How Early Trauma Thwarts Right-Brain Development

Most mental health disorders – plentiful in the trans-identified population – originate in maladaptive coping systems and are developed in early life to tolerate or navigate painful circumstances. When things are terrible, and you dissociate, you’ll feel less terrible. Or if you think of yourself as worthless, it’s easier to manage to love your neglectful parent.

Indeed, suicide— which we are constantly warned is a danger to the population identifying as ‘trans’— is very strongly correlated with early-life relational trauma, particularly trauma in the first year.

Traumas can easily occur in caring homes, due to the unformed, fragile nature of a baby’s mind, and the unavoidable vicissitudes of life. People die; beloved babysitters move away. What determines whether something ‘bad’ rises to the level of ‘trauma’ depends on the developmental capacity of the child. Thus, “Mom was hospitalized for two weeks when I was one” is a severe Developmental Trauma, even if lost to conscious memory, because a one-year-old who didn’t see his Mom for two weeks would have to think she had died, or stopped loving him– for two weeks! No baby could avoid dissociation in this circumstance. Whereas a child of six can speak up about his distress, be aware of why Mom is away, count days on the calendar, cry in Dad’s lap, and be verbally reassured of her return.

UCLA’s Dr Allan Schore, author of “Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self,” is a Developmental Neuroscientist and an expert in how neurological development is derailed by early Trauma, particularly trauma in the first year. He posits that in suicidal people, the neuro-biological artifacts of trauma— including somatiform dissociation (total unawareness of the body), constant physiological dysregulation (fight or flight, racing heart rate, etc), and an inability to emotionally self regulate— can feed and amplify one another, leading into a downward spiral of psychic collapse.

From pregnancy through age three, a child’s brain reaches 90% of adult size. Trauma during this timespan deeply affects the growth and function of the Right brain, which develops preferentially early-on.

The Right brain learns implicitly through observation of patterns, repeated experiences, and adult modeling. So, for example, when a mother soothes and comforts her baby, she both provides “external co-regulation” and also models that skill. Repeated thousands of times, being soothed by Mom gradually teaches the baby how to soothe himself (aka ’emotionally self- regulate’). As Dr Schore explains, from zero to three, via modeling within the dyad, “the right brain of the mother becomes the right brain of the child.”

What about babies who miss out on attentive, relational care? What ‘right brain’ are they downloading? And what about babies whose neuro- developmental differences or traumatic experiences/dissociation make it hard for them to take relational care in?

If a child can’t self-regulate, their sense of self will be unstable, shaky, and painfully fraught– feelings either numbed or pushed away, body sensations muted— just to maintain equilibrium. People who lack self regulation are terrified of stumbling into an unexpected pit of negative emotion they can’t modulate. What kind of ‘self knowledge’ or authenticity can such a person possess, when all feeling is muted or shut down? How can they possibly comfortably inhabit their body, the very place where feelings show up? Schore posits that self awareness and “sense of self” can only come after we finally achieve the ability to self-regulate— at last being able to do on our own what Mom used to have to do for us is precisely how we realize we have an independent self.

While the later-developing Left brain grasps logic, language, and linear time, the Right brain is more of a receiver of data streams— tracking body sensations like hunger or warmth, visual data (what is happening, facial expressions), auditory information (prosody and ‘motherese,’ a barking dog), and other somatic/sensory signals. The right brain processes information much faster than ‘thinking-through’ allows. Hence, the right brain governs “fight or flight,” where hesitation might mean death. Imagine driving towards an intersection on a rainy day, when a pedestrian is poised to cross, the light is changing, a lane is closed, and someone is signaling to turn. This too demands instantaneous assessment of multiple data streams, and rapid, intuitive action. As Dr. Schore puts it, “the right brain drives the car.”

Babies who feel frightened, lonely, frustrated or miserable have no other way to modulate those painful states, besides muting all awareness. Overwhelmed babies require a trusted adult to provide EXTERNAL co-regulation, in order to regain calm. This process teaches the child over time that ‘bad’ feelings are temporary, and can be addressed, ameliorated, and resolved; that comfort or help is always near at hand. If babies are left uncomforted, they will draw very different conclusions, like: ‘feelings are too scary, I am helpless, nobody cares. I feel bad. I am bad.’ Dissociation is the only ‘mute button’ available to a baby.

A dissociative baby misses vast tracts of social-emotional learning, which requires relaxed alertness, curiosity, presence, play— and a safe, regulating ‘other.’ Abused kids space out (‘escape into fantasy’) to deal with emotional pain, so they stop observing, downloading and processing what is happening around them, as ‘tuning in’ feels too distressing. A baby who is frequently sad or frightened misses foundational, brain-organizing neurodevelopment and relational/emotional learning, during the very time of the brain’s most rapid growth, when billions of neuronal connections are normally forged. The right brain is essentially laser-printed while in use. Dissociation and skipped developmental steps leave gaps in right brain functioning and self concept— which we may call ‘mental illness’ later on.

By contrast, babies who are well-attended and kept within their ‘window of tolerance’ (content, engaged, relaxed, alert) learn constantly, intuitively drinking in the skills modeled by their skillful guides. Swift, consistent comfort renders the arrival of ‘bad’ feelings less and less scary over time. If the relational ballast of a caring adult is absent, children may ’turn against themselves’— just from being in a terrible situation, with no help. “I must deserve this.” “I always fail.” “Maybe I am just no good.”

Trauma blocks a baby’s ability to acquire, via modeling, the right-brain skills he needs to be a well-functioning, contented, self-aware human— including a somatic sense of comfortable physical embodiment and of being solidly real, a stable self-concept, a feeling of worth, the capacity to read subtle signals in the body that announce feelings or intuitions, prosocial relational skills, basic trust in others, the capacity to emotionally self regulate, and an internal locus of control.

If we suggest to a distressed child, who lacks all of these capacities, that—with no introspection required!— they can use pills, shots and surgery, and thereby rid themselves of that painfully-aching inner howl of instability, badness, brokenness, and lack? Well, who wouldn’t leap? Suffering kids deserve better. They deserve adults who can co-regulate them, and who are willing to witness, bear with, and intuitively understand their pain.