Elsie’s Reviews > Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain > Status Update

In optimal or even good-enough circumstances, when a baby cries out, the cry alerts the mother to attend to the baby’s needs and comfort him. The two establish a rhythm of reciprocity, heartbeat to heartbeat, and they soothe one another’s distress. The mother of the child who will suffer developmental trauma perceives her child’s needs as assaults and pushes away. The child’s need is either ignored, subsumed, or puni

Children not held in the minds of their mothers are lost, forgotten. Being held in the mind of the mother is the original holding environment, an experience that most of my patients have never had. Several adults with whom I have worked have described being in constant state of free fall, backwards through a black hole. They are themselves black holes and so, often, are their mothers.