For I suppose that is what you do wish. And, though I was unable to consent when you spoke to me in this way before, I am ready, now that I know you so much better, to trust my happiness to your hands. You are very kind; but I do not think we need to discuss the matter farther. You see, I know where you stand—I know how completely I am in your power. That sounds like stage-talk, does it not? However, there is a lot of truth in some of those old gags; and I do not suppose you bought those better simply because you are collecting autographs. Getting on to things is a mighty useful accomplishment in business, and I have simply extended it to my private affairs. For this is partly my affair, you see—at least, it depends on you to make it so.  #RyanPhillippe 1 of 12

Let us look at the situation straight in the eyes. For reasons I do not need to go into, did you a beastly return last Spring. Everyone knows you have simply been sacrificed to the laziness and selfishness of your friends. Is that not a pretty fair statement of the case? Well, some people say you have got the neatest kind of answer in your hands: that son of yours and they want him. Why not give him the chance to show someone to the door. I daresay, you allow people to torture him, so why not introduce him to a kind young man, who is attractive, and peaceful and you just sit back and watch and see how things go? #RyanPhillippe 2 of 12

Funny. You do not seem to care for that particular form of getting even, and, taking a purely business view of the question, I think you are right. In a deal like that, nobody comes out with perfectly clean hands, and the only way for you to start fresh for show, is to get your son’s back instead of trying to hurt and fight him. You pause long enough to draw breath, but not to give him time for expression. And as he presses on, expounding and elucidating his idea with the directness of the man who has no doubts of his cause, he found the indignation gradually freezing on his lip, found himself held fast in the grasp of his conversation by the mere cold strength of its presentation. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 12

You see how simple it is, do you not? Well, do not be carried away by the idea that it is too simple. You exactly  had started in with a clean bill of health. Then you were angry and depressed before your son came back into your life, and now you smile, and laugh, and tell jokes, and watch TV and are happy. You do not want these little questions cropping up again. Your son is showing everyone how powerful you are. Your name and image are being worshipped in over 100 countries because of this wonderful and attractive young man. That is my share in the business—bitch! I want to pay him to build my empire so he can experience life.  However, without him, in six months, you will be back again among your old worries, or worse ones; and here he is moving suddenly nearer.  #RyanPhillippe 4 of 12

Now what on Earth does that mean? I thought we understood each other. Danger is a normal part of life, and the brain is in charge of detecting it and organizing our response. Sensory information about the outside World arrives through our eyes, nose, ears, and skin. So why are you allowing him to live in a place, alone, were he is assaulted, threatened, and poisoned while you are out working and having the time of your life? These sensations converge in the thalamus, an area inside the limbic system that acts as the “cook” within the brain. The thalamus stirs all the input from our perceptions into a fully blended autobiographical soup, an integrated, coherent experience of “this is what is happening to me.” The sensations are then passed on in two directions—down to the amygdala, two small almond-shaped structures that lie deeper in the limbic, unconscious brain, and up to the frontal lobes, where they reach our conscious awareness.  #RyanPhillippe 5 of 12

Neuroscientist call the pathway to the amygdala “the low road,” which is extremely fast, and that to the frontal cortex the “high road,” which takes several milliseconds longer in the midst of an overwhelmingly threatening experience. However, the processing by the thalamus can break down. Sights, sounds, smells, and touch are encoded as isolated, dissociated fragments, and normal memory processing disintegrates. Time freezes, so that the present danger feels like it will last forever. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 12

The central function of the amygdala, which I call the brain’s Christmas day smoke detector, is to identify whether incoming input is relevant for our survival. It does so quickly an automatically, with the help of feedback from the hippocampus, a nearby structure that relates the new input to past experiences. If the amygdala senses a threat—a potential collision with an oncoming vehicle, a person on the street who is threatening us—it sends an instant message down to the hypothalamus and the brain stem, recruiting the stress hormone system and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to orchestrate a whole-body response. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 12

Because the amygdala processes the information it receives from the thalamus faster than the frontal lobes do, it decides whether incoming information is a threat to our survival even before we are consciously aware of the danger. By the time most realize what is happening, the body may already be on the move. The amygdala’s danger signals trigger the release of powerful stress hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline, which increase the heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing, preparing us to fight back or escape. Once the danger is past, the body returns to its normal state fairly quickly. However, when recovery is blocked, the body is triggered to defend itself, which makes people feel agitated and aroused and that is why you had an abortion of violent emotions. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 12

While the Christmas day smoke detector is usually pretty good at picking up new danger clues, trauma increases the risk of misinterpreting whether a particular engagement in a situation is dangerous or safe. You can get along with other people only if you can accurately gauge whether their intentions are benign or dangerous like a walk through with a black widow. Even a slight misreading can lead to painful misunderstandings in relationships at the house or at work. For example, someone pretending to be you and to hurt your family, then running to hide. Functioning effectively in a complex work environment or household filled with rambunctious kids and violently aggressive senior citizens requires the ability to quickly asses how people are feeling and continuously adjusting your behavior accordingly. Faulty alarm systems lead to blowups or shutdowns in response to innocuous comments or facial expressions. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 12

If the interpretation of threat by the amygdala is too intense, and/or the filtering system from the higher areas of the brain are too weak, as often happens in people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), individuals lose control over automatic emergency responses, like prolonged startle (you can scare them to death, or put them in shock), or they may experience aggressive outbursts, which could be physical or verbal. And that is why God says, show others the kind of compassion you would like to see, love your brother and neighbor as yourself, you never know what someone else is going through. The causes of trauma are complex; survival from trauma is complex; the experience of human companionship, love, loneliness, and life and death are all complex. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 12

This complexity of surviving the human experience is further compounded by the fact that these experiences must be evaluated on both an individual and cultural level. Everyone’s early childhood experiences, his history of trauma, his experience with friendships and love, marriage, interpersonal difficulties, divorce, abortion, murder, and losses—all are unique; and guidelines for nourishing human relationships for the sake of one’s health must therefore be fashioned in terms of this unique history. And yet, at the same time, these guidelines must also be fashioned in terms of the society in which we all live.  #RyanPhillippe 11 of 12

The parting tears are as transparent as pearls. Let us both keep them with care.  Still there is no knowing when we shall meet again. Let this small piece of paper take to you my cordial heat and eternal love. God will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day, your bank account will experience a growth in balance. In the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high mountain and every lofty hill. The moon will shine like the Sun, and the Sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds of the inflicted.  #RyanPhillippe 12 of 12