivation-trauma to these developing regions:

“The limbic and lower regions of the brain also house the hypothalamus and the pituitary, which are responsible for physiological homeostasis [Linda note:  or feedback control.  Our earliest attachment experiences build into our body a memory of how to BE in relationship to our center point of balanced equilibrium.  This point is set at CALM in the best safe and secure attachment environment, and is set somewhere else if we experience deprivation-trauma during this early developmental stage.], or bodily equilibrium, established by way of neuroendocrine activity (neuronal firing and hormonal release).  Stress is often responded to by the “hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis, and this system can be adversely affected by trauma.  This neuroendocrine axis, along with the autonomic nervous system (regulating such things as heart rate and respiration) and the neuroimmune system (regulating the body’s immunological defense system) are ways in which the function of the brain and body are intricately intertwined.”  (page 11)

[My note:  Autonomic Nervous System – ANS: Remember sympathetic GO arm and parasympathetic STOP arm “pair a brakes” as I have written about it earlier in relation to the age one onset of the physiological experience of shame.  I also believe, and I have tracked my thoughts through research, that it is the developing immune system itself that orchestrates through signals to the growing infant whether or not the world is a safe, secure benevolent place to be living in or not.  If the immune system, whose job it is to protect and defend us down to our most basic molecular level,  identifies deprivation-trauma, it signals the entire cascade of Trauma Altered Development to occur.]

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I will close today’s post by adding the following description Siegel presents about brain development as it applies most importantly to an infant’s early body-brain development before the age of one:

“The activation of neural pathways directly influences the way connections are made within the brain.  Though experience shapes the activity of the brain and the strength of neuronal connections throughout life, experience early in life may be especially crucial in organizing the way the basic structures of the brain develop.  For example, traumatic experiences at the beginning of life may have more profound effects on the “deeper” structures of the brain, which are responsible for basic regulatory capacities and enable the mind to respond later to stress.  Thus we see that abused children have elevated baseline and reactive stress hormone levels.”  (page 13 – bolding is mine)

Researchers seem forced to use the term “may be” in their writings to avoid some kind of potential peer sanction against their own thinking.  There is nothing “may be” about how early experience IS “especially crucial in organizing the way the basic structures of the brain develop.”  What I hope to convey today is how profound and permanent adaptations to deprivation-trauma are in terms of infant body-brain-nervous system-immune system development.

Early attachment interactional experiences that an infant has with its primary mothering caregiver tells all the mechanisms that govern its early development HOW to build themselves in preparation for either a benevolent, safe and secure world or for an unsafe, insecure and malevolent one.  Once all these critical regulatory structural systems have been built – with or without the need for changes – they will operate on an implicit memory unconscious level, guiding a person’s future interactions from within the core of their body, for the rest of their lives.

If infant mothering is inadequate so that deprivations and trauma are allowed to occur during first-year critical growth stages, Trauma Altered Development is GOING to occur.  There is no possible way it can’t.  And there is no possible way to consider Trauma Altered Development without considering the quality of mothering an infant receives because it is those interactions an infant has with its mothering caregiver that either tell an infant’s DNA to respond to trauma or not to.

If deprivation-trauma does exist in an infant-child’s interactions with its mothering caregiver, this ONLY happens because the same kind of deprivation-trauma was built into the infant’s mother at the start of her life.  This is the way dysregulated trauma-based patterns of ‘being in the world’ topple on down through the generations.  It is in this way, and through these processes that the malevolent conditions of the world are signaled through direct mother-infant communications so that Trauma Altered Development –built right into the forming infant body-brain — can change a growing human into one that can survive in a malevolent world both in the present as well as in the future.

Trauma and the memory of the experience of trauma causes physiological developmental changes because they both build the traumatized infant’s body at the same time they build themselves into it.  This is not like knitting a sweater where an identified mistake can be fixed by unraveling the sweater back to the mistake and correcting it, so a person can start over again and do things right.

Trauma-related adaptive physiological changes that happen within a developing human infant cannot be corrected later.  Any future efforts made to give such a survivor a ‘better life’ have to happen WITH and WITHIN the body-brain that was altered in the first place.  Humans do not REALLY get a second chance to mother an infant right, and we need to drop the illusion that we do.

We have no power to change the way Nature remembers how to make a human being.  The way we form, through mothering-infant social-attachment interactions happens according to Nature’s laws.  If those laws are broken through unsafe, insecure, malevolent early experiences, the developing body-brain of the infant will build all that information into its most basic, fundamental trauma-changed structures.  Survivors of infant-child abuse and maltreatment are left to live with and within a trauma-altered body-brain for the rest of their lives.  I kid you not.

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PLEASE NOTE:  Do not take anything I say as a reason to alter any ongoing treatment, therapy or medication you are receiving.  Consult with your provider if you find something in my writing that brings questions to your mind regarding your health and well-being.

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+”MOTHER! WHERE ART THOU?” — RESPONDING TO AN INFANT-CHILD’S CRY OF NEED

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I did not intend to write about what found its way out the ends of my finger tips on this keyboard today.  Degrees of deprivation of a young human’s developmental needs cause degrees of deprivation adaptations to happen – translated by the tiny growing body as degrees of trauma – as they build the body from its start. When mothers cannot, or will not provide the necessary care to their infant-children during their critical early developmental stages some degree of Trauma Altered Development will occur.

‘Response-ability’ – are mother’s losing their ability to adequately respond to the needs of their offspring?  Is our society losing its ability to respond to the needs of mothers so that they can no longer adequately respond to the needs of their young?  My mother was simply on the far end of the infant-child deprivation of need spectrum.  How many other mothers share this offspring-deprivation spectrum with her?

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Humans are presented at conception with a package of material that is our portion of our species’ memory contained within our genetic material.  Within our DNA is the information needed to send and receive signals of communication within our growing self in relationship to the environment outside of us.  Within this DNA package we were also given abilities to accomplish an impressive range of flexible adaptation to and within our first environment.

By the time we are born our genetic memory as contained within our DNA, including the memory of what to DO with this DNA, has already accomplished an impressive amount of remembering work.  If we are fortunate, all has gone well and we appear into our next arena of development healthy.  Whatever adjustments we needed to make in order to survive and grow within our first environment were made efficiently and well.

We carry all our communication and flexible adaptive abilities right out of the womb with us, along with the rest of the package of our DNA material.  But being born has nothing to do with us having completed all of the most critical stages of our early development.  Nature was faced with two interconnected problems:  How to make an increasingly complex human being even though if left in the womb too long it would be too big to get out without killing its mother, and how to provide continued required nurturing for the infant while it completed the rest of its critical early development.

Nature solved these two problems through a sophisticated maternal preparation process that genetically and hormonally gives mothers what they need to not only carry the unborn but also to be prepared to care for the newborn as it passes through the rest of its early body-brain critical-windows of developmental stages.

All this probably sounds common knowledge to the point of, “Ho!  Hum!” until we begin to understand that HOW the mother cares for her offspring continues to determine the course of its development post-birth just as profoundly as it did pre-birth.  The mother IS an infant’s universe, and it is to THIS universe that an infant’s DNA-communication-adaptation package is going to continue to respond to in its development.

Certainly there are usually other caregivers present surrounding a newborn.  All the interactions an infant has with these significant others are important, but it is to women, the females of our species, that Nature gave the specific biological, physiological nurturing abilities an infant requires to continue its postnatal development in the best way possible.  Any deviation from what is best for an infant will result to it having to make some form of alteration as it adapts to a less-than-best environment.

Deprivations signal to the infant’s growing body that stress exists in the world it is being made for.  Changes that happen in an infant’s course of development depend on the degree of deprivation it is exposed to during the critical windows of its early growth stages.  These changes can and will be made because the original DNA package the infant received at conception contains information that not only tells the infant what conditions of its world ARE less-than-best, how to detect them, but also HOW to adjust to them in order to survive.

Depending on temperament and personality of an infant as contained within its DNA, there are allowable degrees of deprivation to which infant-children can adapt without noticeably altering the direction their overall development has to take.  Results from many years of twin study research has shown that while 50% of temperament and personality stem directly from DNA the other 50% comes directly through the experiences a developing infant-child has within its environment.

In the sophisticated juggling act that an infant-child engages with in interaction with its early primary caregiver, the margin for allowable deprivation-before-adaptation is much smaller than we might think.  I believe that we have reached a point in civilization where the given boundaries of what an infant can flexibly adapt to without having to fundamentally CHANGE itself for survival in a malevolent world can be usefully identified.

In line with the adage that “When a disease appears so will its cure,” it is now, at this point in our evolution, as women make major changes in their lives that affect the quality of care they provide to their young offspring that we must understand how these changes are impacting infant-child development.  Just because cultures allow women increasing opportunity to change their lives during their childbearing years does not in any way mean that the critical needs of developing infant-children can or will change in equal measure.  If these needs are not met, trauma-based changes will occur within the developing body-brain that will last a life time.

Advancing attachment research and increasingly sophisticated findings from the field of development neuroscience are beginning to show us in detail exactly what the best early caregiving environments are that meet the needs of young infants in the best way possible.  If mothers are no longer prepared to take care of offspring the way nature designed them to within a benevolent world in the first place, their little ones are going to suffer changes in their own development as they adapt to the deprivations present within their early environment.

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I am obviously not simply writing today about the long term and permanent adaptive adjustments an infant-child body-brain has to make to survive a severely abusive malevolent early environment as it prepares for a lifetime of living in the same.  I am talking about the universal human needs of children.  Any deprivation of basic need an infant-child suffers exists on a continuum of severity, as do the developmental changes these deprived little ones will experience and suffer from for the rest of their lives.

We have to ask ourselves, “How much deprivation of an infant-child’s fundamental human needs is OK?  How much deprivation is allowable?”  Given the 18 years of severe maltreatment I suffered from birth and throughout my childhood, I am sensitized to concern about the developmental needs of human infant-children from the far end of the maltreatment continuum.  At the same time, it is because I have been forced to learn about the permanent adaptive changes a developing little one will have to make to deprivations that I can stand on the line of this continuum and see how these degrees of deprivation cause changes all the way along its length.

I have thought long, hard and deeply about the topic of human infant-children’s fundamental needs during their early developmental stages.  I have honed my thinking to the point where what I know about the topic appears to be fact.  Best-possible human development requires that certain fundamental human needs be met adequately or some degree of deprivation-trauma will cause adaptive changes to occur during these developmental stages that create corresponding degrees of deprivation of best well-being for a lifetime.

When a society loses sight of the critical role mother’s play in the quality of their offspring’s development that society is in a state of decline.  This slide will take such a society past ‘shabby’ right into ‘a shambles’.  With 75% of our nation’s 17-24 year old young adults being currently unfit for military service I would say our national slide is moving quickly into the ‘shambles’ state.  I will also say that I strongly suspect this rapid decline of quality of life among our nation’s youth can be directly correlated with mothers’ increasing exit from their job of providing for the fundamental human developmental needs of their young infant-children.  (Keep in mind, my maniac abusive mother was a stay-at-home mom!)

I absolutely believe that when a mother brings offspring into the world it is her naturally given responsibility to meet the best-possible developmental needs of that infant-child.  If she chooses to pursue her own life away from her offspring, it is her responsibility to know exactly what the needs of her infant-child are, and to make absolutely certain those needs are being met elsewhere.  If mothers cannot or will not take care of their offspring, even with encouragement and assistance, those little ones need to be removed and be cared for appropriately – elsewhere.

In cases such as my mother’s was, it was (or should have been) obvious that something went terribly wrong during her own young development that caused her to adjust in ways that prevented her from being a mother to me at all.  But it is easy to point a finger at such a complete disaster of a mother while at the same time not paying attention to the kinds of deprivations that cause deprivation/trauma-related changes to happen in the body-brain development of little ones in much less obvious ways.

Any deprivation of ‘best’ will create a deprivation-based memory to be built into a human being’s developing body because memory builds our body in the first place.  Every single adjustment away from ‘best’ treatment in a ‘best’ environment is translated by the body into a need to prepare for a ‘less than best’ future.  When these changes happen particularly during the first year of life, they affect all of development from those foundational changes onward in ways that are permanent and can never be reversed.

It is the degree of quality in mothering during the first developmental years of life that causes these changes to happen.

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+EARLY TRAUMA MEMORY CHANGES ‘THE BODY’ WE DO ALL OUR REMEMBERING WITH

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It is not possible to talk about how we developed into the people we are today without talking about memory.  It is not possible to talk about our Trauma Altered Development without first considering how all our experiences were processed by and stored within our body as memory that built us from our beginning.

Experience forms us.  If this were not true, early infant-childhood trauma would not have the absolute power to change our development that it does.  We cannot talk about how a human being develops or how it remembers itself in the world without thinking in terms of early attachment experiences.  Memory is not only built into the body-brain, it builds the body-brain that does the remembering.

I am including information in today’s post written by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel in his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (The Guilford Press, 1999).  Please see the scanned image below of his chart about the types and characteristics of memory.

It is much easier to think about ‘memory’ in terms of this single, simple word.  But there is nothing simple about memory.  Memory is what our DNA is made of.  We carry genetic memory within us from the instant we are conceived.  From that instant our experiences within the environment begin to tell our DNA about the conditions of the world we find ourselves within so that we can adjust ourselves in every way possible to survive within the conditions of the world we are being made in and for.

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All of the terms that Siegel uses in his chart (below) describe different kinds of memory processes.  Siegel says:

“From the first days of life, infants perceive the environment around them.” (page 28)

More accurately, humans “perceive the environment around them” — and within them — from the instant of their conception.  Their DNA has already begun the process of adapting within the conditions of a person’s earliest world.  What Siegel is saying here is that the postnatal infant, once it has been born and now lives independently in a body outside of its mother, continues to process experience in the form of memory.  Memory happens at the point an individual encounters the world outside of its own skin, takes information about the world and uses it to create an increasingly advanced ‘self in the world’ (which of course includes the body).

Experience and early growth and development of an infant-child’s entire body, INCLUDING the brain, are intimately, fundamentally and absolutely intertwined and interconnected.  Siegel writes:

“At birth, the infant’s brain is the most undifferentiated organ in the body.  Genes and early experience shape the way neurons connect to one another and thus form the specialized circuits that give rise to mental processes.  In this way, experiences early in life have a tremendously important impact on the developing mind.  The differentiation of circuits within the brain involves a number of processes including (1) the growth of axons into local and widely distributed regions; (2) the establishment of new and more extensive synaptic connections between neurons; (3) the growth of myelin along the lengths of neurons, which increases the speed of nerve conduction and thus…enhances the linkage among synaptically connected nerve cells; (4) the modification of receptor density and sensitivity at the postsynaptic “receiving” cell making connections more efficient; and (5) the balance of all of these factors with the dying away or pruning of neurons and synapses resulting from disuse or toxic conditions such as chronic stress….Experiences lead to an increased activity of neurons, which enhances the creation of new synaptic connections.  This experience-dependent brain growth and differentiation is thus referred to as an “activity-dependent” process.”  (page 14)

The entire process described in the above paragraph is how memories make us.  This is not an arbitrary choice.  Memory makes everyone through this same interactive experience-memory-body making process.  Looked at in this way, who and what we are on every level of our existence is a result of how we interact in our biological-physiological very real body with the experiences of our life within the environments we pass through — from conception to death.

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MIND is not a tangible ‘thing.’  Brain is not MIND.  MIND cannot operate separately from the physiological body that gives rise to it and informs it for a person’s lifetime.  The entire foundation for our growth and development from birth happens through our earliest interactions with our attachment caregivers.  If our earliest experiences are unstable, toxic, traumatic and malevolent, the direction of our growth and development will be changed.

Siegel writes:

“Interpersonal experiences continue to influence how our minds function throughout life, but the major structures – especially those that are responsible for self-regulation – appear to be formed in the early years.  It is for this reason that we will look closely at the early years of life to understand the ways in which the mind develops and comes to regulate its own processes.”  (pages 14-15)

Siegel proposes “…that the mind develops at the interface of neurophysiological processes and interpersonal relationships.  Relationship experiences have a dominant influence on the brain because the circuits responsible for social perception are the same as or tightly linked to those that integrate the important functions controlling the creation of meaning, the regulation of bodily states, the modulation of emotion, the organization of memory, and the capacity for interpersonal communication.  Interpersonal experience thus plays a special organizing role in determining the development of brain structure early in life and the ongoing emergence of brain function throughout the lifespan.”  (page 21)

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It is not possible to consider human growth and development without considering the kinds of early attachment experiences an infant has with its caregivers.  In my thinking, the kind of interpersonal signaling that Siegel describes here even governs our conception and all our interactive experiences from the time that conception happens.

It is here that I have to say that because I am a survivor of early and long term severe abuse trauma that caused me to change in my development, I begin to take issue with Siegel’s thinking.   I do not have the luxury of taking the kinds of liberties in my thinking that nearly all non-traumatized people can afford to take.

I have found that research-writers frequently make a giant leap between ‘infant’ and ‘child’ in their thinking and this bothers me.  That is why I use the term ‘infant-child’ most often in my own writing.  An ‘infant’ is not the same as a ‘child’.  There is a universe of critical developmental impact and room for Trauma Altered Development to occur between these two stages of being.  Siegel makes that giant leap here as he continues:

“One fundamental finding relevant for developing this “interpersonal neurobiology” of the mind comes from numerous studies across a wide variety of cultures:  Attachment is based on collaborative communication.  Secure attachment involves contingent communication, in which the signals of one person are directly responded to by the other.  Sounds simple.  But why is this type of reciprocal communication so important?  Why doesn’t it happen in all families?  During early development, a parent and child “tune in” to each other’s feelings and intentions in a dance of connection that establishes the earliest form of communication.  Mary Ainsworth’s early studies suggest that healthy, secure attachment requires that the caregiver have the capacity to perceive and respond to the child’s mental state.” (page 21)

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“Collaborative communication” even happens inside our own bodies as our cells signal one another.  It happens on our molecular levels as our DNA interacts with the environment we live in.  Without collaborative communication life cannot continue.  Life happens on its fundamental levels through this “dance of connection” that Siegel is describing.  These signaling patterns and the information that they transmit form our entire body on all levels, not ‘just’ the brain.  Our brain, as a part of our Central Nervous System (CNS) processes all the signaling information going on within our entire body.

Siegel states that neuroscience can now describe

“…the mechanisms underlying how these early reciprocal communication experiences are remembered and how they allow a child’s brain to develop a balanced capacity to regulate emotions, to feel connected to other people, to establish an autobiographical story, and to move out into the world with a sense of vitality.  The capacity to reflect on mental states, both of the self and of others, emerges from within attachment relationships that foster such processes.  These patterns of communication literally shape the structure of the child’s developing brain.  These important early interpersonal experiences are encoded within various forms of memory.”  (pages 21-22, bolding is mine)

These earliest attachment experiences do not ‘just’ form the child’s developing brain.  They contribute to the formation of the entire body including the nervous system and the immune system because they are communicating to the growing body information in the form of memories about either the benevolent or malevolent environment the infant-child is preparing to live in for the rest of its life.

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My thinking continues to deviate from Siegel’s as he begins in his writing to specifically discuss the impact of memory on an infant-child’s development.  I have to read between his lines and begin to translate what he is saying through the filter of my own experiences from birth.  Siegel states:

“Memory is more than what we can consciously recall about events from the past.  A broader definition is that memory is the way past events affect future function.  Memory is thus the way the brain is affected by experience and then subsequently alters its future responses.  In this view, the brain experiences the world and encodes this interaction in a manner that alters future ways of responding.  What we shall soon see is that this definition of memory allows us to understand how past events can directly shape how and what we learn, even though we may have no conscious recollections of those events.  Our earliest experiences shape our ways of behaving, including patterns of relating to others, without our ability to recall consciously when these first learning experiences occurred.”  (page 24 – I added underlining to what Siegel had italicized)

I do not disagree with Siegel’s words, but from my point of view, his thinking is too limited to apply to what I, as a Trauma Altered Development survivor, most need to understand.  DNA is memory.  DNA has recorded within it all the information needed to remember how to make a body from a single cell.  DNA contains the record of what we need to know to be built from conception into a human being rather than into a leaf, a turnip or a toad.

It is not ‘just’ the brain that “experiences the world and encodes this interaction in a manner that alters future ways of responding.”  Our brain does not pursue a course of development that is in any way separate from the ongoing development of our entire body down to its basic molecular operations.  Experience is translated by the mechanisms that tell our DNA what to do every step of the way.  I now have to consider the research discovering and describing epigenetic changes has happened since the 1999 publication of this book.

While Siegel says “this definition of memory allows us to understand how past events can directly shape how and what we learn, even though we may have no conscious recollections of those events” I must expand my thinking to include how “past events” in the form of memories build the entire body.  I have to expand my concept of “learning” to include the learning that is contained within our DNA itself, within the mechanisms that tell our DNA what to do, within the cells of our body that signal one another and receive signals from the larger environment, and within our entire body that contains a brain that eventually grows and develops an ability to inform our mind.

Because I grew and developed from birth in a malevolent environment that influenced my development on all my levels except the fundamental DNA I was conceived with, I cannot take for granted that any of my ensuing development post-birth was not affected by the influence of trauma, and therefore altered.

The only way I can begin to truly understand myself in the world is to begin to understand that trauma and the memory of trauma built my entire body in the first place, and this trauma-formed (trauma in-formed) ‘remembering body built from trauma memory’ is itself the one that I remember every memory with.  Every memory I have, conscious or not, happens within this trauma changed body.

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Siegel:

“In a direct way, experience shapes the structure of the brain.”  (page 24)

Add to this, in a direct way experience shapes the structure of the body itself.

Siegel:

“The infant brain has an overabundance of neurons with relatively few synaptic connections at birth, compared to the highly differentiated and interconnected set of connections that will be established in the first few years of life.  Experience and genetic information will determine to a large extent how those connections are established.  Memory utilizes the processes by which chemical alterations strengthen associations among neurons for short-term encoding and actually activate the genetic machinery required for the establishment of new synaptic connections for longterm memory storage.”  (page 25 – bolding is mine:  I suspect trauma interruptions in the process lead to dissociation)

Experience interacts with our genetic information.  They do not operate separately or independently.  Human beings are created to be adaptable creatures within the realm of what is possible for each of us as individual members of our species.  At its most fundamental levels, all these interactions are stored within our body as memory, and from our beginning these memories are stored as implicit memory that, according to Siegel,

“…involves parts of the brain that do not require conscious processing during encoding or retrieval.  When implicit memory is retrieved, the neural net profiles that are reactivated involve circuits in the brain that are a fundamental part of our everyday experience of life:  behaviors, emotions, and images.  These implicit elements form part of the foundation for our subjective sense of ourselves:  We act, feel, and imagine without recognition of the influence of past experience on our present reality.”  (page 29 – bolding is mine)

People who do not have a body that developed, grew and formed in a malevolent environment of trauma have a different body than does an early traumatized survivor.  The differences in the kinds of early experiences between these two groups formed different memories into the body that will then be the body that remembers everything else in their life time.  That “we act, feel, and imagine without recognition of the influence of past experience on our present reality” includes everything about our self in the world as determined through our earliest caregiving experiences in the world that built us.

People who did not experience Trauma Altered Development do not have to concern themselves with how their past experiences influenced their present reality.  They can roll on down the road of their lives having been built in a ‘good enough’ benevolent world.  Those of us who suffered severe maltreatment during our formative stages will experience the impact of those traumas within the very fiber of our body in which we live our lives.

Nearly all people who experienced Trauma Altered Development have experienced adulthoods that are less than optimal – and most of us eventually are told that we have ‘symptoms’ that place us in some ‘dysfunctional’ category or another.  NONE of us have been told the facts that I just outlined above.  NONE of us have been told that it is not only the terribly harmful things that were done to us that are our problem, not the memory of these experiences that we might or might not consciously remember that is our problem, but that it is the body we live in that was itself built BY THE EXPERIENCES OF TRAUMA we endured and changed as a consequence – through which we live our life and remember everything else with for the rest of our life – that has made us into a different kind of person than non-early-traumatized people are.

This is what Siegel is not telling me.  Severe trauma so changes us in our development that we become what Teicher’s group calls ‘evolutionarily altered’ beings.  I want to know what that means, because I know that without having had these human resiliency factors that allowed me to transform trauma memory from birth into a body that could survive, I would not be here at all.

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from page 33, "The Developing Mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are," by Daniel J. Siegel

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PLEASE NOTE:  Do not take anything I say as a reason to alter any ongoing treatment, therapy or medication you are receiving.  Consult with your provider if you find something in my writing that brings questions to your mind regarding your health and well-being.

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+GIVE US THE FACTS SO WE CAN BUILD OUR BETTER LIVES – NOW!

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We had to negotiate our development through treacherous waters from the time we were born.  We deserve to learn how to negotiate our way through the calmer ones now.

Yes, the changes that happened to us through our Trauma Altered Development in our malevolent infant-childhoods can continue to cascade into bigger and bigger problems in our adulthoods, but I believe a big part of OUR problem is that we find no one around us that truly understands what these changes really mean in our lives, how they affect us in real-time, or how we can begin to live a life of increased well-being AS the changed people we are.

We have to change the track of our thinking about our situation from beginning to end so we can find solutions that truly and helpfully apply to US.  It is within our power as survivors, with the help of accurate research that applies specifically to us, to do so.

From Teicher’s article:

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

Article posted yesterday is here:  *SYMTPOMS: 120909 Scan of Teicher’s Research – Trauma Altered Development Paper

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In further consideration of the word ‘symptom’ it was important for me to realize that the word itself is only talking about ‘happenings’ within the body.  The subjective report we give to ourselves and others about what it is like to be in-with a body is a report of how we experience what happens to us.

Main Entry: hap·pen

Function: intransitive verb

Inflected Form(s): hap·pened; hap·pen·ing \ˈhap-niŋ, ˈha-pə-\

Etymology: Middle English, from hap

Date: 14th century

1 : to occur by chance —often used with it <it so happens I’m going your way>
2 : to come into being or occur as an event, process, or result <mistakes will happen>
3 : to do, encounter, or attain something by or as if by chance <I happen to know the answer>
4 a : to meet or discover something by chance <happened upon a system that worked — Richard Corbin> b : to come or go casually : make a chance appearance <he might happen by at any time>
5 : to come especially by way of injury or harm

I could possibly accept that what happened to me during my extremely abusive infant-childhood of trauma happened to me by chance, but in reference to the work of Dr. Martin Teicher’s research group (as contained in the above link), how my little body changed in its development in interaction with this trauma did NOT happen to me by chance.

Teicher’s work clearly anticipates what I believe future research will show, that how a human infant-child changes in its development within a malevolent early world does not happen to it by chance.  The changes that we experience are evolutionarily connected to the history of resiliency factors possible within our species that allowed us to ‘go on being’ within world environments that were far from good, benign or benevolent ones.

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When I began my own research in my attempt to understand how what happened to me as my mother abused me caused things to happen within me in my early development as a consequence, I first encountered neuroscientific writings that described what seemed to be area of damage after area of damage in my brain-body-mind-self.  The picture that began to appear and form itself about these happenings became bleaker and grimmer the more I studied.  It wasn’t until I discovered the work of Teicher’s research group that I finally found hope.  When I found this research it was as if a brilliant light suddenly turned on that allowed me to begin to understand the entire big picture in an entirely different way.

The article at the above link was published in 2003, and does not directly discuss epigenetic changes because that research is just beginning to clarify how early trauma during infant-child development changes how our genes express themselves.  Epigenetics is a new and rich field of study.  It is also a critical one that will eventually allow us to understand that nature has clear and direct mandates and intentions about how to survive in a malevolent world that epigenetic processes signal to our little body on its most basic molecular, genetic level.  This new information will further inform our understandings about what happens during early trauma that allows a growing body to adapt within malevolent environments through epigenetic forces.

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I believe that researchers who continue to pursue serious considerations of what happens during Trauma Altered Development will find that all these changes happen according to preestablished patterns of possibility within a human infant-child.  These changes represent our species’ range of possible resiliency factors.  I believe researchers will eventually discover how each and every one of the changes we experience are directly connected to the operation of our immune system.

Our immune system, operating down to our most basic cellular level, is involved with all our defense, protection and healing processes.  These process are anything but random.  The end goal of immune system actions is always about keeping us alive – either within the best or within the worst environments we happen to be living in.

I believe there are underlying patterns through which Trauma Altered Development happens during infant-childhood.  They are not willy-nilly.  They are not random.  The processes that occur can be detected, and the wisdom of an adapted, altered, and trauma-adjusted body will eventually not only be understood in terms of natural physiological wisdom, but will also be able to be predicted.

I also unfortunately do not believe that it is in the best interests of our current medical model to channel the kind of support into Trauma Altered Development that we need in our adult lifetime to make the best use possible of the information that this arena of research could provide to us about what happened to us because of early trauma and maltreatment, how that trauma changed us, and what we can best do about it today in our lives.  We are left down here at the grassroots level to explore our own reality.

While we might not have the power to alter current directions in research, we do have the power to rethink our own experience of being alive in one of these trauma changed bodies.  ANYTHING that we might report to our self as a ‘symptom’ can be re-thought in terms of its connection to the resiliency factors that allowed us to survive.

Research concerns itself with what is common among people on the larger level.  We each live in our body in a very personal way.  What is happening to us in our body and in our life HAPPENS because of what was done to us and how those happenings caused our changes to happen!  Teicher’s article refers to “a cascade of neurobiological events” that happens because “early severe stress and maltreatment” produced them.

I think again about Galileo’s brilliant work with the physics of motion.  Something that falls increases in speed the further if falls.  Cascades, like water cascading over Niagara Falls, involve this kind of action in motion.  Once our body in infant-childhood began to make adjustments to trauma, the following changes increased proportionately.  The early the traumas happened, the worse they were, the longer they happened, the more complex and pervasive the cascade of changes became.

While I certainly did not, obviously, have the worst childhood imaginable, it was certainly down there near the bottom.   My own infant-childhood was certainly among those that would INCLUDE Trauma Altered Development rather than exclude it.  If I had been able to find anything like adequate ‘helpful’ information within current medical model thinking as it might have applied to what truly happened to me, I certainly would not have been motivated to begin my own search for information specific to my circumstance.

Thankfully I am living in an era where the developmental-changes information is beginning to appear, and is appearing where I can get to it – of course ONLY because of the internet.  I will certainly not placidly accept current mainstream medical model thinking about how my so-called ‘symptoms’ fit into any current ‘mental illness’ model because I understand that these models are missing at least 98% of the facts about how what happened to me changed my development and how those changes created me to be a different evolutionarily altered person today.

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Have you ever watched birds in springtime searching the world for bits of material they can carry away in their beaks to build a safe and secure nest for their offspring?  The body we all have to live in is the equivalent of our nest.  We can use every single tiny bit of helpful information we can find to improve the quality of our body-nest.

Current medical model thinking about our survivor ‘symptoms’ treats only the ‘symptoms’ because very few people are factually identifying what bird the feathers of our symptoms actually originated from.  As long as we continue to apply misguided misinformation about how what happened to us in our malevolent childhood affects what happens to us today, we are following along on an old pathway that does not really apply to us.

I have a memory as I write today.  Years ago on a warm northern Minnesota spring day I drove out alone into the woods along an abandoned narrow logging trail until I reached a spot where the beavers had built a dam that so flooded the road I could not pass by it.  At the same time I knew I could not clear the road from water enough that I could drive through on this particular day, I considered the future.

I spent the entire day playing in the water.  I removed the sticks and logs of that dam one by one so the water could rush in full force across the road thinking that perhaps if enough water could pass through that the dropping water level would free the road for my next spring’s travel.  Of course that wasn’t logically possible.  Whatever I did to thwart the beaver’s plans for the area on this day would immediately be remedied by them as soon as I turned my car around and left.

It would have taken a huge crowd of people working from the beginning of this stream to the end of it to remove the dams each step of the way in order for that water to return to the course of its natural, unblocked flow.  But why fight the beavers?  Why not just let beavers do what beavers tend to do and simply find another way to pass through the woods?

After all, there’s no way to reason with beavers any more than it is possible to reason with medical model thinkers who have no real intention of altering the way they do business.  That the dams they create do nothing for us but block us from our true means of healing is not their problem.  We are free as survivors to find out the truth of how what happened to us changed us and to find our own alternative way through the woods. 

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PLEASE NOTE:  Do not take anything I say as a reason to alter any ongoing treatment, therapy or medication you are receiving.  Consult with your provider if you find something in my writing that brings questions to your mind regarding your health and well-being.

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+’SYMP-TOM’ – ‘WITH-BODY’: WE ARE CHANGED PEOPLE, NOT ‘SICK’ ONES

alchemynow2 Comments

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When I write about Trauma Altered Development (TAD) for survivors of extreme, severe infant-child maltreatment in a malevolent environment, I am not making this up.  We must empower ourselves by knowing the truth.

I have spent the better part of the past 48 hours thinking about the word ‘symptom’ in an effort to understand how those of us who suffered from enough early trauma to have TAD must evidently ‘display’ enough similar ‘symptoms’ to end up fitting ‘mental illness’ profiles that match ‘diagnostic categories’.

I KNOW there is something wrong with this picture!!

Yesterday I did a basic Google search for this two word combination, ‘mental symptom’ and received seven million, two hundred and thirty responses.

Today I did a basic Google search for ‘trauma altered development’ and received six million nine hundred and sixty responses.

I believe I am trying to think my way through a very big problem with very little intellectual light to guide me.

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The word ‘symp-tom’ came into modern English in its present form from Greek in 1541.  The prefix part of the word ‘sym’ means ‘with, together with’ and the suffix part of the word ‘tom’ relates to ‘body’ (as in ‘ana-tom-y’).  I know nothing about the Greek language, so I am left simply trying to put together what I think when I consider the English word ‘symptom’ with what it really might mean (see bottom of this post).

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I spent my entire afternoon yesterday searching online for a connection between ‘symptom’ and concepts of medicine.  My search took me backwards in time 5000 years as I looked for the largest ‘tree trunk’ of thinking about medicine in ancient cultures the world over from which any modern day thinking on ‘symptoms’ might have originated.  The thoughts and links I collected yesterday are contained together at *SYMPTOMS: 120809 working notes, and represent what I call ‘interactive thinking’.  These notes are not – yet – even placed into a linear timeline because I am still thinking!  It is clear that the Greeks did not ‘invent medicine’!

The word ‘symptom’ seems to refer to the subjective experience of describing how it is to be within and with one’s body.  It says nothing about what anyone does with that information.  If we use the symptoms that a person reports to place them into any ‘diagnostic category’, physically or ‘mentally’, this happens entirely based on outsider thinking about what ‘bird’ the ‘feather’ of the symptom might be connected to in its origins.

If 100 separate groups of people were to examine the same ‘fallen feather’ (symptom) in an effort to determine what kind of bird it originated from, if they do not all have enough of the right kind of information, they will not all come to the same conclusion.

When those of us who experienced severe trauma and maltreatment during our critical infant-child growth and developmental stages attempt to describe our subjective experience of what it is like to live in and with our body that was forced to adapt through our Trauma Altered Development, what is taken as our ‘symptoms’ leave us only with the option of being stigmatized, labeled, and assigned to a ‘mental illness’ diagnostic category (usually more than one).

It would be a massive understatement to say that at a minimum at least 50% of so-called ‘mentally ill’ or ‘behaviorally disturbed’ people suffered from Trauma Altered Development.  If that minimum of 50% of us were to be simply removed from any consideration of these diagnosis, where would that leave the field of ‘mental’ and ‘behavioral’ so-called ‘health’ professionals?  To put it nicely, they would be left in a quandary of professional disarray.

Our current medical model would rather all survivors rather than the ‘experts’ be left in a quandary and in disarray.  I started my online interactive thinking yesterday by considering what those who held power during his time, as implemented through the Inquisition, did to Galileo in the 1630s.  His radical-thinking book about the position and movement of the earth in relation to the sun was banned by the Catholic Church for over 200 years!  How well does that kind of power-over-information process continue to operate today for anyone who truly challenges contemporary thought regarding the misinformation applied toward anyone who is considered ‘mentally ill’ in our society?

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The work of today’s developmental neuroscientists is giving us enough new information about the consequences of severe early infant-child maltreatment through Trauma Altered Development to challenge current medical model ‘mental health’ thinking in an equally challenging way that Galileo’s findings challenged the whole conception of the arrangement of the cosmos held by the Church nearly 400 years ago.

Although the work of Dr. Martin Teicher and his Harvard research group is based on an accumulation of research done by many, many people, it is to Teicher’s publication that I point my writing today.  This single article changed my entire life when I found it because it changed how I ‘am with my body’ as a Trauma Altered Development infant-child abuse survivor.

I hope the scanned pages of this article presented here today for readers’ general education comes through on your computer clear enough to read.  I realize the style and content of the writing will probably be difficult and unfamiliar, but read as much of it as you can.  Google search brain regions and terms that are foreign to you.

The information presented in this article, when taken seriously and understood, has the power to completely change the way we consider TAD ‘symptom’ consideration because this information is about the REAL ‘bird’ the ‘feathers’ of our symptoms came from.

The current medical model of ‘mental health’ can no longer be considered to be the center of our conceptual universe regarding ‘symptoms’.  Human resiliency factors that allow a human infant-child to adapt its body-brain-mind-self to malevolent traumatic conditions during critical growth and development must take its place.  It is time to move out of the Dark Ages-Middle Ages in our thinking.

We do not have ‘mental illness’ symptoms.  We are Trauma Altered Development people:

*SYMTPOMS: 120909 Scan of Teicher’s Research – Trauma Altered Development Paper

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‘Sym’ or ‘syn’ as a prefix:

Main Entry: syn-

Variant(s): or sym-

Function: prefix

Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, from syn with, together with

1 : with : along with : together <synclinal> <sympetalous>
2 : at the same time <synesthesia>

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Main Entry: symptom

Function: noun

Etymology: Late Latin symptomat-, symptoma, from Greek symptōmat-, symptōma happening, attribute, symptom, from sympiptein to happen, from syn- + piptein to fall — more at feather

Date: 1541

1 a : subjective evidence of disease or physical disturbance; broadly : something that indicates the presence of bodily disorder b : an evident reaction by a plant to a pathogen
2 a : something that indicates the existence of something else <symptoms of an inner turmoil> b : a slight indication : trace

synonyms see sign

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symptom

1. A characteristic sign or indication of the existence of something else.
2. A sign or an indication of disorder or disease, especially when experienced by an individual as a change from normal function, sensation, or appearance.
3. Etymology: from about 1541, earlier sinthoma (1398), from Medieval Latin (c.700-c.1500) sinthoma, “symptom of a disease”; from Late Latin (c.300-c.700) symptoma, from Greek symptoma (genitive symptomatos), “a happening, an accident, a disease”; from the stem of sympiptein, “to befall”; from syn-, “together” + piptein, “to fall”. Spelling was altered in English by Middle French (c.1400-c.1600) and Late Latin forms.

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