How to Relive Trauma that Happened during Life in the Womb

I have been writing about the long-term effects of our experience while in the womb. Another question arises immediately on the heels of that question. How on earth can anyone relive those events—a mother’s depression or anxiety, her drug and alcohol use, poor diet and lack of proper physical care by the mother?

We need to go back to our evolutionary roots and note that as the brain develops, each new structure or area incorporates and re-represents events imprinted on lower brain levels. Thus, there are spokes radiating out of our primitive nervous system that travel all the way to the neocortex (new cortex) via limbic structures to inform the higher levels of what happened on the lower brain levels, even while we lived our life in the womb. So when we feel helpless in the present—no one can process our application until we fulfill impossible requirements—we can begin to experience that feeling now, which will then take us back via the vehicle of feeling to the origins of that feeling. Once we are locked into that feeling the brain takes charge and we have to make no deliberate effort to go back into our past. We feel helpless in the present but it is not a “normal” feeling; it carries with it the force of the beginnings of the feeling when it might have been a matter of life and death. We seemingly over-react but we are reacting, as well, to our history, which has embedded itself into the feeling. When we relive that feeling completely we have automatically relived earlier origins of the feeling; and we can be liberated from its deleterious effects without once acknowledging what the feeling was all about.

But we must eschew verbal explanations or understanding because the body is speaking an entirely different language. And when high blood pressure or migraine normalizes itself without any voluntary act after reliving that helpless feeling, we can assume that we dipped into ancient origins of the feeling and have resolved aspects of the imprint itself. Although I have observed this kind of reliving resulting in the resolution of serious symptoms, it is not enough because it is considered anecdotal and unworthy of science. Lately, however, there is a plethora of research to bolster the point. K.J.S. Anand is one of the premier investigators of this research. (“Can Adverse Neonatal Experiences Alter Brain Development and Subsequent Behavior?” Biology of the Neonate, 2000: 77. 69-82).

He and his associates have produced a compendium of many research studies on the subject. He begins: It is “suggested that imprinting at birth may predispose individuals to certain patterns of behavior that remain masked throughout most of adult life but may be triggered during conditions of extreme stress.” (page 70) This seems like a direct quote from some of my writings. The reason they are similar is because we are describing the same event, they from a scientific research point of view, and I from a clinical observational post.

Anand observes: “for suicides committed by violent means (firearms, jumping in front of a train, hanging, strangulation, etc) the significant risk factors were those perinatal (around birth) events that were likely to cause pain in the newborn.” (same page) Harmful factors included forceps delivery and other neonatal complications that were significantly correlated with adult suicide attempts. Lack of care just after birth also was heavily correlated with later suicides, especially adolescent suicide attempts. Sedatives and/or drugs given to the mother during delivery was noted to increase the later problem of drug addiction. Karen Nyberg also found that drugs the mother took during pregnancy or at birth led to a greater tendency to drug addiction as adults. In short, experience in the womb has, as we have noted for decades, enduring effects. If we want to know the whys of certain behaviors such as suicidal tendencies or drug abuse, we need to go way back into our remote history to find the answers. What Anand points out is we need to study in humans the long-term changes in the brain from traumas in-utero. We know, for example, that certain kinds of cells (NMDA receptors) are permanently altered as a result of lowered oxygen the womb and during birth. This is particularly true because the prenatal and neonatal periods are marked by very rapid brain growth.

I have written extensively about critical periods; those times in life when irreversible changes occur that we cannot change no matter how hard we try. I no longer think that the major critical period is in infancy; rather, it seems like irreversible changes are most apt to occur during our life in the womb; and secondarily around birth, when we have peak brain growth. It is here that the neuronal circuitry can be altered forevermore. In any number experiments with animals, those who were delivered pain just after birth or who were deprived of a mother’s care just after birth had a greater tendency to drink alcohol. In other words, very early pain persists as an imprint and leads to all manner of deviate behavior. Clearly, for any therapy to be successful we need to address those early imprints; those origins of the deviation.