I recently had the privilege of listening to Bessel van der Kolk, trauma researcher and author of The Body Keeps Score. He began his talk with
a video clip of a mom and her baby, who looked to be about 3 months old,
having a conversation. It started with an exchange of soft sounds,
moving on to more complex communication, including shared facial expressions.
Palpable delight characterized the moment of meeting.
As the conversation between mother and baby increased in
complexity, a slight lapse appeared between the baby's signal and the
mother's response. Herein lies the development of resilience. World-renowned child development researcher Ed Tronick, who van der Kolk referenced at
the start of his talk, has demonstrated, with second-to-second videotape
analyses, that in typical relationships parent and infant are mismatched
in 70 percent of interactions. What he terms "quotidian
resilience" develops in the repair of these countless moments.
Ways of being together are laid down in our minds and bodies the
early weeks, months, and years of life. They become part of us; part of our
DNA. Our earliest relationships sculpt our nervous system and the way our body
responds to stress. The moment-to-moment mismatch and
repair of early infancy is the material of which our self, with our own
skin—our own border—is made. Survival of disruption, together with the joy of
repair, creates trust, an essential ingredient of intimacy. We develop a confidence that when
we feel bad, we won’t always feel bad. This early experience builds a
foundation of hope.
The talk was sponsored by Berkshire United Way, which is taking a lead in making our community
"trauma-informed." Driving the movement to create
"trauma-informed communities" is the powerful longitudinal Adverse Childhood Experiences Study showing the poor long-term outcomes of a range of experiences including not
only abuse and neglect, but the more ubiquitous
experiences of parental mental illness, marital conflict, and divorce. The greater the number of ACEs,
the greater the likelihood of a wide range of negative physical, emotional, and
social consequences.
The original ACE research grew out of the observed high association between adult obesity and childhood sexual abuse. The original ACE questionnaires address experiences specific to relationships. Recent adaptations have expanded to include external stressors such as poverty and racism. Again looking to the research of Ed Tronick (credit image below,) we can understand the parent-infant relationship as being either a buffer against or a transducer of these stressors.
An extensive body of research shows us how
these early experiences get into the body and the brain. But perhaps we need look no
further than van der Kolk's opening video. My colleague in Scotland, Suzanne Zeedyk,
who is taking extraordinary strides to make an entire country
"trauma-informed" in large part through showings of the film Resilience about
the ACEs study, began her work in the arena of public policy with a
beautiful film, the connected baby. Both she and van der Kolk recognize that babies
have an extraordinary capacity for connection and communication from the moment
of birth. "ACEs" are experiences that violate that
connection.
Adverse Childhood Experiences can be understood as developmental
derailment of the healthy process of mismatch and repair.
Prolonged lapse between mismatch and repair occurs when a parent is
preoccupied with depression, substance use,
marital conflict, or domestic violence. Absent
mismatch occurs with an anxious intrusive parent. Unrepaired mismatch occurs in
the setting of abuse and neglect.
Van der Kolk went on to demonstrate, using research evidence
and clinical examples, how when bad things happen to us early in our lives, the
experiences live in the body. Offering a message of hope, he encouraged
his audience—a broad range of individuals from our local community—to recognize
that healing begins with the body. Theater, martial arts, drawing, drumming,
yoga, and dance are among the many ways in which, in the setting of
relationships, parts of the brain damaged by the experience of trauma can begin
to heal.
In conclusion, van der Kolk returned to babies. He advised us
to look to paid parental leave, high-quality daycare for all, and other
measures to support new parents as the path to a
trauma-informed community. In keeping with his recommendations, our local Berkshire United Way chapter is
supporting a project designed to give every newborn baby and parent a voice.
Using the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system,
founded in the work of pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, as a model of care for all
new families, we aim to offer opportunities for nonjudgmental listening to
parent and baby together. One mother had an unexpected emergency cesarean
section and feared that the disruption in her birth plan would damage her
connection with her baby. When we used the NBO to take time to demonstrate
how well she did, in fact, understand her baby, she was flooded with relief and
joy.
A recent Time magazine article, The Goddess Myth, identifies the
unrealistic expectations of the transition to motherhood as
potentially damaging to mothers. The article cites the statistic
that close to 50 percent of mothers have deliveries that do not go according to
plan. Sometimes referred to as "birth trauma," the lack of
ability to repair the disruption in a holding environment characterized
by connected relationships can enhance the traumatic nature of
the experience.
The word "trauma" can itself be traumatizing. As we
move forward with this work, I wonder if we might aim to build not
"trauma-informed" communities, but, taking the lead from van der
Kolk's presentation of mother and baby, simply "connected
communities." Parents and babies are an excellent place to start.
-->
