Posted on 11/13/2019 6:00:47 PM PST by daniel1212
Your brain is not just produced by your genes; it’s sculpted by a lifetime of experiences. Experience alters brain activity, which changes gene expression. Any behavioural changes you see reflect alterations in the brain. The opposite is also true: behaviour can change the brain. When we first learn a new motor skill, it seems impossible until practice – repetition – changes the brain.
The brain remains ‘plastic’ throughout life, but trajectories are set during the prenatal period and early childhood. Brain development is very rapid in the womb and continues at an accelerated rate in the first two to three years in particular. Although the sculpting of the brain actively continues for the next 20 years or more, early life experiences will affect your responses throughout life. Many health and behavioural disorders are related to how the brain developed in its earliest period...
The developing cortex is altered by many pre- and postnatal events, including sensory and motor experience, parent-child relationships, play, stress, hormones and psychoactive drugs.
Healthy, engaged parents are the best brain supports a child can have. There is a connection between touch, the skin and brain development. Tactile stimulation by caregivers, and even expectant mothers rubbing their abdomens, aids brain development. The caregiver’s behaviour is transferred to the child epigenetically and affects the lifelong health of the infant via later stress reactivity. The trajectory is set very early on....
There is pretty compelling information now that if your father was an alcoholic, even if you never met him, your brain is different from someone whose father was not.
The speed at which the matured social brain comes on line is biased by early experiences. For some people, it never comes because of high stress or other factors in early childhood. Play behaviour profoundly changes the social brain. Play mimics adult behaviour and helps establish social rules. The brains of animals that grow up with adults only are different than those exposed to many playmates. Peer relationships are critical.
Outcomes such as talking or toilet training are not possible until the brain is ready. Some behaviours take a long time to mature. As late as the mid-teens, children have a difficult time deciphering emotion; they’re not bad at recognizing happy things but don’t do well with sad or disgusting things. This partly relates to the relative immaturity of the brain and also to the differences between boys and girls.
There are big differences in gray volume that reflect the number of neurons in brain cells, with boys reaching their peak approximately two years after girls. This means that environments and experiences will have different effects in girls than in boys.
Hormones have huge influences on the brain, resulting in different sizes in different areas of the brain between the sexes. This should affect behaviour and, in fact, it does. But the effect of hormones is affected by the experience you have during each phase of life – from embryo through to adulthood. Males, for example, are more affected by prenatal experiences because of the presence of testosterone.
There is a huge difference in language ability. Young girls begin talking much sooner than boys, and this is reflected in girls having much more complex cells in the language areas of the brain. Males use more brain to talk because their cells are not as large. There are many more sexual differences in early development, but discrepancies in language development alone suggest that preschool environments and expectations should adapt to these differences.
Cognitive function is also influenced by early experience. We know that more educated people have more complex language centres. But language is found everywhere in the brain and is related to talking, understanding, reading, writing, thinking and emotion. When children are read to, the experience does different things to different parts of the brain. We don’t know yet what types of early experiences give us the biggest effect on brain capacity or IQ, but we know that early reading does have an impact...
The presence of family violence, sexual abuse, drug or alcohol abuse, growing up in a family where someone is in jail, or where a parent suffers from chronic depression or other mental illness, has the effect of turning gold into lead in terms of the future prospects of children.
The presence of any one of these circumstances compromises adult health. The presence of two or more increases the likelihood of being addicted to drugs or attempting suicide by 50 times...
Drugs given prenatally, as well as in early development and adolescence, can alter later response to sensory experiences, learning and memory. The developing cortex is altered by psychoactive drugs as well as by ‘heavy’ drugs, and most of us were exposed to some drugs in utero – nicotine, caffeine, antidepressants, etc.
All drugs leave a footprint on the brain. Something about them changes the brain structure. The likelihood of becoming an addict depends on prenatal and early childhood experiences. Tactile stimulation has a reducing effect, whereas pre- and postnatal stress heighten the likelihood of addictions.
Wonderful! I was a premie 68 years ago, when premies weren’t handled or cuddled in the hospital. A few years ago, my mother, now deceased, told me that when she brought me home, I “wouldn’t let her hold me”, so she didn’t. I don’t remember my mother ever cuddling me. She was a seriously depressed person who was suicidal more than once when I was a child. I have no doubt that my “refusal” to be held, caused her, in her depressed state, emotional pain as well. I’ve always operated far below my potential, and suffered from depression. Of course, even before she told me that, I knew it was because of the way I was raised, but until she told me that, I didn’t know THAT part of it. Only God can fix bad parenting, and He’s still got a lot of work to do in me, even at my age.
+1
This makes a case for nurture in shaping behavior, and it makes the case that there is nothing wrong with recognizing that fact and actively trying to use that fact and shape behavior in the immature person.
When ANYONE says, in tersm of ANY behavior (ANY!!!), “I was born this way”, it is factually never true.
The inability to see the past acting on how a behavior was shaped is not evidence that the behavior is from birth. Not knowing the origins of something is not evidence that it was always there.
What I do is beyond any evidence based psychological or medical treatment. I study all the evidence based psychological treatments and test the results to determine exactly how they work and the extent that they result in temporary or permanent results. My work is spiritual.
(For example, of the 11 evidence based treatments for PTSD only 1 results in permanent healing, the other are temporary.. That one is psychotherapy, however it is also the most expensive due to the investment of professional time. I test the person to see if the traumatic memory is still stored in the person’s soul and the treatment merely temporarily blocked the retrieval of it.)
I’ve been an ordained minister for many years as I used to do services on a regular basis at a church prior to relocating when I retired. I still do services on a periodic regular and irregular basis in retirement. This month I will do two services, last month was one service.
The basis for the work is the common elements in most religions, i.e. forgiveness, prayer, .......
Thus all that I do is done as a spiritual healing, which is exactly what it is. I work strictly on the person’s soul. Because it’s physical to me, it is very easy to do. This is true even though many of the people I work with are referrals from Dr’s as idiopathic cases. I’ve worked individually with many MD’s, psychologists, and research faculty on their own issues. It takes me about ten minutes to do what psychotherapy takes years of sessions and they still can’t find or heal the perceptual programming event causing the difficulty in the person’s life. (Most medical treatment is symptom suppression, not problem resolution.. If you heal the physical body, it is temporary, If you heal the soul, it is permanent.)
Basically, I teach people how to pray and understand how prayer works (and why it often does not work). This assists people in Loving God and finding and removing the obstacles to Love that exist within their souls in order that they can Love their neighbor AND themselves.
I don’t charge for any of the work that I do, so I have kept a low profile to avoid the burden of many people wanting me to “fix” them. That is not what this is about. I prefer to teach exactly what religions teach so people can “fix” themselves and others. Bottom line is, all that I do is only to help people understand the scriptures better.
I’ve worked with and been asked to work with several major university medical research departments, but my guidance in meditation has been to avoid these and to date I have turned them down. That is now changing. What I have shared is a very small tip of a very large glacier of information relating to the root causes of many physical and mental medical illnesses.
There is always truth mixed in with the lie.
Yes, the need to forgive is big, far bigger than I ever realized at first and I think the church has been very remiss up until now for not emphasizing it so much and for not correctly teaching on that.
I see that changing but it is far more significant than most people realize and can really give God a lot of room to work when we forgive someone.
Amen to that, sister!
Well; I don't understand how you understand this.
Thus the phrase:
Matthew 7:1 comes to mind.
Also:
1 John 4:20-21
You must first remove the load of mud from your own eye before you try to throw mud in my eye.
Blessings
Indeed it does!
"Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?... And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?... Do you not know that we shall judge angels?... How much more, things that pertain to this life?.. If then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life, do you appoint those who are least esteemed by the church to judge ? (1 Corinthians 6:1-5).
Many commands of God require the exercise of righteous judgment.
"But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us" (2 Thessalonians 3:6).
"And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother" (2 Thessalonians 3:14,15).
"Teach and exhort these things. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wrangling of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself" (2 Timothy 6:2b-5).
"Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple" (Romans 16:17,18).
All these commands require the careful exercise of righteousness judgment. Do not be deceived by smooth words and flattering speech. Beware of wolves who come to you with a sheep's skin.
We must be careful not to make unqualified judgments. But we must judge appropriately when commanded to do so.
"Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." (John 7:24).
Strange; when I was alluding to...
John 9:6After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.
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