On Surviving

The central nervous system receives input from outside but also, importantly from insides, as well.  It processes and stores information.  So why exactly are we neglecting the nervous system that processes and contains inner input in therapy?  Is it because we only can treat what we see, and since we don’t see what’s inside we imagine it doesn’t exist?  Or is it because some  of us live in “our heads” and cannot believe in  a life  deep in the interior; a life in the underground; in the zone of the interior?  This is the system that responds to stress and threat.  The system that cares and feels. It is the system of need and deprivation; why ignore it?  It is the system that remembers early hurt and deprivation; of suffocation  at birth and of not being touched right afterwards.  It is the system that needs.

  It is also the system that begins its connections with other brain circuits to help  us mature and make  us whole.  It is the system that begins the maturation of the blood and circulatory systems.  All detours are registered here, and here is  where  answers  lie to early hurt and lack of emotional care and touch.  How on earth can we ignore the key system that  remembers what  must be remembered; the system  that fully informs us of what we underwent very early in our lives?  It is the system that speaks of epigenetics and how genes and their expression were permanently changed.  It is the system that forms our personality, that shapes  how we respond to others  in life;  whether we battle on  or give up easily, our future passivity or aggressivity.  All this is set down so early but it is there for the looking; all we have to do is ask and seek.  How in therapy can we not believe in all this and go on treating only the here and now?    The early traumas take on and store early indifference and neglect by parents; it is early on that some neurons settle in the brainstem while  others find their home in the neo-cortex to make  us top heavy with intellect and prevent easy access to our feelings.  Don’t we want to know how mother’s taking drugs and alcohol caused the detour of key neurons  and changed our bodily functions?  Doesn’t this count when we are trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it?  Don’t we want to know how experience  in the womb reduced the brain’s dendrites and changed inner communication?  This resulting in learning problems and  ADD?  We want to know how experience changed the brain  to  take in  less input and  therefore to be easily overwhelmed with too much stimuli or input.  We must know that all the key major changes have taken  place before we play in the schoolyard.  Even before we have words to describe our problems.

  Our first major phase of development lies in the brainstem where we organize  terror, rage and impulsivity.  From this later  comes feeling and then thoughts.  There is a whole world of living before the top level even exists.  And a whole world of hurt, too.  It is the lowest  level  that impairs heart function  and is the precursor for later cancer. It is the site for organizing later diabetes and high blood pressure.  So when we wonder about an early heart attack or stroke we need to look for answers in the right places.  How is it possible to understand any of this and at the same time ignore its existence?  It  means not only ignoring  months  and years of personal development  but millions of years in the development of mankind.  We musn’t forget that our brain neurons migrate and how and where they go depends on early experience.  And  it is  early experience that ultimately determines brain growth.

  This reminds me of the giant painting of  a nude  and there  is  a  little old lady looking  only at the flowers around her.  We cannot afford to look away and still help people.  Cannot afford to not examine the critical period and not  to understand the importance of that period  for  our development.  How love at fifteen cannot ever, ever make up for its lack at age minus eight months.    And while  I am at it, there is a significant meeting going on by august mental health professionals who are renewing the diagnostic psychiatric manual.  And guess what? They are completely ignoring those key lower levels of our existence.

  When we examine animal life and see  how important  the critical period is, how  those not licked or  nuzzled suffer forever, we know how critical the  critical period is.    How the  brain shrinks  when love  is missing and reduces in size. How the brain is  denser with  early love.  Untouched newborn animals (and humans too) die much earlier.  There is a premature atrophy  of the brain.  It is becoming clear that early lack of love affects attachment  and impacts the  right brain that deals with attachment.  So  what is  it all about  Alphie?  Love Love Love.