Saturday, October 24, 2009

On Being Touched

I saw a movie last night. The mother walked by her son and ruffled his hair and moved on. A seemingly innocuous event. But wait! So many of us never had that; so what does it mean? It means that someone acknowledges your existence. If parents walk by you, never smile, touch you or make you feel you exist, you come to believe you don’t. No one has to say you’re bad, I don’t love you. It is all in those very little events. Having hair ruffled day after day means you exist and are wanted, important and loved. When it does not happen day after day it means the opposite; and you come to believe it without ever realizing it. You begin to act as if you don’t exist for anyone. You shy away, never say the kind things you should because who you are and what you do does not matter.

When a parent massages you head it says volumes; I like you, I love you, you are very important, my attention is totally on you, I want to make you happy. That is all absorbed unconsciously and sometimes consciously. “Sometimes consciously” because if you never have had it you then realize something, but if you always had it, it is in the nature of things; nothing exceptional. You deserve just by who you are; and it means you can be who you are without anyone saying anything like that because it is implied and absorbed. You don’t think it matters? It matters.

14 comments:

  1. lucky kid. in the movie at least

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  2. Big trigger, big pain.
    All I know is, if my mother acknowledged me, it was only because she had a list chores or, she needed someone to dump her frustration. For this reason I was happy if she didn’t see me at all.
    Sieglinde

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  3. This little story is to important to just be published in this relatively obscure 'place'.
    Please have one of your trainees send it off electronically to about 200 (or more) newspapers (or 200000 publications for that matter).

    This kind of communication of yours is, more than anything else, precisely what the world needs to receive as much of as possible.

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  4. This blog appears about the psychological concept called mirroring. I live in Finland which is well known for the quietness and shyness of its people. This element of avoidance taken to its extreme creates a certain social type (avoidant A1 type in the context of Ainsworth's attachment theory) associated with rural dwelling, who stays by himself (essentially a male phenomenon) and does not speak to people. Mothering style is seen as the key factor. Mothers try to order and structure their children's experience too much so that they become the arbiter or mediator for the child's interpretation of the world. In extreme cases the child feels so engulfed by the mother that he withdraws from her and the landscape to which she pertains. This is an example of bad mirroring of the other whereby his own experience is subsumed. In most cases though Finns simply take the mother's view over and above their own - until alcohol swings things back the other way and they assert their own physicality without concern for decorum. The balance is best when the perception of the child by the parent allows room for mutual negotiation of needs and desires so that each person can understand and respect the other's perspective. (B1-B3 type). The boy having his hair ruffled may be being touched and acknowledged but it does not mean he enjoys this enactment upon him and he may feel overwhelmed by it. Parent and child is a two-way street.

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  5. Will, of course you are right. I don't remember my mother or father ever touching or holding me until I was 15 yrs old. Also, I don't remember ever wanting to be touched or held.
    When I was 15 my father started reading a book called 'Tough Love'. He started giving me hugs and forced my mother to hug me. He would yell at her when she refused. The whole situation was very uncomfortable for all of us.

    I always thought it was perfectly normal for parents to hold their kids, but I didn't think my parents were abnormal until I was 15. I didn't think I was abnormal until my brother started talking about psychology many years later. I am grateful to my brother because until then, I thought I was almost perfect and I had no interest in psychology.

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  6. Makes sense to me. The greater the lack of love (pain), the greater the emotional reality deficit in the present. If I were not loved, I can not in my heart (2nd line) or guts (1st), believe that it is possible for me to be loved. Despite seeing any intellectual evidence to the contrary.

    As an adult, the most tender and intimate touch of a lover would feel blank and hollow. The feeling is blunted because there is nothing much for it to resonate with stored in the brain as emotional memory.

    I am thinking of an analogy of an air craft trying to land in a storm at night. If the runway had enough lights, landing. If not, crash and burn.

    If the plane landing represents the feeling of being loved in the present, the runway lights would be each emotional memory of childhood.

    Each vicious look, beating or cruel word by a parent can and does put out those runway lights one by one. Each hair ruffling (genuine act of affection) can light one up one at a time.

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  7. Will,

    I think what you might be saying is that if a right behaviour doesn't come from a right feeling, then it may not be worth that much. That's certainly what I think, and I think it's also why our ability to teach a parent how to be a great parent is ultimately limited if they are encapsulated in their own neurosis - and likewise their own "eccentric" feelings.

    I remember seeing a documentary article from a while back where a woman was in tears, saying: "How can you give love when you don't feel it?" She was speaking about how she did not like her daughter, and was sad about the fact. This to me was an expression of a truth and, as such, a display of sanity. I really do think there are countless people who believe that you can give love *behaviourally* without the feeling. And that of course is not true...until maybe the child comes to live in the same fantasy of "behavioural love" as the parent?

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  8. Hi John,

    I liked your aeroplane analogy and I agree with you.

    The way I see it is that feelings are linked to "functions" somewhere/somehow compartmentalised in the brain, in the same way that senses like sight and touch are compartmentalised (zoned) within the brain. So, I think when we talk of "hurt feelings" in the traumatic sense of it, what we are really speaking of "hurt functions".

    When the functions have recieved traumatic input and likewise retain the signiture of overwhleming pain, they then become don't-go-there zones of the brain that our conscious mind must avoid (aka repression). So, to reclaim the 'function' you must confront the damage - and resolve it. Until then you can't feel love: how on earth could you when that part of yourself is literally off-line? Clearly before you can be open to others you must first be open to yourself. To believe that you can feel love without this "reclamation" process (aka primal therapy) is like believing that you can see a picture with an amputated visual cortex.

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  9. John, Will, and Andrew:
    You guys make me _extra_ pleased to read this blog! :]

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  10. John,
    May I take your trigger lines a step further: “As an adult, the most tender and intimate touch of a lover would feel blank and hollow. The feeling is blunted because there is nothing much for it to resonate with stored in the brain as emotional memory.”

    A gentile touch can also trigger an early manifested condition, especially when sexually abused in early childhood. A touch later in life can waken an early imprint. A (neurotic) memory signals: your body will be used again, or, what do I have to give in return for this kindness?

    In another primal memory: a baby lays isolated in crib crying in need for it mother’s touch. Mother comes and spanks the child instead of comfort. The need for touch, feeling save, was replaced by pain. In this case, the hand of a mother becomes the imprint of a threatening instrument.
    Sieglinde

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  11. OK, I said that I was probably not going to write again because many of my posts get refused here for reasons I am not told.But I will try one more time because I really loved Dr Janov's last article here.

    I can totally relate to what he is saying. My parents NEVER ruffled my hair and thus, made me feel at least a bit loved. With them it was either bourgeois niceness (at best), or, at worst, in my mother`s case, outright hatred and accusations of laziness (my father always staid "nice" ..and detached. He is a bit more authentic and real these days). While I did not feel the full impact of all this while young, because I was "busy" with studies, TV, and playing, I have felt this lack of acknowledgement of my existence most of the reast of my life. And I am feeling it more acutely these days for some reason. I mean, I just DO NOT EXIST for anyone . I am just a passing shadow for all the other shadows .And that hurts.

    Janov's article also brought to mind a similar story of his in "Prisoners of Pain" (page 227), in which he relates the story of feeling the warmth and kindnes of a woman who was inducting him into the US Navy during WW2.The memory of that simple experience stuck with him for a long time. That also resonated with me, since such kindness is so rare (or so it seems to me). And so, many of us labor perpetually under a feeling of loneliness, alienation and barenness, a tragic consequence of this disgusting ignorant superficial civilisation, which I detest from the bottom of my desolate heart. Marco Ermacora Canada

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  12. I'll try to contribute to this lively discussion.
    If we can reclaim (to some extent)our capacity to love (by primal therapy), than maybe the critical period of the need for love is never really completely ended. How do we know it? Well, if a gentle touch received at age 25 can resonate and help someone feel his unfulfilled need for touch at age 4, than it looks as if there is some kind of continuity of the need for touch beyond the critical period. Indeed, it could be that in humans (or mammals) the need for touch and gentleness is never completely closed by passage of time, although it might be closed by the valence of pain involved to repress the need. What a miracle is our brain: despite all the pain, storing carefully our capacity to love, for some better times!

    Marjan

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  13. Marjan:

    I would say that 'critical period' has more to do with the time a need must be fulfilled to avoid catastrophic pain and its accompanying effects. It should not mean to the 'forever elimination' of the function.

    Critical periods are interesting though. I think it shows that the brain is going through a developmental sequence, and that a critical need must be fulfilled at a particular time to ensure that the next developmental step can be reached. Pain for a child must ultimately mean "you are screwing with my developmental evolution" and so sensitivity to damage must also mean that.

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  14. losangelee, I wish I could hold you in my arms right now so you could cry and shake and whatever for as long as you need to! I'm sitting here crying just from reading your comment! I don't know where you are, but just know that someone on this planet is feelin' ya!

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Review of "Beyond Belief"

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Quotes for "Life Before Birth"

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Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D.
Bailey Endowed Chair of Animal Well Being Science
Washington State University

Dr. Janov’s essential insight—that our earliest experiences strongly influence later well being—is no longer in doubt. Thanks to advances in neuroscience, immunology, and epigenetics, we can now see some of the mechanisms of action at the heart of these developmental processes. His long-held belief that the brain, human development, and psychological well being need to studied in the context of evolution—from the brainstem up—now lies at the heart of the integration of neuroscience and psychotherapy.
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Lou Cozolino, PsyD, Professor of Psychology, Pepperdine University


In Life Before Birth Dr. Arthur Janov illuminates the sources of much that happens during life after birth. Lucidly, the pioneer of primal therapy provides the scientific rationale for treatments that take us through our original, non-verbal memories—to essential depths of experience that the superficial cognitive-behavioral modalities currently in fashion cannot possibly touch, let alone transform.
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An expansive analysis! This book attempts to explain the impact of critical developmental windows in the past, implores us to improve the lives of pregnant women in the present, and has implications for understanding our children, ourselves, and our collective future. I’m not sure whether primal therapy works or not, but it certainly deserves systematic testing in well-designed, assessor-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trials.
K.J.S. Anand, MBBS, D. Phil, FAACP, FCCM, FRCPCH, Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Anatomy & Neurobiology, Senior Scholar, Center for Excellence in Faith and Health, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare System


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His new book “Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” shows that primal therapy, the lower-brain therapeutic method popularized in the 1970’s international bestseller “Primal Scream” and his early work with John Lennon, may help alleviate depression and anxiety disorders, normalize blood pressure and serotonin levels, and improve the functioning of the immune system.
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Editor