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A survivor’s task is essentially the same as everyone else’s:  to find the coherent narrative of our life story.  A survivor’s story is a far tougher story than most.  It has been broken into billions of billions of pieces by the continued experience of interruption of ongoing inner experience – often from birth – by trauma. Where is OUR story hiding?

Each of us is living our story with every breath we take.  Sometimes, however, even our ongoing story is not one we are enjoying.  Are there ‘bad stories’ or are there just good stories, some of them with some really tough and ‘bad’ things in it?

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I am living a part of my life story right now that is not feeling very pleasant to me.  I am trying really really hard to keep what troubles me from my past from totally overwhelming what I am living through in my present.

I have been in a very complicated relationship for 12 years with a man I love with all my heart who recently turned 75 and has had diabetes (which he pays serious attention to trying to ‘live right’) for many years.  Six months ago tests showed his kidney and liver function to be at 70%, three months ago at 40%, and a week ago at 25%.  What does this mean?

Difficult times ahead.  My dear friend is not showing symptoms yet of either condition.  He states that he has no intention of ever taking kidney dialysis treatments.  There is nothing that can be done for the increasing deterioration of his liver.

My friend.  My dearest friend — life is getting very complicated and is likely to increasingly become so.

I have MANY intense feelings, thoughts and reactions to what is going on right now in his life.  Trying to tease apart and become more clear about what I am feeling for my own self and what I am feeling for him — as well as what I am feeling from what he is feeling — would be a full time task for me right now

With a few diversions…..

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Firstly, the 1,700 mile trip up north to see my children and grandchildren was planned before the latest medical news appeared on the radar for my friend — and for me.  Change the ticket?  Don’t go?  Conflicts…..

On top of this with our increasing humidity I have discovered what is to me a TERRIBLE condition within the walls of my own home.  I cannot ignore this problem.  I cannot run from it.  Facing it and dealing with it — beginning yesterday — is one of the STUPIDEST and nastiest things I have ever had to work my way through.

Most housing construction down here in the high desert of southeastern Arizona, right along the Mexican borderline, is pathetic by most current standards.  No insulation, single pane windows that can only be sealed against winter cold and drafts and our long season of blowing DIRT, few studs in the walls, etc. present a challenge to all of us (it does get cold here in winter, elevation a mile high).

As I have been cleaning my house during this very brief monsoon season in which the dirt has been settled by rain, I have discovered a water-cockroach infestation in two of my closets such as nobody I have spoken with has ever heard of or seen.  (These people are not especially helpful as they speak quietly of “signs” and of Stephen King.)

Yesterday I moved aside some of the hanging clothes in the one closet only to have LARGE roaches, eggs half the size of pinto beans, and poop scatter to the floor at my feet!!  I cleaned this closet completely less than 6 months ago.  The other bedroom closet that shares a wall is also completely infested.

Of course, me being me, not one minute of effort I put in yesterday to cope with this problem could be disentangled from what I know about how unresolved trauma, passed down to some of us from GENERATIONS in the past within our families, contaminates our lives.

I thought about this as I grabbed hangar bunches of clothes yesterday and raced out of my house with them, tossing them in absolute disgust onto the sidewalk at the east side of my house as I then did the cockroach stomp dance trying to smash to death every single large bug that scattered from my CLOTHES!  I hosed every piece of clothing inside and out, then dragged them all off to the laundromat for thorough cleaning (which cost me more money I had not planned to spend this month – and I am far from done.  Even my SHOES were infested).

All the time I felt I was in the twilight zone!  Why after 6 years in this house have these bugs (that fly) moved into my closets?  EVERYTHING in the closet has been affected.  These two closets share a wall where a porch, long ago enclosed, was added onto the south end of the house.  The infestations is currently confined only to these closets.  Of course my fear is that now as I disturb them and try to kill them they will spread all over my house!

I ran to our local hardware store and spent nearly $50 on POISON which I normally do not use on my property.  I talked to everyone I could find who had information for me about what the hell is going on and how to cope with it.

I have roach boxes and traps and hotels, sprays, powders and bombs.  (I am still trying to decide about people’s recommendation to throw mothballs in the crawl space under the house.  Seems to me all the bugs of all kinds down there would just as soon then run up INTO the house.)

I have to launder and seal in bags everything I own, bleach the coat hangars, and after all the spraying and bombing I have to caulk every conceivable crack in that wall I can find.

Meanwhile, my desire to eat and my ability to eat in my own home has dropped below zero.

ALL of my sewing supplies and fabric still need to be dealt with today in the other closet.

Needless to say, these are not FUN DAYS!

But still I found reason to be grateful.  At least I LIVE in a house, have a home, have clothing, have a hose connected to water, and at least it’s not freezing winter out there!  And, as several town folk reminded me yesterday, “At least they can’t hiss at you like the roaches in the southeast would!”

I still found reason to chuckle last night.  For the emerging and escalating fear I have for what is coming for my friend and for me as I lose him, and for my increasing sorrow that could so easily overwhelm me if I do not work very hard to keep it separate from all the other sorrow I have had in my life, I realized that my horrible, disgusting, incredibly EERIE cockroach problem DID take my mind and feelings off of the BIG ISSUES in my life right now.

It WOULD take something as massively overwhelming to all my senses as this MESS I have to deal with to accomplish this feat.

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Today is another day.  Armed with every weapon at my disposal I will continue to fight my war against bugs.

I still think of trauma – how it infests and infects and contaminates early abuse and trauma survivors’ lives.  Or not?

How do we get rid of the ICK ICK ICK and still keep what belongs to US, what we want, what we own, what we need??

I do not have the resources to call some outside person in to deal with this problem in my home.  I don’t have the resources to run out of the house waving my hands frantically and pathetically over my head squealing helplessly.  I can’t throw out everything I own!

There is nobody but me to work my hardest to solve this problem.

Darn it all anyway.  But as my dear friend calmly said to me yesterday, “You’ll get through it.”

Yes.  My point exactly.  The ‘getting through it’ is the substance of life itself, and the living provides us with the stuff of our story.  If we are most fortunate after we are gone someone will remember our stories.

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I do not want to drift away from what I want to write although I have no idea what I actually wish to say until I say it.  I am reacting to having heard news in our local small town (pop. 5,000) as I did laundry at the laundromat cafe.  I am thinking about so many invisible people.  I am thinking of those those who have killed and those who have been killed.  I am thinking about how hardships can soften the heart and give a person important perspective about how things COULD be better — and will — when all of us are ready to help this to happen.

I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about how early traumas change physiological development, but rarely do I attend to the ending of life.  I am thinking about my bias that nobody is conceived or born to become a bad person who does evil.  Nobody is born to inevitably suffer from unnecessary traumas in life.  (See:  *NO MATTER WHAT – HAVE NO ENEMY)  Nobody is born to become one of the ‘untouchables’ of our society.  Nobody should ever die completely alone.

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Two weeks ago a woman seemed to disappear in our small town.  A week has now passed since her disappearance was deemed due to a wrongful doing.  A man she used to date kept appearing at her apartment.  When neighbors in the building asked about this lady they were always told, “She went to Tucson to have some dental work done.  I am house sitting for her while she is gone.”

People who knew this woman were suspicious.  She was known to use drugs, but also known to be reasonable about her affairs of life.  She would have told someone she was leaving.  She would not have simply disappeared.

In the end as this man dragged off and sold everything this woman owned an insistent neighbor confronted him with “I am going to call the police.”  The man stole another of the neighbor’s cars and vanished.  Only two kitties were left behind.

(This man is also tied to four recent break-ins and thefts at our local nonprofit thrift store whose proceeds subsidize rent for low income and homeless people.  His son is in prison for murder.)

In the FINAL end a few days ago police entered the apartment looking for clues about this woman’s obvious disappearance.  They found her 3-week dead body in her bathtub.  She was covered with blankets soaked with rug shampoo and other cleaners.  Piles of clothing further hid her carcass from view.

I hate to use the word ‘carcass’ – and yet once this predator was done with his despicable business that is all of her he left behind.  It is up to those who knew her, loved her, cared about her, appreciated her to honor her carcass back from the pit of despair she died in.

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And another woman.  Another woman who was well past her young years, who suffered from schizophrenia, who lived alone in a subsidized apartment, who all of us who live in this area often saw walking and walking and walking and walking — from sunrise until dark — across parking lots, along the shoulders of the highway — always walking and walking and walking.

This woman always wore a coat and winter stocking cap even when the temperatures were over one hundred.  She talked to herself continually.  I never saw her carry a bottle of water.  She walked and walked, up and down the town, back and forth — always and forever alone.

Those who have lived in this town a very long time know that this woman never hurt a living soul.  And yet a week ago a hit-and-run driver bashed her off the shoulder of the highway into a wide, deep wash that runs down from the mountain.

Her autopsy showed being hit and knocked far out of sight where she could not get up did not kill her.  She died when an evening’s rain sent torrents of water down the wash to drown her.

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I wish to honor both the life and the death of these two women in this post.  I wish to honor even the man who is still on the run, having been imprisoned 7 times so far in his life, who came to our town with a warrant for armed robbery in Louisiana, who is suspected though not tried for killing an innocent woman.

I wish to honor whoever it was who hit and ran from the scene causing the death of the innocent woman who drowned.

We are not born to take the animal road through life.  We are not born to suffer from conception, from birth, all the way through childhood so that some survive those horrible attacks of war when they were little — but did not really make it out of their childhood alive — even if their body is walking and walking and walking and walking around.

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Both of my parents survived the wars of their early years.  Both of my parents lived a miserable life and died alone.  I have no reason to suspect that these local people (with the exception of the hit-and-run driver who remains anonymous and shouldn’t be) had any kind of kind beginnings at all.

I honor the SOUL of people.  I honor the fact that people can lose their connection with their soul so that they never find their way back again in their lifetime here on earth.

These tragedies — there is a day coming in the future of our species when lives will not be snuffed out in these manners — whether people be dead when they’re dead from hardship and crime — or be dead while they are still alive — and walking.

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I recently read a newspaper article about obesity now being the #1 health problem in America.  An important contributing factor to the increasing weight of our population is that people with a high ‘body mass index (BMI)’ are producing children with other people who also have a high BMI.  This genetic selection process is alone and by itself swaying the direction of our literal growth as a nation!

Similar patterns, I believe, happen among people who have unresolved trauma in their history (personally and in their family lines).  Unresolved trauma survivors choose to mate and to produce offspring with others who also are unresolved trauma survivors.  Troubles upon troubles are transferred down through the generations of these people.

The TROUBLES are clearly present in the patterns of the lives these unresolved trauma people live in the ‘form’ of TRAUMA DRAMA.  Most simply put – the stories match!

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I believe that readers who find their way to this blog have recognized these unresolved trauma patterns in self and family and are dedicated to finding ways to reverse the downward spiral.  The first steps to be taken in creating positive changes happen on a deeply profound level at which we have all taken this stand:  “NO MORE TRAUMA!  There IS a better way to live and I am going to find it!”

We can’t beg, push or drag anyone else along with us on our healing journey.  We simply begin to find our own way to let the light of a better way of living begin to creep into our own reality.

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Somewhere in this process there comes a time when all the dark and dismal cards that represent the deck of unresolved trauma coming down the generations of our family are laid face up on the table.  We will play this deck out until there comes a time where we can find no more secrets, hide no more pain, and deny no more misery.  At this time in our honest truth discovery process we realize trauma is NOT the whole story — and it is certainly not the END of our story.

No matter how awful our experiences have been — often clearly so since our conception and birth — if a person is still alive there has been goodness present all along the way — and there still is.

I believe in the natural process of healing there comes a point where we are ready to equally accept THIS fact.  There is no need to rush the process.  Being ready to deal out the cards in the deck of goodness happens after the bulk of the AWFUL truths about our life have been discovered.  Perhaps it is only then that we are ready to find the goodness that had AWESOME power to save us.

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From my own experience I can say that as I discovered the goodness that existed right along with the terrible wreckage of my abusive childhood, I realized that trauma survivors live in a universe that uses different ‘weights and measures’ from ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’.

What was good in our lives carried immense weight!!!

When it comes to accepting this fact we find that we cannot EVER compare the weight of the goodness we experienced to anyone else’s.

As an example, the two hours I spent in caring, friendly, compassionate, kind interaction with my Brownie scout leader when I was seven was the ONLY safe and secure attachment experience I had between the ages of 6 and 18.  It therefore carried weight in its powers of goodness beyond what most people could begin to imagine or comprehend.

In an ‘ordinary’ childhood such a brief interaction probably would have been so insignificant as to not be remembered at all.  In my early life of trauma this was the brightest shining star — and at age 60 I still credit it greatly as giving me what I needed to stay alive.

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Although it is essential to our healing that we clearly track, identify and name all that has harmed us in our life, this is not enough.  No matter how massively dark and overwhelming early trauma was in our beginnings, goodness DID exist or we would not still be here.

In our work toward healing we will eventually be ready to track, identify, name — and KEEP — this goodness at the same time we loosen our grip on what we know of the trauma.

Can we ever let the traumas GO?  We don’t ever pretend they did not happen.  Trauma DID happen to us!  Of course our experience of trauma changed us on every level in the development of our body-brain.

I suspect that resolving unresolved trauma happens as we begin to clarify what we WANT and what we do NOT want.  We never wanted those horrors to happen to us.  We DID WANT good things to happen.

We might not believe that goodness ever happened in the darkness of our infancy and childhood.  We might not understand yet how critically important it is to us to understand that it DID exist in our life (and still does).

There are times our healing work demands that we melt into our pool of despair as if we are sinking into the earth itself.  There are times it demands that we lay curled in a fetal position with our arms bent so tightly into the curve of our body our fists only fit under our chin.

There are times in our healing journey we must pull our power into our body to rail against what wrong was done to us as we pound our way out of the darkness of our past.

There will also be times as we lift up our palms to the warmth of the sun that memories of goodness begin to appear in our openness.

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Please also see some related comments and replies at this link:

REPRODUCTIVE FITNESS INDICATORS

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I don’t care what our background of abuse, neglect and trauma is, there are times when we simply need to make a decision and a choice – to make the decision and choice – to grow as human beings or not to grow.

As survivors, is our ability to grow hampered by the changes that happened to our physiology because of the adjustments our growing body-brain had to make in order for us to stay alive?

I don’t know the answer to this question.  It has to vary from individual to individual.  And yet I suspect it is part of accepting the gift of being alive that automatically gives all of us with the exception of a very few the ability to exercise what it takes to pick up and run with ‘our fighting chance’ of being better that truly matters.

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Through various circumstances in my present life I have been presented with a truth about myself:  I am seriously lacking in patience.

Having an extremely reactionary body-brain makes it (I suspect) difficult for me to be able to STOP when reactions are at full speed (or even before the reactions happen) in order that I can find my own right to CHOOSE to exercise patience or not.

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The issue of choice comes in here.  I wonder, “Did I exercise patience through all the terrible abuse and forced isolation I experienced during the first 18 years of my life?”

Yes, I endured.  But was I PATIENT?

I wonder, “Is ‘being patient’ only a state of being that truly happens with consciousness?”  If this is true, then what I did as a child had nothing to do with patience.  I had no other choice but to get through the traumas of my early life in any other way than the way I did.

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What does ‘being patient’ mean, anyway?

From online Mirriam Webster’s dictionary:

PATIENT

Definition of PATIENT

1: bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint

2: manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain

3: not hasty or impetuous

4: steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity

5a : able or willing to bear —used with of b : susceptible, admitting <patient of one interpretation>

Origin of PATIENT

Middle English pacient, from Anglo-French, from Latinpatient-, patiens, from present participle of pati to suffer; perhaps akin to Greek pēma suffering

First Known Use: 14th century

Related to PATIENT

Synonyms: forbearing, long-suffering, stoic (or stoical),tolerant, uncomplaining

Antonyms: complaining, fed up, impatient, kvetching,kvetchy, protesting

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Well, certainly I suffered, but I did not have a choice about this part of my life.  Just as I did not CHOOSE to suffer, I did not CHOOSE how I felt or how I reacted to the abuse and trauma that caused me so much suffering.

Was the fact that I bore “pains or trials calmly or without complaint” any reflection on ME as a unique person?  Again, looking back, I see no sign that I HAD a choice which meant that I COULD NOT make a choice to not be patient.  None of what happened to me involved MY ability to choose.

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I wrote a post a few days ago in which I mentioned that somehow I came out of my childhood in hell with a pervasive, clear and very powerful sense of what a perfect – or much more perfect world – would BE like.  This world we are experiencing at this point in human evolution is NOT that world.

True, vast improvements have been made in many ways and in many places around this world – but so much more COULD be done to improve the world – and to improve each of us individually – which would, of course, create better conditions all the way around.

But as my close friend pointed out to me yesterday, I am EXTEMELY IMPATIENT with the way reality actually is at this point in time.  He says it’s like I was born out-of-synch with this time and place, and that my vision of people and of the world belongs to a point far into the distant future.

As I wrote the other day, I was always told from birth that all problems in my family (which was the only world I really knew) happened because I existed in it.  If I didn’t exist all would be perfect.

During the massive amounts of time I was isolated in corners, in bed, etc. because Mother had removed me from the ongoing life of her family I listened and I heard the life of the rest of my family going on — PERFECTLY.

I cannot say that these powerful and long-enduring conditions didn’t influence how I perceive perfection in the world.  But I am all grown up now – and what do I know, what do I practice, what CAN I practice (and practice better) of PATIENCE with the way I am, the way other people are, the way the human species is behaving – NOW in the REAL world in real time – right now?

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I have to honestly say I don’t actually even understand the word ‘patience’.  I don’t actually comprehend what patience actually is.  I could say that what I have always thought I have known about being patient has been contaminated by my trauma experiences – or I could say what I know has been deeply honed so that perhaps I actually know vast amounts of information about what being patient is.

I mentioned this one small example from my childhood to my friend yesterday – what did patience have to do with this experience?  *Age 15 – FORCED TO WATCH AN ALASKAN SUNRISE

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Patience with standing in a super-slow store line when shopping.  Patience when teaching a child something new.  Patience in listening to someone tell a story when they wander around and never get to their point.  Patience with drivers who need to wake up.  Patient with people who are rude and inconsiderate.  Patient when I don’t get what I want, don’t get it soon enough?

It seems to me that the ‘issue of patience’ and with the choice to be patient involves a consideration of one main element that I DID NOT HAVE as a child:  I did not have a SELF-centered point of view.  I did not have an “I” perspective.  I did not exist.  I had no rights.  I made no conscious choices.

So ‘ego’ has to be involved somewhere in the ‘patience’ equation.  So – now that at 60 I can finally begin to see what a difficult time I am having with patience – I equally must admit that I now have an ego that can and does get in my own way.

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Patience is a spiritual virtue that nurtured and cultured and grown becomes one of the important powers of our soul that we take with us to the next world.

I asked my friend about this:  “If there is ONLY GOODNESS in the next world (because it is God’s world and there is no duality there) – why would we ever need patience?  There would be nothing negative there for us to be patient about!”

My friend’s own opinion:  “Maybe we need to learn how to be patient to enjoy joy!”

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Well, if I wasn’t already lost in considering this idea of patience I sure was after THAT part of the conversation!  I only report all this in passing today – because I don’t understand.  The earth is patient as it bears the burdens of providing life.  I can see that.  But again, is patience patience if there is no option to be exercised otherwise?

Are birds patient as they wait for their fledglings to grow wings?  Are ants patient as they struggle to drag items home that are 50 times their weight?

What is patience for?  What does it accomplish?  When would it best be exercised — and when not?  How do I learn to grow patiently more patient?

I sure have a lot to learn!

When do I feel patient?  When am I being patient?  And when am I not?  What can I do to increase my ability – and willingness – to exercise patience?  Am I able to be patient enough to find out?

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Housing Troubles Linked to Increased Child AbusePosted: 02 Aug 2012 12:08 PM PDT Housing insecurity is associated with higher rates of child abuse, according to a new study from researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The study, titledTrends in Physical Abuse and the Relationship with Housing Insecurity, looked at hospital discharge data for 38 freestanding children’s hospitals from January 2000 until December 2009. The findings: Over a ten-year period, hospital admission rates for physical abuse and high-risk traumatic brain injury increased across 38 pediatric hospitals in contrast to the admission rate for all injuries. Within metropolitan areas, 90-day delinquency and foreclosure rates were associated with abuse-related hospital admissions. Within metropolitan areas, the unemployment rate was not associated with abuse-related hospital admissions. These findings stand in contrast to data reported by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), which have shown a steady decline in physical abuse over the same decade. The authors propose that child welfare agencies at the state and local level consider additional methods of tracking child abuse data, including hospital data. They also suggest pediatricians and other professionals working with families be aware that housing insecurity may be adversely affecting families and connect families to the appropriate social services. It is important to be aware of the impact the downturn in the economy has on the health and stability of children. This study illustrates what can happen when the stress of economic hardship collides with the challenges of raising children. Even with the best intentions, parents can be pushed to the breaking point. The best way to prevent this from happening is to provide parents with the support, skills and resources they need to succeed. Our Parent Helpline is a terrific resource for parents looking to ease their burden. Helpline Specialists provide information and referral services for families in New York State struggling with parenting issues, challenging children, the child protective system, housing and basic needs, and more. A trained specialist is available 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. After 10 p.m you can leave your number with our answering service, and we’ll get back to you the following morning. The Parent Helpline is toll free and confidential at 1-800-CHILDREN.

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Ever since writing my last post I have a memory from 30 years ago that keeps popping up for attention.  It is evidently strongly connected to what I wrote about here –

+ACTION, REACTION AND CHOICE

I had known for over a year that I needed to make a decision about my 2nd marriage — to a very good man, but to a man that I could best say I loved as my brother, certainly was not ‘in love’ with as with a mate.

All the thoughts and feelings that had come to me appeared in what seemed to be a random way, and nothing about the pattern in which my ‘in-formation’ came to me happened in a useful, coherent way.  Nothing ‘stuck together’ so that I could begin to see what was my own picture of this marriage, of what was best for me (and hence for my children).  I COULD not make a decision.  I therefore could not make a choice to set change in motion in my life.

This memory contains what seems to be my best self example of how information from my right brain hemisphere trumps information that comes to me through my left one.

One day I was visiting a woman friend I had met a few years earlier in AA. I liked her.  I trusted her.  I resonated with her.  As we sat in her living room discussing the ins and outs and ups and downs and mysteries pertaining to my paralyzed indecision about ‘divorce this man I can’t even stand to sleep with’ versus ‘oh no, I can’t divorce a second time!’ — I saw an image.  It appeared so clearly to me that I could SEE it, HEAR the sound of it — and I still can in my memory.

As this image came to me I was able to describe it to my friend, and by the time the image brought itself fully and clearly into my ‘in-formation’ gathering process, completely consciously — shared with self and other — I had my answer.

As if held in 3-D suspended animation I saw a very large outdoor faucet hanging in the air in one corner of the living room.  (The proper name for this object?  A hose bib, though this has never made any sense to me.)

In the opposite corner of the living room, at the same height from the floor, came the gushing stream of water that SHOULD have been coming out directly from the open faucet.

Instantly I had my ANSWER!

Finally everything made SENSE to me.  This kind of sense involves the senses of the body as they communicate with the self about one’s reality — its experience and meaning — through the right brain hemisphere.  As this image appeared to me my senses of what it looked like, what the water sounded like, what it would have felt like physically to have held my hand under the stream all gave me important information so that this bigger SENSE of what truly made sense to me could finally come clear.  I sensed the sense of the image in every possible way.

My life in my marriage FELT just like that to me.  I was not ‘lined up’ within myself with the life I was living.  I was not living my own truth.  I was ‘off’ center, being pulled further and further away from who I was (though at this time when I was 30 I had no idea what that really meant). My inner core, my inner source of my life was split apart from the life I was living.

I left my friend’s house that day with no doubts about my decision and I have never regretted it.  I knew it was my honest decision and therefore was the right one.

No amount of trying to linearly or logically or rationally THINK my way through making this decision had worked.  I needed to know what I REALLY knew — and this experience was the only way that could happen.

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Perhaps investigating what a person of any age knows about CHOICE would be an extremely useful ‘diagnostic’ assessment tool for Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).  It might be that the most troublesome and toxic aspect of RAD is that the element of ‘ordinary’ abilities to choose, or to even really know what choice is, are missing.  Looking back on my own life I could certainly say that this has been true for me.

My first encounter (believe it!) with a dawning conscious knowledge of CHOICE did not happen until after my 29th birthday.  I had entered a 7-week in-patient treatment program for alcoholism (and drug use although in 1980 nobody would talk about the addictive nature of marijuana use).

The women-only program I attended in Minnesota was very thorough and very strict.  There were clear rules with clear consequences if the rules were not followed.  One day I CHOSE to break a rule, and here is where perhaps the most important lessons I learned in those seven weeks began (I see as I look back).

I knew virtually NOTHING about myself.  I mean this literally:  I knew virtually nothing about my SELF.  I didn’t even know what a self was.  I didn’t know a lot of things.

This program was housed in one of the many buildings that were part of a very large brick complex that used to be a ‘mental institution’.  All these many buildings were connected by a vast underground network of spooky long narrow tunnels.

I had been created through 18 long years of severe abuse from my mother to be someone designed to do my best to BE GOOD and to please others.  These patterns were so built into me they were both instinctive and reactive.  On this mid-November day, however, my reactivity took me outside the bounds of ‘behaving’.

I didn’t know I was missing social right-brain interaction abilities due to terrible unsafe and insecure attachment relationships when this part of my brain was forming birth to age one.  I COULD NOT bond with peers in anything like a ‘normal’ way.  I didn’t know what a want was, what a need was, and I certainly did not have the awareness that it was possible to ponder decisions, to weigh outcomes, and to make choices.  Therefore, I had no ability to take responsibility for choices that I made.

On this day I did make a choice — which of course I was confronted with by my therapist later.

On this day I broke away from ‘the group’ which was against the rules and CHOSE to walk to lunch alone and above ground in the brisk, open fresh air.  I hated the tunnels!  They were scary for many reasons.  I did not like being enclosed as part of a group in the first place.  I did not like being confined within dimly lit mazes of tunnels.  After my experience with the 3-minute long 9.2 Alaskan earthquake when I was 12, I sure didn’t like being underground!

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My therapist confronted me with the choice I had made – and this was the first time this word – CHOICE – entered my conscious awareness.  I had absolutely NO IDEA what she was talking about!!  None!  It took several intense sessions with my therapist about my infraction before I could begin to understand (1) what a choice even WAS, and (2) that I had made one.

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EVERYTHING I had done in my life up until this confrontation had been – yes – an action I had taken, but never had I recognized this fact.  In my universe as a severely abused child and as an adult survivor everything I had done was an instinctive REACTION to the conditions within which I lived.

Yes, looking back of course I had made ‘choices’ of some kind all of my life.  Every crayon I had picked out as a child to add to every picture I ever drew involved a choice.  But did I really have the ability to CHOOSE if I didn’t even know what the concept involved?

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I again refer readers to this most important information:

+Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

*Notes on Teicher

The human higher cortex planning and decision-making region of an abused, neglected and traumatized infant-child is most likely NOT ABLE TO form in a ‘normal’ way.

As you read Teicher’s article notice where he mentions that ‘our’ brains never finish forming this most important part of our brain.  Rather, it ‘atrophies early’.  This is a tragedy beyond description – and Teicher’s description warrants some serious considerations.

At the end of this article as Teicher describes a survivor’s ‘evolutionarily altered brain’ – and writes about how people built in, by, and for a malevolent world never adapt completely to a benevolent world once they are ‘free’ from their early traumatic environment — part of what he is describing involves the diminishment of our ability to make informed choice.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE HERE!

As one of these survivors I do have another take on this ‘informed choice’ thing.  Looking at it this way — IN-FORMED — I understand that the way I way I make choices is DIFFERENT from ‘normal’, as are the TIMES I make decisions, what I make decisions about, the kinds of choices I make….

To me, “in-formed” means that what I do mostly when I make choices – even the rapid-fire reactionary ones — is use in-formation of which I am in-formed WITHIN MY BODY-SELF.  The form (formation) of my choices comes MOSTLY through my right brain.  Part of how I know this is because researchers describe how ALL the important information we receive from our BODY comes to us through our right brain.

Being a ‘reactionary’ I know that my choices and decisions will most often be in response to stimulations/challenges in my environment that I detect and ‘act’ upon from my body first – instinctively, RAPIDLY and automatically.  It is my job to become as aware as I can be about when these rapid ‘un-conscious’ choices are being made — and here is a clincher.

Am I ONLY making a choice if I take action in the slower fashion that runs the whole process of deliberation-before-action through my higher cortex (trauma-altered as it is)?  Am I actually making a decision if what I do has run through my BODY so fast I am ‘reacting’ without conscious awareness?

Because I now know I have a differently-formed brain all the way around because of early severe trauma – which certainly includes my higher cortex — I HAVE to understand that what ‘ordinary’ people know about CHOICE is NOT what I have known, do know, or will EVER KNOW!

In other words, as with so many other aspects of being a trauma changed person, I have to attempt to TRANSLATE what well-intended people say about choice and choice making.

I have to translate what they say about determining consequences BEFORE HAND in order to make ‘informed’ decisions and choices.  (What’s known as the ability for ‘future thought’ happens best in a well-formed, non-traumatized higher cortex.)

My way of being in the world — as I use the ‘in formed’ method of gathering information from my hyper-survival prepared body-self means that I know ALL KINDS of things — very very quickly — I am a supersized detection wizard!

Every single reaction I had for the first 18 years of my life kept me alive.  That these patterns were built into me deeply and thoroughly enough to BE — not WHO I am in the world but HOW I am in the world — is a critically important fact I need to understand.

When it comes to translation of information back and forth between survivors and ‘the rest of the world’, we also have to understand that only early-in-life severely traumatized survivors will know what we know.

We therefore are in danger of sabotaging our self if we denigrate and demean what we know because what we know, how we know it and how we ACT based on all of this is different from normal.  Nobody is WRONG here!  We are DIFFERENT!

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Again, as I have said many times before on this blog, researchers like Dr. Teicher can describe the technical aspects of how trauma changed us.  But they do NOT describe what it is actually like for survivors to be alive in the world living WITH these changes.

As we hone our abilities to KNOW what we know as survivors we will at the same time actually be coming up with our own language, our own vocabulary of terms and words that DO HAVE TO BE TRANSLATED by someone who has not been trauma-changed if they truly care enough to wish to know HOW we are in the world.

My 1980 therapist gave me my boost up onto the steed of learning-about-myself-in the world.  That was over half my lifetime ago.  I am very much still learning — but like being blindfolded, turned in circles and being left in the dark to pin a tail on a paper donkey or hit a wildly moving pinata target — somebody has to point us in the right direction.

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Now, I consider this a FIND – so I want to share it!!

Why Are We Wired for Story?

By Lisa Cron on Jul 30 2012

Here is part of THAT story…..

“What would you say if I told you that what the brain craves, hunts for and responds to in every story it hears has nothing to do with what most writers are taught to strive for?”

“What does the brain crave? Beginning with the very first sentence, the brain craves a sense of urgency that instantly makes us want to know what happens next. It’s a visceral feeling that seduces us into leaving the real world behind and surrendering to the world of the story.

Which brings us to the real question: Why? What are we really looking for in every story we read? What is that sense of urgency all about?

Thanks to recent advances in neuroscience, these are questions that we can now begin to answer with the kind clarity that sheds light on the genuine purpose of story, and elevates writers to the most powerful people on earth. Because story, as it turns out, has a much deeper and more meaningful purpose than simply to entertain and delight.

Story is how we make sense of the world. Let me explain . . .

It’s long been known that the brain has one goal: survival. It evaluates everything we encounter based on a very simple question: Is this going to help me or hurt me? Not just physically, but emotionally as well.

The brain’s goal is to then predict what might happen, so we can figure out what the hell to do about it before it does. That’s where story comes in. By letting us vicariously experience difficult situations and problems we haven’t actually lived through, story bestows upon us, risk free, a treasure trove of useful intel, just in case. And so back in the Stone Age, even though those shiny red berries looked delicious, we remembered the story of the Neanderthal next door who gobbled ‘em down and promptly keeled over, and made do with a couple of stale old beetles instead.

Story was so crucial to our survival that the brain evolved specifically to respond to it, especially once we realized that banding together in social groups makes surviving a whole lot easier.

Suddenly it wasn’t just about figuring out the physical world, it was about something far trickier: navigating the social realm.

In short, we’re wired to turn to story to teach us the way of the world and give us insight into what makes people tick, the better to discern whether the cute guy in the next cubicle really is single like he says, and to plan the perfect comeuppance if he’s not.

The sense of urgency we feel when a good story grabs us is nature’s way of making sure we pay attention to it. It turns out that intoxicating sensation is not arbitrary, ephemeral or “magic,” even though it sure feels like magic. It’s physical. It’s a rush of the neural pleasure transmitter, dopamine. And it has a very specific purpose. Want to know what triggers it?”

Click HERE TO READ THE REST!

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And here is the BOOK!

Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron 

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And – on this blog – the connection between degrees of safe and secure attachment and our ability to tell our own life story coherently —

+NEEDY PEOPLE AND BUMPY CONVERSATIONS (GRICE’S MAXIMS, AGAIN!)

+LINK TO A WHOPPER OF A TALE ABOUT TELLING OUR TALE

*THE MEANING OF MENDING OUR LIFE STORY

+FREEDOM: HEALING SELF, HEALING OUR LIFE STORY, SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

+SIEGEL – ANTICIPATION, TIME AND COHERENCE OF MIND

And there are more posts a’plenty here about the connection between attachment and our ability or non-ability to tell our own coherent life story.  Simply Google or otherwise online search these terms and click and read:

“stop the storm coherent life story “

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I am thinking about my 28-month-old grandson whose life has changed dramatically now that he has a one-week-old baby brother.  Nobody can possibly determine how this change is affecting him.  He isn’t old enough to be able to articulate in word or thought how he feels or how he sees the world.  Add into the mixture the fact that nearly everyone commonly uses the phrase “the terrible twos’ to describe in general the stage that little people of his age group seem to transition through no matter what else might be going on in their lives.

These ponderings of mine flow from this tributary of thought into one that concerns all of us:  “Who helped us grow the body-nervous system-brain pathways and circuits on every level during our early development that we needed to move through transitions of life as calmly and orderly as possible?”

My grandson has all of the safe and secure attachment patterns built into him already that he needs to further build his patterns of processing change of all kinds throughout his lifetime.  He is unequivocally loved and cherished.  He has two wise and informed parents as well as a super-professional daycare staff to assist him – every step of the way through his growth and development.

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Transitions are as much a part of life as are changes.  These two states of ‘being in the world’ (for everything) are not two sides of the same coin.  They are ONE side — inextricably interwoven in their connection with one another.

I realize as I ponder this morning that I most often think of trauma in term of the ACTIONS that are its components.  Yet the truth is that the radical disturbances that are created by these actions to a previously ongoing state INTO a different one are so radical that a smooth transition from one state to the other cannot happen smoothly.  The WAY traumatic change happens is just as traumatic as WHAT actually happens as these changes take place.

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My abusive infancy and childhood was nothing BUT unpredictable, unforeseeable, unanticipated, uncontrollable, unprepared for RADICAL CHANGE from MY current-ongoing state of being a little person in my own reality into and through a traumatic transition/change state that was instrumented by my psychotic very mentally ill supremely abusive mother.

Without giving an account here of all the times I know of when the shifts between my own states of being into those initiated by abuse I can simply say that each and every one of these FELT like an ATTACK to me on every level of my being — because they WERE attacks.  These attacks came out-of-the-blue and so greatly disturbed my ongoing experience of being alive that I had no possible way to transition smoothly through them.  And obviously there certainly was NOBODY there to assist me.

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I see an image in my mind’s eye.  There I was even from the tiniest of my ages on my own ‘solid ground’.  Seeking ‘solid ground’ is as natural a part of being alive as – well, as LIFE is a part of being alive.  Every living creature must be able to return to some place of ‘safety and security’ within the body to reestablish and maintain ongoing existence or it will die.

There I am on my ‘solid ground’ — and BOOM!  ATTACK by Mother!  Suddenly inside of myself I am falling into a bottomless abyss.  There is no rope to grab, nobody to throw the rope — just falling falling falling until the ATTACK stops.  I went through such frequent attacks sometimes several times a day, sometimes all day, sometimes for weeks — and the conditions of continual threat of attack were such that my body had to find a way to make conscious continual awareness of my danger fade into the background so that I could continue to remain alive at all.

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But today instead of thinking one bit about what Mother actually DID to me during these attacks — I am thinking about the very split-second INSTANT her attacks took place.

The fact that I could not transition from my own pre-attack state smoothly into the trauma of her actual attack was as traumatic for me as any action she actually did to me.

Developmental neuroscientists speak of ‘state shifts’.  Yes, we often experience these shifts between one ongoing experience into another one emotionally — but often, as severe early trauma survivors, our emotions come in the aftermath.  Our BODY and our brain react of their OWN well-honed extremely-rapid intelligence about how to transition through anything that hints of threat as quickly and as effectively as possible.  Our conscious self is dragged along by our physiological self’s reaction which had to dominate our development so that we could remain alive.

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(I went outside into the glorious beauty of this new day after recent monsoons rain have stimulated such new growth around me in this high desert to write what follows….)

Given the unsafe, insecure, unpredictable, threatening, dangerous and traumatic, malevolent conditions of a little person’s universe of abuse (and I include all neglect of basic important needs here) there is no possible way such a person’s body-brain could develop “AS IF” conditions were the opposite.

Yet within the OVERALL environment of malevolence every little person will find, will discover, will create times-places-spaces (inside and outside of itself) where all the trauma does not exist — because trauma CANNOT ALWAYS EXIST if the little person is going to remain alive.

Even on the level of physiology alone there HAS TO BE down-time from the ongoing experience and reality of trauma.  The human self has this same need.

And yet there is a very high price paid both for being FORCED to find these down-times AND for actually finding a way to do so.

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Chaos theorists describe something known as ‘The Butterfly Effect.”  According to Wickipedia, “In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane’s formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.”

Some say the wing flap can be on one side of the planet causing the hurricane on the other side of the planet.  How are visible realities tied and connected by invisible ones?  What is the tie and the connection between what we currently understand and what we do not?

Early trauma survivors do not get to connect their down-time realities together.  These realities seem to be as far apart as the butterfly wing and the hurricane described above.  Not being allowed in the BODY to transition smoothly between ‘states of reality’ due to continual traumatic interruptions leaves us living the experience of our lives as if we are in disconnected pieces.  The traumas we lived through were too overwhelming to manage in any other way.

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As I stop to consider the words I have just written this morning I see the image in my mind of a lake so big it’s shores are so far away they are invisible and might as well not exist at all.  We entered this world in such a big splash of trauma that the ripples moving out from the epicenter of our earliest unsafe and insecure beginnings continue to roll out around us — affecting every aspect of our existence — for our entire lifespan.

OK.  So exactly where and how do I find something helpful and hopeful to say here without it sounding useless and trite?

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Just at the moment I ask this question one single word comes into my thoughts:  CONTRIBUTION.

The world itself seems to be a doorway.  As I peek through it I see what appears at first glimpse to be —– an infinity of beauty!

I know should I choose to move through this doorway evidently represented by this seemingly oddly presenting word — CONTRIBUTION — that I could spend an infinity of time describing what I find.

The simple words that come to me next are, “Do not forget that there are infinite ways to look at and to understand every aspect of life.”

Yes, what I think I know is such a tiny fragment that it limits me — until I allow myself to begin to see all the goodness and beauty that has CONTRIBUTED to my even being alive at this moment.

Do I allow, even encourage myself to also see the brilliant sparkles from sunlight and moonbeams that are a part of this lake of my life?  Do I see the colors in the prisms of each tiny drop?  Do I imagine the purity of this water that is me, the life teeming in its depths, the cycles of the water’s movements over the courses of time?

Do I consider the spring thaws in distant places that send water here, the cycles of clouds giving rain, the evaporation of moisture as lake water changes form and rises to move off to give life somewhere else?

Do I consider the miracles?

Oh.  I see.  No matter what else has happened this part is up to me.

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This post follows

+”NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!”

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I am thinking about credibility – how severe early neglect, abuse and trauma survivors are in many ways geared physiologically to appreciate the perspective of ‘their people’ who know first hand what I don’t think any non-survivor of early trauma can.  I think we resonate with one another.  We believe one another.

It is an honor to be believed.  No matter how horrible my first 18 years of life were – and no matter the very real and very serious consequences I bear because of that abuse — having this honor is a great gift to me.  Heck!  Sometimes I even believe myself!

Seriously though – I find myself wanting to go back and add whole new thoughts to the post above that I just wrote awhile ago.  I better not because people who have already read that post will not read what I add to it now!

I am thinking about depression and that kind of deep, deep sadness that brings the state of being where NOTHING new and positive seems possible.

I can believe myself about this.  I have felt this sadness ALL OF MY LIFE, all the way back into my earliest infancy and childhood.

I think this is why my rather new discovery for myself that I CAN feel positive emotions and have a ‘good day’ AT THE SAME TIME my sadness (and related feelings) are running along inside of me at the same time.

There is power in this discovery for me.  There is also a recognition of the reality of my existence.

Over and over again in my childhood my mother commented on how SLOW Linda was.  I found references to this in her letters I transcribed after her death that were written to her mother.

I have had flashes of anger about this – but it doesn’t help me – knowing how sick my mother was – to ask questions like, “How could she do to me the terrible things that she did and expect me to NOT be sad – and hence slow?”

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Often I find myself moving in what feels like slow motion – as if I am moving deep deep under water.

I always do MOVE, though.  I always find something positive to do in one day even if nobody in the world will know what I did.  Somehow finding some little positive solution to accomplish to something helps me to feel I am contributing something to the betterment of the world.

My garden is about this, too.  Maybe only the butterflies and bees and hummingbirds benefit – but I know I am creating beauty and moving forward while I do this work.

LINDA’S ADOBE PEACE GARDEN

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If I could handle the hyper-stimulation that being around public creates in me I could find some volunteer work to do.  I might have to be really creative to come up with something — but I am going to try.

Sometimes I donate books I’ve read to the public library, or food to the food bank, or school supplies to the school.  I have very little money – but doing anything that might have a positive impact on the world, for others, helps me a lot.

This is part of contributing to the SOLUTIONS in the much bigger picture.  Sometimes maybe we don’t see that we are making any real progress ‘on our own problems’ – ANYTHING we do in the direction of compassion, generosity, caring about the world in any way, HELPS!!

I believe myself when I say this!  I really, really do.

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A serious reminder to subscribers of this blog – I edit a lot!  Just the way I write, I guess.  Please remember to click on the title of a post that appears to you in your email so you will see the latest updates for the post.  Thanks!

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