Tag: posttraumatic stress disorder

+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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+NOTICING INVISIBLE CHILDREN

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I posted this one before the brain exercise post, but it seems to have vanished!  Here it is again!  If I find the duplicate (first one) I will delete it and keep this post.  It’s hard to read an invisible post about invisible children?

First I want to say a few things before I return to the most important mother-infant brain building article by Dr. Allan Schore that I introduced two days ago in my post.  I hope readers have found the time to at least begin reading it.  I will get back to talking about the article in depth, but it won’t happen today.

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IDEAS ON INDENTIFYING AT RISK CHILDREN:

Kids and activities – I am having some thoughts about this topic stemming from my post about myself as a young first grader as I found them in my mother’s 1958 letters.  My sister and I talked further about her experiences as an active home-schooling mother.  She told me that over the years of raising her children in New Mexico, even the most strict parents were able to allow their children to engage in ordinary and NOISY child play when groups of them were together.  Adults watched them from the sidelines, but they did not interfere, criticize, condemn, punish, or in any way separate their children out from THE GROUP.

My sister and I discussed how it would probably be possible to identify at risk and high risk children who were being raised in homes where their basic human rights as children were not being met by watching parent-child interactions at child-centered events.  Children who continually get into fights, children who seem rigid and unable to join in the play, children whose parents are ‘getting mad’ at them for doing nothing but being a child.  I guess in all the years my sister has been actively involved in all kinds of situations like this, she never noticed such negative parent-child interactions going on.

I found myself thinking last night, “Gee, maybe people like me who were severely maltreated and not allowed to be children are among a very rare group indeed!  Maybe we are in SUCH A MINORITY that we barely exist as a recognizable group at all!”

Then the thought hit me, “Maybe abused children aren’t on the at risk child watch radar outside the home in social situations because abusive and maltreating parents do not take their children to these kinds of social child centered or parent-child centered activities and events in the first place!”

Well, DUH! Linda – of course the latter is most likely true!

I think back to my own infant-childhood and know that the only time anyone was allowed exposure to ‘my mother’s children’ was when she could set up, orchestrate and control the encounter.  I also know that if I didn’t ‘behave’ perfectly, the full consequences of abuse happened when everyone was gone and nobody could see or hear them.

My mother’s letters are full of descriptions about the social conflicts she had with other people.  She starts out once we moved to Alaska defining her discomfort with her neighbors.  By the time we moved up the mountain when I was seven and the ‘homesteading’ began, there were no neighbors near us for miles!  She had herself, and especially ME right where she wanted me.

Except for the brief period of time I was allowed to join Brownies, never after that was I ever allowed to have a friend, go to a friend’s house or have one over to my house.  Never did our family – after our first few months in Alaska – participate in community life.  There were a few brief periods in between all of our moves that mother let her children attend Sunday school, but summers we were her captives, evenings and nights we were her captives, week-ends and holidays we were her captives – me of course – and most of all.

If we think we are going to identify, intervene or prevent severe maltreatment of children, somebody on the outside of the family needs to notice and pay attention.  Which children are always missing from situations that other children are a part of?  How do we know they are even missing?  (This is not even an issue for very young infants and children – how do we know what goes on to harm little ones behind their family’s closed doors?)

I am talking about children who are old enough that NORMALLY and ORDINARILY they would be ‘out there’ in the social world on some level and be seen.  We humans are social beings.  Our need to build a social-emotional brain continues on its path of development all the way through our infant-childhood as our activities within the larger world become more and more varied and complex.  We continue to build our social brain through interacting with others for our entire lives!

How well are teachers and others (especially daycare providers) who interact with young children really trained to recognize and accurately interpret child behavior so they can detect suspicious parenting practices?  No longer are parents likely to send their children to school with visible signs of maltreatment on their little body.  No longer can parents do what my mother did when she kept me out of school for days or weeks so that she could abuse me at home and nobody was ever the wiser.

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As more and more families suffer the stresses and distresses related to bringing children in to the world when they cannot stay home and take care of them, most of what used to be ‘ordinary’ opportunities for parents and children to gather together in activities is vanishing, as well.  Adults who DO remain actively involved in these social situations wont’ be likely to even KNOW other children, let alone be able to detect which children are missing – and why.

And yet as I write I also realize that the disintegration of mutual family parent-child activity times is also a sign of the growing malevolent infant-child environment our nation is increasingly experiencing.  Our inadequate 75% of fit-for-military-duty 17-24 year olds didn’t get that way over night.  The conditions within our nation are changing so fast we would be spinning if we understood the implications in terms of how they affect the well-being of children within cohesive, actively involved families.

Who can notice a child today who is really ‘missing in childhood’ even though they are living under their own parents’ roof?  Are so many of our nation’s children simply RESIDING under their parents’ roof while missing most of what children need to grow into healthy social beings?

As I write I try to focus my observations in the direction of severely abused infant-children, but I don’t seem able to do this.  The needs of children must be met all along the continuum of the years they are developing.  Deprivation of need, even far down on the other end of the spectrum for severe abuse and maltreatment changes the course of human development.  Neglect of the fundamental needs of infant-children is a growing problem within our nation, and I can’t ignore this fact.

We have such wide open holes in our childrearing net that literally 75% or more of our nation’s children are falling right through it.  It is no longer a small handful of the most terribly abused, maltreated children that don’t show up for child-centered or child-parent events so that these young ones might possibly be identified as ‘missing in action’ because they are missing the action – the very socially required activities that build children into happy, well-adjusted, safe and securely attached adults.

When the neighborhood children come over this afternoon to decorate the Holiday cut-out cookies that I better get busy baking, I know straight out that if there are any severely abused children living near me, they won’t be the ones who show up.  IF one of them showed up, I also know that I am finely tuned within myself to recognize that something is wrong in their universe.

I live in a town so small it isn’t even a town – it’s a part of the county.  We have a warm climate, and children are outside playing, parents have their doors and windows open, our houses are close enough that we can usually hear raised adult voices and children’s crying.  We still don’t know what goes on behind the closed doors, but we have a better chance of noticing when something is wrong.  (Today’s techno children, experiencing their developmental stages inside a closed house as they miss the rumble and tumble of NECESSARY group childhood play, are missing in action, also.)

We need to know that no adult who maltreats a child is a socially FIT or well-adjusted member of their species!  It is not their priority or their concern to build an emotionally regulated adequate social brain into their offspring.

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+HAVE FUN WITH THIS SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL BRAIN BUILDING EXERCISE!

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Let me introduce something fun now!  This exercise is about how we order, organize, regulate our nervous system-brain, our body, our emotions, our SELF in direct face-to-face communication with others of our social species.

Here is some basic (useful) information from Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s book about brain-mind building as he talks about the growth of our early right and left brain connections.  As you read the paragraph below, and connect it to the information in Dr. Allan N. Schore’s mother-infant brain building of the earliest foundation of our social human brain, realize that the exercise of our brain regions, circuits, pathways and neurons in our social-emotional right limbic brain never ceases throughout our lifespan.

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Siegel writes:

“From the beginning of life, the brain has an asymmetry in its circuitry, which leads to the specialization of functions on each side of the brain.  The ways in which the mind creates representations of experience is shaped by this lateralization of function.  The capacities to sense another person’s emotions, to understand others’ minds, and even to express one’s own emotions via facial expressions and tone of voice are all mediated predominately by the right side of the brain.  In certain insecure attachment patterns, communication between parent and child may lack these aspects of emotions and mental experience.  In contrast, secure attachments seem to involve the sharing of a wide range of representational processes from both sides of the brain.  In essence, such balanced interpersonal communication allows the activity of mind to sense and respond to the activity of another.  Such sharing of activity can be seen as the sharing of states of mind….” (Page 7) from Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s book, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (The Guilford Press, 1999))

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The more we were deprived in our own infant-childhood of deprivation-trauma, the less we experienced the kinds of safe and secure social-human attachment experiences that allowed these brain patterns to grow and develop in our brain – during the formative stages when they were most needed and necessary.

Except in very rare situations of complete infant-child isolation (and my experience did contain 95% isolation except within the school environment), most people (which DOES include me or I would not be able to talk!) have at least a rudimentary social-brain in existence.

We are long past the earliest stages where our neurons where assigned their place in our brain regions and given their job to do.  We are long past the earliest stages where the superhighways of connection between our social-emotional brain and the regions it is intimately connected to were carved into place through our earliest mother-caregiver interactions.  BUT, we continue as human beings to exercise these brain functions as long as we breath.

For those of us who suffered Trauma Altered Development through severe malevolent treatment, we especially need to understand – intellectually and consciously – the vital information contained within Shore’s article because we need to do TODAY as much as we possibly can in our interactions with people what Schore is describing in order to strengthen and improve the functioning of our emotional-social brain.

Remember, what I am suggesting here is meant to be enjoyable.  We can best benefit from these kinds of exercises if we approach them from a playful stance within ourselves.  This process, even from the beginning when our brain was built, always best happens in safe, secure and play-filled mother-infant activities.  That is no less true – ever.

Social-brain, emotional, right brain exercise happens in close communication through signals exchanged through ALL OF OUR SENSES directly with another person.  It can be really hard to find an adult who will do this with us, yet it is MOSTLY this kind of interaction with a trained, skilled and caring therapist that is effecting the most beneficial healing for us.  Because most of us don’t have access to a therapist who can help us with this, we need to learn how to do it ourselves.

Most importantly, do not feel any pressure to do this RIGHT.  Certainly no brain-building infant ever has that thought!  It is even best to simply watch other people from a distance in the beginning as they interact in signaling communication with one another.  Of course, as Schore points out, the facial signals are being transmitted – received – and responded to so FAST that we cannot consciously detect them.  But we can try to!

I cannot read other people’s ‘social’ or ‘emotional cues’ correctly.  This contributes to my sense of depersonalization and derealization (not to mention dissociations).  I am always an outsider – really – when it comes to human interactions because of the Trauma Altered Development I experienced from birth.  This does not ever mean that I can’t continue to learn more about what being a member of a social species is all about!  Every single positive human interaction we have improves the social-emotional regulatory region of our right brain.

So – – – –

Try this once you have completed some serious, focused outside watching of other people as they communicate with one another (and if you have family or ‘party’ holiday gatherings you have a perfect crowd for the watching!).  Having paid attention of the nature and quality of their interactive signaling, through body movement, facial expression, gestures, tone of voice, pitch, patterns of pauses, etc. you will already have an idea about how what I am going to suggest next might feel TO YOU.

I call this ‘in situ‘, or ‘in place’ communication.  You can do this with anyone you feel safe and secure with, even a child who is old enough to engage in conversation.

Sit comfortably FACING ONE ANOTHER with your knees about a foot apart.  Relax.  Feel yourself inside your own body.  Breath.  Notice the physical sensations of your feet on the floor (don’t cross your legs or ankles), your bottom on the chair, your back, etc.  These are feelings (tied to emotions) recognizable by your right brain.

Concentrate on letting anxiety leave this PLACE.  I know this is hard for some of us to ever accomplish, but the point of this exercise is to connect the sensation of NO ANXIETY with feeling calm in social interaction that is safe and secure.  ‘Ordinary’ safe and securely attached (from birth) people get to NOT feel anxiety nearly all of the time!  Survivors don’t really even know what this feels like.

So here you are with your chosen partner.  Look at one another’s faces and begin to speak.  You can talk about ANYTHING!  Remember, at least two-thirds of all human speech is about other people – or gossip.  So, gossip if you like.

Tell a story about something that happened during your day – and your partner’s day.  Nothing deep or heavy here.  Just communicate, and as you do begin to THINK ABOUT how you two are transmitting, receiving and sending back communication signals.  Because we are working to exercise the earliest forming regions of the social-emotional brain, it is important to particularly notice the face – expression conveyed through muscles, eyes, and position of the head.

Notice PARTICULARLY how both of you both make eye contact and break it!  The actions that accomplish this are social-emotional regulatory actions.  The fun thing to begin to see is that we all do this!  We have always done it!

If a person moves their eyes away from another person’s eyes, either also turning the head or not, you can tell which region of their brain they are INWARDLY sending their energy to.  When a person looks to the left and/or turns their head to the left they are ORGANIZING and ordering the information into their RIGHT BRAIN.

If we move our eyes to the right and/or the head, we are ORGANIZING and ordering information into the left region of our brain.  This information we are dealing with is very complicated and involves both the external information we are receiving from the other person and our own INTERNAL information that we get at the same time.

Even without consciously noticing that it is happening, a person in face-to-face direct dyadic (two person) communication might eventually shift their ENTIRE BODY in one direction or the other.  If they do this, pay attention to the direction they are shifting toward and realize it is the OPPOSITE side of their brain that is being organized and ordered.  (These patterns might be a bit different depending on which hand, right or left, a person is dominant with – though the basic underlying structures are the same, the information itself can be processed differently depending on which is our dominant side.)

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Once this exercise feels comfortable, and as you have noticed how you feel during the entire process, you can experiment with more emotionally laden conversation and watch what happens next!  Because part of our intention is to strengthen particularly the right social-emotional regions of the brain, every time you notice a shift toward the RIGHT in eyes, head or body, intentionally compensate with a shift in the OPPOSITE direction toward the LEFT so that you reinforce, through this action, activity that is ordering and organizing the right brain regions.

Every time one or both of the people engaged in this kind of direct fact-to-face conversation make this kind of BREAK away from one another, this is a rupture that will be or not be repaired by a return to facing one another and continuing to communicate – after each takes the time that they need to process the information inside of their own brain.  These interactions continually build themselves within the pathways of our brain into patterns of pauses that help regulate us back to CALM so that we can return for more stimulation – again!

These rupture and repair pauses and returns to activity happen all the way down to our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) level where our – you got it!!  Where our parasympathetic STOP (‘pair a brakes’) arm of our ANS balances itself with our sympathetic GO ANS arm!

There you have it – neuroscience exercise to help build better and better internal emotional regulation into your body-brain through safe and secure social interactions!!

Have fun!  And please continue to read and study Dr. Allan N. Schore’s baby social-emotional brain building article!

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+DEGREES-OF-WELL-BEING IS ABOUT SOCIAL HEALTH, NOT “MENTAL” OR “BEHAVIORAL”

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At the same time that I do not personally like the use of the words either ‘mental’ or ‘behavioral’ health in regard to the well-being of humans, I cannot fight the world on this point, but I sure can examine what is meant by the words themselves.  The human ‘mind’ is a nebulous, invisible, intangible nonexistent physical entity.  It is not a THING we can detect through our ordinary senses.  We are always forced to follow some magical ‘this is subjective but we’ll all pretend it isn’t” course in our thinking about the concept of MIND.

Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s work and writings talk about how humans both develop a mind and the ability to have what he calls ‘Mind Sight’.   Siegel serves as the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization that focuses on how the development of insight, compassion and empathy in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes.  His work accurately describes how the mind does not exist separately from the physiological body that comes to manifest it.

If we are going to continue to use the term ‘mental health’ it must be done within the context that Siegel presents.  ‘Behavioral health’ must also be firmly anchored into an accurate understanding that behavior, just like ‘mind’, stems from physiological processes within a person’s body and is completely open for subjective interpretation.

By using either one of these terms on a grand scale, either ‘mental health’ or ‘behavioral health’,  we are pretending that we are talking about a THING.  A thing is an object.  Humans are not objects.  We are living beings who exist in relationship with our environment, within our own body and to everyone and everything around us.  To try to define our well-being in the world in terms of our mind or our behavior as if they are separate THINGS that have nothing to do with our physiological body is STUPID!

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We CAN talk about human well-being at every stage of our existence from conception until death.  Before I would trust any individual national, state, regional, local or individual opinion on any topic of human health, I would want to know what our global ‘best of the best’ have to say about it.

The World Health Organization’s website has a page devoted to Mental Health, where they say:

“Mental health is not just the absence of mental disorder. It is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.”

The World Health Organization defines some specifics about “the early signs of mental disorders”:

“A mental or behavioural disorder is characterized by a disturbance in thinking, mood, or behaviour, which is out of keeping with cultural beliefs and norms. In most cases the symptoms are associated with distress and interference with personal functions.

Mental disorders produce symptoms that sufferers or those close to them notice. These may include:

  • physical symptoms (e.g. aches and sleep disturbance)
  • emotional symptoms (e.g. feeling sad, scared, or anxious)
  • cognitive symptoms (e.g. difficulty thinking clearly, abnormal beliefs, memory disturbance)
  • behavioural symptoms (e.g. behaving in an aggressive manner, inability to perform routine daily functions, excessive use of substances)
  • perceptual symptoms (e.g. seeing or hearing things that others cannot)”

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Well, I am getting nowhere here, so I am going back to look at the origins of the word ‘mind’ itself.  Interestingly, I have to continue to search for the actual date this word came into our modern English language.  My hard-copy dictionary gives the date as being before the 12th century.:

Main Entry: 1mind

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gemynd; akin to Old High German gimunt memory, Latin ment-, mens mind, monEre to remind, warn, Greek menos spirit, mnasthai, mimnEskesthai to remember

1 : RECOLLECTION, MEMORY <keep that in mind> <time out of mind>
2 a : the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons b : the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism c : the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism
3 : INTENTION, DESIRE <I changed my mind>
4 : the normal or healthy condition of the mental faculties
5 : OPINION, VIEW
6 : DISPOSITION, MOOD
7 a : a person or group embodying mental qualities <the public mind> b : intellectual ability
8 capitalized, Christian Science : GOD 1b
9 : a conscious substratum or factor in the universe
10 : ATTENTION <pay him no mind>

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Very interesting origins!  I looked up the word “mental” and found:

Main Entry: 1men·tal

Function: adjective

Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin mentalis, from Latin ment-, mens mind — more at mind

Date: 15th century

1 a : of or relating to the mind; specifically : of or relating to the total emotional and intellectual response of an individual to external reality <mental health> b : of or relating to intellectual as contrasted with emotional activity c : of, relating to, or being intellectual as contrasted with overt physical activity d : occurring or experienced in the mind : inner <mental anguish> e : relating to the mind, its activity, or its products as an object of study : ideological f : relating to spirit or idea as opposed to matter
2 a (1) : of, relating to, or affected by a psychiatric disorder <a mental patient> (2) : mentally disordered : mad, crazy b : intended for the care or treatment of persons affected by psychiatric disorders <mental hospitals>
3 : of or relating to telepathic or mind-reading powers

Ah!  Here again, as with the word ‘symptom’ (see post on topic here) , we have a Renaissance-origin word:  ‘Mental’ as an adjective.

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It becomes immediately clear to me as soon as I try to discover the roots of human thinking behind a term like ‘mental health’ that we are evidently not willing to talk about what we are really talking about!

When the invisible unreal entity of MIND is considered independently from the human body that both HAS a mind and experiences life WITH this mind, what we are really talking about – as we can see from our consideration of the meaning of ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ in relationship to their origins —  is HOW A PERSON’S  SPIRIT REMEMBERS ITSELF in the world.

(If the treatment a developing infant receives from its mother is unsafe and insecure, that treatment is a warning to the infant that adjustments need to be made in order to survive within a malevolent world.  A mother’s treatment of her offspring ‘reminds’ it of the conditions of the environment.  All human ‘remembering’ (including how our DNA manifests itself) happens from conception within this framework.  Because we are a social species, all our ‘remembering’ happens through the body-brain we developed primarily before the age of one.)

No matter what the Renaissance thinkers intended as they began to talk about ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ the reality is that no consideration of mind is actually remotely scientific!  Just by making up a meaning and attaching it to a made-up word DOES NOT MAKE SOMETHING into a real, tangible THING.

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Are we really talking about something no less tangible than what one of my favorite words describes?

Main Entry: al·che·my

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English alkamie, alquemie, from Middle French or Medieval Latin; Middle French alkimie, from Medieval Latin alchymia, from Arabic al-kīmiyā’, from al the + kīmiyā’ alchemy, from Late Greek chēmeia

Date: 14th century

1 : a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life
2 : a power or process of transforming something common into something special
3 : an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting

— al·chem·i·cal \-mi-kəl\ also al·chem·ic \al-ˈke-mik\ adjective

— al·chem·i·cal·ly \-mi-k(ə-)lē\ adverb

There it is:  “an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting.”  We have transmuted the invisible process of how and who a human being is in the world into a tangible THING, giving the words ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ meaning AS IF we are talking about something REAL and tangible rather than something UNREAL and intangible.

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What happens if I turn my considerations toward ‘behavioral health’ instead of ‘mental health’?  Hummmmm – this search also is leading me toward the obvious – yet another Renaissance word:

Main Entry: be·have

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): be·haved; be·hav·ing

Etymology: Middle English behaven, from be- + haven to have, hold

Date: 15th century

transitive verb 1 : to manage the actions of (oneself) in a particular way
2 : to conduct (oneself) in a proper mannerintransitive verb 1 : to act, function, or react in a particular way
2 : to conduct oneself properly

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If I make a gigantic leap and connect “to conduct oneself properly” in relationship to ‘behavioral health’ back through ‘mind’ as being a ‘remembering of the spirit’, and return full circle to the beginning of the post, I find in the World Health Organization’s discussion about the ‘symptoms’ of ‘mental illness’ and ‘mental disorders’ that they clearly present this qualifying statement:

“A mental or behavioural disorder is characterized by a disturbance in thinking, mood, or behaviour, which is out of keeping with cultural beliefs and norms”

In other words, it is impossible to even begin to think even about ‘disorder’ itself, in relation to either a so-called ‘mental’ or a ‘behavioral’ one without first defining what any particular culture’s ‘beliefs and norms’ are.

Any consideration of ‘disorder’ has to be done within a consideration of the established social-cultural patterns of what’s considered to be ‘order’.  Disorder is itself another Renaissance word:

Main Entry: 1dis·or·der

Function: transitive verb

Date: 15th century

1 : to disturb the order of
2 : to disturb the regular or normal functions of

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Even if I try to place the IDEA of disorder within the larger context of what ORDER might mean, I find myself looking at an English word that is connected not in our history of Renaissance-period thinking, but to our Medieval-period, or Middle Age Millennium of thinking:

Main Entry: 1or·der

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): or·dered; or·der·ing \ˈȯr-d(ə-)riŋ\

Etymology: Middle English, from ordre, noun

Date: 13th century

transitive verb 1 : to put in order : arrange
2 a : to give an order to : command b : destine, ordain <so ordered by the gods> c : to command to go or come to a specified place <ordered back to the base> d : to give an order for <order a meal>intransitive verb 1 : to bring about order : regulate
2 a : to issue orders : command b : to give or place an order

OR AS A NOUN:

Main Entry: 2order

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French ordre, from Medieval Latin & Latin; Medieval Latin ordin-, ordo ecclesiastical order, from Latin, arrangement, group, class; akin to Latin ordiri to lay the warp, begin

Date: 14th century

1 a : a group of people united in a formal way: as (1) : a fraternal society <the Masonic Order> (2) : a community under a religious rule; especially : one requiring members to take solemn vows b : a badge or medal of such a society; also : a military decoration
2 a : any of the several grades of the Christian ministry b plural : the office of a person in the Christian ministry c plural : ordination
3 a : a rank, class, or special group in a community or society b : a class of persons or things grouped according to quality, value, or natural characteristics: as (1) : a category of taxonomic classification ranking above the family and below the class (2) : the broadest category in soil classification

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As a weaver, I find “akin to Latin ordiri to lay the warp, begin” fascinating!  That is exactly what a mother does for her infant — she lays the warp as her infant begins its life as a social being, and with that warp a person’s life is created.

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We cannot consider ‘mental’ or ‘behavioral’ ‘disorders’ outside of the context that gave birth not only to the words themselves, but to the cultural ideas and concepts that contain them.

It is clear to me that all of these words originated within a Christian mindset and cultural world view.  We continue to use these words AS IF (think alchemy again) we could transmute the concepts, values, beliefs, understandings and religious underpinnings beneath and behind them into something magically SCIENTIFIC.

Main Entry: sci·ence

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin scientia, from scient-, sciens having knowledge, from present participle of scire to know; perhaps akin to Sanskrit chyati he cuts off, Latin scindere to split — more at shed

Date: 14th century

1 : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
2 a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology> b : something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge <have it down to a science>
3 a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science
4 : a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws <cooking is both a science and an art>

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“Scientific’ is supposedly “the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.”  We are all familiar in our culture with the other end of the ‘nonscientific’ spectrum, and the conflict that often arises between them:

Main Entry: re·li·gion

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back — more at rely

Date: 13th century

1 a : the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

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Yet if we are honest with ourselves as a species, this entire discussion and any consideration of what the terms ‘mental health’ and ‘behavioral health’, as well as ‘mental disorder’ and ‘behavioral disorder’ is really describing is how comfortably –or not — an individual fits into the social system of which they are a member.

At the point that so-called ‘science’ wanted to begin to establish itself separately from ‘religion’ words began to be used in our language that were supposed to take ‘how spirit remembers itself’ and transmute them magically into something else – something tangible, literal, measurable and real.

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As we accept these terms and use them to describe ourselves and/or others, we are continuing only to consider human beings in the context of the social environment they live within.  We are not REALLY concerning ourselves with the actual conditions of well-being or lack of well-being that a person experiences from within their own skin.  We are a social species, so it is not at all surprising that the formulas we use in our thinking about how we fit into the larger social context are all reducible down to social relationships.

And, again, it is the earliest mothering caregiver interactions we experience during our infant brain developmental stages that entirely build the foundation of our social brain that will regulate our interactions within our own self and within our social environment for the rest of our lives.  These experiences ‘order’ our brain.  It is at this level that we have to look for what happens to us the rest of our lives.

It is at this very real level of interaction between our social environment (our mothering experiences) and our growing and forming social brain’s foundation that we can NOW understand the science of social interaction.  It has nothing to do with ‘religion’ as we usually understand it as lying at the foundation of our culture, our social order, or the words, concepts and terms we use to consider our ‘invisible’ ideas.

The Latin conception of ‘religio’ as tying and binding together is, in its largest sense, what mothering an infant adequately is all about.  Social interaction is the way humans, as members of a social species, find themselves in the world from the building of our early-forming social-brain on up.  Neurons tie themselves together and form circuits, pathways, patterns in our early-forming brain that are SUPPOSED to link us harmoniously to our own SELF and to other selves in the world around us – beginning with our mothering early caregiver.  How our brain is ‘ordered’ and organized happens through social attachment.

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Looking at the roots of our word ‘social’ I find it related in its origins to ‘man, companion, ally’ (and also, interestingly, as it relates to ‘sue’).  We are a social species, and therefore the issue of companionship – companionship with our mother, companionship with our developing self, and companionship with other members of our species – forms the foundation of who we are through the social brain we built.

Our word ‘companion’ is fundamentally connected in its origins to FOOD, and for all the words I have considered today, it is only in this simple word – food – that I find an origin in our language that goes back before the 12th century.

FOOD

Etymology: Middle English fode, from Old English fōda; akin to Old High German fuotar food, fodder, Latin panis bread, pascere to feed

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NOW THIS IS TAKING US BACK TO WHAT MATTERS.  THIS WORD TAKES US BACK TO OUR HUMAN ROOTS.  THIS WORD IS ABOUT OUR ORIGINS.  With our mothers, beginning our human journey, we transition into the social ordering of our very foundational social brain through all the kinds and qualities of FEEDING that our earliest caregiver, our mother, gives to us.

This is the natural order of making a human being.  This is where our attachments in the world begin.  This is where all our feel-good physiological processes originate.

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If you are still reading this post, and have followed along this far, you will appreciate what a search through words in our language now gives us.  Mothering is about something both so simple and so profound that it lies at the basis of our species.  Mothers can either provide the best possible nourishment for her offspring or she cannot.

Main Entry: nour·ish

Pronunciation: \ˈnər-ish, ˈnə-rish\

Etymology: Middle English nurishen, from Anglo-French nuriss-, stem of nurrir, norrir, from Latin nutrire to suckle, nourish; akin to Greek nan to flow, noteros damp, Sanskrit snauti it drips

Date: 14th century

1 : nurture, rear
2 : to promote the growth of
3 a : to furnish or sustain with nutriment : feed b : maintain, support

— nour·ish·er noun

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All of my thoughts, in fact all of anyone’s thoughts, always return in their origins to the mother who brought us into the world and who was then responsible for forming the foundations of our earliest social-emotional brain.  We find in one single word the essence of all that matters in our beginnings.

Main Entry: 1suck

Function: verb

Etymology: Middle English suken, from Old English sūcan; akin to Old High German sūgan to suck, Latin sugere

Date: before 12th century

transitive verb 1 a : to draw (as liquid) into the mouth through a suction force produced by movements of the lips and tongue <sucked milk from his mother’s breast> b : to draw something from or consume by such movements c : to apply the mouth to in order to or as if to suck out a liquid
2 a : to draw by or as if by suction b : to take in and consume by or as if by suction

We draw the world into ourselves in our beginnings through our interactions with our earliest caregiver, our earliest representation of humanity in our world – our mother.  We take in and consume what she provides for us and build a brain out of it, build a nervous system, an immune system, and entire body that has at its basis of operation in the world the signals her treatment of us communicates to us about the condition of the world:  Is it a safe and secure benevolent world or is it an unsafe, insecure malevolent one?

The resiliency factors available in our own DNA memory or our species allow us to adapt to and adjust within the quality of the world our mother presents to us from our conception.  How our developing body-brain is ordered is dependent upon the interactions we have with ALL of our earliest caregivers, but most centrally upon the interactions with the mother that suckles us – by feeding us information about the condition of the world that we adapt ourselves to in our earliest development.

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We have reached the heart of the matter.  We cannot separate either our mind or our behavior from the body we live within, this same body that was guided in its development by the suckling we received from our mothering caregiver that built us.

What we are actually talking about is our degree of SOCIAL HEALTH.  This is, in my opinion, the most accurate term we can use to talk about how we are in the world as members of a social species.

The problem with adopting Social Health as an accurate term related to our degrees of well-being is that it simply does not allow us to continue using stigma against one another.  Social Health and well-being is about ALL OF US.  It is about our entire body, not only individually, but about the health of the culture we live within and on the largest scale, of the entire quality of health for every single one of the members of our species on our planet.

Main Entry: stig·ma

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural stig·ma·ta

\stig-ˈmä-tə, ˈstig-mə-tə\ or stig·mas

Etymology: Latin stigmat-, stigma mark, brand, from Greek, from stizein to tattoo — more at stick

Date: circa 1593

1 a archaic : a scar left by a hot iron : brand b : a mark of shame or discredit : stain <bore the stigma of cowardice> c : an identifying mark or characteristic; specifically : a specific diagnostic sign of a disease
2 a stigmata plural : bodily marks or pains resembling the wounds of the crucified Jesus and sometimes accompanying religious ecstasy

Once we are given a ‘diagnosis’, we are then the recipient of a ‘brand’ or a ‘mark’ that sticks to us and separates us from ‘the others’.

Main Entry: 1stickFunction: noun

Etymology: Middle English stik, from Old English sticca; akin to Old Norse stik stick, Old English stician to stick

Date: before 12th century

1 : a woody piece or part of a tree or shrub: as a : a usually dry or dead severed shoot, twig, or slender branch b : a cut or broken branch or piece of wood gathered for fuel or construction material
2 a : a long slender piece of wood or metal: as (1) : a club or staff used as a weapon (2) : walking stick b : an implement used for striking or propelling an object in a game c : something used to force compliance d : a baton symbolizing an office or dignity; also : a person entitled to bear such a baton

We are cast aside, as if we are cut off as a branch would be broken from the main tree of human life.  We are both ‘stuck’ with the stigma and ‘struck’ by it because stigmas hurt people.

Social Health is an inclusive rather than an exclusive term.  Using it would stop stigmatization dead in its tracks.  Everyone would then be included; nobody would be marked, cast off, stigmatized, judged, condemned or punished as being different from anybody else.  Everyone has some degree of social health.

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Oh, but in the U.S.A. we are such big fans of uniqueness and individuality.  Social Health smacks of ‘socialism’ and unwanted oppression over the rights of the individual!  We want to be ‘free’ to be ‘different’ from everyone else.  We do not want to accept that after all, we are human beings just like everyone else is.

When we are ‘free’ to be ‘unique individuals’ and ‘different’ from everyone else, we can feel superior or inferior, better-than or less-than other people.  We can keep our stigmas, our prejudices, our arrogance and our ignorance.  We do not want to admit or accept that these aspects to our ‘social ordering’ within our culture are fooling no one but ourselves.

We continue to keep our illusions intact, and believe in ‘manifest destiny’ and ‘the right of imminent domain’.  After all, in America anyone and everyone can ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ if they only want to.  After all, we are all born ‘all men are equal before the law’.

Never mind that laws are not enforced equally.  Never mind that infant-children can be neglected, battered, abused and maltreated within our national boundaries, forcing these victim-survivors to grow a completely evolutionarily altered body and brain that will change how they are in the world for the rest of their lives.  What is happening to The Great Society?

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Our primary concern is with health – every kind of health related to the conditions of being human.  Because we are a species of social beings, all of our health concerns boil down to social ones.  The adjective we use to talk about how we are as social beings in the world, in relationship with our own self and with one another needs to be accurate.  Social Health uses the right adjective.

Main Entry: health

Function: noun

Usage: often attributive

Etymology: Middle English helthe, from Old English hǣlth, from hāl

Date: before 12th century

1 a : the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially : freedom from physical disease or pain b : the general condition of the body <in poor health> <enjoys good health>
2 a : flourishing condition : well-being b : general condition or state <poor economic health>

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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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