Reading this book has honestly been life-changing. It has allowed me to locate my organism’s (mind-body) relational dysfunctionality within a framework of understanding. Allowing me to better understand myself as a whole, care for myself, and move forward in the right directions for healing. It really should be mandatory reading for all mentally disordered people and parents in general.
Without the goodwill of adults, babies could indeed die. In this sense, experiences that would not be a matter of life and death for an
p168 – This really clarifies that even basic neglect can trigger a physiological trauma response in a baby – which then becomes neurologically encoded.
adult may well be experienced as such by a child. If the
mother or carer so much as goes out of sight, there is a possi-
bility that the child could be attacked or injured without her.
Equally, if she is not disposed to protect the child, he is
exposed to danger. Trauma as a confrontation with mortality
in some form is in some ways then much more likely in child-
hood than in adulthood.
Attachment literature has made it clear that children
p173 – voices arise in response to a responsive audience. Without a responsive audience, no voice arises – no psyche arises.
develop working models of one’s self with
another person; models of interaction between people, not
static internal images of ‘mother’ or ‘father’. This means that
the inner pictures that we draw on to guide our behaviour
are images that conjure up how it feels to be with another
person. If the other person consistently treats you as if you
were a fool, you feel like a fool. (You also develop the capacity
to treat others as if they were fools.) If your parents show
little interest in your states of mind, you feel as if your states
of mind are not of interest to others (and probably have little
interest in their states of mind either). Of course, as people
develop they bring their internal working models to bear on
other people too, but in early childhood they are still being
formed and are largely shaped by the adults and older chil-
dren in their life. From later childhood onwards, they will
elaborate and rework these early models in various ways.
But in families which neglect or criticise their children
too much, there can be a fundamental uncertainty about the
worth of the self. The internal working model will be one of
inner worthlessness or even badness anticipating a critical
or neglectful other. These expectations inform behaviour and
often draw others into confirming the expectations, setting
up a vicious cycle which is hard to break.
The links between personality disorders and early experience
I looked upon myself like so much garbage, an anomaly,
a disgrace, and, what was worse, I believed that I had
allowed myself to be overrun by error because of an evil
nature.
Marie Cardinal 1984
Being the object of others’ negative attention or being
disregarded is like an acid which eats away at self-esteem.
As we have seen, it can lead to depression or can create a
vulnerability to depression if experienced early in life when
the personality is forming. But there is a darker form of
depression, which is linked to more extreme early experi-
ences, particularly in infancy. This is known in the psychi-
atric trade as ‘borderline personality disorder’.
There is a whole rainbow-like diagnostic spectrum of
personality disorders (with acronyms such as ASPD, BPD,
NPD, OCD etc.) Real individuals don’t always fit neatly into such categories…they merely describe typical features of various points on a continuum of difficulties in managing emotional life.
Depression runs through the personality disorders, like
a familiar theme in different pieces of music. In both the
‘narcissistic’ and ‘borderline’ disturbances of personality,
individuals are prone to depression. They share a fragile
sense of self that can be disturbed by experiences which
more robust people would manage with little difficulty. But
the depression of the ‘borderline’ is less a flattening of feel-
ings and submission to fate than a terrifying roller coaster of
emotions. Borderline behaviours are described in textbook
terms as including self-destructiveness, impulsiveness,
dissociation, hostility, shame, fear of abandonment and diffi-
culty maintaining stable relationships. To others living
better regulated lives, it is apparent that the borderline
person has enormous difficulty in regulating feelings.
Emotions are on the rampage, often quite out of control.
But the focus on describing the ‘symptoms’ of the person
with a personality disorder inevitably results in distortion.
These are not qualities the person was born with, nor are
they the sum total of the whole personality. The symptoms
are the end results of certain typical histories of parent–
child relationships. On this continuum, to think in the most
simplified terms, it is likely that the more hurtful these rela-
tionships have been, the greater the symptoms are likely to
be… what can be stated quite categorically is that emotional difficulties such as these are the result of an individual’s relationship history (Carlson et al. 2009; Agrawal et al. 2004).
Recent research has confirmed the powerful effect it can have on a baby when a parent emotionally withdraws; it is in fact the biggest
factor in predicting the development of borderline person-
ality disorder, especially the likelihood of future self-harm
(Lyons-Ruth et al. 2013). This may well be because a parent’s
withdrawal from close contact deprives the child of the regu-
latory partner that he or she needs to make sense of
emotional experiences and to keep on an even keel through
the day…
What kinds of parents do borderline people have?
Most often these are parents who have very few inner
resources themselves and find it very difficult to be sensitive
to their babies’ cues, usually because they are so preoccupied
with their own feelings. For example, a baby who is over-
aroused by a noisy rattle being waved close to his face will
turn his head away to signal that he has had enough of that
particular stimulus. But the unattuned parent may be paying
more attention, consciously or unconsciously, to her own
inner state of anxiety or distress than to her baby’s signal.
She might shake the rattle more loudly, thinking that he has
just lost interest, instead of responding accurately to the
baby’s signal and soothing him or offering him something
else…This really ties it all together: various personality disorders are the corresponding outcomes of various failures in the parent-child relationship.
Lacking self-soothing skills, such parents trying to cope
with a baby will be highly stressed. Their nerves are jangled
by the baby’s crying. The baby’s mess is intolerable. There is
no time for themselves. Parents in this state who lack helpful
family supports may react strongly against the baby, hitting
or verbally attacking him, or they may avoid him altogether,
leaving him to cry.
The parent of a potential borderline person is often very
needy and sensitive to rejection. She may feel that her
newborn baby doesn’t like her because he is not yet smiling,
or perhaps when her baby starts to take an interest in the
world around him at around 4 months old, this parent can
feel that he is rejecting her. He doesn’t seem to need her any
more. This can feel very painful since her own emotional
needs are so powerfully felt, so unmet. She may retaliate by
withdrawing from the baby. The problem is that anyone with
powerful unmet needs of her own may find great difficulty in
putting the baby’s needs before her own, particularly if that
does not provide any gratification for her. It can be very hard
for her to be a parent in the psychological sense.
Often, such parents have had histories of being neglected
or maltreated in their own childhood…Perhaps they
found the demands of a relationship with a baby too much,
living with a profound uncertainty about their capacity to
regulate their own or the baby’s arousal… their difficulty in sustaining emotional availability because of their own inner preoccupations tends to make them erratic parents who frequently fail to respond to
their baby’s distress. As a result, their children often develop
disorganised attachments.
Fear is usually a component of the ‘disorganised’ baby’s
experience, perhaps partly because inconsistent care in the
first year of life is itself potentially life threatening. Adult
patients who may have had these sorts of experiences as
infants often describe feelings of falling or disintegrating,
suggestive of moments of total regulatory failure.
My clients Norah and her baby Ricky had a volatile
relationship which generated these kinds of moments of fear
for Ricky. Norah adored her baby when she felt all right,
but when her boyfriend let her down and didn’t call round
when he said he would, she felt so lost and abandoned and
enraged that she would treat Ricky viciously, feeding him
roughly, shoving the spoon into his mouth in a sadistic
fashion, or she would be playing with him and suddenly give
in to the urge to pinch his ear very hard, making him cry.
Later, she could feel remorse for her behaviour, but she
seemed incapable of controlling it. She worried that Ricky
wouldn’t love her any more because of the way she treated
him at times, but still experienced flashes of pure hatred for
him as the embodiment of a world that didn’t love her
enough.
In effect, parents suffering from unmanageable internal
pain create a barrier between themselves and their child.
Norah’s attacks on Ricky made him look at her with the
wariness and anxious fearfulness that made her doubt
whether he loved her. Such situations feed on themselves in
a vicious cycle, which it is vital to break into at the earliest
opportunity. Fortunately, Norah did seek help. By becoming
more aware of her own history and the distress that could be
so easily triggered in the present, she was able to see Ricky
differently and to recognise that he was not the cause of that
distress. Prolonged therapeutic work is often needed to help
such parents to learn to manage their own states well
enough to be able to focus on the baby’s needs.This really demonstrates that abusive parent’s are (for the most part) not consciously malicious. They are struggling imperfect humans that need support. An important insight to move towards forgiveness and acceptance.This confirms for me my own experience, and allows me to locate myself as disorganized attached. It also helps me understand myself and ambivalence towards others.
The ‘disorganised’ baby
But what is it like to be the baby of such a parent? It is very
difficult for him to co- ordinate his developing systems with
his mother as she is so unpredictable. He can’t develop a
coherent strategy or game plan with such a parent. He
doesn’t know whether to turn to her or keep away from her.
He needs her, but she may make things worse rather than
better. These are the features of a disorganised attachment,
as I described in the last chapter.
Disorganised attachments are at the extreme end of the
scale of emotional dysregulation, with corresponding effects
on the brain. The child is simply not being taught how to
manage feelings in any consistent way. He may not have the
brain structures to calm himself and cope with distress.
Small stresses may escalate into major distress because
the orbitofrontal cortex cannot control the arousal of the
amygdala and hypothalamus. He may find it difficult to hold
back feelings or distract himself when it’s necessary to
achieve his own goals. This actually leaves the developing
child in a rather helpless and dependent state, unable to
trust his own responses, constantly looking to other people
for cues about how to act and feel. Even though time passes
and he looks as if he is growing up, internally he may remain
a baby who awaits vital input that would give him the tools
to cope with the world.
The kind of neglect that results from having parents
preoccupied with their own emotional states can also be very
frightening. It is hard to make sense of a world which has to
be navigated without a reliable guide. But the parent may
also be frightening because he or she is unpredictably
violent, or verbally abusive at times when her own feelings
spiral out of control.
According to Marsha Linehan, an American therapist
who has pioneered a highly effective treatment programme
especially for borderline personality disorders, the border-
line person has experienced what she calls an ‘invalidating
environment’ in childhood (Linehan 1993). Its essence is the
parents’ inability to recognise and respect the child’s own
feelings and experiences. They may be denigrated because
they are an inconvenience to the parents. ‘Shut up about
that stupid toy, we’re not going back for Mr. Squeaky’ the
parent will say. Because of her own inability to soothe herself,
the parent cannot bear her child being upset. Instead of
acknowledging what is wrong, the parent feels so uncomfort-
able that she says irritably ‘stop being a cry-baby’. Such
parenting behaviour in effect demands that the child manage
his own feelings and punishes the child for a lack of moral
fibre if he is not equal to the task. But it does not teach the
child how to manage his feelings.
The requirement not to have feelings that your parent
finds too demanding may also result in the production of a
‘false self’, a front which acts like a person but doesn’t feel
like a person inside. As Marie Cardinal, a French woman
who wrote an account of her slow recovery from mental
illness, put it:
I had been fashioned to resemble as closely as possible
a human model which I had not chosen and which did
not suit me. Day after day since my birth, I had been
made up: my gestures, my attitudes, my vocabulary.
My needs were repressed, my desires, my impetus,
they had been dammed up, painted over, disguised and
imprisoned. After having removed my brain, having
gutted my skull, they had stuffed it full of acceptable
thoughts which suited me like an apron on a cow.
(Cardinal 1984: 121
No matter what the attachment pattern, humiliation
may be a central issue that links those in the narcissistic
spectrum. Allan Schore thinks that its ‘symptoms’ arise
largely from the poor regulation of shame, in particular.
During toddlerhood, important aspects of socialisation are
taking place, facilitating important brain development. As I
have already described in Chapter 3, this is when the orbito-
frontal area of the prefrontal cortex matures and comes
online. As the orbitofrontal cortex starts to develop connec-
tions with the amygdala, it can stop the amygdala in turn
from activating the hypothalamus and other autonomic struc-
tures (Barbas 2007). This enables the child to begin to be able
to control his own behaviour in response to parental guidance
and to choose not to react so impulsively. This is a key period
when parents can start to convey their rules to their child.
One way they do this is by withdrawing attunement and
positive feedback. As the orbitofrontal cortex develops, it
gets more skilled at ‘reading’ faces and evaluating social
situations and can now start to recognise disapproval and
negativity on the parent’s face. Through its connections to
the autonomic nervous system, this can trigger the
unpleasant ‘gut’ feelings of humiliation, leading to a drop in
blood pressure, as well as the release of cortisol.
Although this process is an important route to learning
social rules, it’s equally vital for the ruptured relationship to
be quickly repaired before the feeling of continuity of the
good relationship is lost. This is a matter of judgement, and
can perhaps be extended in time as the child gets older. But
small children, who need much more continuous regulation,
cannot afford to lose the thread of their regulatory relation-
ship. At a physiological level, they need to restore the warm
connection with their parent in order to disperse the cortisol
and other stress hormones and regulate back to a normal
set point.The quotes could be taken directly from my own childhood. Certainly I’ve come across glimpses of a great intensity of self-disgust and shame within me before it faded again to numbness.
Parents who are not good at regulating their toddlers
may leave the toddler in a distressed state for too long. They
may be parents who have difficulties in bearing negative
feelings, so they may attempt to distance themselves from
the child’s feelings instead of entering into them and
‘containing’ them. These parents often tease or humiliate a
child in a state of shame, saying things such as ‘I can see why
they picked on you in the playground’ or ‘Don’t be so wet.’ If
the child is angry, instead of containing the anger the parent
may escalate it – ‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’ Equally, the
parent may have difficulty responding to the toddler’s excite-
ment and joy, in meeting it and sharing it, and regulating it
to a manageable level. With these kinds of regulatory diffi-
culties, over time the child may lose confidence in his rela-
tionship with the parent and in its basic goodness and
capacity to regulate him. As we have seen in the previous
chapter, he may become prone to depression – easily plunged
into dysregulation by a current humiliation or loss, because
his stress response is oversensitised during toddlerhood.
Dehumanisation and lack of emotional value is at the heart of
the borderline relationship. From the start, the parents have
difficulties in recognising their baby as an intentional being
with mental states. Peter Fonagy has studied borderline
issues both from the perspective of attachment research and
from a clinical, psychoanalytic perspective. He places a great
deal of emphasis on what he calls ‘mentalising’ – the capacity
to recognise other minds. He suggests that the borderline
person grows up avoiding thinking and mentalising because
it would involve recognising this hatred or lack of love in his
parents’ attitude to him. But blanking out the maltreatment
and thoughts about it makes it impossible for the person to
find any way of recovering from it (Fonagy et al. 1997).
Severely borderline people often have great difficulty
thinking about their experiences, particularly their experi-
ences with their parents. It is unbearable to know that your
parents disregarded your feelings and may even have hated
you in some way. This makes the therapeutic process a very
difficult task. It is true that borderline people do need to
understand what has happened to them and they will find it
difficult to have a secure sense of self until they can face the
painful nature of their childhood experiences and find a way
of accepting them…
The feelings that are experienced by borderline people
evoke the intensity and terror of a helpless, uncared for baby.
At its worst, the borderline sometimes falls into what has
been called the ‘black hole of shame’, a non-verbal state of
blankness: timeless, spaceless horror. It is linked to feelings
of falling into the void – of not being safely held, contained,
in a mother’s arms. The borderline person is overwhelmed
by negative feelings and tends to have what others experi-
ence as an exaggerated response. When things are going
badly, everything is bad, there is no possible end to badness.
He feels he himself is bad. His feelings are shameful since no
one can understand them or wants to know them. He loathes
himself. Past good feelings don’t exist and can’t be recalled.
As Patti said to me once, ‘I can’t keep good experiences in.’
Good feelings run through the fingers like sand, perhaps
because nothing good can be trusted in a world where
parents have been so ambivalent towards you…
It’s as if there is not enough of a ‘self’ there to process
the experience – ‘self’ in the sense of a regulatory self. After
all, ‘selfhood’ is very tied up with the ability to manage
emotions in a consistent way that others can recognise and
comment on… The sense of self is very dependent on this
feedback from others. We need to know how others see us
and to develop a consistent ‘personality’ or style of emotional
management. But if the parental response is consistently
negative or absent, we can feel ‘wiped out’, invalidated and
basically bad. It becomes much harder to think about feel-
ings without a framework of ongoing support and the sense
of self becomes increasingly tenuous…Dilys had no bearings on her own reality that were rooted in her own feelings. She acted impulsively and she spoke impulsively, without an
I was definitely dehumanised as a baby, and have fully and repeatedly experienced the blackhole and tenuous sense of self… because of an alienation from feeling my own feelings. I was more functional when I was completely numb. Therapy has put my in touch with more feelings, but now my skills in self-regulating myself need to catch up.
organising principle that would allow her to prioritise her
experiences and make choices about how to act. For most of
us, the organising principle is our feelings and the meaning
we attribute to them. But Dilys didn’t know what she felt.
She conveyed the helplessness of a baby, who
needed someone somewhere to look after her and make sense
of it all. Lacking adequate regulatory mechanisms, she was
prone to panic, particularly when she felt abandoned by
other people. The borderline person usually has a desperate
fear of rejection or abandonment. Many borderline people
(20–40 per cent) have in fact had a traumatic separation
from a parent or parents in early childhood, something
which had happened to Dilys too (Bradley and Westen 2005).
But it’s also possible to feel abandoned and uncared for when
the parent figure is physically present, if they are not atten-
tive or responsive. In either case, when key relationships are
threatened, or he imagines they are threatened, it feels as if
the world is falling apart. At this point, the borderline person
has to rely on his own means of self-regulation, which are
often very crude… Many borderline behaviours are self-destructive rather than destructive of others, although they often do impact on
others’ lives in a negative way.
When a positive relationship hasn’t been established in
relational aggression – as someone barely socially literate enough to understand a given group dynamic I’ve often felt myself the helpless and unable to defend myself against relational aggression. The sort of people that gossip and eventually generate a narrative within the group the causes your rejection and expulsion. Nice to find a word for it.
babyhood, the next stage of socialising the toddler into
acceptable behaviour is made infinitely more difficult. The
parent cannot draw on a secure bond laced with good humour
and mutual understanding, and cannot make demands on
the child to restrain his impulses for the sake of maintaining
that good relationship. Instead, the child is already defen-
sive and expects harsh treatment so he has little to lose in
defying parental wishes.
The problem can be compounded by parents who lack
self- esteem or a strong sense of self. These are the parents
who find it most difficult to be ‘authoritative’ and to follow
through on their demands of the child in a firm way. This
unwittingly reinforces the child’s negative and resistant
behaviour. We have all seen what can happen next: parents
at their wits’ end who find themselves resorting to coercive
tactics such as threatening, yelling or bullying the child to
behave.
Hostile, coercive and harsh parenting is strongly linked
to the child’s difficulty in regulating emotions and increases
the likelihood that a child will react and act out his or her
anger (Sellers et al. 2013; Xu et al. 2009; McKee et al. 2008).
Some gender differences have been found here as boys are
more likely to express themselves in physical aggression
(Hill et al. 2006) while girls may be especially good at what
Hyun Rhee and Waldman (2002) call ‘relational aggression’,
such as the malicious damaging of another’s reputation, or
excluding others from the peer group.
To put it bluntly, children who are not treated well are
more likely to become antisocial. The whole range of ‘adverse
childhood experiences’, from emotional abuse or neglect
through to physical abuse and sexual abuse, is linked with
an increased incidence of future antisocial behaviour (Teisl
and Ciccetti 2008; Douglas et al. 2011)…
However, the impact is not just on a child’s psychological
Traumatized children are wired to think negatively. Helps me put my own circular negative thinking into context. Journaling negative thoughts helps activate the witnessing awareness and distance required to disregard them and end the thought stream. Currently working with Crappy Childhood Fairy’s daily practice but looking into Byron Katie’s “The Work”.
development. Children who go through such experiences
are also affected physiologically. The maltreated child ends
up not only being more watchful and vigilant, but also has
a more active right brain (processing negative feelings),
and a much higher heart rate when provoked by his
schoolmates (Lenneke et al. 2009). He tends to anticipate
hostility from others, often interpreting others’ behaviour as
aggressive and antagonistic even when it isn’t (Dodge and
Somberg 1987).
Some researchers have documented the particular skills
I am incredibly hostile, at least in thinking. The slightest inconvenience or potential offense and my kill-and-destroy-and-hate-everything mode is switched on. I don’t externalize, but I think that is out of fear of others which remains greater. Learning to simply re-direct my focus away from the source of frustration is something I’m only now learning to do!
that are needed to control impulses. The three main stra-
tegies are self-distraction, comfort seeking and seeking infor-
mation about the obstacle to our goals. One study found that
3 year olds who were skilled in using all three strategies
showed the least aggressive and externalising behaviour
(Gilliom et al. 2002). They were able to control themselves
sufficiently to turn away from the source of frustration and
focus on something else, and were less likely to attack it. They
could also ask questions about when the situation would be
alleviated, which was very helpful in dissolving anger. Only
when feeling quite distressed or overwhelmed did they use
the comfort-seeking strategy. But children who did not have
this repertoire and used only one strategy were found to be
the most aggressive. These strategies are learnt – they are
modelled by parental behaviour and encouragement, they are
not genetic.I’m not sure if I quite fit in the introverted/feelings hiding camp. Maybe 60%. I feel others have become completely irrelevant emotionally, and are instead a source of fear, or threats to be managed, manipulated, etc or they are otherwise irrelevant.
Much of the skill involved is in inhibiting behaviour for the
sake of others. But this skill depends also on brain develop-
ment, on the good development of the prefrontal cortex
which plays this inhibitory role. Yet in a circular fashion, the
development of this part of the brain is very dependent on
relationships – on the affectionate, tactile early relation-
ships that will generate plenty of opioids which help the
brain to grow. Parents who succeed in tuning in to their
baby’s moods and give him lots of feedback are helping to
consolidate his self-awareness, which in time will be reflected
in a well-connected, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Mah
et al. 2005; Kolb et al. 2012). Since this part of the brain
helps him to quell fears and anxieties, it also plays an impor-
tant role in self- regulation (Milad et al. 2005). On top of that,
it helps him regulate his physiological responses since the
ventromedial prefrontal cortex is linked to the nervous
system and can increase or decrease blood pressure and
heart rate (Hilz et al. 2006; Hansel and Kanel 2008). But the
child’s ability to manage his emotions in all these ways
depends very much on experiencing warm, supportive
parenting in the first place (Eisenberg et al. 2010).
As the baby’s pre-frontal cortex develops, he can use his
increasing self-awareness to notice what other people’s body
language is telling him. With a growing ability to direct his
own body, he is more able to control his own behaviour in
response to their expectations. This maturing self-control
establishes the crucial neural pathway between the ‘higher’
orbital and medial prefrontal areas and the ‘lower’, more
impulsive amygdala. Parents can help build synaptic connec-
tions along this pathway by gently but firmly encouraging
the baby to master his own behaviour. This is achieved by
offering mildly stressful but manageable challenges followed
by helping the baby restore his good feelings about himself.
The baby can then gradually learn how to use his higher
brain to suppress his more impulsive responses to negative
experience.
But when babies don’t get enough good experience to
build up these circuits, their ability to master their own
behaviour, and to manage stress or anxiety, is weakened.
Worse still, experiences of maltreatment can reduce brain
volume in these regulatory areas (Van Harmelen et al. 2010;
Cerqueira et al. 2005). This makes it much more difficult for
the child to know how to regulate feelings, or to feel confi-
dent in turning to others for help in challenging situations.
Instead, the introverted maltreated child learns to hide her
feelings and may try desperately to please others to get her
needs met, while the ‘externaliser’ tries to get his feelings
noticed by making an impact on others, or takes what he
wants from others regardless of their feelings. Both stra-
tegies, however, stem from the same failure in the early
regulatory relationships.
Children who are emotionally secure and well regulated
This is what did not happen, and therefore explains why I have no value in relationships and simply have no basic motivation in relating to others – except out of some negative drive relieve loneliness.
rarely become the antisocial individuals of the future. The
toddler who wants to resolve a conflict with dad, or who is
willing to wait for his ice cream to please mum, is the
toddler who is confident of his relationships. This child is
less likely to need socialisation through fear and punish-
ment because he is beginning to grasp the effect of his own
actions on other people and to be aware of their feelings.
This happens only because his adult carers have been
responsive to his feelings in the past and have convinced
him that relationships are a source of pleasure and comfort,
and therefore worth preserving
PART 3 – Cure
A chance to grow up again
The independent psychotherapeutic tradition offers a
different kind of cure. Through establishing a personal rela-
tionship for therapeutic purposes only, the individual can
explore the way that he or she regulates himself or herself in
relation to other people, and can attempt to modify old
emotional habits and introduce new ones. But emotional
habits take time to form and time to change. First, they have
to be aroused. You can only change emotional processing by
doing it differently. When a particular feeling is aroused,
neurotransmitters are released from the subcortex and old
neural networks automatically become activated to manage
this state of arousal in the old way. But with the help of a
therapist, new forms of regulation can be practised. If your
therapist accepts your feelings, they do not have to be denied
by the neural network which would normally do that, or
acted upon by the neural network that would normally
respond in that way. The therapist’s acceptance allows a
‘IF ALL ELSE FAILS, HUG YOUR TEDDYBEAR’ 235
mental space to reflect on the feelings and consider how to
respond afresh. While the feelings are alive and active, so too
are the stress hormones which will assist new (higher brain)
cortical synapses to be made in response to the subcortical
signals. Together with the therapist, new networks can be
developed.
Some of this work may involve dealing with the unfin-
ished business of early life, the feelings of fear that you will
be abandoned or rejected which were at their most potent
when you were a dependent child; feelings that were over-
whelming and unmanageable without a parental regulator;
feelings of rage that your parent did not help you to cope
with particular feelings; many feelings that were held back
because it was not safe to feel them while you were a child,
so dependent on the parent to regulate you and keep you
alive. These feelings often do not go away. Somehow they lie
dormant, unprocessed, liable to break out at moments of
stress when the adult ‘flips’ and releases huge rage or fear
which seems incomprehensible to others since it is so dispro-
portionate to the current event.