3.4.2 Trauma

Trauma, (and traumatised), are much used and sometimes misunderstood terms.  The term trauma has a meaning in mainstream medicine in that it refers to a sudden violent injury.  (I am sure that most of you will have heard, for example, of a leg broken by blunt force trauma).

In the psychological world, however, it is generally associated with severe emotional pain occurring from a sudden negative event, a shock or a devastating emotional injury that has the effect of temporarily numbing us or rendering us incapable of rational thought and behaviour.

You might have heard of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This is a medical term for a condition which affects people who have been in war-zones, or witness, or have been exposed to traumatic events such as house fires, car crashes, tragic accidents etc. where lives were lost and/or people suffered severe injuries. This type of trauma can be lodged in the body when the person is experiencing the event (or events), but can be triggered in a different environment – by, for example, a smell, a sight, a sound etc. – long after the need to be on high-alert has passed. This is sometimes called a flashback.

The type of trauma that this Chapter is about is similar to that – but in situations where the traumatic events are ongoing and continuous, and frequently occur in childhood, with little or no opportunity to heal. This is sometimes known as complex trauma, as its incidents and effects might be far more multifaceted and enduring than what is commonly known as PTSD.

Now the thing about trauma is that it is common to all forms of severe emotional distress and what is usually referred to as mental illness.

Let us consider trauma in respect of how our memory functions.

Every time we have an experience, the experience goes into our conscious memory, and then, (mostly) our unconscious memory.  The experience is then assimilated, or absorbed, into our bank of memories.  The memories meld into each other and, unless we have a particular reason for recalling one of them, the mixture of memories – our life’s experience – is a kind of background, or backdrop to our daily lives.

In respect of intense memories, I will borrow from Gestalt psychotherapy and use eating as an analogy.  When we eat something our body assimilates that which we eat and we get nourishment and energy from it.  If, however, we eat something that our body cannot assimilate, for example something toxic, our body rejects it – it cannot be digested and assimilated.  We may reject it by vomiting, but if we don’t do that, we get ill.

Similarly, if we have a very intense emotional experience we do not assimilate, or absorb it – as we do with run-of-the-mill memories – instead it stays there.

I would say that you will have experiences from your childhood or youth (or even later in life) that have stuck in your memory.  It might have been a very enjoyable experience, or an experience of some significance.  An experience that causes a lot of pain – particularly if it is sudden and/or unexpected, (described as trauma) however, may cause us to dissociate (I’ll be describing dissociation in a later Sub-Chapter) so while the memory is not assimilated, it may not be available to conscious recall either – that is because it is too painful.

That is, it is lodged in our unconscious – so it will be influential even though we cannot really consciously remember it.

A bit like the panic in a crowd that I described here, the experience of trauma could mean that the individual becomes so stressed that his normal coping mechanisms cannot kick in to manage the emotions that result from the event.

Trauma can result from one event, or, as I said above, a series of events repeated over time.  Feelings of being overwhelmed or unable to cope over years or even decades may result from the initial trauma as the person recalls the event and relives it – the influence of the unconscious that I also mentioned above.

This may happen even though the event that the person is experiencing in the present time may not threaten at all.

When I think of trauma that endures for years or decades in a person’s life I often think of a flywheel that keeps an engine running, that is, maintains the momentum in an engine.  A much lesser amount of fuel (akin to a reminder of past trauma) is enough to keep the engine running because of the energy stored in the flywheel.

Serious, long-term negative consequences to physical, mental and emotional health can result from unresolved trauma.

Trauma is likely to be a feature in all our lives at some stage.

For most people who grow up in a good enough family and live in a democratic peaceful society it is probably a rare enough occurrence, and generally we have enough supports in our lives to work through it satisfactorily over time.

However in a family in the Focus Group, (i.e. a family that has many of the characteristics as described earlier), an infant’s or child’s exposure to trauma might be such a regular occurrence that s/he learns to live on high alert at all times – that high alert being an early warning of impending danger which, from the perspective of the infant/child, may be life-threatening in nature.

An important aspect of trauma is that it is usually buried (often in our bodies) in unconscious memory.  This is because we may deal with trauma by dissociation or splitting off from the experience rendering it inaccessible to conscious memory.  The trauma may have occurred at a pre-verbal stage in our lives, even pre-birth, at a time when we did not have the cognitive capacity to consciously remember it.  (Dissociation is important in the context of trauma).

Also, it is worth noting that the experience of trauma differs from person to person, and, therefore, so do its effects.

What might be traumatic for me might not be as traumatic for you.  And how we recover, and resolve the trauma will differ too.  Some people have far more protective factors than others – and/or are more resilient [1].  Some people are better at looking for help than others.  Though – it must be said – the ability and willingness to ask for help is a sign of resilience in itself.

Very often people develop strategies to hide their distress; these strategies have been built up over many years.  (This probably applies a little to most people.  The old joke about getting through each day managing our madness well enough so that others will not notice has a certain truth)!

[1]. Someone who is resilient is someone who can bounce back after a negative event in their lives.

In terms of the imprisonment experience, I believe that unresolved trauma is a factor in 1): the rage that might have led the person in prison to commit a serious violent crime, and/or 2): the ongoing, apparent totally unreasonable behaviour that is often observed among people who go to prison – over and above what we may observe as normal anger levels in the general population.

I believe that it also (remember, we are referring to the imprisonment experience here) contributes to a sense of heightened alertness where even the slightest criticism devastates the sense of self, and threatens the default protection system which is often a kind of exaggerated self-importance and sense of entitlement.

Added to this is 1): the desperation to be right, or to win; (the emotional equivalent of a drowning man gasping for air), and 2): the sedimentation (that is, the laying down deposits of habits like sediment settling in the bottom of a slow-flowing river, and eventually becoming thicker, and harder and harder to shift) of years of behavioural patterns that are so ingrained that they are what we often call second nature.

The reason for all the above is that trauma is held far more in the body than in the brain. So generally, when it is triggered, we cannot think our way out of it – our reaction bursts out of us unaware, sometimes in violence, or in totally unreasonable behaviour, and when it is over (and, as is said, we cool down), we might not take responsibility for it.

This process will be better understood as the following Sub-Chapters on Attachment, Dissociation and Narcissism are read.

I often encounter what most people would label as totally unreasonable behaviour and I will give an example here.

Some of my work involves encouraging people (who may be spouses, partners or parents of someone in prison) to focus on healthy boundaries in respect of their relationship.  This will be very helpful in the goal of protecting children in such situations.

It is not uncommon for the parent on the outside who has suffered a lot due to his/her partner’s drink or drug misuse to use the prison sentence as a time of respite, a time of safety and security, and free of the controlling behaviour of the person in prison. It is also the case that parents on the outside sometimes find it easier to parent alone than have an unstable and erratic addict contradicting, fighting, looking for attention, and/or giving very bad example to children.

And someone in prison can also use the time incarcerated as a time of respite – engaging with anger management, recovery from addiction, education and many other positive pursuits away from the pressure of their peers on the outside.

I have heard many stories over the years where parents, having improved their housing and financial situations, as well as the educational prospects of their children and their own lifestyles i.e., hobbies or further education, broach the subject of drink and drugs misuse by their partner in prison – seeking a commitment to a sober lifestyle.  These requests are based on fears that addiction, criminality, debt, domestic violence, self-destructive behaviour etc. will once again become part of their day-to-day life on release.

Sometimes those in prison respond very well to such requests, and with a bit of support on release settle down and use the skills that they have learned both from self-reflection and on courses inside. 

However, I have known of many cases where such requests, despite all the courses done in prison, are met with either over-the-top acquiescence, (which evaporates very quickly post-release), or a very angry response – accompanied by complaints about being nagged.  (Anyone who is familiar with addiction or imprisonment will know that such responses would not be uncommon in those situations).

Now – and this is important – in the everyday world in which we live, where so much comparing and judging is done, many people would, naturally enough, view the person who has worked hard (to provide a stable and nurturing atmosphere in the home for children) as the goodie and the person to be released (who won’t commit to a sober lifestyle for the sake of their partner and children’s well-being) as the baddie.

But it will be clear as we discover more about the effects of trauma that this is not a matter of goodie and baddie – an angry reply is merely a trauma response; an emotional outburst that kicks in automatically, on feeling threatened by what most people would believe to be very reasonable requests based on rational grounds.

When trauma is triggered in us we often behave in a way that the majority of people think is irrational.

For even highly trained, perceptive and experienced workers, dealing with trauma on a day to day basis is very challenging.

Studies over many decades have identified the parallel process where trauma kind of, seeps, into staff teams and new discoveries in neuroscience have confirmed it in more recent years.

(It is important to note that it is slightly different to vicarious trauma, which is the trauma that I might experience from, for example, being witness to a serious accident).

When trauma seeps into teams, and it affects practitioners who are tasked with the healing of the very trauma that finds its way in, it can cause the spread of what I’ll call slow panic over a long time.

This, in turn, can lead to many negative traits such as anger, competitiveness, dishonesty etc. and ultimately powerlessness.  Powerlessness can cause people to become apathetic as they begin to despair that anything will change.  This is not surprising really – it is well known how panic spreads and each person loses a sense of proportion of the problem (and indeed a sense of their own personal power to do something about it) as it takes hold – the overload that I have described already.

Trauma has the potential to be destructive.

Many very enthusiastic and committed people stay in this type of work for some years, getting great experience, and then drift towards other work (very often within the Pillars, actually).  While financial security is one reason for this, another factor is burnout from working, unsupported, with people who suffer from unresolved trauma, are continually in crisis, who have very few coping skills to deal with it.

As trauma and its effects are largely misunderstood by potential funders of agencies that support very marginalised people, the acknowledgement of same and development of skills in a staff team to deal with it on a continual basis is a very challenging aspect of initiating any venture that aims to support people who have suffered trauma and include them in determining their own path towards good enough emotional health – i.e. committing to two-way knowledge flow.

So, to sum up, the effects of trauma are continual and enduring, and involve dealing with unresolved emotions of anger, (and sometimes rage), acute loss, guilt, shame, fear, high anxiety levels, and sadness, often unrecognised, unacknowledged and inappropriately expressed, the extent of which can be overwhelming.

At its worst it manifests as behaviour that may be oppositional, narcissistic, egotistical and above all utterly self-destructive.

In the Chapter on Training I will offer suggestions as to how we can protect ourselves and our colleagues from the harmful effects of trauma.

It is important for anyone working with trauma to be aware of the difference between public and private trauma.  This is particularly true if we are supporting families in our Focus Group.

Public Trauma

Just to recap, trauma is described as a sudden unexpected event causing severe emotional pain, a shock, or a devastating type blow.  If it occurs as a public event, (such as a tsunami, earthquake or a plane crash) it is generally perceived to be either an act of God, or an unfortunate, tragic accident after which there is an outpouring of public sympathy and rush of support to assist those who are traumatised.

Of course, this does not diminish the pain or the loss of the families who lose their loved ones, but it is at least a solace to them to think that people are sympathetic.

In a war, it is a little more complicated.  The amount of sympathy available for traumatised soldiers will often depend on the general attitude to the war in the country itself.  If it was felt that the war was necessary to, for example, keep a population safe from a regime that is perceived to be tyrannical, (such as our own War of Independence), there is considerable sympathy and indeed high praise and approval for participants, even though they may have committed terrible atrocities in the pursuit of their goal.

If, however, this is not the belief, it is a different story.  There has been a lot written on how debilitating the level of trauma was in the ranks of US Army veterans who returned from Vietnam – whereas the soldiers who returned from World War Two supposedly were not as traumatised – because the country was, almost universally, proud of their endeavour. And the suicide rate among veterans of more recent wars is deeply troubling.

For famine it is also not that straightforward.  I believe that in Ireland, we suffered inter-generationally from the trauma of the great hunger of the 1840’s.  The ruling classes at the time were of the view that we were in some way, ourselves, responsible for starving to death in great numbers because of our laziness, stupidity and irresponsibility.  Nor was there a huge outpouring of sympathy.  (The coloniser was generally unsympathetic and apathetic to our plight, whereas a group of Choctaw Indians, who had also suffered a lot, and heard about the famine in Ireland, sent aid from afar).  I believe that it is only now, 5 or 6 generations after the event that we are resolving and working through the trauma that we experienced.

Private Trauma

Trauma, however, can also be a very private event.  Knowledge of abuse within the family, including, and in particular, sexual abuse, is almost always kept private.  Usually it is not spoken about even within the family itself. In addition to the reality of the abuse, there is a reluctance to be open about bad news in general.  I include involvement in crime, imprisonment and/or mental illness here.

I suggest that the reasons such matters are kept private may be due to the following:

1. The powerful cultural norm in our society that we protect our family and that it is a betrayal to reveal anything negative that happens within it.

2. The reluctance to admit that our family is not perfect.  The weight of media idealisation of the perfect family is nowadays so strong that (I believe anyway) it equals if not surpasses the idealisation of the Holy Family that we in Ireland looked up to for so many centuries.

3. The behaviour that stems from the fact that ‘I generally defend some course of action that I choose, simply because it’s my choice, and it’s a reflection on me if it turns out badly!’  Even though we, as children, don’t really choose our family (i.e. we are born into it) we still have a huge personal stake in it – as if it is our choice.  And, when we get to a certain age, we can, indeed, either choose to stay part of our family or to leave.

4. If we break the code of silence we may be rejected by family and may then suffer exclusion, isolation, loss of identity etc. which is very detrimental to our sense of well-being.

5. Even if it is a bad family it’s the only one I have – and I need a family.

6. And finally, and most importantly, silence and secrecy is part of the abuse itself. Similar to the disingenuous rooms described earlier, its success (if you don’t mind me using that word in the context of abuse) depends on the real truth never getting out.

So even in the 21^st Century, when we consider ourselves to be enlightened and progressive in such matters, there is considerable pressure in keeping trauma that arises from emotional, physical and sexual abuse in general, and particularly within the family, private.

What is common to 1 to 6 above is the experience of that most debilitating of human emotions, shame.

Recent research shows that we begin to experience shame very early on in life.  One form of shame occurs when a baby does not experience what he hopes for (or expects) from those who he trusts should care for him and love him. This will be described further in the Sub-Chapter on Attachment, as will the difference between shame and guilt.

The shame that accompanies the experience of sexual abuse is, of course, intensified by the prevailing public attitude to sexual activity between adults and children. In times past, when the general public did not have a sense that children had a right to personal integrity, safety, or indeed, when the world had a different definition as to what an adult was, sexual abuse may not have been as private, or it may not have been thought to be abuse at all.

I would say that this was just as bad if not worse for children, because even though they were deeply harmed, they had little recourse to any understanding or support.

Here is a Table which attempts to describe the differences (emotional) between public and private trauma.

Trauma

<<<<<< Public ———————————————————— Private>>>>>>

To Sum Up:

Public trauma (caused by car accidents, plane crash, earthquake etc. i.e. the ‘Act of God’) is shown to the public and the world at large (that is, how we know it has happened) by the collective outpouring of sympathy and very public (and publicised) grief that follows such events.

Private trauma (the hurt that children experience due to violence and sexual abuse that is never spoken openly about) may be shown to the public and the world at large (that is, how we know it has happened) through further violence towards others or self, mental illness, criminal behaviour, abuse of others and eventually imprisonment.

So imprisonment can – in many cases – be manifestation of private trauma.  That is, prison is the part of the trauma that the general public sees – the part that is not surface-evident is almost always kept private because it would cause too much hurt to reveal.

Imagine that, in our normal state, we have an emotional protective layer that insulates us from harm.  Let us imagine this to be a skin of sorts, protecting us from emotional needles and pins (Shakespeare‘s slings and arrows) like our physical skin protects our flesh.

In the reasonably well-adjusted adult, this imaginary protective layer can be considered to be relatively absorbent (spongy) and/or flexible. That is, in our run-of-the-mill life, events that we deem to be moderately negative, or little hurts that inevitably arise from being in relationship, are either absorbed into the layer, where their energy dissipates harmlessly, or else bounce off the layer, impacting but not penetrating.

Did you ever hear expressions like thin-skinned, or touchy? These describe people who become offended easily, and around whom others feel that they have to be careful what they say. Or, consider our expression highly-strung, tense like a wire pulled so tight that if we put any more pressure on it, it’ll snap.

I am sure that the expression thin-skinned comes from the notion of our imaginary protective layer being very thin, and does not refer to our real skin! And touchy implies very little insulation, like the game where a buzz goes off if you touch a ring off a wire. If the wire was insulated there would be no sound so the person would not have to avoid touching the wire.

Nowadays little disappointments or hurts that come our way are sometimes referred to as first world problems, implying that if we were in poorer countries these concerns would be so trivial they wouldn’t bother us. And I read an entertaining book once entitled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff by Richard Carlson which encourages us to separate out big worries from small worries!

For example, if our favourite team loses, we feel angry or disappointed for a day or two but eventually the bigger picture emerges, we absorb the disappointment into our day-to-day life, and our life resumes as normal, i.e. the imaginary layer is restored to normality.  If we have a bigger negative event, such as failing an exam, (which might have longer term consequences), it may take longer for the disappointment to be absorbed, and longer for the layer to return to normal thickness and sponginess, but it does nonetheless.

Of course, with a positive event it’s the same. If our team wins, or we pass an important exam, we are delighted for some time afterwards – but, like the negative event, eventually we put it in perspective and see that normal life with all its trials and tribulations will soon resume – indeed, the example I used, passing an exam, might bring on more challenges that we then get ourselves ready for.

Part of the reason for this is that (if we are realistic people) we probably have prepared ourselves for the possibility of either our team losing the match or us failing the exam, (or, in the positive case, our team winning, or passing the exam).  This is linked to resilience which I already described as our capacity to bounce back after a negative event.

Realism also ensures that we are not carried away, as the saying goes, with a positive event – and we don’t think that just because something good has happened to us everything in the garden will be rosy for ever.

Trauma has a different flavour to our team losing or even failing an exam. A traumatic event is an event of such emotional intensity (and usually happens so unexpectedly) that it pierces the imaginary protective layer that I just described.  Following the piercing it penetrates to the extent that it affects our body, mind, and spirit/soul.

It often evokes the fear of either dying oneself or, perhaps a loved one dying, or losing something very precious that we depend on for life.

In the well-adjusted child or adult with a loving family and supportive environment healing from trauma can take a long time – but healing eventually does occur.  The old saying asserts that time is a great healer – but an empathic, supportive environment is vital too.

However – if trauma happens within an environment that misunderstands or ignores the trauma, or even pours more trauma upon it, healing may never occur, no matter how much time elapses.

Let us once again imagine our emotional skin – our psychological protective layer.  (Remember now, this is not our real skin)!

If, when we are infants and/or children, the protective layer is pierced again and again, without having an opportunity to heal, our natural tendency to protect ourselves kicks in, and the layer begins to increase in both thickness and solidity, and the sponginess becomes crusty, and eventually loses its flexibility.  In this, we can imagine it becoming more like rigid armour.  Over time, we find it difficult to allow in any emotions at all; whether they are good for us or bad for us.

Our armour will often manifest in developing skills at spotting emotions from a distance and choosing places, people and things that do not bring emotions with them. 

In short, we come to regard emotions as things to be wary of. 

Using the analogy of armour, rather than the sponginess or flexibility that is healthy, the layer becomes brittle, so if it is breached, rather than absorbing the pain, it shatters like glass.

When it shatters, our psyche – that is, our conscious and unconscious mind, our body and our spirit, is overwhelmed. 

Armour is displayed in our language by the terms we use for those who we perceive to be unemotional, i.e. the hard man, or describing someone as hard-hearted. And it is well known that continual stress that arises from a series of negative events that we appear to be helpless to stop can harden our arteries and affects vital organs such as our heart, liver, spleen etc. – the term hard implying the armour which I described above.  As W.B. Yeats put it ‘too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart’.

Rather than feeling each hurt, and either acknowledging it or expressing it, the hurts are suppressed.  But the trouble with unacknowledged and/or unexpressed hurts is that they build up over time until what might seem to be others to be a minor hurt triggers all the other hurts and the person might react in an explosion of anger, which could well lead to violence.

Or the explosion could be turned inwards, which perhaps, is what is commonly referred to a nervous breakdown, and could result in violence against self.

Psychoanalysts such as Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen were among the pioneers of this way of thinking of our protective layer, and coined the term body armour. While they were controversial in their day, if you have an openness to different ways of looking at illness, both physical and mental, both are worth dipping into for more information on the subject.

A complete Chapter is devoted to Energy in Section Four.  I believe that ongoing experience of trauma is a substantial drain on our energy – as most of our energy goes into ensuring that our psychological armour stays impenetrable. 

But notwithstanding our hard, brittle, armour, the human within continually yearns for love, warmth, intimacy, closeness to others, genuine relationship, and (I believe anyway) the ability to feel.

To finish this post, I remember a hit song when I was a teenager entitled Little Arrows, by a singer called Leapy Lee – who I don’t remember having that many more hits! (It was covered in Ireland by the wonderful Dixies Showband from Cork, who had quite a few hits – in Ireland anyway). A memorable line from the very clever song – which is about how Cupid’s love arrows overcome all sorts of obstacles to reach our hearts – goes:

“Some folks put on armour but the arrows go straight through”.

This implies, of course, that the force of love (one of our root foundations) is so strong it will penetrate any armour we put on!

The brain is divided into two halves.  The right generally gives rise to intuition, feelings, spontaneity, artistic endeavour, and the left promotes logic, reason, deductive thought and judgment. Traditionally, very artistic and spontaneous people were labelled as right-brain and the more logical and deductive were left-brain.

However much modern research shows that there’s not really a down-the-middle divide. Common sense will tell us that it will enhance our artistic work if we apply some logic to our endeavours and we’ll be better technologists if we have an appreciation of art. In good enough growth our innate tendency in one is complemented by the other.

Balance in respect of this growth is what this post is about.

Have a look at Abraham Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of needs – pictured in his iconic pyramid below. This pyramid is well known and is studied in almost all helping type Courses.  (Though I could never figure out why it gets smaller as it gets higher)!

To achieve something close to our true potential (self-actualisation as Maslow called it) the cognitive-logical-rational side of the brain (left) and the creative-irrational-imagination side (right) need to develop together, and in sympathy with each other.

The needs (self-fulfilment) towards the top of the pyramid imply a healthy balance in this development as we grow, as neural connections continually pass messages from one side to the other. Trauma can disrupt the healthy growth of these connections, and thereby the moderation of one side by the other.

Learning to trust both sides of our brain in deciding on responses to challenges in our lives depends on our early security and safety needs being met, so that the neural connections will grow.  (We will discuss this further under Attachment in the next Sub-Chapter).

But if we feel unsafe or insecure all the time, and/or we experience ongoing trauma a split develops between the left (logical) and right (creative) and they tend to develop independently.

Say, for example, I am a child taking a risk in a family.  A very common risk is to voice an opinion on something that I feel strongly about. (This could be, for example, my own safety).

If I am fearful of being severely punished for making a mistake (in this case saying the wrong thing), I may lean too far towards the purely logical side when I come to make a decision, suppressing my natural impulsive side.

As the two sides of my brain develop almost independently, I become rigid in my thinking and fearful of risk-taking. This is because it leads to punishment, and very often shame, humiliation, and perhaps physical and emotional pain.  This is very left brain – with the effect of the right brain (creative, impulsive, empathy) suppressed.

So I learn to protect myself by taking everything literally because voicing an opinion based on emotions brings disapproval or even punishment.

But emotions cannot be suppressed for ever.

So, under pressure, I may have an emotional outburst which is totally out of proportion to the issue.  This is my right brain, totally impulsive, and is not moderated by my left-brain rational or logical thinking.

However, if I am rewarded for voicing my opinion on a matter that I feel strongly about I will be better able, in the long term, to apply logical or rational reasoning to the more impulsive side.  As the left and right sides develop together, one will moderate the other, the rational-logical assisting the creative-impulsive, and the creative-impulsive, in turn, assisting the rational-logical.

The balanced development (this is beginning to sound like a politician trying to push through a planning application) means that if I have a sudden impulse to be creative, or intuitive, my thinking brain will kick in to assess what outcome might occur if I follow through on my impulse.

So, I can’t really identify what or how I feel (and/or can’t predict what might happen) until the left-brain analyses my feeling and identifies it as something tangible – i.e. gives it a label that makes sense to me, something I recognise. How well it does this, and how well the prefrontal cortex (the part of my brain that is responsible for self-awareness, reflection, decision making) develops depends on how well the neural connections between the two halves have developed.

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The most important aspect of this, from the point of view of our theory of change, is that balanced development is optimised in an environment where our root foundations (described in the previous Chapter on Universal Theories) are permitted to work away as we grow.

If they are disallowed, or not accepted, (for example, if our potential to grow is not allowed emerge naturally or our identity is confused, or we are growing up in an atmosphere where love is very conditional) the balanced development may be slowed down or indeed it might not happen at all.

As adults, when we become aware of the importance of attending to it – in, for example a supportive or therapeutic environment – we may sometimes be resistant to allowing our root foundations to flourish – as our long held suspicion of others’ motives kicks in. 

In my experience our resistance will dissipate by being allowed grow at our own pace (and enabled and facilitated) rather than being force fed with one-way knowledge flow and time-limited plans.

And while I am on the subject of right brain and left brain – I have always found it interesting that the right in our popular and political culture implies rigidity, conservatism (right-wing) and the left implies radical change, spontaneity, creativity etc. (left-wing) – whereas  in our brains it is the opposite.

Just a left-brain thought!