Saturday, September 20, 2014
A number of themes have emerged in my blog writing over the course of these last fifteen months. One of those themes is compassion. I actually took a course focused on compassion as a student of Naropa University.
Earlier this year I learned about the work of Dr. Gabor Mate. My discovery came about as a result of my curiosity regarding the powerful influence that a child's pre-natal environment can have on development after birth. I became curious because I have spent some time trying to better understand my father.
Dr. Gabor Mate is a Canadian physician, speaker and author. He is known for his expertise on the topics of addiction, stress and childhood development. His website can be found here. An article on the Spirituality and Health website provides an accessible and concise overview of Dr. Mate's work and his own history. I have come to deeply value Mate's insights in part because I believe he further substantiates the legitimacy of a belief I have long held: compassion is an essential ingredient to healthy childhood development, healthy communities and a healthy society. I believe we here in the United States suffer from a compassion deficit. This 'compassion deficit' is perhaps as immense a crisis as the much discussed financial crisis that began in 2008.
A collection of interviews with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now provides an excellent overview of Dr. Mate's perspective on the issues I enumerated above. Mate argues that the phenomenon of addiction is deeply intertwined with early experience of abuse and neglect. In essence people who as children experience the severe stress of abuse, neglect, abandonment and the like are more likely to develop significant issues of addiction at some point in their development. In the first interview Mate notes the important distinction between the developmental pathway of human beings and that of other animals. The development of the human brain occurs 'under the influence of the environment' (in other words after birth) to a greater degree as compared to other animals. Mate draws attention to the important issue of what significance nature and nurture (or to phrase it differently genetics versus environment) play in human development.
Mate also speaks from his own personal history to further emphasize the impact that 'extremely stressed parenting' may have on early childhood development. Mate was an infant during the time of World War II in Europe; he was born in Nazi occupied Hungary. Even though Mate was a mere infant at the time he, like so many Jewish infants and children, was nonetheless affected by the severe stress his family was enduring at the time. Mate asserts that infants sense the stress of their parents. He further asserts that infants deal with such stress by tuning it out.
And yet tuning out such immense stress during infancy and childhood doesn't make the stress disappear. It is a law of physics that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. In a similar way it must then be true that there is a very real impact attributable to stressful experiences (whether of short or long duration). Children who experience 'extremely stressed parenting' may ultimately experience the consequences of exposure to such stress for years and even decades.
It's so clear to me now why I became so angry and embittered last year when my father could not and would not be present to me at a time when I needed him to be deeply available to my own grief and sadness. My experience of his inability to be present caused me to involuntarily recall my own experience of extremely stressed parenting when I was an infant and small child. I didn't receive very good parenting in part because my father had to focus so much of his attention on my mother during and after her descent into her life-changing illness. I recall having a deep and persistent feeling that my father struggled to figure out how to respond to my mother's illness. And though I believe (and I believe I have the right to feel this way) my father could have done better in handling the very difficult situation of my mother's illness I also am of the opinion that his ultimate response was very much a product of his own abilities and limitations. My father grew up in a small Arkansas town in the 1950s. The field of medicine in general and mental health in particular was almost 'medieval' compared to what it is now. I suppose he responded to the crisis of my mother's health as well as he knew how.
I find Dr. Mate's work especially compelling because I see within what I have learned thus far an implicit and explicit argument for the importance of compassion in how we treat one another. I believe my mother, my father and I might have all lived very different lives if compassion had played a greater role in our own life experiences.
I am grateful that it is not too late for me to redirect the course of my life. Though the phase of 'picking up the pieces' in my own life is long since over and I have begun to create a genuine and inspired renewed vision for myself there are still days when the grief wells up within me and nearly broadsides me. On such occasions I try to pause, breathe and remember the vital ingredient of compassion in my own life.
I will end today with a quote from Naguib Mahfouz which Dr. Mate cited at the end of one of his interviews with Amy Goodman:
"Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body"
I see in this wise statement a deep recognition of the interconnectedness of the human mind and body. The sum of our life experiences (which come to constitute our life journey) becomes etched in the contours of our body. Happy lives are revealed in happy faces. And sad lives are expressed in sad faces. I wish for my own life to be a happy one. My will to a future filled with love and happiness motivates me to daily meet the world here on my blog and express my heart and mind.
Enjoy your Saturday!
A number of themes have emerged in my blog writing over the course of these last fifteen months. One of those themes is compassion. I actually took a course focused on compassion as a student of Naropa University.
Earlier this year I learned about the work of Dr. Gabor Mate. My discovery came about as a result of my curiosity regarding the powerful influence that a child's pre-natal environment can have on development after birth. I became curious because I have spent some time trying to better understand my father.
Dr. Gabor Mate is a Canadian physician, speaker and author. He is known for his expertise on the topics of addiction, stress and childhood development. His website can be found here. An article on the Spirituality and Health website provides an accessible and concise overview of Dr. Mate's work and his own history. I have come to deeply value Mate's insights in part because I believe he further substantiates the legitimacy of a belief I have long held: compassion is an essential ingredient to healthy childhood development, healthy communities and a healthy society. I believe we here in the United States suffer from a compassion deficit. This 'compassion deficit' is perhaps as immense a crisis as the much discussed financial crisis that began in 2008.
A collection of interviews with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now provides an excellent overview of Dr. Mate's perspective on the issues I enumerated above. Mate argues that the phenomenon of addiction is deeply intertwined with early experience of abuse and neglect. In essence people who as children experience the severe stress of abuse, neglect, abandonment and the like are more likely to develop significant issues of addiction at some point in their development. In the first interview Mate notes the important distinction between the developmental pathway of human beings and that of other animals. The development of the human brain occurs 'under the influence of the environment' (in other words after birth) to a greater degree as compared to other animals. Mate draws attention to the important issue of what significance nature and nurture (or to phrase it differently genetics versus environment) play in human development.
Mate also speaks from his own personal history to further emphasize the impact that 'extremely stressed parenting' may have on early childhood development. Mate was an infant during the time of World War II in Europe; he was born in Nazi occupied Hungary. Even though Mate was a mere infant at the time he, like so many Jewish infants and children, was nonetheless affected by the severe stress his family was enduring at the time. Mate asserts that infants sense the stress of their parents. He further asserts that infants deal with such stress by tuning it out.
And yet tuning out such immense stress during infancy and childhood doesn't make the stress disappear. It is a law of physics that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. In a similar way it must then be true that there is a very real impact attributable to stressful experiences (whether of short or long duration). Children who experience 'extremely stressed parenting' may ultimately experience the consequences of exposure to such stress for years and even decades.
It's so clear to me now why I became so angry and embittered last year when my father could not and would not be present to me at a time when I needed him to be deeply available to my own grief and sadness. My experience of his inability to be present caused me to involuntarily recall my own experience of extremely stressed parenting when I was an infant and small child. I didn't receive very good parenting in part because my father had to focus so much of his attention on my mother during and after her descent into her life-changing illness. I recall having a deep and persistent feeling that my father struggled to figure out how to respond to my mother's illness. And though I believe (and I believe I have the right to feel this way) my father could have done better in handling the very difficult situation of my mother's illness I also am of the opinion that his ultimate response was very much a product of his own abilities and limitations. My father grew up in a small Arkansas town in the 1950s. The field of medicine in general and mental health in particular was almost 'medieval' compared to what it is now. I suppose he responded to the crisis of my mother's health as well as he knew how.
I find Dr. Mate's work especially compelling because I see within what I have learned thus far an implicit and explicit argument for the importance of compassion in how we treat one another. I believe my mother, my father and I might have all lived very different lives if compassion had played a greater role in our own life experiences.
I am grateful that it is not too late for me to redirect the course of my life. Though the phase of 'picking up the pieces' in my own life is long since over and I have begun to create a genuine and inspired renewed vision for myself there are still days when the grief wells up within me and nearly broadsides me. On such occasions I try to pause, breathe and remember the vital ingredient of compassion in my own life.
I will end today with a quote from Naguib Mahfouz which Dr. Mate cited at the end of one of his interviews with Amy Goodman:
"Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body"
I see in this wise statement a deep recognition of the interconnectedness of the human mind and body. The sum of our life experiences (which come to constitute our life journey) becomes etched in the contours of our body. Happy lives are revealed in happy faces. And sad lives are expressed in sad faces. I wish for my own life to be a happy one. My will to a future filled with love and happiness motivates me to daily meet the world here on my blog and express my heart and mind.
Enjoy your Saturday!
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