Larry Davis, a local business new thought leader, and I recently were discussing emotional self-awareness, the lynchpin of emotional intelligence, and during the course of our discussion he directed me to one of the most profound books I’ve ever read, The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, written by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. The book focuses on children whose brain function was severely damaged by early childhood abuse or trauma.
The story takes us from the 1980’s when very little was understood about the profound damage that early childhood trauma caused in disturbed brain function, through three decades of tremendous discoveries and heartening success in diagnosing and treating the root causes of many childhood behavioral problems and accompanying physical and psychological disorders.
The message to each and every one of us is that almost nobody totally escapes the effects of childhood traumas. Most often these overwhelming traumatic events are perpetrated by adults and parents who themselves were traumatized as youngsters. Often traumas are inadvertently and unintentionally visited on children by dysfunctional family systems and our profound ignorance about the development needs of children.
Brain science tells us that cortisol, endorphins and a whole host of other hormones effect up to 50% of the physiological development of a fetus in utero. This is in itself a devastating discovery owing to how little is done even today to help women have happy and peaceful pregnancies.
Once born, an infant’s brain develops in well-understood stages. The brain stem develops most during the first two years after birth with its focus on building connections around sensory experiences – sights, sounds, smells, touch. Also, the developing lower brain involves emotional control centers. If there is neglect, emotional development will be hindered as will be sensory development, and emotional trauma may cause emotional processing in the brain to become hyper-active. The limbic system and the “fight or flight” functions may be disturbed and exaggerated.
From ages two to four, language, logic, working memory and math propensities and decision-making will develop more as the cortex, prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex all are developing more. Neglect or trauma will adversely affect development in these processes as well.
While this is extremely simplistic explanation of brain development, my purpose is to explain that neglect or traumatic experiences occurring during critical stages of brain development will result in underdevelopment or overdevelopment of critical brain functions. The younger a child is when such neglect or assaults occur, the more pronounced and severe will be the disturbances.
We know that neurons, brain cells, that are unused and undeveloped simply die. Even with insightful interventions, critical brain functions can be impaired permanently.
Further, at any age extreme trauma or deprivation, whether intentional or unintentional, will cause humans to repress or suppress the emotions connected to the events and this repression-suppression will filter perceptions of life events from that point forward.
As I said in the opening paragraphs of this article, nobody escapes totally the negative effects of childhood trauma’s, deprivation or neglect. I’ll give one example about my life, but virtually everyone I know has stories of their own.
I was developing in utero when my father lost his job. It was a high-paying job which he needed to support my mother, my brothers and me (soon-to-be), my mother’s parents who lived with us, and my dad’s mom in Georgia. The timing of my conception simply added another layer of stress to the family dynamic, and my mother was worried and anxious during her pregnancy with me.
My grandmother was a terribly angry woman who despised my grandfather and my father, for reasons I never knew. She spewed her hatred throughout the household. My grandfather retreated into dementia, and my father disappeared into work. My mom was the sweetest soul and yet was always on edge with her mother’s judgment looming.
I have enjoyed a healthy, successful and enjoyable life. Yet I know I bathed in this emotional cauldron from birth until my grandmother died when I was ten. I grew up with behavioral patterns of conflict avoidance and lack of self-worth that I didn’t uncover until my late forties, at which time I began to disassemble those difficult patterns. It still took years to purge them. Even now remnants remain.
I know my life would have been even happier and more productive if I could have avoided or purged these emotional blocks earlier in life. It is a certainty that virtually everyone has these unconscious limitations (beliefs, perceptions, expectation) to some degree. Evidence of our collective emotional and mental distress is everywhere. I’ll give one example. Our closest relationships are in shambles. Divorce rates hover around 60%, and another 35% of married couples claim they stay in their marriage for reasons other than love. Less than 10% of marriages today are truly successful in a traditional sense.
Almost all of us could substantially surmount many serious blocks to our happiness and success if we were aware of these restraints, were willing to open to our greater potential and commit to doing “whatever it takes” to grow beyond these limitations.
When I was discussing The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog earlier in this article, I mentioned that many discoveries have been made over the last few years in successfully treating these traumatized children. We have experienced tremendous success in our coaching work using similar discoveries to uncover and eliminate frustrations that hold our clients back needlessly. People are living less than the best lives they dream of simply because they don’t know what’s wrong. And because they don’t know what’s wrong, they do nothing about it.
We can change that working together.
By the way, we are offering a free report, “Success For All, The Certain Path To Fulfillment”. This astonishing report is a summary of the best experiences of Dr. David Hawkins, a highly talented psychotherapist and exceptionally successful businessman. Simply click here to download it.
As Gandhi said, “The difference between was we do and what we are capable of doing would serve to solve most of the problems of the world.”
Regards,
Tom Searcy, BBC
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