Stress increases the risk for rheumatism...

Lars Alfredsson.

Yes, stress can cause different sorts of rheumatism, not only rheumatoid, but also for instance polymyalgia rheumatica, which a person near to me maybe has. A person probably suffering from longterm stress, and with a history of child abuse of different kinds. Abuse that is denied, or in parts recognized but considered having no real significance for this person's life, from that person herself, and probably many around her.

Thought of blogging about something I thought was interesting, from a Swedish site called Suntliv.nu. I want to start with relating to the content in the article:

Low control at work increases the risk for rheumatoid arthritis. A new Swedish study shows that the one who doesn’t decide over her/his work situation runs the risk of getting rheumatoid arthritis. It’s an endemic disease with over 50,000 people stricken by it in Sweden (with a population of 9 million people). Women are more often stricken than men.

“We have found clear connections between the disease and works where you can’t control your situation,”

the Swedish professor Lars Alfredsson says.

Other factors for getting ill are smoking and low education.

The researchers have also found some unexpected connections, namely between stress at work and rheumatoid arthritis.

The ones with low space for (own) decisions have a 60 % higher risk of being stricken.

The researchers also classified people in different professions after how low respective high control they have and compared people in professions with low control with people with high control concerning the risk of getting ill.

In that investigation they showed that it is 30 % higher risk for people in professions with low control to get ill.

Stress causes inflammation they mean and think it’s possible that stress makes inflammation come up.

Studies abroad has shown that the ones stricken with rheumatoid arthritis often have had a period of stress or experienced something revolutionary before the debut of the disease.

The researchers have also asked the participants about different sorts of stress and are now analyzing the connections between stress, results which are going to become presented later.

The study is also about interplay between inheritance and milieu.

My loud thinking around this article: I read this article after I had blogged about the young woman Veronika with rheumatoid arthritis whose psychiatrists didn’t believe her when she said she had been raped, and who showed to have been sexually abused as a child too.

I also came to think of two men I know of who got rheumatism as adults, one after a divorce in middle age and the other when he had passed 75 I think. The latter also got heart problems at the same time. I wonder over the latter and the relation he lives in and possible stress in that relation, a relation that easily could make you feel a little out of control?

The latter man was spanked as a child I think. Something he doesn’t seem to really question or view as wrong, or really rebel against. Something that was natural then and "what all parents did” because they "didn’t know better"?

I think I have read somewhere about connections between spanking and rheumatism too.

Thinking loudly, and trying to put something in words I am not really capable of putting in words yet. Being in a relation or maybe situation feeling a low control could also be a feeling that is fooling a person... Because he or she can actually have the power to leave it in may cases. But is feeling stuck and power and helpless, maybe even feels paralyzed (as the child ones was). Early feelings that are triggered in the present and feels so real so the person doesn’t see any alternatives, truly doesn’t see them. But those feelings stemming from early events in this persons life aren’t just to control. As we think we can. And are nothing to moralize over...

Voices in Sweden about the financial crisis and the state of affairs in the world…

the family Bonnier eating dinner.

[Slightly edited October 5, quite angrily written, so I wonder how my English was?]. Voices in Sweden about the financial crisis and the state of affairs in the world today: It has been about creating needs in a constantly, perpetually ascending spiral in societies all over the world. A have-mentality. But do we need to be slaves under consumption?

The bank bosses have gotten million bonuses and million parachutes.

The worst enemy to the finance and corporation world is contentedness.

Still the most important idea of business is to create needs and desires (or cravings) in a constantly ascending spiral. Nobody shall be satisfied.

Quite ironically: at the same time we are blamed for being too demanding!!! One of the contradictions and confusions again!?

It stood about the bourgeois’ scale of value and view on man. Are there people wanting to live outside their (the bourgeois’) conception of the world, in another world we think is possible a writer wonders?

Can the time come when having two cars will be seen as something embarrassing and not – as it is now – something enviable.

One writer writes that the modern “extortion”, with the help of media, advertisement, pr-consults, lifestyle-agents and trademarks, forces a lifestyle on people that has shown to be deeply destructive, but all this is (or could be, even if I think it is difficult, with all the pressure around) something one can do something about oneself, in contrast to the wage-slavery during the former turn of the century.

In the middle of this I saw that tonight (or tomorrow, I didn’t look properly) they are sending a new version of “Let’s dance”, this time the competitors are learning to dance on ice (with skates!!). Yes, this is what people are entertained with…

One can rebel against oneself and ones own have-desire, the desire you have been enticed into. You can start to grin at medias holding up the rich as models and idols (as even the newspaper ICA-kuriren here in Sweden started to a couple of years ago, and then I unsubscribed); the same medias who have been worshiping the finance-men and managers whom now have thrown the world into crisis. Haven’t they “forfeited their pound”?

No, they need to make even worse things?? But people lower on the status-scale failing aren't apologized, sometimes at all. Yes, people are treated differently, depending on their status, where on the scale they stand. What about people's equal value only seen to the fact that they are born to this world? Quite ironically. And others get ashamed for much smaller "crimes”!! That about proportions…

This obsession with the rich and successful, supplied by the media, doesn’t it all of a sudden feel incredibly out-of-date?

One person here writes about (not least) a moral fiasco for Bush, for a politics that has failed so much and in so many areas.

Does the free market actually function? Isn’t it ruled by a few actors actually?

One writer thinks it would be honorable if the ones analyzing the finance-capital as a positive, creative power in the economy some years ago (the written words are still there, and can be read even today), stating that the new global market with all its insurances and reinsurances is sound, could apologize for their analysis. Admit to what they wrote some years ago.

Or that they at least could search on the words “the economy’s ability to function” and get surprised over that they only a few years ago thought that a big welfare state and high taxes are checking for the (the economic, and overall) “growth.” Sweden and the Scandinavian countries are proofs that a big welfare state and quite high taxes aren't curbing for the economical growth? But our current government is now rapidly destroying this? (but the situation here hasn't made us lazy workers I think. We are, or have been, hard workers? And interested in other countries and phenomena in the world? Our society hasn't been a closed society, even if we have had social democratic, i.e., "left wing", government for long? But a government that has turned more and more to the right, yes!).

The most usual prevarication today is the statement that the problem is about “anonymous owners”, which means owners not steered by a steady “owner hand”, like the Wallenberg’s or Bonnier’s in Sweden.

People try to earn money on money, instead of investing them in our real lives.

The financial crisis isn’t an accident, but an element belonging to the capitalism.

It’s the taxpayers who have to pay for the speculators loans, instead of seeing their money going to school, care and nursing, or what it’s called in English. All those instances are forced aside by what the (many times well paid) speculators have done.

The ones winning on all this are the members in corporations’ managements, because the system makes so they get their bonuses and bizarre wages apart from the fact if the businesses goes well or not.

It’s a myth that the market is stable; the ones winning on these situations are those living on the differences in prizes, so what’s happening isn’t an accident.

How can one interpret our current finance minister saying that the world economy is influenced by “raw avariciousness”?

Can there be two comments to this?

1/ He is an eager supporter of market economy and this statement only reinforces the myth that this ought not to happen, that the crisis has nothing to do with the system itself.

2/ On top of it he individualizes the problem. He says that the speculators are greedy in the same manner as he says that the ones with no job are lazy!

What we see now is a saving-action for the capitalism. There is no movement which can take over. What’s so dangerous about our time is that there is no strong worker’s movement, and this increases the risk somebody else takes over, in the worst case the fascism.

See the American neurologist Jonathan Pincus on his findings, and further about perversion and perverted needs.

Texts I have used in this posting you find here.

Traumas and changes in the brain...

Areas in the brain that has minor volume of grey matter, among those who were in the nearness of the terrorist-attack. All areas, which are light in colour on this picture, are areas that are connected with emotions. (Foto: Barbara Ganzel/Cornell University)

”Traumas can change the brain” was the heading to an article I got a link to. It stands that evil experiences as those happening September 11 at World Trade Center can reduce the amount of grey matter in the brain. See "Resilience after 9/11: Multimodal neuroimaging evidence for stress-related change in the healthy adult brain" and ”Brain's gray cells appear to be changed by trauma of major events like 9/11 attack, a study suggests.”

Unprocessed trauma makes the brain vulnerable for new trauma? The less traumatized (or the more help an individual has gotten to process difficult things from early in life r later in a successful, proper therapy) the less vulnerable, the more easily you can process difficult life-events later. What Jenson says!! Unprocessed traumas influence our ability to process later traumas so we can go on in life better.

I had to look in Jenson’s book again. Yes, she writes at page 36 that another serious consequence of a permanent suppression is the distortion (förvrängning) the unconscious forces us to. She means that we aren’t aware of what and how we are actually behaving and doing (these defence and survival strategies comes automatically, and have become as a part of ourselves, in my understanding and interpretation of her, we need to learn to recognize them first), for instance trying to change oneself in hope of getting appreciation and/or be spared abuse and violations.

An inborn ability to process experiences is damaged. And she means that to be capable of processing things realistically and in full a person needs to see clearly what’s happening in a given situation. When there is a high degree of denial clear perception is rather exception than rule. The unconscious distorts the individual’s experiences without her/him being aware of it.

Suppression damages a very important human capacity namely the ability to process experiences, something which is important for a sound, satisfying life. And the results of these inabilities are often quite tragic I would frankly say.

Of course this influences later difficult experiences and our capacity to process them constructively.

And that is what the researchers have seeing the research that is referred to?

See wikipedia according grey matter in the brain, and the ACE-reporter nr. 4 ”Adverse Childhood Experiences and Stress: Paying the Piper” where it for instance stands:

“…the ACE Study data [was analyzed] against demonstrated neurobiological defects that result from early trauma, changes to areas of the brain that mediate mood, anxiety, healthy bonding with other people, memory, and even where our bodies store fat.

After careful analysis, what they found is that ‘early experiences can have profound long-term effects on the biological systems that govern responses to stress…Disturbances [in neuron-development] at a critical time early in life may exert a disproportionate influence, creating the conditions for childhood and adult depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms.’

These shared findings have ‘the potential to unify and improve our understanding of many seemingly unrelated, but often co-morbid [occurring at the same time] health and social problems that have historically been seen and treated as categorically independent in Western culture.’

Why is this important? First, it is important to recognize that our ‘functional neuroanatomical and physiologic systems are interactive and integrated and that behaviors and health problems cannot generally be attributed to the function of any single or particular system.’ Our bodies’ systems work together. Therefore, treating one aspect of a problem, without addressing the other aspects, cannot possibly solve the problem completely.

Comprehending this essential relationship can help improve both preventive and primary care medicine, giving patients and their caregivers the information they need to achieve the best possible health and social outcomes.

Second, this convergence of colleagues and their data ‘adds support for numerous effects of childhood adverse experiences on physical health.

Stress is known from animal studies to be associated with a broad range of effects on physical health, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, asthma, metabolic abnormalities, obesity, infection and other physical disorders.’ These findings provide the sort of substance that governments, organizations, and people in general typically require to become engaged, and to take action.

Without scientific data, the long-term effects of childhood trauma are otherwise easily brushed aside in favor of a more comfortable and convenient denial of the problem.

Third, we now know that ‘retrospective reports of childhood abuse [that was documented at the time of its occurrence] are likely to underestimate actual occurrence…[due to] effects of traumatic stress in childhood on the hippocampus’. In other words, the incidence of child abuse is probably much greater than is reported, and even greater than remembered and acknowledged by the victims themselves. Not only is such trauma protected by secrecy and shame, but by the function of our own brains.

Equally important, this multi-disciplinary approach to research encourages future collaboration among scientists, all working at solving different pieces of what we are beginning to understand is the same puzzle. As the puzzle takes shape, the pipers lose ground.”

In wikipedia it stands about the grey matter:

“Grey matter is distributed at the surface of the cerebral hemispheres (cerebral cortex) and of the cerebellum (cerebellar cortex), as well as in the depth of the cerebral (thalamus; hypothalamus; subthalamus, basal ganglia - putamen, globus pallidus, nucleus accumbens; septal nuclei), cerebellar (deep cerebellar nuclei - dentate nucleus, globose nucleus, emboliform nucleus, fastigial nucleus), brainstem (substantia nigra, red nucleus, olivary nuclei, cranial nerve nuclei) and spinal grey matter (anterior horn, lateral horn, posterior horn).

The function of gray matter is to route sensory or motor stimulus to interneurons of the CNS in order to create a response to the stimulus through chemical synapse activity. Gray matter structures (cortex, deep nuclei) process information originating in the sensory organs or in other gray matter regions. This information is conveyed via specialized nerve cell extensions (long axons), which form the bulk of the cerebral, cerebellar, and spinal white matter.”

See earlier postings on the brain and also the posting on hysteria and neocortex.

Hysteria…

Jean Martin Charcot.

Peter Währborg also writes about hysteria in his book (a book which is in Swedish, so the text below is my amateur translation and interpretation of his text), at page 87-88 in a chapter called “Neocortical stress reactions.”

He writes that stress influences the behaviour. Memory, concentration, attention and other neuropsychological functions deteriorate during stress. During severe stress an even more pronounced reduction of higher mental and cortical functions can occur. This state has been described by Jean Martin Charcot (also see here about him) in the end of the nineteenth century and fascinated one of his visitors, namely Sigmund Freud.

This state is called hysteria. Wärhborg writes that it is a state whose physiology is almost unknown. It can be described as a sort of mental “playing dead reaction” (apparent death).where an active as well as a passive symptomatology can appear. In the former case symptoms like paralysis (förlamning), dumbness (stumhet), disequilibrium (balansrubbning) and vomiting appear. Passive symptoms are reduced feelings (nedsatt känsel), blindness, deafness, tunnel vision, failing off of smell (bortfall av lukten) and insensitiveness for pain. Characterized by what the French psychologist and prominent pupil to Charcot, Pierre Janet, once described as “la belle indifference.”

Easily influenced (påverkbarhet) without critical thinking, i.e., suggestibility and earlier occurrence (förekomst) of similar episodes are other important clues to this diagnosis.

Hysteria is characterized by a symptom-picture which is nearly related to the neocortical function. Often these symptoms appear swift as a lightning, not seldom in connection with a trauma for which the individual is lacking strategies handling. One can always discuss if hysteria shall be seen as a stress related syndrome he writes.

Judith Lewis Herman writes about hysteria, Charcot and Freud in her book "Trauma and Recovery - From Domestic Violence to Political Terror", see for instance the chapter “A Forgotten History.”

It starts with (page 7):

“The study of psychological trauma has a curious history – one of episodic amnesia. Periods of active investigation have alternated with periods of oblivion. Repeatedly in the past century, similar lines of inquiry have been taken up and abruptly abandoned, only to be discovered much later. Classic documents of fifty or one hundred years ago often read like contemporary works. Though this field has in fact an abundant and rich tradition, it has been periodically forgotten and must be periodically reclaimed.”

And I wonder if the drive theory can occur in other clothing during history too? More or less disguised? Even today? All sorts of ideas about what is driving people... Ideas that are defences rather?

A boss said:

"You are flexible [extremely stretchable??], innovative, don’t get stuck in a problem but try to see/seek solutions, you take own initiatives, are working independently… You have a broad ground to stand on."

Phew...

Psychosocial stressors in children…

from the Swedish child-film Dunderklumpen (1974, English site here and Swedish here), I have played the first tune with a couple of pupils.

Peter Währborg (see former posting "Empathy and Stress...") also writes about children and psychosocial stressors at page 79-81 in his book (mentioned in the former posting).

He writes that in the main the same things which are stressing children are stressing adults.

The most important stressors are emotionally significant separations, for instance parents divorce, but also getting new teachers and classmates. When children loose a part of the body because of illness or accident they react with a powerful stress reaction, as when a person whom is important dies or moves. Children lives in a world which is a little bigger than adults understand Wärhborg writes.

Discomfort (vantrisel) being in a school and a class which only causes social and psychic suffering is of course not fun and causes (sometimes severe) stress in children. If you experience (thinks) you don’t manage especially well in school each failure gives new proofs on your insufficiency or inadequacy. The self esteem is jeopardized, and the inability to live up to the demands parents, teachers or others put turns into chronic stress.

Difficult relations are another source of stress in children. It looks as children in this case reacts more equal to grown up women, i.e., they react more pronounced on difficult relations than men do.

Children have many different sorts of relations which can play a significant or important role for the risk developing stress (my addition: and for minimizing the bad effects?).

Especially powerful are the stress reactions in children exposed to insulting “specific treatment” (särbehandling) or victimization (?) such as mobbing. (See this pdf-file on "Victimization at Work" from the Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health).

Währborg thinks that children’s sensitivity means that the best would be if the classes were small and stable.

Encroachments (abuse), accidents, maltreatment or other severe traumas also causes stress. Sometimes this stress state is of a more serious nature, so called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Not least children who have immigrated can carry things with them that they haven’t got any opportunity to process.

Währborg also mentions time and decision conflicts as a source for stress reactions in children something we also see in adults. When children feel powerlessness or that they don’t have control over their situation they react with stress.

Children suffer more seriously because of lack of security and social stability. The family-situation plays an important role in this (in moderating, and in moderating both this and that?). Here it isn’t only a question of interaction-patterns in the family but also about events happening to the family.

My brief reflections: We have tended to minimize and belittle things children experience, and to sweep it under the rug? And it was even more so earlier? If you didn’t talk about bigger and smaller events or traumas they didn’t harm one thought. And the child and whole events became surrounded by silence.

See about the ACE-study here and here.

Empathy and stress...

Updated in the evening: The Swedish stress-researcher Peter Währborg (see photo above) writes in his book ”Stress och den nya ohälsan” (“Stress and the new ill health”) at page 63 in the (under-)chapter “Övriga psykologiska stressorer” (“Other psychological Stressors”) to the chapter "Stressorer" (Stressors"?), that there is an abundance (uppsjö) of psychological conditions which can redeem (utlösa) stress.

He writes that empathy, defined as the ability to compassion, has shown to be associated with an increased degree of stress-physiological activity in their research. Maybe this is surprising to some he writes, but at the same time this isn’t entirely unreasonable.

An engagement in others and for others can in a moral sense be seen as positive, but for the individual form/create strain (skapa påfrestning) and stress.

He also writes that we can discern (skönja) two principal, main causes to psychic stress. At the one hand the ones that depends on the primary emotional reaction which occurs with, for instance, a separation and on the other these which primarily depends on our personal philosophy (föreställningsvärld). The former we can group as emotional and the latter as cognitive stressors he writes.

And on page 62 he writes about Harlow’s research on monkeys, I see now, in the (under)chapter with the title “Separationer och förluster” (“Separations and losses”).

He thinks that separations and losses (especially of relations which play a central role for well being) seem to be a particularly significant psychological factor behind the development of stress, something that has been shown in many experiments, but also in studies which his group has done on children exposed to involuntary separations.

But how does one come to terms with this (eventual vulnerability to stress and burn out)? By changing ones thoughts or using other popular methods today?

I think one should need something else… Maybe I come back to this later.

A comment to my earlier posting on Balancing made me think...

Addition in the evening: I read further in the book by Währborg. At page 78-79 he writes about the differences between men and women. It’s during the last (one or two?) decades one has noticed the differences between the genders in scientific studies.

A lot talks for (??) that the women’s health has deteriorated generally, at least in how the health is experienced subjectively. Stress-related troubles have increased, especially in young women.

According to Währborg Christina Maslach (earlier postings on Maslach and Leiter and on Währborg) has established that burn out looks different in men and women, even if the condition is about equally distributed (?) between the sexes.

In women the emotional exhaustion (feelings of emptiness) are more intense and usual. Men react with depersonalization and frigidity more often instead.

More recent research has shown that women more often than men develop relation-related stress.

There is also much that talks for that women feel (subjectively?) more stressed than men. In Währborg’s research they have found that women experience time-pressure more often than men, and think they are easier stressed and they are more often sad or depressed. They experience powerlessness more often than men and perform their duties “to whatever price.”

Interestingly enough women describe themselves as more empathic than men does (!!), when this at the same time vary in correlation (samvarierar) positively with occurrence in stress substances as noradrenalin and adrenalin in the blood.

The last-mentioned finding is especially interesting as empathy is apprehended as a positive feeling. Women in works which put big and lengthy demands on empathy (for instance people in health-care, teachers etc.) are at greater risk that this capacity for empathy becomes a stressor. This is in fact maybe not so strange, as compassion with another person implies both a strong feeling but also powerlessness.

Währborg thinks that a conclusion one can draw is that women to a higher degree than men experience stress in their relations. Besides empathy (a natural feeling in many relations on good and bad) seem to generate stress.

Währborg also writes that the sleeping-time has decreased considerably (page 83). Before Thomas Edison invented the incandescent lamp (glödlampan) we slept nine to ten hours in average per night. Now we sleep just below seven hours per night. And the sleeping quality has successively been worse.

Through measuring the brainwaves (EEG) and melatonin one has found that it is worries for the coming day which above all causes worse sleeping quality with shorter periods of deep recovery-sleep (??).

Sleeping troubles are more common in women than men.

But there are probably exceptions...

I wonder where the roots for all this lies... Maybe more about this later... And maybe also write about what Währborg writes about children and stress.

Crying...

sleeping baby, and not sleeping in a parent's arms...

[Updated in the end January 28]. I thought further on the former topic when I did other things and wondered if Ingeborg Bosh hadn't written anything about perfectionism. I didn't find anything on that though (skimmed the book very swiftly), but I found something else, instead; about crying (at page 132 in her book "Rediscovering The True Self"). And about honoring all feelings and letting our children express their feelings. She writes that:

"There are no exceptions. When they feel pain, are frightened, confused etc. it is important to listen to them, let them fully express their feelings, and then, see if a solution can be found together, if the child so desires. Be sure to allow enough time so that the feeling can be fully experienced by the child and not stopped before it has run its natural course. Never try to make children stop crying! It's the crying in the presence of an empathic adult that has a healing effect on children."

And then it stands about crying:

"Crying is the only way a newborn or small baby has to communicate its distress and it should be taken very seriously. It is as terrible for he baby as it sounds. Often young parents will say: 'Well we pick her up when she cries, but not immediately. We let her cry for 15 minutes or so. Sometimes a little longer. We can't react to her every whim.'

Harvard researchers Commons and Miller show how devastating this treatment can be to the young child. Alvin Powell write about this research: 'Instead of letting infants cry, American parents should keep their babies close, console them when they cry, and bring them to bed with them, where they'll feel safe, according to Michael Simmons and Patrice Miller, researchers at the Medical School's Department of Psychiatry.

The pair examined child-rearing practices here and in other cultures and say that the widespread American practice of putting babies in separate beds - even separate rooms - and not responding to their cries may lead to more incidents of post-traumatic stress and panic disorders among American adults.

The early stress due to separation causes changes in infant brains that make future adults more susceptible to stress in their lives. Parents should recognize that having babies cry unnecessarily harms the baby permanently (italics by author). It changes the nervous system so they're sensitive to future trauma."

I came to think of the small baby, the sixth, to a mother that was near 40... The mother had had five children earlier, was "experienced", and felt she needed her sleep?? So the baby was put in another room, though next to the parent's (but not with doors between the two rooms). At bedtime the small baby started to cry. Now she was going to be left alone? The house had become silent. No noise of people - no signs of any kind of living human beings near!? Alone in the world? So the baby started to cry.

The mom picked her up and sat in a rocking-chair in the hall outside the two bedrooms. The other two bedrooms (for the four oldest) lay one stair up together with a TV-room in a hall between the bedrooms.

The fifth child in line slept in her own bed in the parents' bedroom.

The mom put on some music on the recorder, a special song which was popular that time, and sat there with the baby which calmed down and stopped crying.

The other children got calm too?? Because it was distressing for them too to hear the small baby cry?? And it disturbed their sleep too?? And they should get up early and go to school too... And the baby was put back in her bed in her own room. And fell asleep of pure tiredness?

This went on for the baby's first three months I think...

Later this child grew up to an adult with high demands, fairly easily stressed, yes, with anxiety and perfectionist problems... Problems with her stomach, often ache in it...

I know her... And met her yesterday, newly operated... What help has she got to process this, or even to decipher this?? With the reservation I may be wrong in my thoughts, that I am rewriting a history? But am I? I was there. I was 12, 5 years then...Thus not so small... I get so angry, because this woman has been in therapy a lot for her self-awareness sake (gestalt-therapy). And, yes, a period she got panic-attacks...

What did the older children experience in this way?? Yes, they were all separated from the mother directly after birth, taken away to be bathed. The second in line cried so much after his birth that the mother still remembers it. And the fist child was blue at birth... And when she was bathed she was thrown down to her mom with the words:

"I have never seen such a blue baby!!"

This baby had an enormous fontanel. Was it something wrong with her?? Was she hurt, damaged? Did she have"water in the brain" (Hydrocephalus)?? It showed she wasn't. She was not unintelligent, maybe the opposite... The next child, a boy also had, as the fourth, also a boy. But b then the mom (very anxious mom) this was nothing to be afraid of.

---

About Michael Commons' and Patrice Miller's (I am not 100 % sure I ave linked the right persons) findings see the article "Cry it out". And "Children Need Touch and Attention" here and here. The same text though an all these sites??

In the second text it stands for instance:

"The pair say that American childrearing practices are influenced by fears that children will grow up dependent. But they say that parents are on the wrong track: physical contact and reassurance will make children more secure and better able to form adult relationships when they finally head out on their own.

'We've stressed independence so much that it's having some very negative side effects,' Miller said."

And in the second (my italics below):

The way we are brought up colors our entire society, Commons and Miller say. Americans in general don't like to be touched and pride themselves on independence to the point of isolation, even when undergoing a difficult or stressful time. /…/

‘There are ways to grow up and be independent without putting babies through this trauma,’ Commons said. ‘My advice is to keep the kids secure so they can grow up and take some risks.’

Besides fears of dependence, other factors have helped form our childrearing practices, including fears that children would interfere with sex if they shared their parents' room [but if parents bond better and ore with their children they are better protected from harming them in any way?? Including sexually abusing them??] and doctors' concerns that a baby would be injured by a parent rolling on it if it shared their bed, the pair said. The nation's growing wealth has helped the trend toward separation by giving families the means to buy larger homes with separate rooms for children.

The result, Commons and Miller said, is a nation that doesn't like caring for its own children, a violent nation marked by loose, nonphysical relationships.

‘I think there's a real resistance in this culture to caring for children,’ Commons said. ‘Punishment and abandonment has never been a good way to get warm, caring, independent people.’”

But I don’t think only Americans have those childrearing practices. And this way of handling a child is a fear of spoiling the child, and what might then happen!??

Addition January 28:
But see earlier postings about what Bosch writes about respecting physical integrity (and touch) and about emotional needs (and their essential role for survival) from last summer. None of these postings are edited... I have only skimmed them now... I let them stand there as they are, at least for now... As spontaneously written as they were then.

Also see earlier posting on Kirkengen and boundary violations.

"I feel so angry, sad, and disappointed!!"

"But you shouldn't! Look... Maybe it can be so or so..."

Told what to think and feel is abuse according to Pia Melody. And when I hear such things I don't get less angry, but more!! :-) As if it is forbidden to feel, and feel strongly!!?? And forbidden to feel negative, difficult feelings!! I think people view me as grounded in the earth and calm?? But there are a lot of feelings under the surface... Maybe they also see that!??

Before I was somewhere round 33 years I didn't want to be seen, so I dressed fairly "gray" struck me again this morning...

My youngest brother skied MarciaLonga in Italy yesterday, around 70 km on around 4 hours... I haven't spoken with him though. He turns 49 years in June.

Our relative physical "strength" seen to that we are short, small people does it come of an inner fury I have thought sometimes... And what is this fury about?

Some expressions struck me when I took a shower now: "corrective measures", by telling another person what to feel, think, how to react... Strong feelings, emotions and expression are dangerous - and threatening?? Yes, hasn't Miller written about artistic expressions as socially accepted expressions (though with limits they too)? Even highly regarded! People with artistic talents are often enormously admired?? But does anyone want to know what's behind these expressions? If there is something behind them?

Yes, that about socially accepted expressions and behaviors again... And how shamy it is if a person is imperfect sometimes...

Helpers of all kinds, as therapists, psychologists and other sorts of "healers" (and gurus??) also believe and rely on corrective measures (only)??? That people just need to change, be relearned, need better models and that is the solution?? Maybe it is or feels so? But what has actually changed? If they just start behaving functional instead of dysfunctional, then they are cured?? Or?

What are the healer, therapist doing actually??

Yes, I use to train relaxation with programs (on the mp3-player in my cellphone for instance) and such things... But there is a but... This is only about trying to survive the best way possible... Minute by minute... But what and how much does it actually resolve?

And all those corrective measures, as retraining and relearning what message do they pass forward?? Very ironically... That here is something wrong with you!!?? And the healer, helper doesn't want to know more!!?? Does he/she?? There must really be something dangerous here?? Something that is forbidden to mention and touch upon!!?? Things that already are filled with fear... The healer signals (if not consciously so unconsciously) that this is really something dangerous?? What does this mean? For the one seeking help...

Jenson (and maybe also Bosch) writes about what the idea about "safe places" can imply. As if they are needed!!?? What scary things are then below?

In a hurry to work, making food, planning the day, taking a walk... Hmmm, how was it now with stressing??

Can anyone forbid one to feel neither this nor that actually? Less if you are grown up?! And isn't it as Miller says: it's not the feelings and emotions that are dangerous in themselves, but the actions they can lead to?? So feelings can't harm as long as you don't act them out (destructively or self-destructively), as long as you just feel them, which can be difficult enough...

"But you don't have to..."

As if one has to be protected against feelings (and pain)? As if one is so weak, maybe too sensitive for such things!? Even over-sensitive?? ("Yes think if I am???"). Yes, Miller writes about a woman in upper middle-age, who was protected by her husband... She suffered from severe depressions, but he thought she wouldn't survive processing her childhood experiences. But it showed to be different... To his astonishment (what I referred to in the posting about that love isn't the only thing needed for healing, despite this woman was surrounded by a loving family: husband and daughter, this didn't heal or made her less depressed). But love probably contributes in a positive way!! Makes it easier to face eventual truths!? And I don't believe at all in any truth-telling or other brutal ways of bringing people to enlightenment...

And, yes, does a disconsolate crying baby/child make us feel insecure and worried?