Our Toxic Inner Life

Most of us agree that toxic chemicals in the environment can affect a carrying mother and her baby. When they spray pesticides onto fruit and vegetables it can deform the growing fetus. But if I told you that the really harmful chemicals that deform the growing fetus are also those that are “sprayed” from inside. If the mother is anxious and her cortisol levels are high, those stress hormone levels will infuse the fetus and affect his growth and brain development. The baby has to adopt to new and abnormal levels of stress that he should not have to adapt to. His system has to rev up to handle the input; it has to overreact in order to meet the threat. It has to react inordinately, and that overreacting my dog him through life. He may become the hysteric who is tense and responds excessively to a normally neutral stimulus. He is operating near the top all of the time. He, too, is under stress, an imprint that is embedded into his system.

The input of cortisol and other hormones affects the evolving brain, and in the first months of gestation there is an effect on the primitive brainstem that governs all of our primordial reactions: digestion, elimination, urination, breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. Also, it affects the alimentary canal, so when years later under an anxiety attack there are “butterflies in the stomach” we know where and when their origin. It is one of many ways that we know the cause and origin of panic and anxiety attacks.

When there is what I call a first line imprint there is perforce, a first line reaction; that means one of the key functions of the primitive brainstem must be involved. So there is a churning of the stomach, a pressure in the chest, a generalized terror, a need to pee, inability to eat, a racing heart and an elevated blood pressure. And yep, the doctor who examines you says it does look like an anxiety attack. But who can guess where it comes from? The disconnection between our lives at minus eight and our lives at forty is very large and it would take a giant leap of faith and science to make that connection. But we do. But patients make that connection all of the time; they come in anxious and descend to very early imprints, only after months of therapy, and it is they who make the connection, not us. What a relief, we don’t have to figure out anything.

At the start of the third month of gestation we are beginning to have an intact nervous system. And traumatic events are still registered very low down. It is only months later that there is an inchoate feeling system where feelings are imprinted, primitive as they are. We now have the beginnings of the limbic area with the amygdala. Thus low level terror can move to join the limbic system where fear is organized. Later on in life when fear is stimulated it can trigger off related deep-lying terror, and we have a panic attack. This happens when there is a violent household where fear is commonplace. The infant is terrified all of the time and the gating system that should hold back terror becomes faulty. Too many assaults on it.

Let me make sure we understand this: a first line trauma engenders a first line reaction. When we see it, a racing heart, for example, we have an idea of what trauma caused it and when. It helps orient us to where we have to go in therapy. Yes, current events can trigger it but through the process of resonance it sets off a first line reaction. We need to begin well anchored in the current situation and feeling and then later descend when the patient is ready for it, which may be some time. We never want to defy our personal evolution and plunge into first line imprints and reactions before the patient is ready. From that we can get abreaction, and worse, psychosis and delusions.
But when someone is very sensitive to low oxygen levels in a room, we can bet that it stems from early on when oxygen was life saving. You have only to witness severe locomotive breathing when a patient is down there reliving oxygen deprivation to understand my point. It is a good bet that it is brainstem originated.

Now suppose the carrying mother drinks and smokes. Can you imagine the chemical pollution affecting the fetus? The child has no chance. It may not show right away, but I have been in this métier for 60 years and I can attest it will cut your life short. You can easily understand this if you live in a wine field where they spray every day with chemicals. But it is the same when you get sprayed from inside every day.

You know why children need to be born to two loving parents? Because the carrying mother needs love, protection and caring while pregnant, and it takes a partner to do that. And when there is an absent father the mother and baby suffer. The mother needs to know that her partner will stay around and be there for her.

And when the father is hostile and impatient they also suffer. She needs a kind, patient environment to rear and carry a healthy baby. I have written in my Life Before Birth, soon or now in bookstores, that arguing parents(when mother is pregnant) lead to babies that have serious allergies, and for males, a greater chance of homosexuality. This is not booga booga talking; there are research results. But it should be obvious that the mother is under stress and her stress hormone level is constantly high. The pregnant mother is spewing out stress into the baby and forty years later the adult now has some heart problems.

Here is what scientists have found when there is a high cortisol level in the carrying mother: the baby’s nervous system is slow to develop and he will have learning and studying problems; the muscles are not developing properly and there can be a lack of coordination later on, and constant fear. (“Prenatal Programming of Human Neurological Function.” C.A. Sandman, et al, International J. of Peptides. Vol 2011. For those interested in the science of it all, read this).

The time when a mother should be most calm is during pregnancy. A revolution or war in the surroundings can be catastrophic for the baby. But a war between the parents is a catastrophe.