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."

Elderly care, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism…

Mats Thorslund.

In a discussion on elderly care in Sweden last night a professor in Social Gerontology Mats Thorslund said that the question “What care without dignity is” wasn’t interesting in the commission of inquiry concerning what care with dignity is. He had tried to raise this question with no response (whatsoever?) from the others in the committee (except from one person?).

Someone also spoke about that by redefining the needs (in this case the needs of elderly people) the politicians can get around the laws.

Here an article about that the old people’s needs in elderly care aren’t governing. And here about class differences in elderly care. See how the sociey is meeting old people's needs. More about Mats Thorslund and what he does (all those linked texs are in Swedish).

And once again, the more unequal society the worse the health not only among the poorest but through the whole society, due to the stress through the whole society. More equal societies work better.

Is the solution to go back to old time’s class differences? Should we rethink everything in the society? Is this with elderly care a symptom on something in the society and the whole world?

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.