Gabor Mate on The Biology of Loss

I listened to Gabor Mate talk about The Biology of Loss: Recognizing the Consequences of Impaired Attachments and Fostering Resilience. Mate is the author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Scattered Minds and When the Body Says No.

Here is some of what I learned:

Gabor Mate

• Children are being diagnosed and medicated for mental health disorders at an alarming rate.
• We have a massive social experiment where we are using anti-psychotic medications to control their behaviour.
• We are now treating the side effects and unintended consequences of all this diagnosis and medicating of children.
• The medications we are using are changing the biology of children's brains.
• When we say this person is behaving this way because they have depression, ADHD or OCD. These are not explanations -- these are merely descriptions of their behaviours. A diagnosis is a description, not an explanation.
• We too often see misbehaviours as the problem. Misbehaviour is the symptom of a larger problem. Treating the misbehaviour ignores the larger problem. Using punishments to force behaviour to change makes the problem worse.
• Punishing children for misbehaviour by isolating them and rupturing relationships is like taking books away from children who can't read.
• There is nothing wrong with acting out. When we act out it is a signal that we lack the skills to communicate our needs and problems. Think of the crying baby who is hungry or has a dirty diaper. Misbehaviour, acting out and temper tantrums are a primitive way of communicating that there is a problem.
• We can't separate biology and physiology. We can't separate nature and nurture.
• Stress is learned and passed on from one generation to the next.
• Seeing people with only a medical lens holds up back from seeing whole people. It is a mistake to separate the mind from the body and physical health from social experiences.
• We treat so many physical illnesses with cortisol which treats stress but then we never inquire into the effects of stress that contributed to our physical illness.
• Isolation kills.
• Cancer is not the disease of an individual. It is a disease of the individual's environment.
• It is a mistake to see ADHD, depression and other mental health issues as genetic. Because these diagnosis are increasing, but our genes are not changing, tells us that it can't be genetic.
• Our attention has to be selective. We must ignore other things to pay attention to something.
• If stress is too much, tuning out becomes a coping strategy. 
• Adaptations that a child resort to in order to survive stress and trauma will cause long-term problems as they grow and develop. Necessary short-term solutions cause long-term problems. A child who tunes out to save themselves from stress, trauma and danger has a hard time turning back in when in a safe environment.
• Addicts' brains lack the dopamine and chemistry that they can get from substance abuse. What happened in their life that affected their brain chemistry?
• The prevention of ADHD, depression, OCD and others should happen at the first pre-natal visit. The stress of pregnant mothers are already affecting their baby's brains.
• We need a preventative healthcare system that understands that we need to raise children's brains that don't need drugs from birth.
• Emotionally and physically available parents who are not stressed that spend quality time with children are the best way to prevent addiction.
• The hunter/gather tribe is one of the best environments to raise children because they have more than one set of adults to raise them. It takes a village to raise a child.
• Parents can be stupid, so children need more than one set of adults to turn to.
• Allowing young children to cry it out we are building their brains to not trust and defensive. Crying children learn that you don't care. They learn that the world doesn't care.
• Infants cry because they have no other way to connect with people other than to be hold. Attachment is literal and requires physical touch.
• When we use our love or absence of love as reward and punishment we teach children that they must please people at any cost to be loved.
• If you have a 2 year old that isn't frustrated or mad at you, you're not parenting them.
• When we convince children that angry little girls don't get love, they will learn to depress their feelings -- and then we diagnose them with depression. 
• We need to move from punitive to supportive.
• The greatest loss in life is not that there is no love or support -- the greatest loss is that we lose our sense of self. The good news is that reconnection with our true self is always possible. And the best way to help people find themselves is to provide them with unconditional acceptance and connection.

Theo Fleury and Kim Barthel

I listened to Kim Barthel and Theo Fleury discuss Trauma, Healing and the Brain. Together they wrote a book Conversations with a Rattle Snake. Here is some of what I learned:

• There is always a reason for the behaviour.
• If a care giver is preoccupied or unavailable then a child will feel rejection, abandonment and feeling not good enough which for a child is trauma.
• In 2009, Theo Fleury wrote a book called Playing with Fire.
• The fear of vulnerability holds us all back from living a whole life.
• Trauma comes in many different shapes and sizes and it doesn't have to be just physical.
• One of the most dangerous things for the brain is cortisol. Cortisol is our brain's pharmacy for stress. When we feel rejected, abandoned and not feeling good enough our brain is having a bath in cortisol.
• Your brain can change until you stop breathing.
• Trauma can harm the right side of the brain which can 
• A care givers body language and facial expressions have huge impact on children's well-being. 
• It is not necessarily helpful to retell the story of trauma. It's how we tell the story that matters in a relentlessly positive frame.
• How parents interact with each other has a profound affect on children.
• Trauma creates trauma. Hurt people, hurt people.
• People who experience trauma often feel forced to pay attention to potential danger at the cost of mindfulness.
• People who experience trauma sometimes cope by not being present and disassociating. It can be a safety mechanism to avoid further trauma.
• Mindfulness teaches us to recognize our triggers for feeling not good enough, abandoned or rejected. The anecdote to these feelings is vulnerability and being aware of the here and now.
• Our brains like balance to find our zone of comfort. Trauma changes our sense of balance so we engage in coping strategies to create a sense of balance.
• People who struggle with regulating their brain chemistry self-medicate to regulate their brain chemistry. When mothers abuse substances, babies are born with brains that struggle to regulate their brain chemistry (dopamine).
• Connection begets connection. Vulnerability is a two-way street between a mentor and mentee, parent and child, teacher and student.
• Conversations with a Rattle Snake was almost called You're not a therapist, I'm not a patient, now let's just have a conversation. 
• Sometimes when we don't feel good enough, it is sometimes a sign that we are not being authentic enough. People who are the most authentic are the most vulnerable and they might be the ones who feel good enough.
• Childhood experiences and trauma can lead us to feel abandoned, rejected, unloved and to feel not good enough.

Trauma, Healing & the Brain with Dr. Earl Henslin

I attended a Trauma, Healing and the Brain conference. Here is some of what I learned from Dr. Earl Henslin.

Dr. Earl Henslin

• Earl has a doctorate in clinical psychology. 
• Author of This is your Brain in Love and This is your Brain on Joy
• Is there a normal brain? How can there be when we all experience such different things.
• Bumps to our head can change a lot about our lives.
• The real reason to not do drugs: They damage your brain and limit your potential.
• Everything we put in our mouth has an affect on our brain.
• Prefrontal cortex: front part of the brain that runs executive functioning. It is the "adult on board" that helps us make good decisions. Drug and alcohol abuse damages the prefrontal cortex.
• Any 12 step addiction program tells us that recovering addicts shouldn't make any life altering decisions inside of the first year of being sober. A sponsor and mentor is needed to help make up for the damage done to the prefrontal cortex.
• Exercise and movement is the best thing we can do for the brain. Sleep is the second best thing we can do for our brain.
• 10 years of alcohol and nicotine abuse quadruples the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia.
• Head trauma can be the cause of depression, anxiety, anger, etc.
• Neuroplasticity = the brain can change
• Before we jump into education and therapy, we should make sure the child's basic needs and health are being met. Eat, sleep and movement. There may be organic brain damage that we need to address.
• Basal ganglia is the part of the brain responsible for anxiety
• Heal the brain, help the soul.
• Without a healthy brain, the half-life of talk therapy and education can be from the classroom/office to the playground/parking lot.
• Quiet the Mind is a great book on calming our thoughts
• Energy drinks are doing more damage to our brains than we understand.

Alberta needs a strong public sector

This post first appeared on Krystal Kromm and Serge Gingras's Red Deer Alberta Party blog here.

Do you care about our public services like health, education, fire and police protection?

Take 5 and a half minutes and watch this video.

Creating and protecting public services require a strong government that represents the people and our values of fairness, empathy, responsibility and equality.

The private marketplace filled with ethical entrepreneurs is an important part of a strong economy. Public education, universal health care, fire and police services are not markets -- they occupy a public, not private, space that is driven not by private profits but by public service.

Some corporations and their political friends want to turn our public goods that are for everyone into private interests that profit an elite and wealthy few.

Here is how they are doing it:

1. Deliberately underfund public services.

2. Taxes for the wealthiest people and corporations are cut in a way that government claims that we spend too much and as a result, we “all” must address the deficit together with higher fees and new health care premiums.

3. Lack of funding erodes the quality, availability and accessibility of services.

4. People get more frustrated and lose confidence in the services.

5. Corporations and their political friends say that privatization is the answer.

In many cases, privatization of public goods has a proven track record of lower quality, less service, higher costs and greater risks to public safety. Too often, privatization means that Albertans pay more and get less.

Privatizing our health, education and services for seniors often changes the bottom line. When a service remains public, people remain the bottom line. When we privatize and corporations take over the delivery of services, there is a shift and the bottom line becomes more focused on profits and less on the needs of people.

Some private-public partnerships may work but they can not only be held accountable to shareholders whose interest is on profits. A transparent government should be truly accountable to all Albertans and provide the best care for our health, education and seniors, without the threat of privatizing our public services.

The Alberta Party understands that Alberta's health and wealth requires a diversified economy, a commitment to the environment, a strong public sector, a balanced budget and a strong social conscience.

Learn about the Alberta Party's Better Way here.

There is a better way Alberta!

Alberta's basic operations like health and education have been held hostage by the price of oil for too long. Albertans need to understand that there is a better way to manage our oil so that we can keep our promises to our children, our seniors and ourselves.

We need to manage our spending as much as our revenue.

Alberta needs fair and progressive corporate taxation.

Alberta's oil belongs to Albertans. Albertans deserve their fair share of the profits from our oil.

Alberta has been lied to for too long. Blaming scapegoats might get you elected, but at some point, Albertans will speak truth to power, revealing the real culprits.

Take less than 5 minutes and watch this:

Canada's income inequality

The Globe and Mail: Income inequality affects
every Canadian.

Income inequality is not just a made-in-America problem.

The Globe and Mail ran a piece featuring how income inequality hurts every Canadian's chance of building a better life.

This must-read is a part of The Globe and Mail's Wealth Paradox series which takes a look into how the income gap and inequality is shaping Canada. The question: How income in income inequality affects you? The answers are broken down into four categories: the wage gap, healthcare, education, recreation.

Here are a couple highlights:

WAGE GAP

• Canada's top earners have been getting richer with increasing speed while average incomes remain stagnant.
• In 2002, the average CEO-to-worker pay ration was 84:1. In 2012, its 122:1
• What if more companies ensured that the highest-paid worker never makes more than 10 times the wage of the lowest-paid worker?
• What if more companies engaged in profit-sharing with it's employees?

HEALTH CARE

• Inequality is linked to poorer health outcomes. 
• The income gap is perhaps the most pronounced in mental health care. An estimated 1.2 million young Canadians are affected by mental illness. Only 1 in 4 gets appropriate treatment.
• "What we have today in Canada is a two-tier mental health system in which kids are the victim." Michael Kirby

EDUCATION

• High income areas are primarily home to high-achieving schools while lower income areas have a higher number of lower-scoring schools.
• We need to stop pretending that education can lift people out of poverty on its own.
• Great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can't do it alone - they require the support of an equitable society.
• If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting standardized test scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.
• Highly-educated and affluent parents can give their kids opportunities their lower-income peers simply don't have. 

RECREATION

• Median incomes haven't budged in 30 years, but leisure activities, the pleasure in life, some of which have become too expensive for the majority of Canadians.
• Parents of current minor hockey players spent an average of $2,898 on hockey-related items during the 2011/2012 season. The parents surveyed earned 15% more than the Canadian average. 

INCOME GAP SOLUTIONS

At the end of the Globe and Mail's piece is a poll that asks Which solution would best reduce the effects of income inequality in Canada? The options include:

Restore Fairness in our Tax System

Enhance Early Childhood Education

Emulate Germany's Approach to Skills Training

Create a New "Social Contract"

Boost Support for the Working Poor

Do Nothing - There's No Major Problem

Check it out here

Best. Anti-Smoking commercial. Ever.

It might feel like kids listen to 1% of what we say but whether we like it or not, they watch 100% of what we do. The children are always watching.

What is the single best thing we can do for our health?

Here's a video that I use with children and colleagues to show how important physical activity can be for attaining and maintaining mental and physical health.

I've found that the contents of this video relates very well to my students who have been "diagnosed" with ADHD and depression.