On the Breakdown of Our Adaptive Capacity

Some time ago I wrote about how it is the unrelenting input of pain that taxes our ability to adjust and adapt, causing a breakdown of this capacity.  The result is a scrambling of our brain cells and a collapse of our ability to cope.  It can lead to early psychosis or mental insufficiency.  What does this mean?

Not only must we look at our clinical experience but the latest in brain science.  Rockefeller University, New York, and Cambridge University, England (E.Keverne, D. Pfaff and Inna Tabansky.  “Epigenetic changes in the developing brain:  Effects on behavior.”; See: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/22/6789.full). One conclusion of their work was about methylation, how aspects of the methyl group are recruited to stamp in painful memory and imprint it.  When you block methylation you prevent the nerve cells from adapting to changes in their environment. It becomes maladaptive. New learning cannot take place without successful epigenetic programming.  And this makes me wonder when so many orphan children cannot learn well, are dyslexic and are slow to form sentences.  When there is day in-day out neglect, indifference and lack of love, the ability to adapt falters and damage occurs.  

The researchers noted that there is adverse effects on the feeling/hippocampus areas.  In short, chronic unrelenting pain overtaxes the native ability to adjust, and we see the results.  On the feeling level the person claims, it is all too much.  He gives up easily and cannot try hard to succeed.  It is not explained  verbally by the schizophrenic but he lives it.  He needs help to navigate his daily life.  He cannot adapt to new circumstances.  This is the extreme breakdown of adaptation.  This is because the adaptation mechanisms help us evolve and deal with different circumstances.  They are crucial for our evolution.  We can take minor setbacks, such as being left alone for a day or two, but being isolated for long periods damages our ability to adapt.

If we look for confirmation of all this in hard science, it is there.  The Dana-Farber cancer Institute discusses cancer in terms of the epigenetic switching mechanism.  (Dec. 8, 2014.  “Disorder in gene-control system is a defining characteristic of cancer.” (see: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141208145512.htm) (See also Cancer Cell). Here is what they say: “The genetic tumult with cancerous tumors is more than matched by the disorder in one of the mechanisms for switching cells’ genes on and off.  The disarray in the on/off  switches , known as methylation is one of the defining characteristics of cancer.”  (Genes are recruiting methyl to help attach to the DNA—methylation). What I am positing is that Primal imprints are heavily responsible for this Epigenetic tumult and disarray as the entire adaptation process has broken down.  Tumors can no longer adapt in any normal way and show highly disorganized methylation.  In short, they cannot adapt nor repress effectively. Disordered methylation pervades the entire tumor.

The Dana-Farber group noted “the behavior of a cancer cell is dictated not only by genetics but also epigenetics,” and the derangement of the methylation process has a direct  bearing on the effectiveness of cancer therapy.  They partnered with Alexander Meissner (Ph.d) of the Broad Institute to find out how to measure this deregulation: “Using bisulfite sequencing , it allows the  the scientists to track the presence or absence of methyl groups.”  They the devised a simple measure, they call, PDR (percent discordant), to quantify deranged methylation.  I consider this a major step in epigenetic research as soon, we may be able to quantify physical and emotional damage to a human being and the degree of damage;  and finally the degree of resolution we achieve in a feeling therapy.  We are rapidly getting the tools to achieve our aims.

What am I saying?  That methylation is in the order of things; it is the key adaptive mechanism, and what I believe, is that in some ways it gets scrambled and can no longer do its job.  It has lost its cohesion.  Further, that the origin of so many catastrophic diseases begin their life in this disorganization, which is why it is so difficult to treat.

In my opinion, the dangerous time for unceasing pain which threatens the adaptation process is in the womb during gestation. Here the chronic smoker and drinker or pill taker, the continuous depression or anxiety states become inescapable for the fetus and he suffers.  It is ultimately imprinted and endures throughout life.  It is if he lived in a straight jacket for nine agonizing months, and could find no way to stop the input.  He goes to a doctor, and the doctor asks, “Any stress lately? “  Yes ,stress, but decades before anyone, including the patient can even remember it.  So he shakes his head and says, “everything has been OK for some time now.”  Those imprints are shouting in the only way they can, through the physical system.  Migraines, asthma, anxiety, depression, and on and on. He just cannot get comfortable in his skin, because just below that skin is a mountain of hurt and agitation that won’t let him relax. Why agitation?  Because the pain is sending a message to awareness that there is serious trouble down below. Alas, there is no one to listen.  And even if they could, they could not translate that message because, ALL IMPORTANT, it is not in English.  It is in a wholly different brain language where words do not exist.  We have to travel with the patient to the inner depths and see for ourselves. And there it is, the agony is right before our eyes. The suffocation, cannot catch one’s breath, the misery on the face, all answer the question, what trouble?  And the patient in a session never says, I cannot catch my breath, but we see it before our eyes.  When I am in that state my mouth closes and there is no force of will that can open it until the end of the session.  Why?  Because “force of will” is a higher brain function that has little effect on the deep brain.  This begins to sound like some mystic spouting booga booga insights, but it s far from that.

Epigenetic science can help explain all this:  it is the agent for repression and its failure to put away the pain and go on.  Certain switches turn on and off to accommodate the painful intrusion; when it gets to a certain  level there is a breakdown of its efforts and “normal” adaptation is no longer possible.  The result: abnormality in physical development and psychological adjustment.  The person can no longer be neurotically normal.  There is now serious pathology which endures.    I say “endures,” because the imprint lasts a lifetime and the person spends his life trying to get normal, seeing this doctor or that; mental hospitals and psychiatrists; all to no avail.  They will not response to  current treatment efforts because that is not where the damage lies.  It is locked up with the epigenetic switches which were overwhelmed early on and no longer function properly. They almost don’t know what to turn on or off.  They are as helpless as the patient because they are far out of reach of understanding.  Alas, he is condemned.

But wait!  There is a way out.  If he can travel back in time with us toward the buried vestiges of the imprinted pain and connect with the Primal feeling we can stop the condemnation.  Because then the epigenetic switches can be reversed and a salubrious state be achieved.  What does this mean?  That soon, we will be able to go back down the feeling chain from current to past imprints, observe how deep the pain is by its methyl traces and know where to go for the least dangerous pains first.  That it has all to do with feeling feelings in sequential order from current to remote past so as to finally resettle the methylation process; that is, to normalize the biochemistry and allow the genetic switches to normalize so that they can do their job of adaptation.