Tag: abuse

+NOTHING LIKE A MONDAY MORNING ‘HODGE-PODGE’ POST

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This is a sort of ‘scavenger’ post.  I’ve been thinking about a comment left yesterday, and I wanted to make sure these links were easy to spot in case there might be something in here that might interest/assist!

Considering the fact that our body is a link in a generational and genetic chain, the more we can learn about how the actual circumstances of our individual life affects how our genetic code manifests itself throughout our lifetime, the more we can learn about both the specifics and the overall picture of where we came from and how the history of our species affects us now.

Understanding how our circumstances affect how our genetic code manifests itself through epigenetic processes helps us expand the range of our vision about our self and about our family.

See this blog’s posts:

+ EPIGENETICS

We can think of a load-bearing wall in a house and understand that if that wall is removed without special attention being first made as to how the load that wall is carrying can be handled in some other way the house can collapse.  Our body carries the load of all the combined debits and credits combined.  Learning how the circumstances of our life affect how our body handles the load of our life involves an understanding of what is called allostasis and allostatic load.

See this blog’s posts:

+ ALLOSTASIS AND ALLOSTATIC LOAD

Two other links of interest:

+ Other posts on the vagus nerve

+ DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

See also:  +IS MENTAL ILLNESS THE COST OF OUR SPECIES’ GREATEST GIFTS?

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Here are a few pictures of my current mud project.  I want to direct the rain water coming off my south roof line away from the house’s foundation.  Eventually I want to grade the back yard so that the water ends up where I want it:  On the plants and trees!

Years of water pounding down along the sidewalk edge have lowered the soil there so far rain water cannot escape and run into the yard. I need to change that grade and direct the water flow - before the summer monsoon rains come (usually in July). The slope I need is 1/4 inch per foot down away from the house, and level across the width - my civil engineering father would probably cringe if he saw the way I do things!
I had to go collect some rocks from nearby roadsides for this project. The rocks are embedded into the adobes. I find I don't care if I see the stones or not, but suspect that eventually wear on the adobes will expose them. Certainly the stones (and increased cement in my mud mix) will aid in survival of my adobes under the pressures of running water over time.
It's always hard for me to be linear enough (left-brained?) to level anything! It just happens that directing the water requires that I pay at least SOME attention to which way 'what' is going!

I figure it will take several days before the blocks are dry enough that I can go back and fill the cracks - with cement-mud and gravel/small stones.
I don't know the technical name for this species of aloe, but they survive winters and go 'native' - this is what they look like blooming (my neighbor's trailer was put there the day they moved in 3 years ago - has never moved - and I doubt it ever will in my lifetime!)

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IN MEMORY OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER:

From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder

What’s the link between child abuse and BPD? We do know that people with BPD endorse child abuse at a much higher rate than the general population, but does that mean the BPD is caused by abuse?

Child Abuse and BPD– Understanding the Link

Parents of BPD teens and adults often ask why their child has the disorder, and sometimes feel blamed for their child’s symptoms. Yes, sometimes BPD is caused by child maltreatment, but that isn’t the full story– parents are not always to blame.
What is ‘Abusive’ Behavior?

When we talk about child abuse, what exactly do we mean? Learn more about child abuse and maltreatment.
Building a Meaningful Life- Where to Start?

Do you need help finding meaning in your life? Many people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) struggle with feelings of emptiness, identity problems, and depressed mood. Together, the symptoms of BPD can leave you searching for meaning in your life.
This Week’s How-To — Grounding Exercises

Grounding exercises are designed to help you focus your attention on the present moment. They are helpful whenever you are having an experience that is overwhelming, or that is absorbing all of your attention. Grounding exercises are meant to “snap you back into reality” relatively quickly.

Must Reads

What is BPD?
Symptoms of BPD
Diagnosis of BPD
Treatment of BPD
Living with BPD

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+WHERE IS MY REFLECTIVE POOL OF SELF?

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I woke up thinking with my brain-mind-soul-self about an opposite condition – if it exists – to Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Actually, I was wondering.  I didn’t wonder for my first 18 years, either – so I actually think being able to wonder is a gift.

I keep seeing images from movies of situations (sci-fi) in space where ‘life support failure’ means the oxygen in the environment is going to run out.  Who would last longer, a big person who needs to breathe a lot or a little person who needs to breathe less oxygen?

An infant-child is a captive of its early environment.  It is contained in the space with its earliest caregivers and cannot escape or do anything, really, to improve what might be terrible conditions it is living in.  If there is ‘limited life support’, which person is going to get the most and leave whom without, the parent or the child?

If a little person and a big person were both approaching a Black Hole, or if one just suddenly appeared in front of them some distance away, but both are within the gravitational pull-field of the Hole, who would get sucked in first and fastest, the big or the little one?

If a big person and a much smaller person were wandering lost, thirsty without water, and came upon a little clear pool, and were both kneeling on the moist soil at the edge of the pool, bending to take a drink, who would get to the water first and drink the most?

What if this pool is one meant for gaining a ‘narcissistic psychological’ view of one’s self?  What if the big person shoved the little one away?  If I imagine that there’s only enough room on the surface of the pool for only one to get a clear view of their own self reflection there, might only the big one get that clear reflective (mirroring) look?

Yes, in all of these conditions, I can imagine the big person being the hog while the little person does without.  It is nice in environments free from scarcity and trauma when everyone can get what they need.  Yet because I was raised by my Borderline mother, it isn’t hard for me at all to imagine my mother, as the big person, consuming everything she felt that she needed (certainly psychologically) while leaving her children with scraps.

It is much harder for me to imagine what these situations might be like if a mother would self-sacrifice her own self for the benefit of her child.  Is this what nature would want to happen if push came to shove and only one of a ‘big person-little person’ pair (dyad) could survive?  What would evolution say about survival then?

Would Nature determine that the big person mother take what she needed so she could survive and reproduce soon again if and when the environment became less malevolent rather than influencing survival in the direction of the little dependent one who still had so very far to go before it could reproduce?

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I don’t want these thoughts and wonderings to fade away as my dreams from last night certainly have already done that spawned these ponderings, yet all I can do is string out these words that seem connected to whatever it was I was processing while I slept and before I woke up this morning.

All I can guess is that my ‘topic’ might be related to mothers who see their own more complete self reflected only in the faces and in the lives and in the presence of their children long after this mother’s solid sense of self COULD have been formed within her under better circumstances from the time she was very, very young herself.

It’s too early in the day for my thinking to be able to get as complicated as it would need to be in order for me to follow my own train of thought past this point.  I lose my own bread-crumb trail through the forest.  All I know is that there are varying conditions where physical deprivation related to supplies of air, water and food can occur in families.  I spoke with a woman in her 60s yesterday whose WWII PTSD alcoholic father consumed most of his income and often left his wife and children hungry during her childhood with no food in the house whatsoever.  This woman built into herself an ongoing, continual concern for her own children that they (and herself) NEVER have a house empty of food.  As this woman told me, “I always made sure there was baking powder, flour and beans in the house.  Then I always knew I could make something for us to eat.”

But what if the scarcity is more invisible?  What if the deprivation is primarily ‘psychological’ like it was in my childhood home?  What if infant-children’s needs to have their little growing self reflected back to them so they can claim it for their own never happens because their parent is consumed with trying to find their own reflection?

Such a parent is psychologically starving to death in their own need to locate and claim their OWN fully formed self.  They not only have little or nothing left over to offer their offspring personally because they are so depleted, they also steal away their children’s opportunities to use vital resources themselves.

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So, this leaves me thinking about ‘anti-narcissism’ as it might ‘psychologically’ exist like anti-matter.  If the parents of these anti-matter children cannot help their own children to MATTER, what choice do the children have but to be in a deprivation-of-a-fully-formed-own-self into their adulthood?  Offspring of incompletely-built-self parents were never given the chance to form their own self, either, and on down the generations the scarcity and deprivation-based patterns tumble.

I can’t think my way out far enough away from the Black Hole of the Personality Disorder spectrum to imagine under what conditions an anti-narcissism state of being does not exist in some way within every single one of the Personality Disorders.

As I ponder this morning about a state of ‘anti-narcissism’ I cannot imagine that there is any self-love involved in the process of having to perpetually search for the reflection of an unformed self.  Particularly infants and very young children are SUPPOSED to search for the reflections of their own self being mirrored back to them from others in their beginning of their lives.  What the little ones find mirrored back to them (or not) gets built particularly into the way their brain will operate for the rest of their lives (along with the brain’s connection to all aspects of their body, nervous and immune system).

To NOT have one’s self appropriately and adequately mirrored back leaves a person in a state of ‘unfinished business’ so that the search for self, through mirrored reflection from outside of the self, simply continues on and on and on and on…..

‘Anti-narcissism’  seems to be like a state of hanging around in life in limbo, like in a state of anti-gravity where a person can never completely come into their own body and live their own life from a position of FELT CERTAINTY that they exist as a whole-self person at all.  Developmental neuroscientist, Dr. Daniel Siegel, addresses the ‘problems’ from one point of view:  That a person’s self is always meant to be in a state of flexible, resilient adaptation.

But I believe the first steps of forming a strong, clear sense of self in relationship to others and to the world must be taken correctly for this adaptive, cohesive, coherent self to ever appear at all.  If those first steps cannot be taken, if the new self cannot be reflected back to the ‘new one’ through a mirroring process that includes required information being sent to the ‘new one’ very early in its life, the adaptive whole self simply never takes form, and the searching continues for this whole self that lasts for a lifetime.

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If I am using people, situations and circumstances in my life to see my own partially-formed self reflected back to me, what happens to ME when these reflecting ‘surfaces’ change?  If having a WHOLE self means that I am flexible, resilient and adaptive, and if I KNOW I don’t have one of these whole selves, then by definition I am at risk for suffering greatly if the external conditions of my life (that I am dependent upon to shine aspects of my self back to me) change.

Life is about change.  In fact, to me, LIFE IS CHANGE.  Being alive is a guarantee that change is constantly happening.  My suffering happens when I cannot do what a whole self is designed to do – flexibly, resiliently and adaptively adjust to change.

Our capacity to control our ‘reflective surfaces’, be they people, situations or circumstances, is limited.  Those of us who were deprived of the air, water and food we needed ‘psychologically’ to build our whole self in our earliest life, are left feeling disoriented and disorganized, if not overwhelmingly desperate when change leaves us in a void without the ‘reflective surfaces’ we need for our survival.

My guess is that one of the meanest consequences of growing up with ‘mentally ill’ if not truly abusive parents is that we are at extremely high risk for painful disequilibrium to take over our self and our life when life changes take away from us whatever ‘reflective surface’ we rely upon to recognize important parts of our own self.  We are left like a flying kite with a severed string, a bobbing balloon untied and left to the whims of the wind.  We are like an unanchored ship without a rudder tossed around in a raging storm far out at sea, or like a small or giant tree without roots that falls to the earth unable to stand.

One way or the other a human being needs to be tethered inside of their own self to their own whole self.  Even in cultures where the definition of a self means the self is more closely formed in social relationship and less defined by autonomous action, a self that is not tethered will suffer from change that threatens its organization and orientation in a body in the world.

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The ongoing processes of life do not stop and wait for any individual to form a whole self.  We are given our infant-childhoods for this job to be mostly completed.  Some attachment experts call this whole self ‘the autonomous self’.  Whatever words we use to culturally describe this whole self, it is the one that possesses what it needs to successfully adapt and adjust itself throughout the changes life brings.

Various self-states of being that exist along the narcissism /anti-narcissism spectrum simply reflect degrees of lack of wholeness that affect a person’s ability to flexibly, resiliently and adaptively adjust to change with a minimal reliance on outside ‘reflective-surfaces’ – or mirrors for the self.

I am one of the dependent searchers.  My inner well-being state right now is completely dependent on where I live.  I am dependent for my safety and security on this house I reside in, on my yard I can grow things in, on the small circle of people I know that care about me.  Any thought of change to my circumstances right now completely threatens to destabilize me.

But I have a huge advantage over what my mother had.  I KNOW this about myself.  I am uncomfortably conscious of my current internal limitations in the same way I am painfully aware of my financial and material limitations.

At the same time I am also aware that the way my mother consumed ‘psychological’ air, water, food and all other resources she could get a hold of in my infancy-childhood left me without all the inner whole self structures that would now let me be more complete and whole myself.  I greatly struggle with my own dis-abilities to live my life as a flexible, resilient and adaptive-to-change person.

This all leaves me today as a high risk for upset person.  I struggle every moment of my life to nurture, feed, strengthen and grow my own root connection to my own authentic, autonomous, whole self so that my own self can be stronger and not be so shakily dependent upon outside conditions and circumstances for its sense of well-being.

Where does the concept of ‘self love’ or ‘love of one’s own reflection’ even enter this picture I am painting in words here this morning?  If one has been left from the origins of their being in a state of searching for one’s self in the reflections we get back from the world around us that might tell us we even exist at all, we can only guess at what it would FEEL like and BE like to know entirely that we even are a self in the first place.

“I feel, therefore I am.”  “I do, therefore I am.”  “I think, therefore I am.”  These are stages of development that we go through from the time we are born.  All of these states of self-development, if accomplished adequately and successfully, most likely lead to this integrative state:  “I am, therefore I am.”

Nobody is exempt from enduring this process in this lifetime according to their physiological abilities.  In this fact we are all the same.  To the degree that this process is joy-filled or pain-filled we take delight or sorrow in the process – and trigger degrees of either state within others around us.  It’s far better that the major stages be accomplished in our earliest years as they are meant to, but if that does not happen, we will be going through them for the rest of our lives.  This seems to me to be the destiny of being human, whether we like it so or not.

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I remember telling the first therapist I had ever developed a relationship with right before she moved away that she had been like a sustaining, reflective pool of clear water that I had been able to go to and see myself reflected back to me.  Looking back, I am surprised that I knew exactly what I needed even way back then 30 years ago.  Now I know I want that reflecting pool within my own self.  That is what I work for.  That is what I need.  That is what I want.  That is where my strength and power as a self truly lies.  Having this reflective pool of self within my self is my antidote to feeling fragile and vulnerable throughout my life.  And it is something my mother never had.

(I wonder, is this the difference between being a being that is resource-full rather than being a being that is resource-less?)

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+LIVING ON EARTH – HOW MUCH ARE WE MISSING?

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Everyday we are alive is an Earth Day, yet it seems now we have chosen a particular day once a year in our culture to recognize Earth.  I suppose that’s in part so we might focus our thoughts on the source of our existence.

I’m on my way into town today to spend a few hours working on a little project – my town day.  But before I leave home I just wanted to post a link to the story I wrote a year ago that I will probably always remember especially on Earth Day because on the day I wrote about I saw something so different from the ordinary that it’s impossible for me to forget it.

In a lifetime of being a human being, at least in this culture, it is easy to assume superiority over the rest of life’s manifestations, I suppose.  But on this day I felt humbled, extremely humbled.  I just want to again share this story for any readers who might not have encountered it last year as I wish everyone the best of days on this amazing planet we all share life on together.

*In Honor of the Grieving Chicken (2003)

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+THINKING MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING

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OK, there’s a cloud cover outside today (well, obviously OUTSIDE!), and it’s a perfect temperature for me to be out there making adobe blocks.  I set the 22 I made yesterday on their edges so they can continue to dry evenly.  But I am distracted from mud work because I am very busy still thinking about thinking.

The small section of Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle I read this morning led to another suggested pause, so I am being an obedient reader and now I’m processing what Tolle said while on vacation, or recess.  His suggestion is to try to get to a ‘place’ where we can watch our self that is doing all this THINKING.  I guess this watching self is one step closer to the FREE self who is the BIG self.  This BIG self (as I see it) is somehow itself closer to an ‘enlightened one’.

I’m game.  I’m usually game for learning something new, and something that might be helpful to increasing my internal state of well-being.  But all this thinking about thinking, and the ‘one’ that is doing the thinking and the ‘one’ that watches the ‘one’ doing all the thinking – well, believe it or not, it’s all rather confusing!

So, if I can’t yet pull up anchor on this thinking business, or yet cut the chain that ties me down to all this thinking, or cut the proverbial apron string to my own ‘mind’, or free the inner kite that might be a different sort of ME, I might as well write something.

Writing presents a different kind of thinking for me.  It always seems to be a bit more orderly process, putting all these single letters into words as they string themselves into nice left-brain sentences.  As I write I know that at least on some sort of level my left and my right brain are at the moment in cooperation with one another.

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I continue to tell myself repeatedly that I didn’t think during the first 18 years of my life about myself in any personal way – that I didn’t know I even WAS a self or HAD a self.  In a moment I will include here something from Dr. Daniel Siegel’s book, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2001), about ‘self’ (see link below).  But first I want to say something about memories of my thinking self.

I was given a very nice gold-colored very feminine watch by my grandmother on my 14th birthday.  I loved my grandmother.  I loved the watch.  I loved that she loved me enough to give me a watch.  I loved wearing the watch.  NOW I can say that I loved how wearing the watch made me feel about myself, only I didn’t know THEN that I had a self.  But as I think about thinking I think about this:

I walked to and from high school that winter of my 9th grade year.  The family (minus my father) spent the year in Tucson, an exotic place for a girl from Alaska.  I consciously made the effort every morning and every afternoon during my walk to switch all my school books I was carrying to holding them in my right arm so that I could swing my left arm with my watch on my wrist freely every time I came to a place I had to cross a street.

I remember my thinking:  “Everyone sitting there in their car waiting for me to cross this street notices my beautiful watch.  They will think, “Look at that beautiful watch.  What a special and wonderful girl that is to be wearing such a beautiful watch.””

Looking back I can see that the Theory of Mind I had about the world was – well, ridiculous for a girl of 14.  As a severely abused child, I had been given no experience in forming a Theory of Mind that would have allowed me to grow into a world with other people in it in such a way that I could conceive anything about how their minds worked.  Neither did I have a Theory of Mind that appropriately or adequately let me understand the workings of my own mind.

There is no possible way that even one single person of all those I walked in front of my 9th grade year ever noticed my watch, let alone THOUGHT what I THOUGHT they were THINKING.

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This leads me to thinking about something else I remember thinking this same year.  One morning I had scraped the skin off the entire length of my shin bone while I was hurriedly shaving my legs before school.  That afternoon as I was changing into my little blue (required) gym suit before class, a girl glanced at my leg and simply said, “I see you cut yourself shaving.”

No big deal, except that again I see how pitiful, even nonexistent my Theory of Mind was at 14.  I was stunned by her observation.  How could this girl POSSIBLY know that fact?  I had no concept of clairvoyancy, but that was my feeling.  This girl obviously possessed amazing magical abilities!  There was, to me, no other possible way that she could have known my secret, a secret that was veiled and shrouded in the privacy of my own bathroom at home.  I felt naked and exposed in front of this stranger, and I’ve never forgotten this moment, either.

Partly this is true because this wasn’t the only time in my life I had this exact same reaction to something someone observed about me as a truth.  When I was 29 and was going through my final session with my therapist before exiting my 7-week inpatient alcoholism treatment program, I was stunned in the same way when my therapist said to me, “I have called a local counseling center and made an appointment for you with a therapist there as a part of your aftercare program.  She is a specialist in treating child abuse survivors.”

Child abuse survivor?  ME?  That was the very first time anyone had ever signaled to me in any way that I had been abused in my childhood.  At that time, I wasn’t even remotely, consciously privy to the fact I had been abused.  Yet on another level OF COURSE I knew I had been abused.  I had just NEVER, EVER had any way to think about this fact.

Here was this woman, who even though I had spent hours with her in addiction-related therapy sessions over a 7-week period of time, still considered her a stranger.  I was just as stunned at her words as I was when the magical girl had known the secret of my leg scrape.  How could this woman possibly know I had been abused?  I certainly hadn’t told either one of these people my secrets!  This therapist was, obviously, a magical clairvoyant, too.

I had no place in my warped, distorted, tiny, unsubstantial and uniformed Theory of Mind to understand that other people can EASILY tell all kinds of things about other people.  Again, I felt exposed, vulnerable, and very confused.  Walking around in a world filled with other people, how was I supposed to ever know what they knew about me?

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It wasn’t until about six years ago when I began my own research in an effort to more fully understand what my mother’s 18 years of abuse of me had ACTUALLY done to me that I discovered the very real concept of Theory of Mind.  Even then, it took me another two years after I discovered this concept for me to realize how my trauma-influenced formation of my own (very limited) Theory of Mind meant that not only did I not understand how other people were able to know what they know about me and others, but in return I am equally limited in my understanding of other people’s minds.

Having an adequately formed Theory of Mind built through secure-enough early attachment experiences means that in most human-to-human interactions people do not have to stop and THINK about what is going on.  These patterns of interaction have their roots in the early-forming right, social, limbic, emotional brain.  When trauma and abuse changes the way this part of the brain develops, human interactions and the operation of Theory of Mind will never (in my opinion) be automatic and normal.

This all comes into my thinking about thinking today in regard to Tolle’s writing because I know that our Theory of Mind doesn’t only concern itself with other people.  It also informs all of our thinking about our relationship with the most important person we know:  our own SELF.  Tolle’s writing seems to be in part about discovering a different layer of our self, one that exists in a much bigger way than does our ‘thinking self’.

This is all fine and good, but our physiological construction, I believe, always guides everything in our life as long as we are alive in a body.  The Theory of Mind that we use in our THINKING is directly tied in all of its aspects to our body through our nervous system.  Our early-forming right brain is meant to be the foremost expert at being able to read all the extremely rapid-firing nerve-based expressions other people send about their inner states through the sound of their voice, the extremely rapid signals of their facial muscles, their body language – in essence, all the nonverbal information that is always included in our interactions with other people in real-place, real-time.

These most important nonverbal signals are received by our brain on its fundamental levels, and the regions of our brain that receive them are directly tied to our autonomic nervous system and vagus nerve responses.  In fact, our vagus nerve system and our facial signaling processes are connected in their earliest evolution to the nerve structures of primitive jawless fish and are connected to both our stress and our calm and connection response systems.

I don’t believe that we can disconnect, or dis-associate our THINKING that Tolle is suggesting we begin to watch from these very ancient and very real present-day physiological structures within our body.  Thinking that we can witness above the surface, or consciously pay attention to, is the tip of our physiological iceberg that happens BECAUSE we have some version of a Theory of Mind.

The ‘place’ where our Theory of Mind operates within us is, to me, like a Ground Zero for what we actually can know consciously both about our self and about others:  Our Theory of Mind in-forms our thinking.  While we are not perhaps used to thinking about our thinking this way, I believe that our entire being thinks.  We think with our body because we live within our body.

Certainly what we actually know is much larger that what reaches our conscious awareness at any given instant of time.  I suspect that our Theory of Mind acts like a two-way filtering system.  It not only influences and in-forms both our unconscious (implicit) and our conscious (explicit) reactions, it also determines which is which, and colors our self-reflective abilities and processes!

I believe that as long as we are alive we experience a changing Theory of Mind, and that we have the power to influence these changes.  This is what I THINK Tolle is talking about when he states:

“The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind.  This is the only true liberation.  You can take the first step right now.  Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can.  Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patters, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years.  This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying:  listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

“When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially.  That is to say, do not judge.  Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door.  You’ll soon realize:  there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it.  This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought.  It arises from beyond the mind.”  (pages 18-19)

Perhaps I simply have a differing definitions of ‘thought’, ‘mind’ and ‘self’ than Tolle might.  In My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey author Jill Bolte Taylor describes a very similar pattern as Tolle does, one based on her stroke experience of ‘losing’ access to her left-brain hemisphere action, Taylor describes this ‘thoughtless state’ in terms of being able to access our right-brain hemisphere’s reality without words.

Our ‘thinking self’ is not the enemy.  Having the ability to think is a gift.  Having a mind is a gift to be thankful for (see word family-definitions below).  Having a flexible, adaptive, resilient, changeable Theory of Mind allows us to make the best use possible of both of these gifts – and more.  If I accept that Tolle is using his own thinking about thinking in his particular way, and that what he is trying to say is that he found a way to improve upon the experience of being a conscious non-word-based thinker, I am curious enough about his thoughts to read more about what he has to say.

Perhaps my own Theory of Mind will change in positive ways as a result of this process of learning.  I always appreciate learning how to bring new ways of being myself into the playing field of my Theory of Mind.  Meanwhile, now that this post is completed I will go outdoors before today’s big winds show up and ‘think with my body-mind’ as I play with the mud making more adobes!

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For some thought provoking information from Dr. Siegel’s writings about states of mind (and states of being) in regard to the organization of the SELF, follow this link (might be a little slow on the page loading!):

**Dr. Siegel on organization-reorganization of the SELF

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THINK

Inflected Form(s): thought \ˈthȯt\; think·ing

Etymology: Middle English thenken, from Old English thencan; akin to Old High German denken to think, Latin tongēre to know — more at thanks

Date: before 12th century

transitive verb 1 : to form or have in the mind
2 : to have as an intention <thought to return early>
3 a : to have as an opinion <think it’s so> b : to regard as : consider <think the rule unfair>
4 a : to reflect on : ponder <think the matter over> b : to determine by reflecting <think what to do next>
5 : to call to mind : remember <he never thinks to ask how we do>
6 : to devise by thinking —usually used with up <thought up a plan to escape>
7 : to have as an expectation : anticipate <we didn’t think we’d have any trouble>
8 a : to center one’s thoughts on <talks and thinks business> b : to form a mental picture of
9 : to subject to the processes of logical thought <think things out>intransitive verb 1 a : to exercise the powers of judgment, conception, or inference : reason b : to have in the mind or call to mind a thought
2 a : to have the mind engaged in reflection : meditate b : to consider the suitability <thought of her for president>
3 : to have a view or opinion <thinks of himself as a poet>
4 : to have concern —usually used with of <a man must think first of his family>
5 : to consider something likely : suspect <may happen sooner than you think>

— think·er noun

— think better of : to reconsider and make a wiser decision

— think much of : to view with satisfaction : approve —usually used in negative constructions <I didn’t think much of the new car>

synonyms think, conceive, imagine, fancy, realize, envisage, envision mean to form an idea of. think implies the entrance of an idea into one’s mind with or without deliberate consideration or reflection <I just thought of a good joke>. conceive suggests the forming and bringing forth and usually developing of an idea, plan, or design <conceived of a new marketing approach>. imagine stresses a visualization <imagine you’re at the beach>. fancy suggests an imagining often unrestrained by reality but spurred by desires <fancied himself a super athlete>. realize stresses a grasping of the significance of what is conceived or imagined <realized the enormity of the task ahead>. envisage and envision imply a conceiving or imagining that is especially clear or detailed <envisaged a totally computerized operation> <envisioned a cure for the disease>.

synonyms think, cogitate, reflect, reason, speculate, deliberate mean to use one’s powers of conception, judgment, or inference. think is general and may apply to any mental activity, but used alone often suggests attainment of clear ideas or conclusions <teaches students how to think>. cogitate implies deep or intent thinking <cogitated on the mysteries of nature>. reflect suggests unhurried consideration of something recalled to the mind <reflecting on fifty years of married life>. reason stresses consecutive logical thinking <able to reason brilliantly in debate>. speculate implies reasoning about things theoretical or problematic <speculated on the fate of the lost explorers>. deliberate suggests slow or careful reasoning before forming an opinion or reaching a conclusion or decision <the jury deliberated for five hours>.

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THANKS

Etymology: plural of Middle English thank, from Old English thanc thought, gratitude; akin to Old High German dank gratitude, Latin tongēre to know

Date: before 12th century

1 : kindly or grateful thoughts : gratitude
2 : an expression of gratitude <return thanks before the meal> —often used in an utterance containing no verb and serving as a courteous and somewhat informal expression of gratitude <many thanks>

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MIND

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gemynd; akin to Old High German gimunt memory, Latin ment-, mens mind, monēre to remind, warn, Greek menos spirit, mnasthai, mimnēskesthai to remember

Date: before 12th century

1 : recollection, memory <keep that in mind> <time out of mind>
2 a : the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons b : the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism c : the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism
3 : intention, desire <I changed my mind>
4 : the normal or healthy condition of the mental faculties
5 : opinion, view
6 : disposition, mood
7 a : a person or group embodying mental qualities <the public mind> b : intellectual ability
8 capitalized Christian Science : god 1b
9 : a conscious substratum or factor in the universe
10 : attention <pay him no mind>

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+THINKING THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING

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I thought a lot about thinking today while I mixed and formed my 22 adobe blocks.  The book my sister sent to me arrived yesterday, Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and I’ve started reading it.  Tolle writes ‘pauses’ into his text to give the reader an idea how far and how much to read before pausing to consider his words.  I’m not far into it, being a big believer in pauses, but I can tell already that Tolle is saying that we are not our thoughts.

In fact, I think what he’s going to be saying is that our BIG self has nothing to do with mind or thinking at all.  I think he’s going to say that NOT THINKING frees us to be our BIG person who is somehow closer to ‘enlightened’.  I think he’s saying that when we can find the part of ourselves that can watch the thinking part of us doing all its busy thinking, we will be a step closer to understanding whatever it is he is writing about.

I won’t give up, though.  I’ll keep reading and pausing and reading and pausing – and I guess sooner or later I’ll be able to read without thinking and pause without thinking.  In the meantime I remember very well 18 years of childhood spent not thinking.  I evidently wasn’t close to ‘enlightened’, though, because I didn’t know I had a self to be thinking with.  Tolle seems to suggest that once a person can find this non-thinking person self and then BY CHOICE  STOP THINKING – well, that must be something entirely different.

Today I didn’t get very far in my pausing in regard to not thinking, even though I enjoyed the pauses – kind of like recess!.  I just thought about thinking just as I did when I woke up this morning.  Part of what is contributing to this thinking on thinking has to do with why I seriously doubt that, for all the information on this blog, that I can manage to write a book without outside help.

I was thinking about how I thought when I first had to write papers in art therapy graduate school in 1989.  I couldn’t think about what I was writing about straight on.  I took my notes, wrote my words, and then after my 3-year-old was in bed for the night, I cut every single sentence apart from the next one, laid all the little slips of paper on my living room floor, and proceeded to think about my thoughts.

I could move all the slips around, group them one way and then another way.  Eventually I figured out what thought went with what, and taped them together.  I didn’t have a computer, so off to the typewriter I went and worked through the night until I had a finished paper to turn into the professor the next day.

I never received anything but an “A” on a paper I wrote, and most of them my professor suggested I submit to art therapy journals for publication.  I never did.

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Then came the second year of graduate school, and the thinking got harder.  Near the end of my coursework, I was given an assignment to write a 40-page synthesis paper about the ideas contained in this book:  The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism – Hardcover (Feb. 20, 1981) by James Engell.  Believe me, this was NOT an easy or a fun project!  Take a look HERE at the Table of Contents.

But, boy oh boy, had I made progress in my ability to think and to synthesize ideas.  I read the book through and wrote a 50-page paper about the idea of the creative imagination as presented by 40 of the philosophers whose thoughts were presented in this book.

I received an “A+” plus on the paper, which was written straight through from beginning to end without notes.  I added the introduction as my final movement.  Yet never after that moment could I again remember one single bit of information from that book, nor could I remember one single thing I had written about it.  I had memory of being the person who had pursued the process of MAKING the paper appear, but that was all I ever had – except for my grade.  The chair of the department requested I submit that paper for publication.  I never did.

So, I have no idea how I can ever write a book.  I don’t want to become that dissociated Linda that could process information and write like that.  Neither can I be the ‘invested’ Linda that has to think that intensely about every single sentence I write.  Blogging just seems to fit because it can be as circular as a buzz-saw blade.

My writing can go somewhere or nowhere at all.  Nobody pays to read it.  If someone doesn’t like how I write or what I write – well, the internet’s the limit!  Unless some magical day appears in the future where I can write a ‘once and for all’, blogging is exactly where I will stay.

I posted my first thoughts here on April 10, 2009.  What matters to me is that I do not give up writing just because I cannot contain my ideas, thoughts, expressions or feelings within two covers of a book, although if this ever happens it will delight me.

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+NOT UP TO MUCH OF ANYTHING AT ALL

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I chose to just work myself tired today outside digging down my yard.  Literally.  I am very grateful I have as big a yard as I do, but I miss the 7 1/2 acres I managed to ‘buy’ for a few years when I first moved down here.  Eventually I had to let it go.  I could no longer afford a $1,200 monthly payment.  Fortunately, that ‘crash’ in my life happened 8 months after my youngest had left home for the Air Force.

So, I decided to change the slope of the property away from the house rather than toward it.  My big piles of dirt I shoveled today will end up in adobe blocks.  Meanwhile, it was overcast and threatening rain – a big “No! No!” for making mud bricks.  I just didn’t want to think or feel today, so shovel in hand I plowed through the earth like a big above ground mole.

Sometimes I DO wish I knew what the point is to all the writing I do over here.  But, I don’t.  I just do it.  I TRY to be constructive whether its writing or digging, but the truth is my life is pretty simple these days.  Mental-emotional ‘disabilities’ do that to a person sometimes.  If I think of something even a wee bit profound to say, I’ll be back here.  Meanwhile, I’m going back to watch some more of this ‘take-me-away-to-Australia’ ranch (station they call it) Netflix streamed TV series.

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+A COLLECTION OF THIS BLOG’S LINKS ON DISSOCIATION AND DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED INSECURE ATTACHMENT

alchemynow5 Comments

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Today I am just moving some blog links to the front burner on self-organization, dissociation and disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment patterns.  I sure can’t claim that reading any of this information is fun, but it might be helpful in some way to add a few new ideas into the Think Pot!

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IN MEMORY OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER:

From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder
Scientists Explore Ways to Alter MemoriesI stumbled on this interesting article recently published in the Wall Stress Journal on scientists’ attempts to alter fear memories. Researchers are finding that memories that produce fear and anxiety… Read more
Physician on Trial for Allegedly Assisting a BPD SuicideLast week Newsweek ran this article on Dr. Lawrence Egbert, the head of the right-to-die group Final Exit Network (FEN). Dr. Egbert is currently facing charges in Georgia and Arizona… Read more
How Will Healthcare Reform Impact BPD Treatment?Readers in the United States woke up to the news that the House of Representatives has passed massive healthcare reform legislation. The road to this legislation has been contentious and… Read more
Understanding Borderline Personality DisorderLearn more about the symptoms and associated features of borderline personality disorder, including emotional and relationship instability, impulsivity, suicidality, self-harm, and more.

What is BPD? Symptoms of BPD Diagnosis of BPD Treatment of BPD
Living with BPD

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+’DIS-ASSOCIATION’ BETWEEN RIGHT-LEFT BRAIN HEMISPHERES AND DISMISSIVE-AVOIDANT INSECURE ATTACHMENT DISORDERS

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Dr. Daniel Siegel, in his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2001), describes how “dis-associated hemispheric processing” between our left and right human brain regions each contribute to differently as he describes in what he calls a “laterality-attachment hypothesis.”  This hypothesis seems to be particularly related to what attachment experts refer to as ‘dismissive-avoidant’ insecure attachment disorders (one I suspect my father had and ‘got’ from his depressed mother).

In this post I am presenting some of Siegel’s creative and thought provoking ideas on the subject:

“Patterns of representations differ markedly between the left and right halves of the brain.  An important distinction, often underrecognized within the fields of clinical psychiatry and psychology, is the distinction between the modes of representation within the two hemispheres of the brain.  The left hemisphere has been described as having a logical “interpreter” function that uses syllogistic reasoning to deduce cause-effect relationships from the representational data it has available to it.  The right hemisphere specializes in the representation of context and of mentalizing capacities.  It is therefore uniquely capable of registering and expressing affective facial expressions, developing a “theory of mind,” registering and regulating the state of the body, and having autobiographical representations.

“How are these bilateral processes relevant to relationships?  Communication is crucial in establishing neural connections early in life and involves the sharing of energy and information.  Levels of arousal (energy) and mental representations (information) are very different on each side of the brain.  The sharing of arousal and representations from one brain to another — the essence of connecting minds — will thus differ between the hemispheres.  One can propose, in fact, that the right brain perceives the output of the right brain of another person, whereas the left brain perceives the left brain’s output.

“In intimate, emotional relationships, such as friendship, romance, parent-child pairs, psychotherapy, and teacher-student dyads, what does this look like?  The left brain sends out language-based, logical, sequential interpreting statements that attempt to make sense of things [in a particular way].  The left brain receives these messages, decodes the linguistic representations, and tries to make sense out of these newly arrived digital symbols.  At the same time, the right brain is sending nonverbal messages via facial expressions, gestures, prosody [the music of speech], and tone of voice, which are perceived by the other’s [sic] right brain.  OK.  So what?

“The “what” of it is that the right brain takes this information and uses its social perceptions of nonverbal communication to engage directly in a few very important processes.

— It creates an image of the other’s [sic] mind (“mindsight”).

— It regulates bodily response while at the same time registering the somatic [body-based] markers of shifts in bodily state.

— It creates autobiographical representations within memory.

— It appraises the meaning of these events and directly affects the degree of arousal, thus creating primary emotional responses.  Intense and primary emotional states are therefore likely to be mediated via the right hemisphere.”

“When we examine these findings alongside the independent set of data from attachment research, certain patterns are suggested.  The early affect attunement and alignment of mental states can be seen as a mutually regulated hemisphere-to-hemisphere coordination between child and parent.  In this view, we can propose that avoidant attachment involves a serious lack of this form of communication between the right hemispheres of child and parent.  The extension of this finding to laterality research raises the possibility that the left hemisphere serves as the dominant mediator of communication between an avoidant child and a dismissing parent.

“In support of this perspective, it turns out that in 1989, [attachment experts] Main and Hesse examined exactly this hypothesis in two large-scale samples of Berkeley undergraduates, each of whom were asked about their degree of right (or left) handedness, as a rough approximation of brain dominance….  At the same time, Main and Hesse had devised a set of self-report items that they considered indicative of a “dismissing” state of mind.  Although this type of scale was not ultimately able to predict AAI [Adult Attachment Interview] classifications [of attachment styles] statistically, and therefore these findings were never published, in keeping with the hypothesis both studies found that the degree of right handedness was significantly correlated with elevated scores of the scale for “dismissing” state of mind.

“Further extensions of these ideas to relationships allow us to look more deeply into why certain couples may be “unable to communicate” with any emotional satisfaction.  When we know about the different languages of the right and left hemispheres, it is possible to make hypotheses  about why interactions may be frustrating:  Individuals may not know how to understand the particular language being expressed by their significant others.  If we then integrate past attachment history in understanding the pattern of these difficulties, it is possible to create a framework of understanding that can help the partners in such relationships escape their well-worn ruts.   [My note:  I would think parents, as well, would benefit so that the intergenerational transmission of dismissive-avoidant insecure attachment patterns could be eliminated.]

“If this laterality-attachment hypothesis is correct, then a logical implication would be that any experiences that help to develop the processing abilities of each hemisphere and/or the integrated activities of the two hemispheres may improve certain individuals’ internal and interpersonal lives.  Such movement toward more coordinated interhemispheric functioning would be quite welcomed by many people (especially the lonely and frustrated spouses [and I would say infant-children0 of dismissing individuals).

“The developmental and experiential histories that have led to a lack of integration of the functioning of the two hemispheres may leave individuals vulnerable to emotional and social problems.  Unresolved trauma and grief, histories of emotional neglect, and restrictive adaptations may each represent some form of constriction in the flow of information processing between the hemispheres.  This proposal of the central role of the dis-associated hemispheric processing in emotional disturbances is supported by the finding that insecure attachments in childhood may establish a vulnerability to psychological dysfunction.

“Emotional relationships that enhance the development of each hemisphere and its unrestricted integration with the activity of the other can thus be proposed to be likely to foster the development of psychological well-being.  In this way, a secure attachment can be seen as a developmental relationship that provides for an integration of functioning of the two hemispheres, both between child and caregiver and within the child’s own brain.

“At the most basic level, right-hemisphere-to-right-hemisphere communication can be seen within the affectively attuned communications that allow for primary emotional states to be shared via nonverbal signals. Left-hemisphere-to-left-hemisphere alignment can be seen in shared attention to objects in the world.  Reflective dialogues, in which language is used to focus attention on the mental states of others (including the two members of the dyad), may foster bilateral integration between the two hemispheres of both child and parent.  The resilience of secure attachments can thus be proposed as founded in part in the bilateral integration that these relationships foster.”  (pages 205-207 – all bold type is mine)

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+DISSOCIATION: MEMORY OF ONGOING EXPERIENCE FROM THE PREY’S POINT OF VIEW

alchemynow2 Comments

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I intended today to write a post about dissociation when I went outside to sit with my morning cup of coffee.  What greeted me there was a trauma-drama in full play, and not a pleasant one for me to watch.  Yet I know that life, and nature itself shows us things that often allow our right brain to watch visually as drama and image at the same time our left brain is offered information to THINK about.

I am going to separate my two ‘streams of information’ this morning.  This post is about how a severely abused and traumatized infant-toddler’s body-brain is forced to absorb information about the world, and about itself in the world in relation to its early attachment caregivers.  The information I am going to present in my NEXT post will be the scientific, rational, logical and far more abstract information.  We NEED this more technical information, but as survivors we will not be able to really understand it or make good practical use of the dry information that developmental neuroscientists provide for us if we cannot ASSOCIATE this information with our own ongoing experience.

People often use this term in the English language, “a game of cat and mouse.”  What I watched this morning as one of my cats toyed with a furry little mouse could have looked like a game from her point of view.  But what was this experience like for the little, tiny mouse?  Its life was at stake, and there was anything BUT a game going on from its point of view.

Those of us who were raised especially by extremely hate-filled abusive and traumatizing mothers from the time of our birth were like this little mouse.  Yet we were even more helpless against our giant predator.  At least this mouse was fully developed and could use all its possible defense abilities – not that they would in the end be effective at allowing it to escape and go on living.

I knew how this ongoing drama would end.  Yes, my cat WAS playing with her prey.  She was fully focused and concentrated on her ‘game’.  The mouse was fully focused on trying to avoid being killed.  And there I was, the bystander at the same time I was the only hope that little mouse had for staying alive.

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The mouse was quick, but the cat was quicker.  Every time I tried to sidetrack the cat she out maneuvered me, grabbed her little ‘toy’ and ran off to continue her ‘hunt’ somewhere else.  How could I help to give the mouse a chance to escape – to where?  There’s nowhere in my yard that mouse would be safe and secure.  There was no way I could catch the mouse and move it somewhere out of danger’s way, either.

There are a lot of mice here.  Part of the reason why, I know, is because my east neighbor whose property I just fenced off from my yard visually, continues to heap all his garbage for a family of seven against that fence, thus encouraging rodents to multiply.  Where there are rodents, there are rattlesnakes to eat them in this country.  Elimination of mice is normally a good thing.  I just didn’t want to WATCH the elimination happen.  Not today.  Not as I prepared to write a victimized-survivor post about dissociation!

But what I thought about as I continued to try to dissuade my cat from continuing her mission was how that little mouse, in the midst of the insecurity and lack of safety involved with its ongoing trauma, would NEVER do anything else but focus on its own survival.

These thoughts became entangled and intertwined with the technical information I was thinking about for my post on dissociation.  Because my mother was a predator, and because I was just as much her ongoing prey as this mouse was to my cat, there was NEVER a time in my infant-toddler-childhood that I was assured of enough safety and security to do ANYTHING ELSE other than survive.

At the same time I was more powerless and helpless than a mouse is under the attack of a cat, my brain, my nervous system, my immune system, my entire being was growing and developing in interaction with the experiences I was having in my early environment.  Nothing else but surviving the trauma of my mother’s attacks against me mattered.  Never was there a TIME when trauma wasn’t immediately threatening and impending, happening in the present moment, or just having finished happening – so that it could happen again.

My childhood was spent in a state of heightened trauma alertness from the beginning of my life.  As I watched my cat, she periodically caught the mouse in her mouth and carried him to another ‘play ground’ where she then let it go long enough that it could run a short distance and do what a little mouse will do:  Hide itself in an area that it thinks MIGHT best conceal it.

Of course the cat knew exactly where the mouse went, and right where it was.  She poked her paws into the spaces in the hiding places, batted the little creature, pushed and prodded it, and when it didn’t come out at a full run, she’s simply stick her head in, grab the mouse again, and move it on to another (to her) intriguing hiding playground.  Of course the most obvious places for this game to go on were in amongst my flower beds, a process which of course would have eventually led not only to the death of the mouse but to the destruction of my much-loved plants!

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Yes, watching my cat’s play-filled species determined extermination of this mouse was a trauma trigger for me.  I could not help but try to intervene on behalf of the little one who was going to lose its life if I didn’t.  I couldn’t catch my cat, so I sat out there for a long time chasing her away from the vicinity of the hidden prey.  I opened the back door thinking she would eventually get bored with out-waiting me and venture into the house.  Nope, that didn’t happen.

Instead, two of my other cats wandered out of the house.  They could tell immediately that Goldilocks was after prey, and all I could think of was, “Oh great!  There’s no way out of this.  I’ll take some pictures and then exit the playground so I don’t have to watch what I know is unavoidably going to happen.”

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So here are some pictures.  It’s been about an hour since I stopped watching the trauma-drama outside my door.  I just went outside again to see another one of my cats sitting under the Oleander bush satisfyingly smacking its lips and cleaning its jaw daintily with its paw.  “Mouse gone.  Game over.”

So, now in thinking about dissociation as the experts like to write about it, I have to say that nobody, absolutely nobody actually knows what dissociation is, what it does, what it feels like, how it operates, or where it came from like survivors do – particularly and especially those of us who endured and survived repeated, ongoing predatory attacks in our very early life of infancy and toddlerhood by our mothers.

If we then continued to endure trauma, abuse and attacks into and throughout our childhood, there is (in my thinking) no possible way that so-called dissociation did not build itself into our growing and developing body-brain.

I will never believe that dissociation is a so-called ‘defense mechanism’ for such survivors.  Our dissociation is simply HOW our brain regions, circuitry and networks were forced to grow and develop.

The mouse I watched today was in an ongoing peritraumatic state which was broken up A LITTLE TINY BIT by the moments the cat allowed it to nestle within its hiding places.  But these periodic reprieves from direct terror and assault were not enough to ever allow this mouse to go on about its life in anything like an ordinary (safe and secure) way.

Everything that mouse experienced both during direct assaults upon its life and during its reprieves, demanded that trauma-based body-brain operations continue to happen.  Those experiences are completely different in the midst of trauma and its trauma-based allowances of semi-reprieve than are ongoing experiences where trauma is not present or immediately threatened.  When any creature is forced to adapt to trauma environments during critical growth and developmental stages, both the experiences of trauma and reactions to it build themselves in.  The trauma in effect ‘moves in to stay’.

What this means to an early abused and traumatized human is that the emerging self goes into and remains in hiding as surely as this mouse did.  I don’t believe our parental-predators could ever reach our hidden self.  Yes, they could reach our little bodies with the attack of their words and blows, but our inner own self remained protected simply because of the nature of being human.

Every single person is a separate, individual entity that can only be accessed from the inside.  Even though everything that happens to us from the OUTSIDE profoundly affected our development, and could and did change the way our body that our self lives in, our self – its own self – remains ours and ours only.

The problem became one of us not being able to experience our self in our own life.  Experts refer to alterations in memory capacities (which is what the next post is about).  Dissociation means that we do not remember ourselves as being connected to our own ongoing experience in ordinary ways because our capacity to REMEMBER was affected PHYSIOLOGICALLY during our earliest development.

Enough said at the moment.  As you look at the following pictures think of each one as representing an environmental context for ongoing moments of my cat’s life – but from the point of view of the mouse.  No way was it important for the mouse (forget the cat here) to remember itself in one of these ‘pictures’ in any particular order.  All the mouse could do was attempt to stay alive.  The only way it could do that would be if it could find a safe enough place to hide and remain hidden.

Safe enough.  That is what every living creature needs so it can continue to remain alive.  But growing and developing a human body-brain as time moves on and the trauma continues means that the inner experience of being in the midst of trauma never leaves us.  Trauma is not only what happened to us, but became how we grew a body-brain to remember ourselves with.

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It's only a GAME of hide-and-seek if we play it with equal peers. It's only a GAME of cat-and-mouse if you are the predator.
Where could a victimized-prey hide to escape? Under the blue flax and sage bush?
Is there a tiny little self tucked into hiding within the clover?
Under the poppies among the petunias? Is this a safe place to hide for survival?
Where is it safe for an abused and traumatized mouse -- or infant-child -- to hide?
Is it safe enough to stay alive under the newly blooming rose bush?
When I finally turned away from the trauma drama, the little mouse had hidden itself here among the tiny pansies.
The mouse was hiding in here last I saw of it. Each of these hiding places can be thought of as a momentary segment of the mouse's endangered life -- like victimized tiny children forming their abilities to remember their self in their life -- the separate events are just that -- dissociated experiences linked together only by one thing: Ongoing experiences of individual events of enduring and surviving trauma. Meanwhile, the SELF remains hidden unless we can contact and connect with 'self' within its own world

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+LOVING THE POSSIBILITIES – OUTDOORS WITH THE MUD

alchemynow7 Comments

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Light cloud cover screened the intensity of the sun today, creating a temperature veil that made it a most perfect day to work outside.  I was out there for hours, digging and hauling dirt, sifting for gravel that’s getting moved to the front of the house’s walkway.  I made 15 grand adobe blocks today and have dirt ready for tomorrow if the temperature stays cooler.  (More ‘modern’ people would be able to ‘make hay’ with a power cement mixer — it is WORK mixing in the 10% cement evenly and the WATER!)

My vision of the back yard is taking form.  I want to tear down what’s left of that old, raggedy shed.  I’ll save the wood, clear the cement pad, and build a little adobe chapel!  There might not be another chapel so close to the Mexican-American border line anywhere in America!  How sweet that will be!

I will dedicate the little place as a prayer chapel for peace and tranquility.  Somehow I will include within it a very simple plaque with my most favorite words in the whole world on it (in English and in Spanish):

“Never sadden anyone, no matter whom, for no matter what.”

by The Bab

(This was on page 31 of the edition – not sure of the year – I found this in when I wrote it into my prayer book nearly 40 years ago – in Release the Sun: An Early History of the Baha’i Faith by William Sears)

I am beginning to see more clearly what isn’t here yet.   Let the fair winds continue to blow, I’ve got work to do!  Give this woman a shovel, a pair of gloves, a plastic bucket — some dirt and water — and WATCH OUT!  There is nothing better for my healing and well-being I could be doing right now – absolutely nothing.

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These only bloom in the spring
The first of many-yet-to-be gravel and adobe mines!
15 today
Lovin' it
Accumulating - continuing to dry and cure
So, this shed's gotta go. This is where all the rusty corrugated steel came from, blew off in 4 separate high winds last winter, Mexico-American border wall behind it - and - a Mesquite tree I believe I can trim and beautify (Can't see it, it's behind the shed)
For many years 'illegals' stayed in this shed, even since I've lived here until the 2nd wall-fence was put up that they can no longer cross behind my yard
Wait 'til you see what's gonna take its place! I can SEE it!

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