• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

FREE WHY LOVE MATTERS: HOW AFFECTION SHAPES A BABYS BRAIN PDF Sue Gerhardt | 318 pages | 22 Oct 2014 | Taylor & Francis Ltd | 9780415870535 | English | London, United Kingdom Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain by Sue Gerhardt Her solid argument, with research to back it up, is that children are best cared for in their early years by their parents because of the love they have for them. When separated from loving caregivers, even though babies may appear calm, their heart rate and autonomic arousal is sky rocketing. She writes. Attachment theory has been widely used in psychotherapy for over 50 years. Gerhardt argues that the social brain, our emotional style and resources are developing and established in the early years of life. The evidence that Gerhardt provides shows that the possible consequences of such experiences are attachment disturbances, psychosomatic illness, eating disorders, addiction, antisocial behaviour, personality disorders, chronic stress, anxiety and depression p. Gerhardt proposes that for those of us who have experienced disturbances in our early attachment relationships and family of history — through psychotherapy — we can indeed grow a socially and emotionally intelligent brain. In my personal and professional experience, psychotherapy is primarily about building a healthy relationship with self and others. It is important though that we choose a therapist who is able to love us unconditionally. The therapist must also be able to Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain at depth not only attached to certain techniques or models aimed at changing behaviours. Alongside psychotherapy, Graham suggests that we also need to hang out with other healthy brains. For example: self-help groups, yoga or meditation classes, personal growth workshops and at expressive arts, dance and movement classes. This research is not about blaming mothers, parents or primary caregivers. This blog is part of my Therapy Rocks! And thank you for noting that in order to help our children to develop secure attachments which promote a confident and rewarding interaction style as adults we need to be thinking about what THEY need at that point in their development. Previous Next. Attachment theory and the social brain Attachment theory has been widely used in psychotherapy for over 50 years. About the Author: Jodie. Over the last 20 years, Jodie has helped s of women to transform their lives. She has a private counselling, life-coaching and psychotherapy practice in Manly, Allambie Heights and Frenchs Forest on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Jodie is passionate about putting the soul back into Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain Related Posts. Soul Sessions with Jodie Gale Podcast. I Am Woman. Embodied Eating Disorder Recovery. Cheri Armstrong February 25, at am. Great title Jodie! Three cheers! Jodie February 25, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain am. Toggle Sliding Bar Area. Let your light shine and live the life you have always dreamed of! Contact me now to book your first appointment. Jodie Gale. Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain – breathwork-science This is the part of the brain that enables us to manage our emotions, to relate sensitively to other people, to experience pleasure and to appreciate beauty. It was Margaret Ainsworth, a Canadian psychologist, who first demonstrated a robust connection between early childhood experience and personality. For a large part of the s Ainsworth sat behind a two-way mirror in Baltimore and watched one-year-olds playing with their mothers. She noted what happened when the mother left the room for a few minutes and how the child responded when she returned. She then took the study a stage further and studied what happened when, instead of the mother, a stranger entered the room and tried to engage with the child. A neglectful, stressed or inconsistent parent gave the kind of care which tended to lead to anxious, insecure or avoidant children. Further studies showed that patterns of attachment behaviour in one-year- olds could accurately predict how those children would behave aged five and eight. Although attachment theory has been massively influential in many ways, underpinning psychology and psychotherapy ever since, it has never achieved general credibility. Sitting in a room watching babies — what kind of proof is that? How can anyone know what a baby is thinking and feeling? Added to this, an entire generation of feminists hated attachment theory from the word go, accusing Bowlby of being against working women and wanting to shackle women to the home. The whole issue of how babies develop suddenly became highly politicised — and still is. Confusion reigns about the connection between early experience and personality. Parents are blamed when things go wrong, the rest of the time their role is downplayed. In Why Love Matters, Gerhardt, a psychotherapist, has Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain gone where most in recent years have feared to tread. She takes the hard language of neuroscience and uses it to prove the soft stuff Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain attachment theory. Putting your one-year-old in a nursery or leaving them with a childminder may turn out to be a more momentous decision than you thought. Drawing on the most recent findings from the Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain of neurochemistry, Gerhardt makes an impressive case that emotional experiences in infancy and early childhood have a measurable effect on how we develop as human beings. Wielding the language and findings of science like a haycutter in a corn field, she scythes through the confusion that normally surrounds this subject to explain how daily interactions between a baby and its main carer have a direct impact on the way the brain develops. Gerhardt is not interested in cognitive skills — how quickly a child learns to read, write, count to Who we are is neither encoded at birth, she argues, nor gradually assembled over the years, but is inscribed into our brains during the first two years of life in direct response to how we are loved and cared for. Our earliest experiences are not simply laid down as memories or influences, they are translated into precise physiological patterns of response in the brain that then set the neurological rules for how we deal with our feelings and those of other people for the rest of our lives. The kind of brain that each baby develops is the brain that comes out of his or her particular experiences with people. The key player in this unfolding drama turns out to be a hormone called cortisol. When a baby is upset, the hypothalamus, situated in the subcortex at the centre of the brain, produces cortisol. In normal amounts cortisol is fine, but if a baby is exposed for too long or too often to stressful situations such as being left to cry its brain becomes flooded with cortisol and it will then either over- or under-produce cortisol whenever the child is exposed to stress. Too much is linked to depression and fearfulness; too little to emotional detachment and aggression. Children of alcoholics have a raised cortisol level, as do children of very stressed mothers. Baseline levels of cortisol are pretty much set by six months of age. Human babies, like all mammals, are born wired for survival, but uniquely, we are wired to do so through other people. By smiling cutely long before they can walk or talk, babies ensure that the adults in their lives are sufficiently besotted to forgive them the sleepless nights and want to keep them alive. Being smiled at in return teaches the baby the rewards of communication and primes the infant brain for more. Interaction, it turns out, is the high Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain from merely human to fully humane. Gerhardt touches only briefly on the issue of daycare for very young children but this, too, clearly needs Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain more attention. Gerhardt is not the first person to say these things, but research findings in this area have been very slow to filter out to the general public. Precisely because they are so politically sensitive, researchers in this field have been reticent over the years about broadcasting their results. Why Love Matters is hugely important. It should be mandatory reading for all parents, teachers and politicians. Routledge, You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Search for: Search. Date: October 3, Author: breathwork-science 0 Comments. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. Email required Address never made public. Name required. Why Love Matters: Attachment Theory in Psychotherapy Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Why Love Matters explains why love is essential to brain development in the early years of life, particularly to the development of our social and emotional brain systems, and presents the startling discoveries Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Babys Brain provide the answers to how our emotional lives work. Sue Gerhardt considers how the earliest relationship shapes the baby's nervous system, with lasting consequ Why Love Matters explains why love is essential to brain development in the early years of life, particularly to the development of our social and emotional brain systems, and presents the startling discoveries that provide the answers to how our emotional lives work.

Load more

  6

Copy Link