Showing posts with label Big Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Society. Show all posts

Adverse Childhood Experiences present in both immediate behaviur, and long term illness later in life. Punishment does not work.;

Rather a long title, I know.

It's just that this has been rattling 'round my heart recently when I saw a brief article suggesting it's time to make emotional abuse a criminal offence, and the article avoided the subject of how to help parents break cycles of behaviour that are effectively institutionalised in our Society. Including coercive schooling.

And at the same time, I have to look at my own health, and observe the changing health of those older than I, as well as my peers, as it is emerging now I am in my 50s. For sure some of my behaviour - I smoke - is causing me some damage. There are also a number of visible behavioural issues, such as unreasonable anger I might find difficult to control at times, intense political rants at in appropriate moments,  shyness, telling dreadful jokes. 

There's a damaged knee from a fall long, long ago that was never diagnosed, my changing eyesight. 
These and other symptoms are all visible. My friends probably see them clearer than I do.

Q. Are there processes within my body that have been disrupted as a consequence of my earliest experiences such as caesarian birth, incubator baby etc etc.... events that I cannot recall?

This is a question that has been of interest to me for some time, and I have taken steps to explore and to a small degree deal with some of this. There's always more I could do.

As much as I might have expressed my pain, grief, anger and resolution at the time, I certainly have suppressed some of each in turn, buried it, stored it in my body somewhere.

We experience our lives, and if the earliest years are adverse, or there is trauma at any time, that experience is written into our bodies, our minds, our hearts and souls. So too the good stuff. Our response to those experiences can be external or internal. Resolution or just coping. Or enjoying.

It terms of 'just coping' here are two modes of presenting outcomes of a situation where the natural mandated experience are disrupted, over time.

Externalisation : the expression of distress outwards, presenting as anti-social behaviour, aggressiveness, non-compliant children, etc.... visually observable

Internalisation : the holding of that distress within the body, the distress goes inwards, as in one's boo-chemsitry is thrown out of balance as a result of adverse traumatising events, and coping means resolution does not happen, so the feelings of pain, fear, grief remain, stressing the body's systems, eventually presenting as as physical symptoms or a disease state that emerged over time ....usually invisible until the symptoms become noticeable, or cause pain, discomfort or organ failure.

Externalisation : punishment for 'bad behaviour, blame and sanctions.

Internalisation : medication, surgical intervention, suppression of symptoms, make the pain go away, complications and death due to some inherent weakness of patient not any inadequacy of treatment.

Object : to avoid discussing the source of the distress, which if carried out honestly, scientifically and logically would demand that certain Institutional Influences/Powers would have to abdicate, step aside, take the gold watch, retire or just go. Or accept the information and change accordingly, as a mature and psychologically healthy adult no doubt would do.
 1. In truth, ALL adults are parents, for parenting was never meant by biology to be a couple based process, let alone a working couple based process.

2. So we are where we are.....

3. I am looking at two sets of symptoms of distress or trauma, one's that emerge at the time and are visible, and as such, provide a useful starting point for a resolution of the distress or trauma.

3.a Others, less visible, emerge many years later, often as disease states, some of them life threatening, all life debilitating to some degree.


4. A little empathy towards children would go a long, long way to reducing the NHS annual budget on a wide range of conditions.

4.a The use of punishment to control the child, which Institutional Society accepts as necessary. and standard parenting jealously guards as a 'right'. Indeed as corporal punishment was outlawed in public schooling, it was replaced with psychological behavioural modification punishment through highly structured, target based educational processes which stress both teacher and child.

4.b The widespread practice of medication to suppress disease or ill-health symptoms are both qualified with 'it's for your own good'. They are linked.

4.c Psychology, dysfunctional or functional always seeks congruence throughout.


5. The science : The Adverse Childhood Experience Life Survey http://www.cdc.gov/ace/year.htm in brief... there is much, much more solid science on all this, and it all points towards a biological mandate towards empathy, and self empathy as an expression of optimal human health.

6. A good doctor is always trying to ensure he is not needed. Prevention ought be the primary concern of any public health system, the primary drive of any decent physician.

7. I have heard that there is some political movement towards criminalising emotional abuse expressed towards children by parents, and other primary carers. It sounds like punishment..... which we know does not work.

In this, prevention is surely the most important aspect to be concerned with, by a long margin.


Most parents follow the parenting 'style' that Institutional Society suggests, the ideal of the 'normal parent', and most parents will also, as a basic biological process repeat with their own children aspects of their earliest learnings and experiences, much of it unconsciously, because in the biology, the child grows into the psychological state of the parents, and of their world, which in our case is very largely defined by Institutional Power, through Governance, Wars, Economics, Ideology and Religion, and the defenceless child must adapt to that psychology as best he or she can, and some adaptations, or survival strategies the emerge in that situation become 'dysfunctional' psychological and behavioural patterns, many of which are damaging in the long term if they are maintained.


The child cannot be held responsible, and the adult must be held accountable; though within each adult is a child. wounded, fearful, surviving. So the psychology that determined that child's environmental habitat is also linked to the Institutional structure's psychology, and it's behaviours as much as it is linked to the individual parents.

Both share responsibility. Punishment is often a means to an end: one party can avoid it's responsibility in the matter.


That an adult CAN see the harm they could be or are causing, ought to be enough for that adult to choose to stop harming action. That choice is always there, no matter what the person might say.....  no matter who they are, whether they stride across the corridors of power or walk the streets.

So there's this element of choice or will, and of past psychological conditioning, stressful situations predicated by the way Power expresses itself throughout Society, resulting in presenting behaviour that is harmful, and both past and present must be understood and worked with, including incarceration as containment (not as punishment) where the danger to any other person or child is real, and with the clearest intent and mandate to resolve each case, and to prevent future occurrences, through honest education, and practical support, aiming to reduce the incidences across society over time.

Clearly, current punishment paradigms, current consumerist ideology, current understanding of what Governance means in practice, is all working against this potential pathway.

That does not diminish the value of this approach. It enhances it.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

An open letter to the media, the BBC and all others concerned with the issue of child abuse, and in particular concerning the reportage of the Jimmy Saville case….



An open letter to the media, the BBC and all others concerned with the issue of child abuse, and in particular concerning the reportage of the Jimmy Saville case….

To whom it may concern,

The most frequent word being used to describe those who have been abused, harmed or assaulted by Jimmy Saville is ‘victims’, rather than the term ‘Survivors’ which we Survivors ourselves prefer to use.

There is a qualitative difference between the two words – one implies weakness, the other strength.

The etymology of the word ‘victim’ and its link to the word ‘victor’ is interesting, and worth reflecting upon. The victor tends to justify any abuses they perpetrate, or harm they cause, and thus they minimise the meaning of the lived experience of those amongst the ‘defeated’.

Yes, Saddam was a monster – yet did the Iraqi people deserve what was visited upon them by the International Community in the name of removing this monster?

Madelaine Albright’s infamous comment on the sanctions that preceded the removal of Saddam, was that “the price was worth paying – we think the price was worth paying.”  A price paid not by her, not by the US Government, or any other, not even by Saddam, but by the Iraqi people and their children.

There is also the use of the phrase “victim consciousness” which is often used to denigrate those communities and cultures who have been subject to massive and long term trauma and who come forward and seek acknowledgement of their stories as human beings, (rather than the simple and cold historical facts and statistics), from the inheritors of the Powers that traumatised them.

They are asked to ‘get over it’ – ‘ old history, not our ‘fault’, ‘things are different now’, ‘can we please move on’ etc etc….

These phrases are used to deflect honest reflection upon what has happened, and what the long term and present adverse affects are in meaning, and in the lived experience.

Vulnerability is not the same as weakness. One cannot describe the boys and girls assaulted by Jummy Saville as being weak, and ascribe that value of weakness to them as a quality they expressed that led to their abuse. One cannot in all fairness ascribe the value of weakness to those who suffer from the adverse affects of intergenerational trauma. Vulnerability is closer to the truth.

To Survive trauma and abuse most often means to live past the events themselves, scarred and wounded, and to slowly and painfully try to re-assemble oneself so as to continue to live as best one can.

Often this has to be done without adequate support or understanding from those closest to the Survivor, let alone the wider community and Society. This takes a formidable  unacknowledged strength.

Not all Survivors make it, and it’s not through weakness that this happens. It’s through vulnerability, and through that heart breaking sense of abandonment that comes with denial, that comes with the all too common reflexive unwillingness of Society to accept that a pillar of Society could behave in such manner, a refusal to believe the Survivor because it threatens the projected image and self image of what are held to be central tenets or solid Institutions of Society.

”How could someone who did SO MUCH GOOD do so much evil?”

A Survivor would never ask that question in the way the media has framed the reporting of that question. A Survivor would never ask it in that tone of bewilderment.
 The Survivors of Jimmy Saville's abuses are not concerned with the reputation of the BBC, as much as they are concerned with truth, recovery and restorative justice and the protection of present and future children.

So I am calling on all media, and anyone else concerned with these matters, to cease using the word ‘victim’ to describe those who were abused, and to use instead the word Survivor.To attribute strength to those who come forwards, and to those who are unable to come forwards, just for their willingness to continue living and coping with what they have been through.

I would also add that using the word ‘victimisation’ to describe the abusers actions towards the vulnerable is more reliable and accurate. The victimiser alters the reality of the abused. The victimisers is the culprit.

Finally, I note that in all of the reporting, the stories and histories of Survivors appears to be being screened out. This is a grave omission. It cannot, and must not stand if truth, justice and genuine resolution is the intent of those who are writing and acting on this matter. Kindest regards

Corneilius Crowley



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe



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Limbic Imprint and The Emergence of Behaviour and Violent Societies

How Society Normalises Dysfunctional Behaviour.
An optimistic view.

Limbic Imprinting at Birth and The Emergence of Dysfunctional Behaviour

”We come into this world wide-open to receiving love. When we do receive it, as our first primal experience, our nervous system is limbically imprinted with an undeniable rightness of being.”  Elena Tonetti-Vladimirova 

Limbic Imprint is the term used to describe the processes of experience 'writing' the neural networks , the connections within our brain, heart and body during our time in the womb, and in particular during birth, and often in the immediate aftermath of birth.*
That is to say that our rapidly growing neural systems record whatever occurs, and that then becomes the base pattern from which we will evolve. In babies this growth is incredibly rapid, in the region of 200,000 connections per minute being created. Being held in our mother’s loving arms, feeding from her breast and other sensations provide us with a natural sense of bliss and security which forms the neural networks that will be the loving base from which we grow into loving adults.

If our first impressions are anything less than loving (for example, painful, frightening or lonely), then those impressions will imprint as our valid experience of love, and of life itself. It will be immediately coded into our nervous system as the norm, our comfort zone, acting as a surrogate for love and nurturing, regardless of how undesirable the experience actually was.

As adults, we unconsciously, automatically recreate the conditions that were imprinted at birth and through early childhood. Research conducted by the pioneers of prenatal psychology, such as doctors Thomas Verny, David Chamberlain and William Emerson, shows that an overwhelming amount of physical conditions and behavioural disorders are in reality symptomatic of unresolved traumatic gestational experiences during pregnancy and complications during delivery.

This is compounded by how the child is related to as he or she grows. If the child’s symptoms of distress are misunderstood, and treated as ‘bad behaviour’ and subject to sanction, this deepens the problem, the child becomes identified as the problem and will in turn internalise that identification.

Fortunately, not ALL children exposed to this dynamic will be overburdened by it, and many do 'escape' the worst affects, either through their own efforts of if they meet what Alice Miller calls an 'enlightened witness'. However enough do not survive intact, and may become as adults less than empathic, and will be absorbed by the Power structure where they will be 'successful'. Others are afflicted with the symptoms of thier distress, and are demonised by the Power structures and used as scapegoats. All of which, is of course avoidable....

Imposed Societal Values and How They Emerge.

The psychology of any given society is revealed in how that society treats their children. The adult world is created in the womb, the cradle and throughout childhood.

If a child, or adult for that matter, for whatever reason, is traumatised, and is unable to resolve that trauma, they remain in the 'coping strategy' stage, that is to say they will shut down awareness of aspects of their experience and feeling. As survival strategy; coping is a useful temporary strategy, but becomes adverse if extended, and it is this extension of the suppression of vital information (what is alive in the person) that leads to a growing loss of self-empathy, which undermines the development of empathy.

This compounds the fear inherent in traumatic experiences, and leads to an unconscious drive to exert adverse control over others (including the environment). Any adverse control imposed on a natural organism will meet resistance, and that resistance becomes the focus of violence, applied to overcome that natural resistance.

When any individual or group in this condition builds a societal structure, those structures will contain expressions of the unresolved fear and the drive to adverse control. This is how Hierarchically Violent Societies have emerged. Such societies codify their psychology over time, and thus behaviours such as war, concentration of wealth, racism etc become normalised and institutionalised. They are therefore more willing to inflict trauma than other more empathic societies, who are vulnerable because they are less likely to engage in whole sale violence to meet their perceived needs. To heal this dynamic is now the single most crucial work ahead of us. 

Fortunately Nature is With Us.


This dynamic does not affect every child in the same way, and therefore many people do recover to some degree. Were it not so, then we would not notice the costs. There would not be people like you, like me, like the many that are outraged with the harms associated with the current status quo. We would all of us be 100% normalised to the abuse. The urge to grow, to live as an empathic, connected, sensing member of our families, communities as a part of our Earthly environment is perhaps the deepest, most naturally embedded drive of all.

There is also ample evidence to suggest that people afflicted with dysfunctional behaviour can be nurtured in ways that enable them to recover. Thus it is also possible for entire societies. If the will is there. It is a question of making a choice.

The Current Situation


The current situation, of wealth and power disparity, of widespread institutional violence, of environmental degradation with all the costs to real peoples lives associated, is the result of the interplay of the limbic imprint and imposed societal values.

We know all to well what the dry facts and statistics tell us. To change how our Society behaves and operates, we must understand its roots, and learn again how to live without adverse controls on our natural growth. We must address how we treat our children, part of which is personal, resolving how we ourselves were treated as children, and part of which is societal which is where we must engage in peaceful, determined and well informed direct action, collectively, to confront the current situation. They are all of a piece.

 * a similar process also applies in the aftermath of any serious trauma....

Resources :        

http://www.whatbabieswant.org- a well researched and powerful documentary

http://www.birthpsychology.com-web portal for the research of Thomas Verny, David Chamberlain and William Emerson

http://www.alice-miller.com– pre-eminent researcher and writer on the sociological influences on parenting and child 'rearing' and the processes of recovery

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com– award winning teacher, author of the definitive history of Compulsory State Education


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe




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Speech to Rally Trafalgar Square June 4th 2011

This is the text of a speech I was to deliver at the Rally Against Child Abuse, hosted by Truth and Hope, on June 4th, 2011 @ Trafalgar Square. 

I was also asked to deliver a message to the gathering from Kevin Annett, my friend whose pioneering research unveiled to the world the full horror and extent of the Canadian Indian Residential School System, and forced the Canadian Government and those Christian Churches involved in running that system to finally and grudgingly acknowledge what was done in the name of the Canadian tax-payer,  and of 'civilisation'. His work continues, as does mine, with regard to a full and open accounting for these crimes, and a demand that Society address it's profound lack of empathy and it's resultant adverse behaviour.

There was not time enough to do both. I read Kevin's message, and have published the text of the speech here.....

Child protection is many things.

One of the things it is not and never should be is a set of regulations to be followed willy nilly,  so often 'following orders' whilst ignoring the distress that the enforcement of ill-designed bureaucratic rules results in, because they reduce what ought to be a humane interaction to the ticking of boxes, the filling of forms, the application of formulae, the submission of the human being to an order that is un-natural, and ultimately the rejection of the meaning of the lived experience of children and their parents.

Child Protection must be something far deeper than the dry application of the Law, the provision of a Service, and above all it must be humane, empathic and acutely sensitive to the natural needs of the children, the natural needs of families, of parents and of their communities. 

It takes a village to raise a child. Parents MUST BE SUPPORTED in every way possible.

Child protection, if it is to have any meaning, has to recognise a number of key biological realities.

These realities are felt by most mothers, most fathers and not least, well understood by many Scientists researching the biologically mandated developmental realities concerning the consciousness of babies, in the womb, in infancy and throughout childhood development.

Science and Reality meet in best practice. 

Most parents are doing their best. Under the circumstances.

The Reality is this : The Human Child is expecting to emerge into an empathic and nurturing Society.  The Institutions of our Society are neither in great measure. These are the circumstances that mitigate against natural development.

Our Biology is clear: we observe the presence of mirror neurons, which fire the same neural networks that would be required to make the movements that have been observed, that have been seen, and this tells us yet again, that empathy is very much a multi-sensory ability that is innate, intrinsic and absolutely fundamental to the human being. That is to say, that what we experience is written into our physiology, our neurology. The environment in which we grow is of vital importance, and nature has much to offer in this regard. So much to offer.

Empathy is our most basic nature, not fear. We learn best through love. Self empathy is the basis for empathy with others.

The image of mankind as a potentially rampaging, self destructive mass is a fundamental error. Original Sin and The Fall are fables, malign metaphors, and  they do not describe the biological reality at all.

WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE!

We know that love starts with loving oneself, with self-empathy.

What we also know through experience and through developmental Science, that from within the womb, through birth, infancy and childhood, the development of empathy, as is the case for the development of any other aspect of the child, requires certain biologically mandated experiences that nurture that development.

Being treated with empathy nurtures empathy in the child.

There is a multi-sensory bonding, an experiential process of securing one’s sense of self and this is a learning process, one that is biologically mandated, a process which if disrupted leads to pathology. It cannot be stated any clearer than this:

If Society damages the natural empathic child, then Society will create empathically damaged people, who will potentially repeat the cycle. If those people build Institutions, make rules, effectively codifying their own neuroses into the common lore, they will repeat the cycles.

If ANY Society permits these bonding experientials to be disrupted, then that Society is creating the pathologies that ensue from that disruption.

Where is the empathy and nurturance in our Societal Institutions?

And, as we, the Survivors and the distressed, are all too familiar with, it is those people who are harmed and who suffer, who present the symptoms, which we know as symptoms of distress,  which in truth reveal the presence of Societal pathogens, yet which Society labels as disease, or worse, as dysfunctional behaviour to be judged, who are then scape-goated by this exclusive and judgemental diagnosis. 

If the Society itself is not also diagnosed as part of the problem, and then treated accordingly, and that means a change in the behaviour of Power, of Societal Institutions, then those who suffer the most, and reveal the trauma creation that Society is responsible for, are yet again betrayed.

This omission is the essence of institutional cruelty. Society blames the Survivor. It cannot stand. This is why we are here today.

Institutional Care Protocols, Policies and behaviours cause more harm than good. The proof of this is the re-currant intergenerational trauma patterns, transmitted through each successive generation. The wounds of the fathers and mothers are visited upon the children, because the fathers and mothers are not given the healing support they need and because the judgementalism of Social Services and Organised Religion and adversarial family courts prevails.

Thus the question arises.

Is what we, as a Society, are doing truly Nurturant?

Is what is being done to the Survivors, to parents under stress, by the Institutions of Society truly Nurturant?

How can it be considered Nurturant to NOT support parents whose lives may well be influenced by intergenerational trauma patterns, whose lives may well include incredibly difficult circumstances, such as poverty, sudden bereavement, perhaps even severe trauma, circumstances beyond their control and for whom the ensuing symptoms of these difficulties can make a prison even of what was formerly a home.

The evidence is clear: Institutional Care does not work in the best interests of the children when they remove children from their homes, and when they do not support and assist parents who are stressed and under pressure to the extent that is required and is relatively easy and inexpensive to implement?

The National Coalition for the Reform of Child Protection Services in the USA has helped three states avoid removals of children, by providing the kinds of support that works best for families, for children, their parents and ultimately, for Society. Their work shows some of the possibilities. They have saved State Government many millions of dollars, both on frontline care and in terms of outcomes requiring intervention in later life.

Why is the UK Child Protection System so judgemental, so secretive, so ill informed, so far behind the curve on what really works for children, for parents, for communities and ultimately for Society?

Why does UK official policy mis-interpret the truth that whilst neglect and abuse occur, that their presence has more to do with the kind of Society into which people are born and to which they are forced to conform to, than it does the kinds of people who  are born, who grow up in and become parents in a Society that does not support natural empathic parenting. That lack of adequate support fro nurturant parenting eats away at the very heart of what it is to be human, to be a child of life.

Economics, with which most officials are obsessed, is not the measure of a good life.

Why are those influences, that affect so many peoples lives so adversely, left out of the diagnoses of ‘at risk parents’ when it is OBVIOUS that these influences are very much part of the causality and indicate the societal pathology which these parents reveal as they present these symptoms?

Who benefits from this persistent refusal to admit a holistic diagnosis?

Is that refusal not irrational, or even insane, in and of itself?

Do we not meet this irrationality in our lives, every day?

Are we not the living witnesses to this cruelty, we who have suffered as children and continue to suffer as adults the adverse affects of this Institutionalised, legalised, codified lack of empathy, through no personal weakness within ourselves?

Are we not correct to demand that justice be fully served where real harm and loss has  occurred, and are we not also to make of our efforts a call, a cry from the heart, to place empathy at the very core of how our Society relates to all children?

Who will join this call?

We ask : Will you join this work?

Big Society? Think again.

It's an intentional scam - Cameron came across the www.powerinquiry.org back in 2006 which revealed a few key points - that voter apathy was a myth, that what actually was occurring was that more and more people saw the way the politicians sought a mandate then did the pretty much what they wanted , broke promises, had their noses in various troughs, launched wars no-one wanted, suppressed democractic dissent, bailed out bankers for their gambling debts, etc etc and thus tpublic rust in politicians had plummetted , along with live membership of policial parties, whilst involvment in social community works of all kinds increased as people started to do more for their communities at the grass roots by themselves , for themselves- which built in a growing sense of independence and strength.

It revealed in some detail that people were, in general, quite capable of making decisions on matters that affect their lives and were now desirous of a political democracy that conferred that power (the means to make the decisions on how to use taxes to support their communities on issues that directly affected their lives) onto them, away from the central, and finally, that the people had thought long and hard about how to do this (hence the 47 reccomendations of The Power Inquiry) and had come up with viable changes and methods to do this.

In other words Big Society was up and running.... and was therefore seeen as direct threat to centralised Power...

Cameron, Menzies Campbell and Ed Milliband attended the Power Inquiry Conference and made flowery overtures to the assembled people, nearly 600 strong, from all over the UK. I was there, I heard the speeches. I attended the break-out sessions. I read The Power Inquiry Report, cover to cover. I saw what could be.

Two days later, media reported the politicans as saying that the reccomendations of the Power Inquiry were 'impractical'. And that was that. End of.

Camerons Big Society is an attempt to privatise that constituency so as to undermine it. This includes ,of course, amongst other things, forcing smaller local grass roots charities to close, handing their 'services' over to larger charities whose purse strings are controlled by Corporate and Government funding, the privarisation of the NHS under the false guise of 'improving services' - using that wanton mantra of the market being the  natural driver of excellence.

He agrees with Thatcher. There is no such thing as Society - or rather, he and those he works with, dines with,  would  prefer there was no such thing as Society as a responsive, intelligent and empathic collective, but rather individuals, whose qualities, flawed or otherwise are entirely of their own making, scrambling over each other for a slice of the pie. He's trying to dismantle what has been built up at the grass roots.

Which is why this week, Cameron has gone to Egypt, with a defence sales team on tow.


"Yasmin Khan, senior campaigns officer at the charity War on Want, called for the Prime Minister's "shameful" and "ill-timed" trip to be cancelled. She said: "It is deplorable that David Cameron is seeking to exploit the crisis by promoting sales of weapons and torture equipment to the region." 

Sarah Waldron, campaigns co-ordinator at Campaign Against the Arms Trade, said: "The UK Government prioritises the interests of arms companies – it makes a mockery of claiming to have a rigorous approach to arms sales. People in the Middle East are dying in an attempt to get democracy and yet Cameron and other ministers are still selling weapons used to oppress them."

People power must be thwarted at every turn. Directly, or indirectly.

If you haven't already read the Power Inquiry, I suggest you do so at the soonest opportunity.


We need to know what is possible and what has been rejected by the politicians. 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe











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