Early-life stress can disrupt maturation of brain’s reward circuits
news.uci.edu
news.uci.edu
I've been on a long term therapy journey for C-PTSD stemming from childhood trauma, and there's a part me that has always felt like I should be past all of that now that I'm some decades beyond that environment. There's part of your brain that tells you it's your problem, and won't accept that the mindset was deeply embedded before you even understood what was going on, or that other modes of existence are possible.
The built-in pessimism has served me well in some professional capacities, but when this permeates all aspects of thinking, things do not go well in the long run.
I'm on a much better path now, and meditation/yoga/some useful parts of Buddhist philosophy (and a really good therapist) are opening my eyes to new ways of thinking.
But it has been a long and often painful journey.
Read it, did the work. It was life changing. Seven years now with 0 anxiety after decades of having moderate to severe anxiety.
If you do not mind, how did the book actually help you? Obviously, please do not feel obligated to answer if you are uncomfortable. I personally have found therapy to be nothing more than a substantial waste of time and money with perhaps a dash of cathartic release.
Before anyone suggests that I need to "find the right one." I've seen around 14 different providers in about 12 years -- just doesn't work for me.
I'm also pretty interested in the book mentioned above. I should also mention that the book "Why Buddhism is True" is a book that really opened my eyes to some aspects of human experience that just hadn't made any sense to me up to that point. This is not a religious book, but rather an examination of the philosophical claims of Buddhism and mapping those onto a modern understanding of evolutionary psychology. I had just started meditating when I read this, and reading it convinced me fully that I was on the right path.
I've come to believe that this meditation practice is the single most important habit in my life at this point. It's a foundation for thinking more clearly, and thinking more clearly tends to sort out a bunch of other problems automatically.
I would not consider myself well versed in the practices by any means though. I will try to check out the book you mentioned as well. Hopefully, there is an audiobook version, that would be a huge help.
I am so happy that mediation has been beneficial to you. From practitioners of mediation, I have heard nothing but positive reviews. I really want to do it, and I have tried on multiple occasions, but I seriously cannot physically sit still long enough to do it. Trust me, I want to be a Jedi. Nothing would be cooler than that.
I have severe ADHD, and it makes things like reading books, mediating, and even therapy really difficult (amongst everything else). Of course, I am treated for it, but treatment is like drinking alcohol for depression. Sure, it kind of works in some ways, but it has its own world of problems.
I encourage you to try a therapist listing "trauma" as a key area of interest. Regardless of your ADHD diagnosis. See haswell and my comments above. This is from someone who has had six or seven therapists and only two were effective. (Guess what those two had in common...)
Much love.
I'll contact my insurance tomorrow and see what they can find me lol.
Thank you again, and much love back.
For example, a pessimist thinks anything good that happens to them is temporary and impersonal. And they think that anything bad that happens to them is permanent and personal. An optimist is the opposite of that.
So if something good happens, a pessimist will think, “I just got lucky this time. I can’t count on good things happening in the future.” An optimist thinks, “of course I was able to make something good happen! Good things often happen for me.”
Then he teaches you a method similar to cognitive behavioral therapy to record and then dispute your negative thoughts on paper. I followed it for about 5 months and it honestly rewired my brain dramatically for the better.
Maybe stuff other than what you listed, but mostly more details on things like what type of therapy has helped (CBT/DBT?), or what part of Buddhist philosophy you found most useful?
Thanks in advance!
I've been using the same Waking Up app mentioned in the sibling comment. I started going down a bit of a rabbit hole on consciousness awhile back, and eventually that led me to Sam Harris, and his book "Waking Up" was a bit of a gateway for me. I then started using the app, which is like taking everything you read about in the book and having it carefully presented to you bit by bit as you go through the practice. It's the first app that actually made meditation make sense to me, and the results have been life changing for me. It's mindfulness meditation also known as Vipassana, or "seeing things as they really are".
Regarding Yoga, I've been using the "Yoga with Adriene" channel on YouTube. I'm not very experienced with this yet, but taking one of her 30 day journeys was a great way to get into it. I could feel my body get stronger bit by bit, and my awareness of the sensations in my body (something I've struggled with due to repressed trauma) has improved significantly.
A typical therapist is almost zero-impact, you breeze through pre-prepared scripts and they nod and smile and you leave and back-pat and pay a bill. By typical, I mean in the center of the bell-curve. According to my lived experiences, and that of close friends.
A therapist with impact will sit and listen and smile, and then they'll simply repeat something you said or ask an innocent question or laugh, and this small gesture will cause a satori-like awareness of what was previously invisible to you.
I've never found a trauma-aware therapist incapable of reaching out and touching you deeply. This is the "I have rust on my resume, even if you don't code rust" of the therapist world.
[edit: If it needs to be said plainly, run like hell from any unlicensed practitioner who focuses on trauma.]
The kind of meditation is very important. There are some meditation practices that therapists urge people with trauma history to avoid, and Vipassana is the specific type of meditation that is recommended because of the clarifying nature of the practice. This is the type of meditation that has been subject to studies with positive outcomes.
Other forms of concentration practice may be a stepping stone to Vipassana if they help someone with concentration, but can also be a gateway to less ideal experiences for someone with trauma history. It can also be a path to nowhere if you stay on these other practices without understanding the differences between them.
Regarding therapy, the type of therapy matters too, and will depend on your history. EMDR is not widely accepted as treatment for trauma, and is not for everyone. I’ve experienced the power of EMDR directly and it helped me reduce the effects of more recent events (I was in a car accident that deeply unsettled me for a time), but trying to apply therapy to other events that had even tangential connotations with my past resulted in getting completely stuck during EMDR sessions. My current therapist fully supports the use of EMDR but has cautioned me against it for complex trauma history and my personal experiences confirm that this is good advice for me.
I think the most important thing here is that YMMV and do what works for you, but be thoughtful about it and understand the key differences between available treatment.
But even though therapy modalities can vary greatly depending on your past experiences, the recommended gateway into meditation is consistently Vipassana and from what I can tell this is for a good reason. This isn’t to say other forms can’t be useful and another comment pointed out some useful resources above, but there are definitely some paths that will lead nowhere.
I've tried many different meditations with many different teachers and guides and books, and the ones that I have found most effective for me personally and for people that I have taught, in order of how I'd suggest them:
• Zazen is a simple but hugely impactful meditation, and you can do it anywhere with any length of time as it doesn't require "zoning out". It can be very helpful to sit to do it until you get the hang of it, though. (read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it's an easy but meaningful read).
• the practices in The Mind Illuminated book - neuroscientist + meditator modernizes and de-mysticizes older paths. Anytime you get stuck, this is a great way to get unstuck. Find where you are in the journey, and start practicing what he suggests for where you are. It makes a big difference.
• Neti Neti meditation (any thoughts or experiences that arise in meditation, you think "not that" as in "if I can think it, I am not that"). This doesn't need any "lead in" so if you only have a couple of minutes to sit this can be a great way to be impactful during a short time.
• the Brahmavihārā https://accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel006... this is the best practice I've found for bringing the inner work you do out into the world as a more kind and uplifting human. I think this is best done when you have a while to sit; I have found that the longer you do it in a session, the more densely it gets integrated.
Side note, if you want to explore your inner experience in a more active way, try finding a local meet up that does shamanic drumming with a guide. I know this sounds weird, but our subconscious is all about symbolism, and if you can play along it's basically a short and gentle drug-free psychedelic trip in a good setting that can be very rewarding.
I am really intrigued by this (and I don't find it excessively weird). Would you have any material to recommend if one wants to understand how it works and why before actually trying it?
I wasn't looking for relief from C-PTSD when I converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity about three years ago, but since I have joined that church, participating in Divine Liturgy at least once a week, and beginning and ending my day with prayer (following the techniques and patterns my priest has taught me), my whole life has been transformed. Not only my life, but the lives of my family are healing dramatically as well. I can't put it into words adequately, but the difference between my life now and just three years ago is so stark that I hardly feel like the same person.
Nothing else has even come close to the impact and depth of healing I have experienced. Other people have shared their experience with "Eastern religions", and I just wanted to share my experiences with you from another mystical tradition that isn't very familiar to most people.
[1] https://courses.crappychildhoodfairy.com/daily-practice [2] https://crappychildhoodfairy.com/videos/
Others in the thread have recommended "The Body Keeps the Score", which I also recommend. It is available on Audible as an audiobook as well.
Other books I recommend:
"Self-Parenting: The Complete Guide to Your Inner Conversations" by John K Pollard and Linda Nusbaum.
"How to be an Adult in Relationships" by David Richo
"The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture" by Gabor Mate
"When the Body Says No" by Gabor Mate
I practice Mindful Qi Gong (healing movement + meditation) once a week as a part of a 2-hour class, as well as independently on an irregular schedule. It has helped significantly to deal with stress.
I think that for people struggling with issues like CPTSD, ignorance is the first, and largest barrier to healing / recovery / improving. We grow up and enter the adult world and often in many ways "escape" our stressful / traumatic childhoods only to start the process of creating our own trauma and stress as young adults. As we enter adulthood, we may be consciously or subconsciously masking our feelings / hide our pain / run from dealing with our emotions and issues because we want desperately to leave all that behind us. This "running away" may actually compound our problems, leading to destructive behaviors such as substance abuse. Gabor Mate, among others, presents a compelling case that the majority of the people we see on the street struggling with addictions and mental health issues may not have ended up there if they had received proper care and healing, even as adults. If only they had, perhaps, in their more lucid, clearer-thinking, younger days come to understand that they had the need and possibility for healing. The pure ignorance we have about this topic in our society is staggering, considering the widespread impact childhood trauma has on our lives.
I certainly wish someone had sat me down in my 20s and told me directly: "You had a crappy childhood, that sucks. And the effects of the trauma on your physiology and psychology may limit you for the rest of your life. However, there is good news: Now you're an adult and healing is possible."
I’ve been lucky enough to suffer from both covert and overt depression. Behind my anger is sadness and that is depression. We learn a lot of this from our parents who probably suffered similarly themselves which is a form of chronic ptsd.
The only thing that works for me right now is running, but it's working fairly well so hey.
For anyone who has tried CBT or other traditional therapy and hasnt seen results it could be worth looking into. YMMV as I know people close to me who have dealt with similar early-life trauma and have been better served by other techiques
EMDR felt like magic when dealing with the aftermath of a car accident, but sent me into a tailspin for any subject even tangentially related to my past.
YMMV.
This isn’t to say that people should not consider EMDR, but if they do, don’t just seek out an EMDR practitioner and expect a quick fix, but ensure the practitioner is trauma-aware and skilled in adapting treatment to the specific needs of patients with trauma histories, and it’s part of a broader treatment plan.
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/docs/mhp_veterans...
It is this need for modification and the prerequisite work (sometimes the long/hard kind of work) that makes it less clear-cut as a treatment for this form of trauma.
The EMDR practitioner I worked with made me aware of this as did my regular therapist, and most C-PTSD-aware EMDR info you can find online will also explain this distinction and the necessary modifications/prerequisites.
We don’t live in “normal” conditions relative to our evolutionary history.
Maybe these responses are adaptive and provide a fitness advantage under historically normal conditions even if they appear maladaptive in the current environment.
It's equally possible that the responses are maladaptive and provide a fitness disadvantage under historically normal and current conditions too.
Evolution is not always well optimized, and sometimes "bugs" make it through. One just needs to be fit enough to reproduce -- nothing else matters after that.
It is just a thing that happens through random changes and culling out very bad experiments. The mutation just have to be not too bad. And even bad one can survive forever if not everyone with it dies.
Exactly. I have green eyes which is technically a genetic mutation. I do not think it provides any advantages, but it also causes no harms. It just is what it is.
Agreed - the cant of this article could just as easily be "environmental factors during formative years influence behavior at maturity" without representing a particular set of responses as "normal" or "abnormal". I'm surprised they didn't use adaptive/maladaptive, like you do; it seems more appropriate.
"As adults, the early adversity-experiencing male mice had little interest in sweet foods or sex cues compared to typically reared mice. In contrast, adversity-experiencing females craved rich, sweet food. Inhibiting the pathway restored normal reward behaviors in males, yet it had no effect in females."
Okay, so they're not going to be obese and spending every night swiping right? Our bodies, minds, and everything about us is evolving and changing, and this will never end. If you take some point in the past as "normal" and everything else as "abnormal" then you simply dedicate yourself to trying to stop potentially adaptive changes. And somehow I trust evolution much more than psychology.
Of course I'm handwaving away this sentence, "Impaired function of this circuit is thought to underlie several major disorders, such as depression, substance abuse and excessive risk-taking." But I'd observe that 'thought to underlie' is an exceptionally weak phrasing, and the balance between pros and cons was seemingly left completely unconsidered. Obviously a genetic craving for rich, sweet food is obviously corpulently maladaptive in modern society, even if it would probably have been neutral to beneficial in the past.
The analogy that comes to mind is how a baby elephant, tied to a stake, can't escape the rope and eventually accepts he is stuck where the rope lets him wander. As the elephant grows large enough to overpower the rope and walk away, he has already stopped trying, so he remains stuck.
I'm not sure if this is a true story, but it stays with me.
It seems reasonable to conclude there is a physical impact on brain development.
Imagine a 500kg bear dancing for someone's amusement when the music starts. I haven't seen this in 30 years but even as a kid it seemed really wrong in many ways
We recently bought a new fridge and haven't put a latch on it. They don't understand that they can open it on their own yet and we haven't told them. Observing this reminded me of the elephant story and it's made me wonder if this is something that could affect them later in life.
There are plenty of study's that carried out experiments into learned helplessness[1,2] whats interesting now is how its being associated with things like depression [3] later on in life.
I'd go so far to say people who have suicided themselves or attempted could be because of their childhood abusers and certainly in the past, there was no evidence back then and very little surveillance, so clever well connected individuals could get away with alot.
I know here in the UK the Police and NHS do not investigate attempted suicides, even when they have been told. In fact, I do know a GP could tell you how to suicide yourself with off the shelf ingredients, which might seem to be against the hippocratic oath, but who is that GP prioritising, the patient they have just told to suicide themselves or their other patients?
Words can be so vague especially in the legal system.
I can remember my time as a toddler in Terry's nappy's with rubber pants, that chaffed the groin area, and with todays improved food standards and food diversity, access to multi vitamins, I think the younger generation will find it easier to remember their childhood.
In the case of childhood abuse, some just regress or some come out fighting, the legal system is very skewed here because it only wants to punish the individual, it doesnt want to take responsibility for allowing the abuse to occur by not teaching kids law in order to avoid abuse. Even the state doesnt hold primary school teachers to account, but then the state also carries out secret experiments on kids on all ages, some of them pre-emptive in order to control individuals later on in life based on the existing theories of the day.
Things might be better in the US by virtue of having private healthcare, but state healthcare like the UK's NHS enables the state to carry out more experimentation in secret.
The NHS is not all that its cracked up to be, far from it, but then most users dont know nothing about healthcare which is why they are using it in the first place.
All parts of the UK state data share whilst denying it until they have to come up with something called parallel construction to use a US legal term.
Bottom line is, with kids every action has a reaction and some things, your beliefs they might choose to disagree with later on in life.
Factors like are they kept busy with their own adult life or do they have plenty of time on their hands to reflect, will also determine how much their agree with from their childhood.
Above all else, make sure you have a relationship with them so that they can talk to you. I didnt have a relationship with any adult where I could talk to them about stuff, and its only later on in life, that you come to realise especially when aware of law that criminals acts were carried out on you and other elements of your childhood were stolen. I think this is why law is not taught to kids, it keeps those pontificating lawyers and judges in employment, but it doesnt tackle the causes of crime, it just enables it by keeping kids innocent and in the dark. Taking away that cotton wool you want to wrap kids in, is a very delicate matter, too much cotton wool, will set them up for exploitation later on in life, take it away too quickly and that could be traumatic if not a path that some choose to walk. Its a tightrope to walk.
I'd also be wary about moving them around to different schools and different parts of the country. Its a legal form of isolation when considering how the new kid is bullied at school often overseen by teachers and can be used to isolate people later on in life.
Its probably why the Police and Military move people around, breaking down friends networks, forcing new friends networks on people. Its that divide and conqueror mentality which has existed since before Roman times.
I think a good approach is to not be dictatorial, which can be simple instructions of dont do this, dont do that, be quiet without the explainantions in a concept understandable format. Thats hard when kids are young, but explain why something can or cant be done. That was harder in the past because there was no internet, but with the internet today, its easier to find out things. Example, putting things in mouths, explaining the concept of germs and how some of them like bacteria can go dormant in the body (biofilms) desite antibiotics and some viruses never leave the body (herpes), and some viruses get into parts of the body where the adaptive immune system cant go and importantly, clinicians cant test for their existence except at the time of autopsy.
I know the medical profession like to portray themselves as experts, but if you look at how medical theories are being rewritten all they time especially now when new tech becomes available or cheaper to use to allow more testing and data acquisition occurs, that's when you realise even dominant personalities can skew the interpretation of data.
[1] 1975 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1150935/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Learned+helplessness
Are you serious?
> but state healthcare like the UK's NHS enables the state to carry out more experimentation in secret.
Ah. Well, I'm not going to try to reason with you, then.
Why are you in denial? Is it because you haven't experienced or witnessed it?
I can tell you that the so called National Curriculum was only national in name, this is something I experienced and witnessed by being moved around the country.
Stuff I was taught in primary school, I was then retaught it in secondary school in a different part of the country.
I dont think you realise just how criminal the so called pillars of society really are. Look at religion, there is still no scientific evidence for the existence of god. Is that not legal delusions?
Examples of the NHS covering up conditions, in A&E before you can be checked out they have to check you over, things like oxygen blood saturation, if you read in the 80's that should be investigated, the nurses will tell you to take a few deep breaths then do the check again. Its covering up conditions which need investigation. Nurses that come out to you in the home, will do things like engage you on conversations before doing a oxygen blood saturation level check in order to get you breathing more in order to get your levels up. However if your day is typically on your own no one to talk to, your levels will still read in the 80's. That situation will apply to alot of OAP's living in their home's "home blocking" in the same context as "bed blocking" in the hospitals, which the Govt and Banks allow as this pushes up house prices. Shelter being one of the lower tier's in Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.
Perhaps you cant tell or spot how you are being led?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2XCJAb43d6b4cNLdKS9jSw?si=v...
+ his recent books, can be bought from Amazon
The worst ones are the ones where he onlyntalks about himself. I would nominate the interview with Louis Theroux, number 835 [0]. This was an extremely wasted opportunity to talk with the best and one of our most prolific documentaries of our time.
For what it's worth, these are the best ever:
* 908 Leah Remini
* 1609 Elon Musk
* 1518 David Choe
[0], https://open.spotify.com/episode/0IGHoKiXvNiWJU9S9xPpei?si=S...
If there is a book that has radically changed my life for the better, it is this one. I wish I knew about my condition and family history 20 or 30 years ago.
Edited for typo.
I think there may have been a stress response difference too but can't remember exactly.
Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Sapolsky. This whole book is about stress.
what's the answer here?
> “We know that early-life stress impacts the brain, but until now, we didn’t know how,” Baram said. “Our team focused on identifying potentially stress-sensitive brain pathways. We discovered a new pathway within the reward circuit that expresses a molecule called corticotropin-releasing hormone that controls our responses to stress. We found that adverse experiences cause this brain pathway to be overactive.”
Read A Framework For Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne. It explains this phenomenon and the book dates to the 1990s. Basically that the stress of growing up in poverty stunts your ability to plan for the future and you choose immediate gratification over longer-term strategic saving.
I’m always leery of “the poors are dumb!” as if that’s self-evident, rather than in poverty the risk-reward trade off is different and they accordingly adapt to that — as a rational choice.
Do you think escaping poverty is as simple as “just save money, dummy!”
This is exactly not what you want to do. It’s an attitude of entitlement without a sense of delayed gratification.
>> The only way a lot of people can break the cycle is to earn more, not spend less
Earning more is a result, not a means to an end. You break the cycle by improving your means. How you improve your means is entirely up to you and knowing how to balance delayed gratification has a big part to play in it.
All I have is my own experience, but there are loads of happy and successful people that came from a rough start.
From that very same experience I can also say that the trend for people to leave this world the way they came in seems stronger. I think personal values and culture play the strongest role.
Actually, having a screwed up reward system can promote success, as one often goes to enormous lengths to prove to oneself that one isn’t a worthless piece of shit, which is often the upshot of anhedonia.
Alas, it is an endless run. In the end, I'll always think that I am a worthless piece of shit.
It emerges as rampant pessimism and distrust of anyone and everyone. It's highly beneficial in the corporate world but has irreparably damaged my ability to bond with people. Which leaves me at a impasse as to whether to solve it. Given my age it's not worth it as I am well beyond my years of socializing freely.
Some people become very mentally tough, but this is a projection of physical resistance training onto your brain.
Note that basically nobody does this. Very few people decide to put themselves into adverse circumstances and fewer still do it to benefit their brain.
If you've knowingly put yourself there, it's much less likely to be genuinely traumatic. It's only when someone finds themselves trapped in an unexpected and undesired negative situation that real trauma manifests.
A roller-coaster ride and an auto wreck might have the same physical effect but very different psychological effects.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x29Y38mfsxw
But there is no virtue in experiencing pain. It is not better to reach some form of personal enlightenment by being forced to do so through adversity.
And I think this is also a different category because we're talking about childhood here. This is a period of time when a human is most vulnerable, fully dependent on those around them, and unable to even understand that the world could be different than it is. The impact into adulthood can be catastrophic, and the fact that some folks navigate this successfully via contemplative practice should be something we marvel over, not an ideal we should strive for.
But when we're talking about childhood trauma/stress, I'd be more cautious about associating value. While value may certainly be derived by folks fortunate enough to find a path out, many don't find that path. And that path out can also leave quite a bit of damage in its wake.
Childhood trauma like physical neglect, sexual abuse or living with a parent who suffered from mental illness does not "make us mentally stronger."
It's not about "worldview". As the parent article shows, the types of experiences create physiological changes in the brain. The changes are correlated later in life with everything from drug abuse to depression suicide attempts and cancer. A lot of this is driven by unhealthy behavior driven by the physiological changes, but some of it is directly linked in a physical sense.
I'm all for inspiring adults to learn from their hardships, but it's cruel to ever cast childhood trauma as a good thing.
A better life for kids is zero-trauma, especially from the parents issues.
Speaking personally I don't think ACEs made me any stronger and I think I am where I am now in spite of them.
It’s also likely the genetic material being passed on to you isn’t helpful in overcoming these things when you have control of them.
> From what we have learnt from Spirituality and all of the wise philosophers, that sounds contradictory.
Such a loaded statement. Coming from the assumption that there is anything reliable from spirituality or wise or unwise philosphers, doesn't mean that there reasons are justified truth belief, just anecdotal observations.
> Most of the teachings of philosophy point to adversity and stress as events from which we can learn from and become more stronger mentally
Can you please provide sources and not assume its common knowledge.
> It's possible that always being in this state of stress can morph your worldview to always be broken, and perhaps that is what's being referenced and reflected here.
"Possible," do you have any reasons to back up your claim?
[1] https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/about-child-traum...
Yet your attitude is entirely typical of most people: you seem to assume that children one year of age who are screamed at by a psychotic mother have the capacity to think about all the wise things the Buddha and Marcus Aurelius said and how best to respond to the situation, so that they can learn from it and become as sage and wise as someone like yourself.
This is simply not the case. Very young humans are literally dependent on the people around them for their survival. They are not capable of complex, abstract reasoning. When Mom screams her head off at a one-year-old baby, that baby is not able to think that maybe Mom is screaming because she has borderline personality disorder, a terrible marriage and a very demanding boss; the baby assumes he's being screamed at because he is at fault. The bodies and nervous systems of young humans assume that early life experiences are a good representation of how the world really is, that the people around us in those very formative years are good representations of how people are.
Significant early-life adversity causes lasting physical changes to the brain, as well as lasting epigenetic changes (changes in the expression of the genes) which affect many (all?) parts of the organism. If you care to learn about this, look into books by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Gabor Mate, the "ACE" study which I believe another commenter mentioned, as well as "Born Anxious" by Daniel P. Keating. Or, feel free to continue trotting around on your high horse, assuming the addicts and mentally ill of the world are just people with a lack of willpower and initiative. Not everyone is as blessed as you are, please remember that.
It seems like mice evolved so that males who were deprived or damaged took themselves out of competition with other males by not having interest in sex and sweet foods. I suppose as a species that might make sense by cutting the losses on a damaged individual, but it is a cold logic.
It is uncanny that it maps to our religious practices, where "damaged" males drop out of sexual competition and became monks (but I suppose nowadays become "incels" instead).
That is a gigantic "if."
I think not having to repair one's self and, instead, using said time and resources to better one's self or to work towards one's goals would be a better gift.
It's really difficult to look at it as a gift. It feels more like a curse that has a bunch workaround protocols in place.
I did not mean to offend anyone by calling trauma a gift. In retrospect, it seems absurd of me to call something a gift that one has to work so hard to overcome to receive its benefits- and that even with hard work, there is still such a low chance of receiving them.
Although this is unrelated to your comment, thinking about your comment has caused me to reevaluate my original comment. It was downvoted and I think I offended people by comparing monks to incels. I actually think it is liberating to not only understand the research in this article as relating to the drive that some people have to become monks, but also liberating to understand the drive to be a monk as relating to the feeling of being an incel.
I have been lucky in that I had wise people to guide me beyond the trauma. I believe that monasteries, religion and philosophy have done that for many people too. It is my belief that the deep ambivalence and frustration that incels feel is related to the same things, but they are without the guidance that I and others have received to figure out how to process and understand their suffering. Although there is much wisdom in psychology, most therapy still seems shallow and unable to give the guidance that is needed. Our pop culture seems even worse.
The solution is probably not to revive monastic culture, but I don't think our pop culture should revile incels as much as it does. They may say and do hateful things, but they are just humans suffering. I think incels need guidance as much as our pop culture does.
Do you have more evidence for your assertion? Otherwise it seems like it’s based solely on a shallow contempt for religiosity - putting it as nicely as possible.
Here is some evidence for my assertion from "Tibetan Buddhism and Mass Monasticism" by Melvyn C. Goldstein:
> A fourth, and extremely common, type of situation occurred when parents made a son a monk as part of a strategy for organizing their family’s human resources so as to minimize the likelihood of family fragmentation and land division in the next generation.
> Poverty also was very important in motivating parents to make sons monks. Very poor Tibetans with many children had two main mechanisms for balancing their income with subsistence needs. One was making one or more sons a monk as the above mentioned case of the nomad illustrated.
I have only done a quick search to find references to respond to you, but I have taken it for granted people knew that monasteries in medieval Europe as well as all around the world were places where younger sons and the children of impoverished people were sent. Primogeniture was a common practice, and it not only entailed oldest sons inheriting everything, but also younger sons frequently being abused. I can search for more references and examples if you like.
Once again, I would reaffirm that just because there seems to be a biological basis for this behavior, it in no way means that there is something wrong with these people- in fact, to the contrary. The development of the mind by monks across religions is a remarkable feat and the jewel of humanity- even if it is born from struggle.
Sending the younger inheritors away to the clergy is a way of nipping such nasty family problems in the bud before they become problems. A man of the church can't inherit unless they are called back by their family.
TL;DR: None of this has to do with someone's sexual fitness, and everything to do with straightening out potentially complicated family inheritances.
I think the research in this article points to a biological adaptation for handling this issue before the development of monasteries as a human institution. I.e., mice don't have monasteries
That is to say, the family picks a would-be inheritor and sends away all the others to hopefully prevent family feuds.
I do not speak for mice and their culture, whatever it may be.
Most of evolutionary pressure comes from members of the same species, so dropping out of that competition (genetic suicide) doesn't make sense, evolutionarily seen