Excerpts from Trauma, The Brain and Relationship:
Helping Children Heal
Dr. Bruce Perry
If the brainstem is poorly organized and over reactive and dissynchronous, the baby’s born and very often they will have what we call a state regulation problem. They are hard to soothe, you can’t quiet them down very well, it’s hard to engage them, and it makes the caregivers feel overwhelmed … which can then have this whole cascade of negative effects. The caregiver doesn’t feel very competent, they can’t calm the child down very well… Instead of having this smooth, synchronous interaction, you have kind of this bad fit.
Dr. Marcy Axness
When a pregnant mother is under constant stress… She might just be stressed at the office, but her brain and her body, and her developing baby’s brain don’t know the difference between that, and that there are predators in the environment! So we’re seeing babies being born that are hyper-reactive, why? Mom’s under stress during her whole pregnancy-either through work, or through being unsupported by her community, by her partner, by her family… So we have this baby born that is already hyper-reactive.
Read the transcript of the unedited interview the filmmakers did with Dr. Axness.