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I didn’t create the hell of my childhood. I didn’t create the changes that hell forced upon my growing and developing body-brain. I might like what happened to me. Others might not like to hear about it. But this IS my story – And I’m Sticking To It. (Play song from Lala.com)
Here is a link for the brave among you readers who have a vested interest in thinking about your own life in terms of the narrative life story you TELL and the one you COULD TELL. Because the inability to tell (narrate) a coherent life story is considered to be the NUMBER ONE symptom of an insecure attachment (which any of us with severe early abuse in our lives are EXTREMELY likely to have), thinking about the telling of our story has a critically important purpose:
Healing our self will heal the telling of our story (making it more coherent), and improving the coherency of the telling of our life story helps heal us! (Think infinity sign)
There are a LOT of words at the other end of this link! But what is telling a life story about if it’s not about WORDS?
The topic is personally important to me because I am stuck with a Catch-22 in that I want to make a book from my experience. A book is SUPPOSED to be coherent, yet my #1 symptom of having a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment pattern due to early and long term severe infant-childhood abuse took away my ability to tell a coherent life story in the first place! (That’s sort of a broken infinity sign situation!)
So, in working to put my book(s) together I am thinking about words related to this whole process. How it all got broken and how this might all be repaired is part of what I write about at this link. Feel free to scan rather than read it, but perhaps there is something in here that you might find of interest:
*THE MEANING OF MENDING OUR LIFE STORY
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Stop the Storm 
Can’t…read…anymore….vision….blurry……Sorry. Just kidding. The post “*THE MEANING OF MENDING OUR LIFE STORY” reminded me of a therapy exercise I like to do. It’s not fun, but it helps me understand me. It’s the one that starts with a word (usually an emotion) in the middle of the paper and then you draw lines to other words it makes you think of, etc., until you feel done. Is that how you chose those words?
When I went back into therapy one of my goals was to know my linear history, but now I’m wondering if that is such a good goal to have. After all of this work that you have done is your memory more linear now, or still fragmented?
I have also been thinking about our preoccupation with history, either our personal, family, or national history. What is more important – the history to this point in time, or the history we will create as a result of knowing and healing from our trauma?
What do I want to share? Who would I share it with? How will it matter? I believe it is important to somehow acknowledge the cause of our trauma, but should it be a very personal-only-I-can-see-it thing or something we share with therapists, family, friends, fellow bloggers, etc.? Maybe I’m just tired, too. It hasn’t been a very productive week for me and I feel small, insignificant, and beat up.
One more thing and I’ll leave you alone. As a fellow word origin enthusiast, I love how you dive into language to decipher the myriads of meaning words have.
Lisa (same Lisa, different username since I moved my blog)
Silly woman, you weren’t supposed to actually READ that thing! Kidding!
The choice of direction for all those words was found within the origins and meanings of each word itself – like signposts, the ‘hermes’ of the traveler across the country side – heaps of stones saying “I traveled here, and THIS is THAT way” – the comings and goings…. for the wanderer
I think the stories are circular – in the end a slice of LIFE itself, not that any one person actually owns any real estate there (in LIFE) – all passing through. The story of our species IS in our genetic memory
I’m thinking about +ATTACHMENT – HOW WE ARE WHO WE ARE
https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/attachment-how-we-are-who-we-are/
Descriptions of Grice’s Maxims as they are used to ‘analyze’ if not grade Adult Attachment Interviews
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Interesting that the other place I’ve encountered the Maxims is in Keltner’s work on teasing:
+A LONG, THOUGHTFUL LOOK AT VERBAL ABUSE AS MALIGNANT TEASING
at https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/a-long-thoughtful-look-at-verbal-abuse-as-malignant-teasing/
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I am practicing (again) moving when I feel stuck, helpless, hopeless (all of that STOP stuff) – is movement in my life FORWARD? Is that ‘linear’?
Having ORDER and ORGANIZATION seems like a good thing – and something dissociation tears apart like a kitten would shred a curtain tassel! (Tussling with the tassel)
I have to find the quote, I think it’s in Damasio’s work, but not sure – maybe Joseph LeDoux? Whichever neuroscientist who says that the more we learn about the brain the more we will understand that it’s mode of operation is poesis
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I think all stories are alive because they belong to living humanity – no matter how old the stories are, even if they are dormant, hidden in reserve within our DNA. If all humans were dead, the stories would die, also.
Because stories belong with the living, and are a part of life, the words in the stories, in language itself are alive also.
I think the left hemisphere doesn’t care about this, and is perfectly comfortable using words like object-tools. The right hemisphere, however, knows about the life in words because it (and they) are deeply connected in the ‘living waters’ and electrical pulses of the body itself. The two hemispheres working together can always be exercised for improvement – but for those of us with terrible childhoods from birth – the exercise is important for us because we not only HAVE a different brain but experience and use it differently.
While it is very easy to notice all the ways that I might be different from ‘ordinary’ nontrauma formed people, I hope to increasingly learn to delight in the way this kind of unusual brain actually works.
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It has been much too cool for my liking these past days – and today I did not go out and do battle with the mud – yet I miss it, and hope to return to it tomorrow. That work, using my BODY helps my equilibrium – it grounds me. But it does make me tired – at 58 my body seems to work differently than I am used to, and a day’s break actually makes me stronger the next day, where daily work out there wears me down and out.
I am glad to hear you also are a ‘word origin enthusiast’. It surprised me today to see those old-root words without grounded imagery behind them – a ‘furrow’ here, a ‘stick’ there – but lots of those words are about social values and human experience and originated so far back that their tracks into English come from words that meant the very same thing where they came from. Those words just mean what they mean! (As my art therapy professor used to say, “Look for the animal in the words.”)
I also wonder if a woman’s sense of her-story is different than a man’s version of his-story. It seems to me that it very likely may be so.
But if attachment experts use the narrating of a life story to assess, analyze and pigeonhole attachment related categories, then I feel my search to understand the MEANING of what they are saying must be important!
OK, on poesis and the brain – I didn’t get that quite right!
It’s Dr. John J. Ratey, in his book “A User’s Guide To the Brain: Perception, Attention and the Four Theaters of the Brain” (Vintage Books, 2001)
“”Although metaphor and analogy are unconventional in scientific circles, I am firmly convinced that a more nonlinear kind of thought will eventually supplant much of the logical reasoning we use today. Chris Langton, one of the primary researchers in the field of complexity theory, has speculated that in the future science will become more poetic. Our troubled world, too, is becoming too complex for logical argumentation, and may have to change its thinking: real trust, when emotions are running high, is based on analogy, not calculation.” (Page 5)
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And, I like this in his writing:
“The lesson here is that we have the power to change our brains. The human brain’s amazing plasticity enables it to continually rewire and learn, not just through academic study but through experience, thought, action, and emotion. As with our muscles, we can strengthen our neural pathways with exercise. Or we can let them wither. It is wise to remember once again one of the brain’s most basic principles: Use it or lose it.
“Every time we choose to solve a problem creatively, or think about something in a new way, we reshape the physical connections in our brains. The brain has to be challenged in order to stay fit, just as the muscles, heart, and lungs must be deliberately exercised to become more resilient.” (page 364)