Though it no doubt runs diametrically counter to most parents’ intentions, a child whose cries are not responded to, who is not fed, not held close to a parent’s warm body when in distress, learns a clear if wordless lesson: that his needs will not be met, that he must constantly strive to find rest and peace, that he is not lovable as he is. By taxing my brain’s PANIC/GRIEF system, my poor mother’s non-responsiveness also helped wire my brain for those chronic tendencies of mine that express the overactivation of that system: anxiety and depression. “When our brains are undercared for,”
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