Category: borderline mother

+SOME NOTES ON MY CURRENT ONLINE SEARCHES RELATED TO AMERICAN INDIAN HEALTH DISPARITIES

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Monday, March 17, 2014.  Here is a small part of what I have accumulated during my online studies that began last Friday and continued today.  I am not finished by any means.  The bulk of what I have on file now would not be of interest to many readers but I did think perhaps what follows might interest some.

“Medical Sociology” is not a combination of words I have ever thought about until this afternoon when I encountered this article during an online research investigation I am working on to assist my daughter as she prepares to write papers and do several presentations around the country on the topic of health disparities and American Indian people.

Social Conditions As Fundamental Causes of Disease

Bruce G. Link; Jo Phelan

Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 35, Extra Issue: Forty Years of Medical Sociology:

The State of the Art and Directions for the Future. (1995), pp. 80-94.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-1465%281995%2935%3C80%3ASCAFCO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S

Journal of Health and Social Behavior is currently published by American Sociological Association.

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This is the bio information on Link & Phelan from the 1995 article:

Bruce G. Link is associate professor of public health at Columbia University and research scientist at New York State Psychiatric Institute. His interests lie in understanding the sources of particular types of inequality, its legitimation, and its consequences as these bear on the social patterning of health and illness. This interest is reflected in his work on the association between socioeconomic status and major mental disorders and the possible role that occupational conditions may play in this association, research on the health and well-being of homeless people, and research on the social and economic adversities engendered by the stigma of mental illness.

Jo Phelan is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include homelessness, social stigma, the impact of social conditions on health and illness, and attitudes concerning inequality and its legitimacy.

CONCLUSION to the 1995 article

“The dominant focus in epidemiology and perhaps the American culture in general is on individually-based risk factors that lie relatively close to disease in a causal chain. But this focus overlooks important sociological processes and, as a result, could lead us to actions that limit our ability to improve the nation’s health. We have focused on two concepts — contextualizing risk factors and fundamental causes — that direct our attention to precisely those factors that are left unexamined in the currently dominant orientation to research on risk factors for disease. If future research by medical sociologists and social epidemiologists increases our understanding of the processes implied by these concepts, we will be better positioned as a society to further improve the nation’s health.”  – page 90

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I also located this book chapter of more recent writing by the authors Link & Phelan:

Fundamental sources of health inequalities

BG Link, JC Phelan – Policy challenges in modern health care, 2005 – books.google.com

… argued that new mechanisms arise because persons higher in socioeconomic status enjoy
a wide range of resources—including money, knowledge, prestige, power, and beneficial social
connections—that they can utilize to their health advantage (Link and Phelan 1995). …

Link to their chapter is also here:  http://homeoint.ru/pdfs/socialconditions.pdf in the book Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care edited by Lynn B. Rogut, James R. Knickman, David Mechanic, David Colby – 2005

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This is the most important main body of statistical information currently available in the United States on this topic:

CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report — United States, 2013

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This is the most current information specific to American Indian health:

Trends in Indian Health and Regional Differences in Indian Health

…. Part 5: Patient Care Statistics (PDF – 1.9MB)

…. Brochure (PDF – 667KB)

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And this from the Office of minority health – US dep’t of health and human services

http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/

Also on this site

Cultural Competency

15 National StandardsWhat’s Cultural Competency?

Training Tools | Continuing Education

There is also HHS disparities action plan at this site

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American Indian health profiles are at this link per 12 regional divisions for data collection nationwide outside of Alaska:

http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlID=52

  1. Aberdeen Area
  2. Alaska Area
  3. Albuquerque Area
  4. Bemidji Area
  5. Billings Area
  6. California Area
  1. Nashville Area
  2. Navajo Area
  3. Oklahoma Area
  4. Phoenix Area
  5. Portland Area
  6. Tucson Area

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I also found these two concepts intriguing although more work to ferret out the meaning and significance of these terms will be required:

“Social resistance framework” (3/17/14) and “nondominant minorities”

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Roni  Factor, David R.  Williams, Ichiro  Kawachi. (2013) Social Resistance Framework for Understanding High-Risk Behavior Among Nondominant Minorities: Preliminary Evidence. American Journal of Public Health 103:12, 2245-2251
Online publication date: 1-Dec-2013.

 

ABSTRACT HERE

Objectives. The recently developed social resistance framework addresses a widespread pattern in which members of some nondominant minorities tend to engage in various risky and unhealthy behaviors more than the majority group. This pilot study tested the core hypotheses derived from this innovative framework.

Methods. We conducted in 2011 a nationally representative Web-based survey of 200 members of a nondominant minority group (African Americans) and 200 members of a majority group (Whites).

Results. The preliminary findings supported the main premises of the framework and suggested that nondominant minorities who felt discriminated and alienated from society tended also to have higher levels of social resistance. Those with higher levels of social resistance also engaged more in risky and unhealthy behaviors—smoking, drinking, and nonuse of seat belts—than did those with lower levels of social resistance. These associations were not found in the majority group.

Conclusions. These preliminary results supported the framework and suggested that social resistance might play a meaningful role in risky and unhealthy behaviors of nondominant minorities, and should be taken into account when trying to reduce health disparities.

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Understanding high-risk behavior among non-dominant minorities: A social resistance framework

R Factor, I Kawachi, DR Williams – Social Science & Medicine, 2011 – Elsevier

Across different societies, non-dominant minority groups, compared to the dominant group,
often exhibit higher rates of involvement in high-risk behaviors, such as smoking, drug and
alcohol use, sexual risk behaviors, overeating, and unsafe driving habits. In turn, these …

HARVARD EDU – PDFharvard.edu [PDF]

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I have also located and sent to my daughter all the United Nations links to current reports and centers that collect information about and work to serve the needs of Indigenous People the globe over.

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I can simply state that severe infant and child abuse survivors are, in my thinking, members of a “nondominant minority.”  We survivors, as the CDC-ACE study has shown, thoroughly live with risk factors for low health standards often because of the risky behaviors we are most likely to engage in.  We are probably very similar to the groups that could be identified as fitting within a “social resistance framework” for many reasons.  (I suggest doing a Google Scholar search for the term “cdc ace pyramid” – the results that will come up are incredible indicators of the lifelong serious consequences of severe trauma in the early years of life for ANYONE.)

I fortunately do not have to think my way through any of the resources I am accumulating.  That is my daughter’s professional job as she works with 200 responses to a local survey with American Indian and Non-American Indian respondents.

I have taken on a simple but complex part of the job to find resources embedded within resources about disparities in health between minorities and non-minorities.  A very clear pattern is emerging in America as the data shows.  At present 50% of all girls age 15 and under in the United States are “minorities.”  It is suspected that by 2050 50% of the population in America will be “minorities” while 50% will be what many consider to be “white.”

Times are changing.

I have come across valid research articles that suggest that the widening gap in all forms of health disparities between the “dominant majority” and the minorities in America may well never be closed.  I cannot imagine the tragedy of such a continuing pattern. 

I don’t have to do anything more right now than to voluntarily accumulate resources that will help light my daughter’s pathway as she pursues this important current research work – which in actuality is a sideline to her main employment tasks.  I LIKE doing the internet research part.  I would NOT LIKE to have to integrate this information into a coherent whole!  That is my daughter’s gift.

I send her related articles and reports, each individually notated in emails that will be printed on her end to be used in an index for the emails themselves – and some collected documentation in WORD – that contain live links.  When I do this kind of study I am reminded of what a miracle the internet is!!  Awesome in ways that probably only later generations will recognize.

Let us all make the very best use possible of all helpful information OUT THERE.  We need one another’s help.  Of that much I am certain.

Meanwhile I realize that as I do this kind of online research I feel as close to flying as I ever will in my lifetime.  I get lost to real time for hours and hours.  I absolutely love it!

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HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING FINDINGS from my flying.  I haven’t yet gone to see if I can access whole articles or even abstracts for these but the titles intrigue me!

Braveman PA, Cubbin C, Egerter S, Williams DR, Pamuk E. Socioeconomic disparities in health in the United States: what the patterns tell us. Am J Public Health 2010;100(Suppl 1):S186–96. DOI:10.2105/AJPH.2009.166082.   Sent to ramona

ABSTRACT

Objectives. We aimed to describe socioeconomic disparities in the United States across multiple health indicators and socioeconomic groups.

Methods. Using recent national data on 5 child (infant mortality, health status, activity limitation, healthy eating, sedentary adolescents) and 6 adult (life expectancy, health status, activity limitation, heart disease, diabetes, obesity) health indicators, we examined indicator rates across multiple income or education categories, overall and within racial/ethnic groups.

Results. Those with the lowest income and who were least educated were consistently least healthy, but for most indicators, even groups with intermediate income and education levels were less healthy than the wealthiest and most educated. Gradient patterns were seen often among non-Hispanic Blacks and Whites but less consistently among Hispanics.

Conclusions. Health in the United States is often, though not invariably, patterned strongly along both socioeconomic and racial/ethnic lines, suggesting links between hierarchies of social advantage and health. Worse health among the most socially disadvantaged argues for policies prioritizing those groups, but pervasive gradient patterns also indicate a need to address a wider socioeconomic spectrum—which may help garner political support. Routine health reporting should examine socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparity patterns, jointly and separately.

Read More: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2009.166082http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2009.166082

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Adler NE, Stewart J. Health disparities across the lifespan: meaning, methods, and mechanisms. In: Adler NE, Stewart J, eds. The biology of disadvantage. New York, NY: New York Academy of Sciences; 2010;1186:5–23. 

Ohlshansky SJ, Antonucci T, Berkman L, et al. Differences in life expectancy due to race and educational differences are widening, and may not catch up. Health Aff 2012;31:1803–13. 

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Independent research supporting the CDC-ACE study findings —

Cathy Spatz  Widom, Sally J.  Czaja, Tyrone  Bentley, Mark S.  Johnson. (2012) A Prospective Investigation of Physical Health Outcomes in Abused and Neglected Children: New Findings From a 30-Year Follow-Up. American Journal of Public Health 102:6, 1135-1144
Online publication date: 1-Jun-2012.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES:

We investigated whether abused and neglected children are at risk for negative physical health outcomes in adulthood.

METHODS:

Using a prospective cohort design, we matched children (aged 0-11 years) with documented cases of physical and sexual abuse and neglect from a US Midwestern county during 1967 through 1971 with nonmaltreated children. Both groups completed a medical status examination (measured health outcomes and blood tests) and interview during 2003 through 2005 (mean age=41.2 years).

RESULTS:

After adjusting for age, gender, and race, child maltreatment predicted above normal hemoglobin, lower albumin levels, poor peak airflow, and vision problems in adulthood. Physical abuse predicted malnutrition, albumin, blood urea nitrogen, and hemoglobin A1C. Neglect predicted hemoglobin A1C, albumin, poor peak airflow, and oral health and vision problems, Sexual abuse predicted hepatitis C and oral health problems. Additional controls for childhood socioeconomic status, adult socioeconomic status, unhealthy behaviors, smoking, and mental health problems play varying roles in attenuating or intensifying these relationships.

CONCLUSIONS:

Child abuse and neglect affect long-term health status-increasing risk for diabetes, lung disease, malnutrition, and vision problems-and support the need for early health care prevention.

Read More: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2009.166082

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Rosenthal L, Caroll-Scott A, Earnshaw VA, et al. The importance of full-time work for urban adults’ mental and physical health. Soc Sci Med 2012;75:1692–6. 

Leach LS, Butterworth  P, Strazdins L, et al. The limitations of employment as a tool for social inclusion. BMC Public Health 2010;10:621

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Woolf SH, Johnson RE, Phillips RL, Philipsen M. Giving everyone the health of the educated: an examination of whether social change would save more lives than medical advances. Am J Public Health 2007;97:679–83

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Now I am going to sit down and read more of my junk mystery crime thriller!  VEG TIME!

NOTE:  I am running Windows XP on this old slow laptop which is threatening me with a major crash even as I work to get this posted first!  I am a techno phobe who is being forced to upgrade to a new computer – hopefully it can be ordered soon so I don’t loose online time as I learn to manage Windows 8.1 (with the handy help of my new nearly 1000 page help manual!)

OOPS!  It crashed first.  Big time.  Good thing I put this in Word and saved it in time!  It’s just not up to the work I’m loading on it.  I will be glad once I have a new computer.  Just have to learn how to manage in Tile World as they call Windows 8.1!  I learn do it.  I can do it……

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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+WRONG GIG?

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Sunday, March 16, 2014.  I have been listening to the drummers all in a line here at YouTube all day long!  I luckily found out there is an all-day free percussion extravaganza Saturday, April 5 at a local college – I gotta get ready!

Wrong color, wrong sex, wrong age — DRUMMER AM I?  I’d fit in anywhere about like this dude – and boy this makes me GIGGLE!  I can so relate!!

TOO FUNNY!!

LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH!!

Drumming Man

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This is REALLY great!

STREET DRUMMER

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Another CRAZY Drummer

(Just stay on site an there’s MORE!)

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment

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+BABBLE BABY HEAVEN

alchemynow2 Comments

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Thursday, March 13, 2014.  No, this wasn’t baby neglect, even though I do know the interaction – or rather, lack of interaction — I had with my nearly 20-month grandson this afternoon was very unusual.  In this small apartment I could hear everything that went on as baby went down for his nap at 3:30 this afternoon in his crib which is placed on the other side of the living room wall where I sat listening to him babble as if there was no tomorrow in the (quite crowded with craft supplies) bedroom next to me.

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I read research a few years ago that describes how babies have been found to engage in entirely different babbling when they are in a room alone than they do when they are in a room with other people in it.  Those researchers believe that BOTH KINDS of babbling are essential to a little person’s brain and its language-building abilities.  But this little guy talked loudly, clearly as a babbler expert could talk as he animatedly engaged in his one-sided conversation for 2 ½ hours!

I listened carefully for any signs of distress or discomfort that baby might make.  He didn’t call me as he would have if he wanted “up.”  He gave no indication whatsoever that he was anywhere but in total babble heaven. 

In my younger years I would have known as I listened to this miraculous baby talk that he was carrying on a conversation with the angels.  In my older more pragmatic years I didn’t think any such thought until I was trying to describe those hours to my daughter when she came to pick her baby up.

I can’t imagine that this kind of solo-babble can go on in daycare centers, nor is it likely to go on in homes such as baby’s is where another older (but not that much older!) sibling monopolizes everybody’s attention – verbally – every moment whether baby is present or not.  Obviously children end up talking unless something serious prevents it, so whatever kind of babbling baby did today could have been spared without harming his later language.

But still – how absolutely miraculously marvelous it was to listen to a little person having an absolutely fantastically joyous time – in there all by himself!  He needed nothing from me except what I provided.  The rest was all up to him on his side of the wall.  I did not need to interfere in any possible way.

His intonations and inflections and pauses.  The rises and falls of his expressions.  Changes in pitch and tone and the length of his “sentences.”  The variety of rhythms.  LONG and seemingly very complicated thoughts were being communicated FROM him to???  His beloved fuzzy stuffed little kitten?  I did hear a variety of his highest-pitched mews.  I suspect at those times kitty had something of its own to add to that conversation.  The prosody of his language — the perfect music of it!

I feel blessed having been present to listen to this.  What a privilege.  What a miracle human development is. 

And this is what I have been hoping to help him achieve:  A complete sense of himself as a separate and fantastically unique person who can be completely comfortable alone with himself – with perfect joy — while also being completely comfortable with other people, as well. 

Two wings of a bird.  In balance.  And OH what tales he told today in there without another human being present.  I don’t think he could have enjoyed himself more in what I named the oratorium! 

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Just another sign that baby is being allowed to build peaceful calm as the set-point for the balanced equilibrium of his nervous system through safe and secure attachment.  YAY!!!!

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BABBLING or TWADDLING

“Babbling is the first sign of human language.  These vocalizations do not generally contain meaning or refer to anything specific.  Human infants are not excited or upset when babbling, but instead they will babble spontaneously and incessantly only when emotionally calm.”

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Does Baby ‘Babbling’ Lead To Faster Language Development? Surprising New Research Challenges Traditional Advice

By Lizette Borreli — January 7, 2014

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Understanding ‘Ba Ba Ba’ as a Key to Development

By PERRI KLASS, M.D. — October 11, 2010

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Much More than Babble

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Babbling babies – responding to one-on-one ‘baby talk’ helps master more words

January 6, 2014

Summary:  “Common advice to new parents is that the more words babies hear the faster their vocabulary grows. Now new findings show that what spurs early language development isn’t so much the quantity of words as the style of speech and social context in which speech occurs.”

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And – for those of us who were traumatized in absolutely unsafe and insecure attachment environments from birth – I betcha WE did not get to babble away in baby heaven!  Yet another possible link in my thinking about how the brain and nervous system developmental changes that happened to us probably created many pathways and circuits that were/are similar to autism:

Babbling delay may be early marker of autism

By Laura Geggel — 18 February 2014

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On this blog: 

+SOME PRIMARY LINKS ON INFANT VERBAL ABUSE

September 24, 2010

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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+WHEN IS TOO MUCH TOO MUCH?

alchemynow2 Comments

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Thursday, March 13, 2014. I suppose it’s a sign of the times of my life right now that even my use of words has become less than an easy flow and more of a “What the heck is THAT?” experience.  This morning I find myself face-to-face with the word REPLENISH, along with all its various forms and – parts of speech?

PARTS?  Even words – broken into pieces?  How helpful is that to me right now, to discover that I am feeling caught up in an undertow of complexity even in the universe of words I might use to think about my life right now? 

I am trying to talk myself into leaving that level of reality alone – the reality that there are PROPER ways to speak versus – improper ones?  I am criticizing myself for not even – thinking properly?

“If you can’t even get your parts of speech correct, Linda, then you sure have no business WRITING anything!”

Oh, Geeze.  Who was that writing about “the monkey on your back?”

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REPLENISH

Transitive verb? 

1a :  to fill with persons or animals :  stock

b archaic :  to supply fully :  perfect

c :  to fill with inspiration or power :  nourish

2a :  to fill or build up again <replenished his glass>

b :  to make good :  replace

INTRAnsitive verb?

:  to become full :  fill up again

— re·plen·ish·able \-ni-shə-bəl\ adjective

— re·plen·ish·er noun

— re·plen·ish·ment \-nish-mənt\ noun

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Perhaps it’s just another sign of the near overload I feel as a trauma altered individual as my super-sensitivities seem to be nearly crowding me out of my own body-life. 

There is GREAT stress in my family right now.  I created massive stress in my own life (and therefore within myself) by venturing these 2000 miles away from my own location-of-home to try to “help” by adding my own life energies to that of the people I love.

Is this entire venture at risk of toppling me over and of burying me alive?

Right now it seems so.

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Dumb little things.  But then, my small life is probably made up mostly of small things.  As far as I can tell at the moment.

I have been reading some cheapo bestselling trash thrillers – (in my book) – and find myself being most stressed by all the COMMAS thrown willy-nilly (seems to me) in all the sentences so that I can hardly read for the pauses those commas demand of me!

“Get those commas out of my way so I can actually READ this dumb book!”

Then – of course – I MUST increase my doubts about my own writing.  If I want a pause?  Use one of those — — — things or create an obvious break of my intention with a PERIOD for heaven’s sake.

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Perhaps my stress level is right at (or possibly over) the DISTRESS level all the way around!  It does not help for me, with my super hearing to be DRONED out of my own sanity by the ROAR of the ventilation system in this 30-unit apartment building!  I HATE irritating noises and here I am with a lease on this place until next 12/1 with a DRONING ROAR in my walls and ceilings that I cannot drown out….

And I am trying!  I built 3 fountains that run in this one room I spend my life in right now.  I run an obnoxious fan at night.  There is NO PLACE I can go in my home to get away from that horrible sound!

Tip of the iceberg.  (In honor of the poor shrinking population of polar bears who will soon have no iceberg or ice floe in sight to live upon I HATE to draw attention to an image that is itself disappearing from this poor distressed and troubled planet.)

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I must skip the 10,000 pages it would take me to flesh out the story of how my life is going and how it feels to me to be in my life right now.  Skip to the chase?

How do I REPLENISH what inner meager resources I am still hanging onto at this point in my 62-year-old life?  I walked away from the PLACE and the people of the past 14 years of my life that evidently sustained me so deeply I forgot that sustenance was NOT within me!!

How do I replenish myself now, (oops, a comma!) given the weight of the determining factors all the way around me that are influencing me?

Trauma depletes resources.  In its survivors it not only depletes inner resources but at the same time creates a reality within which continual incoming/available outer resources are necessary to simply balance the flow of resources that are continually being lost just by the fact of being a trauma survivor.

Where does anything EXTRA possibly come from if one is trying to provide resources to others?

Out of thin air?  (What’s with THAT expression?)

From GOD?

Seems to me I am relying upon INVISIBLE resources right now or I am going DOWN in ways I am fighting even contemplating.

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I guess – having written myself this far down in this post – I would have to say that I have given myself some kind of ground – fertile or infertile – to contemplate as I try to buoy myself up enough to continue forward “a good piece” in “good peace.”

I can refine my contemplations (thinkings) about inner and outer resources, about draining them, about offering them to others in balance with sustaining myself, about replenishing my entire stock of resources in any way that I can – in terms of those resources I have, can access, can offer to others in HEALTHY ways as being VISIBLE or INVISIBLE ones.

I can only access my entire human support system online or on the phone.  Visible?  Invisible?

I can only access images and memories of beloved landscapes that have so fed and sustained me (in effort to counterbalance the drain that being in an area of the country I am allergic to (evidently) and the drain of being in a CITY!!  Horrors!).  Visible or Invisible resource?

And certainly – GOD – prayer – desperate prayer for replenishment, sustenance, assistance for self and others – INVISIBLE OR VISIBLE?  Sustainability?

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Survivors of severe early trauma go through their – our – lives resource-deplenished (seems like a good word to me!) in PROFOUNDLY significant ways at the same time we are in-the-hole regarding ways to increase our resources (same thing as increasing our well-being).

Stores.  Provisions.  Inventory.  Costs of doing business.  Visible.  Invisible.  Tangible.  Intangible.

What makes certain resources – say certain minerals, gems, elementals – especially valuable is their rarity.

We survivors are rare – for the most part the worse the early trauma the rarer is the survivor?  How do I VALUE that as an asset, as a resource in ME so I can use it to turn around and replenish what feels to be my very depleted resource store right now?

I don’t WANT to be rare.  I had a terrible night of sleep last night – something rare for me (finally) for the most part.  I orient myself toward being rested to care for the BABY the next day and usually from that center I can find sleep in spite of the DRONING in this building that has become my enemy in significant ways!

I found myself feeling so ANGRY last night that I had stolen from me through 18 years of extreme abuse and neglect from birth SO MUCH of what I needed – of what nonsurvivors of early trauma automatically possess – that I could USE when life gets tough!  I have been robbed.  No doubt about it!

NOW WHAT?  That is always the droning question.  We live in the NOW – no choice on that – so……NOW WHAT?

No matter WHAT, that’s ongoing life:  now what

Enough with the WHATS and the THAT’S – those are SO not poetic words – but – WHERE would I be without them???

Damn river of words….

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I step outside.  The sky is blue.  The air is warmer.  Sunrays lengthen.  Birds chirp.  I am surrounded by ROARING traffic!  No silence to greet me!  No vistas.  No hills and mountains.  How to solace (sooth) myself in this cacophony of NOISE and roads and buildings?

A challenge.  I have challenged myself.  At such times we either MAKE IT or we BREAK IT.

IT?

Back inside.  Footsteps.  Tromping around on my ceiling.  Sound:  Visible or Invisible?

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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+ALONE ? ALL minus ONE = LONELINESS

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Wednesday, March 12, 2014.  Now that I have found out (!!) that feelings are adjectives – little parts of speech that I have tended to think of as “extraneous extras” when it comes to an economy of language, if such a time might arrive when ONLY important words would be salvaged for use – I am having to rethink how I think about life!  True – it doesn’t take much for me to enter one of these rethinking cycles. 

While the word PATIENCE seems to be a noun and hence must have far more substance than a simple adjective like LONELY, I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that my feeling patient is any different than my feeling of lonely (or sad, angry, etc.).  But there I have it, right in front of my prying eyes.  Patience is NOT a feeling!

Could have fooled me!

So – with loneliness and the feeling of the adjective state of lonely in my thoughts I take another look at wonder-filled Webster’s online:

LONELY

1a :  being without company :  lone

b :  cut off from others :  solitary

2:  not frequented by human beings :  desolate

3:  sad from being alone :  lonesome

4:  producing a feeling of bleakness or desolation

First Known Use of LONELY — circa 1598 – I search ALONE — yet another adjective, for the heritage of lonely and find –

Origin of ALONE – from Middle English, from al all + one one — First Known Use: 13th century

1:  separated from others :  isolated

2:  exclusive of anyone or anything else :  only <she alone knows why>

3a :  considered without reference to any other <the children alone would eat that much>

b :  incomparable, unique <alone among their contemporaries in this respect>

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Well, in a language sort of way I have a new way to wrap my thoughts around the reality of probably ALL early abuse, neglect and severe trauma survivors’ reality.  This perpetual inner seemingly core state of BEING ALONE – and therefore probably also of unending deep loneliness – comes from us being from our beginnings – in the midst of a most unsafe and insecure early attachment relationship environment – exactly this as the origin of ALONE suggests:  I was the ONE extra in my family that was in no way integrated into any benign/benevolent universe where the ALL existed.  I was the ONE taken away and kept apart from the ALL.  I still feel that way!

In a state of great need from birth where the ALL belongs to one another there is safety and security.  Where the ONE exists as NOT a part of the ALL there is greatest threat and danger.

An infant will seek what is called in attachment theory – PROXIMITY – exactly because an infant/young child is fundamentally reliant upon someone in the ALL for survival. 

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ONE is an adjective.  This word has been around for a long time –

Origin of ONE

Middle English on, an, from Old English ān; akin to Old High German ein one, Latin unus (Old Latin oinos), Sanskrit eka — First Known Use: before 12th century

ALL, also an adjective with a long history —

Origin of ALL

Middle English all, al, from Old English eall; akin to Old High German all all — First Known Use: before 12th century

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I did not ASK to be born as the one outside the all.  Did that make me ALL – ONE?  Yes.  It did and I will spend the rest of my lifetime in that state unable to truly connect to the ALL because my very physiology was changed during my most rapid and critically important developmental stages in that kind of a malevolent environment that provided no CONNECTION and INTEGRATION of myself with others. 

Once those early developmental stages of nervous system-brain-body passed without a connection being made that would have connected-integrated me to-with the ALL – well, as many readers of this blog well know – we are left ALONE.  ALL ALONE no matter what else happens in our life.

There is a chasm between “one self and all” that as far as I know cannot be physiologically bridged in later life within survivors of severe infant/young child attachment-related trauma.   The simplest image I have for the impossibility of changing the “hardwired” physiology from this kind of infant/very young child loss is a reminder that in the days of Chinese binding of a girl’s feet during their growth stages, such feet could never restore themselves in later life.

We survivors are left living with various degrees of loneliness that cannot be healed.

++

That we are creating a society in America that is spreading this kind of loneliness around freely SHOULD be cause for concern and correction.  But realistically I know it may take a few generations before the majority in our nation begins to even have a solitary CLUE about what any of this means.

A friend of mine sent me this last night:

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” — Kurt Vonnegut

I could write all kinds of things here in response to my increasing concerns about the hole-in-the-heart that daycare kids are …….

Well, no.  Not right now.  Instead I’ll end with this, another Vonnegut –

“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.  Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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+GRAMMAR OF FEELINGS?

alchemynow3 Comments

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Tuesday, March 11, 2014.  I have never before now specifically wondered about the parts of speech connected to using words to describe emotions and feelings.  In looking online at Webster’s definition of

FEELING

I see it has existed as a noun in Modern English since the 12th century and as an adjective since the 14th.  It’s a rather thought provoking study just reading what Webster states about this word.  I find myself trying to understand how “feeling” is a noun because I grew up being taught that a noun was a “person, place or thing.”  Feeling as a THING?

I admit I remember very little of the specifics of language use I was taught so many years ago.  I guess until this morning when I went to the dictionary I hadn’t realized that feeling words such as happy, angry and sad are adjectives.  I guess I see that – Greg is sad – Greg being the noun.

My mind has to squirm around with (adjective) sad, (noun) feeling.  “I feel sad.”  I need to go back to grammar school!

++

My trains of thought today spring from – spring!  Over 20 years have passed since I lived in an area where spring did anything more than increase temperatures overall.  Spring did not melt snow, make things drip, create slush and monster puddles and expose filth accumulated during months of snow cover.

Of course it is very nice to have the temps going UP instead of DOWN as they have been doing since I moved into this little apartment.  But I am finding myself FEELING feelings evidently connected to this kind of spring experience that are familiar to me – but not positively so!

How can that be, I am wondering?  Yet – what is this sinking sort of heavy feeling I feel – very organic, very weighty, dense, even oppressive – not spring-like-warm and bouncy by any means.  WHAT FEELING IS THIS?  Or what conglomeration of feelings bundled into one (?) main feeling is this?

I don’t know.  I don’t want to know.  That kind of feeling, whatever it is, is connected to me through my own history – but also to my history of LEAVING this kind of climate along with all its stages and phases.

I have grown very used to the high desert southeastern Arizona climate of very moderate change with lengthy periods of overall pleasantness.  The blowing dust and lack of air cleanliness bothered me – and THIS air IS CLEAN, I have to say – although I greatly miss the VISTA expanses of land I could gaze across ‘back home’ that let me know the sky was not all that sparkly viewed from a distance.

I guess this northland now seems completely bi-polar to me!  Soon the muggy sticky heat will come along with too long daylight to make up – for too much lack of light on the other end of that pole!  I notice these things.  These organic polarities that are so connected to my embodied FEELING me that I cannot any more control my response to these dramatic changes than I can control the changes themselves.

++

Perhaps I am paying very close attention in case I get to return south to a place that has felt more like home to me than has any place I have ever lived.  I want to remember what I complain about HERE – to balance that knowledge with what I complained about THERE, which was mostly about silty dirt everywhere in my house and what looked like continual pollution in the air.  (Much of it probably does come from the copper smelters in Mexico.)

Of course in the desert there are also very weird bugs one doesn’t want to deal with up close and personal as well as a collection of deadly snakes.  No place – people like to say – is perfect?

I am also reacting to CITY living which I have always detested, and the lack of yard and privacy here – so no feeling is ever probably a “one kind” of thing – oh, well, adjective and not a thing at all!  I guess that all makes sense if I can remember to think in terms of “I AM THE NOUN” and all the feelings I have right along with the words to name them are describing (adjectizing) me!

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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+COST OF EMOTIONS (be careful)

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Monday, March 10, 2014.  I now have a shrunken yard – an 8’ by 8’ slab of cement very open to public view in this apartment complex.  I gave up my rental house-home and 20,000 square foot gorgeous Arizona high desert garden to come here last October, as many blog readers know.  One of the few solaces I have enjoyed this winter was to be able to feed the many wild rabbits that seem to thrive around the cat tail area outside my door.

Several times this story from my childhood appeared in my thoughts as I watched those gentle animals feed. 

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When I wrote about emotions and feelings in my previous post today –

+EMOTIONAL ZOMBIE-ISM: The feeling diseases and disorders

I did not include any thoughts about how costly emotions often are to traumatized infants and children, and thereafter to those survivors who make it to adulthood.

Emotions ARE EXPENSIVE!

Emotions might be costly-expensive for EVERYONE – but to survivors of severe early trauma it matters – while perhaps those costs are easily absorbed into the “management system for resources” of more safe and securely attached people.

I realized this winter that the investment of my little girl open heart love for my pet rabbit put me at incredible risk for PAINFUL HARM as my story about my black rabbit describes.  (I think there’s a more recent version of the story but not sure and wouldn’t know where it is at this moment – so this “edition” of this portion of my life story narrative is good enough for now!)

Over half a century later after my loss of Peter (damage to me coupled with my psychotic abusive mother’s reaction to me at that time) I understand that as far as I can tell something very fragile and so important I cannot begin to name its value was broken inside of me that day.

++

Even though I had already suffered from more abuse-neglect trauma by age 7-8 (my exact age has to be confirmed along the timeline from within Mother’s letters) than most people experience in a lifetime – probably far more, actually – when Peter came into my life I still had not lost my ability to trust my heart to a living entity.  I had never before that time had anything (let alone anyone) to love.  Peter WAS my first love and as desperate for attachment as I must have been I had no possible chance to protect myself from what happened next – his death and Mother’s insane reaction to it.

My

Heart

Broke.

++

I’m not kidding.  This winter I reached inside of myself to search for what I had within me WITH PETER – but all I felt was what has never been there inside of me since I lost him.

That kind of emptiness that comes from something vital having once been, once lost – when there only was THAT ONE CHANCE and no more.

Love of land and place, of siblings, of mates and children and now of grandchildren.  I miss that part of me that once lived and was murdered that rainy Alaskan mountain night 55 years ago.  It has never returned – and I very much doubt that it will in this lifetime – or it would have already.  (No magical potion comments here, folks.  I know myself and I know what I am talking about.  Death like this is permanent.)

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It may well be that as a traumatized child I COULD NOT AFFORD the love exchange I had with my rabbit.  There was no possible way I could have known this.

I bring this up to make sure I follow my previous post with a truth:  There is often a very good reason why emotions-feelings are unavailable – and there are a lot of reasons why this is so.

This reason MUST be honored.  If a person wishes to heal their ability to feel as much as they can caution is still advised.  Feelings were expensive for me as a child – and still are!!

I have said in the past that if a person does not have a SUPER support system around them – that they are embedded within – BE VERY CAREFUL!!  There are times and circumstances when I would say it is very unwise to “mess with nature” in order to try to wake feelings up!

Just because I wrote this morning’s post giving information about loss of feelings does NOT mean that I am suggesting everyone needs to CHANGE their relationship with their feelings in any way.  Certainly not immediately.  In some cases certainly not at all!

Trauma people often feel ANYTHING at great cost.  Determining whether feeling itself is a risk or a resiliency factor must happen before we go racing off in any direction just to change something about our reality that relates to our “embodied selfhood.”

++

If magic like this did exist, if I could go back and warn my child self

I would tell that so-abused child

“When a little black rabbit is offered to you

Do not touch it.

Turn your back.

Walk away.

Do not look back.

Do not doubt what I say.

DO NOT!”

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Perhaps when I grew older had I suffered such a heartbreak I could have afforded it.  Perhaps I would have had the inner resources to master my own protection so that the devastation of my loss would not have broken “that” within me.  (At the end point of massive cumulative losses, I know.)

As things went I have spent the rest of my entire lifetime unable to again feel that kind of love in any “personal” relationship. 

That love cost me too much.

Yet I probably would not have survived without it. 

Early severe trauma survivors, we are the experts of unsolvable paradox!

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NOTE:  I consider my love for the Alaskan wilderness to be a kind of impersonal relationship – as I have mentioned in recent posts, I believe that love belonged within what Dr. Daniel Siegel refers to as “the open plane of possibility.”  I also consider my relationships with people to be based upon “borrowed secure attachment” that also rests within that plane.

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+EMOTIONAL ZOMBIE-ISM: The feeling diseases and disorders

alchemynow1 Comment

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Monday, March 10, 2014.  Where do I start this morning as I begin a post I intend to use to clarify my thoughts about FEELINGS?

I think I’ll start here —

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Addiction is a Feelings Disease  – Posted on June 26, 2012 by Karl Shallowhorn, MS, CASAC

It’s a feelings disease – Emotions and addictions

The Feelings Chart – How addictions interact with feelings (does not address how a severe early trauma history alters our emotional life from the start so that “normal” does not exist so that “using” happens in attempt to even feel anything LIKE normal – this article does offer insights on feelings and addiction processes including its progression!)

Addiction as a disease of “Frozen Feelings” – Interestingly, from the perspective of medical anthropology – a take on Russian recovery, VERY GOOD article!

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OK, let’s dig a little deeper here – Not too hard to begin to see the patterns – which, I believe, greatly relate to what Dr. Siegel describes as the goal of healing one’s entire embodied, relational mind – INTEGRATION!

Alexithymia – While this Wickipedia entry says that 10% of the public suffer from this condition I would beg to differ.  A very similar condition is HIDING in people, in families, in communities, cultures, civilization and within our species under many different guises.  In other words, there are many roads that “lead to Rome.”  We can CREATE this condition, support and sustain it in many different ways.

HERE COMES A FEW MORE BIG GUNS OF THE FEELINGS DIS-EASES!

“Alexithymia/ˌeɪlɛksəˈθaɪmiə/ is a personality construct characterized by the sub-clinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self.[1] The core characteristics of alexithymia are marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment, and interpersonal relating.[2] Furthermore, individuals suffering from alexithymia also have difficulty in distinguishing and appreciating the emotions of others, which is thought to lead to unempathic and ineffective emotional responding.[2] Alexithymia is prevalent in approximately 10% of the general population and is known to be comorbid with a number of psychiatric conditions.[3]

The term “alexithymia” was coined by psychotherapist Peter Sifneos in 1973.[4][5] According to the OED, the word comes from the Greek words αλέξω (alexo, “repel”, “protect”) and θυμός (thumos, “soul, as the seat of emotion, feeling, and thought”) modified by an alpha privative, literally meaning “repelling emotions”.” – bold type emphasis is mine

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“Depersonalization disorder (DPD) is a mental disorder in which the sufferer is affected by persistent or recurrent feelings of depersonalization and/or derealization. In the DSM-IV-TR this disorder is classified as a dissociative disorder; in the ICD-10 it is called depersonalization-derealization syndrome and classified as an independent neurotic disorder.[1] Common descriptions of symptoms are: feeling disconnected from one’s physicality; feeling as though one is not completely occupying the body; not feeling in control of one’s speech or physical movements; feeling detached from one’s own thoughts or emotions; a sense of automation, going through the motions of life but not experiencing it or participating in it; loss of conviction with one’s identity; feeling a disconnection from one’s body; inability to accept one’s reflection as one’s own; difficulty relating oneself to reality and the environment; feeling as though one is in a dream; and out-of-body experiences.[2] Depersonalization is described as suffering from episodes of surreal experiences. Some of these experiences have been also reminiscent of panic attacks and paroxysmal anxiety. While many people experience brief moments of depersonalization, in others it may last much longer and can become a persistent problem.[3] Diagnostic criteria for Depersonalization disorder include, among others, persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from one’s mental processes or body.[4] A diagnosis is made when the dissociation is persistent and interferes with the social and occupational functions necessary for everyday living. Providing an accurate description through investigation has proved challenging due to the subjective nature of depersonalization, the ambiguity of the language used to describe episodes of depersonalization and because the experiences of depersonalization overlap with those of derealization, which are two separate disorders.[5]

Depersonalization disorder is thought to be largely caused by severe traumatic lifetime events including childhood abuse, accidents, war, torture, panic attacks and bad drug experiences. It is unclear whether genetics play a role; however, there are many neurochemical and hormonal changes in individuals suffering with depersonalization disorder.[6]

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And as a start into the insecure/secure attachment links to difficulties with feelings – and therefore with empathy –

AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT

“…common characteristics include a failure to support partners during stressful times and an inability to share feelings, thoughts, and emotions with partners.”

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Disorganized Attachment or Why You Think You’re Crazy But Really Aren’t – A very nice article that gives an overview of attachment as a whole with a focus on how insecure attachment disorders appear in people who come to therapy.  (I do know there is another side to the last statement made in this article for some of us who were traumatized through neglect and abuse from birth – just keep that in mind although I won’t discuss it at the moment here – it’s already on the blog in many places.)

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What is your attachment style?  Emotionally Limited – I like this term!

“Avoidant Attachment:  There are adults who are emotionally unavailable and, as a result, they are insensitive to and unaware of the needs of their children.”  [I WOULD ADD,  EMOTIONALLY UNAWARE AND UNAVAILABLE, INSENSITIVE TO EMOTIONS OF SELF AND ALL OTHERS!]

+ A Google search for terms like “anxious-avoidant insecure attachment emotions” will land you in a universe of related information!

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

A Personal Take on Emotions-Feelings

A few posts back I included a link to Dr. Daniel Siegel’s 25-minute Wheel of Awareness guided meditation  (Just Google “siegel wheel of awareness youtube” and lots of related info will come up.).

It would take me some time to elucidate my concerns today about the topic I am presenting. 

(1) On one level I note that I do not get the impression through Siegel’s mediation that feelings and emotions are given their proper due in this exercise.  The weight is on THOUGHTS as you will notice at the end of the practice.  A thought without a root in embodied/feelings is a sterile monster of a thing in my book.

(2) I have known many traditional-minded indigenous people in my lifetime.  Nearly ALL of them would say that “white people” are most known for being “cut-off at the neck” as they “live in their brain only.”  I agree.

(3) Insecure attachment disorders are rampant in American culture and are increasing moment by moment.  This means that “empathy disorders” that include an increasing inability to FEEL anyone’s emotions – self, others, planet — are concurrently escalating.  This is to me a SERIOUS malady that affects certainly American culture on MASSIVE levels.

(4)  Being dead/numb/dumb to one’s feelings is, to me, an indication of dis-integration.  It is a form of DEATH, DYING, and of being DEAD to one’s self and to all life in SERIOUS ways.  This condition is passed through CULTURE as it includes caregiver relationships with little people who are entrusted to adults for their nervous system/brain/body/mind development.  Do we intend to SHUT DOWN the vital signs as they are contained in emotional/feeling information within ourselves, our children and within other people?

(5) I am seeing these shut-down death and dying patterns in my family and know this condition is a massive condition of those living in this Fargo, North Dakota region.  I am now recognizing the familiar awareness I had while living in this area beginning 40+ years ago.  It is a HUGE reason I left here!

(6)  I’ll put this bluntly:  Anyone who tries to shut me down by devaluing ME by devaluing my emotional and feeling state of being in this lifetime is actually working to KILL me-as-myself just as surely as my mother did.

This form of devaluing and disrespect comes at me through RAGE attacks by one person I know and by “so-sweet-shush-shush you are being SO INAPPROPRIATE” by another!!  I remember how this operated for me as an outsider when I first arrived in this area 40+ years ago:  DO NOT BE YOU NO MATTER WHAT because WHO YOU ARE/HOW YOU ARE IS COMPLETELY WRONG AND UNACCEPTABLE TO US!!

Oh, I’ll tell you – I am learning a lot right now – seeing what has taken me so many, many years to learn:  I could NOT make the progress I needed to make in my own healing in this location.  The litmus test now all these years later – and I have been gone from the northland for 20 years – can I maintain MYSELF – my WHOLE SELF – for any length of time while living here again?

If I determine I cannot I will leave here as soon as my apartment lease is up next December 1st, no matter what my other good intentions for assisting others might be.

I will NOT – will NEVER – again be shut down, disrespected, not valued, shamed, ridiculed, judged and rejected from loving acceptance FOR BEING MY TRUE SELF which HAS to include all I FEEL and have the RIGHT to express in my own ways (which of course evidently displease others – but certainly does not harm them in any possible way!).

(7) There are a lot of people here of Scandinavian heritage.  Do far northerners tend to deaden their emotions so that in important ways – as I see things as a complete outsider – they become as cold, frigid and rigid as the often frozen land they inhabit?  Can they only live in winters like these ones by NOT FEELING?

As the “addiction disease” models point out, it is not possible to deaden “only the rejected” and deemed unacceptable “negative” feelings without greatly harming one’s ability to feel the “positive” feelings.  I will NOT become numb/dumb/dead to my FEELING self until I am literally dead in body.  (I also strongly suspect that some form of feeling belongs to our soul and travels with us into eternity without this physical body.)

(8) Is it a Fargo urban legend that North Dakota has the highest alcohol consumption rates of any state in the nation?  Fargo is the largest city in this state – and therefore would have the highest consumption rate. 

99 Million Americans Drink Beer – Well, North Dakota is #1 in the nation for beer consumption, and we all know this says nothing about other alcohol consumption, street or prescription drug use, etc.

Is North Dakota the ALCOHOLIC CAPITAL of the nation?  I am beginning to see that it very well may be.  A feeling disease?  You GOT IT!

North Dakota in Top 10 States for Alcohol Consumption per capita (North Dakota just reached the population it had in 1930 – and has a peculiar demographic based on age of employees in its current farm and oil based boom economy.)

National Alcohol Statistics 2010

National Surveillance Report #96 – Underage Drinking

45 States that Allow Drinking Under 21– at least North Dakota does not ALLOW

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If you are DEAD to your emotional self – what a set-up – DRINK to FEEL anything at all!  It’s a deadly cycle!

Is this a HUGE part of what I am noticing living back here?  Is alcohol consumption a boom biz in North Dakota?  How is booze affecting my family – and therefore – me?  I believe that alcoholism has been in my family for generations.  It’s still here.  Actively in some cases.  In remission in others.

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This post topic is beginning to make me feel ill….  I am certainly no expert on addictions but I do know I have spent over 30 years of my life trying to put myself together after the traumas of my first 18 years of life – and I had to FIND my feelings, even FIND my body at all so wounded was I!  I am NOT going to put myself at risk of backing backwards down my spiral of recovery!

I am hoping I am strong enough to DO THIS current learning curve of my life without anything but increased growth and healing coming to me.  I will sure find out!  This is NOT an easy time!

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Check out this great blog about CONTROL mentioned by a commenter here:

Monkeytraps / Free your inner monkey blog here — http://monkeytraps.wordpress.com/

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Here is an excellent source for the BEST addiction model of treatment on the planet!  HAZELDEN

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Warning contained in this follow-up post —

+COST OF EMOTIONS (be careful)

March 10, 2014

++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

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 and appreciated!

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

 

+TODAY

alchemynow4 Comments

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Sunday, March 09, 2014.  Do I know my limitations right now and if I do, do I know how to honor those limitations?  My entire life is swirling around me in parts and pieces – like chunks and shreds of flying debris.  I recognize this state of emergency both in myself and in my immediate family.  I think in important ways all of us with traumatic, complicated lives both wish for with all our heart and DREAD with everything in our being — these kinds of times.

Healing comes through in these times.  That is the hope, the intention anyway.  Yet I am not sure they (these times) could be more complex, more sinister, more frightening — no, terrifying — in many, many ways.

These are life and death times.  Sometimes actual physical life and death is on the line.  Sometimes it is a death with hope of new life that must include major changes in one’s way of being in the world.  These are times of birthing.  Of regeneration.  But oh the agonies of birthing sometimes.

The hidden difficulties appear as if called into the sky above to cloud or to blacken, to illuminate, to prevent ignorance — ignorance born of the need to survive hard times at all.  That kind of ignoring that keeps TOO MUCH INFORMATION from swamping the often meager boat, the retrofitted (seemingly) pathetic rafts that we have strung together from the times of our childhood and then try to create a good life all through our adult lives being tossed around upon.

++

I could continue on in my life during the first half of it being oblivious to feelings.  I could cry and then continue forward without remembering (thinking about) ever having cried before.  I could make choices and decisions without ever having to link one to the other.  All I knew how to do was to endure.  To survive.  Working SO HARD at living!!!!  Knowing NO OTHER WAY to be alive!

++

I just grabbed a piece of paper and a pen a few moments ago and sketched out how my life feels to me right now.  I started by making a little circle connected to a short straight line going across the paper.  Attached to the end of this line I drew down a long squiggly line that formed a loop “down there” and then squiggled its way back up again to meet at the point where it began.  Like a loop of crooked string.

Then a little space.  Then I drew another concoction just the same as the first one.  Then another one and another and another.

I know that along each of the drooping, dropping down squiggle loops is a collection of experiences I have had in my life that as a rule – in any given moment in the passage of time in my current life — have no meaning to me because they do not relate to what is going on NOW.

I have always left them behind (No, Dr. Daniel Siegel, they are so NOT integrated into my main life story!) as I faced and tackled and made do living with whatever appeared to me next.

All fine so it seems until something MAJOR happens – like is happening for me now – that brings into play my entire life history!  Like pulling up a series of tangled fishing lines dropped off the edge of my battered raft – Is there anything life-producing (helpful, useful) attached to or involved with my history stored along those lines?

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Dissociation.  Protection against being overwhelmed with more information at any one time than any person could cope with!

Take a step.  One dot as my heel rests upon the earth.  A line forms as the rest of my foot lays itself down.  A space between.  Another step forward.  As if being alive gives anyone any other choice?

BUT ALL THAT INFORMATION DOWN THERE!  ALL of it contaminated in some way from the horrendous traumatic abuse of the first 18 years of my life that was glued inside of me as I made all my choices.  All my decisions.

Children were born to me.  There is no way I could leave behind me (down below, tromp tromp drag tromp….) all my complicated history so that it could NOT touch and hurt my children.

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No.  The history my children carry of the trauma that happened to me and came through me to be their burden is NOTHING like the burden I carry — but it hurts them just the same.  Just as I could not have anyone heal me they must heal themselves.  Now within THIS family we are all doing our best to be there for one another.  But oh what a storm!

Prayer and faith and forgiveness.  Truth and honesty.  Love.  Courage and willingness.  But this time is PAINFUL!!  It is very very hard.

Of course individuals do not stand all alone in sharing the passed-down traumas within families.  In many ways – so many of them accidental — we carry these traumas and their effects together.  Heart to heart.  Shoulder to shoulder.  Tears and rage.  Hopes and terrors.  In the traces together.

And when one falls?  When one begins to fall?  When one begins to STOP FALLING?

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This is not an arbitrary process.  Death is disintegration.  Continued life is integration.  (Yes, Dr. Siegel — I hear this!)  Life is orderly.  No matter how hard, no matter how chaotic it might feel.  Healing IS ORDERLY in its own way so that life can go on — and go on — better than it was before.

Even when it doesn’t feel that way.

Especially then.

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So many of those trauma-loaded lines below being shaken and dragged up into NOW at the same time.  Is it true that we cannot bear alone what is meant to be shared together?

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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+FAMILY EMERGENCIES = STATES OF EMERGENCE

alchemynow2 Comments

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Friday, March 07, 2014.  There are a million more things I cannot say on this blog right now that what I can say.  Our family is “in crisis” – which can be more rightly called “a state of emergency.”  (When what hurts and ails one member of a family breaks through past the patterns of status quo as they have operated for years and years such a time brings with it the emergence for ALL members of a family everything that lies deeply below the surface.

The difficult things.  The HUGE things that have affected everyone since their beginning as members of such a family.

What is happening right now for me as the mother in this family could not be more important and could not be more personal.  At the same time the privacy of the family has to be preserved I also need to find ways to express what is happening for me – the best that I can while respecting and doing my best to protect that vitally required privacy of *.

As of Wednesday the highest priority hope of my life for many, many years has been fulfilled.

The local treatment program being accessed for *’s recovery on the residential “high intensity” level for advanced alcoholism means that these professionals now have the entire future of one the most important, loved and cherished members of my family in their hands.  I am most grateful for all prayers and thoughts for healing that can be offered in *’s and our family’s direction.  Thank you.

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I could not be more powerfully aware of the complexity and toughness of the kinds of things I have been recording on this blog about what Dr. Daniel Siegel is telling the world about “making sense” of traumatic pasts so that the power locked within traumas can be erased by their integration into the narrations of people’s life stories than I am right now.

I find myself wondering, “Does Siegel have ANY IDEA how hard this work actually is within people – and therefore within the family those people are members of?”  Can he even IMAGINE the depths that have to remain as open channels that run directly back to the original traumas themselves in order for continued healing and the changes that healing requires to take place?

My answer is, “No, I don’t think he does.  I don’t think Siegel can possibly even begin to know how tough the lives of people affected by severe early abuse and trauma truly is.  How can he?”

This in no way, however, diminishes or negates ANYTHING that Siegel is saying.  How do I know this to be truth?

I know because everything I am finding of what Siegel says matches what I have discovered on my own during my own 30+ years of trying to find ways to heal from, to understand, to comprehend, to make sense of, to-straighten-out-the-bent-and-crooked parts of my own trauma-laden life (that could have been SO MUCH WORSE than it was in so many significant ways).

There is no emotion of which I am capable of feeling that is not being triggered right now by what is happening in *’s life.  Statistics report that at least 50% of American families have at least one close family member who suffers from alcoholism/drug addiction.  We cannot leave dependency on prescription drugs or marijuana out of this equation.  And no matter how the past has been flowing along once one of these family members reaches out for help EVERY family member will be affected.

New truths HAVE to emerge for all as they emerge for one member of a family.  When this happens everything one of us knows from “making sense” of our life as we heal our self (as we heal our life story) toward the integration Siegel promotes as the only REAL solution to healing trauma HAS to change. 

All life is linked together.  Every part affects another part.  The powers these connections have within the “shared emerging mind” (again go back to recent posts on Siegel’s work) on members of families is nearly astronomical.  We are probably not as apt to FEEL this within our conscious awareness when things seem to be going well.  But we sure will notice this when things are happening in the realm of difficulties.

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There is nothing about me in my life going all the way back to my birth that will not be touched by this current “emergency.”  What I know even going back to the generations before me is also flashing back into my conceptions about myself in my life and therefore of myself in *’s life.

There is great, great sorrow and pain for many things that have happened that I had no power over.  Then looking back at my much younger self – and the choices I made, at my own behaviors – how could I have known more than I did so that I could have lived better?

Oh I have FOUGHT for healing for so many years.  Did I fight “good enough” to spare my children?  No. And yes.

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There is no possible way we can make the choice for another person to take the step into the roaring inferno of healing.

We cannot remove the pain from our children that we – no matter how inadvertently, innocently, naively or selfishly — caused them by the way we have lived our life.

As a parent this fact becomes the filter through which I yet again begin the revision of my own life story as I wait to provide * with any help I possibly can toward healing. 

The “making sense of traumas” and the “integration” of which Siegel so knowledgeably and wisely speaks never ends in our lifetime.  We cannot pick and choose which truth of our life we can include and which we can leave out.  But these truths are ALIVE because they are OUR truths.  They can be worked with.  They CAN be healed.

And then – as life goes on – with those we care about and have most powerfully influenced in our life as they live their own life – those truths come back up again – so they can be healed some more.

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But – in spite of how difficult the journey for all of us can be at times – or often — we ARE heading in a positive direction – and that makes all the difference in the world!!  (Thanks for the song, Sandy!)

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job) – what a gift and thank you Ben!  Click here to view or purchase: 

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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