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I have frequently said on this blog that I don’t believe the actual specifics of our infant-child abuse and trauma experiences matter in the bigger picture as we work to heal ourselves as adults.  All survivors have a history or a herstory that CAN contain the specifics we might remember.  I don’t encourage people to ‘go back’ to look for the specifics of abuse experiences, either.  In the end I believe that what matters MOST to all survivors is how the early infant-child trauma and abuse we suffered, most often coupled with and a result of inadequate caregiving that deprived us of the safe and secure attachment we so naturally and desperately needed, changed the course of our physiological development in our body-brain.

THOSE changes are what we need to discover and begin to describe to our self and to others.  Those changes that our Trauma Altered Development caused in our body determine what kind of a life experience we have.  Those changes are ALWAYS related to our having had an overtaxed stress response system at the same time we had an underdeveloped or undeveloped safe and secure attachment system built into us.

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By means of illustration I will present here a very taxing and stressful experience that I have been involved with for the past three months that finally today reached completion.  There is a federal fuel assistance program administered by each state – on the county level through Community Action Programs.  The rules change at the same time they make NO common sense.  I will not go into the details here, but being poor and having to rely on the ‘system’ is ALWAYS stressful.

With my extreme anxiety problems, including my social anxiety and my inability to utilize spoken language when under duress are direct consequences of the severe abuse I suffered PARTICULARLY before the age of one.

Every single nasty, horrible, terrifying, abusive and traumatic experience I endured with my mother for the 18 years of my infant-childhood of course contributed to the mess my nervous system and brain are in today.  At the same time, as I repeat, it isn’t that on this or that particular day my mother hit me with a belt versus a wooden coat hangar versus a flapjack turner.  It doesn’t matter specifically that on this or that day she forced me to eat a bar of Dove hand soap versus swallow heaping tablespoons of black pepper or spoonfuls of laundry soap.

What matters is that I experienced Trauma Altered Development as my body-brain developed as a consequence of the extreme stress-duress I was exposed to.

I suffered all the way through these past three months trying to jump through the right hoops at the right time in the right way to get the fuel assistance I needed.  What today’s’ final leg of the journey brought to mind is that the anxiety, fears, distress of this experience built itself over this time into a state for which I only had one word:  ANGUISH.

I recognized this state, this emotion in my body and realized how fundamentally familiar it is to me from the abuse experiences of my childhood.

Then I went to online Webster’s for the definition of ANGUISH and discovered that in its roots it is directly related to ANGER.

Anguish, to me, feels more related to sadness, so what is the anger connection?

This led me to reconsider my own ideas about the patterns of stress response to a challenge in the environment that leads first through

– anger:  trying to meet the challenge successfully using skills we have used in the past – if this works, we are supposed to move back to a center set point in our nervous system-body of peaceful calm.

– if anger doesn’t work, we move into the next spot on a stress response cycle – fear.  In this state we realize that what we have learned in the past is NOT going to solve the problem.  Quickly we utilize whatever we can figure out to move BACK into the anger state where energy is available to get us out of whatever mess we are in.  Sometimes simply freezing, running, etc. is all we have

– but if NOTHING we can find to do, nothing whatsoever works, then we move into sadness – which can turn into hopelessness and despair.  But in this spot on the cycle-wheel-circle we are MOST prepared to learn something entirely new – if we are open to this possibility and often just plain fortunate.

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So, as I considered the connection today between anguish and anger in our English language I began to wonder if this emotion is the connection point between sadness and anger if we DON’T get stuck in sadness but end up experiencing emotions far more powerful – and to me, far more disturbing.

Anguish happens when we are pushed to our limits and are forced to endure anyway.

As I remember the anguish of my childhood, as I think for example about my mother’s beatings that could go on and on and on and on in FULL force – that feeling without words of “I CAN BEAR NO MORE” – for me – is the place that anguish has past anything like ‘ordinary’ pain and sadness.

When we are in fact in true NEED of something and at the same time dependent upon especially ANOTHER PERSON to get our needs met, on our own we cannot escape the anguish state easily.

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I figured out for myself years ago that my anger is ALWAYS connected to a true injustice.  ALWAYS.

That I do not tend to recognize the anger doesn’t probably mean that it doesn’t exist.  I was NEVER angry at my mother – never – even today.

But, true, I AM angry at the idiocy of our government’s ineptitude when it comes to making programs for those in poverty accessible.  I could write a LOT about this point – and my heart breaks for those in much worse situations than mine – also a topic I could write a LOT about.

But to make this short, I will simply say that those of us who were severely abused as infant-children are the MOST likely to be the MOST poor and in the MOST need for help – specifically BECAUSE of the consequences of the abuse that altered our physiological development in all KINDS of ways that continue to make life difficult for us for our lifetime.

ANGUISH is very nearly an intolerable state – but I believe also that it is the state we survivors spent MOST of our developmental years in.  Anger – as I define it is the most active start point for our stress response system to enter when we are challenged by difficulties.  Our little body could NOT overcome the monsters that hurt us, and we were left to degenerate along the stress response cycle points without reprieve or resolution.  Our entire body-brain has paid a price for that – and in the end it is our experience of the emotional-physiological state of ANGUISH that most closely mirrors the state we spent our infant-childhoods within.

What followed today for me finally was a solution that means I will receive the fuel assistance funds I need.  This means I can experience RELIEF which soothes away the ANGUISH – at least for now and in connection with this situation.

How did RELIEF feel to me at the end of a long drawn out horrible beating when I was little?  Did I feel ‘good’ when the beating ceased?  Not possible.

These conditions built my body-brain at the same time they built themselves into it/me.  To have experiences as an adult that create parallel emotions within me is very difficult.  We don’t need someone to physically BEAT us to experience the same cycles within our body that we did when we were little and in the midst of trauma.

And that is a fact.

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