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Saturday, June 4, 2016.  OK.  Now one MORE post for today and I can drop my pen for the evening.  (Yes, I did have a bit of a backlog!)

Here is an outstanding free resource online for ANYONE involved with ACEs related concerns.  Any of us with high ACE scores are in the lifelong process of providing care for our self, so I see this tooklit as OUR toolkit, as well as a toolkit for those working or living with other people of any age who have a severe trauma history.

I sincerely and with deepest gratitude thank these  public health nurses in Spokane, Washington — Melissa Charbonneau, Peggy Slider and Rhonda Crooker — for their fantastic work in the creation of this toolkit that will help so many people!

There is a link in this short article (presented below in this post) by Jane Stevens to download the 178 page free toolkit — 1*2*3 Care  —

Public health nurses awarded for “1-2-3 Care Toolkit, a Trauma-Sensitive Toolkit for Caregivers of Children”

“Public health nurses at Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) developed a 178-page toolkit — 1*2*3 Care — for caregivers of children. They define caregivers as parents, grandparents, child care providers, teachers, and others who care for children daily.

“They describe the toolkit as supporting caregivers on their journey towards “trauma sensitivity”.

“The toolkit can be downloaded as a whole, or individual topics can be downloaded separately. The toolkit also includes handouts for caregivers.

“The topics include:

• The Brain — Stress and early brain development, understanding adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and accompanying parent handouts.
• Resilience
• Attachment
• Cues
• Emotions
• Emotional Regulation
• Behavior
• Discipline
• Repair
• Self-Care
• Military Families “

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Saturday, June 4, 2016.  Here I would simply like to share with you a great IDEA about QUESTIONS and QUESTIONING, along with another idea about what to do regarding ideas and questions.  I am more excited about the opportunities Christopher Phillips presents in his book, Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy (2002) than I have been about anything in a long, long time!

This is NOT a “book about philosophy.”  It is a book about how to question in healthy ways one’s own thoughts and enjoy being in community with others who are doing the same thing.  This book presents the foundations of how to begin a Socrates Café grassroot group ANYWHERE with ANY group of people!

There is a clear step-by-step online article here:  Tips for starting and facilitating a Socrates Café!  But the book must be read in order to grasp the bigger picture of what “this” is all about – for you, and for others.

One of the certain characteristics of trauma ridden childhoods is that we were not exposed to ordinary, healthy conversations OR exposed to QUESTIONING as we needed to be.  This book clearly shows people like me HOW to LEARN to question – how to question with others – how to improve our life – with others AND with our self!

The book is inexpensive online.  It is NOT complex or hard to comprehend.  It is, I am finding, a FUN read.  Very stimulating, encouraging and inspiring.  It is hopeful.  It gives me something to try when I get back home this fall!

Here’s the link to the background website:  Philosopher.org

I have never studied anything about philosophy.  I am not a linear person.  Does that mean I am not a reasonable (reason-able) person?  Not a rationally minded person?

Nope. It’s the philosophy of life as people live it!  Take a look!  Have some fun!  Build some real community!  What a great idea!

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Saturday, June 4, 2016.  Someone recently gifted me with an almost 100-year-old small newsletter from which I copied the quote on healing presented below.  I wish to make a few trauma altered development, high ACE score comments about this piece here at the beginning first.

I read a little about the woman who gave the talk this quote was taken from and found nothing to suggest that her background was less than OK.  Unlike my early experiences and those of many of this blog’s reader, there were probably no high risk patterns that prevented her from going along through her life in at least a ‘good enough’ fashion.

I now know as I approach my 65^th birthday, having spent more than half of my life now working on healing from my severe early traumas, that I was NEVER able to ‘be a child’ in any ordinary way (as described in my book noted at the end of this post).  This means for me I was NEVER truly healthy – never – from my first breath on this earth.  I was not allowed to be healthy.  The environment I grew up in was nearly the epitome of dis-ease.

It’s important in my life journey for me to realize, according to my beliefs, that God created me – my soul self that will live forever – at the moment of my conception.  It really struck me the other night in a rather strange sort of epiphany instant as I was drifting off to sleep – really for the first time so clearly – that my parents were NEVER my parents.

God is my parent.  He has ALWAYS been my parent.  He MADE me!

My earth parents hurt me.  Terribly.  It is now possible to feel just a little bit freer of the constrictions of thinking of myself as “my parents’ child.”  I need to recognize that “restore both body and soul” is, for me, a two part process.

While my body itself was healthy before I was born into trauma – that was the ONLY time that trauma did not influence my physiology.

However, my SOUL restoration is an entirely different thing.  I have long recognized in my healing journey that Mother could NOT touch ME – my soul.  She could not and she did not.

Making this distinction matters greatly to me, especially as I experience ever-more serious consequences of the stress/distress/trauma alterations to my body that the continual horrors of the first 18 years of my life created in my body systems.  I can take my “life awareness” including my healing journey to an entirely different level because of this clarify I have.

In this “old” quote I read some words that as a trauma altered person I put quotes around for myself in my own thinking:  “Instead of dwelling upon your injury or your ailment, talking about it….” is a different thing for people like me who had no voice and no caregivers to protect us when we needed to be saved.

We DO need to talk when helpful about our reality – so I take those words in quotes to illuminate my need to be watchful of what I am telling MYSELF in my thoughts.

And most particularly I need to continually remind myself that nothing is hopeless!  Life itself is a creative, miraculous, generative process.  There is no end to the healing potentials around us, no matter who we are or what our early experiences were – or what they did to harm us.

But I think we need to be vigilant in the world of words so as to not invisibly bash ourselves for not being able to accomplish what non-traumatized people around us seem to be able to.

I am not sure that I have EVER “pitied” myself, for example.  My suffering was and still is very, very real.  I do need tools to help me get over the larger of the road bumps that appear sometimes.  I found some of that help among the words in this quote below, enough so that I want to share this —

Healing quote

– published in Star of the West, August 1, 1916, Vol. VII, No. 8, p. 74

Segment of a talk given by Baha’i Mary Hanford Ford (1856-1937) while “on the Pacific Coast” on “The Bahai [sic] Movement and Spiritual Healing”

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“Deny injury and illness, and then lift yourself up to the Divine One, and thus bring yourself health and healing.  Instead of dwelling upon your injury or your ailment, talking about it and pitying yourself, call upon God for strength, health, wisdom, ideals, courage and a renewal of the soul and body.  The power of the spiritual belongs to the whole world, and not to a few.  It is easily acquired, and will often restore both body and soul.  One must become as a little child to receive the Kingdom of heaven into the heart.”

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Wednesday, May 18, 2016.  NOTE:  This list was deleted from the newer 2010 edition of this book.  I found it incredibly helpful to me in “nailing down” what was wrong with my abusive, psychotic mentally ill mother.

Here is the link to my first post on this list – and my Mother.  It took me another year for the reality of the terrible PSYCHOTIC nature of her illness to crystallize in my thinking, especially as it created her insane abuse of me (see my book’s link at bottom of this post for more info):

+DID MY MOTHER SUFFER FROM BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)? (this is eerie)  October 6, 2012

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43 characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder

From:  Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul Mason MS and Randi Kreger (Jan 2, 2010)

Thoughts That May Indicate BPD

Does this person:

 (1) — Alternate between seeing people as either flawless or evil?  Have difficulty remembering the good things about a person they’re casting in the role of villain?  Find it impossible to recall anything negative about this person when they become the hero?

(2) — Alternate between seeing others as completely for them or against them?

(3) — Alternate between seeing situations as either disastrous or ideal?

(4) — Alternate between seeing themselves as either worthless of flawless?

 (5) — Have a hard time recalling someone’s love for them when they’re not around?

(6) — Believe that others are either completely right or totally wrong?

(7) — Change their opinions depending upon who they’re with?

(8) — Alternate between idealizing people and devaluing them?

(9) — Remember situations very differently than other people, or find themselves unable to recall them at all?

(10) — Believe that others are responsible for their actions — or take too much responsibility for the actions of others?

(11) — Seem unwilling to admit a mistake — or feel that everything that they do is a mistake?

(12) — Based their beliefs on feelings rather than facts?

(13) — Not realize the effects of their behavior on others?

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Feelings That May Indicate BPD

Does this person:

(14) — Feel abandoned at the slightest provocation?

 (15) — Have extreme moodiness that cycles very quickly (in minutes or hours?)

(16) — Have difficulty managing their emotions?

(17) — Feel emotions so intensely that it’s difficult to put others’ needs — even those of their own children — ahead of their own?

(18) — Feel distrustful and suspicious a great deal of the time?

(19) — Feel anxious or irritable a great deal of the time?

(20) — Feel empty or like they have no self a great deal of the time?

(21) — Feel ignored when they are not the focus of attention?

(22) — Express anger inappropriately or have difficulty in expressing anger at all?

(23) —  Feel that they never can get enough love, affection, or attention?

(24) — Frequently feel spacey, unreal, or out of it?

Behaviors That May Indicate BPD

Does this person

 (25) — Have trouble observing others’ personal limits?

(26) — Have trouble defining their own personal limits?

(27) — Act impulsively in ways that are potentially self-damaging, such as spending too much, engaging in dangerous sex, fighting, gambling, abusing drugs or alcohol, reckless driving, shoplifting, or disordered eating?

(28) — Mutilate themselves — for example, purposely cutting or burning their skin?

(29) — Threaten to kill themselves — or make actual suicide attempts?

(30) — Rush into relationships based on idealized fantasies of what they would like the other person or the relationship to be?

(31) — Change their expectations in such a way that the other person feels they can never do anything right?

(32) — Have frightening, unpredictable rages that make no logical sense — or have trouble expressing anger at all?

(33) — Physically abuse others, such as slapping, kicking, and scratching them?

(34) — Needlessly create crises or live a chaotic lifestyle?

(35) — Act inconsistently or unpredictably?

(36) — Alternately want to be close to others, then distance themselves?  (Examples include picking fights when things are going well or alternately ending relationships and then trying to get back together.)

(37) — Cut people out of their life over issues that seem trivial or overblown?

(38) — Act competent and controlled in some situations but extremely out of control in others?

(39) — Verbally abuse others, criticizing and blaming them to the point where it feels brutal?

(40) — Act verbally abusive toward people they know very well, while putting on a charming front for others?  Can they switch from one mode to the other in seconds?

(41) — Act in what seems like extreme or controlling ways to get their own needs met?

(42) — Do or say something inappropriate to focus the attention on them when they feel ignored?

(43) — Accuse others of doing things they did not do, having feelings they do not feel, or believing things they do not believe?

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Monday, May 16, 2016.  Good day today.  Nice to be able to jump over that dead uncle triggering heap so quickly (yes, turns out, writing a blog post DID help).  Rest in peace, Uncle.  I mean that.  “Let the dead bury the dead.”

And I moved on….

My daughter fulfilled my wish list today when she bought me a 2’ x 3’ white dry erase board for my music composing!  It’s even magnetic!

Very sweet gift – which will do away with my sheets of paper taped to my walls all around my keyboard.

Today I nudged this song I am working on ALL the way out of its original interesting melding of Middle Eastern musical scale with Western diatonic scale so that it now lies squarely within a useful (flatfooted) plain old Key of C.  That’s OK.  I had great fun with it today!

Later I might play around with this “East meets West” thing.  At first this song appeared as IF it SHOULD have been in the Key of A – which it clearly was not.  There were no sharps or flats to be found anywhere!

But they WERE there – so I went online searching and quickly found that in Persian Middle Eastern music sharps and flats abound – differently from over here on our side of the ocean.

But this is part of the fun of these musical adventures.  With internet assistance I can instantly find musical facts that fit my need-to-know (which is vast).  At the moment I have a kind of “PS” piece to this bigger song that is just meant for kids of all ages to have fun with!

Kneading its beat led me to take a gaze at the beautiful Bach piece HERE – and then to a site that showed me that the graph paper I decided to use today for writing this ‘beat ditty’ makes perfect sense!!  HERE are some visual examples of the musical notation of RAP!

How FASCINATING!  Both of the styles of writing and of music displayed at these links are beautiful to me, indicative not only of the beauty of music itself, but also of the ‘turning into matter’ something invisible.  Giving patterns visual form that is – but it not – the music itself.

(I like to surround myself with books of piano music scrounged from rummage sales and thrift stores.  Not that I think about training myself to play those songs.  I think written music is a display of beauty of form and marking all by itself. I want them on my walls!)

Music is miraculous to me, although I listen to less and less of it the older I get.  I think in part that’s because if I give myself the time to LISTEN – there are other songs waiting for me to find them.

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Other than what little bit I have managed to figure out on my own, I have no musical training.  That’s OK.  There’s joy in this for me and that is a very great thing!  Of course it helps that today was actually SUNNY without wind!

About time.

Speaking of time….

Melody takes nothing of effort it seems to me.  It’s the RHYTHM that I am working with (shovel, hoe and plow!).  I need to SEE “time” in order to “get this” the way I want it – the way I FEEL it – which is as difficult to capture for me as an invisible butterfly.

No different, I suppose, from trying to name any complex emotional configuration from within that does not ACTUALLY have a name.

We find these things, it seems.  Shifts in perceptions.  Focusing thought.  Yes, I have clocks.  I can tell time.

Or CAN I?

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I wonder what music will be like 500 years from now.  I think we will invent instruments not imagined yet.  I don’t mean purely digital ones, either.  REAL instruments, ones that have body – like a glorious grand piano has body.  Real drums have body.  Shake the room vibrating sound waves kind of body.

Tomorrow I will think some more about how I can play my melody along with its bass notes – together at the same time – within the same middle 2.5 octaves.  High notes are too high.  Low notes are to low.  Hummmm…..

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I am also wondering about this free MuseScore software – I asked my computer savvy son to look over this for me.  Hope he gets back to me on this so I don’t have to bug him!

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Michael Jackson (did not read music, did not feel it was necessary (he recorded versions of his songs) – his music came out entirely whole, or “appeared” to him over time) – amazing – tribute link – you might need to copy and paste this into your browser –

http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-incredible-way-michael-jackson-wrote-music/

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

++++

Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame

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Wednesday, May 4, 2016.  My art therapy training sessions with a “service provider” I will call Abby here in Fargo are going refreshingly well!  Many aspects of the practice are coming up for us to describe through a very natural process of art production and discussion.

It is fascinating to be working with a very healthy woman!  At the same time she is experiencing the process of creating images, many important aspects of “being a therapist” are appearing in her images.

I wanted to mention two linked and intertwined aspects of “being a therapist” (“being a healer”) that showed up in Abby’s art work today – 1) transference and countertransference, and 2) “the healer” archetypes.

Patterns and dynamics of therapy processes are about communication.  When limited only to verbalization processes the details of the nuances in the processes are much harder to track than they are through art work expressions.  Importantly, all aspects of the transference process work best for a HEALED  healer.  Art processes enable these patterns to become very clear and nearly tangible in image work.

For an art therapist countertransference will appear through doing one’s own artwork outside of sessions while focus is on session work, on the client and on the internal experience of the therapist.  This is an “evoking-evocative” process which allows “awakenings” within the therapist that will in-form the therapy work.

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In a healed healer those images can be trusted to be “echoes” of the processes a client is moving through.  They can clarify for the therapist deeper levels of meaning, connections and movement of the work going on in sessions.

Art therapy, when done near its peak maximum potential, is a kind of poetry (poesis).  This is a highly constructive and re-creational way of being in the world.  Every second in a session matters.  Every part of the session is a “telling” part of the image and speaks of the poetry of the work.  All words and related non-spoken exchange signals are also part of the wholeness of the image being expressed in an ongoing manner.  Every part is valued – and is OF value.

Transference (client to therapist) is an expected aspect of a therapy relationship.  Countertransference (therapist to client) also needs to be welcomed, appreciated, valued – AND understood.  These processes MUST be operating on the conscious level for the therapist, and art image making is a powerful way to bring this consciousness into focus.

Because art therapy (done correctly) is a superb medium of communication exchanges it WILL expose to light all that can be known of what is happening in therapy processes.  Not all at once, of course!  No therapy works that way­.  The art work is a specific record of the details of such a process along with whatever words are recorded in the poetic process of interacting verbally with the images.

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Probably up to and into the 1980s the term “wounded healer” was still accepted in reference to people who suffered in their own lives but could use all of their experiences of suffering and healing processes to help others heal.

At about the middle of that decade a shift began to appear which demonstrated that being wounded as a healer was no longer enough — or acceptable.

As time moves forward in the evolution of the maturation process of the human race we will eventually reach a point where civilization no longer will tolerate anywhere on the planet what so harms people today (and all life here on earth).

I anticipate this to be a many centuries-long process, but we ARE moving in this direction.

A part of this process is a paradigm shift reflected in the healed healer archetype.  We are ALL now able to work toward healing our own wounds COMPLETELY.  It is now the obligation, the moral and ethical responsibility of those working in any arena of “being a healer” to accelerate their own healing as they ALWAYS remain as consciously aware as they possibly can where their wounds still exist.

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My own pathway through these processes led me to step away from any role connected to “being a healer” because I now understand too much about what the kind of horrific trauma of abuse and neglect did to harm me.

I have NO problem at all with being in the educator role for healers who have healed themselves such as Abby has done.  She will no doubt keep continual track of the state of her own health for the rest of her life to keep herself healthy.

Because I believe in God I believe it has been His Will in motion that has caused my and Abby’s paths to connect at this time.

The techniques and “theory” I am sharing through the art making and training process will inform Abby’s life and work in any way she chooses to use them.  Meanwhile I am freed from ANY worry that I am teaching someone who I would not see as healed-enough to call herself “a healer.”

I KNOW that Abby will only do good for other people.  I KNOW she will never harm anyone.  She is too healthy and whole to do so.

Such a delight!

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++++

Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

“Story Without Words is a forensic biography/autobiography in which the author, Linda Danielson, explores three generations of her family history to help understand the horrific abuse she was subjected to from birth at her mother’s hands. Her mother Mildred had a psychotic break while delivering Linda, her second of six children and the only one of whom she targeted directly for abuse. The delivery culminated in Mildred being convinced that Linda had been sent by the devil to kill her, and until Linda left home at age 18 for boot camp, she was subjected to unrelenting abuse.

“Story Without Words is a creative and compassionate exploration of early factors that may have contributed to Mildred’s abusive trajectory. The author seeks to give words to her experiences as a child abuse survivor; Story Without Words is unique in providing the words of the abuser and the abused in one volume. The author seeks to provide insight for others who were themselves abused, professionals who wish to learn more about the inner world of survivors, and concerned individuals who wish to help stop the storm of child abuse in our society.”

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame