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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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