Stopping the Vicious Circle by Deep Personal Work

Neurobiologist Gerald Hüther showed that prenatal experiences contribute to programming our memory. Indeed, it is during life in the womb that the network of neurons and synapses is formed and that unused potentialities perish. The embryo’s brain is prepared for what awaits it based on the experiences lived in the mother’s womb, it develops a pattern that in a large part determines the individual’s future existence. It is therefore important to take into consideration negative influences such as the parents’ stress, suffering and shortcomings, along with environmental factors. The very strong emotions that surface during and immediately after birth, may nevertheless soften this pattern and reimprint it with new positive or negative messages. This is why the birth of a child can be an excellent opportunity to break the vicious circle, provided that the parents are willing to submit themselves to the emotions that intense contact with their baby provokes. The parents’ bodies can then produce ocytocin and prolactin, described by Michel Odent(1) as the love and concern hormones. These hormones guide the parents’ behaviour to make their child’s arrival as serene as possible, ensuring that the child will not subsequently need to cut itself off from its emotions to avoid remembering them.

Babies who have suffered during the birth process need to cry, even when the pain has subsided. These cries have a calming effect and help infants to assimilate what they have just experienced. At this moment they need to be cradled in their mother’s arms to allow their emotions free reign. The child's need to cry may last for several hours and it is essential that the mother allows her child to expel all of this stress. She will need to be sufficiently at peace with herself to tolerate these cries, which are often difficult to hear. If the baby feels loved and understood by its mother, he/she will be able to overcome the birth shock and find its identity. Reconnecting with our wounded inner child and allowing the ensuing emotions to emerge takes energy, time and commitment, but is also a chance to grow and to better manage our future interior conflicts. This interior work can ensure that we do not repeat and perpetuate our parents’ errors that we often unconsciously replicate on our own children, despite wanting to spare them the suffering we have experienced ourselves. In effect, it is this interior division which prevents us from acknowledging the tragedy of our history and learning lessons from it. By connecting to our own deep wounds and thereby, understanding human disarray we can better help those around us to reconnect with themselves.

During this questioning process we can be shaken and feel vulnerable, but it is a necessary journey to truly, deeply change our way of functioning and consequently, our behaviour towards our own children. Situations can arise when we are in contact with children, as in many other moments in life, which are often “well chosen” precisely to awaken in us similar unresolved situations that have been carefully buried away but which act beneath the surface. By releasing our emotions, we can try to understand and express our underlying needs and thereby, find a satisfactory solution to our imbalance. If we have the courage to allow them to resurface and be expressed, we will become aware of them and will no longer bury them, developing more authentic thought patterns.

(1) The surgeon and obstetrician Dr Michel Odent introduced the concepts of “home-like” birthing rooms and birthing pools. A world-renowned personality, respected for his scientific vigor, Michel Odent is the author of over fifty scientific papers and eleven books. In 1986 he founded the Primal Health Research Centre in London, which aims to study the consequences of events during the ‘primal period’ (from conception to first birthday) on the health and behavior of the child and on the adult that it will become.

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