Parents have a profound influence on how their child will be able to handle emotions as adults. Most parents respond to baby's needs and help baby develop empathy along the way. The way an infant, toddler, and child is treated determines his happiness in life. It determines if he can think independently and tap into his rational brain or if he is caught up in his reptilian and mammalian brain, incapable of feeling another's emotions.
The Mammalian Brain or emotional brain is the lower brain, or the limbic system, which is very similar to other mammals. It triggers emotions that need to be dealt with in the rational brain. Parents can help children build a strong pathway from the mammalian brain to the rational brain by responding to their child's need immediately. If neglected to do so, the child is left to deal with their own feelings without the acquired skill to do so.
This Mammalian brain holds emotions such as rage, fear, social bonding, and separation distress.
The Reptilian Brain controls basic functions such as hunger, digestion, elimination, breathing, circulation, temperature, territorial instincts, and flight or fight impulse.
The Rational Brain is the one that keeps people grounded. The pathways to the rational brain are developed mainly in the first 5 years. It's functions include creativity and imagination, problem-solving, reasoning and reflection, self-awareness, kindness, empathy, and concern for others. Together with the mammalian brain and reptilian brain it makes a functioning human being who can deal with emotions.
In the first five years millions of brain connections or synapses are being formed, unformed, and then re-formed, directly due to the influence of your child's life experiences and in particular his emotional experiences with the parents.
If a parent responds in a kind loving way to baby's needs, the baby will build a secure bond and release opioids and oxytocin, feel good hormones. “When a child is not given enough help with his intense lower brain feelings and primitive impulses, the brain may not develop the pathways to enable him to manage stressful situations effectively. The legacy in later life is that he will not develop the higher human capacity for concern, or the ability to reflect on his feelings in a self-aware way.” (The Science of Parenting, 25)
“The developing brain in the crucial first years of life is also highly vulnerable to stress. It is so sensitive that the stress of many common parenting techniques can alter delicate “emotion chemical” balance and stress response system in the infant's brain and body, and sometimes causes actual cell death in the certain brain structures. This means that he may over-react to minor stressors, “sweat the small stuff,” and live a life of worrying, and/or be angry or short-tempered for much of the time.” (The Science of Parenting, 27)
Margot Sunderland found that people who don't handle stress well end up shrinking from the world or doing battle with it. She also found that children whose needs were not addressed in a kind and loving way developed an oversensitive stress response system that affected them throughout life. That means that his perception of the world is colored by a sense of threat and anxiety, even when everything is actually perfectly safe. Separating the child in a playpen or activity saucer, and all the other places parents conveniently park their children actually work against the development of a mature connection between the three different brains. The separating babies from the parents without a caregiver and letting them cry rises the stress chemicals in the brain to often dangerous levels. This can lead to the wiring of an overactive fear system that leads to phobias, obsessions, and fearful avoidance behavior. Repeatedly being rebuffed or criticized for his needs, to be a big boy, a child can move into avoidant attachment behavior with a fear of closeness in adult relationships. (The Science of Parenting, 50)
Sound familiar? An adult who gets enraged at something small and seemingly insignificant to those who have a well developed rational brain?
An adult who cannot get emotionally close to another adult? A man who gets scared when a woman moves closer and reacts by moving far away? Often by hurting the woman emotionally and even physically to keep a gap between them.
A man who has little social connections, only connections to mother and siblings. A man who reacts with rage when a woman suggests something isn't right.
A MEM's brain seems to be underdeveloped, which keeps him from understanding and assessing the dysfunctional dynamic in his family and keeps him from understanding how his behavior hurts those around him who love him and want to help. Those who see the dysfunction but can't get through to the MEM as to how dysfunctional it really is. A MEM often lashes out in anger when only the word mom or mommy is spoken, without engaging the rational brain at all. Immediately the emotional brain reacts because the pathway to the rational brain was not nurtured in early childhood. MEM's mother neglected her son when she felt like it but her son was never allowed to turn away from her. He was trained like a mammal with no rational brain, much the same way we train a dog, cat, or even goat. Blind obedience without ever questioning it, nor engaging the rational brain.
In order for a MEM to break free he needs years of counseling, years of working on engaging the rational brain. Years of help in engaging the rational brain. Years of understanding healthy dynamics and unhealthy dynamics and help in seeing where his family fits in. This is painful for any MEM. Most won't even go there. Very few do. Just looking around my neighborhood and circle of friends, most MEM deny anything is wrong, they blame it all on the wife or partner. I am guessing only 1-2% of MEM actually make the break from their dysfunctional family of origin. The other 98-99% are mother's pet until the day they die unhappy and miserable blaming everybody around them but never the source of their misery, their own enmeshed mothers.