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Sunday, November 23, 2014. It has been a long time since an academic book has drawn my attention, and I am not sure if I have ever spent $100 on a title. But here goes!
Dr. Ross Buck breezed through today to leave a short comment about his new book’s publication on one of my blog pages where I referenced some of his other writing I read in 2007.
(NEUROLOGICAL BASES OF RECEIVING EMOTIONAL DISPLAYS , The Neuropsychology of Communication: Spontaneous and Symbolic Aspects,Journal of Pragmatics 22 (1994) 265-278) with my notes posted here: **Buck on Symbolic Communication and Emotions
My friend and I spent a bit of time online searching this new book today and I have decided to purchase a copy ASAP in spite of its $100 (or so) price tag –
Emotion: A Biosocial Synthesis (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction), Dr. Ross Buck – October 20, 2014 — Cambridge University Press
That’s a LOT of money in my poverty budget, but I believe this is an investment I won’t regret.
Why this leap?
In some ways I am buying the book for what I already know is NOT inside its covers. The big guns of ‘developmental neuroscience’ such as doctors Allan Schore, Daniel Siegel, Jon Allen, Martin Teicher, Stephen Porges , etc. are NOT listed in the bibliography.
But I trust that I have done my homework. I KNOW what these docs have to say. I can do some solo flying now because I know a lot about how early attachment interactional patterns build the right limbic social-emotional brain hemisphere – what goes wrong, what goes right….
My great scholar friend found one ‘disclaimer’ paragraph on around page 363 of Buck’s book and read it to me today, although when I later asked him to read it to me again no place online allow let him get back to that paragraph. The gist of it in regard to my chief areas of concern is that it contained – virtually, from my point of view – a clear statement that I can search the entire book to find anything like a description of what it is like to be a Trauma Altered Development person from severe infant and child abuse and I will NOT find any resonance to my kind (and others of this blog’s readers) situations within its pages.
So be it. I can live with that now. I honor the presence of the ‘disclaimer’. I will not search in vain. I know what’s missing.
However, ‘attachment’ and ‘shame’ are in the index, and importantly the work of Dr. Silva Tomkins is also mentioned. And then, of course, there’s an entire smorgasbord of thoughts and ideas in this book that will be entirely new to me. NEW is fine with me. Actually, it’s GREAT! Fantastic.
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I’ve mentioned here on the blog before that one of my daughters stunned me with one of her first questions soon after she acquired competence with language enough to ask it at around age 3: “Mommy, is my body the boss of my mind or is my mind the boss of my body?”
I was nearly 40 years younger then than I am now. I am not certain that I would answer my daughter’s question the same way now. Maybe I would? I don’t know. But what I told her that day was that she has a SOUL that is the boss of both her mind and her body.
Yet here I am now faced very powerfully with a similar question of my own. I am SICK of being run by my trauma-altered body! I intend to feed my MIND with information that will strengthen me enough to in some new way make a new kind of peace between the ME that is trying to live my earth-bound life with any kind of quality at all in a body that has evidently just about HAD it with having to ‘carry on’ in the condition is was forced to be built in through 18 years of severe abuse and neglect trauma from birth.
Somewhere in the middle between my sleeping troubles, very high anxiety, nasty depression, dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, and PTSD overload there is a ME in here who WANTS MY LIFE BACK!!
I could not be more serious. I have increasingly difficult problems being around people AT ALL! I know I not only missed out on nearly every kind of adequate developmental opportunity to learn to read social cues (this information was not built into my early-forming right brain hemisphere as it should have been) but also because of childhood years of extensive solitary confinement and extreme social isolation I cannot respond to and with emotions in “ordinary” ways, either.
I am so far down at the bottom of the heap when it comes to what abuse (truly psychotic abuse) can do to a person I literally have NO idea how I am still HERE. I really don’t.
But I AM HERE! And I deserve a better life than the one I have been forced to live as my ‘disabilities’ close in on me as if I am literally being buried alive by them.
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So when it comes down to ‘efficacy’ as I recently posted about it, I know darn well I can devour this academic book just fine, and I certainly intend to do so. I KNOW there are answers in those pages for what ails me right now and I intend to find them.
This Stop the Storm blog is a teensy weensy flit of a spec in the vast internet world, and yet Dr. Buck found that one post I entered here years ago. I don’t consider the appearance of an alert for his comment in my email box today to be a ‘mere coincidence’. No, not me. I believe it is an answer to my desperate prayer for healing that has brought me some light I need now in the form of this book.
We are not in this universe alone. I am a good person. This book even discusses THAT. Take a look at the Table of Contents. Look at the note this book ends on. I am game! And I am sure really, really sick of the level of suffering I have been living with. I deserve MORE! We all do.
So, I will literally keep you posted on this venture – adventure! I thank the author in advance for this opportunity his work has to teach me what I do not yet know. I will make very good use of what I learn. Of that I have no doubt!
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NOTE: Many early (and “late”) trauma survivors have difficulty with sleep and dreaming. I was glad to see this come across my “attention desk” today.
An interesting movie I plan to watch online tonight:
One More Reason to Get a Good Night’s Sleep
“The brain uses a quarter of the body’s entire energy supply, yet only accounts for about two percent of the body’s mass. So how does this unique organ receive and, perhaps more importantly, rid itself of vital nutrients? New research suggests it has to do with sleep.”
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While there is no money for me in my mention of this herbal-vitamin supplement here, I am taking it daily now and find it extremely helpful. That means a lot to me, so I thought perhaps other readers might wish to take a look:
Source Naturals Theanine Serene with Relora
- Contains the amino acids L-theanine, to support relaxing brain wave activity
- Contains taurine to ease tension, as well as the calming neurotransmitter GABA
- Features magnesium to support muscle and nerve relaxation
- Contains calming holy basil leaf extract and Relora®to gently soothe away the tension in your body
- 2 tablets daily, or as recommended by your health care professional
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Here is our first book out in ebook format. Click here to view or purchase –
Story Without Words: How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?
It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge. Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are welcome.
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Stop the Storm 