PEOPLE often ask me how one family can have one child that ends up faring well emotionally, personally and professionally, while the other child falls victim to depression, drug dependence or repeated toxic relationships. The fact that children raised in the same family can have such different fates is often used to argue that biology must dictate their futures – that they must be born with different potential.
Certainly, each person’s nervous system is unique from birth.
Some of us are graced with particularly hardy brains, with plenty of calming serotonin and activating norepinephrine. Others have more sluggish neuronal transmission – making them, perhaps, more vulnerable to stress.
From that foundation, however, I believe the more important variables begin to unfold. On the dynamic canvas of our nervous systems, the paint gets applied. Everything we experience impacts us. Appearance. Birth order. The subtleties of whether we connect with one parent or another, one teacher or another. The social and emotional impact of being short or tall, physically powerful or not, healthy or asthmatic. Having a best friend to trust can be a saving grace. Having one who falls victim to a tragic illness can be a trauma that resonates for decades.
Events resonate spiritually and psychologically, but also at the level of the nerve cell. The metabolic activity of the brain is itself vulnerable to repeated stresses.
Psychiatrist John Bowlby demonstrated that separation of infants and toddlers from their mothers for periods of just several weeks can lead to separation anxiety in school-age children – and later in life. Imagine. That’s the exquisitely sensitive kind of adaptive or maladaptive system we’re speaking about. Then think about luck. Do you meet a mate who abides your foibles? Do you find a mentor who sees the best in you and helps you see the best in yourself?
I have treated an organized-crime figure whose brother was a priest, as well as a prostitute whose sister is a teacher.
Every life event matters. I have treated a man who avoided the financial risks that caused his brother repeated bankruptcies and shattered marriages. “I had the sense my mother loved me especially well,” he told me. “I saw her cry when I got into any kind of trouble as a kid. Something about that kept me from throwing myself under the bus.” Those tears altered the course of his life.
We are so much more than our nervous systems. We are all, truly, interconnected, but unique stories.
Keith Ablow, MD, is a psychiatrist, Fox News Channel contributor and founder of livingthetruth.com. Contact him at [email protected].