We’re made for attachment. You need a secure connection in your childhood to “feel and deal” with the stresses of life. If your primary caregiver had an insecure home environment growing up then you probably got the same. You can’t give what you don’t have! But if your parent, caregiver, etc had a secure connection then they could give you the same.

So mom is stressed that she can’t pay rent. You come inside from playing with a hole in your new shoes. Crack. Pop. Bam. “You tore your new shoes! Money doesn’t grow on trees. You’re not playing outside the rest of the week!” You run to your room and hear your mom crying at the kitchen table. Later, you overhear her say to her sister she doesn’t know how she can afford to take care of you like she wants. The cement drys. The imprinted lied is hardened. You internalize a message that she didn’t intend to communicate. “It’s all your fault. You’re such a burden, etc.” Her inability to feel and deal with life’s stresses and keep a secure connection with you set you on a hidden life-long path of “look(ing) for love and evidence that you’re worth keeping”. (Points for working in a lyric from the new Pearl Jam album)

You may not remember the explicit details of that or a thousand other little exchanges. But when you’re overwhelmed with painful emotion that you can’t process, it gets stored implicitly in your brain. Until the emotion is detoxified, the past becomes the present as your body feels what you felt when you ran to your room even though you’re 20 years older. The above example is mild. Many experienced much more traumatic (large T) events as a child. Some experienced many little (small T) traumatic events that added up. Sadly, there are many that got both. (290-291)

The impact of these events are not able to be processed by your undeveloped hippocampus so the memory is stored emotionally. Later she will suffer from “anxiety, depression, and negative thinking” (284) that she won’t be able to “snap out of” on her own. The pathway to healing is a more powerful experience in the present care of another that will allow them to process what happened and discard the negative.

Breaking it down:

1. Your childhood experience most likely contained events that were mildly or strongly beyond your ability to process.
2. If your immediate caregiver didn’t have a secure environment (unless they experienced the healing and processing of their wounds) they could not assist you in processing and may have caused some/most of your disturbance.
3. The place that was supposed to be a shelter from the storm became the center of the storm (great quote from a friend) and your overwhelmed emotions stored these memories implicitly.
4. These implicit memories guide your thoughts and their following actions beneath the surface of your awareness.
5. The path to these implicit memories is non-verbal. The empathetic, non-judgmental, nurturing care of another can give you safety to explore your feelings and ultimately re-experience these moments as you find healing from the lies they imprinted on your soul. (freely apply this principle beyond the human to human interaction but instead the human to divine…have fun swimming)

Thoughts?

*Unless noted differently quotes are from Healing Trauma. (Click on my amazon link if you want to purchase.)

For over 10 years I’ve been a student of transformation. From leadership to self-help to psychology to biblical studies I’m constantly looking at the angle of why we don’t change as much as we want and how to facilitate transformation. For the next series of posts we’ll be diving deeply into this subject matter looking specifically at the newest research on the brain.

We’ll come at this from the angle of mental health showing how Scripture affirms the newest research and widen the application to our lives.

The starting point is what our brain needs. Mental health is the ability to process life, the good and bad, framing what happens in the context of our larger life story. We keep what is beneficial to remember and learn from life’s events while discarding the useless and negative information. If we haven’t discarded the negative information it manifests itself in our inability to process life through negative talk and thoughts that constantly occur in our brain. This negative information is stored implicitly and drives our self-defeating behavior. We’re typically not aware that these thoughts occur.

How do we develop the ability to process?

“(T)he mother shapes the infant’s stress coping systems” (120)* What that means is that your brain is given the the hardware to process life but an attachment to a caregiver or parent that soothes your troubled emotion is the software that makes it happen. Your hippocampus processes the stress. And that doesn’t start working on it’s own until to two or three. And if you don’t get the software from an early age your hippocampus’ development will be stunted, thus stunting your ability to process life and it’s stresses.

See, “(t)he baby’s brain is not only affected by these interactions, its growth literally requires brain-brain interactions and occurs in the context of a positive relationship between mother and infant.” (Journal article in Development and Psychopathology, 8, 59-87.) Your brain has to have to an attachment to develop properly. The baby’s mind requires the parent’s mind to form the neural circuitry that allows it to self-regulate in stress and process life. Another way of saying it, “Experiences shape the brain connections that create the mind and enable an emerging sense of “self” in the world” (10)*

Implications:

• Experiences, especially our earliest, are the most important determining factor in the development of our ability to thrive in the midst of life’s demands and hurts.
• You were made for attachment to someone who is patient, supportive, empathetic, and nurturing.
• Most didn’t get that in life but we can find healing and learn to thrive in a relationship with a caregiver who emulates these characteristics and gives us a safe place to learn new life skills.
• At it’s deepest level this means we were created for attachment and that attachment is most fulfilled in Jesus. We can be attached to an intimate, patient, non-judgmental, accepting, and affirming love that will literally re-wire our brain with new neural connections. That is healing!

We had to go deeper and more technical in this post. Hang on, we’re just getting started and I promise to help make the journey of learning this as smooth as possible.

Thoughs?

*Unless noted differently quotes are from Healing Trauma. (Click on my amazon link if you want to purchase.)

Recently I finished the last of my seminars for the doctoral degree I’m pursuing at Ashland Seminary. Now comes the project and writing. After a year and a half of work I’ll be done, assuming I pass the necessary hoops. And frankly, while that matters, it doesn’t compare to the education I’m receiving.

I am learning the deepest truths about why we don’t change in spite of so much effort and how we can change without striving.

Formational Counseling is built on three disciplines. First it is anchored in Scripture. Second it is verified by developmental psychology and the most cutting edge research of the brain barriers to change and how to position for transformation. Understanding the latter two disciplines opens up the first into 3-D color like I’ve never seen in over 10 years of theological research.

I’ll be doing a series of posts on what we’ve learned about the brain and what that means for our personal transformation. Get ready you’re about to be “lit up”.