Ordinarily the executive capacities of the prefrontal cortex enable people to
observe what is going on, predict what will happen if they take a certain action,
and make a conscious choice. Being able to hover calmly and objectively over
our thoughts, feelings, and emotions (an ability I’ll call mindfulness throughout
this book) and then take our time to respond allows the executive brain to
inhibit, organize, and modulate the hardwired automatic reactions
preprogrammed into the emotional brain. This capacity is crucial for preserving
our relationships with our fellow human beings. As long as our frontal lobes are
working properly, we’re unlikely to lose our temper every time a waiter is late
with our order or an insurance company agent puts us on hold. (Our watchtower
also tells us that other people’s anger and threats are a function of their
emotional state.) When that system breaks down, we become like conditioned animals: The moment we detect danger we automatically go into fight-or-flight
mode.

In PTSD the critical balance between the amygdala (smoke detector) and the
MPFC (watchtower) shifts radically, which makes it much harder to control
emotions and impulses. Neuroimaging studies of human beings in highly
emotional states reveal that intense fear, sadness, and anger all increase the
activation of subcortical brain regions involved in emotions and significantly
reduce the activity in various areas in the frontal lobe, particularly the MPFC.
When that occurs, the inhibitory capacities of the frontal lobe break down, and
people “take leave of their senses”: They may startle in response to any loud
sound, become enraged by small frustrations, or freeze when somebody touches
them.13

(Top down or bottom up. Structures in the emotional brain decide what we perceive as dangerous or
safe. There are two ways of changing the threat detection system: from the top down, via modulating
messages from the medial prefrontal cortex (not just prefrontal cortex), or from the bottom up, via the
reptilian brain, through breathing, movement, and touch.)

The above is quoted from The Body Keeps the Score

Early childhood trauma was the original cause of my behaviors, rages, instability, years upon decades of therapy and flight to the relative safety of a hospital ward.

I am not alone by any stretch. But it is myself I have been forced to live with and through while I watched my chaotic life unfold as if with a will of its own.

The earliest trauma aiding in the wiring of my brain I cannot say. I know from tales from siblings there were vicious beatings I would have likely witnessed. I remember the day my sister Sharon was beaten. I was very small. My sister Joyce asked if I had to stay and watch, as all the other children were forced to. Ma said I could go to my room. Sadly my room was directly above the living room where the beating took place. I heard the screams clearly through the floorboards as I stood alone, terrified. It was not until 2007 the story was told to me of the physical damage done to my sister. Mother gripped her hair by the curlers in it while Dad beat her butt. the bruises were nothing compared to the tufts of hair yanked from her head.

Do I need to be so graphic? People I love have been led to believe the worst of me, far worse than the life I am responsible for.

Now I get some measure of relief just to know my chaotic life had a beginning in the early wiring of my brain to fight or flight always very much alone and confused and frustrated by choices I could not believe I made out of any rational mind. Now I get to work on rewiring what can be and hopefully put my flight shoes away forever.

How many are there? Tens of millions I suspect. if there were only some way to heal together.

Wait! What if we begin to understand things and people and stop judging and stereotyping. I never chose my life. I was set upon a wild ride at the circus of life and no matter how I willed it, could not dismount while life just spun further and further out of control. That does neither excuse my effect on others along the way or absolved me.

And no matter what I say or do, or what I learn, undoing the defamation, ridicule and hate from people who swear I had a wonderful childhood is beyond my power. It is also beyond my purpose.

I am me, and I can never be the woman many people think me to be, hateful, cruel, a liar and loose woman, and selfish beyond contempt in spite of having an idyllic childhood.

I am me, scarred and worn out from an entire life of abuse and loss of most of my “family.” I am a woman who will always get up more than I fall down and a woman teachable now that there is something pertinent to learn. I am also a woman who wishes to pass on whatever it is of recovery that I can because that is what all good people should do. My sister Joyce called that “grandiose” to think I had something to say or share. What I think is grandiose is a family who haughtily stands by the imaginary “family” they dreamed up in their minds to hide the truth. They have no power to help anyone, not even themselves.