I’m still slogging my way through Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence. Again, the basic premise of the book is that there are physiological reactions that take place in our brains during social interactions that we are not even aware of at the time. We can become aware of them through study and practice and learn to override their effects with our conscious mind. Living and interacting from our conscious self, rather than our “low-road” brain chemistry will lead to a more successful and fulfilling life. Wow…that was not as brief as I thought. Now you can understand why I used the verb “slogging” to describe my progress but I digress.
I just finished a section about the effects on our newborn children. Studies have shown that infants are primed for social interaction and the more they get, the more they thrive. Not just thriving in some abstractly measureable way either; when an infant has positive social interaction with a parent, it’s neuro-chemistry actually works to enhance the connections between the parts of the brain that manage the interaction. I thought of the rivulets that would cut through the desert sand in New Mexico, quickly cutting streambeds in the soft ground. The more positive interaction a baby has, the better equipped it’s brain becomes to handle social interactions and the more positive and resilient the child becomes later in life.
What hit me between the eyes was a discussion about negative “feedback loops” in developing children of socially inept or neglectful caregivers. If a parent is too busy or too tired or clinically depressed or has extreme postpartum or any number of interaction-inhibiting conditions, the “rivulets” don’t form as deeply and the infant brain simply does not develop as much. This continues through childhood where positive interaction does more than teach a child. Consciously, how to behave and act; it physically changes the brain to make positive interaction easier. Conversely, if a child is neglected or continually experiences negative interactions, the brain physically changes in ways that inhibits good interactions and development. The regions of the brain that govern emotional response, empathy, gestures, facial recognition, speech and thought organization literally are not able to work together in concert.
Think about this for a minute. This is how our broken-ness gets passed from one generation to another. I have one Marilyn Hickey book in my home – only one – and in it she talks about generational iniquity and how it gets passed from parent to child and so on, etc. She defines iniquity as a pattern of unconscious behavior that keeps us from the life of God (anger, depression, strife, worry, gossip, excessive suspicion, hypersensitivity). This neuro-chemical issue is generational iniquity at work. These patterns of behavior are not only learned, they are literally engrained in our brains and can drive our behavior long into life without us even being aware of it.
I’m not a determinist or a fatalist – I don’t think that people are destined to live a certain way because of their parents or their brains or whatever. In fact, the point of the book is that those things can change with the proper help. What startled me was how that sin-soaked brokenness can passively get passed from one generation to the next – strengthening as it goes. After saying all that, I hope this doesn’t sound trite: Thank God that Jesus makes a way to break through all of that. He can heal our relationships and our physical bodies (brains included) to make us whole in him. All we need is to open our eyes (or have them opened) and ask for help from Him.
