My Brain and Its Architecture

What I’ve shared in this book is, literally, the journey of a lifetime. I am left wondering what comes next. Instead of exploring and analyzing life as I have done extensively during the book writing process, do I now simply focus on applying the principles uncovered? Or does the process of exploration and analysis continue? I have certainly not shared everything about my life experiences and about rock ‘n roll, and I am sure that there is more left to discover. I certainly don’t feel myself after revisiting such emotionally challenging memories and thoughts about the nature of reality, so I will very likely pursue my psychotherapy more consistently and aggressively. I am hoping that undergoing counseling outside of the book writing will be easier to handle. It certainly cannot be any more difficult. Fingers crossed!

In thinking about how I’ve pieced together the elements in this book, it appears to me that what I have done in a way is to map out my brain architecture. I have a way of categorizing information that is concept- or principle-based such that when I try to describe a certain idea then all of the information stored in my brain related to that idea comes to my active memory, whether I was trying to access it or not. This is why in a variety of passages I make seemingly random statements like “this reminds me of movie “x” or the scene in the movie “y” that might directly or indirectly relate to whatever I might be writing about in the realm of music. In a similar vein, I was also amazed at the way that I have been able to extract positive messages from songs that on the surface appear to be negative or problematic in some way. It is interesting to consider that whatever caused my brain to develop its unique way of processing emotion may have also significantly influenced the way my brain decided to categorize and analyze information.

During the book writing process, I have not only researched music, quantum physics, philosophy, and theology, I also researched brain development as a way of better understanding my unique brain architecture. I kept waiting for the right part of my book to share information about how my emotional coping mechanism may have come to develop, but it always seemed like the subject would distract from the subject specific I was writing about. Since my way of processing emotion sounds like science fiction, I thought that the sci-fi chapter would probably be the most likely place for it. With all the focus on knowledge and consciousness in Chapter 6, adding more scientific analysis could have just become overwhelming (if indeed it was not overwhelming already). So, I made everyone wait until the very end of the book to explain my way of processing emotion and my way of thinking in general. This is probably a good thing because with every passing day, I seem to understand this condition a bit more.

In this book, I have made a variety of claims about the nature of rock ‘n roll and the nature of reality and humanity. I suppose that now I should try to better describe “my claims about my brains.” Mostly what I have shared thus far is that I don’t feel emotion in the same way that most people do. Unless an emotion is extreme, I cannot use emotion to understand situations or process information. Routine interactions just don’t seem to stimulate neural activity (or any kind of enthusiasm) until a deviation from the routine happens. Then my brain fires up and gets to work trying to understand why the deviation occurred. It files away this observation and then later this collective set of observations helps me to draw conclusions about human nature and the nature of reality.

My brain is actually storing the emotional responses that I should be feeling during my daily interactions with others. The emotions are tucked away in a vault of sorts where they remain until I decide to summon them. For many years, I never summoned any of them because I didn’t know they were available for summoning. When I started my “favorites songs of my favorite bands” exercise, I cracked open my emotional vault which led to a huge emotional discharge that made it nearly impossible for me to shut it again. Although at times I’ve successfully closed that emotional vault (like when I take a break from both therapy and book writing), I actually am now able to feel the condition of “not feeling.” That feeling is much more distracting than my attempts to feel. Either way, I am one distracted individual. This is also what would likely lead people who have interactions with me to think, “that is one distracted dude.”

Let’s move on to some of my own theories about why my brain behaves the way it does. I have already given the explanation that arose from a series of therapeutic assessments (i.e., that my brain behaves in a way that is consistent with someone who suffered trauma in early childhood). Even with this assessment, there is so much to unpack. When I think about what this might mean, I don’t feel any sort of trepidation and don’t feel wronged in any way. I think this is because I know how the story ends. I have had a great life. I have a great family. I’ve done some things other people never get to experience. I have every reason to be grateful and know that everything that has happened in my life (good and bad) is what allowed me to become the person that I’ve become and to do the things that I’ve done. I do regret that I’ve caused hurt to others because of the peculiar way I tend to interact with people and wish very much I could take certain statements and decisions back. To those individuals, I do beg for forgiveness.

Knowing there was childhood trauma does not begin to explain what caused the childhood trauma that led to the development of my unique coping mechanism for processing emotion. I want an answer, but a clear answer isn’t within reach. I venture to say that the answer is to be found in a time of my life before I was one year old and to consider what kinds of things could happen in the first year of life, in the womb or genetically, that may have caused my brain to develop in this way. Keep in mind that this is not specifically knowable so I am just sharing what my gut tells me might be contributing factors.

There are two large buckets of issues to consider in terms of finding factors that may have influenced a certain pattern of development. The first factor I will highlight is the one that pops in our head almost instinctively: what must have happened to this poor child? We want an easy answer because then maybe the solution or resolution may be more easily attained. The second factor that we often ignore when it comes to thinking about trauma’s impact on brain development is the impact that trauma in previous generations might have on our own genetic make-up. Is it possible that trauma suffered by my mom or dad could have affected me through some kind of genetic transmission? In my particular situation, I would argue that both factors are at play and will try to address each at a very high level.

Genetic Potential/Activation and Its Impact on Brain Development

I will first address what we might glean from the question of our genes. Very important decisions about our brain’s architecture happen before we can do much more than eat, poop, sleep, and cry. It can’t be our own brain that is making the decisions because it still has yet to be formed. The natural conclusion is that it is some combination of our genetic potential and our environment that ultimately determines the specific architecture of our brains. When considering the cause of a health condition, we often think about family medical history. This is very difficult to do with trauma because there are many different types of trauma that a person can experience and multiple kinds of trauma may be at play within any given individual. The important thing is to try to identify as many of the factors at play because that will help identify a better path for healing.

Trauma is passed down in the genes, but can you scan the historical record to see if you could glean something about the kinds of stressors that prior generations have experienced? I have chosen to look at my maternal blood line, beginning with my great grandmother (Gen 1) to me (Gen 4).

I will start by noting the impact of the death of family members and the fear of death of loved ones and friends due to war. In the “Gen 1” level, my great grandmother, Maria Martinez, was born in the mid 1890’s and was alive during World War I. In fact, she gave birth to my grandmother, Santos Ramirez (Gen 2), in 1916 which was 2 years after the beginning of the war and a year before the U.S. entered the war. In 1910, my great grandmother endured the death of her mother. A year before my grandmother’s birth, my great grandmother suffered the death of her brother in 1915. Clearly, there were some stressors of death and war affecting the experience of my Great Grandmother (Gen 1).

As previously stated, my grandmother was born in 1916 when World War 1 was raging. She had 13 siblings. Because my Abuela Santos was the first born daughter, she had to offer help to her mother with household chores and child rearing. She was 17 years old when her father (my great grandfather) died in 1936 and thus, there was a greater need for her to support the family until 1939 when she married my grandfather, Teofilo Tomas Trevino. In 1941, my grandmother’s sister, Josefa, died.

My Abuelo Tomas served in the U.S.Navy in World War II. He was deployed after my Aunt Mary was born in 1942. His aircraft carrier, the Liscome Bay, was sunk in 1943. He was one of approximately 270 survivors of the more than 900 crew members serving on the ship. He contracted polio while enlisted and was not discharged from the armed services until he regained his health. My mother, Yolanda Trevino, was born in 1948 after my grandfather’s discharge from the Navy. In this example, we see a very direct impact that war had on the emotional and psychological well-being of both my grandmother and grandfather when my mom was conceived and born.

I hit the scene in 1966. My mom married at the age of 16, had her first child, Araceli, in 1965 and me in 1966. So, when she was 18 years old, she was already the mother of two children. You will note that 1966 lies in the middle of the Vietnam War. There would have been family members and friends who had to enlist for the draft, who were called to service in his armed conflict, and who may have lost their lives in the armed conflict. A year after I was born, my great-grandmother passed which would have affected not only my mom but also my Abuela Santos, one of her sources of support as a young mom. There was certainly a lot for a teenage mom to worry about in addition to just trying to be a good mom.

I share this very narrow window into my family’s history to show that there were a variety of stressors at play when my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother became pregnant, carried a baby to term, and started raising their children. If whatever mechanism is in place to design brain architecture continually detects an environment of death and war, then it is going to try to better prepare each generation for survival in that particular kind of environment. I suppose it is me, in “Gen 4,” who now has a chance of breaking the cycle. Maybe the conscious recognition of the emotional coping mechanism that my brain employs is the first step in trying to change what happens in future generations of our family.

Unfortunately, my unique way of processing emotion only came to light after my two kids (“Gen 5” of this story) were born. Hold on to the hopeful messages I’ve shared here and not the cynical and critical things I say about people, especially when I’m driving in traffic. (I think we should all get a pass when it comes to our reaction to being stuck in traffic.) Cling to hope and peace and spread this message to all those you encounter. And don’t be afraid to challenge those who foster fear and/or engage-in or promote war/conflict.

Environment Factors Affecting Brain Development

Just as with the genetic factors that may have had an impact on my brain’s development, the environmental factors that may have had an impact on brain development are also complex and varied. I’ll start by noting that everything I described as possibly having affected my mother in the previous section may have also affected me and my child development based on her level of stress and ability to cope with that stress. If you left your family, your school, your social circles to get married at the age of 16, then there may be a great deal of anxiety that comes with this change in interpersonal connection with family and friends. When you become a mom a year later and mother of two by the age of 18, then this may create some stress as well. I was in my mid-30’s when I became a dad, and I was a bit stressed out. I can’t imagine being a teenager (at a time when there were no guide books for new parents) and trying to care for a tiny, helpless human being. I will note that my mom’s recollection of her early years as a mom is that it was kind of fun and not as stressful as we might think.

The mention of parenting guidebooks, like What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Dr. Spock’s, leads one to ask, in the early sixties, how did a mom (in this case a teenage mom) learn how to parent? Naturally, the answer is that my mom learned from her mom and other relatives. And how did may grandma learn to be a mom? Well, she learned from her mom, or more accurately, by helping her mom raise kids. When my Abuela was 12, she had a brother that was a newborn, a brother than was one year old, and a brother that was three years old. As the eldest daughter of this family, she would have had to become very independent and responsible for easing the demand on her own mother. When my Abuela became a mom at age 26, she already knew what to do. When her daughter (my mom) became a mom as a teenager, then the parenting advice given and probably accepted by mom were the parenting strategies from the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. Those were difficult times in general, but especially for poor farm working families.

I image that the intent behind child rearing in this era after the depression and before World War II was to prepare kids for difficult times and a rough life. I say this because that is what I feel in my gut, that the world is a cruel and hard place. Even today, I have this strong sense that the only person I can count on in this world is myself (and my mom and God), even though I know this not to be true at all. I have had to resist the strong urge to raise my two kids in a way that prepares them for a cruel and hard world. It is so hard to relate to people when you hold this view. And it is, clearly, very hard to shake this way of thinking/feeling. I have this ongoing internal struggle where I have to lean extra hard on my logical brain to fight my natural instinct to make sure my kids “grow up to be tough, because that is how you make it in this world.” Of course, I now question my skewed view of the world and am hard pressed to explain how I came to believe that the world is a cruel and hard place.

The final environmental factor that I’ll reference is the fact that we grew up poor. We were poor like almost everyone else around us, so it didn’t seem like we were that deprived, relatively speaking. Of course there were well off families that we knew (i.e., the farm owners, the doctors, the lawyers, the accountants, etc.), but at school, amongst the kids, that didn’t seem to be such a big deal. My parents owned their home (which was a gift from my mom’s parents), so we had a stable living situation even though the house itself was pretty run down. My mom made sure we always had meat with every meal, even if it was a modest portion. She made sure we had new school clothes every year. When we were young, the clothes might have been homemade. Maybe. Maybe not. My mom made sure we had a good night’s sleep because it’s good for a growing child (and the developing brain). She made sure we had books (or Weekly Readers), and that we did our homework every night. She told us from a very young age that we were going to college, which I remember knowing was expected of me since I was in fourth grade. And, of course, I did go to college (two different ones, actually).

While all this is true, that doesn’t mean that life wasn’t a struggle for our parents. Mostly, this would have been unknown to us. I am sure we sensed the stress at times but we also were shielded from it. My parents both worked in the fields in their youth, and that is where the connection between the two was first made. My parents weren’t working in the fields after they were married, but my father was still working in the packing sheds as a foreman. At times, he was sent to West Texas or out of state to help with packing operations when the harvest ended in South Texas. So my mom would be home alone with one, two, or three kids and maybe waiting for some money to arrive in the mail.

My parents divorced when I was in middle school. Those are the years I remember as the hard years. There were a lot of heavy emotions to be suppressed. It was hard to handle as a kid. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to be a mother of three kids and in that situation. I also could tell it was hard for my dad who had never really had to worry about developing a strong bond with his kids. Luckily, by the time my parents divorced, we were all good students. We had our studies to focus on. At least for me, that was my preferred way of coping. It was certainly not by talking to my parents, sisters, or friends about it.

I hadn’t intended to share this much about my developmental years in the conclusion of this journal, but it’s because I wrote this book that I’ve reached this understanding. Literally, I could not share this earlier because I didn’t know how I might go about explaining it in a way that made sense. The intent was to show the kinds of things that might have affected me as a growing child and the developing brain. Poverty has been shown in studies to affect brain development. Check. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have also been shown to affect brain development. Parents who divorced and corporal punishment are considered ACEs. Check. I had not mentioned corporal punishment before, but I did mention that it was a late 1930’s and early 1940’s style of parenting that likely was employed. You know what that means with regard to discipline. Also, we were from “el rancho” (i.e., the country). I’m just sayin’. It’s a rugged existence.

In the end, the feeling that I can’t shake is the feeling of having to be tough to make it in this world. I learned to be tough, to never give up, to never let anyone dictate to me what I could and couldn’t do. I learned to persevere. I would just get up when I was down and try again. I would do this over and over until I accomplished what I had set out to do. Because I’ve accomplished some interesting things, I can sense people appreciate work ethic, drive, and perseverance. That made me feel good about myself. Deep down inside, I still feel like that momma’s boy who learned how to act tough. It’s similar to me being an introvert who had to learn how to act like an extrovert in order to succeed in politics. In reflecting upon my life, I feel like the persona people associate with me was built on a lie. Because I hate liars, that makes this feeling very hard to swallow. Before, I didn’t have to worry about the feelings of fragility and inadequacy, because I could just brush the ideas and the emotions aside with ease. In this era of my life where I am trying to let myself feel emotions as they rear their ugly heads, it’s these kinds of emotions that are the hardest to bear. I suppose it’s hard because they’ve been buried the longest. If I am that deep, maybe the vault is almost empty. One can only hope!