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Walking 

‘Ο ήλιος σκάει μέσα μας κι εμείς κρατάμε την παλάμη στο στόμα έντρομοι’ Οδυσσέας Ελύτης

‘Για να πατάς στέρεα στη γη, πρέπει το ένα πόδι σου να είναι έξω από τη γη’ Οδυσσέας Ελύτης

‘Kiss the Earth with your feet’  Thich Nhat Hanh

Αs I was walking by the sea my attention was caught by the orange-crimson sun that was setting and the shifts of colour and clouds in the sky for a while, and then I drifted into thoughts about what to make for dinner and if I needed to get anything from the market. Then I pondered on the memoir I had just finished by Ariana Neumann*. It’s a Holocaust related story of her ten year quest to know more about her father, his family and early life in Europe.  She writes ‘My father left the world of which he seldom spoke as a riddle for me to unlock…… The boxes held a jigsaw puzzle for me to reconstruct, with pieces just large enough to allow a sense of the theme. But there were also missing parts, fragments that I had to find to complete the picture.’

The book traces her journey from her own childhood in Latin America, where her father had built a prosperous life as an immigrant to her father’s death and the beginning of her journey back in time and in history to reclaim her father’s past, and ultimately, parts of herself and extended family unknown to her. She covers the period prior to the deportation of her grandparents and other relatives to camps and talks about the culmination of events and aggression as a constructed political strategy. She writes: ‘The first tier had been to exclude the Jews from society, the second to concentrate them as a segregated temporary work force in places like Terezín, and then, finally, to deport them to extermination camps further east.’  In the book we witness how throughout the thirties people were gradually deprived of legal rights and subjected to systematic public humiliation and intimidation. They were made, for example, to scrub the streets with their toothbrushes or consume grass like animals. They lost their right to vote and were banned from state-sector jobs in government, law, farming, publishing, journalism and the arts. And even before the official decree that banned Jews from schools and universities her uncle had received a letter informing him that he must leave college.

Today in our democracies and societies we talk about social exclusion as the process in which people are blocked from or denied full access to rights, opportunities and resources that are normally available to members of another group, and which are fundamental to social integration.  Even though laws protect many of these rights, deprivation and alienation resulting from social exclusion connected to social class, skin color, sexual orientation, appearance or age, religion or non religion, gender, ethnic origin, educational status, childhood relationships, political opinions or a combination of the above, take place. However, we tend to forget that many terrible things are hatched over a long stretch of time, and this is true both at a collective level and at an individual. And then maybe a global health crisis arises and we are shaken out of our trance and reminded of our deep interdependence, and that our own health and safety are inherently dependent on others’ well being and the health of our planet.

Meanwhile, as I was lost in all this thinking the road got busier and I realised that I wasn’t paying much attention to life around me. Walking is usually a habituated action that requires little concentration and it is easy to slip into a semi conscious state of walking. So, I left my political musings for later and turned to being mindfully aware of each step, my breath and bodily sensations, as well, as the magnificent sky, the sounds of nature and vehicles, and those around me.

Below is the poem, A Walk, by Rainer Maria Rilke that came to my mind as I was writing this today

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far beyond the road I have begun,
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has an inner light, even from a distance-
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

* Ariana Neumann, 2020, When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains

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The power of connectedness

Quote from The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook by Bruce D. Perry)

“Human beings fear what they don’t understand. The unknown scares us. When we meet people who look or act in unfamiliar or strange ways, our initial response is to keep them at arm’s length. At times we make ourselves feel superior, smarter or more competent by dehumanizing or degrading those who are different. The roots of so many of our species’ ugliest behaviors—racism, ageism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, to name just a few—are in this basic brain-mediated response to perceived threat. We tend to fear what we do not understand, and fear can so easily twist into hate or even violence because it can suppress the rational parts of our brain.”

In today’s post I’m sharing a link to a podcast I listened at: https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast-childhood-trauma-with-dr-bruce-perry/  hosted by Dr Rick Hanson and his son, Forrest, and Dr Bruce Perry, who is a leading expert on childhood trauma. His clinical research and practice focus on examining the long-term effects of trauma in children, adolescents, and adults, and on how traumatic events in childhood change the biology of the brain. He is an author and has also received awards for the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) , which has been integrated into clinical and child protection settings.

The key topics explored in this podcast are the reasons why childhood trauma is so uniquely impactful, the systems of the brain that play a role in the construction of a traumatized system, the factors that can ameliorate the impact of traumatic events and the power of connectedness. In his book The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories…….. Dr Perry writes “The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.”

Summarily, Dr Bruce says that “The development of the brain is very, very front-loaded. Even in the first nine months in utero there’s explosive growth. After we’re born, we’ve got a pretty big, intact brain. But it’s still very undeveloped.”  During the  first years of our life brain volume and cognitive function increase at an explosive rate, and so, there’s no doubt that childhood maltreatment leads to changes in brain structure and function. He highlights the massive significance of the first two months of life on one’s future experience. Dr Bruce talks about three key neurotransmitters: norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, which are fundamental to brain function, and essentially, manage everything from our breathing to our heartbeat, learning and concentration levels, to sleep, appetite and pleasure. They are also involved in the body’s fight-flight responses; therefore, when these systems become dysregulated or over potentiated by a developmental insult, they can impact all the areas they influence.

Another important thing that was highlighted in the talk is that even “low-grade” stress, like inconsistent, unpredictable parenting, being a minority student, housing or food insecurity, bullying, and so on, when activated in chaotic ways over a long period of time, will eventually lead to the same point of functioning as if you had a capital T trauma. Neuroplasticity, the mechanism by which the brain changes over time by repeated experience is supercharged in childhood. Consequently, when there is enough stress and trauma our fight-flight response is activated constantly. Over time, enough stress can change the regulatory set point of the brain network, and when acute adaptive states and defenses persist over time, they can become maladaptive traits.

One of the key messages of the discussion is that ‘The best predictor of how you’re doing in the present isn’t our history of adversity, it’s our history of connectedness” and how positive relationships can lead to good outcomes and ameliorate developmental vulnerabilities. This point is supported by research that has found that a strong relationship with at least one person was a major predictor on whether at-risk children became effective adults.

Dr Bruce’s Neurosequential Model of Theraputics is also described. This model helps professionals understand the level of developmental functioning a person is currently at, and then targets this level of development with a series of therapeutic activities and interventions that are developmentally reasonable for the particular individual. They mentioned that because the brain processes information in a sequential way the reactive, regulatory and more primitive part of the brain processes information before the information reaches the neo-cortical areas of the brain.

Finally, they discussed the top down mechanism of CBT work and how when children or adults are too distressed and highly aroused their cortical abilities are compromised, and thus, other modalities like art therapy, somatosensory approaches could help regulate one’s physiology first, before CBT interventions are used. Finally, Dr Hanson talked about  the value of many small therapeutic moments throughout the day, and that similarly, to how many moments of small t traumas build up over time, likewise, many moments of repair can also build resilience, soothe and make a difference in one’s well being.

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The taming vs Good enough holding      (Edited)

“… an environment that holds the baby well enough, the baby is able to make personal development according to the inherited tendencies. The result is a continuity of existence that becomes a sense of existing, a sense of self, and eventually results in autonomy.” (From Home Is Where We Start From: Essays by a Psychoanalyst by D. W. Winnicott)

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse.  ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’ (From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams)

 

 

 

Also, I’d like to share an article with the title The Midlife Unraveling by Brene Brown, imbued with humor, on the serious and painful business of the midlife unraveling, which I know from experience is a lot of things and often encompasses a spiritual awakening of sorts, a waking up to more reality, a need to feel suppressed emotions and unspent grief and a reclamation of aspects of one’s self.

Brene Brown writes ‘Many scholars have proposed that the struggle at midlife is about the fear that comes with our first true glimpse of mortality. Again, wishful thinking. Midlife is not about the fear of death. Midlife is death. Tearing down the walls that we spent our entire life building is death. Like it or not, at some point during midlife, you’re going down, and after that there are only two choices: staying down or enduring rebirth.’

The tearing down and rebirth pains are only yours to endure. Nobody can feel the grief and cry the tears for you. It can be brutal. Like a boxer you have to walk into that ring alone and meet all that you have denied, forgotten, buried, lost, suffered. They say that boxers do not only face their opponents in the ring, but also themselves and that boxing forces oneself to look deep within to discover one’s true self. Maybe, I don’t know much about boxing, neither do I like watching it, though I do admire the presence, speed, stamina and skill that it requires. Only you have no padded gloves and you don’t fight what you find there, you see, feel, remember, understand and embrace over and over – because we are built in layers we heal and understand in layers.  You can read the passage at:  https://brenebrown.com/blog/2018/05/24/the-midlife-unraveling/