Brain Development: Why It Matters

1 rich Libsyn https://www.libsyn.com 90 600 Brain Development: Why It Matters Brain development can be understood as a process of four maturing stages: survival, emotional, attachment and cognitive. These stages hold a key to understanding both poor and healthy thought processes. In this episode of Breaking Bread, Dr. Kirby Reutter steps us through brain development, how trauma impacts it and how by God’s grace we can think healthier.&nbsp; &nbsp; Show Notes:&nbsp;&nbsp; The first dimension of the brain&nbsp;to develop&nbsp;very early&nbsp;in life is the&nbsp;survival&nbsp;brain. Survival lies at the heart of the operations of the survival brain.&nbsp;The responses of&nbsp;fight, flight and&nbsp;freeze&nbsp;protect and train us to respond to our surrounds&nbsp;and preserve life.&nbsp; Healthy&nbsp;development :&nbsp;A child has a healthy co-regulator (parent figure) who helps them regulate their responses and properly protects them.&nbsp; Unhealthy development: A child does not have a healthy co-regulator&nbsp;and their safety is exploited. Fight, flight and freeze become&nbsp;a constant regular reaction to outside stimuli.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;The second dimension of the brain to develop is the emotional brain. Responses to&nbsp;outside stimuli&nbsp;are&nbsp;mapped to&nbsp;feelings.&nbsp; Healthy development:&nbsp;A properly developed survival brain allows for a developing emotional brain.&nbsp;The full range of emotions, both comfortable emotions (positive) and uncomfortable emotions (negative) are appropriately experienced.&nbsp; Unhealthy development:&nbsp;An underdeveloped survival brain has a detrimental effect on&nbsp;the developing&nbsp;emotional&nbsp;brain.&nbsp;Negative emotions (primarily fear and anger)&nbsp;are&nbsp;over developed&nbsp;because of their abundant use. At the same time, positive&nbsp;emotions under&nbsp;develop because of their infrequent use or betraying affect.&nbsp; The third dimension of the brain to develop is the&nbsp;attachment&nbsp;brain. This development helps us connect with another human in&nbsp;relationship.&nbsp;&nbsp; Healthy development:&nbsp;A healthy emotional brain allows for&nbsp;a healthy&nbsp;attachment&nbsp;brain to develop.&nbsp;A recognition&nbsp;exists&nbsp;that people and relationships are needed. A child is seen, safe and soothed by another person (parent&nbsp;figure).&nbsp; Unhealthy development:&nbsp;An unhealthy emotional brain thwarts a maturing&nbsp;attachment&nbsp;brain.&nbsp;A belief&nbsp;emerges&nbsp;that recognizes people as a threat and relationships as dangerous.&nbsp; &nbsp;The fourth dimension of the brain to develop is the cognitive brain. This is the thinking brain, responsible for reasoning and judgement.&nbsp;&nbsp; Healthy development:&nbsp;A healthy&nbsp;attachment&nbsp;brain gives way to healthy thinking and reasoning.&nbsp;A healthy cognitive brain will&nbsp;making&nbsp;good&nbsp;decisions, recognize&nbsp;cause and effect, seeing short term and&nbsp;long term&nbsp;goals,&nbsp;identifying&nbsp;pros and cons, thinking abstractly, theoretically,&nbsp;logically&nbsp;and linguistically.&nbsp; Unhealthy development:&nbsp;An unhealthy&nbsp;attachment&nbsp;brain skews&nbsp;the cognitive&nbsp;development.&nbsp;Decisions and judgements are made through the lens of a threatening world.&nbsp;&nbsp; Breaking Bread Podcast http://apostolicchristiancounseling.libsyn.com/podcast <iframe title="Libsyn Player" style="border: none" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/41051140/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/88AA3C/" height="90" width="600" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe> https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/item/41051140