Bruce D. Perry is a renowned psychiatrist who published a book in 2007 called The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog. The book is horrifying yet fascinating. Perry relates stories of children he has worked with who suffered neglect, traumatic life events, and abuse. He shares fascinating insights about what fear does in the brain.
“As we move up the arousal continuum toward fear,” he writes, “we necessarily rely on lower and faster brain regions. … Fear quite literally makes us dumber. … [It] can become maladaptive if sustained, the threat system becomes sensitized to keep us in this state constantly” [emphasis mine].
Perry explains that when a person’s stress response systems are activated too often for too long, two different long-term conditions can develop. One is that of an overreactive, “sensitized” stress response system in which our mind and body react to minor stressors as great threats (a major aspect of PTSD, better understood in adults but Dr. Perry argues is often misdiagnosed as ADHD or ODD in children). The other is dissociation, which can be compared to a computer in “idle” or “sleep” mode. The brain starts to disengage from reality and keeps the outside world at a safe distance.
Both these conditions stem from natural reactions that can help us in the short term in the face of real danger, but when they are activated consistently and regularly, they have surprisingly damaging physical and neurological effects. Perry’s book is a must-read for teachers, pastors, and anyone else whose work may bring them in close contact with troubled families.
I must say, though, that I think there is an important application of these insights for our culture as a whole.
In particular, it seems to me that the vast majority of Americans have an approach similar to one of these two conditions when it comes to things that are going on in our nation and world. Many people I know are either overreactive/sensitized or dissociated. We seem to be either hyper-connected and ultra-sensitive, seeing each new story or event as the end of the world, or largely disconnected, overwhelmed by what we see and hear and retreating back to our private lives.
In expanding these psychological conditions as an analogy for the culture, I don’t intend to trivialize how very real and serious such things are for individuals and their families. However, there are ways in which these conditions can manifest in a system — a culture — that are different but no less real and effectual.
Dissociation from social issues and public policy is so common we may not even recognize it as such. Some feel they don’t know enough to engage. Others don’t care to know enough. Others see substantive topics in polite company as a threat to peaceful accord in their relationships. Religion and politics are the two forbidden topics, but, for better or worse, they are the two things that affect the most people in the most profound ways.
We see heightened alarm and overreactive behavior quite a bit too, especially among those who are frequently plugged into cable news or who live in an echo chamber of dire threats that run contrary to evidence. Only well-funded, manufactured fear-mongering can make people think that they have to more to fear from a desperate mother immigrant with children in her arms than a wealthy lawmaker with lobby money in his pockets, a Muslim woman donning a hijab than an angry white man with a gun.
Dr. Perry used very illustrative phrases to describe what his child patients had gone through. They had been “incubated in terror” and “marinated in fear,” he said. Such is parts our culture. It is the natural outcome of depending on news organizations that are working for ratings at best, and systematic demonization at worst. It is constant, it is right at our fingertips, and it is “marinating us” in strife and fear. Ours is the first generation that can choose to use technology to either know of every tragedy and evil in the world or totally disconnect from the world.
So while I understand what is causing us to be either overly sensitized or dissociated, neither of these responses will do for dealing with the current state of our country. In fact, those who seek to exploit power want us in those states. When the powerful few can get the masses overly sensitized and in a constant state of fear or alarm, they can get us to do and believe what they want. When we dissociate and unplug, they can run roughshod over democracy and well-being undetected. It is easier for “the principalities and powers” to have their way once fear has made us dumber.
Jesus rejected both responses in his disciples. In an overly sensitized moment, they wanted to call down fire on those who rejected them, but Jesus rebuked them for this (Luke 9:54-55). In what could be interpreted as a dissociative moment, Jesus finds the disciples sleeping in the midst of a pending crisis. He exhorts them to “watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Matt 26:41).
Now, more than ever, is the time for watchfulness and for courageous, reasoned engagement. It’s not that there are not valid reasons for fear and anger. Millions stand to lose affordable health insurance, for example. There are many real life issues at stake, but they are tangled up in the arena of “politics” to which so many are averse. People of faith must not abdicate our role and responsibility to “speak the truth in love,” much like Martin Luther King Jr. did so effectively. We’re going to need men and women of God with balanced resolve who will not be guided by the “spirit of fear” but by “power, love and self-discipline” (2 Tim 1:7).
You may be wondering what Dr. Perry found to be effective in treating his patients’ in the midst of their traumatized stress responses. In short, it came down to helping the children find safe, nurturing relationships in which positive behavioral patterns are learned through repetition and routine. He wrote, “Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.”
That sounds familiar.