Bad Bedfellows – Stress and Poverty

Understanding Your vmPFC

Bad Bedfellows – Stress and Poverty

The vmPFC (Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex) controls and helps to reduce the impact of stressful situations. Stressors aren’t stressful in you think you can escape or solve them at will.

The brain has an entire system for turning off the stress systems known as the dorsal raphe nuclei. It’s located in the Prefrontal Cortex and when we think, then we have control over the stressful situation.

Control over a stressor activates the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). The vmPFC turns off the stress response and eliminates the effects of stress. After experiencing control, it extrapolates to other stressors. People with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), don’t activate this region under stress

Further explanation is provided as Philippe Matthews, the founder of the HOW Movement, interviews Psychologist, Dr. Brian King

Dr. Brian King:

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is that area of the brain, located in the part of our brain that we would consider our conscious mind, the part of our brain where all conscious activity occurs. When we feel in control, what we’re doing is we’re activating areas in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and that has a connection to other parts of the brain that control our stress response. Feeling in control turns off our stress response. Not feeling in control, of course, is where all the effects of stress come from. Control is really the element there.

In the issue, I guess, and the thing that faces a lot of impoverished children, a lot of people that grow up in these situations, is that they don’t feel that sense of control. Not only that, they first of all don’t have a lot of control. Again, when it comes to the nature of the way our system is set up, money really does, in a lot of ways, equal control. At the bare minimum, it equals an escape route. When things get too bad, you can leave them. Knowing that you have that escape route is, in a sense, an element of control. It’s the lack of financial stability that will then exacerbate other stressors in life by making them feel more stressful than it might actually be.

Then of course, we talk about all those other conditions that might occur in that environment, and yes, we’re really setting the stage for the expression of a lot of really destructive behaviors, and we do see that, of course. You see all those behaviors in impoverished populations.

Philippe:

One would also say that even domestic violence would be a contributing factor to stress and to learned helplessness as it relates to stress. Is that correct?

Dr. Brian King:

Absolutely, because when we don’t have control or when we don’t experience control and we are repeatedly exposed to stressors that are outside of what we perceive as control, that could lead to the condition of learned helplessness.

If someone is beating on us everyday, there is nothing we can do. We can’t leave them. We can’t move on. We can’t call the cops. We can’t pursue any further legal action. We’re not physical enough to be able to fight back. That’s going to ultimately all take away from that sense of control and develop a condition that we call learned helplessness, where we stop trying because we learn that no matter what we do, it doesn’t have an impact.

Philippe:

That is amazing and frightening at the same time.

Dr. Brian King:

It is. I would say that I tend to approach it a little bit less emotionally. I know it has a tremendous impact on what’s currently going on. I don’t think it’s anything necessarily to be frightened of, but I think it does have explanatory power because it definitely helps us to understand why certain types of behaviors perpetuate. Certain types of behaviors that are brought upon by impoverished conditions, they then, in turn, create an environment that’s going to promote those same behaviors.

Philippe:

That’s interesting that you bring that up. What you are saying, and help me out here, Doc, what you are saying is that continued exposure of a particular environment will create certain behaviors that will become habitual.

Dr. Brian King:

Exactly. Let’s just say, for example, that an individual is in a situation where they don’t feel very in control, let’s just say, and because you are concerned about impoverished children, let’s just say that they’re in a household where it’s poverty-stricken. Mom and Dad are fighting. They have to work a lot. The kids are neglected, et cetera. All of those elements, first of all, that contribute to that decreased sense of control, are going to amplify the experience of stressors in life.

Let’s suppose just hypothetically in that situation there is a significant trauma experienced. Let’s say we have Dad, just for a hypothetical, just say Dad has a drinking problem, comes home and beats the child on a fairly regular basis. Not only do we have a lack of control because of environmental factors, but now, we are suffering significant trauma.

As a developing brain, we can’t do anything about that situation, and we’re experiencing this trauma, it leads to really, I mean realistically, it leads to a shutdown of this particular pathway in the brain. Surviving that then, ultimately we’d grow up lacking the ability to regulate our stress response. When we encounter stressors in the future, we’re going to react with a very exaggerated reaction. The environment that we grow up in, say, an impoverished background, that environment we might grow up in is going to contribute to a lack of our abilities to handle stress as adults.

By lacking our ability to handle stress as adult, we are going to then engage in the same types of behaviors that inspired our background in the first place. We’re going to be more likely to drink, gamble, do drugs, get depressed. All of those types behaviors that contributed to the condition we were raised in are going to be expressed by us, and it does create this cycle that we’ve been observing for however many generations.

Stresses outside the home as further context for this discussion:

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS THAT CREATE STRESS AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE:

• 13 million kids will be bullied in the U.S. this year. 3 million students are absent each month because they feel unsafe at school
• Corrective measure sought in Self help programs”

WHY SELF HELP AND SELF ESTEEM PROGRAMS FAIL

• It depends on how the Self Help System (SHS) was first introduced to the brain
• If it was introduced incorrectly or processed incorrectly, the self help system will be stored and categorized as an entertaining, engaging event. It is not a building block of experience that should be repeated and change behaviour. The first is passive entertainment and feels good for a while. The second requires engagement so that individuals really accept change.