Figuring Out Trauma: More on Genes and Environment

John,

There is yet another element to this complicated interaction of genetics and the environment I stumbled across.  I will see if I can regurgitate what I understand so far.

The psychological, behavioral perspective explains another aspect that may play a role in contributing to our illness, our personality.  We are born with inherited personality traits.  Our environment and how we learn to react to it, then shapes our personality.  We develop ways of responding to our environment, certain patterns and forms of behavior.

The ways in which we respond are referred to as basic behavioral repetoirs (BBRs).  Once learned, we consistantly repeat these behaviors.  They are divided in three types: emotional-motivational, sensory-motor, and language-cognitive.  This is where it gets a little complicated but I will try to make it simple and explain from my understanding.

The emotional-motivational BBRs we learn determine what emotional response we associate with certain stimuli.  We then know which stimuli are mood altering, reinforcing and direct behavior.  The perspective contends that this, in conjuction with the environment and biological conditions, determine emotional states.  In social situations a person with hypomania and an euphoric mood may get positive responses from others which reinforces the mood.  Sometimes, euphoric responses are related to dangerous activities that would usually elicit fear and are inappropriate.  In some cases fearless risk taking behavior is reinforced.  Dysfunctional emotional-motivational BBRs can escalate positive emotions, reinforcing the mood through reward.  This may be a good tool to climb out of depression, though without a check, it can run away.

The sensory-motor BBRs determine basic functional ability and skills in areas like social, vocational, and educational.  With mental illness it is common for deficits to be seen in these areas.  Skills that are a risk factor for Bipolar Disorder, which have a short term pay off and long term risk are: persuasive conversational techniques, social manipulation and skills for high risk activities.  Consider that these have an emotional reward in the short term, which seems to follow the thrill seeking element that coincides with Bipoloar Disorder.  These behaviors can contribute to feelings of elation and push an individual to mania or leave them elated and pennyless at the poker table.

The language-cognitive BBRs have to do with language, imagery or other stimulus that leads to cognition.  They affect emotion and behavior through their interaction with the emotional-motivational and sensory-motor BBRs.  Patterns of thought that are maladaptive can result in deficits of performance and excessive emotional responses.  If a person has a tendancy for grandiose thoughts about themself and little to inhibit their ideas, the positive self image and resulting emotion can become excessive and provide fuel for mania.  A certain train of thought, about a subject with a positive emotional reward, may be familiar to some and may be recurrant during episodes of hypomania, fueling the feel good feeling and motoring you down the road.

So, personality may have its role and a personality that was shaped by the environmental interaction, all of the situations we encountered, coupled with the genetics for Bipolar Disorder makes for a racey combination.  An interesting take on how personality plays into the disorder, it also provides for contribution to depression and switching from mania to a depressed state.

 Good for this girl...as i know support from community support groups

 is very important and so helpful.  i use imagery,  positive readings-movies,

 songs with positive words, meditation music,  eucalyptus oil to relax,

 and i know myself, when it comes to HALT.   hungry angry lonely tired.

              so i m going to rest .

You who what you are and in what type of environment you will heal. We keep ourselves in balance by watching who is giving the treatment and if they are at all normal or balanced themselves. We understand our background and thus know our psychological makeup. We can clearly discover what type of environments drive us crazy off beam and what types will trigger a serenity type healing of the mind. Many meds cause side effects. Some side effects are critiacly dangerous to the patient. A short term fix with meds may allow the patient to gain strength to heal.  Other factors are the environmental factor that may trigger unhealthy stress and and illness. Other types of environmental states trigger a positive healthy reward pleasure for the healthy mind balance.  People can blame a gene predisposition ; while environmental conditions will cast the patient into the demension of recovery to robust mental health return to dehabilitating psycho social dysfunction. An antisocial approach to patient health and recovery can trigger a more horrifc illness to the patient. Know yourself. it may take decades to find yourself after you ve dropped off balance. Know the material you are dealing with. Know that environmental factors do cause a psycho physiological reaction for the good and/or for the worse. Understand the dynamics that interact in your lifestyle that may contribute to healthy and unhealthy behavior response patterns. Be careful of botched medication designs that may throw you into the bounds of having to crawl out of a morass of human experimentation disfavorable to the patient. Sometimes commonsense is a better friend than the dictator who throws prescriptions at the patients... who in turn ditches the patients upon immature social workers or hobby psychologists. We have our personal mental barriers in life; but we also are exposed to a mad mad world. Sometimes it really them and its not you who has created all the high drama trauma. Blaiming and disposing of the patient is sometimes really a dodge by those who put you where you are and by those who will not face the truth and fix the problem. Sometimes its your employer, your partner, your organization that has got the problem. The patient may reflect the illness of a company by becoming ill. Understand not many of us...not many at all were born crazy. Mental illness is cause by many factors and by many vectors of illness. Sometimes if people didn't know what your were thinking they would not know how to harm you so easily by their antisocial behavior. The antisocial culture of a government, a society, a culture contribute to patients illnesses. Sometimes young people will move out to escape the dysfunctional behavior of their own family. SOmetimes young people will evolve and heal and sometimes they may be caught in a web of repeated family horros in a controlled envireonment they may not be aboe to escape. Picking on a patient or a target until he falls apart is really a harmful injustice to humanity. Social and psychological abuse of people should be outlawed. Often the patients break down is attributed to the way they were treated not only in the past but in the present. Abusers sometimes can spot or hone in on the traits of individuals who have been victims of abuse. The streesors may make it a folk way or organizational established cue to abuse the target as a means of mind control. he target may eventually be driven into a cascade of illness; a reflection of job stress and a social pecking order of hazing and harrassment. After the destruction of the patient; the organization or the abusers will write unsavoray evaluations. The abusers proceed attacking their target with a created hell on earth environment both suttle and bold. The patient is outcast from the corporate social structure... The abusers ritually dump the victim patient into the street casting the blame on the patient. The sickest nastiest people wear the mask and beat up on others. Your controllers who have meddled in the harmony of your life may be the real devilish sickos causing the trauma.  Break away from them and run like hell. Get a friendly lawyer if you want and always get a patient friendly doctor to treat you. Any time you sense a red flag signal that your therapist is sick and harmful ...get the hell away from them before they do worse damage to you.  Physician Heal Thyself.

Well John what a change !  Bi PolarMind ed sounds appropriate!

See you in a Couple of Months at DBSA Conference ?