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Tuesday, April 7, 2015. (I have no idea why WordPress has confused type and size in this post. There is no way I can correct this problem. I DO NOT like whatever these new changes they have made to the post publishing process!) Last evening I was able to communicate via shared comments on another public blog related to trauma with a stunningly remarkable survivor of “one of the worst of the worst” kinds of abusive trauma childhoods, much of it caused by parental severe mental illness and societal neglect of what was happening in that family especially to vulnerable children. (As happened in my case.)
I felt something interesting I haven’t felt for quite some time by the end of the evening when I took my practice time to lay my fingers on keys to roll out the increasingly complicated scales I am working to learn. After communicating with this survivor who KNEW my story as I KNEW her story – not exact details of course, but the nicely resonating patterns of notes played over chords – she and I harmonized – I could PLAY my scales with an ease I have not yet experienced in the five months I have been playing.
I felt like a massive burden, a great weight had at least temporarily been SHARED with another person in such a way as to lighten even my fingers, and certainly my mind as the anxiety of chronic “distress” temporarily lifted from me.
Which led me today to think about how it may be a consequence for those severe early abuse survivors (I am talking insanely intense and high ACE scores and negative-zero resiliency as it is currently being measured) – of the fact that we are choosing to heal, choosing to keep as much trauma drama along with the people who would create it in our lives OUT of our lives, are living free of addictions as much as possible, etc. – that we can feel SO ALONE, so LONELY, so unable to experience EMPATHY coming to us from other people who cannot even imagine what happened to us and “what our life is like now.”
Our healing, our self-education, the choices and actions we take and have taken to heal from trauma send us out into a different kind of world that we will never actually match. “Those others” have NO idea about severe trauma – and it is forbidden in our culture from speaking about it.
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I could write a lot about this, but now isn’t the time. These are contextual kinds of thoughts and realizations for me. They directly relate to this:
+Dr. Teicher’s ARTICLE ON TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT
*Notes on Teicher
I experienced a literal kind of freedom from this OTHER and ADDITIONAL burden of being in a “better world” while being barred from describing MY world to anyone else. I am so used to that experience – at least currently in my life – that I was nearly SHOCKED last night that I felt so different, so much better. I felt connected, understood in that kind of way I think non-severe trauma people take absolutely for granted all of the time!
If you haven’t taken a look at Dr. Teicher’s work, I am very seriously suggesting the article above as a MUST READ – please do so! And here are a few more links – there are plenty online to his work. There is also a trauma information jackpot at the end of an online search for terms: “martin teacher verbal abuse”
+SOME ARTICLES FROM DR. MARTIN H. TEICHER – AN EXPERT ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHILDHOOD ABUSE
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And a few other links to related writing on this blog:
+SOME LIKE IT THIS WAY
+BEING A SPECIAL NEEDS CASE
++DAMAGE AND REPAIR
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And just for a tidbit of research and study candy, do online search for “jaak panksepp research” for a real treat.
I mention this briefly because of a peripheral series of thoughts I am having today related to feeling at least briefly a whole lot freer to me a happier me last night. I have no idea where to find the specific research article I am thinking of among the 10,000 pages/post pages on this blog but I REMEMBER something that I THINK came from the direction of Panksepp, who engages in primate and other animal research.
Probably nearly 10 years ago now I discovered in that rather magical way that studying research online can work an article that wrote about how primates who have been exposed to the creation of lesions in different brain regions depending on what was being studied – and then were turned out into (in this case) a very large and “nice” (yeah, I know….) outdoor confine.
Researchers discovered by surprise that all primates with the same kind of lesion/same brain area grouped themselves together and had nothing whatsoever to do with other groups. In other words, what I am saying about how there is an isolation/loneliness consequence we survivors who are trying to heal experience because we have “left the group of our so-wounded kind” and are now, as Teicher describes it, are in a “mismatch” situation within a world of far more safe and securely attached people (as are even those with the “organized” insecure attachment disorders – compared to us these others are SO much better off and less traumatized than are those of us with the “disorganized” insecure attachment-built body/nervous system/ brain).
Those researchers accidentally discovered that by instinct like found like among those brain lesioned animals. They stayed together. Those of us working to heal our self from the most severely traumatic abuse and neglect in infancy and throughout our childhood (as per highest ACE scores) do have “brain changes” as the first Teicher article I posted above describes.
This is why it is so vital that we locate link up with OUR kind wherever we can find YOU!
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Here is our first book out in ebook format. Click here to view or purchase –
Story Without Words: How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?
It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.
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NOTE: I am stuck with a new version of the blog’s posting page that I do not like and cannot get out of. It has refused to post or include my chosen tags:
adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame
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