Pet Peeves about People's Paradigms

I know, I know alliteration is a no-no in blogging. But I have liked the term "pet peeve" ever since my daughter made a little elfin creature out of Sculpty clay and gave me my own pet peeve. I call him Alfred.

Oliver's Pet Peeves about People's Paradigms

Paradigm #1: There is psychology and there is physiology and the two are unrelated and need totally different approaches.

The longer I study neuro-development, the more I believe that much of what we perceived as personality is really just an accommodation to our perceptual world and the attendant stress. This may sound materialistic, but in reality we do have choice and creativity with these accommodations, if we are aware of where it starts. Most people think that personality starts in the mysterious area called, "psychology".

For years, psychology has told us that we are affected emotionally by early trauma. Trauma does affect the type and amount of stress that a system receives and can impact many neuro-systems in subtle and overt ways. However, emotions are the feedback systems that tell us how our systems are dealing with stresses.

I once helped with a study trying to find why some people have resilience in the face of great trauma and others do not. At the time the theory was that a dependable adult in the life of a child makes a difference (and of course it usually does.) However, I would bet that a robust neuro-developmental system is even more consistent with resilience.

More "peeves" in future posts.....