Month: April 2010

+THINKING MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

OK, there’s a cloud cover outside today (well, obviously OUTSIDE!), and it’s a perfect temperature for me to be out there making adobe blocks.  I set the 22 I made yesterday on their edges so they can continue to dry evenly.  But I am distracted from mud work because I am very busy still thinking about thinking.

The small section of Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle I read this morning led to another suggested pause, so I am being an obedient reader and now I’m processing what Tolle said while on vacation, or recess.  His suggestion is to try to get to a ‘place’ where we can watch our self that is doing all this THINKING.  I guess this watching self is one step closer to the FREE self who is the BIG self.  This BIG self (as I see it) is somehow itself closer to an ‘enlightened one’.

I’m game.  I’m usually game for learning something new, and something that might be helpful to increasing my internal state of well-being.  But all this thinking about thinking, and the ‘one’ that is doing the thinking and the ‘one’ that watches the ‘one’ doing all the thinking – well, believe it or not, it’s all rather confusing!

So, if I can’t yet pull up anchor on this thinking business, or yet cut the chain that ties me down to all this thinking, or cut the proverbial apron string to my own ‘mind’, or free the inner kite that might be a different sort of ME, I might as well write something.

Writing presents a different kind of thinking for me.  It always seems to be a bit more orderly process, putting all these single letters into words as they string themselves into nice left-brain sentences.  As I write I know that at least on some sort of level my left and my right brain are at the moment in cooperation with one another.

++++

I continue to tell myself repeatedly that I didn’t think during the first 18 years of my life about myself in any personal way – that I didn’t know I even WAS a self or HAD a self.  In a moment I will include here something from Dr. Daniel Siegel’s book, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2001), about ‘self’ (see link below).  But first I want to say something about memories of my thinking self.

I was given a very nice gold-colored very feminine watch by my grandmother on my 14th birthday.  I loved my grandmother.  I loved the watch.  I loved that she loved me enough to give me a watch.  I loved wearing the watch.  NOW I can say that I loved how wearing the watch made me feel about myself, only I didn’t know THEN that I had a self.  But as I think about thinking I think about this:

I walked to and from high school that winter of my 9th grade year.  The family (minus my father) spent the year in Tucson, an exotic place for a girl from Alaska.  I consciously made the effort every morning and every afternoon during my walk to switch all my school books I was carrying to holding them in my right arm so that I could swing my left arm with my watch on my wrist freely every time I came to a place I had to cross a street.

I remember my thinking:  “Everyone sitting there in their car waiting for me to cross this street notices my beautiful watch.  They will think, “Look at that beautiful watch.  What a special and wonderful girl that is to be wearing such a beautiful watch.””

Looking back I can see that the Theory of Mind I had about the world was – well, ridiculous for a girl of 14.  As a severely abused child, I had been given no experience in forming a Theory of Mind that would have allowed me to grow into a world with other people in it in such a way that I could conceive anything about how their minds worked.  Neither did I have a Theory of Mind that appropriately or adequately let me understand the workings of my own mind.

There is no possible way that even one single person of all those I walked in front of my 9th grade year ever noticed my watch, let alone THOUGHT what I THOUGHT they were THINKING.

++++

This leads me to thinking about something else I remember thinking this same year.  One morning I had scraped the skin off the entire length of my shin bone while I was hurriedly shaving my legs before school.  That afternoon as I was changing into my little blue (required) gym suit before class, a girl glanced at my leg and simply said, “I see you cut yourself shaving.”

No big deal, except that again I see how pitiful, even nonexistent my Theory of Mind was at 14.  I was stunned by her observation.  How could this girl POSSIBLY know that fact?  I had no concept of clairvoyancy, but that was my feeling.  This girl obviously possessed amazing magical abilities!  There was, to me, no other possible way that she could have known my secret, a secret that was veiled and shrouded in the privacy of my own bathroom at home.  I felt naked and exposed in front of this stranger, and I’ve never forgotten this moment, either.

Partly this is true because this wasn’t the only time in my life I had this exact same reaction to something someone observed about me as a truth.  When I was 29 and was going through my final session with my therapist before exiting my 7-week inpatient alcoholism treatment program, I was stunned in the same way when my therapist said to me, “I have called a local counseling center and made an appointment for you with a therapist there as a part of your aftercare program.  She is a specialist in treating child abuse survivors.”

Child abuse survivor?  ME?  That was the very first time anyone had ever signaled to me in any way that I had been abused in my childhood.  At that time, I wasn’t even remotely, consciously privy to the fact I had been abused.  Yet on another level OF COURSE I knew I had been abused.  I had just NEVER, EVER had any way to think about this fact.

Here was this woman, who even though I had spent hours with her in addiction-related therapy sessions over a 7-week period of time, still considered her a stranger.  I was just as stunned at her words as I was when the magical girl had known the secret of my leg scrape.  How could this woman possibly know I had been abused?  I certainly hadn’t told either one of these people my secrets!  This therapist was, obviously, a magical clairvoyant, too.

I had no place in my warped, distorted, tiny, unsubstantial and uniformed Theory of Mind to understand that other people can EASILY tell all kinds of things about other people.  Again, I felt exposed, vulnerable, and very confused.  Walking around in a world filled with other people, how was I supposed to ever know what they knew about me?

++++

It wasn’t until about six years ago when I began my own research in an effort to more fully understand what my mother’s 18 years of abuse of me had ACTUALLY done to me that I discovered the very real concept of Theory of Mind.  Even then, it took me another two years after I discovered this concept for me to realize how my trauma-influenced formation of my own (very limited) Theory of Mind meant that not only did I not understand how other people were able to know what they know about me and others, but in return I am equally limited in my understanding of other people’s minds.

Having an adequately formed Theory of Mind built through secure-enough early attachment experiences means that in most human-to-human interactions people do not have to stop and THINK about what is going on.  These patterns of interaction have their roots in the early-forming right, social, limbic, emotional brain.  When trauma and abuse changes the way this part of the brain develops, human interactions and the operation of Theory of Mind will never (in my opinion) be automatic and normal.

This all comes into my thinking about thinking today in regard to Tolle’s writing because I know that our Theory of Mind doesn’t only concern itself with other people.  It also informs all of our thinking about our relationship with the most important person we know:  our own SELF.  Tolle’s writing seems to be in part about discovering a different layer of our self, one that exists in a much bigger way than does our ‘thinking self’.

This is all fine and good, but our physiological construction, I believe, always guides everything in our life as long as we are alive in a body.  The Theory of Mind that we use in our THINKING is directly tied in all of its aspects to our body through our nervous system.  Our early-forming right brain is meant to be the foremost expert at being able to read all the extremely rapid-firing nerve-based expressions other people send about their inner states through the sound of their voice, the extremely rapid signals of their facial muscles, their body language – in essence, all the nonverbal information that is always included in our interactions with other people in real-place, real-time.

These most important nonverbal signals are received by our brain on its fundamental levels, and the regions of our brain that receive them are directly tied to our autonomic nervous system and vagus nerve responses.  In fact, our vagus nerve system and our facial signaling processes are connected in their earliest evolution to the nerve structures of primitive jawless fish and are connected to both our stress and our calm and connection response systems.

I don’t believe that we can disconnect, or dis-associate our THINKING that Tolle is suggesting we begin to watch from these very ancient and very real present-day physiological structures within our body.  Thinking that we can witness above the surface, or consciously pay attention to, is the tip of our physiological iceberg that happens BECAUSE we have some version of a Theory of Mind.

The ‘place’ where our Theory of Mind operates within us is, to me, like a Ground Zero for what we actually can know consciously both about our self and about others:  Our Theory of Mind in-forms our thinking.  While we are not perhaps used to thinking about our thinking this way, I believe that our entire being thinks.  We think with our body because we live within our body.

Certainly what we actually know is much larger that what reaches our conscious awareness at any given instant of time.  I suspect that our Theory of Mind acts like a two-way filtering system.  It not only influences and in-forms both our unconscious (implicit) and our conscious (explicit) reactions, it also determines which is which, and colors our self-reflective abilities and processes!

I believe that as long as we are alive we experience a changing Theory of Mind, and that we have the power to influence these changes.  This is what I THINK Tolle is talking about when he states:

“The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind.  This is the only true liberation.  You can take the first step right now.  Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can.  Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patters, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years.  This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying:  listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

“When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially.  That is to say, do not judge.  Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door.  You’ll soon realize:  there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it.  This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought.  It arises from beyond the mind.”  (pages 18-19)

Perhaps I simply have a differing definitions of ‘thought’, ‘mind’ and ‘self’ than Tolle might.  In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey author Jill Bolte Taylor describes a very similar pattern as Tolle does, one based on her stroke experience of ‘losing’ access to her left-brain hemisphere action, Taylor describes this ‘thoughtless state’ in terms of being able to access our right-brain hemisphere’s reality without words.

Our ‘thinking self’ is not the enemy.  Having the ability to think is a gift.  Having a mind is a gift to be thankful for (see word family-definitions below).  Having a flexible, adaptive, resilient, changeable Theory of Mind allows us to make the best use possible of both of these gifts – and more.  If I accept that Tolle is using his own thinking about thinking in his particular way, and that what he is trying to say is that he found a way to improve upon the experience of being a conscious non-word-based thinker, I am curious enough about his thoughts to read more about what he has to say.

Perhaps my own Theory of Mind will change in positive ways as a result of this process of learning.  I always appreciate learning how to bring new ways of being myself into the playing field of my Theory of Mind.  Meanwhile, now that this post is completed I will go outdoors before today’s big winds show up and ‘think with my body-mind’ as I play with the mud making more adobes!

++++

For some thought provoking information from Dr. Siegel’s writings about states of mind (and states of being) in regard to the organization of the SELF, follow this link (might be a little slow on the page loading!):

**Dr. Siegel on organization-reorganization of the SELF

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THINK

Inflected Form(s): thought \ˈthȯt\; think·ing

Etymology: Middle English thenken, from Old English thencan; akin to Old High German denken to think, Latin tongēre to know — more at thanks

Date: before 12th century

transitive verb 1 : to form or have in the mind
2 : to have as an intention <thought to return early>
3 a : to have as an opinion <think it’s so> b : to regard as : consider <think the rule unfair>
4 a : to reflect on : ponder <think the matter over> b : to determine by reflecting <think what to do next>
5 : to call to mind : remember <he never thinks to ask how we do>
6 : to devise by thinking —usually used with up <thought up a plan to escape>
7 : to have as an expectation : anticipate <we didn’t think we’d have any trouble>
8 a : to center one’s thoughts on <talks and thinks business> b : to form a mental picture of
9 : to subject to the processes of logical thought <think things out>intransitive verb 1 a : to exercise the powers of judgment, conception, or inference : reason b : to have in the mind or call to mind a thought
2 a : to have the mind engaged in reflection : meditate b : to consider the suitability <thought of her for president>
3 : to have a view or opinion <thinks of himself as a poet>
4 : to have concern —usually used with of <a man must think first of his family>
5 : to consider something likely : suspect <may happen sooner than you think>

— think·er noun

— think better of : to reconsider and make a wiser decision

— think much of : to view with satisfaction : approve —usually used in negative constructions <I didn’t think much of the new car>

synonyms think, conceive, imagine, fancy, realize, envisage, envision mean to form an idea of. think implies the entrance of an idea into one’s mind with or without deliberate consideration or reflection <I just thought of a good joke>. conceive suggests the forming and bringing forth and usually developing of an idea, plan, or design <conceived of a new marketing approach>. imagine stresses a visualization <imagine you’re at the beach>. fancy suggests an imagining often unrestrained by reality but spurred by desires <fancied himself a super athlete>. realize stresses a grasping of the significance of what is conceived or imagined <realized the enormity of the task ahead>. envisage and envision imply a conceiving or imagining that is especially clear or detailed <envisaged a totally computerized operation> <envisioned a cure for the disease>.

synonyms think, cogitate, reflect, reason, speculate, deliberate mean to use one’s powers of conception, judgment, or inference. think is general and may apply to any mental activity, but used alone often suggests attainment of clear ideas or conclusions <teaches students how to think>. cogitate implies deep or intent thinking <cogitated on the mysteries of nature>. reflect suggests unhurried consideration of something recalled to the mind <reflecting on fifty years of married life>. reason stresses consecutive logical thinking <able to reason brilliantly in debate>. speculate implies reasoning about things theoretical or problematic <speculated on the fate of the lost explorers>. deliberate suggests slow or careful reasoning before forming an opinion or reaching a conclusion or decision <the jury deliberated for five hours>.

++++++++++++++

THANKS

Etymology: plural of Middle English thank, from Old English thanc thought, gratitude; akin to Old High German dank gratitude, Latin tongēre to know

Date: before 12th century

1 : kindly or grateful thoughts : gratitude
2 : an expression of gratitude <return thanks before the meal> —often used in an utterance containing no verb and serving as a courteous and somewhat informal expression of gratitude <many thanks>

++++++++++++++

MIND

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gemynd; akin to Old High German gimunt memory, Latin ment-, mens mind, monēre to remind, warn, Greek menos spirit, mnasthai, mimnēskesthai to remember

Date: before 12th century

1 : recollection, memory <keep that in mind> <time out of mind>
2 a : the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons b : the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism c : the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism
3 : intention, desire <I changed my mind>
4 : the normal or healthy condition of the mental faculties
5 : opinion, view
6 : disposition, mood
7 a : a person or group embodying mental qualities <the public mind> b : intellectual ability
8 capitalized Christian Science : god 1b
9 : a conscious substratum or factor in the universe
10 : attention <pay him no mind>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+THINKING THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++

I thought a lot about thinking today while I mixed and formed my 22 adobe blocks.  The book my sister sent to me arrived yesterday, Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and I’ve started reading it.  Tolle writes ‘pauses’ into his text to give the reader an idea how far and how much to read before pausing to consider his words.  I’m not far into it, being a big believer in pauses, but I can tell already that Tolle is saying that we are not our thoughts.

In fact, I think what he’s going to be saying is that our BIG self has nothing to do with mind or thinking at all.  I think he’s going to say that NOT THINKING frees us to be our BIG person who is somehow closer to ‘enlightened’.  I think he’s saying that when we can find the part of ourselves that can watch the thinking part of us doing all its busy thinking, we will be a step closer to understanding whatever it is he is writing about.

I won’t give up, though.  I’ll keep reading and pausing and reading and pausing – and I guess sooner or later I’ll be able to read without thinking and pause without thinking.  In the meantime I remember very well 18 years of childhood spent not thinking.  I evidently wasn’t close to ‘enlightened’, though, because I didn’t know I had a self to be thinking with.  Tolle seems to suggest that once a person can find this non-thinking person self and then BY CHOICE  STOP THINKING – well, that must be something entirely different.

Today I didn’t get very far in my pausing in regard to not thinking, even though I enjoyed the pauses – kind of like recess!.  I just thought about thinking just as I did when I woke up this morning.  Part of what is contributing to this thinking on thinking has to do with why I seriously doubt that, for all the information on this blog, that I can manage to write a book without outside help.

I was thinking about how I thought when I first had to write papers in art therapy graduate school in 1989.  I couldn’t think about what I was writing about straight on.  I took my notes, wrote my words, and then after my 3-year-old was in bed for the night, I cut every single sentence apart from the next one, laid all the little slips of paper on my living room floor, and proceeded to think about my thoughts.

I could move all the slips around, group them one way and then another way.  Eventually I figured out what thought went with what, and taped them together.  I didn’t have a computer, so off to the typewriter I went and worked through the night until I had a finished paper to turn into the professor the next day.

I never received anything but an “A” on a paper I wrote, and most of them my professor suggested I submit to art therapy journals for publication.  I never did.

++++

Then came the second year of graduate school, and the thinking got harder.  Near the end of my coursework, I was given an assignment to write a 40-page synthesis paper about the ideas contained in this book:  The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism – Hardcover (Feb. 20, 1981) by James Engell.  Believe me, this was NOT an easy or a fun project!  Take a look HERE at the Table of Contents.

But, boy oh boy, had I made progress in my ability to think and to synthesize ideas.  I read the book through and wrote a 50-page paper about the idea of the creative imagination as presented by 40 of the philosophers whose thoughts were presented in this book.

I received an “A+” plus on the paper, which was written straight through from beginning to end without notes.  I added the introduction as my final movement.  Yet never after that moment could I again remember one single bit of information from that book, nor could I remember one single thing I had written about it.  I had memory of being the person who had pursued the process of MAKING the paper appear, but that was all I ever had – except for my grade.  The chair of the department requested I submit that paper for publication.  I never did.

So, I have no idea how I can ever write a book.  I don’t want to become that dissociated Linda that could process information and write like that.  Neither can I be the ‘invested’ Linda that has to think that intensely about every single sentence I write.  Blogging just seems to fit because it can be as circular as a buzz-saw blade.

My writing can go somewhere or nowhere at all.  Nobody pays to read it.  If someone doesn’t like how I write or what I write – well, the internet’s the limit!  Unless some magical day appears in the future where I can write a ‘once and for all’, blogging is exactly where I will stay.

I posted my first thoughts here on April 10, 2009.  What matters to me is that I do not give up writing just because I cannot contain my ideas, thoughts, expressions or feelings within two covers of a book, although if this ever happens it will delight me.

++++++++++++++++++

+NOT UP TO MUCH OF ANYTHING AT ALL

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I chose to just work myself tired today outside digging down my yard.  Literally.  I am very grateful I have as big a yard as I do, but I miss the 7 1/2 acres I managed to ‘buy’ for a few years when I first moved down here.  Eventually I had to let it go.  I could no longer afford a $1,200 monthly payment.  Fortunately, that ‘crash’ in my life happened 8 months after my youngest had left home for the Air Force.

So, I decided to change the slope of the property away from the house rather than toward it.  My big piles of dirt I shoveled today will end up in adobe blocks.  Meanwhile, it was overcast and threatening rain – a big “No! No!” for making mud bricks.  I just didn’t want to think or feel today, so shovel in hand I plowed through the earth like a big above ground mole.

Sometimes I DO wish I knew what the point is to all the writing I do over here.  But, I don’t.  I just do it.  I TRY to be constructive whether its writing or digging, but the truth is my life is pretty simple these days.  Mental-emotional ‘disabilities’ do that to a person sometimes.  If I think of something even a wee bit profound to say, I’ll be back here.  Meanwhile, I’m going back to watch some more of this ‘take-me-away-to-Australia’ ranch (station they call it) Netflix streamed TV series.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+A COLLECTION OF THIS BLOG’S LINKS ON DISSOCIATION AND DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED INSECURE ATTACHMENT

alchemynow5 Comments

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Today I am just moving some blog links to the front burner on self-organization, dissociation and disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment patterns.  I sure can’t claim that reading any of this information is fun, but it might be helpful in some way to add a few new ideas into the Think Pot!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

IN MEMORY OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER:

From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder
Scientists Explore Ways to Alter MemoriesI stumbled on this interesting article recently published in the Wall Stress Journal on scientists’ attempts to alter fear memories. Researchers are finding that memories that produce fear and anxiety… Read more
Physician on Trial for Allegedly Assisting a BPD SuicideLast week Newsweek ran this article on Dr. Lawrence Egbert, the head of the right-to-die group Final Exit Network (FEN). Dr. Egbert is currently facing charges in Georgia and Arizona… Read more
How Will Healthcare Reform Impact BPD Treatment?Readers in the United States woke up to the news that the House of Representatives has passed massive healthcare reform legislation. The road to this legislation has been contentious and… Read more
Understanding Borderline Personality DisorderLearn more about the symptoms and associated features of borderline personality disorder, including emotional and relationship instability, impulsivity, suicidality, self-harm, and more.

What is BPD? Symptoms of BPD Diagnosis of BPD Treatment of BPD
Living with BPD

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+’DIS-ASSOCIATION’ BETWEEN RIGHT-LEFT BRAIN HEMISPHERES AND DISMISSIVE-AVOIDANT INSECURE ATTACHMENT DISORDERS

alchemynowLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dr. Daniel Siegel, in his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2001), describes how “dis-associated hemispheric processing” between our left and right human brain regions each contribute to differently as he describes in what he calls a “laterality-attachment hypothesis.”  This hypothesis seems to be particularly related to what attachment experts refer to as ‘dismissive-avoidant’ insecure attachment disorders (one I suspect my father had and ‘got’ from his depressed mother).

In this post I am presenting some of Siegel’s creative and thought provoking ideas on the subject:

“Patterns of representations differ markedly between the left and right halves of the brain.  An important distinction, often underrecognized within the fields of clinical psychiatry and psychology, is the distinction between the modes of representation within the two hemispheres of the brain.  The left hemisphere has been described as having a logical “interpreter” function that uses syllogistic reasoning to deduce cause-effect relationships from the representational data it has available to it.  The right hemisphere specializes in the representation of context and of mentalizing capacities.  It is therefore uniquely capable of registering and expressing affective facial expressions, developing a “theory of mind,” registering and regulating the state of the body, and having autobiographical representations.

“How are these bilateral processes relevant to relationships?  Communication is crucial in establishing neural connections early in life and involves the sharing of energy and information.  Levels of arousal (energy) and mental representations (information) are very different on each side of the brain.  The sharing of arousal and representations from one brain to another — the essence of connecting minds — will thus differ between the hemispheres.  One can propose, in fact, that the right brain perceives the output of the right brain of another person, whereas the left brain perceives the left brain’s output.

“In intimate, emotional relationships, such as friendship, romance, parent-child pairs, psychotherapy, and teacher-student dyads, what does this look like?  The left brain sends out language-based, logical, sequential interpreting statements that attempt to make sense of things [in a particular way].  The left brain receives these messages, decodes the linguistic representations, and tries to make sense out of these newly arrived digital symbols.  At the same time, the right brain is sending nonverbal messages via facial expressions, gestures, prosody [the music of speech], and tone of voice, which are perceived by the other’s [sic] right brain.  OK.  So what?

“The “what” of it is that the right brain takes this information and uses its social perceptions of nonverbal communication to engage directly in a few very important processes.

— It creates an image of the other’s [sic] mind (“mindsight”).

— It regulates bodily response while at the same time registering the somatic [body-based] markers of shifts in bodily state.

— It creates autobiographical representations within memory.

— It appraises the meaning of these events and directly affects the degree of arousal, thus creating primary emotional responses.  Intense and primary emotional states are therefore likely to be mediated via the right hemisphere.”

“When we examine these findings alongside the independent set of data from attachment research, certain patterns are suggested.  The early affect attunement and alignment of mental states can be seen as a mutually regulated hemisphere-to-hemisphere coordination between child and parent.  In this view, we can propose that avoidant attachment involves a serious lack of this form of communication between the right hemispheres of child and parent.  The extension of this finding to laterality research raises the possibility that the left hemisphere serves as the dominant mediator of communication between an avoidant child and a dismissing parent.

“In support of this perspective, it turns out that in 1989, [attachment experts] Main and Hesse examined exactly this hypothesis in two large-scale samples of Berkeley undergraduates, each of whom were asked about their degree of right (or left) handedness, as a rough approximation of brain dominance….  At the same time, Main and Hesse had devised a set of self-report items that they considered indicative of a “dismissing” state of mind.  Although this type of scale was not ultimately able to predict AAI [Adult Attachment Interview] classifications [of attachment styles] statistically, and therefore these findings were never published, in keeping with the hypothesis both studies found that the degree of right handedness was significantly correlated with elevated scores of the scale for “dismissing” state of mind.

“Further extensions of these ideas to relationships allow us to look more deeply into why certain couples may be “unable to communicate” with any emotional satisfaction.  When we know about the different languages of the right and left hemispheres, it is possible to make hypotheses  about why interactions may be frustrating:  Individuals may not know how to understand the particular language being expressed by their significant others.  If we then integrate past attachment history in understanding the pattern of these difficulties, it is possible to create a framework of understanding that can help the partners in such relationships escape their well-worn ruts.   [My note:  I would think parents, as well, would benefit so that the intergenerational transmission of dismissive-avoidant insecure attachment patterns could be eliminated.]

“If this laterality-attachment hypothesis is correct, then a logical implication would be that any experiences that help to develop the processing abilities of each hemisphere and/or the integrated activities of the two hemispheres may improve certain individuals’ internal and interpersonal lives.  Such movement toward more coordinated interhemispheric functioning would be quite welcomed by many people (especially the lonely and frustrated spouses [and I would say infant-children0 of dismissing individuals).

“The developmental and experiential histories that have led to a lack of integration of the functioning of the two hemispheres may leave individuals vulnerable to emotional and social problems.  Unresolved trauma and grief, histories of emotional neglect, and restrictive adaptations may each represent some form of constriction in the flow of information processing between the hemispheres.  This proposal of the central role of the dis-associated hemispheric processing in emotional disturbances is supported by the finding that insecure attachments in childhood may establish a vulnerability to psychological dysfunction.

“Emotional relationships that enhance the development of each hemisphere and its unrestricted integration with the activity of the other can thus be proposed to be likely to foster the development of psychological well-being.  In this way, a secure attachment can be seen as a developmental relationship that provides for an integration of functioning of the two hemispheres, both between child and caregiver and within the child’s own brain.

“At the most basic level, right-hemisphere-to-right-hemisphere communication can be seen within the affectively attuned communications that allow for primary emotional states to be shared via nonverbal signals. Left-hemisphere-to-left-hemisphere alignment can be seen in shared attention to objects in the world.  Reflective dialogues, in which language is used to focus attention on the mental states of others (including the two members of the dyad), may foster bilateral integration between the two hemispheres of both child and parent.  The resilience of secure attachments can thus be proposed as founded in part in the bilateral integration that these relationships foster.”  (pages 205-207 – all bold type is mine)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ANTI-DISSOCIATION: REMEMBERING THE FEELING OF FEELING ONE’S SELF IN ONE’S LIFE

alchemynow2 Comments

++++++++++++++++++++

While a mouse like the one I just described in my previous post is under attack and threat of attack, there is nothing else in its life that matters except for its own self-preservation.  Such a mouse will not be finding a mate, or likely return to take care of a nest of its young.  It will not be looking for food or eating.  It will not be playing or exploring its environment.  All its usual safety- and security-based activities will be suspended.

From the point of view of a 18 year survivor of my mother’s insane and persistent abuse of me from birth, I know that nearly every opportunity that could have been and should have been mine to simply BE an infant, toddler, child and teenager was sabotaged or stolen from me by my mother.  I was left in a perpetual state of trauma at the same time that my life was passing by.  In my condition of emergency and near emergency I was not able to form a story of myself in my own life, and could do very little of what a child is naturally supposed to be doing.

Autobiographical memory preserves the ongoing story of a person having a felt experience of their own self in and moving through their own life.  Because there wasn’t enough time (or times) where I was allowed to simply BE safely and securely in my own life as an infant-child, my ability to form, exercise, consolidate and use autobiographical memory circuitry and networks in my body-brain was nearly completely eliminated.

Imagining the ongoing life experience of a little mouse being preyed upon by a cat, and knowing that the mouse’s ongoing ordinary life has been interrupted, interfered with and eliminated, reminds me that not being able to make sense of my early life or to influence what happened to me contributed to the ongoing sensation of being ‘unreal’ and depersonalized in my life today.

When developmental neuroscientists like Dr. Daniel J. Siegel write about the effects and consequences of early attachment-caregiver related trauma and abuse, they are describing what is known about memory and dissociation from the outside.  Those of us who are survivors of severe early ongoing trauma and abuse live with the consequences as they have built our body-brain differently from normal.

As we take Siegel’s following words, found in his book, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2001), and let this information resonate with and connect to what we survivors experience from the inside, we can begin to understand how profoundly different we were formed because we were forced to live through trauma in our early life.  Trauma all but filled all the time and space of our infancy-childhood, leaving us very little time and space of our own to associate our experiences together with who we were and who we were becoming.

Of course we ‘dissociated’ ourselves from our experiences of trauma.  They were too big, too awful, too overwhelming to incorporate into any ongoing story of our life or to be included in our ongoing memory.  Dissociation is like a detour taken by the self safely and securely around an accident scene.

Although the abuse and trauma my mother perpetrated on me affected me, influenced the way my body-brain developed, encircled me, endangered me, hurt me, terrified me – it WAS NOT ME.  The me that was supposed to be connecting to the world and finding associations stayed in hiding.  All the trauma continued on with me at its center, BUT IT WAS NOT ME.  ME is something ELSE completely, and it is that ME that matters now.  It is that ME that I want to connect to and forge associations with now.

Inbuilt physiological, neurological patterns of dissociation interfere with this process of experiencing ME now in my own life, and prevent me from remembering myself in my ongoing autobiographical FELT experience of myself in my life.  These patterns have always influenced how I experience my self in time and space.  Unlike Siegel, I know on the inside of me what living life with these patterns built within me FEELS like.  It is by adding my own awareness of this fact to the following words he gives us in his book that helps me understand the reality of his words.

++++++++++++++++++++

From The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are by Daniel J. Siegel (2001)

STRESS, TRAUMA, AND MEMORY

“Stressful experiences may take the form of highly emotional events or, when overwhelming, overtly traumatizing experiences.  The degree of stress will have a direct effect on memory:  Small amounts have a neutral effect on memory; moderate amounts facilitate memory, and large amounts impair memory…..  Recent studies suggest that the HPA axis involves the release of stress hormones that directly affect the hippocampus, a region with the highest density of receptors for these blood-borne agents.  Chronic stress may produce elevated baseline levels of stress hormones and abnormal daily rhythms of hormone release.

“The effects of high levels of stress hormones on the hippocampus may initially be reversible and involve the inhibition of neuronal growth and the atrophy of cellular receptive components called dendrites….  High levels of stress not only transiently block hippocampal functioning, but excessive and chronic exposure to stress hormones may lead to neuronal death in the region, possibly producing decreased hippocampal volume, as found in patients with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder….

“Activation of the autonomic nervous system [our STOP and GO stress response and calm, connection response system] leads to the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine (known as the catecholamines), which are thought to affect the amygdala directly.  The amygdala…plays an important role in establishing the value of an experience and integrating elements of encoding with the hippocampal processing of the event.  Excessive stress hormone or catecholamine release appears respectively, to impair the hippocampal and amygdala contributions to memory processing….

“Under some conditions, explicit memory [conscious] may be blocked from encoding at the actual time of an experience.  Trauma may be proposed to be such a situation.  Various factors may contribute to the inhibition of hippocampal functioning needed for explicit memory at the time of a severe trauma…. During a trauma….the release of large amounts of stress hormones and the excessive discharge of amygdala activity in response to threat may impair hippocampal functioning.

“The outcome for a victim who dissociates explicit [conscious] from implicit [unconscious] processing is an impairment in autobiographical memory for at least certain aspects of the trauma….  Implicit memory of the event is intact and includes intrusive elements such as behavioral impulses to flee [hide/freeze, fight, etc.] emotional reactions, bodily sensations, and intrusive images related to the trauma….

“As we’ve discussed, chronic stress may actually damage the hippocampus itself, as suggested by the finding of decreased hippocampal volume in patients suffering from chronic posttraumatic stress disorder….  Under such conditions, future explicit processing and learning may be chronically impaired.  Furthermore, in addition to damaging the hippocampus, early child maltreatment may directly affect circuits that link bodily response to brain function:  the autonomic nervous system, the HPA axis, and the neuroimmune process….

“These ingrained ways in which adverse child experiences are “remembered,” and directly affect the development of regulatory brain structures that govern basic brain-body processes, may explain the markedly increased risk for medical illness in adults with histories of childhood abuse and dysfunctional home environments….

“On the basis of this information, one can propose that psychological trauma involving the blockage of explicit processing also impairs the victim’s ability to cortically consolidate the experience….  With dissociation or the prohibition of discussing with others what was experienced, as is so often the case in familial child abuse, there may be a profound blockage to the pathway toward consolidating memory.  Unresolved traumatic experiences from this perspective may involve an impairment in the cortical consolidation process, which leaves the memories of these events out of permanent [conscious] memory….

(pages 50-52)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I believe that this is what I experienced as a child, what was ‘built into me’, represents the way my body-brain grew and developed, and is now a permanent condition and not a ‘may be’:

“chronic stress may actually damage the hippocampus itself….  Under such conditions, future explicit processing and learning may be chronically impaired.”

The way I remember EVERYTHING about myself in my life has been affected because the severe trauma happened while my remembering capacities were being physiologically created.  It isn’t just “ingrained ways in which adverse child experiences are “remembered”” that I suffer from.  These so-called “ingrained ways” are actually the physiological circuits and pathways built into my body-brain that form my ‘remembering’ abilities.

Because of the extensive and very severe abuse I endured, I take Siegel’s term INGRAINED absolutely literally.  Patterns of dissociation, derealization and depersonalization formed themselves – ingrained themselves – physiologically into my body-brain.  I could say the same thing Jessica does in the wonderful movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit:  “… I’m just drawn that way,”

++++

The only way I know of to try to combat the ingrained dissociation built into my remembering brain is to try to make implicit explicit.  Those readers who were built with a dissociational body-brain will know from the inside what this feels like:  Every evening as I stand holding my hose with a stream of water flowing onto my lovely flower beds, I ‘remember’ and recognize ‘the Linda how stands and waters.’

I am every evening in the SAME time and space of the watering Linda, so I FEEL her.  I recognize her.

While I have a shovel in my hand and am bent over stirring water into my bucket of adobe mud, involved in that process, I am in the time and space of ‘the adobe-making Linda’.  I remember and recognize her.

Today I am giving my muscles a rest.  I sit outside and look at the adobe blocks as they soak up the heat of the sun and turn a lighter shade of brown – and become lighter weight in the process.  I can explicitly and consciously force myself to remember that ‘the Linda sitting in the chair in the yard watching the adobes dry’ is the same person who made them.  She is the same person who waters the flowers, who planted them, who enjoys them.

‘The Linda sitting at the computer typing’ is – I intellectually understand – the same Linda who has done and might do in the future all kinds of things.  But all the different Linda’s that I am do not FEEL connected, nor can they always remember things that have happened at all.

As I wrote in a reply today to a blog comment, it’s not just that I struggle with a detached, remote, dissociated sense of ‘things have always been this way’.  (The Linda aware of watering flowers has ALWAYS been watering flowers because that’s what she does.)

Going all the way back to the patterns that began at my birth and continued to form me for the following 18 years, one incident of terror, pain, trauma and abuse – while it was happening – found me in a state of ‘it’s always been this way’.  Then, when there was a pause in the abuse, and often when I was isolated in a corner or in bed, that was another ‘it’s always been this way’ experience.

When one of the dissociated experiences happened (and happens) it is its own reality and the person autobiographically remembering the ‘in the moment’ experience is not connected at that moment to any other time in space.  When something is ‘always happening’ it precludes anything else from ‘ever happening’.

In this strange dissociated web of events, experiences are both ‘always happening’ and ‘never happened’ at the same time.  The only ‘thing’ that links our life experiences to us, and to one another, is HOW we remember them – both while they are happening and after they have happened.  (This sense of ‘it never happened’ is about time, space and how events are remembered.  It is NOT the same as denial in any usual sense of the concept, although the end results can be nearly the same in regard to ‘dealing with’ traumas that of course DID actually happen.)

Because the physiological stress chemical reactions have changed the way our body-brain processes information, those of us who were formed while our self was in hiding do not link ourselves in the events of our lives in ordinary ways.  I am fortunate that nothing inside of me ever put together complete constellations of ‘personalities’ that might hold together collections of memories.

The fragmentation of my ongoing experience was nearly complete.  I can ‘cortically process’ information intellectually that always allows at least some ability to place ‘a Linda’, and ‘only a Linda’ as being somewhere in the vicinity of the one doing the autobiographical remembering.  But it doesn’t take much turning up the heat of stress or anxiety to instigate disorganization and disorientation of my entire experience-processing and remembering system.  But that’s the subject of future posts.

Right now I will just say that if I were the mouse I watched today being captured and hauled around and dropped arbitrarily into ‘hiding places’, there would be a ‘different mouse’ for each stage of the ‘hauling’ and for each one of those locations I just posted the pictures of.  There would be ‘a mouse in the clover’ and ‘a mouse in the pansies’ and ‘a mouse in the poppies’.  Each of these different and separate entities had a different and separate experience in time and space.

As a child, for the entire first 18 years of my life, I had no more of an ability to THINK about these different time and space Linda’s than a mouse would.  Each experience, and the self who had them, were dissociated from one another so completely that Linda didn’t exist as a separate (remembering) self at all.  Any associating I might now do to bring together the autobiographical experience of my life, because I was formed as an ‘ingrained-dissociator, requires application of conscious effort.  But not even this effort can give me the feeling of feeling FELT as a complete being having the experiences of and within my own life.

So if anyone who did not build a body-brain from the start of their life within a severely abuse-trauma environment (without reprieve) wants to talk about ‘dissociation’ OR ‘being in the now’, I simply know that they will NEVER know what they are talking about.  Those people’s ‘ingrained’ physiological patterning doesn’t work that way and never really will.  Lucky them!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+DISSOCIATION: MEMORY OF ONGOING EXPERIENCE FROM THE PREY’S POINT OF VIEW

alchemynow2 Comments

++++++++++++++++++++

I intended today to write a post about dissociation when I went outside to sit with my morning cup of coffee.  What greeted me there was a trauma-drama in full play, and not a pleasant one for me to watch.  Yet I know that life, and nature itself shows us things that often allow our right brain to watch visually as drama and image at the same time our left brain is offered information to THINK about.

I am going to separate my two ‘streams of information’ this morning.  This post is about how a severely abused and traumatized infant-toddler’s body-brain is forced to absorb information about the world, and about itself in the world in relation to its early attachment caregivers.  The information I am going to present in my NEXT post will be the scientific, rational, logical and far more abstract information.  We NEED this more technical information, but as survivors we will not be able to really understand it or make good practical use of the dry information that developmental neuroscientists provide for us if we cannot ASSOCIATE this information with our own ongoing experience.

People often use this term in the English language, “a game of cat and mouse.”  What I watched this morning as one of my cats toyed with a furry little mouse could have looked like a game from her point of view.  But what was this experience like for the little, tiny mouse?  Its life was at stake, and there was anything BUT a game going on from its point of view.

Those of us who were raised especially by extremely hate-filled abusive and traumatizing mothers from the time of our birth were like this little mouse.  Yet we were even more helpless against our giant predator.  At least this mouse was fully developed and could use all its possible defense abilities – not that they would in the end be effective at allowing it to escape and go on living.

I knew how this ongoing drama would end.  Yes, my cat WAS playing with her prey.  She was fully focused and concentrated on her ‘game’.  The mouse was fully focused on trying to avoid being killed.  And there I was, the bystander at the same time I was the only hope that little mouse had for staying alive.

++++

The mouse was quick, but the cat was quicker.  Every time I tried to sidetrack the cat she out maneuvered me, grabbed her little ‘toy’ and ran off to continue her ‘hunt’ somewhere else.  How could I help to give the mouse a chance to escape – to where?  There’s nowhere in my yard that mouse would be safe and secure.  There was no way I could catch the mouse and move it somewhere out of danger’s way, either.

There are a lot of mice here.  Part of the reason why, I know, is because my east neighbor whose property I just fenced off from my yard visually, continues to heap all his garbage for a family of seven against that fence, thus encouraging rodents to multiply.  Where there are rodents, there are rattlesnakes to eat them in this country.  Elimination of mice is normally a good thing.  I just didn’t want to WATCH the elimination happen.  Not today.  Not as I prepared to write a victimized-survivor post about dissociation!

But what I thought about as I continued to try to dissuade my cat from continuing her mission was how that little mouse, in the midst of the insecurity and lack of safety involved with its ongoing trauma, would NEVER do anything else but focus on its own survival.

These thoughts became entangled and intertwined with the technical information I was thinking about for my post on dissociation.  Because my mother was a predator, and because I was just as much her ongoing prey as this mouse was to my cat, there was NEVER a time in my infant-toddler-childhood that I was assured of enough safety and security to do ANYTHING ELSE other than survive.

At the same time I was more powerless and helpless than a mouse is under the attack of a cat, my brain, my nervous system, my immune system, my entire being was growing and developing in interaction with the experiences I was having in my early environment.  Nothing else but surviving the trauma of my mother’s attacks against me mattered.  Never was there a TIME when trauma wasn’t immediately threatening and impending, happening in the present moment, or just having finished happening – so that it could happen again.

My childhood was spent in a state of heightened trauma alertness from the beginning of my life.  As I watched my cat, she periodically caught the mouse in her mouth and carried him to another ‘play ground’ where she then let it go long enough that it could run a short distance and do what a little mouse will do:  Hide itself in an area that it thinks MIGHT best conceal it.

Of course the cat knew exactly where the mouse went, and right where it was.  She poked her paws into the spaces in the hiding places, batted the little creature, pushed and prodded it, and when it didn’t come out at a full run, she’s simply stick her head in, grab the mouse again, and move it on to another (to her) intriguing hiding playground.  Of course the most obvious places for this game to go on were in amongst my flower beds, a process which of course would have eventually led not only to the death of the mouse but to the destruction of my much-loved plants!

++++

Yes, watching my cat’s play-filled species determined extermination of this mouse was a trauma trigger for me.  I could not help but try to intervene on behalf of the little one who was going to lose its life if I didn’t.  I couldn’t catch my cat, so I sat out there for a long time chasing her away from the vicinity of the hidden prey.  I opened the back door thinking she would eventually get bored with out-waiting me and venture into the house.  Nope, that didn’t happen.

Instead, two of my other cats wandered out of the house.  They could tell immediately that Goldilocks was after prey, and all I could think of was, “Oh great!  There’s no way out of this.  I’ll take some pictures and then exit the playground so I don’t have to watch what I know is unavoidably going to happen.”

++++

So here are some pictures.  It’s been about an hour since I stopped watching the trauma-drama outside my door.  I just went outside again to see another one of my cats sitting under the Oleander bush satisfyingly smacking its lips and cleaning its jaw daintily with its paw.  “Mouse gone.  Game over.”

So, now in thinking about dissociation as the experts like to write about it, I have to say that nobody, absolutely nobody actually knows what dissociation is, what it does, what it feels like, how it operates, or where it came from like survivors do – particularly and especially those of us who endured and survived repeated, ongoing predatory attacks in our very early life of infancy and toddlerhood by our mothers.

If we then continued to endure trauma, abuse and attacks into and throughout our childhood, there is (in my thinking) no possible way that so-called dissociation did not build itself into our growing and developing body-brain.

I will never believe that dissociation is a so-called ‘defense mechanism’ for such survivors.  Our dissociation is simply HOW our brain regions, circuitry and networks were forced to grow and develop.

The mouse I watched today was in an ongoing peritraumatic state which was broken up A LITTLE TINY BIT by the moments the cat allowed it to nestle within its hiding places.  But these periodic reprieves from direct terror and assault were not enough to ever allow this mouse to go on about its life in anything like an ordinary (safe and secure) way.

Everything that mouse experienced both during direct assaults upon its life and during its reprieves, demanded that trauma-based body-brain operations continue to happen.  Those experiences are completely different in the midst of trauma and its trauma-based allowances of semi-reprieve than are ongoing experiences where trauma is not present or immediately threatened.  When any creature is forced to adapt to trauma environments during critical growth and developmental stages, both the experiences of trauma and reactions to it build themselves in.  The trauma in effect ‘moves in to stay’.

What this means to an early abused and traumatized human is that the emerging self goes into and remains in hiding as surely as this mouse did.  I don’t believe our parental-predators could ever reach our hidden self.  Yes, they could reach our little bodies with the attack of their words and blows, but our inner own self remained protected simply because of the nature of being human.

Every single person is a separate, individual entity that can only be accessed from the inside.  Even though everything that happens to us from the OUTSIDE profoundly affected our development, and could and did change the way our body that our self lives in, our self – its own self – remains ours and ours only.

The problem became one of us not being able to experience our self in our own life.  Experts refer to alterations in memory capacities (which is what the next post is about).  Dissociation means that we do not remember ourselves as being connected to our own ongoing experience in ordinary ways because our capacity to REMEMBER was affected PHYSIOLOGICALLY during our earliest development.

Enough said at the moment.  As you look at the following pictures think of each one as representing an environmental context for ongoing moments of my cat’s life – but from the point of view of the mouse.  No way was it important for the mouse (forget the cat here) to remember itself in one of these ‘pictures’ in any particular order.  All the mouse could do was attempt to stay alive.  The only way it could do that would be if it could find a safe enough place to hide and remain hidden.

Safe enough.  That is what every living creature needs so it can continue to remain alive.  But growing and developing a human body-brain as time moves on and the trauma continues means that the inner experience of being in the midst of trauma never leaves us.  Trauma is not only what happened to us, but became how we grew a body-brain to remember ourselves with.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

It's only a GAME of hide-and-seek if we play it with equal peers. It's only a GAME of cat-and-mouse if you are the predator.
Where could a victimized-prey hide to escape? Under the blue flax and sage bush?
Is there a tiny little self tucked into hiding within the clover?
Under the poppies among the petunias? Is this a safe place to hide for survival?
Where is it safe for an abused and traumatized mouse -- or infant-child -- to hide?
Is it safe enough to stay alive under the newly blooming rose bush?
When I finally turned away from the trauma drama, the little mouse had hidden itself here among the tiny pansies.
The mouse was hiding in here last I saw of it. Each of these hiding places can be thought of as a momentary segment of the mouse's endangered life -- like victimized tiny children forming their abilities to remember their self in their life -- the separate events are just that -- dissociated experiences linked together only by one thing: Ongoing experiences of individual events of enduring and surviving trauma. Meanwhile, the SELF remains hidden unless we can contact and connect with 'self' within its own world

+++++++++++++++++++++++

+LOVING THE POSSIBILITIES – OUTDOORS WITH THE MUD

alchemynow7 Comments

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Light cloud cover screened the intensity of the sun today, creating a temperature veil that made it a most perfect day to work outside.  I was out there for hours, digging and hauling dirt, sifting for gravel that’s getting moved to the front of the house’s walkway.  I made 15 grand adobe blocks today and have dirt ready for tomorrow if the temperature stays cooler.  (More ‘modern’ people would be able to ‘make hay’ with a power cement mixer — it is WORK mixing in the 10% cement evenly and the WATER!)

My vision of the back yard is taking form.  I want to tear down what’s left of that old, raggedy shed.  I’ll save the wood, clear the cement pad, and build a little adobe chapel!  There might not be another chapel so close to the Mexican-American border line anywhere in America!  How sweet that will be!

I will dedicate the little place as a prayer chapel for peace and tranquility.  Somehow I will include within it a very simple plaque with my most favorite words in the whole world on it (in English and in Spanish):

“Never sadden anyone, no matter whom, for no matter what.”

by The Bab

(This was on page 31 of the edition – not sure of the year – I found this in when I wrote it into my prayer book nearly 40 years ago – in Release the Sun: An Early History of the Baha’i Faith by William Sears)

I am beginning to see more clearly what isn’t here yet.   Let the fair winds continue to blow, I’ve got work to do!  Give this woman a shovel, a pair of gloves, a plastic bucket — some dirt and water — and WATCH OUT!  There is nothing better for my healing and well-being I could be doing right now – absolutely nothing.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

These only bloom in the spring
The first of many-yet-to-be gravel and adobe mines!
15 today
Lovin' it
Accumulating - continuing to dry and cure
So, this shed's gotta go. This is where all the rusty corrugated steel came from, blew off in 4 separate high winds last winter, Mexico-American border wall behind it - and - a Mesquite tree I believe I can trim and beautify (Can't see it, it's behind the shed)
For many years 'illegals' stayed in this shed, even since I've lived here until the 2nd wall-fence was put up that they can no longer cross behind my yard
Wait 'til you see what's gonna take its place! I can SEE it!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+TRAUMA AND DISAPPOINTMENT – POINTING TO OUR TRAUMA WOUNDS

alchemynowLeave a comment

++++++++++++++++++

All trauma is upsetting.  That’s what trauma does.  It upsets the status quo.  That’s what trauma is.  It’s an upset.  By its very nature, trauma involves disappointment.

The more an organism is prepared with resources to ‘cope’ with trauma the better off they are because this means they can ‘get over’ the trauma and get back to a state of status quo faster.  Without enough of the right kind of resources, the slower a return to the state of status quo becomes.  Or, without enough of the right kind of resources, a return to a state of status quo is impossible.

Available resources are directly tied to a very real state of safety and security in the world.  Having enough of the right resources means that we can achieve a return to the desired state of safety and security relatively quickly and easily.

Survivors of severe early infant-childhood abuse trauma had things happen to them in their lives way before they had the inner or outer resources to effect a return to a state of safety and security – because if they’d had an environment filled with the plenty of safety and security in the first place the traumas of abuse would not have happened to them in the first place.

That’s what an insecure attachment ‘disorder’ actually is.  The state not only of trauma but of scarcity and depletion of inner and outer resources, which creates unsafe and insecure status in and to the world, built itself right into the growing body-brain-mind-self from the start.

This means that the necessary status quo state of safety, security and calm connection is missing.  The normal physiological state for early abuse trauma survivors never was a status quo state of well-being.  Because this calm, safe, secure state is missing in our very body itself, survivors of early abuse trauma can struggle the rest of their lives just trying to figure out what this GOOD status quo state even feels like.

From there we have to figure out how to GET THERE from HERE – HERE being our trauma-built state of inner disequilibrium.

++++

Dr. Diana Fosha is one of the most hopeful and positive experts within the field of trauma, attachment and healing that I have encountered.  Here’s a link to one of her 2002 articles that I highly recommend, written primarily for professionals working with traumatized clients.  Because so few of us have access to any therapy at all, let alone to effective therapy with truly competent trauma experts, what Fosha says in this article is important for we survivors to know on our own:

TRAUMA REVEALS THE ROOTS OF RESILIENCE

++++

Here is the link to her book:  The Transforming Power of Affect : A Model for Accelerated Change by Diana Fosha (Hardcover – May 5, 2000)

I haven’t had the opportunity to read it myself, but I include it here because it is the feelings related to trauma that tend to trap me in some other place than a calm center of connected well-being.

Sometimes it seems as though all the powerful abuse trauma-related emotions that were going on within my body from the time I was born, that were not identified, recognized, differentiated, named or understood, just sat there within the cells of my body waiting.  Well, not only did they wait for a time they could make their presence known, they expanded and multiplied astronomically until they broke through the numbness and the blankness of all of my dissociation to become the ‘animals’, the rampaging beasts they often seem to me to be within me today because I did not grow up with a body-brain-mind-self that was able to recognize them as friends and allies.

Rather my reactions to life, with all the trauma triggers that are built into me, often disrupt my ongoing equilibrium – what little of it I can manage to find for myself.  My reactions to trauma triggers stimulate emotions that are not integrated together in a modulated, right-limbic-social-emotional brain built with stability, safety and security within it.  This region of my brain along with the rest of my brain and all the nervous system components that it is connected to, was not built with ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ regulatory abilities within it.

Where my experiences within my environment should have been able to hook themselves together in ongoing ASSOCIATED patterns of being, they were instead created in DISSOCIATIONAL patterns that are often profoundly disorganizing and disorienting to me today.  Often the best I can do is try to identify these patterns so that I can find the ‘willy-nilly’ way things were connected together inside of me and try to piece them together differently in more orderly, organized and oriented ways.

++++

Here is another book, again one I haven’t yet read but that looks vitally promising:

Sweet Sorrow: Love, Loss and Attachment In Human Life – Paperback (June 2009) by Alan B. Eppel

“In this volume the author proposes that it is the interplay of love and loss that lies at the epicentre of the human story. Support for this proposal is taken from neuroscience, art and psychoanalysis. It will also introduce the reader to important ideas and findings from Attachment Theory. An exploration of the relationship between love and loss can lead us to some understanding of the meaning of our lives. It shows how love and loss are inextricably bound at the centre of human experience, and form the essential dynamic of the human struggle.”

“Alan B. Eppel has been a practicing psychiatrist over the past thirty years and currently is director of Community Psychiatric Services at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Hamilton, Ontario, and an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.”

++++

I mention this book in connection with the topic of my last post, +MY FOGGY POST ABOUT DISAPPOINTMENT AS A TRAUMA TRIGGER, because the state of feeling disappointed is for me a very real experience of being in a state of disorganization and disorientation in my body in the world.

Expectations are a required ‘food’ for our brain as it works to combine information we have about our self in the world in an integrated way.  Our body-brain-mind-self processes life through ongoing feedforward and feedbackward information loops that take into account everything we know about our self in the world – IN TIME.

I complained in my last post about the invisibility of the root word origins for the word ‘disappointment’ in our English language.  Thinking about it more clearly today, I realize that just as individual people begin very early in their lives (hopefully) to recognize, identify, discriminate between, name and manage all the different emotional experiences we are capable of, so must the words that name these emotional states of being also go through some kind of growth process themselves.

‘Disappoint’ is a word related both to ‘appoint’ and to ‘point’.  Our right brain is our imaginal link to experience and contains within it a veritable ocean of potential meaning.  As we use words the two hemispheres of our brain pass information back and forth between them – sort of like pouring water from one glass to another until a level of balanced equality exists between the two containers – as we seek to gain understanding about our own self in our experience of our life.

I believe that ‘disappointment’ is intimately connected with overwhelming heartbreak.  As our brain-being tries to get along in life, we orient and organize our self IN TIME by using information as reference POINTS.  In fact, without reference points, we cannot orient and organize ourselves at all.

These reference POINTS IN TIME exist in us where associations have been successfully and satisfactorily made.  Those of us whose body-brains were formed within abusive traumatic early environments suffered far more dissociations in our experiences than we did associations, and are therefore suffering from a scarcity of these required reference points in time.

What could our inner self compass possibly find as reference points in a world of madness, abuse and trauma?  How could we establish our self with any stability in a dangerous world of chaos?  What could I point to as a KNOWN, as a dependable GIVEN in the world as I grew up?

I knew really only one thing as a given and one thing only:  I was terribly BAD and not only deserved everything that my mother did to me, not only earned everything she did to me, but I evidently liked and wanted her to do what she did to me because I CHOSE TO REMAIN BAD.  According to my mother, she magnanimously offered to me every possible (saint-given) opportunity to change my ways, and I never made the right choice.  I chose to defy her efforts with every breath I took.

How could I possibly use any information I got from that environment to find a stable inner or outer POINT of reference in the world?  What was the POINT in my even trying, though I DID try as hard as I possibly could to BE GOOD, not knowing I was absolutely and fundamentally and permanently being set up to fail?  After all, according to my mother, being born ‘the devil’s child’ did not even get me started off in life at the starting point of even being a human being in the first place.

Did I ever reach the POINT as a child of not trying?  No.  Did I ever surrender or give up?  No.  I didn’t see that I ever had a choice.  I just formed my entire being around the information I was given and kept on going.

++++

It is not a stretch of reality to consider ‘disappointment’ within the context of its right-brain meanings.  It involves every aspect of ‘point’ we can think of with our left brain.  We really come into this world as a single one-dimensional POINT in time and space.  From there we are supposed to be able to grow and blossom and bear fruit in our lifetime.  Some of us are born to parents who seem completely intent on stomping the life out of that little tiny point that is us from the moment we are born.  What we do, then, is survive IN SPITE of our parents.

That is the primary POINT of life – to stay alive in it.

When we experience our emotions and reactions in the present, the POINT of origin of our emotions lies in our body as it was formed way back there.  A pinhole-sized point of light continues to expand over distance and time.  The older we get, the more complex life becomes, the wider becomes the range of influence that our emotions can have in our life.

When severe trauma of abuse forms a person, the expanding rays of light from the early origin point of emotions suffers from distortion.  We then live with those distortions unless and until we can bring healing to all the wounded places within us – a job of a lifetime.

++++

Looking at Webster’s:

POINT

Date 13th century

Etymology: Middle English, partly from Anglo-French, prick, dot, moment, from Latin punctum, from neuter of punctus, past participle of pungere to prick; partly from Anglo-French pointe sharp end, from Vulgar Latin *puncta, from Latin, feminine of punctus, past participle — more at pungent

And tracing connections back through

PUNGENT

Etymology: Latin pungent-, pungens, present participle of pungere to prick, sting; akin to Latin pugnus fist, pugnare to fight, Greek pygmē fist

Date: 1597

1 : sharply painful…..

and through the synonyms to ‘pungent’ to

PUNGENT implies a sharp, stinging, or biting quality especially of odors <a cheese with a pungent odor> POIGNANT suggests something is sharply or piercingly effective in stirring one’s emotions <felt a poignant sense of loss — applies to what keenly or sharply affects one’s sensitivities <a poignant documentary on the homeless>

POIGNANT

Etymology: Middle English poynaunt, from Anglo-French poinant, poignant, present participle of poindre to prick, sting, from Latin pungere — more at pungent

Date: 14th century

1 : pungently pervasive <a poignant perfume>
2 a (1) : painfully affecting the feelings : piercing (2) : deeply affecting : touching b : designed to make an impression : cutting <poignant satire>
3 a : pleasurably stimulating b : being to the point : apt

synonyms see pungent, moving

STING

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English stingan; akin to Old Norse stinga to sting and probably to Greek stachys spike of grain, stochos target, aim

Date: before 12th century

Here I begin to see and feel the ‘image in the word’ as it relates to the origins of disappoint – sticking one’s self with a dry, sharp spike of rustling, life sustaining grain

PRICK

Etymology: Middle English prikke, from Old English prica; akin to Middle Dutch pric prick

Date: before 12th century

1 : a mark or shallow hole made by a pointed instrument
2 a : a pointed instrument or weapon b : a sharp projecting organ or part
3 : an instance of pricking or the sensation of being pricked: as a : a nagging or sharp feeling of remorse, regret, or sorrow

++

And of course, looking from the angle of Latin pungere – related to the origins of ‘poignant’ I see this connection:

PUNCTURE

Etymology: Middle English, from Latin punctura, from punctus, past participle of pungere

Date: 14th century

1 : an act of puncturing
2 : a hole, wound, or perforation made by puncturing
3 : a minute depression

+++++++++++++++++++

Our abusers punctured us full of holes.  Full of wounds, we continued onward.  Every time we were physically, emotionally, mentally hurt, our chance for building an ongoing safe and secure, organized, oriented attachment with our self in the world was ruptured and not repaired.  Every time we were hurt in any way, deprived, terrorized, terrified, we suffered from a disappointment based on how things are MEANT to be in the world for little ones who are completely dependent on their early caregivers.

How possible would it be to empty the ocean with a sieve?

First we were ‘poked full of holes’, wounded nearly beyond belief by the same people who were supposed to love us, cherish us, protect us, provide for us, defend us, and help us become integrated ‘associated’ people.  Then we are supposed to take our punctured selves out into the world and NOT be disappointed?

Maybe every single time I recognize the state of disappointment in myself I can learn to identify how that disappointment POINTS to my wounds.  From there, maybe I can begin to find ways to exercise my resilience to repair them.

++++++++++++++++++

+MY FOGGY POST ABOUT DISAPPOINTMENT AS A TRAUMA TRIGGER

alchemynow2 Comments

++++++++++++++++

I’ve been doing pretty good these past few days.  I think I got spoiled.  Today was a crasher.  My word for my mood, or state of emotional being is FUNK.  I’m trying to sort out how I got here today thinking that maybe it will help me get out of this dark grey-blue-black mood, or feeling state.

So far, I can think of at least ten things that happened today that I reacted to with disappointment.  That’s one sure thing I know about myself:  I do not handle disappointment very well at all.  I also know that disappointment IS a feeling I felt as an abused child – often.  My mother was an expert at setting me up and then knocking me down.  She took sadistic pleasure in my innocent hope knowing she could shatter it in a heartbeat – which she always did.

Because I WAS a child, I could not out-guess her.  I walked blindly into her traps over and over and over again.  I was unsuspecting.  Part of how all this operated, I know, was because of the dissociated states I slipped into between all the violent attacks, that state where time always seemed suspended as if it didn’t exist at all.  My mother’s forced isolation did this to me, also.  Nothing made sense.  I could predict nothing, anticipate nothing.  But, unfortunately for me I still believed my mother when she said something good was going to happen, even though every time she took it away.  (see **FAMILY TIME – by Brother (1965) for my baby brother’s experience with my mother about this.)

++++

Main Entry: dis·ap·point·ment

Date: 1604

1 : the act or an instance of disappointing : the state or emotion of being disappointed
2 : one that disappoints <he’s a disappointment to his parents>

++++

Why in 1604 did this word suddenly appear in the English language?  Why does Webster’s not include any reference to this word’s roots?  Elsewhere I found a reference that the root is in ‘appoint’.  Somewhere else I read online it’s in ‘point’.  It all seems very confusing to me.

I think when I experience disappointment in my life it ALWAYS acts as a trauma trigger for me.  ALWAYS.

That means when something disappointments me NOW in my life, all the ick attached to disappointment in my 18 year abusive childhood comes plowing right on through and catches up with me every single time.

I don’t know how to NOT let this happen.

I didn’t catch the warning signs this morning when I encountered my first disappointment.  Looking back, I see that my disappointment was connected FIRST to a feeling of being surprised.  I had hoped to buy 3 (cheap) climbing roses bushes today at our local Alco store.  I looked at my bank balance online.  It was far lower than I had expected, and it ruled out flowers along with just about anything else until the 3rd of next month when my next disability check shows up in the account.

So, I EXPECTED the balance to be higher.  I was SURPRISED when it wasn’t.  Then I was disappointed not only that I’m about broke (again), but also that there will be no roses or anything else.  Then I was disappointed because I couldn’t have lunch today as I usually do with my woman friend.  I NEED that social contact.

I was swept up in the twisting snake of down-the-emotional-drain and didn’t catch it – in time.  On the day went.  No major disaster, just a series of expectations, hopes, surprises, and disappointments.

They pile up, and then knock me down.  Flat.

Now, how exactly do I pick myself up again?

Is there some way I can avoid this crash in the future?

How can I expand my “Window of Tolerance” for disappointment?

++++

One big disappointment of my life right now is that I’ve been working on this blog for a year now, and I am not one single word closer to being able to put together and publish a book than I was before I started writing here.  I see publishing a worthwhile and SELLING book as my ONLY hope out of my poverty.  It’s a big disappointment.

If I tell myself that it doesn’t matter if there’s ever a book, that it only matters if I can write something that might make sense to someone – and there’s nothing wrong with FREE info – then I’m better, but that has to be processed for me on some kind of ‘spiritual’ level having to do with my ‘purpose in life’ and ‘my mission’ in being alive.  I have no idea, most of the time.  I just TRY…..

++++

It was too hot today to work outside on my adobe-making project.  That was disappointing.  All-in-all, my disappointment ALWAYS cycles around to my difficulty in not being angry at my self.  GEE, I sure don’t have to wonder how that pattern came to be!  Every single time my mother punished me with intentional disappointment, I was blamed for it.  It was ALWAYS my fault because I was bad, because I wanted to be bad, because I wanted to ruin my mother’s life.

I am going to quit writing – enough said.  I imagine there are plenty of readers who know exactly what I am TRYING to say.  I am going to watch my NetFlix streaming Australian TV series, “McLeod’s Daughters,” which I am enjoying.  I could see myself living that life.  I would have loved it.

Or, as that other great movie puts it”  “Never give up!  Never surrender!”

++++++++++++++++