Another Look at Reliving

Let’s go over this again so we can make sure that reliving is important in the therapy for all kinds of neuroses. Neurosis means that there is an early traumatic input that alters function and behavior; not one or the other but both. That is, there is pain and denial of need that overwhelms normal functioning and causes a diversion. We are no longer normal; things go wrong neurologically, biochemically and behaviorally. And of course to cure we need to normalize the whole system, not just behavior or biochemistry.

That in a tiny nutshell is the story of neurosis. We are no longer ourselves; we are re-routed in function. To get back to ourselves we have to re-establish function in every aspect. Not just behavior.

And when we are diverted and rerouted, there are marks that leave their traces; epigenetic marks. For example, if we are loved and hugged and touched a lot there are changes in the brain where methylation patterns are changed. The function of the gene is changed and how we then behave is diverted. The brain has “borrowed” part of the methyl group and produced alterations in how genes are expressed or repressed; shut down or opened up. And this changes us in profound ways. Our personality becomes different; we can be more open or closed off; more depressed or anxious depending on what genes do what. But it is not genetic; it is epigenetic, how life impacts us. How experienced changes us. It is not just in the genes; it is in experience. Don’t go looking at the genes alone; it is not there. They are the result of experience.

Now those marks or traces are embedded and can follow us throughout life. They form the substrate on how further experience impacts us. So with lots of love we have a different system than a deficit amount of love. And a different brain. And a different focus and attention span. All this right after birth. And it can spell a chronically aggressive or passive baby and child. The difference between a heavily allergic child who spends her life in emergency rooms, and a normal child. Above all, it sets the stage for a child who does well in school and another who fails. You mean all this from events in life before birth? Exactly. Love means altering those immune cells and making them stronger. No love means the opposite.

OK so now we have those marks, methylation which foretells of a life to come and how it will be lived. How do we change all that? We need to revisit those early experiences, those without words, go back and redo them. Change history and their traces. We need to undo the damage and that means slowly demethylizing. One experience at a time; or one experience over many times. We need to find how the system was detoured and put it back on track, literally. This happened because pain installed itself and forced change. A mother who was on coffee or who was constantly on tranquilizers changes the baby’s system. He cannot slow down because the anxious carrying mother has caused a more speedy system in her offspring. And this can be measured; the amount of methylation can be observed and changed. That is meaningful progress. It informs us about altering neuroses. And when allergies disappear we have supporting data. And when sexual deviation goes away we have even more key data. And above all, when the telomeres lengthen and we live longer that is critical information. Neurosis, in short, is a global affair, not just one behavior or one symptom.

But isn’t this what medicine today is about? Lowering blood pressure, giving allergy medication. Restructuring behavior. It is called “whack-a-mole.” Every time a symptom shows up just whack it back.
And don’t ask where it all came from? It is obviously a “brain disease.” Experience takes a back seat as we slither down into the depths and minutia of the brain seeking answers that do not exist there and never will.

But we are the dealers in experience because we have seen what experience does to us, especially very early pre-verbal experience. If one sees one Primal one knows for all time how crucial experience is in the scheme of things. It is rarely a brain disease; that is concocted by those who fiddle around in neurons and synapses and do not see the brain reacting to experience. If we leave out experience we are bereft of what can give us answers. We see only the end result and miss half of the puzzle. It is like looking at diabetics and never know what they eat. If we leave out the first three years in an orphanage can you wonder that we can never know what the matter is. Thinking it is a brain disease is the result of another more serious disease: solipsism.

How Do You Harm a Fetus?

 You harm anyone, no matter the age, by depriving them of their biologic needs. So you abuse a fetus by not recognizing her needs. And what are they? We can tell because we have seen those needs in action in therapy sessions, and the screaming and agony when they go unfulfilled. We do not have to theorize about them. If we do not know them then there will be deprivation and harm. We see the terrible impact when the baby is left alone after birth, and is not held, caressed or touched. We see the pain and the result. Further, in later reliving, we see its lifelong effects: the inability to be alone, the nagging emptiness of not being with someone, the need to constantly connect either personally or on the phone. All to keep that basic aloneness away.

 We can see how the pains pile up and accumulate reaching inordinate heights, and the symptoms that issue from that; aching stomach, migraines and high blood pressure. Further, we see in the reliving that once that terrible aloneness and isolation has been felt, so much changes both psychologically and biologically. And we also know that we don't get to those imprints until months into the therapy.  The earlier the pain the more time it takes to reach, as it should be since the more remote the event the more painful it will be. And from what I have seen, the imprints from just after conception cannot be seen or often even imagine but they set down their seeds in the earliest formation of cells. And those are the most difficult to find and the most difficult to conceptualize and treat, but they may be behind schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and some cancers. These may be the deepest imbeds, the most remote and ineffable memories engraved in the primitive developing cells. We look at them after decades of agitation and try to decipher their causes and how to deal with them.  But we are long after the fact, and that is the problem. The fetus is deprived, first of all, through irresponsible diet by the mother, and then most importantly, the mother is chronically anxious and revs up the baby unrelentingly. It is this chronic input, un-contained and un-circumscribed that does its damage. It never lets up, and the baby's resources can no longer cope. This is the harbinger of later disease. It is not one fixed event in time that does the damage; it is the unrelenting adversity that does it.

 But when we get the perfect trifecta: fetal damage, birth damage and infancy harm, there is little doubt that we have a child whose life will be cut short. Depriving parents tend to be that way all along the child's development. One way we can predict how long that child's life will be is by the length of her telomeres, the longer the better for longevity. The mother's stress level shortens her telomeres and, I assume, that of the fetus as well. Your projected lifespan is already set inside the womb. That is where the great early harm takes place; a fetus who has not way to escape the harm but sets there and takes it, day after day. Children who grow up in orphanages have very short telomeres. And that tendency goes on into adult life. It does not have to be in institution; a divorcing mother can suffer continuously and over stimulate the baby. And we know that the higher the stress hormone level, cortisol, the shorter the telomeres. Worse, those who had shorter telomeres in childhood could often count on diseases such as cancer in adulthood. Three times more likely to develop pancreatic cancer. And this, I believe, begins during womb life and sets the stage of arcane and recondite illness later on. So telomere length is a good index of disease later on. Those with chronic shorter telomeres were far more likely to end up Alzheimer’s. The point is that those mothers who were heavily stressed during pregnancy had shorter telomeres, which finally affected the offspring.

Thus the remote life endangering events are the very imprints that become life endangering in adult life. It is a memory of near death that again can put you near-death later on, so long as that memory is not relived and extirpate from the system. Stress, or deprivation of need, which is the same thing, imprints a molecular mark that trails us for life. That is the culprit we must deal with.
And that is the culprit that is so evasive because it is of such early provenance. Few of us can imagine that time-span. Few of us can investigate and see the fetal imprint, yet it is there before our eyes if we know how to look at it.

So we ask patients about their childhood, and usually go not further. We leave out real basic causes and content ourselves with what may be obvious. It is the non-obvious that is the killer.