Observation of a Brain Shut Down

"Use soft words and hard arguments."
–English proverb

OBSERVATION OF A BRAIN SHUT DOWN

Fr. Shay Cullen, a Columban Missionary working in the Philippines since 1969, offers these observations: 

"Anita was only 6 years old when she was brought to the children’s therapeutic recovery Home. She was withdrawn, slow to respond to normal childhood stimuli, could not join in children's games, frequently was found staring off into space with a vacant expression and hardly did anything thing to promote her own well being and comfort. She just accepted passively whatever situation she was in. The house parents and social workers had to coax her to eat, dress up and participate in any group activity. In other words she was turned off, her brain that is.

"This I presumed was the result of some traumatic experience according to the phenomena observed in Anita. Her condition was like posttraumatic apathy. Research shows that a developing person severely abused can suffer not only emotional damage and develop severe neurosis but there can be physical damage to the brain itself. This the extent of the damage, loss and deprivation caused to a defenseless child. Anita, in our view, had brain damage caused by repeated sexual and physical abuse. 

"My view, which is non-academic and gleaned from my own experience and research and the effort of trying to develop practical and effective therapies on a shoe-string budget that help traumatized victims of abuse recover. I see a six years old child's personality, brain and body in the full flight of human development, provided they are receiving the love, care affirmation and educational stimuli to propel them into the wonder world of knowing and experiencing themselves and other human beings. Consider the wonder in a child beaming eyes looking into the eyes of a loving parent. It is seeking there a model to imitate. It is striving to become more human and needs an example to model itself on. We are born with ready-made kidneys and hearts that just grow bigger and stronger, but we do not come into this world with ready-made personalities and characters. These are formed by nurture and nature.

"Imagine the scene where the cruel adult bashes the child rejects, physically and verbally and takes away all that would bring happiness and joy. The child is crushed, his or her interest in becoming an adult is quashed, her knowledge of the adult world is darkened as the source of pain and sorrow, fear and deprivation. There is no model to imitate now. There is an end of growth and aspiration. The child's natural desire to participate in such an adult world is diminished, inhibited and the learning process is now retarded. There is nothing higher to strive for.

"The brain is closing down, it cannot absorb the massive influx of information and data coming from a new experience it is not ready or developed enough to cope with. The physical and emotional trauma flashes warnings to the brain and it goes from growth mode to defensive and survival mode. All it's chemicals and electrical impulses are flashing like Christmas lights gone mad. The vital information impulses that make us conscious and knowing and responding to the outside world are redirecting themselves away from the future to what it knows already and needs - the basics of survival. It is like a back and white TV replaying the same short movie over and over. It seldom changes the picture but it bravely holds it together and plays it repeatedly as long as it can. It is a computer screen hung up. That’s retardation for you. A personality in full flight shot down like a bird and flopping along wounded on the ground.

"The sexual abuse of a child or another traumatic experience turns off the growth switches and the intellectual lights of a healthy happy bubbling life of joy, it turns the child into a dying flower. How to prevent traumatic abuse and revive the dying brain and a heart of love in a child is what we all desire and it is a work that occupies much of my life."

For more information on the work of Fr. Cullen, go to www.preda.org
 

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