Kids These Days!

“Kids these days.” How many times have you heard someone speak these words? How many times have you thought or spoken them yourself? We adults are perfect projection machines—chastising children for their behavior while at the same time forgetting it is a reflection of our own. Sure, each person is born with a unique temperament. Nevertheless, the environment of the home and culture radiates a powerfully influential force that molds them as well.Fighting Children

It might be helpful to think of children as biological recording devices. As such, they come into the world equipped to record and playback everything they experience. How do we imagine children learn to feel, sit with, and process their emotions? Clearly, it is through the process of modeling the emotional responses of those closest to them. Kids learn to speak kindly to others or not, depending on whether or not they hear kind words spoken to them. They may learn to respect others and their feelings, but only if their feelings receive respect first.

Likewise, by modeling the adults in their lives, children learn to become anxious, depressed, aggressive, distracted, impatient or disinterested. Unfortunately, most often our medical system treats these emotional issues as medical conditions. Pharmaceutical companies create pills for dampening all such “symptoms.” This misguided polypharmaceutical approach has no endgame. Lab testing our kids by pouring psychoactive chemicals into them is not the answer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying in all cases. Sure, in rare instances medicine can be a solution. What I’m saying is that pills won’t solve problems related to an unsafe environment, or the unavailability of tuned-in, emotionally skillful caregivers.

Happily, there’s another alternative to taking our children to the doctor. Humans never exhaust the capacity for growth and evolution. Meaning, grace is embedded in the practice of parenting. But, progressing along the path towards positive change requires pulling yourself out of your routine, and then, learning something new. Happy ChildrenIf you want to change your child’s behavior, start by working on yourself first. When you learn to experience your emotions more skillfully, speak more kindly and respectfully, be more compassionate, you’ll become perfectly enabled to model that skillfulness for your children. Then they’ll change.

Dr. Mark Pirtle is a meditation and mindfulness teacher who works in the recovery field. He contracts for Sierra Tucson, Miraval and is a faculty member of the Center for Integrative Medicine Fellowship Program at the University of Arizona. He teaches Skillfully Aware, a 6-week class that teaches the brain science of emotional literacy and the practice of meditation and mindfulness. For more information on classes go to www.skillfullyaware.com.

How to Heal Addictions with Mindfulness–In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (Post 8)

In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts Cover

Hello and welcome back. Thanks for joining me as I read and discuss Gabor Mate’s insightful and inspirational book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.”

Last time we talked about what Mate calls the “process” of addiction, which I likened to a network function, or “system dynamic.” Where pre-programed actions (process) affect present moment processes, parts, and patterns. In addictions, the whole system therefore gets caught up in self-reinforcing feedback loop from which it is very difficult to break free. Earlier, we discussed the lack of evidence for a person’s genes as being the primary cause of addiction.

Today, we’ll discuss how early childhood experiences plays a much larger role in predisposing a person to addictive behaviors later in life. Before we do, it’s important to understand why experience plays a larger role in developing humans than it does in all other animals.

A human child at the end of its gestation possess a relatively large head compared to the limited pelvic size of its mother. Given that biological fact, the human brain completes the predominance of its development outside the womb. Where a new born colt can run within minutes, a human baby takes months just to roll over and the better part of a year to take its first tentative steps. Such extreme helplessness leaves human children extraordinarily dependent on a safe environment, and on competent, caring and connected adults. Proper brain development depends on it.

AddictAbuse and neglect leave brain systems responsible for attachment, emotional self-regulation and maturity woefully underdeveloped. Children grow into adults. Adults who suffered childhood traumas or neglect are the ones who develop a harsh inner critic, lack self-compassion, can’t focus, make and keep long-term goals or plans, have trouble in relationships, and are predisposed to medicating away the hurt with externals substance or behaviors.

And yet, despite the fact that these dysfunctions were born out of neglect and abuse, large parts of our current treatment system seeks to punish the addict for their thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Such a stance is both strategically and morally wrong. Understanding, as Mate argues, the larger context from which addiction springs allows one to use both evidence and compassion in devising a more heart-centered approach to treatment.

Thanks again for joining me. In the next few posts I’ll delve more deeply into the evidence for blending mindfulness with compassion-centered approaches to addiction treatment.

If you find these posts helpful, please share them with your social networks. To learn more about me and my work, please visit my website: www.skillfullyaware.com. If you’d like me to speak to a group or organization in your city, email: lynda@skillfullyaware.com.

Be well,

Mark