++++

Sunday, December 14, 2014.  The weather is so drab, gray and damp, but fortunately much warmer than usual.  I had to set off 6 bed bug bombs in this small apartment yesterday and I sprayed again, as well.  Then I vacated and spent the night at my daughter’s.  I took care of my two young grandsons so my daughter and her hubby could go out on a date.  This morning I am back here again trying to make some kind of sense of the horrific tangled disarrangement this bug battle is causing in my life.

No, it’s not the end of the world to have these awful pests visiting me.  I am cleaning and cleaning, sorting and throwing, hoping in my frantic efforts SOMETHING I do helps these critters DIE.  Just DIE!  Nobody on earth needs this crazy bunch of bugs to show up anywhere else.

So….  That’s an ongoing misery-creating process.  But this is not what brought me to my computer to write this post.

++

Firstly I will include this link to a December 2009 post I wrote on a topic that I doubt I will ever write about again directly:

+CONSUMERS BEWARE OF TRAUMA TRIGGERS LURKING IN ‘HOLIDAY SEASON MAGIC’

++

Next I will say that I have no idea if my daughter and her husband’s very good friend’s 29-year-old brother’s suicide last week was in any way connected to the holidays.  This young man had attempted suicide two years ago, received “help” and everyone who knew him seemed to have believed that he was alright.

It is the ALRIGHT that I am thinking about here.

Who really knew?

Evidently nobody in his life from what my daughter is finding out in conversations with her friend and his family.

++

There does not seem to have been addiction, abuse or overt trauma in the family, my daughter says.  However, there IS depression among many family members.  Yes, many factors influence both depression and suicide.  But this is not even what I want to write about today.

++

I want to write about LISTENING to people — those we care about as well as strangers.  What is LISTENING?

LISTEN

transitive verb

1: to pay attention to someone or something in order to hear what is being said, sung, played, etc. —used to tell a person to listen to what you are saying

2:  to hear what someone has said and understand that it is serious, important, or true

intransitive verb

++

I cannot say that this young man wasn’t listened to or heard.  I just have a very strong sense that he was not able to speak his truth, not allowed to speak it, because nobody wanted to hear what he had to say.

Oh, this would be SUCH a tragedy if true!

I have mentioned in earlier posts that this North Dakota area is, to me, an extremely unhealthy and unnatural emotional landscape.  People insist on NEVER showing an emotion, talking about an emotion or even knowing that they or anyone else ever HAS an emotion.  I HATE this about this region, which feels “dead” to me or at least “non-living” in so many ways.  Yet I will never know if this emotional-void local culture affected this young man the way I imagine it may have.

His medication was being changed.  To me this is a very high-risk action for anyone to go through alone — and for the many who do need to be hospitalized.  If there were no direct warning signs that suicide was a choice made or about to be made, nobody could have done anything to prevent it.

My point simply is that we must LISTEN to people talk about feelings and states of mind that are less than “positive” if we want to hear the reality of that person.  If all anyone wants to hear is the up-beat “Gee things are going so great for me” kind of language a stage is set where nothing that NEEDS to be said WILL be said.

In other words, people can feel completely unsafe even with those who love them to show their more complicated self in any way.  I think people can make choices to listen in better ways.  Why is it so tempting to be so afraid of people’s descriptions about their less than “perfect” experiences in and with life?  Why do we shut one another off and shut one another up when something “unhappy” might appear in a conversation?

++

If interested, readers can do an online search for the terms “deep brain magnetic stimulation” which will bring up pages about a treatment for depression that can be highly effective.  I have a friend whose partner suffered for many years with severe medication-resistant depression who was treated with this method during its experimental stages and is FINE now!  A true miracle.

Another informative online search term combination is this one:  “link between genes depression suicide.”

++

I am especially encouraging people to open their minds, hearts and EARS during this holiday season to allow for people who ARE struggling at this time of year (at ANY time of year!) can feel encouraged to speak the truth about how they are feeling.  Listening, truly LISTENING to one another is one of the greatest gifts humans have been given to use to share our experiences of life.  This is not one HALF of a gift so that we choose to listen only to “the positive” and shun and shame people for speaking about anything other than what we might judge as negative.

Give me a break!  Give one another a break!  I completely understand why people who NEED to speak do NOT speak.  We have an instinctive ability to know when it is safe or not safe to expose our inner “vulnerabilities” with other people.  We know in our gut, in our body — when speaking our truth will be negatively received in such a way that we then become PREY to someone else who — quite frankly — is acting like they are somehow better than we are.

I am NOT judging this family my daughter knows.  I don’t even know them!  I am writing from an inward place of resonance with deep and seemingly unbounded despair.  I told my daughter bluntly last evening that if I did not have children I do not believe I would still be on this planet.

I don’t know that, of course.  I have been a mother all of my adult life.  I also recognize that BEING a mother is a great gift to me because it HAS enabled me to — stay here — especially at times when I hurt so much I did not believe I could take another breath or survive another second.

This is not a chipper kind of post!!  It is a testament to exactly what I am trying to convey.  There are UPS in life and there are DOWNS — because life is an ongoing, creative, organic process we FEEL our way through, whether or not we have words for our feelings or not.  Whether or not anyone will truly listen to us when we most need to be heard.

Don’t give up!  Yes, if at all possible do not give up!  But also do not wait too long until it is too late to encourage EVERYONE in your life, especially those you care about, to feel COMPLETELY and absolutely safe in sharing anything of their truest, deepest feelings with you when they want and need to.

We need to be truly heard and we need to truly hear.  This is one of the most powerful antidotes to feeling completely isolated an all, all alone.

But even then, there are people who will choose to leave this world earlier than seems best.  There are part of ourselves and certainly depths to others that we will never know.  There are mysteries.  And suffering beyond the point of ability to bear it can also be very, very real.

I am just suggesting that perhaps nobody can really know if they did all they could have done to help someone avoid that precipice of suicide if they cannot truly say they were willing to listen and truly hear what that other person NEEDED to share with them.

While we cannot make someone talk to us we can make ourselves able to listen and to hear.

++

Comments are welcome on this blog.  Please consider changing your name to something that is not identifiable to others if that might make you feel safer to speak.  I can only respond directly to comments I publish/post (you do need to watch for and put a check mark in the little box that lets you receive follow-up replies).   Thank you for reading and please have a safe holiday season and find SOMEONE you can talk to and be open to finding someone who needs you to listen to them.

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

++++

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

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

Monday, December 8, 2014.  I can’t quite figure out when it might be at all appropriate to say to most people, “I AM SO PROUD OF YOU THAT YOU ARE ALIVE!!!

In defining my terms, and therefore the terms of this blog, I am saying that “most people” includes all of those who received what they needed during their earliest years of life (“good enough” caregiving) to become safe and securely attached people.  That would be about 55% of our population.

Coming down the pike, then, there are among the remaining 45% of people who have some degree and version of an insecure attachment disorder — let’s say — about 20% of THIS group a bunch with an “avoidant” insecure attachment disorder.  Those people fit into a society pretty nicely that has no real clue of the value of emotions in the first place.

Now, coming down further into the insecurely attached group, there would be another perhaps 15% that have an “ambivalent” insecure attachment disorder and then — down here where I reside, a remaining approximate 15% who received a very harsh and inadequate, often very abusive, neglectful and traumatic early beginning that left this group with a combination of “disorganized-disoriented” and “reactive” insecure attachment disorders.

OK.  Within this breakdown I am saying that only this bottom 15%, really, are the ones that are NOT among the “most people” group.  It is to these people (myself included) that it is VERY appropriate to affirm the fact that it is only through our MAJOR efforts to find our footing along the extremely treacherous and dangerous path of the early years of our life that has kept us alive — and “YAY US!!”

++

Seems likely to me that the amount of focused effort and energy it has taken us to survive is effort and energy — along with corresponding resources — that “most people” get to spend on making themselves a pretty good life.  This is NOT a post about self-pity.  It is a post about the practical matters of life as a survivor.  It is about being a person with — MORE.

Again, if readers do an online search for “CDC ACE study” all of those articles that will appear in connection with these research findings affirm what I am saying.  Something happens when people have to fight against terrible odds to survive from the very start of life.  True, billions of people are suffering on this planet in ways I cannot begin to imagine — but the truth is, trauma is trauma and because we are all of the human species the same kinds of consequences that take over the bulk of living for people traumatized severely in the earliest years of life is mostly the same.

AND always the major factor mitigating the effects of early trauma is the availability of safe and secure attachment.  Attachment.

++

There is something a bit different in my thoughts as I write this post than there has been in the many hundreds of posts I have already written about the consequences of early trauma.  Again I am also mentioned this article my Dr. Martin Teicher and his researchers:  The neurobiological consequences of early stress and childhood maltreatment.

BUT today for the first time that I know of I am rethinking how I place early traumatic stress survivors on the so-called rungs of the evolutionary ladder.

Always before now I have figured that the kinds of physiological changes this article describes put survivors of malevolent early traumatic childhoods at some BACKWARD state of evolutionary adaptation.  Maybe that is NOT what the kinds of changes that happen to us are all about!

Maybe we are evolutionarily ADVANCED because of what we have endured and survived.  Maybe the mismatch that Teicher describes (I know, the article is complicated but read through it and especially attend to its final paragraphs) between those who had no choice but to adapt in their physiological development to a malevolent world and the more benevolent world we found ourselves living in when we got out of our home of origin is a mismatch of a different kind than the one I have imagined before now.

True, many survivors find their way into abusive relationships, environments of deprived violence and into the clutches of all kinds of addictions — but this is NOT what I am talking about.

I am talking about WHO we are in combination with HOW we are in our trauma-altered body.

Maybe we are designed to “hatch” into a FAR FAR more advanced world than this one is.  Benevolent?  There is a whole lot about current culture and society in America that is NOT benevolent or benign, or even just, wise, fair or even kind.

Maybe we are not the ones that can be fooled.

Maybe we have extremely high standards, ones we have earned the right to know about.

Maybe we know that these standards are missing from this “more benign” world we are now in.  Life is relative.  Just because, for many of us, the worst of the horrors of our early years are not present in our adult lives does not mean, by default, that this world is THAT much better.  THIS world certainly never gave a damn about terribly-abused-child-me.  So much for being a benevolent world out here.  Not all that much has changed, all things considered.

I think most of us live with a close connection to innate, instinctive, ancient wisdom.  We cannot be easily fooled.  We don’t play games.  We see through things “most people” take for granted as being true.  Maybe this world WE live in, as different as it can seem to be from the world of “most people,” is a BETTER inner world than we realize.

We have heightened compassion, extra attentiveness to the REAL conditions of others no matter how they may try to mask their truth from self and from those around them.  We are often extremely sensitive.  SUPER sensitive.  I don’t care about the “survival” theories about how we came to be this way.

I am thinking about the way we are!!  We don’t take life for granted.  We have depths in our hearts that are so wide open that many people cannot comprehend us.  Maybe we KNOW how the world could be a different, BETTER world if “most people” knew what we know.

We are not oblivious.  We are not shallow, trivial or trite.  Our endurance and our strength and our patience has been tested.  Life has found us worthy to still be here.  We don’t need to ever take THAT for granted.  We were not formed in ease.  We were formed in great, great hardship and difficulty.  Most of us, I’ll bet, do not have easy lives even now.  We have the extra struggles.  But we are still here to have them!

Yes, here we still are.  That didn’t “just” happen.  It happened because we MADE it happen.  True there have been miracles along the way that helped us.  But WE let them.

We had to AGREE to still be here.  We are tough and we are tender — in all the right ways.  We know what sacrifice IS.

There is nothing weak or flawed about us.  We are HIGH QUALITY, and we know it if we are honest with ourselves.  But we also have a rare kind of humility.  Arrogance is not our nature.  We crave peace.  We know its absence.  We are watchers.  We are loyal.  Our integrity demands that we say what we mean and mean what we say.

I believe that if we are honest with ourselves we know we are leaders, not followers.  I say, “GOOD FOR US!”

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

++++

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

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »
++++

++++

Monday, December 8, 2014.  This may sound redundant, but we are in a life where life matters.  Life as it exists in this lifetime is fundamentally a biological matter.  This IS a physical reality.  True, I don’t believe humans exist here without their soul being present with them.  If the soul leaves the body dies.  Or, if you prefer, if the body dies the soul leaves.  But either way, as far as humans are concerned, the soul which is CONNECTED to our body is not actually IN our body.  Soul has nothing to do with egress or regress.  Soul is not a physical THING.

So here we are hanging in, hanging around — souls in the womb of this earthly life doing whatever development here we can manage to do in order to build up our spiritual abilities to carry with us into the next life, the one that never ends.  (Believe it or not.)

Meanwhile, because we are physical beings here we are connected to everyone and everything here.  I am RELATED — whether I like to admit the fact or not — even to bed bugs!

Those little very clever, tenacious, resilient-adaptive critters.  They are not liked one bit by humans!

BUT – because goodness is really the only reality — everything here contains within it an ability to reflect from a “spiritual mirror” placed within it some aspect of the divine goodness, a ray of the light shining from the “sun” of the One Who created all — there is certainly something good shining back to me not only from the existence of bed bugs themselves but also from this experience I am going through because they have invaded my life.  And what an experience it is.

++

I can do nothing at the time but give a progress report on this elimination process I have been engaged in since I discovered these critters in my tiny apartment about a week ago.  I can’t SEE the bugs so I have no idea if anything I am doing is actually effective.  I started Friday evening setting off chemical bug bombs after dragging much of what I own out and around in order to maximize the coating of bug poison in this environment.

I am spending lots of money running fabric stuff through the apartment building’s dryer — which of course is set too low by management so that we have to all spend twice too much to get things hot and dry.

Then stuff is going in and out of all kinds of bags.  Sealed.  Unsealed.  Coverings on the recliner.  On and off.  Shaking things.  Drying the rag rugs.  Bagging the rag rugs.

WHATEVER!  Big WHATEVER!!!

Then Saturday I bombed again and sprayed with Hot Shot products from Home Depot.  I did make enough progress in my thinking to realize that probably billions of our human species living in dire conditions must live continually with these pests with no other option.  Up in the morning.  Find the bugs, sweep them up, dump them out for the chickens.  If any of these people are fortunate enough to have chickens, which I am sure billions are not.

Perspective.  Yet I still feel 3rd world in a 1st world society.  But EVERYONE is susceptible to these bugs.

On a spiritual level?  These bugs are known as “The Travelers.”  Hey!  I can relate to that!

They are known as resilient survivors.  Hey!  Yeah, that’s me.

Take, for example, the fact that a zero degree F temperature will kill them.  Freeze their sorry brown (or invisible tiny newly hatched) butts DEAD.  BUT!!  That temperature has to hit them INSTANTLY!  If they are embedded (!) within items that mean the core temp of the stuff takes a while to hit zero, the bugs will resiliently ADAPT as the temp goes down so that it will then take another 20 degrees COLDER temperature to kill them!

Well, if LIFE is something the Creator values, which is true, then a tenacious ability to survive it, endure and even to thrive is a very good thing!  That’s why we severe trauma survivors are still here.  Our physiology was able to adapt in our earliest developmental stages to horrible conditions of our environment so that we would be able to stay right here!

++

At least I no longer believe these visitors, these squatters, these free-loading vampires necessarily came out of the walls when it cooled outside.  They didn’t have to go to all that trouble.  I guess it is not even likely that they attached themselves to the potted plants I had outside on my cement slab, traveling inside when I brought the plants in.  Nope!

Once those upstairs neighbors put their infested box spring and mattress out on their balcony the bugs simply went traveling elsewhere to find new food sources.  The neighbors, I believe, knew what they were doing for their OWN “greater good.”  They left their bed outside long enough to get the entire mess through a complete egg hatching cycle.  The WORST thing a person can do for other people!

But hey!  If you are ignorant about the risk being created for others?  Or if you know darn well what that risk is and don’t care?  After all, those neighbors are immigrants from Nepal who watched their fellow citizens die en mass along the sides of the streets where they came from.  What do they REALLY care about a few bugs in MY apartment?

So, the bugs most likely just took their little barbed tootsies along the red brick walls of the outside of this building and immigrated to MY place — through the cooler vents, through the sliding door……

I saw yesterday how THAT happens here.  I watched a good-sized black spider race across an expanse of snow right to my shoveled cement slab heading right for my door.  The welcome mat was so NOT down but my foot sure was!

Do I have a reputation in the neighborhood for being kind to BUGS?

++

Which reminds me, I bought a small Christmas cactus from Home Depot last December when I moved in here because I was desperate for greenery. However, I ALSO hauled in with it an infestation source for tiny black flies that have been a pesky curse in this apartment.  Nothing anyone has suggested to eliminate them has worked.  So, yesterday a woman who had this experience and received the solution from a plant expert, told me to place ALL of my houseplants inside plastic bags and keep them sealed in there for a week.  She said it kills the bugs and does not harm the plants.

So….  NOW….  I see no greenery in here.  I see plastic BAGS!

It is WAR ON BUGS.  But, realistically, that is a war that humans will never actually win although we hope to win a battle or more.  Believe me, I am engaged for the long haul in bed bug extermination although I won’t know until three weeks from now, after an entire egg cycle for the bugs has elapsed, if what I am doing is effective.  This is so NOT fun!

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

++++

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

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

Thursday, December 4, 2014.  There is nothing about this post I WANT to write.  Exactly how fun is it to be able to find a comparison between one’s life and BED BUGS?  A week ago I had no idea AT ALL what a bed bug was!  Oh, was I ignorant and naive!

I have become illuminated.  Oh, great.

Life in a trauma-changed body due to infant-child abuse.

Life in a cramped apartment — with bed bugs.

Insidious.  Trapped.  Not to blame.  Victim of circumstances.  Nearly impossible to eradicate.  No vindication!  Any real hope of reprieve?

Looking back from my new informed vantage point I can see there were definite and probable signals that bed bugs were afoot around this low income apartment complex I live in.  (They do not fly, are not known to carry diseases, are vampire blood suckers who do not alert their hosts they are being bit in the dead of night, and who can live 12-15 months just fine without food.)

++

Several hours ago I closed out of this page without publishing this post.  WordPress saved a draft of this for me, so here I am – back again.

Scroll to the bottom of THIS LINK and you will see what I am fairly certain is coming up not only for me, but probably for at least the tenants of the other 32 apartments in my building.

Not good.  Maybe if I were my younger self I could slide right over this nasty predicament as I found bed bugs in my apartment last weekend.  I had NO idea what they were!  At 63 years old perhaps I am just damn fortunate to have thus far been spared any personal encounter with these creatures.  As it is — and the way things seem to be shaping up — I am finding the invasion of these blood sucking vampires VERY TRAUMATIZING!

They are not known to carry serious disease but they are known to spread like wildfire and are extremely difficult to get rid of.  They have developed immunity to all the pesticides that used to be used against them.  Now the only recommended treatment is the heat one described at the above link.  140 degrees for 12 hours.  And lots of preparation before hand along with evacuation during the treatment time at a cost of $1000 per apartment.

If all ten buildings in this complex need to be treated that is going to cost someone over $300,000.

This is so upsetting I can barely regulate my thoughts enough to do so.  I believe these bugs entered my apartment as the outside temperatures began to drop, probably from within the walls.

All tenants at move-in are required to sign a form at the office that says if an exterminator has to be called that they can tell whose apartment “caused the problem” and that person will be charged for the entire cost of treating the building.

I never THOUGHT of bed bugs when I signed that form, and of course I can’t even locate my copy of the form – assuming I was ever given one at the time I signed it a year ago.

This entire complex is filled with low income tenants.  Most are either disabled (from what I have seen) or are immigrant and refugee people.  Many of these people struggle greatly with English.  Nearly all came from places with severe trauma.  Starvation, war, people dying on the sides of the street.  Bugs might not even get their attention.

And if they DO get anyone’s attention – the terror of the thought of having to PAY for extermination for a whole building is overwhelming!  These are poverty people who live here, myself included!

I have to forgive myself for being so naive.  Looking back — NOW I see some things very differently.

Last June I walked by one of the dumpsters for another of the buildings here.  I thought someone must be moving out.  There were couches, chairs and bags of cloth stuff all around the dumpster.  There were mounds of bedding heaped ON the dumpster — that were so covered with moving brown bugs I could hardly see the fabric!

Yes, I noticed and was grossed out, but I walked away.  I didn’t “report” this to management.  I thought the bugs looked a lot like wood ticks, but I had never seen them before.  I had NO idea what they were.

I have seen many beds, box springs, chairs, couches thrown beside dumpsters here and always I have thought they came from people who were moving and could not take these things with them.  How many of them get grabbed by someone who needs furniture and hauled back into a building?

I know of two Nepal immigrant families who each had box springs and mattresses out on their upper floor balconies for weeks.  In my Pollyanna kind of ignorance I thought, “Gee, these people must not have room in their apartment for that bed.”  Or I thought, “These people must not be used to living in cities (like I am not) and like to air their beds out so they smell nice and fresh.”

YEAH!?  You THINK?

The exterminator my daughter spoke with today said that putting beds outdoors like that is a very, very bad idea.  The bugs just spread out and run for the nearest blood source.  They are not at all picky where they find it, and can go 12 – 15 months without eating and be just fine.

And no, diatomaceous earth is not effective.  I have that all along my baseboards, etc.  Bed bugs don’t dehydrate fast enough….

++

Trauma-built people (from severe early abuse and neglect) do NOT tend to handle insane messes like this one smoothly.  I am so much worse at it now than through my younger adulthood I don’t often feel remotely like the same person I used to be.  I’ve handled bugs in the desert and never been this upset — or invaded.  Being in an apartment means I cannot control for what happens in MY SPACE — which I certainly don’t really have.

This is all far from over yet.  I am most blessed to have my brilliant and very clear-thinking daughter making the calls and contacts that need to be made right now.  I cleaned all weekend – and I cannot end this infestation on my own.

What happens next?  Whatever it is, I dread it.

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

++++

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

++++

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.

++++

Leave a Comment »

++++

++++

Monday, December 1, 2014.  Everybody has ways of keeping track of time.  I know I jotted down these notes I discovered this morning at least seven years ago as I was pursuing my studies about my life to find vital information I needed to know — that nobody had ever told me.

I can tell they are from my personal “long ago” because there are only two pages left between the covers of this battered spiral notebook, whose spiral is bent, smashed and a bit twisted from being carried along with me through some very hard times in my life.  One remaining page is full of music notes from my first drumming lessons.  The other page, full of my notes, is about what follows.

In order to follow these thoughts, in your mind or on a piece of paper, draw an “X” and then over the top of this draw a “+” sign so that you now have  8 sections.  On this original piece of paper I tracked my attachment-related thoughts upon I drew a square at the bottom of the left horizontal “+” line that includes the right lower side of the “+.”  I labeled this box DISSOCIATE.

To back up a moment, taking a look at my notes by moving clockwise around the combined “X +” pattern, I see:

— At the top area of the “+” and in that top space of the “X” I wrote SECURE attachment = balance, flexible flow

— At the right point area of the “+” and in that space of the “X” I wrote AMBIVALENT insecure attachment = too much stop’n’go, ignoring  (Today I would add to this area “undependable and at times inappropriate approach/avoid“)

— At the bottom point of the “+” and its corresponding area of the “X” I wrote DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED insecure attachment = imbalanced, inflexible, no flow  (Today I would also add to this area “VERY undependable and at times inappropriate approach/avoid“)

— At the left point of the “+” and its corresponding “X” area I wrote AMBIVALENT insecure attachment = too unruly stop’n’go  (Today I would also add to this area “undependable and at times inappropriate approach/avoid“)

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At the bottom of my paper I noted the breakdown between these attachment patterns with SECURE at about 55% of the population (although today I believe this percentage is dropping drastically due to the societal changes that are taking mothers out of the home to work way, way too early for the good of infants as children are being raised – very often- during the bulk of their waking daytime hours (not unusually up to 10 hours per weekday) in what I call “day orphanages,” the huge daycare centers where many very young children are left without the intimate face-to-face, body-language/touch interactions with their primary caregivers that are so VITAL to the “safe and secure attachment pattern” developments in a little one’s nervous system-brain-body)

Even without these “new” societal changes in infant and child-rearing practices the best at least American society has to offer its offspring who are not safe and securely attached is a 65% drop into the insecure attachment categories.  When I took these notes I divided the space equally between the three categories noted above.

There is not way of knowing accurately what any of these figures actually are, but my bet today (along with popular assessment) is that of that 65% of insecurely attached people (and parents/caregivers are very likely to pass their attachment patterns to their offspring), 30% would be AVOIDANT (our society so disempowers emotions!), 20% would be AMBIVALENT, and 15% would fall into the lower DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED insecure attachment category.

Today I would add one more category at the lower points of this little diagram:  REACTIVE ATTACHMENT DISORDER which I suggest includes at LEAST 5% of our population, dropping to 10% the percentage of people in the DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED category.

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Readers can do additional online searching for “cannot classify” attachments, as well as for what is commonly called “earned secure attachment.”  From my perspective as a person down there in the lowest 5% of people, I believe from my own experience that there is another category I named “borrowed secure attachment.”

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In the lower half of my notebook page I wrote:

— consciousness comes with WORDS

— the more we can differentiate, identify and name the more light of consciousness we can bring to bear on ourselves and our lives (situations, relationships)

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I wrote these notes before I knew anything about the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) studies on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE).  The clearest place to start understanding this research and its implications is, again, by doing an online search for “CDC ACE study pyramid.”

As I have been writing about recently, the United Nation’s World Health Organization’s ACE research is tied to this:

• Questionnaire
  pdf, 247kb

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I most HIGHLY recommend that readers who are new to these ideas buy and READ Dr. Daniel Siegel’s book

Parenting from the Inside: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive

Absolutely ANYTHING you find online (including at amazon.com) written (or spoken in YouTube videos) by Dr. Siegel is MOST helpful!  This book I mention here gives the clearest “lay person” explanation of what the basic attachment categories are, how humans “get” them, and what they mean both to our parenting and to all of our relationships as human beings.

There is no better place to begin to inform yourself so you can begin to improve not only the quality of your life but also the quality of those around you.

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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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