People learn social and emotional communication through facial expressions. Children exposed to "still faces", for three years during the pandemic have experienced high levels of stress and dissociation. Due to the intensity of our recent global environmental stressors, there are now a vast amount of youth in which their neural architecture has led them to have a blunted affect or subdued emotional expression, which is extremely dangerous because it makes it more difficult for people to understand their internal emotions and get them help, as it might not reflect on their face.

"Teachers, parents and mental health providers need to work harder to create safe spaces for children so that they can open up about their feelings, as they have been conditioned to mask themselves both physically and metaphorically," says Blickstein, "We need to begin a new era of 'opening up and exposing vulnerability' and children need our help to do this more than ever."

One place these issues stem from is the isolation and fear-mongering during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through her intensive interventions in working with families, Dr. Blickstein noticed that the pandemic as a whole resulted in vast amounts of child emotional and developmental regression. Through her clinical practices, Dr. Blickstein has found that suicidality, anxiety, and depression among children and adolescents has reached an all-time-high. She further observed that technology and device use has amplified these symptoms. Parents' increased usage of technology has created a divide and has impeded their capacity to bond with their kids on a deeper emotional level. This has further increased the feelings of isolation among children, damaging their mental and emotional landscapes.

Dr. Tronick's still face experiment proves this very point, that a lack of facial interaction can be damaging for young infants, even if only for a short period of time. In the psychological study, parents interacting with their infants would transition from interactive emotional expressions to a completely still and emotionless attitude. The babies would then begin to try and reignite the playful demeanor in the parent and when the parents didn't react, the babies would become stressed. "If this state is disturbing to young infants when experienced for only two minutes," explains Dr. Blickstein, "imagine the accumulated effects of the metaphorical still face over the course of years. There are babies born today that have not seen consistent facial expressions for the last three years. This has profound effects on brain development."

Blickstein emphasizes that full-facial caregiver exposure; eyes, nose, and mouth; enable a child to co-regulate with their caregiver and also promote social-emotional learning through modeling through their brain mirror-neurons. A caregiver or child should never have their face covered in a mask or any other covering, as it can lead to severe brain damage and social-emotional regression. Absent the ability to co-regulate through facial exposure, accumulated stress-induced neurotoxic chemicals can lead the child to become neurologically dysregulated and hyper-reactive to future stressors.

Dr. Blickstein has given lectures and presentations at the recent conference hosted by her company, Teal Dragon called the Cosmic Dragon Conference 2023 on this very subject. During her talk she discussed the micro brain traumas resulting from these breaches in emotional intimacy between parent and child. She also reports the negative and long-enduring effects of tech neck; the act of stressing muscles while using phones, tablets, and computers that results in neck and shoulder pain, as well as putting the user in a subservient state in terms of body language. If not remediated, this can cause long-term damage and lower life expectancy.

The overuse of technology further impedes intimacy within families. "We are living in a bonding pandemic," says Dr. Blickstein. "People have forgotten how to connect with one another because of cell phones and technology overuse. It's so easy to avoid connection when you have a cell phone so easily accessible. We are prioritizing textual relationships over family members that cohabitate." Many of the families she has worked with have complained that they have no real quality time anymore with their children because of technological distraction. This is why she teaches her 'Wean From The Screen' protocol which will be taught in The Love Lab program launching June 1st 2023.

"We can't pull screens away from kids or parents abruptly because it is an addiction that will lead to severe resistance. Families have to be led compassionately to establish a balanced and reasonable plan for appropriate technology use, that also allows space for quality family time with or without screens," Dr. Blickstein concludes.

Adena Blickstein
Adena Blickstein Adena Blickstein

Dr. Blickstein states that the road to connection starts with a child's parents. Through her own innovative approach, 'Family-Focused Healing' (FFH), Dr. Blickstein encourages parents to be mindful about their technology use as children often model their parents' behavior. Her company partners with holistic healers who are part of her Conscious Provider Network. The network consists of a community of providers ranging from allopaths to energy workers. Some examples of providers' specialties include: holistic nutrition, family constellations, CHEK practitioners, biogeometry, hypnotherapy, heart math, psychotherapy, psychiatric medication management, biofeedback and intimacy coaching, and many more.

Practitioners teach parents the tools to "hold space" for their child, which is to be in a state of open receptivity. This energetic shift from the parent creates a containership of safety, and enables the child to emote and be vulnerable without fear of parental judgment.

Creating a container in which family members can connect to each other through their heart center ultimately heals both the inner child of the parent who creates the container as well as the child who is on the receiving end of the container. "Participating in The Love Lab program is transformative for families," says Dr. Blickstein. "Parents and children can then take their love skills and extend them into the world and feel stronger and more intimate connections with themselves as well as other family members, friends or the workplace."

"The goal of The Love Lab is to ultimately eradicate transgenerational trauma globally and create new family units in which dysfunction is an anomaly instead of a norm." Dr. Blickstein encourages families to sign up and is offering a special discount for the first five New York-based families who register before May 15th 2023. "We all live on a spectrum between fear and love. FFH is designed to move individuals and families further toward the love end of the spectrum. Connection with fear as an ally and transmutation of that fear into love, can be our biggest fuel for guidance, navigation, and propulsion to our ultimate soul's purpose," says Blickstein.

Dr. Blickstein has an original way of reaching out to clients and educating people about intimacy and relationship issued. Therapyoke is a form of education delivered by Meshugenamama, a larger than life personality that brings color to deep psychological wants and needs. Her channel features songs, rap, and poetry as a means to connect people to their joy and passion, while still learning deep and important life lessons.

Signing up for the program will help families connect and resolve the problem of isolation and disconnect. Dr. Blickstein of Teal Dragon will only choose seven families to be part of the program and space is limited. Any families interested can apply for The Love Lab on the Teal Dragon website.

She also hosted a variety of presenters speaking about the negative effects that technology is having on society as a whole. She has noticed that families might be cohabiting but not attuning to one another at all. Attuning to each other comes with eye contact and full and complete presence, which she finds is very hard for parents to carve out. Technology also serves as a big distractor that impedes unadulterated emotional connection.

The basic principle of FFH (Family-Focused Healing) is the concept of seeing the family as a whole unit instead of individuals. In FFH, practitioners understand that everyone is interconnected and an issue among one family member affects everyone. The idea of interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of FFH and differs from other traditional modalities that target individuals. Having taught parents how to "hold space" for their child, the Love Lab ultimately aims to eradicate transgenerational trauma globally and create new family units in which dysfunction is an anomaly instead of a norm.