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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“)

++

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.

++

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.”

++

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)

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

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

++

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.

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

++++

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, November 24, 2014.  It didn’t take me very long after I began my studies in 2004 about how early abuse and neglect profoundly affect the physiological development of sufferers for me to understand that all of the various fields of study that contributed information each in essence had one puzzle piece with a small segment of the picture on it.  I knew I have a strong asset in my not being tied to any school or school of thought because I am free to see the bigger picture of how these puzzle pieces fit together, connect and relate to one another.

I discovered a research article this morning that brings my thoughts back into focus along these lines.  This entire article is online free

Childhood Adversity Heightens the Impact of Later-Life Caregiving Stress on Telomere Length and Inflammation

 By Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, Ph.D., Jean-Philippe Gouin, M.A., Nan-ping Weng, M.D., Ph.D., William B. Malarkey, M.D., David Q. Beversdorf, M.D., and Ronald Glaser, Ph.D. — Psychosom Med. Jan 2011; 73(1): 16–22.

Conclusions

“Adverse childhood events are related to continued vulnerability among older adults, enhancing the impact of chronic stressors. Childhood adversities cast a very long shadow.”

++

Long before I heard about the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research I KNEW that the immune system is involved in physiological changes severe early trauma causes in survivors’ development.  However, I am still unclear if ‘others out there’ understand that it is – my strong suspicion – the immune system itself that is responsible for orchestrating the kinds of physiological developmental changes survivors experience on every necessary level so that survival to childbearing years is best achieved.

Yes, it may be that the ‘design’ of the immune system itself also changes as dictated by genetic – epigenetic – engineering in response to early stress during development.  (In fact, it is very probable that epigenetic forces carry early trauma changes down to successive generations so that those people suffer early trauma consequences even if they literally had none in their own early years.)  But the immune system may well be the first line of defense to insure continued survival in unsurvivable early conditions that in turn triggers the kinds of intricately complicated and interacting cascading changes through all ensuing developmental changes.

The above article came to my attention today as I work my own thoughts into patterns I believe in regarding my daughter’s choice of PhD dissertation topic.  Hence the specificity of this article to one area she is considering for research.  However, the article is enlightening and its reference list is absolutely relevant to anyone’s concerns about how early trauma impacts the entire being of its survivors.

++

Along the lines of my current thinking related to my daughter’s research options I found this:

Adverse Childhood Experiences International Questionnaire (ACE-IQ)

“Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) refer to some of the most intensive and frequently occurring sources of stress that children may suffer early in life. Such experiences include multiple types of abuse; neglect; violence between parents or caregivers; other kinds of serious household dysfunction such as alcohol and substance abuse; and peer, community and collective violence.

It has been shown that considerable and prolonged stress in childhood has life-long consequences for a person’s health and well-being. It can disrupt early brain development and compromise functioning of the nervous and immune systems. In addition because of the behaviours adopted by some people who have faced ACEs, such stress can lead to serious problems such as alcoholism, depression, eating disorders, unsafe sex, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases.

The ACE International Questionnaire (ACE-IQ) is intended to measure ACEs in all countries, and the association between them and risk behaviours in later life. ACE-IQ is designed for administration to people aged 18 years and older. Questions cover family dysfunction; physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect by parents or caregivers; peer violence; witnessing community violence, and exposure to collective violence. ACE-IQ is currently being validated through trial implementation as part of broader health surveys.

Findings from ACE-IQ surveys can be of great value in advocating for increased investments to reduce childhood adversities, and to inform the design of prevention programmes.”

About ACE-IQ

• Introductory materials
  pdf, 17kb
• Questionnaire
  pdf, 247kb
• Guide to administering ACE-IQ
• Data management
• Supporting documents
• • How you can help validate ACE-IQ
  • Global ACE-IQ research network

++

If nothing else, linking our thinking as severe early abuse, neglect and trauma survivors up to the bigger picture helps us affirm that WE ARE NOT ALONE!  It is, to me, a sign of the emerging maturity of humanity that this subject is gaining wider and wider interest and attention.  Not a small problem to address for anyone, but there are movements in the right direction!

++++

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 »

++++

++++

Sunday, November 23, 2014.  It has been a long time since an academic book has drawn my attention, and I am not sure if I have ever spent $100 on a title.  But here goes!

Dr. Ross Buck breezed through today to leave a short comment about his new book’s publication on one of my blog pages where I referenced some of his other writing I read in 2007.

(NEUROLOGICAL BASES OF RECEIVING EMOTIONAL DISPLAYS , The Neuropsychology of Communication:  Spontaneous and Symbolic Aspects,Journal of Pragmatics 22 (1994) 265-278) with my notes posted here:  **Buck on Symbolic Communication and Emotions

My friend and I spent a bit of time online searching this new book today and I have decided to purchase a copy ASAP in spite of its $100 (or so) price tag –

Emotion: A Biosocial Synthesis (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction), Dr. Ross Buck – October 20, 2014 — Cambridge University Press

That’s a LOT of money in my poverty budget, but I believe this is an investment I won’t regret.

Why this leap?

In some ways I am buying the book for what I already know is NOT inside its covers.  The big guns of ‘developmental neuroscience’ such as doctors Allan Schore, Daniel Siegel, Jon Allen, Martin Teicher, Stephen Porges , etc. are NOT listed in the bibliography.

But I trust that I have done my homework.  I KNOW what these docs have to say.  I can do some solo flying now because I know a lot about how early attachment interactional patterns build the right limbic social-emotional brain hemisphere – what goes wrong, what goes right….

My great scholar friend found one ‘disclaimer’ paragraph on around page 363 of Buck’s book and read it to me today, although when I later asked him to read it to me again no place online allow let him get back to that paragraph.  The gist of it in regard to my chief areas of concern is that it contained – virtually, from my point of view – a clear statement that I can search the entire book to find anything like a description of what it is like to be a Trauma Altered Development person from severe infant and child abuse and I will NOT find any resonance to my kind (and others of this blog’s readers) situations within its pages.

So be it.  I can live with that now.  I honor the presence of the ‘disclaimer’.  I will not search in vain.  I know what’s missing.

However, ‘attachment’ and ‘shame’ are in the index, and importantly the work of Dr. Silva Tomkins is also mentioned.  And then, of course, there’s an entire smorgasbord of thoughts and ideas in this book that will be entirely new to me.  NEW is fine with me.  Actually, it’s GREAT!  Fantastic.

++

I’ve mentioned here on the blog before that one of my daughters stunned me with one of her first questions soon after she acquired competence with language enough to ask it at around age 3:  “Mommy, is my body the boss of my mind or is my mind the boss of my body?”

I was nearly 40 years younger then than I am now.  I am not certain that I would answer my daughter’s question the same way now.  Maybe I would?  I don’t know.  But what I told her that day was that she has a SOUL that is the boss of both her mind and her body.

Yet here I am now faced very powerfully with a similar question of my own.  I am SICK of being run by my trauma-altered body!  I intend to feed my MIND with information that will strengthen me enough to in some new way make a new kind of peace between the ME that is trying to live my earth-bound life with any kind of quality at all in a body that has evidently just about HAD it with having to ‘carry on’ in the condition is was forced to be built in through 18 years of severe abuse and neglect trauma from birth.

Somewhere in the middle between my sleeping troubles, very high anxiety, nasty depression, dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, and PTSD overload there is a ME in here who WANTS MY LIFE BACK!!

I could not be more serious.  I have increasingly difficult problems being around people AT ALL!  I know I not only missed out on nearly every kind of adequate developmental opportunity to learn to read social cues (this information was not built into my early-forming right brain hemisphere as it should have been) but also because of childhood years of extensive solitary confinement and extreme social isolation I cannot respond to and with emotions in “ordinary” ways, either.

I am so far down at the bottom of the heap when it comes to what abuse (truly psychotic abuse) can do to a person I literally have NO idea how I am still HERE.  I really don’t.

But I AM HERE!  And I deserve a better life than the one I have been forced to live as my ‘disabilities’ close in on me as if I am literally being buried alive by them.

++

So when it comes down to ‘efficacy’ as I recently posted about it, I know darn well I can devour this academic book just fine, and I certainly intend to do so.  I KNOW there are answers in those pages for what ails me right now and I intend to find them.

This Stop the Storm blog is a teensy weensy flit of a spec in the vast internet world, and yet Dr. Buck found that one post I entered here years ago.  I don’t consider the appearance of an alert for his comment in my email box today to be a ‘mere coincidence’.  No, not me.  I believe it is an answer to my desperate prayer for healing that has brought me some light I need now in the form of this book.

We are not in this universe alone.  I am a good person.  This book even discusses THAT.  Take a look at the Table of Contents.  Look at the note this book ends on.  I am game!  And I am sure really, really sick of the level of suffering I have been living with.  I deserve MORE!  We all do.

So, I will literally keep you posted on this venture – adventure!  I thank the author in advance for this opportunity his work has to teach me what I do not yet know.  I will make very good use of what I learn.  Of that I have no doubt!

++++

NOTE:  Many early (and “late”) trauma survivors have difficulty with sleep and dreaming.  I was glad to see this come across my “attention desk” today.

An interesting movie I plan to watch online tonight:

One More Reason to Get a Good Night’s Sleep

“The brain uses a quarter of the body’s entire energy supply, yet only accounts for about two percent of the body’s mass. So how does this unique organ receive and, perhaps more importantly, rid itself of vital nutrients? New research suggests it has to do with sleep.”

++++

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 »

++++

++++

Saturday, November 22, 2014.  Here is a fantastic video!  Short and worth the watch!!

Musicians’ Brains Really Do Work Differently — In A Good Way

“Did you know that every time musicians pick up their instruments, there are fireworks going off all over their brain?”

“That’s the launching point for a fantastic little video made by educator Anita Collins and animator Sharon Colman Graham for TED-Ed. What they explain is that while listening to music is beneficial, playing music is “the brain’s equivalent of a full-body workout.”

“What’s more: Neuroscientists have found that some of these aspects of mental work are different from any other activity studied, including playing sports or engaging in various creative pursuits.”

“For teachers, TED-Ed has made a full, customizable lesson plan available on this fascinating topic and exciting research. Happy playing!”

++

I especially noticed the description (at around 2:00 on the lower slider bar) of the activities of the left and right brain hemispheres, and of the corpus callosum area that passes information between the two hemispheres.  Changes due to early trauma in brain development note that all of these areas are impacted by infant and child abuse trauma.  Learning to play music HEALS us!

There are also some very important article links HERE about how verbal abuse terribly hurts some of these same brain regions that learning to play an instrument can help heal!

While I would like to see some of the references for the research mentioned in this video I am not motivated enough to contact the organization that did this video to look for the list.  I just BELIEVE what they are saying is absolutely true!!

++

I was thinking about this earlier in the day before I watched this video as I practiced my piano scales.  I want to HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone interested in achieving some of these kinds of healing benefits right from the get-go!!

Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises by Charles-Louis Hanon

Be sure to buy the 2006 edition with the cover in color!!!  It is the best translation from the French available, and that is important for reasons explained in the text.  If you click on this link (above) you will find the book is really cheap new, and very cheap used!  It is a perfect learning tool for newbies and a fantastic exercise book for any musician who wants to train to perfection!

I was also thinking that any small keyboard with at least two full octaves would work for these exercises.  Ideally you need one with some stiffness to the keys, and preferably one with 44 keys to do these exercises as specified.

Brain science also tells us that practice for 20 minutes at a time with a 2 hour break between sessions is not only just fine, but provides the optimal time for the brain to maximize learning from those 20 minute segments!  More playing at a time is fine, of course, but this pattern is the most efficient for learning.

++

There are some things I could write about my own music-learning experiences, both on keys and with drumming, but this process is very personal and different in many ways for everyone who plays at any level.  I would rather get my fingers off my computer keys right now and onto my keyboard ones right now, so off I go!

++++

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 »

++++

++++

Friday, November 21, 2014.  Efficacy:  “the power to produce an effect.”  It seems that my writing of my last three posts lead directly to this word in my thinking.  Efficacy.  Such a small word.  Or does it only seem small to me at this moment because it seems to me that my “power to produce an effect” is so pitifully small, limited and inadequate right now?

This being said, I must admit I feel very disempowered in my life right now.  This has been true, really, for a very long time.  I have just been able to outrun the pit-of-my-stomach feeling that I cannot outrun it now.

I can see that having nothing much to work with I found my efficacy in the dirt when I made this –

LINDA’S ADOBE PEACE GARDEN

Being dirt poor I decide that I better make something beautiful out of dirt, then.  “Producing an effect” is always what my love of gardening has been about.  What my craft work has been – and is about.  In my being I always desire to create and produce a positive effect.  Something useful.  And if at all possible something of beauty no matter what I have to work with.

I see at this moment that even my current efforts to practice keyboard and drumming is also tied to my desire to produce an effect even if it is halting, awkward and quite unskilled.  Music is created because someone produces an effect of sound upon the air waves.

Writing.  I can do that out of nothing, virtually nothing.  Perhaps it is one of the most beneficial effects produced by advances in computer technology including access to the internet that lets people increase the efficacy of their lives.  We are empowered in many ways that did not exist not so many years ago.

Cell phones empower us to be in increasing communication with others.  Efficacy.

Yet by nature I am a high enough drive person to CRAVE efficacy.  Child abuse, all oppression and abuse, robs people of degrees of efficacy.

I love being outdoors as much as possible, and here in the north for these months coming up it is a miserable experience for me to be outside.  Frigid winters hurt me in many ways.  They rob me of degrees of what efficacy is for me that I had available in Arizona.  Apartment living in a city without a yard is, for me, another loss of efficacy problem.

So obviously efficacy is very personal and tailor-made differently for different people.  Many people lose efficacy living in the country.  Yet poverty, disabilities, sicknesses, many aspects of aging, oppression, abuse — all rob people of degrees of efficacy.  It becomes a “resiliency factors versus risk factors” situation in how people can respond to any of these conditions.

How do we remedy the depleting effects of a lack of efficacy?  Definition of EFFICACIOUS:  having the power to produce a desired effect <an efficacious remedy>

I am always in the process of working this out because I must.  To me, having efficacy is life.  Not having it (appropriately, of course) is a form of dying.

Efficacy is what I tried so hard to give to my children.  It is “the effect” I am hoping I am contributing to my grandson as I care for him.

I think efficacy is a very hard quality to produce and to maintain alone.

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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.

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Friday, November 21, 2014.  What kept me from evening beginning to comprehend that I had been “an abused child” until I was nearly 30 years old?  Having been ejected out of the horrific conditions of my home of origin one month after my 18th birthday I would think — now — that I should have at least had a glimmer of an idea that something had gone terribly terribly wrong during those 18 years.

Reality was I knew less than NOTHING!

I was that innocent, that naive, and perhaps just that open to the ongoing nature of life forward through time instant by instant that nothing ever came along that caused me to question — anything.

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Questions are very troublesome to me if I can’t find answers for them.  Or at least be able to determine a direction to hunt for what MIGHT be an answer.

There are a LOT of problems in the world.  There are problems within problems within problems.  So are their, equally and correspondingly, answers within answers within answers for every question each of these problems creates?  If so, are there ALSO solutions to problems that follow this same pattern?

What good is a question without an answer?  Of what use?  What good is a problem without a solution?

There were LOTS of problems with my childhood.  Nothing BUT problems, really.  But perhaps because there were no solutions these problems could not be seen for what they were.  Not by me, anyway.

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There’s another twist in how I look at such concerns that might be most unique to me and to those who were abused by a PSYCHOTIC Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) parent.  In my case the bizarre, profound and disastrous two split worlds of my mother — good/heaven/everyone but me — and bad/hell/no one BUT me — meant that in every situation where there was a problem in our family in some way Mother’s twisted mind put ME at the center as “the cause and creator of” those problems.

The set-up from my birth was that if I wasn’t “so bad” everyone’s life would be perfect.  Everyone in our family.  We were the only ones that mattered.

But the psychosis of Mother’s broken mind ALSO and at the same time orchestrated an toxic and invasive, permanent thought structure that was TRUE (of course, in her mind-world) that if I were NOT in the world life would be perfect.

I could not question this thought construct.  I had no other information.  Did I think of myself, then, in terms of “Gee, I guess I better be dead?”

No.

“Not alive?”

No.

Just no thoughts about any of this.  None.  A blank where I SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

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In effect for nearly all practical purposes I was dead.  I was not alive.  I did not exist.  I had never come into being.  Mother’s abuse and her psychosis did not allow me to be a person other than her complete projection of her own inner darkness onto (and into) me.

Nonexistent children do not ask questions because they don’t have any.  This condition did not change simply by the motions of my physically removing my body from the range of that so-sick woman.

NOW?

This post comes about because I am smack nose-against-the-wall aware today that I fundamentally BELIEVE IF THERE IS A PROBLEM THERE IS A SOLUTION!

I cannot turn my thinking around to come up with another way to look at life.

If there are multiple problems, problems within problems, there are matching answers and solutions — every tiny step of the way.

I believe ALL PROBLEMS HAVE SOLUTIONS.

Then…..  My thinking has to move on….  To the WHY aren’t the problems and the questions and the answers and the solutions NOT being identified for ALL of them for EVERYONE and everything on the planet NOW?

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I turn around full circle within and ask myself, “Are these rational, logical thoughts?”  What are they rooted in connected to and embedded within the structure of my cognition processes coming from the way I was raised?

No condition on earth as far as it implicates and involves human beings exists in a vacuum.  To me this fact suggests the biggest problem of all.  We cannot truly solve the biggest problems ALONE.  Not in our individual lives and certainly not in our collective life.

And here comes that word:  Attachment.  With all its complexity, all of its implications for us as members of a social species.  We don’t create problems alone and we don’t solve them alone.  Not really.

But I am not sure there is anything more difficult on earth than to get humans to agree en masse about anything, certainly not about how to improve all lives toward creating a prosperous and peaceful global civilization, which is what really needs to happen.  A society built upon justice, which is itself a spiritual principle.

There was NO JUSTICE in the first 18 years of my life, that’s for sure.  Only its opposite.  Yet somehow I seem to have been born with an innate knowledge that justice DOES exist, that its source is divine, and that its application to all human affairs is not only possible but will solve all of humanity’s problems.

I believe this:

“The obstacle to human happiness is racial or religious prejudice, the competitive struggle for existence and inhumanity toward each other.”  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá  (read entire passage HERE)

I also believe this:

“…among mankind there may be those who are ignorant; they must be trained. Some are sick; they must be treated. Some are immature; they must be helped to attain maturity.”  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá  (read entire passage HERE)

In my thinking all human difficulties exist because of some combination of problems related to the words in these two statements.  The solution is vast and is not one many humans are willing to contemplate.

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I grew up “on the fringe” of society.  Our family took that to the extremes of leaving suburban Los Angeles to move to Alaska, and that wasn’t even fringe enough.  Up they went near timberline on an Alaskan mountainside to stake claim to a homestead.  Never mind the extremely rare fringe severe mental illness with its full-blown psychosis that fueled and sustained this entire fringe operation, within which I was trapped in a psychotically abusive hell.

So I was prepared to “be fringe” and to think fringe.  Here I am.  Doing exactly that.  Not much choice in this matter.  Right along with Popeye, “I yam what I yam.”  I have never found anything about my existence to be easy.  Perhaps I never will.

++++

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.

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Leave a Comment »

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Thursday, November 20, 2014.  I guess I easily jumped forward 900 years in my last post.  And now backward…..   In the meantime, I have a few post-post observations.

Conflict.  Although there are degrees of conflict I don’t think it is “ordinary” to have such a narrow comfort with conflict.  Any change in the environment, any challenge to an ongoing experience of life can be seen as conflict by the body.  Any shift in attention, anything that demands we might need to alter how we are using available resources to get along in life can be perceived as conflict between self and the wider world.

Any time a person is already challenged — by hunger, thirst, exhaustion, sickness and/or preoccupation with other concerns — and then is met by a new change (challenge) in their experience in the world some kind of a readjustment of attention is required so that a determination can be made about what needs to happen next.  Always threat vs safety is included in these assessments.  Every interaction demands the use of resources — inner and/or outer.

Because early severe trauma survivors live in a body that was built by, in and for a trauma world there is always an overload of sensation biased toward the ongoing need to survive in a malevolent, dangerous, threatening world of deprivation and scarcity.  Hoping to rely on the use of perpetual conscious logic to “trick” the body into “laying off the horn” of an alarm response is not enough to keep many of us from over-reacting in challenging situations when they arrive.  The body uses automatic responses because they are incredibly fast, efficient, and most likely to be effective.  Trying to down-regulate alarm responses so that conscious, very slow and complicated conscious responses can come into play always uses inner resources that might not be easily or quickly replenished.

Resiliency is, then, a multifaceted series of events.  I can imagine that as a severe early trauma survivor living within a body whose physiological development was altered in order to endure and survive those 18 long years, that my inner resources have been depleted over the years of my adulthood and have not been adequately replenished — all through no fault of my own.  This seems to be my experience, and I have little tolerance for conflict of ANY kind.  I see this lack of resources, lack of resource replenishment, and depletion of my tolerance for conflict as being directly connected to the ongoing lifelong negative consequence of severe early trauma from abuse and neglect.

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Escaping the physical abuse when I was 18 did NOT mean I escaped then or ever will escape the long-term harmful effects of my years of early trauma.

NOW when I think about “STOP CHILD ABUSE” I think not even so much about the terrible suffering of the little tiny helpless innocent dependent victims of ongoing early abuse.  I think of its SURVIVORS who are most likely to suffer from consequences of that abuse IN THEIR BODY for their entire lifespan.

It does seem to me looking back over my adulthood that I carried with me some kind of natural immunity to the effects that I am so aware of now.  I could “handle” being around people, for example.  I absolutely took it for granted that “we” were alike.  It NEVER dawned on me that I was “a different kind of person” because of what I had lived through and because of how those experience changed my physiological development.

Again I mention a need for readers to Google “CDC ACE study” to begin to learn about the kind of information beginning to infiltrate understanding about the life-long risk of problems from early traumas.  The term “Trauma Informed Care” is evolving as professionals learn more and more about the extremely high risk early severe trauma survivors carry with them for all kinds of problems during their life.  Being able to understand HOW we are in the world because of our trauma history is part of how we apply this kind of new thinking to our own life.

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What depletes us?  What feeds and sustains us?  What helps to increase our strength — which IS our power to experience a better quality of life in all arenas vital to humans?

It seems as I write this meandering post that I am asking myself a fundamental question:  “What is quality of life?  What does it mean?  Where does it come from?  How much of it is essential to having and maintaining an inner ongoing state of assurance that we are OK in the world?”

I lived all of my life until my youngest child left home when I was 52 years old being primarily concerned and involved with GIVING to other people.  It was not a familiar process for me to think about “What do I need for myself in my life?”  Now that I am older I realize that I would say first of all “I needed not to experience continual horrible abuse and neglect trauma throughout the duration of my childhood from birth so that HOW my body was created did not come to overtax every one of my innate abilities to have a good life.”

Perhaps it is helpful at this point for me to be getting so clear about what the limitations I live with are doing to deplete my quality of life.  But how do I CHANGE things to help myself improve my quality of life in spite of these difficulties?

I know I resigned myself to the horrible conditions of my childhood.  If I had not done that I would have been dead a long, long time ago.  I have no doubt that if I had challenged my abuser (Mother) she would have killed me in her attempts to maintain her delusions.  Neither of us had any other choice back then.

But what does resignation do to me now?

I am willing to bet that I only ask these kinds of questions now because I have lived long enough to do so.

And the answers?  SOME answers?  Time will tell.

++++

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.

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Leave a Comment »

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