The enormous importance of the parenting and care taking style and of not exposing children to stress...

A quick blogposting in the morning, spontaneously thinking loudly.

Read the article ”How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Adult Obesity”.

Reducing the stress, already for the not born baby and by treating it with the greatest respect during its whole childhood (and understanding its "inadequate" reactions), is of enormous importance, not only for the individual and her/his future life and life quality, but also for the society and the world.

With other words we have to treat the children with love, genuine love, and if we can't genuinely love we should be willing to explore why; if it has with us or in fact with the child to do. Maybe what the child is triggering in us.

But if you became stressed and didn't get what you needed early I think you can recover later, with a lot of work though, and recover if your painful experiences aren't/haven't been played down. And by that adults recognize what is actually painful, thus needed to be repressed and/or played down, experiences that are still remaining in the body with all what that means, for the individual and her/his environment wherever this person is in the society.

And this has nothing to do with forgiveness. Even if forgiveness probably can feel good for the moment, because what you are ding when you are forgiving is to deny (more or less) what was done and how painful and even harmful and not right it actually was (meeting evil with evil doesn't solve anything, not even when it comes to a parent meeting a small child's evilness with punishments).

See what Alice Miller has written about this with forgiveness, for instance in "Decepetion Kills Love."

Also see the preface to Alice Miller's book "From Rage to Courage."

And it's crucial how we meet children who have already become traumatized and who are stressed (maybe showing it in hyperactivity) later on. That we are willing to listen to them and not expose them for even more stress and pressure. I'm very critical to the current school politics and they who are responsible for it (and oher politics) in the Swedish government today. See David Korten being shocked that countries like Sweden are on their way of copying his home country USA when it comes to economic politics (causing increasing inequality with everything that follows in the footsteps of this).

And what is hyperactivity about? What is ADHD etc. actually?

The article points out that a child being exposed to another parenting style than her mother's (father's or parents') changes her/his future parenting style. So a child born to a neglectful parent who is raised by a caring caretaker becomes a caring caretaker for her/his children later.

The article also refers to research showing that early stress causes a lot of health troubles of different kinds. Troubles that could become avoided.

I think those (we) could be healed to different degrees if they (we) were allowed to admit to the things we have been exposed and were allowed to call early (and later) experiences in question.

Also read the blogposting (my translation of the heading of the posting from Norwegian to English, but the text in the posting is in English) "Adverse Childhood Experiences and Psychosis."

Child abuse and its effects…

Corporal punishment prohibited in schools and the home (green) Corporal punishment prohibited in schools only (blue) Corporal punishment not prohibited (red)

Read “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger: true or false? A discussion of the effects of child abuse” by Sarah Eberhardt and also read about corporal punishment in Europe and USA.

Incongruence between different infrastructures…

the hard working miners got brännvin as wage for their work (about brännvin in Swedish, Swedes started burning brännvin already 600 years ago). Needed to benumb themselves to survive their hard lives? More photos from this area.

[Updated with a video in the end] Peter Währborg (see the other postings about him here) writes at page 308 in the book mentioned in these postings about incongruence* between different infrastructures. He says that stress occurs not only as a phenomenon within different infrastructures when “intern oppositions/antagonisms (? Motsättningar in Swedish)” are at hand. Stress is also an expression for the incongruence which occurs between infrastructures. He gives us an example:

A child needs access to long term and unbroken relationships to adults for its harmonic development. If the social system doesn’t provide with resources which make this possible we get problems. The grown up individual often thinks he or she should be more at home with the children (or spouse?), this is a common apprehension (uppfattning). And thinks he/she ought to this and that. See earlier posting on "Surrogate mirrors..."

However, the social system also provide with more and partially contradicting values, as you ought to have an education, be successful etc. The norm and valuation systems (värderingssystem) are indistinct and therefore this creates conflicts within the particular individual. This conflict can in turn be enough for causing that biological stress reactions are started.

He thinks that stress has occurred since the origin of man. The decisive difference between then and now is its extension and seriousness now. Which can be ascribed the society’s faster and faster change.

During the agrarian period the social stress was minor, but there existed another societal control (much harder in a way). The society was more marked or clear (tydligt) because the society was smaller. People could handle things "better" then (including internal problems, problems due to child abuse, or they turned mad?) because the information flow wasn’t as enormous as it is today and the social structure not as complicated.

With the industrial society and later the information society the demands started to grow. Social, psychic and biologic stress became more usual because the demands on adaptation to the variable (to changes) increased.

Währborg discusses two types of stress in his book: the aggressive or the exhaustion or fatigue stress.

Nothing above is new though?

And doesn’t Miller write about this? Earlier people could handle things "better", because they knew nothing else than what was present in their small world there and then.

And aggressions (and all different feelings) got other outlets then?

And what are aggressions about? What do aggressions lead to? What do needs for power lead to? Both on a private, personal level as on a societal and even global level? Do we handle things constructively or are we driven by more or less conscious emotions, feelings or needs?

Some people are (brutally) forced to process their early things? For their survival... And what about the society in whole??

*with congruence he means homogeneity or grade of accordance, for example between a thought and a feeling. Incongruence is the opposite.

The Roots of Violence:

Some reflections when I made lunch...

two cute 11-year old girls playing bo-peep or tittut (or what is it called in English?)

Reflections when I was making lunch. Thought further on a posting I did on my other blog (in Swedish) on "The Price for 'progress, development' and 'prosperity'..."

Creativity and stress… Under what conditions are people more creative, and under what less creative? And why? I though of the relation between stress and creativity all of a sudden… Being in a (constant) state of fight what does that mean? Maybe it stimulates to creativity to solve the problem(s) or does it and under what conditions, with what sort of (early) background? But if this becomes long term, I think it interferes with creativity in a negative way. I am thinking of the general stress and high demands in society (both in working and private/personal life, and in first hand on external demands, but also a little on internal) and needs for solving all sorts of problems on many different levels…

And being in a (constant) state of flight (consciously or unconsciously or both) what does that mean?

Over stimulation is as bad as under stimulation. Some people, both young and older, are over stimulated and others are under stimulated. What does this create? This with balance in our lives…

What are the roots to all this?

And - animals mean a lot… It became so apparent when Eskil died. Today it’s two weeks since this happened. Mom was offered Eskil’s mom Ines (8 years in November) by Eskil’s breeder. At first mom was very hesitant to this. But my oldest brother thought they should go looking at her at least. And they took her with her! It looks as she has accommodated fairly well!! And seem to be very easy to have to do with. But of course Eskil is very much missed…

Yes, animals mean A LOT!!!

Civil courage...

taking a nap!!

I read something in "Rediscovering the True Self" by Ingeborg Bosch at page 143-144.

I think it was the physician Christina Doctare who pointed out in her book "Brain Stress" (came 1999, and I have a book with a dedication from her, but I didn't get it in person) from where "civil courage" origins? "Courage" comes from the French "coeur" which means "heart"... So civil courage to her means the heart or feelings are involved. About her at Wikipedia (only in Swedish).

Bosch writes Chapter 5, "Taking responsibility for our feelings":

"We usually live more or less impulsively [not an excuse for everything??], and when things go wrong we blame the other person, the world, fate or ultimately God [or ourselves].

Research by Jones and Nisbett has shown how we are all prone to this basic attitude. Actors tend to attribute their actions to external factors, whereas observers tend to attribute the same actions to personal dispositions of the actor. /.../

[An] example is the Watergate scandal. '...Many of the participants in that affair maintained that they were simply following executive orders, while 'higher-ups' argued that they had acted out of a concern for national security. All the actors in short made external attributions. But by the summer of 1974, a majority of citizens - observers via the press - saw the participants as corrupt, power-hungry, and paranoid. The observers made internal attributions.' This is called the actor-observer effect."

At this site it stands about their ideas:

"Jones and Nisbett's (1971) proposition that actors favor environmental attribution and observers personal attribution was investigated. Subjects attributed causality from two perspectives (observer versus role-playing actor) for verbally-described behaviors which varied in desirability (low versus moderate versus high). The results suggested that motivational considerations mediated actor-observer attributional differences. While observers attributed more personal cause than did actors at all levels of desirability, this actor-observer difference was attenuated as behavioral desirability increased. Actor-observer differences were not evidenced on environmental attribution, suggesting that perspective differences represent a differential salience of personal causes for actors and observers."

It also struck me: what do our behaviours towards animals reflect? I could write a separate posting about this, as I grew up with animal and saw things (and probably didn't see things too) and have people in my family of origin working with animals (so I think I know them as persons too, but maybe I don't? I wonder if they are different when family-members aren't present??)... My dad and the two siblings coming after me (a brother and a sister) were/are agronomists with domestic animals as Major (huvudämne in Swedish).

And I wish I could relax as the dog Eskil!! (the dog and cat on the picture are not mine! :-))