Communication Between The Two Brain Hemispheres. (Article 24 of the history of my epilepsy.)

Communication between the brain hemispheres. (Three examples.) 

When my old birth trauma is being dissolved piece by piece, insights and flashbacks can follow provoked by painful events in life. They appear as an effect of the normalization of the brain and is due to improved exchange of information between the hemispheres of the brain, as the painkilling activities of the neuroses no longer are needed. One can speak of a delayed maturation step by step.

One morning I had three very different experiences. The first was a fairly recent history with roots in the past. The second experience occurred 14-15 years since in Malmö, together with my son, Anders, then 25 years old. The third and most dramatic event occurred almost exactly 60 years ago. Last in first out.

Experience 1. 

Puskas is our dog and he is a big adult boxer, four years old, born 2006. We bought him when he was 18 months old. He had then, during a year, traveled in southern Europe participating in dog competitions, when the owner decided to sell him. Puskas was mainly trained for the exhibitions, which meant that he was instinctively set to flash aggressive postures to demonstrate his racial superiority, a sleek muscular structure. To adopt him to a normal life as a house dog we had to start from scratch with his training. The saying: ‘it's hard to teach an old dog to sit’ could not have been given a better example. 

My daughter and I, who both wished that we got a dog, had taken on a difficult task, and we went during four months to a course with Puskas and we read some books on dog training and boxers. Puskas has a healthy mind and is very affectionate with people but is, however, extremely dominant in other dogs' presence. Especially his demand for respect from other dogs created severe adjustment problems early in the course, especially as long as I was convinced that the problem lay with him... 

Puskas and I make daily long walks in the mountains and hills around Genovés and during these trips, I tried practically to implement the theoretical principles from the dog course. I liked Puskas but had no real feel for how I should motivate and discipline him. This affected me mentally and I was occasionally confused and had hallucinations and / petit malls, which were triggered by the feeling of being wrong and incompetent, and I felt generally failed when I had mine, at first, unsuccessful fights with him. Since he is a great boxer and strong both from a physical and mental point of view, he liked to fight with me. Though he is a charmer around people he ignored totally my stubborn attempts to correct him. 

This lasted until I had a hallucinatory / epileptic emotional experience of the painful feeling of ineptitude which my father created by never positively communicate when I did the right thing and without giving me justified criticism and advice when I was doing wrong. A laissez-faire policy which left me without help to learn and understand what was right or wrong or good or bad. Suddenly, I realized or rather I felt I was entitled to punish and correct Puskas immediately (so that he could understand the connection) when he was wrong and, of course, exactly as important, to tell him (with words, patting or other rewards) when he was right. 

This straight communication at the right moment on important and critical elements in the behavior of Puskas changed the relationship between us almost at once. I got a new depth of understanding regarding the importance of proper communication. This, of course, I had read about countless times and knew the theoretical answers, but not until the insights from my feelings / hallucinations, when I knew my childhood lack of educational importance, I knew what behavioral training really meant. I had had to go through a full career without these insights even though I have arranged several training seminars on the theme ... 

Experience 2. 

I drove a car in Malmö City with my son, rather late one dark night 1996.  We rolled through the neighborhoods of The Old West, where I had worked at a very young age after having dropped out of high school and from where I had had exciting experiences. Probably, I could remember, and I expressed catchphrases like "The Lady Shame of the Shady Lane" because the environment in this now fashionable neighborhood those days was not fully housebroken. This district then was the whore quarters . We drove on a very narrow and one-way street. 

Suddenly, a car came towards us. "We are damn running the course in the wrong direction!" I screamed. The car in front of us was a police car! We were trapped, there was no way out! The alley bathed seconds afterward in blue police lights and two large and young police officers came up to the car, one on each side. I opened the window on my side, and the police bent down with a smile, which I need not describe. My next reaction was immediate and equally surprising for both the police on my side of the car, as it was for myself and my son. I began to shake and a heartbreaking sound of a baby’s crying came out of my throat. 

The young police on my side lost his head and yelled at me: 'Go to hell with you’! Then the police and his colleague, with quick steps went back to the police car, beating the blue lights, backed out of the alley (in the forbidden direction) and left the room for us. I can still feel the dual liberation of that birth primal. The therapy has really helped me from more than one viewpoint. This experience, however, will be difficult to repeat! 

Experience 3. 

It was about how my father had beaten and abused me 1950. He made it certainly more of a neurotic ambition, to set an example and uphold the disciplinary rules of the agricultural university of Alnarp. I do not think he did it out of hatred for his son. He did it after being contacted by a supervisor who had reported that I was cheeky and had run away from him after climbing a high fence. 

My father hit me like a lunatic for several minutes until the carpet beater broke, which is difficult even for a strong man as he was. During the merciless beatings so I screamed and begged for forgiveness, “sweet dad, forgive me” time and again. My memories of the violence are not the physical pain itself but the pain that I caused myself by asking for forgiveness. ‘Please, dad, forgive me’ caused the mental pain that exceeded the physical pain. (Anyway, in the brain pain = pain wherever is physical or mental.) I did not mean what I said but humiliated myself by saying these words. I can still feel the pain of the violation, and it happened 60 years ago... 

The physical pain I felt during my father's act of violence was very similar to the pain I feel when I feel the umbilical cord around the neck, stunned, terrorized and trapped stuck in the pelvis of my mother, which in turn is close to the feeling of a seizure. To make an allegory: My father banged me back to my traumatic fetal stage. My father carried the burden of his actions for 40 years until he, two months before his death, crying dared to ask me for forgiveness for what he did with me when I was 9 years old. I said that I no longer hated him. That was not true. Not then. It would take many years yet before the hatred was dissolved. 

“Corporal punishment is as humiliating for him who gives it as for him who receives it; it is ineffective besides. Neither shame nor physical pain has any other effect than a hardening one.” Ellen Key.