Who Took My "NO" Away?

  I am always amazed at how early our basic personalities begin their lives.  I have been primaling lately about how from the very start of infancy a basic tendency set in……..I could not say no to anything my father demanded.  This started before I could articulate why and how that happened.  I was strictly obedient before I could speak.  My father’s presence was enough to strike fear in me.  I remember when I was fourteen he told me to sit still and finish my milk and not to budge until I did.  I obeyed without question.   It never occurred to me to refuse.  Why?  I was terrified.  That terror began with an imprinted latent terror set down in gestation with a psychotic mother who feared everything and everyone.  Laid on that was my first sense of my father who exuded anger and intolerance.   When I say “exuded”  it is what I mean; it poured out of his skin, the way he breathed and the look on his face.   His actions were brusque and abrupt.   I learned as a baby to steer clear of him.  And then the inability to say “No” set in.  His demands were touched by anger and expectations of immediate obeying.    Before I could talk I could not refuse anything and go against any sharp demands.  Mrs. Wardrop at my high school was the twin of him and I obeyed her to the  letter.   I simply had to obey and could not say “No.”

Now for confirmation:  “What makes our brains so special?”.
Scientific American, Nov. 24, 2015, Diana Kwon (see http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-our-brains-special/).   She discusses the remarkable ability for recognition and cognitive capacity in infants. After all, we are born with a large brain.  The study cites the work of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.  They compiled a huge spectrum of expression patterns in different species. They found abundant data to identify unique signatures within humans. We are very similar to other animals. Chimps and Bonobos. What is evident throughout is that wee infants pick up the signals from their environment before they speak, and they have no other reference but to follow the dictates of that milieu as a measure of survival. We learn very, very early before we can even imagine that learning has seriously begun. Because it is so early and because there is no other key countervailing influence, that behavior is sealed in, perhaps for lifetime. And without Primal Therapy it would have.  I had to scream NO over and over again and set up scenes where he demanded things of me with his sharp, impatient tone and I could finally refuse and answer him back. It was not done in a day.  It was deeply embedded behavior from the start of my life.  My therapist demanded of me, and at first my immediate tendency was to comply.  It took a long time until I separated my self from my father. That I was not him and vice versa. The terror  of him was merged into the general terror that my gestation and above all, my birth trauma, almost dying of lack of oxygen, had inculcated into me. I had to re-experience both kinds of terror to bring the level down so I could function. For years up to college I did not function and could not learn.  ADD up the whazoo. I had no way to focus and concentrate because terror was constantly sending its messages to my brain to agitate me; and get ready for a disaster that had already happened. Only I never knew it. I had embedded approaching death into my system and it would not leave.

I had panic attacks and unrelenting nightmares all through my early life. The terror was surging upward trying to escape but I never knew about it. I was just nervous all of the time.

I never considered college because I knew I could not concentrate and was too shaken to focus. I never even knew I was anxious because I grow up with it; it was my normal state. In the same way I never knew I was unloved until I got it later in life.  My neurosis was ego-syntonic, a total part of me. It was “natural.”  And being normal for a while felt a wee bit not natural.

 I had to get used to using “no.”   It was engraved into a brain that  was dominated by instant impulses, like the shark.  It was the reflex brain at work.   Its prominent mode of operation was instincts and impulses.  Those dominate our lives. It is what I call first-line.  As we ascend the nervous system and approach the present, each developing nervous system adds its weight. Brainstem strongest and dominant.  Then the feeling, limbic system and finally the neocortical level.  Never imagine that the strongest is the neo-cortex processes.  They have no chance against deep brain areas; and that is why anger management,  addiction therapy and mental counseling all take a back seat for control of our learning and behavior. The immediate attack and act before thought is how the brain develops. It is evolution at work and we can never abrogate that biologic law. Luckily, we have found a way to give way to the brainstem and allow it to flourish and find its way in our living. We do not beat it back and imagine it is dangerous. It is only dangerous when repressed.

And one day I went on a speedboat ride with a bunch of kids.  And they starting shouting with glee (I was the captain), Art, can I drive the boat, can I lift the anchor?  Can I steer?   I said listen kids.  No matter what you ask I will always say “YES”.  The parents looked at me and shook their heads.   But those kids never asked to do anything that was dangerous or stupid.  I trusted them completely.  And they learned a lot about boats and sailing.   Instead of a negative experience it was one of great joy.   How can anyone beat that?   YES!