Showing posts with label baby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baby. Show all posts

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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A Survivors Manifesto

An alarming number of adults in the so-called 'civilised' world have little or no empathy for themselves as infants and small children - most have no recall of those times, which is why that empathy seems rare.... and so this also explains why most parents are at a loss with babies and small infants and therefore tend to try to control them, because they have no empathy, they cannot sense the childs needs... and so controlling the baby feels safer and so they look for INSTRUCTIONS.... and are vulnerable to those who give instructions - yet the body knows and if trusted the adult can learn empathy again and recover....

As a child I was beaten, humiliated, punished, or neglected in one way or another, almost daily, and I HAD to believe that I was wrong and deserved the beating, just to maintain my psyche,  even if I did not understand WHY I was being beaten (or their reasons for it). 

I also had to believe the FAITH they hammered into me and that brought me great fear, for I feared I was sinful, nasty, ugly,

It took a long, long time to lose those beliefs about myself.... to find my true heart, my natural integrity.

I consider myself VERY lucky to have made that journey, and whilst it IS infuriating that so many of my brothers and sisters are still stuck in the beliefs and denial, my REAL anger is directed at all those who ensure that the conditioning continues; for the rest, patience and empathy.....

My story is not at all rare, and comparitively speaking, I was lucky..... the stories I read of other childrens lives make that very clear : my point here to make it clear that many, many people have been conditioned by circumstance and Society, rather than truly loved... and only those who are truly loved, not least by themselves, can resist that conditioning in meaningful ways....

I know what it is like to be conditioned and fearful.

I deeply appreciate all the love and support I have received and continue to receive...

I never urge survivors to speak out, in public, unless they themselves feel ready to do so.... just as I would never push a child to do anything. It's always be...st to wait until the child feels eady.

I do urge survivors to find someone they can confide in, to break the silence for themselves - and I do understand that finding that empathic person can be difficult even frightening.

I tell my story to encourage a deeper understanding of what it is to be a Survivor, for there are so many in this society.

Even though I detest war, and think soldeiry a fools game, I FEEL for those troops who return from active combat duty, the many thousands who can just about cope, the many thousands who don't and who 'fall through the cracks' because those around them do not understand what violent trauma does to a persons soul - the movies do not tell the truth about violence and it's effects, neither will the media -and neither wil the NHS, the Health Service nor Social Services....

So it has to be Survivors who do this, and it has to be those strong enough and in a position to do it, because ALL survivors need to be heard, we need to be held, to be allowed to cry, to scream, to vent for this is an essential part of the healing, no matter how uncomfortable it might be for others....

The wounded experience lies trapped beneath those unexpressed cries and wails, is walled in in an attempt to keep it alltogether, to 'fit in' and that keeps us permanently wounded, closed down, shuit off from the full vitality of life.

That is something that no-one deserves.

The stiff upper lip approach has it's merits in a traumatic situation, with limitations, yet beyond that it becomes a trap, a form of denial and assures that trauma patterns are repeated, in one form or another.

And then there are those who adapt to that societal trauma, whose abuse becomes thier identity, and who inflict abuse without conscience or remorse and become part of the System of Power that drives war, neglect, inequality, abuse.. who often 'succeed' and run banks, corporations and countries.... dangerous people, damaged people, charismatic people..... what of them?

Tony Blair, George Bush, Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Myra Hindly, Ian Brady, Fred West, David Cameron, the various CEOs of Rapacious Corporations, The Pope, the Abuser Priests, Nuns, Men and Women, children even, the torturers, the bullies and beaters and killers amongst us ...... how are we to deal with these people and how are we to avoid the creation of such damaged people in the future?

How are we to deal with the Institutions that are founded in old patterns of abusive Power?

How can we build Institutions that are empathic, and responsive to the needs of us vulnerable human beings, that responds to the needs of the habitat and all that dwell therein?

For it is the case that such people are rarely born, they are the outcomes of Society and Institutional Power as it is.

These are the questions that I muse on, for my childrens sake, for their childrens sake, for yours and all.

I do not have to be perfect to engage thus. I do not have to wait until I have it all sorted out.

I certainly do not have all the answers and I am so glad that there are many good men and women working on these same problems, doing so honestly, with integrity and empathy, and with diligence, day in, day out for entire lifetimes.

I am encouraged that so much is now know and understood of the dyamics of abuse, of the biology of empathy, knowledge that is practical, that replaces belief with action that makes a difference.

What better legacy for our children could there possibly be, better than all the fine buildings, the great works of art, the exploration of space (where no-one human lives...)?

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed". -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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






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Conditioning, the plastic brain and effective change.....

For many years I have watched, initially within myself, then with others, how the conditioning we experience blurs our abilities to co-operate, to seek truthfully and honestly for understanding; I have watched as we 'debate' and exclude rather than share and explore; I have watched as we repeat the basic thoughts we have been most deeply conditioned to think with - such as the man/woman divide based on difference, the misunderstanding of the very nature and depth of Power Relationships because we have adapted to those Power Relationships in early early childhood....

I have watched and seen within myself how fear based rigid thinking undermines my accurate sensing of the world.

I am watching that now in others. I see how it is used in marketing, propaganda and I say this - it works, and it works because those who have not been able to see the fullness of conditioning, of their own conditioning, react in predictible ways that are written deep into their neurology, their physiology by that conditioning.

Informing each other is crucial...

1. Genetics is proven to have very little to do with psychology or character - it's all about how the child is treated - unless we know this and understand it we will repeat it, again and again, and again.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bi6x-4aNmM

2. There are no genetic female/male psychologies - it's all down to conditioning, and how we learn to relate... the brains of baby boys and baby girls are more or less identical...

http://www.thestar.com/atkinsonseries/atkinson2009/article/720004--part-4-newborn-brains-are-similar-so-nurture-makes-the-difference

3. Adverse childhood experiences are absolutely linked to emergent health issues in later life, linked to the emergence of addiction (from shopping to self-medicating), linked to obesity across all Society - most illnesses are pathologies that are the symptoms of abuse, trauma and adverse conditioning and are the results of the imposition of the systems or conditions we are taught or forced to accept and live within...

http://www.cdc.gov/ace/outcomes.htm

5. Neurology is NOT SET IN STONE - our brains, indeed our very nature, is responsive, plastic - but we are conditioned by fear to become reactive, rigid....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FugrcVhi2tg

http://www.eheart.com/cesarean/babies.html - the facts as to the awareness of babies, in utero and at birth and early infancy... and how they are affected by the mothers environment.

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Collapse can to be seen in these terms - the collapse of the mind-set and psychology we have been infected with,not the collapse of Society or basic structures that support life.

As we free ourselves from our conditioning by Power (and that requires 100% ruthless self honesty, as much as honesty with others - we must know our own experience in some detail) Power has less access to our psyches....

As we refuse to replace one set of conditioning with another, we free ourelves - Jones, Icke, and all the other fear makers, those who  promote fear as the way of change or reason for change are part of that conditioning, whether they are aware of it or not.

Long term planning was the key to the success of the hunter gatherer societies...... daily action was taken with the long term in mind... remember that the hunter gatherer society was the most successful mode of human existence in terms of stability, health and psychological well being... what are the qualities of that way of life that made it so?

What are the keys for such effective long term planning? 

My take is that the key that matters most is empathy, biological empathy, that is to say the ability to 'read' the signals that come from the environment accurately and to be able to utilise that information appropriately.

I and many others are making the connections between conditioning and the kind of behaviour which is the outcome of conditioning which reveals the roots of evil and the with that the understanding that human nature is not evil, (live backwards) that in fact our ...biology tends towards empathy as the basis for long term sustainablity of a society living within the natural habitat.

It is the disruption of the natural child-mother bonding processes (which build the neorology of empathy) that is absolutely key ....... hierarchy, power relationships, rigid gender roles all emerge from that lack of empathy because that resultant lack of empathy cuts one off from the ability to FEEL the world, to 'read' the signals of the environment in ways that lead to appropriate life nurturant behaviour, and that is a form of isolation and of course generates fear, and that fear then conditions the next generation.

The fear generates the perceived need to control others..

One can observe this procees by tracing the child-rearing practices of Civilisation and comparing them to the child nurturing practices of the natural societies.
 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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





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