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One of the reasons I’m excited and fascinated by research in social neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology is because findings in these fields help me make sense of my experience – especially the challenging or troubling ones. Like for example, those allostatically loaded times in junior high when the teacher called on me and I sat there like a deaf mute that I’ve already written about, or when Martha Katz or Sara Cosgrove or Phyllis Granoff would speak to me in history class and I would act like I was retarded. I was retarded – neurologically not connected – the front brain not well-connected to the hind brain. Not to mention all the testosterone (which I’m sure will one day be empirically proven to be a radical neurotoxin) running wild in other parts of my body.
Outmanned by Women
Here’s what UCSF neuro-psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain has to say about me and my seventh grade brain:
Why do previously communicative boys become so taciturn and monosyllabic that they verge on autism when they hit their teens? The testicular surges of testosterone marinate the boys’ brains. Testosterone has been shown to decrease talking as well as interest in socializing … Men use about seven thousand words per day. Women use about twenty thousand.
So that’s nearly a three-fold difference. Women not only have more neural real estate devoted to language-processing and expression, but they don’t have as much testosterone marinating their brains. Instead, girls’ brains march to the beat of estrogen’s drum, driving them more to “tend and befriend.” Theoretically, this affiliative capacity developed because it’s harder to engage in fight or flight in the wild when you have a child on your hip. (While these kinds of findings and speculations might seem to lend themselves to gender stereotyping, that’s not their intent. Men obviously have some capacity to “tend and befriend” as well. In my experience, however, it’s not my first impulse and it’s not something that comes with great neurobiological ease for me).
Requiring Reinforcements
So women’s general facility and grace with language is totally consistent with my experience. What they seem to do effortlessly – use language with great ease and fluency – I actually have to work at. And work pretty hard, at that. In fact, it often feels like I have to call up neural reinforcements in order for me to carry on a conversation of any significant duration. Sometimes it’s almost like I can feel “forced” connections taking place in my brain as I try to sustain an exchange. (Those forced connections often seem to be a requirement in writing as well – words do not simply flow with ease and grace in a perfectly integrated synchrony. Thank God for parentheses).
Estrogen Benefits
Where else do significant differences show up in the female brain? Estrogen, again. Girls’ brains and bodies have more estrogen running around inside them. Estrogen, it turns out, has profoundly positive effects on the brain, including the ability to stimulate new neurons to form new synapses and dendrites; it encourages neurogenesis, protects against free radicals and preserves memory. Estrogen also appears to account for the basic difference in hippocampal structures in men and women. Here’s our stress expert Bruce McEwen once again on the significance of this difference:
When it comes to homo sapiens, men are more likely to use global spatial cues and know approximately in which direction something is relative to where they are, whereas women tend to use “local” cues or landmarks, remembering to turn right at the church and left at the gas station, for example…the “masculinization” of both the structure and function of the hippocampus (in utero) doesn’t explain why men will do seemingly anything rather than ask directions (pp. 169-170).
Perhaps what does explain the reason for such reluctance is that men simply don’t have sufficient neural capacity to process language AND navigation cues AND devote sufficient attention to driving AND chewing gum all at the same time. I know I rarely do.
I once lived and worked and trained to be a therapist at a residential treatment facility located on a farm out in the country in Connecticut. It was called The Country Place, in fact, and the town of Litchfield where it was located, with a population just over 8000, is probably best known for its White Flower Farm. After hanging out in the country for several months, I was assigned the task of taking one of our celebrity clients into New York City to attend to some personal business that would allow him to continue to pay the $13,000 a month it cost to be treated with “milieu therapy.” What I most remember about that trip was how overwhelmed I was by the “energy” of Manhattan. After living those many months in the bucolic tranquility of upstate Connecticut, the cars and noise and dirt and speed of a big city was something I had to physically steel myself against in order to function. It was not a pleasant experience – it all seemed threatening and overwhelming. It was clear in that moment, that living in such an environment took a toll on the human body.
Allostasis
Bruce McEwen, a neuroendocrinologist at Rockefeller University, is perhaps the country’s leading researcher on the impact of stress on brain plasticity and neural development. (Reading Bruce’s book, The End of Stress as We Know It, significantly influenced my recent move up to Whidbey Island!) Bruce distinguishes between two types of stress: good stress and bad stress. Good stress he calls allostasis – the healthy ability to be stable in the face of changing life circumstances. Bad stress Bruce calls allostatic load – it’s what happens when we can no longer adapt well to the changes that life requires of us. Pat Ogden, the founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, provides us with a helpful visual for allostasis. She refers to it as our “window of tolerance.” So long as we’re within the window, stress is able to serve a motivating, protective function. Once we venture into the area below the window – into hypo-arousal, or above the window – into hyper-arousal, stress begins to turn damaging. The challenge for many of us, is first and foremost to recognize for ourselves when we’ve exceeded healthy levels in one direction or another. If we aren’t aware of it for ourselves, it’s unlikely that we’ll be easily able to help our kids with effectively managing stress levels.
Kids Today
I often remark to friends that I would not want to be a kid growing up today. Just the amount of energy and information they are required to process in the course of a day, in my estimation, often turns allostasis into excessive allostatic load. When it does, kids just can’t deal. And there are more ways for allostasis to go bad than we realize. Scroll down this link page and take a look: Allostatic Load. Allostasis is constantly moving between protection and damage in the human body, and many problems result from excessive load – those times when stress moves us outside the arousal window up or down, to the damage side of the ledger. Some show up immediately: kids get sick or become easily upset emotionally. Some may not show up for a long time: as later elevated glucose and cortisol levels and bone mineral loss and excess abdominal fat.
Increasing Awareness
Since I’ve learned about allostasis and allostatic load and the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis and its role in releasing adrenaline and cortisol and other glucocorticoids, it has become increasingly easy to recognize and pay attention to how the release of these chemicals feels in my body. For example, when something as simple as a nasty email arrives, I can feel my stress levels rising as I read it. As a result, I elect to do things that serve to reduce their levels as soon as possible. Under excessive stress loads my brain is not “pro-relationship.” It loses its “reflective function,” along with other “executive” capacities – this can result in “flame wars” which erupt frequently on the Internet. Unless someone really understands what’s going on with me in these circumstances, and they have effective skills for calming and soothing, they can’t help much. They may, in fact, act more as a distractive hindrance to being able to restore allostasis. So, I’m often left to my own devices, which, it turns out continue to be ongoing experiments in what really works to make me truly feel better. If it’s not one thing, it’s another – such is the nature of stress-reduction experimentation. One size does not fit all. Each of us has to find our own healthy ways of getting back inside the window.
My friend Pete punches and kicks his daughter. If you were to see the feet and fists flying and Molly down on the floor, you might be tempted to call Protective Services. Only Molly punches and kicks Pete back. Nobody really gets hurt; it’s sort of like the rough-housing that wolf or bear cubs regularly engage in – a kind of practicing in preparation for going out and facing aggressive energies in the real world. In Molly’s own words, “When we’re both down on the floor, it’s because we’re laughing too hard to stand up. It’s something we both enjoy as a bonding experience and as a way to get pent up aggression out, stuff that, if we tried to talk it out, would take hours and we’d never get anywhere. It’s therapeutic. A truce can always be called and we always end with a hug.”
Leaving out the limbic system
I bring this example up for several reasons. One is that where abuse and trauma are concerned, contexts and outcomes are important variables to factor into the equation; along with what happens afterward. The punching and kicking that go on between Pete and Molly is not fueled by a highjacked limbic system; neither one of them is so angry as to be out of control. Instead, their interactions provide a unique kind of energy expression and personal connection. This is not something so easy to obtain in healthy ways between a father and a teenaged daughter.
Hellfire and Damnation
So, that’s one example where things aren’t necessarily as they seem. For a different one, consider my friend Georgia and her daughter, Delia. Every Sunday they attend church services together. They are faithful members of their church community and their pastor is a powerful preacher of the hellfire and damnation school. If you watch Georgia and Delia and the other people who leave church at the end of services, you’ll notice that there’s not a lot of smiling and socializing going on. And for good reason.
Good God/Bad God
Gail Ironson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami has recently published a remarkable study. She spoke about it at the Spiritual Transformation Public Symposium held at the University of California in Berkeley. Ironson described the results of her research on spiritual transformation and HIV patients. Her key finding is that HIV patients who believe God loves them have much slower disease progression, and live significantly longer than those who do not hold this belief. In other words, if you believe in a punitive God, you will suffer for it. The nature of the God we believe in appears to affect our neurobiology as well as the strength of our immune system. The scope of the suffering such environments create is highlighted by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies in Religion: they found that 31% of Americans believe in an authoritarian, judgmental God; and it’s as high as 44% for people in the southern states. Only 23% of the people in America believe in a benevolent God.
You Be the Judge
Now here’s a question: suppose we accept that Dr. Ironson’s study is true (and I could offer detailed, empirical epigenetic support for it, in fact; and Ken Heilman and Russell Donda present their perspective in an article entitled Neuroscience and Fundamentalism), and we explain to Georgia the damage that apparently happens in Delia’s brain and body by attending such church events. If Georgia insists on taking Delia to these “brain-damaging” sermons, should she be reported to Protective Services for “simply” attending church services? Again, contexts and outcomes are important variables.
Change your God, change your health.
This is not an easy question to answer, but I want to make several points here. One is that when we consider which actions are kind and loving and which are harmful and dangerous where children are concerned, we can’t simply apply adult reasoning. We need to not only consider contexts and outcomes, but more importantly, as Peter Levine and Maggie Kline ask in their book, Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes, what is the actual experience and effect on the child? Most parents want the best for their children and if we discover we’re doing something harmful, in the best of all compassionate worlds, we would choose not to do it. But oftentimes we don’t have such choice. We each come to the role of parenting with personal histories and limitations – the kind of God we were raised to believe in, being one of them. So, what to do? All reasonable suggestions will be welcomed and posted.
Transitions can be challenging. For children they are often fraught with tension, forcing them to give up the comfort of the known for the anxiety-riddled unknown. When children are given appropriate support and attention before, during and after significant transitions, by parents who understand that one of their primary roles during this time is to help children understand and be able to manage their uncomfortable feelings, they grow connections in their brain for being curious and excited about transitions. As children are provided with such attention and begin to acquire a capacity for addressing fears and concerns on their own, they also begin to develop an increased capacity for what neuroscientist Margot Sunderland describes as “seeking-behavior.”
Transitioning to Whidbey
I am in the middle of making a significant transition myself, excited about seeking out and realizing some long-held dreams of my own. After living for almost 30 years on the San Francisco peninsula, I have made the decision to voluntarily leave a secure life amidst a network of many friends, with a steady job and lots of things to keep me busy, for the unknown uncertainty of a new life reborn up on Whidbey Island in Washington State. In many ways this has the recursive feel of an ongoing healing journey for me – a do-over designed to clear out and integrate any number of experiences that I was overwhelmed by and unable to successfully address the first time around.
Do-Over Mastery
Take for example, the first time I rented a U-Haul and packed up and moved from California the first time, in 1972. I got as far as Albuquerque, New Mexico on April 1 and ran into a freak snowstorm that dropped 8 feet of snow on Route 66. Completely frustrated and overwhelmed by the governor on the carburetor that wouldn’t allow me to drive more that 50 miles per hour, I used the impassable conditions to justify dumping our belongings off with the local Mayflower moving company and returning the U-Haul to a local franchiser. Doing that allowed me to begin to relax just enough to complete the 3000 mile trek in reasonably good health. This week I ran into a freak snowstorm as well, but this time I was able to keep going, making it safely to the island destination two and a half days earlier than scheduled. I seemed to have more internal resources with me on the road this time.
Embracing Fear-thoughts
I recognize other “do-overs” spiraling around once again as well. Fear thoughts arise unbidden: “How will I survive?” “You’re no spring chicken.” “What about health insurance?” “What about all the friends you will miss?” “What if you hate it there?” and “What about all that rain?” are just a few among many. Well, I don’t try to suppress or push those thoughts away much. Apparently, I have developed some prefrontal connections that allow me to simply observe such thoughts and let them be, let them float through and dissolve as I repeatedly turn my attention to whatever may be calling me in the present moment. (Like my commitment to write this column, for example).
Servant Mind
This capacity for observing my own thought process, similar to what Dan Siegel calls Mindsight, developmental psychologists call Theory of Mind, and what Buddhists might call mindfulness has apparently been growing in strength over the years. Many fear-based thoughts and many emotionally overwhelming life experiences later, I don’t seem to take the thoughts I think all that seriously these days – “In this moment, everything’s all right.” My own mind is becoming less and less a tyrannical master – especially with respect to fear-based thoughts. Yes, I do pay attention, and yes, I do sometimes take action in response to unsettled stirrings of mind – like making the time to investigate what the monthly costs for me will be for Washington State health insurance. To do otherwise would be similar to Pavoratti’s recognition that only an insane man has no fear of the high notes. Still, I seem to be simultaneously developing Servant Mind – a gentle mind that pats fear thoughts on the back and allows me to focus more and more on my own genuine well-being right alongside the well-being of others. Better late than never.
