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This is essentially what I believe about what my Mother’s severe Borderline Personality Disorder did to her.  Mother’s disease interfered with Mother’s mental faculties in such a way that they did not operate correctly or normally.  Her mind worked according to the trauma-changed dictates of her physiology.

Human mental faculties, as inherent properties of the soul, can be interfered with by diseases in the body:  “Consider how the human intellect develops and weakens, and may at times come to naught, whereas the soul changeth not.”

Mother’s mental faculties were greatly changed from normal, and very nearly came to naught.”  As far as her own evil-bad-devil’s child versus her own blessed-perfect-good-God’s child psychosis was concerned, there was NOTHING RATIONAL ABOUT IT, and nothing rational came from that mentally deranged pattern of brain wave activity.

Mother’s soul, just as mine is and everybody’s else’s is, was not – I believed – in itself changed in its essence.  Her mind was unable to operate in a healthy way in her very sick body:  “For the mind to manifest itself, the human body must be whole; and a sound mind cannot be but in a sound body, whereas the soul dependeth not upon the body.”

Mother’s soul could not radiate its light through her body-brain.  Such was the nature of her disease as it created changes to her mental faculties.  At the same time, and through this process that began in Mother’s earliest life, her true ability to REASON was removed from her by her BPD disease:  “It is through the power of the soul that the mind comprehendeth, imagineth and exerteth its influence, whilst the soul is a power that is free.”

Just as can happen in the cases of many diseases and injuries to a human body, the soul can be trapped in a condition of non-full-expression until the body dies.  As the following quotation indicates, “… the proofs are many that go to show that despite the loss of reason, the power of the soul would still continue to exist.”

The sun behind thick clouds is not affected in its brilliance; only the ability of its rays to shine brightly on the material world below is interfered with.  I believe the disease that captured my Mother’s body eliminated her options of free choice, and in this process nearly completely dimmed the brilliance of her soul.  Her disease was a TRAGEDY that afflicted her – and created much chaos and harm in her life.  Because she was her children’s mother, her disease drastically affected our lives – especially mine.

As far as I am concerned my mother remained a child.  She was robbed by the traumas in her earliest life that contributed so profoundly to the changes her body-brain made in its efforts to survive that trauma, from ever growing up.

Mother remained, in my thinking, an INNOCENT.  I do not believe she fits into the category of accountability or responsibility that is described in the second quotation here down below.  Mother’s disease took her wings away from her.

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“Now concerning mental faculties, they are in truth of the inherent properties of the soul, even as the radiation of light is the essential property of the sun. The rays of the sun are renewed but the sun itself is ever the same and unchanged. Consider how the human intellect develops and weakens, and may at times come to naught, whereas the soul changeth not. For the mind to manifest itself, the human body must be whole; and a sound mind cannot be but in a sound body, whereas the soul dependeth not upon the body. It is through the power of the soul that the mind comprehendeth, imagineth and exerteth its influence, whilst the soul is a power that is free. The mind comprehendeth the abstract by the aid of the concrete, but the soul hath limitless manifestations of its own. The mind is circumscribed, the soul limitless. It is by the aid of such senses as those of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, that the mind comprehendeth, whereas, the soul is free from all agencies. The soul as thou observest, whether it be in sleep or waking, is in motion and ever active. Possibly it may, whilst in a dream, unravel an intricate problem, incapable of solution in the waking state. The mind, moreover, understandeth not whilst the senses have ceased to function, and in the embryonic stage and in early infancy the reasoning power is (p.338) totally absent, whereas the soul is ever endowed with full strength. In short, the proofs are many that go to show that despite the loss of reason, the power of the soul would still continue to exist. The spirit however possesseth various grades and stations.”

Baha’i World Faith–Selected Writings of Baha’u’llah and `Abdu’l-Baha (`Abdu’l-Baha’s Section Only), Pages 336-348: gr4

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There is another quotation that holds much of importance for me to think about in connection to the 18 years of tragic abuse I suffered because of Mother’s illness:

“Know also that the soul is endowed with two wings: should it soar in the atmosphere of love and contentment, then it will be related to the All-Merciful, and should it fly in the atmosphere of self and desire, then it will pertain to the Evil One; may God shield and protect us and protect you therefrom, O ye who perceive! Should the soul become ignited with the fire of the love of God, it is called benevolent and pleasing unto God, but should it be consumed with the fire of passion, it is known as the concupiscent soul. Thus have We expounded this subject for thee that thou mayest obtain a clear understanding.” — Bahá’u’lláh

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See post:  +RATIONAL THOUGHT: POWER OF THE HUMAN SOUL BPD STEALS AWAY TO ENSURE SURVIVAL

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This post is in response to comments posted on a special new blog, Daughters of Borderline Mothers, dedicated to “Sharing our common experiences of having a borderline mother.”  The site is hosted by a woman who had such a mother, and offers fellow surviving daughters of mentally ill Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) mothers a place to share and care about the kinds of traumas that being raised by a BPD mother creates.  Today’s comment to post — My Mother The Wall speaks to my heart especially because I see mirrored in those words my own experience with my BPD abusive mother – to a point.

This POINT mentioned in this comment gave me a wake up call this morning as for the first time in my life (I am 60) I realize how fortunate I am that not ONE of my five siblings believed Mother’s Borderline brainwashing.  In fact, they tell me that they ALWAYS knew our mother was NUTS.  For my part, I have been left looking for the patterns of brainwashing I received from birth that DID NOT allow me to know Mother was NUTS!

It has never before truly sunk into my consciousness that in some cases the siblings of a ‘chosen for special torture’ child of a BPD mother ever COULD, let alone WOULD side with the abuser.  Because I’ve never even contemplated such a situation before, I know that only those who grew up in families where this particular constellation of hellish symptoms can ever be able to investigate FROM THE INSIDE what conditions surrounding the BPD and the hell she created in her home could cause this to happen.

I – personally – am at a loss to understand because I have been BLESSED with siblings who NEVER believed our abusive BPD mother!

As children none of my siblings understood why I didn’t run away.  Some have also told me that they never understood why I didn’t cry and sob while I was being beaten, or say I was sorry or bed for mercy.  As children they believed if I had done these things Mother would have WHAT?  STOPPED?

As I closely examine my own experience with Mother I see that the integrity of MY SELF and my ONLY true opportunity to express myself as a unique human being separate from Mother was to NEVER give into her.  That was part of how I survived her and came out the other end alive and intact as a person.

Intuitively and instinctively I preserved myself even though I could not EXPRESS myself in anything but the most small and inconspicuous ways by inwardly holding fast to REALITY as I knew it.  I won the small battles, beating by beating, assault by assault, by never admitting to something psychotic Mother said I did when I knew I had not done it.

Mother’s brainwashing (as a part of her BPD psychosis) originate while she birthed breech me.  She understood as we both struggled for our lives that the devil had sent ME to kill her while I was being born.  Because we both survived the birthing, she then believed that I was NOT human, that I was the devil’s child, that I had been sent as a curse-upon-her-life, and that I therefore had the power to take my siblings to the devil – if she didn’t prevent that from happening.

By the time I was 17 and a senior in high school I BELIEVED I was that devil’s child.  That’s a time way ahead of where I am in my book writing, so nothing more to say about this right now……

There was never a time during the rest of Mother’s life (she died in 2002) when she did not believe this.  I was NEVER a human being to her.

A miracle I have missed until this morning is that my siblings DID NOT believe her – they knew she was nuts and that what Mother did to me was wrong and that I did not deserve what she did to me.  I cannot IMAGINE what it would be like if my siblings had believed Mother – such as the siblings of the woman who wrote the comment today at the blog post at the link above.

Long after I was gone from home, as Mother’s life long ‘friend’ (mother was incapable of having true friends, but this woman stuck with Mother until her death) told me last year in an interview, one time she went to see Mother and asked her why she had 666 written on her hands and forehead.  Mother told her it was so when the devil came looking for her to take her he would see that mark and understand that she already belonged to him – so he would leave her alone.

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I am coming to understand as I write for the book of my childhood that early in her childhood someone told Mother that she was so bad, so evil, the devil was going to come for her.  I strongly suspect this was used as a threat by someone who sexually abused her.

Very little was right about Mother’s earliest years of life.  It all combined to effect physical changes in her development that gave her a different kind of brain.

Mother used all the considerable power at her command to force me to be her replacement/stand-in for her own ‘projected/split off’ bad, evil child self.

In her illness Mother tricked the devil into believing I was she.  As long as I NEVER showed any signs of being a person in my own right, and as long as she could completely control me and ‘keep me in my place – in her place’ in hell, she was ‘freed’ to live what I call her outer Borderline life – which was totally NUTS!

Everyone but me lived in her outer Borderline ‘ring’.  I and I alone lived in her inner core hell-prison as her replacement

This left my siblings on the OUTSIDE of my hell-world as witnesses to what Mother did to keep me from ever being born as a self or from escaping.  My siblings reaped the benefits (HA!) of having a different crazy mother than I had!  Mother only functioned AT ALL in her outer Borderline world because she maintained her capture and torture of me.

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As I read the comment to My Mother The Wall today I began to wonder if these two very clear and defined dual-Borderline realities Mother created didn’t have the benefit of making crystal clear to my siblings how completely NUTS Mother was!  I, as I lived as Mother’s replacement-evil-bad-child-in-hell (being devil bait!) in the inside Borderline core world, could never see what they saw from the outside.

I do believe that Mother had a Borderline world inside a Borderline world – and VERY clearly so.  What Mother did to me was completely different from how she mothered my siblings.

So, I wonder this morning, in cases where one child of a Borderline is singled out from siblings to be the chosen target of peculiar insane abuse – and there is no clear Borderline (!!) between an inner core Borderline universe of hell and an outer Borderline world that operates only if there is a captive kept as a replacement-in-hell in the inner core world, is there a ‘spill-over’ of brainwashing contamination that DID NOT HAPPEN in my mother’s case – in my case – in my siblings’ case?

Mother contained the worst of her contaminating brainwashing in her inner core world JUST FOR ME.  There was a very clear and terrible BORDERLINE between me and my siblings.  This meant, also, as a very strange benefit I am only seeing at this moment, of protecting my siblings from BELIEVING Mother.

I was the only one who believed her – because I was SUPPOSED to believe her.  Mother’s LIFE (as her body dictated and as she unconsciously knew it) depended on the devil being completely fooled!

Mother could only trick the devil into believing I was she if the myth was fundamentally believed BY HER and BY ME.  It was verbally affirmed in her home that I was the devil’s child.  Mother took great efforts to isolate me from contact with my siblings so I wouldn’t take them to the devil.  I was unequivocally Mother’s own bad-evil self.  But my siblings did NOT BELIEVE her!

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So, from my own point of view in cases where siblings DO believe the brainwashing terrible myths of a Borderline mother — the environment in which the horrors of abuse beyond belief happened WAS MISSING the kind of extremely clear inner-Borderline-core LINES that separated the innermost hell of the Borderline (like the one Mother made me live my 18 year childhood inside) from the outer PRETEND nicey nicey fake yet ‘better’ – Borderline reality everyone else in my family lived in but me.

In other words, Mother’s severe Borderline disturbed insane mine CLEARED UP MUDDY WATERS as she defined these two worlds she created in her life.

It was VERY clear who was in which world.  I on the inside in hell, my siblings on the outside STILL in crazyville but NOT abused or hated like I was.

Mother, in her version of BPD madness, CLEARED THE MUDDY WATERS by creating two entirely separate Borderline universes.

As a consequence, she DID NOT manage to contaminate the thinking of my siblings.  They were able throughout their childhood to CLEARLY see that Borderline line Mother created between me and them.  That, of course, would NEVER have been Mother’s intention.

Mother continued throughout her lifetime, well into the adulthood of all of her offspring, to spout her garbage to my siblings about me.  Nobody EVER believed her but me, though it took many years for ALL of us to truly comprehend in our adulthoods how irreparable and terribly damaged Mother was.

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After reading the comment I refer to today I also have wiped away from me any tiny tidbit of misgivings I might have been holding onto about my disowning Mother in 1988 – and never speaking to her again.

It is only by mixed-contamination of having been formed from birth in the universe of ANY kind a Borderline parent creates that we offspring might guess there is EVER a way to have anything like a ‘normal’ or ‘repaired’ relationship with ‘our Borderline’.

There is NO way that can every happen.  I believe BPD is a physiological disease of the body that changes the brain and nervous system for a lifetime for its hosts.  I also believe that the soul of my mother was freed from her diseased body when she died,  It is entirely up to God, of course, to comprehend the truth about my parents.  I pray for blessings and forgiveness for them both of my parents (Dad died in 2001) every day.

I do not believe Mother had a choice.  My hope for my own efforts in healing is that I can understand with some truthful clarity the way my mother’s severe BPD disease operated at the same time it destroyed her life – and created 18 years of terrible suffering for me as her daughter.

My siblings did NOT escape Mother without harm.  But that is THEIR story – and because my universe at Mother’s Borderline core of hell was so different from the outer Borderline world my siblings lived in, they cannot tell my story, either.

We each can benefit, I believe, by finding our OWN story and from separating it from ANYONE else’s.  I am so grateful for this clarity today about how fortunate I am that my five siblings DID NOT SIDE with our mother.  May we ALL find our own way to peace!

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NOTE:  To be even more clearly accurate I will also say that Mother did create a subsidiary psychotic universe inside her outer Borderline universe in which she protected her all-good God’s child self — onto one of her other children.  This Borderline universe stood in complete opposition to the inner core Borderline universe she created by projecting her all-bad devil’s child self — onto me.

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Here are some very sweet prayers for infants and children:

“O Thou peerless Lord!  Let this suckling babe be nursed from the breast of Thy loving Kindness, guard it within the cradle of Thy safety and protection and grant that it be reared in the arms of Thy tender affection.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — Baha’i Prayers: A Selection of Prayers Revealed by Baha’u’llah, the Bab, and `Abdu’l-Baha, Page 35

“O God!  Rear this little babe in the bosom of Thy love, and give it milk from the breast of Thy Providence.  Cultivate this fresh plant in the rose garden of Thy love and aid it to grow through the showers of Thy bounty.  Make it a child of the kingdom, and lead it to Thy heavenly realm.  Thou are powerful and kind, and Thou are the Bestower, the Generous, the Lord of surpassing bounty.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — Baha’i Prayers: A Selection of Prayers Revealed by Baha’u’llah, the Bab, and `Abdu’l-Baha, Page 35

“O God!  Educate these children.  These children are the plants of Thine orchard, the flowers of Thy meadow, the roses of Thy garden.  Let Thy rain fall upon them; let the Sun of Reality shine upon them with Thy love.  Let Thy breeze refresh them in order that they may be trained, grow and develop, and appear in the utmost beauty.  Thou art the Giver.  Thou art the Compassionate.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — Baha’i Prayers: A Selection of Prayers Revealed by Baha’u’llah, the Bab, and `Abdu’l-Baha, Pages 35-36

“O Thou kind Lord!  These lovely children are the handiwork of the fingers of Thy might and the wondrous signs of Thy greatness.  O God!  Protect these children, graciously assist them to be educated and enable them to render service to the world of humanity.  O God!  These children are pearls, cause them to be nurtured within the shell of Thy loving-kindness.

“Thou art the Bountiful, the All-Loving.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — Baha’i Prayers: A Selection of Prayers Revealed by Baha’u’llah, the Bab, and `Abdu’l-Baha, Page 36

“He is God!  O God, my God!  Bestow upon me a pure heart, like unto a pearl.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — Baha’i Prayers: A Selection of Prayers Revealed by Baha’u’llah, the Bab, and `Abdu’l-Baha, Page 37

“O God, guide me, protect me, make of me a shining lamp and a brilliant star.  Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá —  Baha’i Prayers: A Selection of Prayers Revealed by Baha’u’llah, the Bab, and `Abdu’l-Baha, Page 37

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+GUIDING THE SOUL OF A CHILD — THE OPPOSITE OF TRAUMA

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Forty one years ago when I was an oblivious 19-year-old I traveled off on an adventure with a stranger named Gar in a U-haul van from San Diego to the backwoods little town of Brandywine, West Virginia.  For all that this adventure contained it is only what happened at the end of it that I relate to this post.  At the very end we had to find the U-haul lot in Washington, D.C. to return the van so we could catch our flight back to San Diego.

No helpful GPS assistance back then!  We had a map and we were lost.  Repeatedly we stopped for directions from strangers who were all seemingly very helpful.  Yet for every set of instructions we were given, as we followed them exactly with every turn, we ended up more lost than we were when we started.

Did all these seemingly helpless strangers misguide us intentionally?  I will never know, but this experience comes to mind today in combination with something I wish to say about my grandson.  I will call him Pete.

My daughter and her husband live 1700 miles away from me, so the closest gift of watching Pete grow and change (he is 18 months old now) comes from the wonderful little videos my daughter sends me.  I have one of them open in a window that pops up and starts the video every time I open my internet browser so I can hear and watch that tiny segment of my grandson’s life as many times as I want to.

The video takes place as Pete sits at the side of a parking lot in a country park my daughter and family visited recently in Canada.  Pete’s mom is filming him gently gathering and scattering little handfuls of tiny pebbles under his mommy’s watchful guidance.

After a few tosses of the little stones Pete takes a few in his hand and lifts them to his ear to listen to them.  My daughter says he does this a lot as he learns about himself in the world around him.  Pete has noticed the high pitched skittering clicking sound the pebbles make as he scatters them.  He is studying both the actions of himself and the pebbles — AND the sound they are making.

Only Pete knows what he heard in the pebbles held to his ear, but as he moves on to dropping those pebbles he is singing softly to himself notes and tones that are in harmony with the sound the pebbles are making.

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Knowing what I know about the bigger picture of this little boy’s life I know that this tiny segment of his history belongs in a long, unbroken continuous line of being loved.  Pete has never been distressed by those who care for him since the time of his birth.  There is no adult trauma drama in his life that would deplete him, would rob him of his opportunities to explore himself in a safe and secure world.

Nobody is sending his physiological development off on a wild goose chase of survival.  Nobody is sidetracking his normal process of moving through his most critical earliest stages of development HIS way.  Nobody is leaving him unguided.  He is not being super-challenged by experiences of traumatic stress that do not belong to him and that would overwhelm him as he is traveling through these most important developmental stages.

His life is the complete opposite of what mine was.  As I watch Pete discovering himself in interaction with musical pebbles, as I listen to him sing along, I know that the lack of impediments thrown into his life is going to let him become strong and clear and real and FOUND in his journey through life.

He will NOT BE LOST.  He will not be left with big empty holes inside of him like a chunk of Swiss cheese that he would then be left trying to fill up with meaningless and harmful addictions and pursuits over the course of his lifespan.  I also know that Pete will never be left unloved and unguided and unprotected.

Nothing could make me happier.

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+GUIDING THE SOULS OF CHILDREN – SOME BEAUTIFUL PRAYERS

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*Age 14 – SILENT TREATMENT

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Blog post one thousand – a collection of links to information about depression. Research finds that there is a link between depression and child abuse.  I survived 18 years of terrible child abuse at the hands of my severely ill Borderline mother, and yet it wasn’t until I was 29 years old that I began to have any clue at all that what had happened to me was ABUSE.  I also didn’t know I was depressed as an adult, and I did not know that being a depressed mother of a newborn puts the baby at high risk for lifelong depression.

The interplay between trauma survivorship and depression is complex – but here are a few articles at the tip of the iceberg:

Prenatal depression effects on the fetus and the newborn

Brain-Imaging in Depressed Moms Shows Blunted Response to Crying Infant

EEG during different emotions in 10-month-old infants of depressed mothers

Brain development, infant communication, and empathy disorders: Intrinsic factors in child mental health

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Study links persistent depression to childhood abuse By Kate Kelland | Reuters – Sun, Aug 14, 2011

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CDC: Antidepressants most prescribed drugs in U.S. — July 09, 2007|By Elizabeth Cohen CNN

“Doctors are now medicating unhappiness,” said Dr. Ronald Dworkin. “Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives.”  For Dworkin, the proof is in the statistics. According to a government study, antidepressants have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. They’re prescribed more than drugs to treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, or headaches. CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen discusses the CDC study on antidepressants

More discussion HERE including presentation of depression symptoms

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Depression and Abuse

Recession Linked To Increased Child Abuse

Genetics, abuse history and adult depression

Seeking chemical happiness: Why one in 10 of us reaches for the anti-depressants in middle age by Claire Bates – Last updated at 8:00 AM on 22nd June 2011

Why are antidepressants the most prescribed drug in the U.S.?  by Jane McGrath

Why Antidepressants Don’t Work for Treating Depression by Dr. Mark Hyman

Why Antidepressants Don’t Live Up to the Hype By John Cloud (TIME)

Safety of Antidepressants

Why do antidepressants stop working? By David Mrazek, M.D. May 6, 2011

Depression in babies and young infants  – by Beth McHugh

Suicide rates doubled for children of 5-14 years old over the past 20 years!   Research by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

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The following is from this website:  Depression Facts and Stats — By Bob Murray, PhD and Alicia Fortinberry, MS

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Today, September 19, 2011, marks the writing of my 999th post on this Stop the Storm blog.  This count does not include the many hundreds of ‘pages’ included as background information.  It is only a count of the actual posts to the home-page.  I am wishing I had something happy to write this morning but I am sad to say what is most pressing within me is about sadness itself — and not just any sadness.  My concern today is about sad babies.

How do we begin to think that any child who suffers from depression is going to magically somehow in ‘the future’ manage to have a happy life?

Infant Depression?  By Will Meek, PhD – posted November 10, 2006 – “ABC News had a report this week on the belief that 1 in 40 infants may suffer from depression.”

Personally I believe sadness in infants and toddlers under the age of two is much, much greater than the 1 in 40 figure stated in that article.  How do we discover whether or not a little one is sad?  What do we look for?  What do we SEE?

What happens to such a little person to create such sadness?  I do not believe ‘It’s in their genes.”

I heard tell of such a sad little person yesterday.  Everything described to me lets me know this infant DID NOT get what she needed in her earliest infant-caregiver interactions to give her a safe and secure attachment base in the world.  No, the child (18 months old) was not directly ‘abused’, but I heard all the signs that this little one was – and is – being neglected.

In a society that so barely recognizes our combined responsibility to STOP direct abuse to children, how can we begin to comprehend the many forms that neglect of the needs of little ones actually takes?

I have posted and reposted many times on this blog an article by Dr. Schore that describes in minute detail what a human being needs to BECOME FULLY HUMAN.  The article is too complex and the material is too foreign for anyone to read and understand – so it seems.  I suspect my daughter and I will in the future spend a great deal of time and effort to ‘translate’ this article into ‘human speak’.  If we don’t comprehend what Dr. Shore is saying in this article we will never truly know what some parents do so rightly – and other parents do so wrongly.

EFFECTS OF A SECURE ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP ON RIGHT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT, AFFECT REGULATION, AND INFANT MENTAL HEALTH

By ALLAN N. SCHORE

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There is nothing more important for our human species than adequate MOTHERING conception to age two.  This article describes in detail what adequate MOTHERING is, how it happens, what adequate mothering provides to a human being, and what goes so terribly wrong when adequate mothering is absent.  True, many humans receive their MOTHERING from others who are not their MOTHERS, but it is MOTHERING that humans need to build a human body and brain that will allow a human to become FULLY HUMAN — no matter who provides it.

FULLY HUMAN.  What does that mean?  Happy.  Healthy.  Present in the world and positively engaged in healthy and happy ways on all levels with self, others and the environment.

Sounds simple?  Sounds basic?  Take a look at Dr. Schore’s article and begin to understand that what nature has designed for human early development is massively complex!  Mothers and earliest caregivers have been able to provide the kind of optimal care Schore describes for eons over the span of our human development.

What happens to change a human being born with full potential for being happy, healthy and joyous for a lifetime into a less-than fully human being?  At a minimum, when safe and secure LOVING and ADEQUATE attachment relationships are withheld the survivor of this neglect simply shuffles down to the bottom of  the pile of happy life fulfillment and most likely stays there for a lifetime.  They become ‘the losers’ in ways that we recognize in our culture – at the same time we do not wish to recognize what happens to deplete these people.

In other words, we as a society are perfectly willing to let little ones suffer.  Who cares?  They aren’t OUR children!

The Role of Attachment in Healing Infant Depression – by Rita Brhel

Depression in babies and young infants  — by Beth McHugh

The trauma of depression in infants:  a link with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?  By Frances Thomson Salo

Parenting Style May Foster Anxiety

Overprotective parents may raise worried kids.

By PT Staff, published on September 01, 1994 – last reviewed on May 15, 2009

Infant Separation Anxiety Is Common In The Developmental Phase!

Infant-Toddler attachment disorders

Help for Infants and Toddlers with Attachment Disorder

Reactive Attachment Disorder

Attachment Explained

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What would happen if every month everyone in our great nation gave 2% of their income, no matter what the source of that income might be, to someone who needs it?  The only stipulation would be that whatever is given must be given within 10 miles of home residence and NOT given to a church or any other organization directly — but given rather to people when we can see the white of their eyes, the light in their eyes, the smile on their faces — to those we can ask their name, tell them ours, shake their hand and wish them blessings.

This sharing gift, given without prejudice or judgment of ANY kind, would be given as cash or as something bought by the giver and given to the receiver (donating to a food bank counts if you see the whites of the eyes of the volunteers who accept the food on behalf of others).  There is plenty to go around in our neighborhoods, our towns, our states, our nations and around our planet.  We each need to PERSONALLY care enough to share.

2% will only ‘hurt’ if we are out of practice in giving to other human beings around us — but practice makes perfect!

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The interaction between the awake, conscious self and the sleeping self informed through dreams is fascinating.  For survivors of severe trauma sleeping and dreaming is often complicated — and changed from what non-traumatized people experience, just as our lives are changed.

I am in process of book writing.  I am still working my way through the age-10 severe trauma memory.  I could not write about those experiences at all unless I wrote longhand away from home and my computer in a public place.  A spent the week before this last one accomplishing that difficult task.

Yet I am finding that so difficult is this memory that I am having nearly as hard a time transferring what I wrote longhand into my computer as I did writing it in the first place!  Every day I have transferred a section of that piece of writing — just a short section.  I can do no more.  And yet my ever-curious mind wants to know more about what is so different about this memory that makes it so hard to face (and write about).

I did not sleep well last night.  My entire night of troubled sleep was nothing but a series of POP-UP windows from my mind that kept appearing to wake me up — or at least to make sure I never really got to sleep at all.  They were no different than the obnoxious pop-ups that appear on my computer screen.  Even though I have various versions of protection in place on my computer, they still find their way into my range of vision — demanding my attention.

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I just hand wrote a section of book writing that I will synopsize here.  This is about the very important protection that dissociation provides for survivors of severe trauma — especially if the trauma began at or near birth so that those dissociative patterns built the brain as they build themselves into the brain (and nervous system).

It strikes me now that my mother’s Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) genetic potential may well have been triggered into action by her earliest traumas BEFORE she was able to find another way to survive her trauma.

That would mean that she never got the chance that others without BPD have to find other ways to get along in their life with the trauma held in check and at bay in some other way.

Yes, she suffered from dissociation — but hers operated differently than mine does.  For all of us who have experienced severe traumas and now experience dissociation, there is a very wise reason why this happens to us.  In my efforts to write about the specific chain of traumatic events that happened to me in the spring of 1962 when I was 10, I am coming dangerously close to my own inner protective walls that surround and protect me from much (most) of the details of my early traumas.

These walls, these massive retaining walls within us constrain and contain traumas that are too much for us to know about.  I am concluding that if the society we live within was able, ready and willing to truly listen to survivors tell about the trauma that happened to us, we would NOT be forced to try to deal with these traumas alone.  The ones we do not remember, the traumas that we dissociate ourselves from, need to be told to the members of our species en masse so that the lessons contained in these traumas can educate our entire species.

Those of us who carry trauma sealed away behind protective retaining walls are doing our job of continuing to live the best we can.  These dissociated traumas have not gone anywhere.  They can be triggered into our awareness in all sorts of ways, and certainly trying to write a coherent, cohesive true story about our traumatic past will trigger MUCH discomfort.

That discomfort appeared in those repeating – nay, never ending — series of pop-up trauma alert windows that disturbed my sleep last night.

The BPD disease that took over my mother changed the nature of her retaining walls — and hence of the patterns of dissociation that were built into her body-brain.  I am fortunate that my protective firewalls against trauma are still inside of ME.  My mother’s broke down in such a way she could no longer ascertain what her walls were, where they were, what they were doing, and how their dissolution affected her and everyone around her.

These protective, defensive retaining walls that keep overwhelming trauma contained are there for a reason.  Dissociation happens for a reason.  A wise and good reason — or it wouldn’t happen at all.  It is not the dissociation that should ever be blamed for difficulties in a survivor’s life.  It was and will always be the nature of the original traumas that caused our difficulties.  The ways that we are able to continue to survive in spite of these traumas are part of our immune system’s defense against threat and attack.

But it just struck me this morning that BPD might just be a defense against trauma that kicks in just a little too early in a child’s life.  Without its interference it COULD have been that the survivor would have found other less harmful ways to endure although I have no doubt that, given the current still-primitive level of civilization humans live in, surviving these traumas cannot be done without the very real assistance of dissociation that keeps our memory of our own self experiencing traumas — as well as the memory of the traumas themselves — away from the survivor who would be the one doing the remembering.

When this dissociation happens for individuals we can always trust that the trauma was ALWAYS too much for a single person to deal with and was ALWAYS something that belonged to the larger social whole of our species — to deal with, to learn from AND TO PREVENT!

In essence,  safe and secure attachment prevents dissociation on all levels and in many, many ways within individuals and within societies.  Dissociation is what happens in its absence.

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The more I ‘plumb the depths’ of the picture of the abuse that was done to me by my Borderline mother and as I study her own record of a segment of her life contained in her letters, diaries and childhood stories, I find that the origins of my mother’s disease were completely hidden from her and from those who were responsible for her early care.  But just because the origins of her disease were not obviously present does NOT mean they were not there.

In its essence, I believe that the foundation of the cause of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) lies squarely in a breach of mother-infant early attachment.  It is essential that those considering the disease of BPD and the terrible consequences this disease is most likely to cause for the sufferer and the offspring of BPD parents (and day care providers) that the information in this article becomes well-known.

While it is a well-documented scientific treatise on the subject of what human infants MUST HAVE in their first year of life to build an adequate emotional-regulatory right limbic brain, it must be understood that how this earliest-forming brain region develops directly influences the development of all the rest of an infant’s nervous system and stress response system for life.  Earliest developmental patterning will include extreme stress-distress stimulation of all the overwhelming toxic stress hormones that can and do signal a developing human (and mammal) that there is something WRONG with the environment.  All further development will then be sent off on a detour direction that cannot be reversed on its most fundamental levels.

If you have reason to question the kinds and amount of trauma-drama that is present in your life or present in the life of others you care about, beginning at the beginning by reading, studying and acknowledging the information at this link is of utmost importance:

EFFECTS OF A SECURE ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP ON RIGHT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT, AFFECT REGULATION, AND INFANT MENTAL HEALTH

By Dr. ALLAN N. SCHORE

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It is clear within my mother’s writings that she THOUGHT all was perfect in her childhood.

The denial of the truth that her infancy and childhood was far from perfect contributed to the misery of her life.

Truth creates the channels that funnel off overwhelming traumatic stress and distress.

Absence of the truth in essence puts an early abuse survivor into a pressure cooker that has no release valve.

If such a survivor’s body has access to certain genetic combinations of potential that CAN be activated under early traumatic conditions that have NOT allowed for any other safe release of traumatic-stress-distress-pressure, the activation of the genetic potentials of certain diseases will occur.  BPD is, I definitely believe, one of these genetic combination ‘release valves’.  Activation of this disorder allows a survivor to continue to physically survive while awareness of the overwhelming trauma is completely blocked – for a lifetime.

(In this way BPD genetic potential can be seen as a resiliency factor ensuring survival against otherwise insurmountable odds.  In my opinion a severe Borderline like my mother was pays for their survival with their sanity.)

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Anyone who cannot track the contributing factors of a BPD’s earliest life needs to open wider the lens of their observation of the facts within the environment the BPD was formed in ESPECIALLY conception to age two (the first 33 months of life).

Because these earliest years are usually obscured by time and enshrouded in mystery and denial, the cloak that covers the truth needs to be removed in the present by expanding the arenas of search for those on a healing journey – no matter what their relationship with the BPD person might be.

Lifting the veil that is hiding the truth about trauma in families means looking for the facts about the bigger picture.  Often one needs to literally draw a picture of ‘the family tree’.  Onto this picture, over time, needs to be added ALL INFORMATION a person can locate.

I believe there will ALWAYS be overwhelming unresolved family trauma in the history of a BPD person.  Who in that past was in a war?  Who was alcoholic/addicted?  Who was sexually abused (including incest)?  Who was raped?  Where were the dead children in sibling lines?  Who had children that didn’t want them?  Who was MEAN and was MEAN to children and mates, and who were the survivors of this treatment (including witnesses of trauma and those who suffered from extreme prejudice of all kinds)?  Who suffered from joblessness, poverty, loss of family fortune (including language barriers, lack of education, illiteracy), too many moves, too much chaos, too much challenge without adequate resources, prolonged homelessness?  Who was divorced, murdered, in jail?  Who suffered from fire, natural disasters, displacement, spousal abuse, severe prolonged illness (including ‘mental illness’), premature death?  Who provided early care prior to age six if the mother did not?  Who was orphaned/adopted?  What was the trauma present in the background of any alternate primary early-(0-2) caregiver?  Who suffered from neglect including latchkey children under the age of 12?

To do this job of ‘spotting’ the trauma in a family tree one can create a list such as this one and then simply use colored crayons to attach a color code to each kind of difficulty.  As the truth about people in the family (true also for adoptees and orphans regarding old and new familial relations), put a dot of matching color beside their name.  (Remember that these risk factors work in ‘cumulative cooperation’ with one another and with resiliency factors.)

Severe unresolved trauma patterns in families will ALWAYS affect the ability of mothers to mother correctly.  A study of Dr. Schore’s article will present an objective FACTUAL picture of what adequate mothering is – no matter who is providing it.

People are free to dance around and away from the truth about the history of those who abused them all they want to – or they can find the truth and honor it.

My mother’s BPD disease removed from her the ability to recognize the truth.  Her disease created an alternate version of reality that was entirely supported by the brain-body changes her body went through in response to her earliest traumas.  That nobody, including her, ever owned the truth about those formative and extremely damaging traumas of my mother’s life directly caused my mother to do to me what she did.  My mother’s disease prevented her from having ANY access to the truth.  That’s what BPD is meant to accomplish in a ‘survival at all costs’ world in the face of overwhelming early trauma.

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RELATED POSTS:  +RATIONAL THOUGHT: POWER OF THE HUMAN SOUL BPD STEALS AWAY TO ENSURE SURVIVAL

+CHILD ABUSE AND BPD: TRACKING THE TRAUMA IN THE FAMILY TREE

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