Tag: adult reactive attachment disorder

+MY MOTHER AS A ‘BORDERLINE CHILD’ – HER GOOD/BAD STORY

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I believe that within the ending sentence of this story my mother wrote when she was ten years old (1935) lies a powerful clue to the continuing demise of my mother’s mind that led to the terrible abuse she was later to perpetrate against me as ‘the devil’s child who could do no right’ at the same time she relegated to my younger sister the status of being ‘God’s child who could do no bad’.

Both my sister and I became projections from her own disturbed externalized-mind.

From all the stories my mother told us from her own childhood, her mother also created a profound dichotomous split in her feelings toward and treatment of my mother as the ‘bad’ child and her brother as the ‘good’ one

I am presenting this post as my own response to my previous post

+THE TIN WOMAN’S BRAIN: INFANT-CHILD ABUSE AND DISSOCIATING EMOTION FROM FACT

because from my point of view my mother COULD NOT dissociate or differentiate ’emotion from fact’, while I, as the woman created in response-reaction to the profound continual abuse she perpetrated against me for 18 years experience an in-built (in response to developing a body-brain in my mother’s environment of terror and trauma) ability to certainly dissociate emotional information from factual information when my dissociation is triggered in reaction to stress/duress in the environment.

In what might appear to be a bizarre twist of consequence, I would suggest that my mother DID have one of the ‘organized’ insecure attachment patterns (extreme preoccupation) while I, in response to her insane abuse, ended up with primarily a ‘disorganized’ insecure attachment pattern.

My mother’s inability to differentiate or dissociate emotion from fact (although ‘fact’ was tied to her OWN reality) ended up creating within her brain-mind a condition that was designed to enable her to tolerate what would have otherwise completely overwhelmed her.  She was able to contain her own ‘rejected in-tolerate-able badness’ by including me as an externalized projection of her own mind by projecting all of ‘her badness’ onto me.  That entire process was about her EMOTION being absolutely and permanently confused with FACT (so that she could not differentiate between the two) — and I was forced to pay the price.  Her entire being was ‘organized’ around the profound splitting of good from bad that my mother was unable to recognize.

Neither I nor any of my siblings continued this good-bad splitting with our children.

Because my mother perpetrated continual horrendous abuse against me, I was not able to form an ‘organized’ attachment around anyone including my own self.  It’s like my mother was able to create and absolute vacuum that she placed me within that removed from me any ability to develop my own self whatsoever.

As a consequence, my body-brain was designed and built in this environment of trauma ONLY to ‘react’ to the continual threat, violence and danger that was my mother as I knew her.  I could not possibly ‘organize’ my own self within my environment or take anything but the most basic actions during the first 18 years of my life.  Everything else about me was a reaction to her abuse.

Nearly all my efforts to become an ‘organized oriented self’ and to take action on my own behalf as I grew up were thwarted with very few notable exceptions (my feelings about our Alaskan mountain homestead and my childhood-built ability to learn objective facts).  As a result, I have a ‘disorganized-disoriented’ and ‘reactive’ insecure attachment pattern.

I KNOW I suffered abuse ‘profound enough’ to ‘earn’ me my own diagnosis of the attachment patterns I describe here.  In part due to the ‘solitary confinement’ and extreme isolation my mother enforced upon me I suffer from the Reactive Attachment Disorder component of nonattachment.  (See:   Reactive Attachment Disorder in Adults and Child Abuse and Neglect, Reactive Attachment Disorder)  I react profoundly to all stimulation/information I am exposed to in my external environment.  I believe my mother’s reactions were to the universe created in her brain-mind well before she was old enough to write this story.

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Jane and Charles were sitting on the porch wondering what to do outside little snowflakes were playing tag about.

Jane looked up. Their was her mother she said come and get cleaned up. For we are going to call on Uncle Robert. The two children jumped up quickly for they know that he would tell them a story. They jumped into the car and drove up the snowy road the trees wer covered with snowflakes they stopped at a farm rover came to meet them he barked a welcoming. Uncle Robert got up from the chair where he was reading and met them at once.  Jane and Charles [she had Jimmy written in and crossed it out to put in Charles] asked if he would tell them a story he said yes they sat around the fireplace and Uncle Robert began.

Uncle Robert Tells a Story

He started long long ago a bear had three cubs their names were blackie curly and last of all mischievous this he was named because he was always up to some prank this time his mother was going away he told the three little cubs to stay in their cave blackie and curly did but Mischievous did not Blackie and Curly warned him. But this cub was like some children thought he know it all nothing can hurt me he said boldly he trotted down the path not knowing the danger ahead of him.

He looked around not knowing where he was going or thinking about it. He was following a trickling [actually written trickting] brook it was singing him a melody [actually written moldy] of bells.

The cub was so concerned on the music and tree and things around him that he did not [three letter word scratched out here] hear footsteps behind him a hunter was creaping along in the bushes on the other side.

Now let us see what is in the cave of mother bear blackie cub was badly frightened for he knew the dangers ahead of his little brother. Curly meanwhile was having a feast of berrys. Little footsteps entered the cave mother bear was home she looked around yes their was Curly and Blackie but Mischievous [she actually abbreviated this to Mis.] was no where to be seen. Oh mother bear cried where is my mischievous [again abbreviated to mis.] little cub curly cried I told him to stay. Blackie who was [misspelled crying here and scratched it out] crying hard said I told and told him but he said nothing would happen to him no time to cry there’s only time to hunt said mummy bear so out they all went to hunt for Mischievous [again, mis.].

Mischievous [mis.] did not know that they were hunting for him all he thought about was where the little running brook stopped and of how many berries he could [spelled correctly after written wrongly and crossed out] eat the hunter was thinking about how he could catch little Mischievous [Mis.] without harming him, for he wanted [written wan’t] to catch Mischievous [Mis.] and put him in the zoo [spelled zo] for he know he would get a [crossed out and rewritten] lot of money for him.

Oh mother and Blackie and Curly saw the hunter and all three jumped right infront of him for they all three saw Mischievous [Mis.] and that is why they all jumped right infront of the hunter oh he was so startled he jumped higher and quicker than Mother Bear Curly and Blackie had the hunter took head to heals and ran as fast as he had [word correction, crossed out and rewritten] jumped.

Now said Mother Bear, Mischievous [Mis.] come with me and ended Uncle Robert. I don’t think you would like to hear what happened in the cave that night but I will tell you I heard some little bear yells and I know that Mischievous [Mis.] name was changed to sonny bear and don’t you know why? I will tell you because he was always behaving his mother and being sunshiny to people.

[two duplicate sentences are written at the top of this next page that do not seem to be connected to the story:  A little boy came – is underlined, and again:  a little boy came, both sentences are surrounded with a pencil line circle]

Oh tell us another cried Charles and Jane Oh no we will have to go home now and that night Jane and Charles dreamt about bears and cubs Charles dreamt [that is written twice and crossed out before being written a third time] that they were being good and Jane dreamt that they were being bad.

Mildred

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[Charles was both my mother’s father’s name and her only sibling’s name.  Her brother was 2 years older than my mother]

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Links to the rest of my mother’s childhood stories:

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My mother’s full writings:  Hope For A Mountain

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[I hope the following links remain active — if not, search Google for pre-borderline (preborderline) child]

On the Borderline Child

The American Psychiatric Publishing textbook of psychiatry – Google Books Result

Robert E. Hales, Stuart C. Yudofsky, Glen O. Gabbard – 2008 – Medical – 1786 pages
These traumatic experiences appear to occur within a context of sustained neglect from which the pre–borderline child develops enduring rage and self- …

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The borderline psychotic child: a selective integration – Google Books Result

Trevor Lubbe – 2000 – Medical – 218 pages
In defining the defensive set-up of the borderline child from a Contemporary … described how a pre-adolescent borderline boy employed pseudo-congeniality, …

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Parent-child relations: new research – Google Books Result

Dorothy M. Devore – 2006 – Family & Relationships – 219 pages
But now these affective representations are organized (or in the case of a borderline child, can never be organized) and accessible in verbal utterances, …

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Borderline Personality Disorder Online Support Forums: Safe …

Mar 24, 2009 … The relationship between mother and pre–borderline child is often revealed to have been confrontational or even hostile.”

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core wound of abandonment – Borderline Personality Disorder, Self …

Many cases show an ongoing hostile or confictual relationship between mother and pre–borderline child.”In his book, New Hope for Borderline Personality …

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Personality disorders: toward the DSM-V – Google Books Result

William T. O’Donohue, Katherine A. Fowler, Scott O. Lilienfeld – 2007 – Psychology – 398 pages
… insensitivity to the pre–borderline child’s feelings and needs, and serious emotional discord in the family, perhaps leading to separation or divorce. …

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Severe Emotional Disturbance in Children and Adolescents

Part I: The Young Child. Internal Conflict and Growth in a Pre-school Child. Early Identifications in the Borderline Child. Part II: The Child in the Family …

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Coping with the Borderline Behaviour of Our Children – Borderline …

Jul 20, 2008 … How can we as parents cope with our Borderline children or adult-children? … on the infantile emotional nature of an ego-centric pre-teen …

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Borderline pathology in children and adolescents

by C Meekings – 2004 – Cited by 5 – Related articles
trauma in the borderline children suggesting that the experience of multiple traumatic events is more pre– dictive of borderline pathology than any singular …

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Child and adolescent psychiatry – Google Books Result

Michael Rutter, Eric A. Taylor – 2002 – Medical – 1209 pages
Studies of adult populations in relation to borderline personality disorder … study of pre-morbid adjustment, onset pattern and severity of impairment. …

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+WHO WOULD WANT TO LIVE WITH THIS SADNESS?

alchemynow8 Comments

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This post is for this girl — I am still the same person and feel the same way.

Me left out -- I have felt that all of my life, just a few times less left out - very much feeling this today (me with my father's back turned on me - in a different universe than my siblings were - and I still pay the price for that)
So sad. Sadness beyond 'in my bones' - in all the cells of my body -- and still there

I know I can’t think my sadness away, but I spent the day garden-building and trying to ask ‘God and the angels’ to show me what I can learn from it.

I miss the man I love (who prefers another’s company) and I miss my children and all my siblings more as the holidays arrive than usual.  I HATE ‘the holidays’.

One of the ‘helpful’ insights today was knowing that I am not alone in how I feel, and ‘things could always be worse’.

Far from happy thoughts — either of THOSE two.

Not that I did actually arrive at any happy thoughts today — but I did end up (perhaps mixing up my holidays) thinking about Jesus on the cross and how alone He was there — but for his Father and the angels.

Then I thought about how easy it might be for humans to forget about God when they are happy with one another — well, I don’t fit THAT picture!

Tomorrow on Thanksgiving I am going to a friend’s house to help her in the kitchen — be with people — eat good food.  My friend feeds anyone in the community who wishes to come every Thanksgiving.

I went last year, and ‘hiding’ in the kitchen suit me.  Serving food to others suit me.  Being quiet suit me.  Watching and listening to others (as if they belonged to a different species than I do) suit me.  I am not sure that I have ever truly felt any more a part of a group than I did in the picture of my father and his three favored children on the big Alaskan rock.

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At 59 knowing that I can’t CHANGE how I feel pisses me off more than anything else.  I no longer have the false desire to try, either.  I am soul tired.

People say, “Everyone feels alone in a crowd sometimes.”  I believe it takes a special kind of severely traumatic and abusive infant-childhood for anyone to REALLY even begin to have a glimmer of a clue what ‘feeling alone’ really feels like.

Then I thought some more about Christ on the cross.  I thought some more about my horrible, horrible childhood and the ‘special hell’ my mother reserved for me (as my oldest brother put it once).  I thought about how NO INFANT or CHILD ever deserves the treatment that some of us had any more than Jesus deserved what happened to Him during His time on this earth.

This thought cheered me up a TINY bit.

Maybe it is because I feel so sad and soul weary that I cannot find any way at all to fight to ‘get better than this’ any more.  I can’t run around and ‘try this’ and ‘try that’ and ‘run here’ and ‘run there’ like I used to.  I can’t distract myself any more.  I can’t fool myself any more.  I can’t pretend any more.

I was, most importantly, able to be different for the 35 years of my life that I had a child under 18 in my care to raise.  My ‘caregiving system’ was able to combine with my attachment to my children to get me down the road without having to have to FEEL the depths of my sadness.

I know now that the sadness has always been at my center since my insanely abusive mother built it into me from the time I was born.  I am so proud of myself that I was able to let my children GO, to let them fly, to let them create for themselves their OWN life.  I certainly wish they didn’t live — all three of them — in Fargo, North Dakota!

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Another train of my thoughts today (again) followed the course of my wandering lost life that seemed to most importantly enable all three of the very special people my children are to be born.  Yet I also NEVER felt that the life I lived along the way was mine, meant for me, belonged to me.  Maybe it is ONLY to the future that the meaning of my own life will come true — in my children, in their lives, the people they encounter and affect — and in the next generations.

If my body processed experience and stored my memories in a safe and securely attached fashion (autobiographical memory) I know I would feel different and be different today.  My dissociational patterns means that all of my memories feel remote to me and NOT a part of ME.  That is so WRONG — and so directly connected as a consequence of my having to build a body-brain in the midst of such terrible and continuing trauma.

I don’t believe my memories comfort me in the way that they do more ‘ordinary’ people — and they never have.

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I think knowing and feeling all of this is directly connected to the most fortunate opportunity I have to work outside with the soil to build a garden.

I laid a big piece of the drip irrigation in the back yard yesterday, and today I planted there.  In went poppy seeds, larkspur seeds, pansy seeds — all waiting now for winter rains to nourish them — and for spring.

I planted a lilac today and I planted an apple tree.  (I moved a rose bush to a happier place for it with morning light so I could better improve the spot for the apple tree.)

I am digging out an area by the back turquoise wood fence as I imagine perhaps — just perhaps — I can tear down the remains of the old shed on my back fence and use that lumber to build a chicken coop.

I use the adobe from that digging to fill in a long planter along the tall yellow metal fence.

I have an adobe bench back there I can sit on in the sun and watch the apple tree grow now.  If I can build a chicken coop I could sit there and watch my chickens.  I would LOVE to be able to do that — though I don’t have transportation to get to a feed store to buy them feed — even if I can afford to buy it — and can find three chickens.

And maybe a little rabbit.  I could sit like I did when I was a child with my warm fuzzy so-gentle rabbit on my lap — pat it and get to know its spirit.

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Someday I hope somebody comes to visit me.  I find down here in southeastern Arizona that people do not go to one another’s house to be with one another like they do up north.  I couldn’t handle the ‘stimulation-noise’ of too many people — or the ‘wrong’ people.  But SOMEONE?

My daughter will bring my grandson down about the 4th to the 8th of this January.  That will be — well — fantastically wonderful!  Then they will go and then I will miss them…….

Meanwhile……….  Perhaps the angels like it if I talk to them.

(Oh — and yesterday I laid the drip over the large compost pile filled with delicious garbage and the thousand worms my sister sent me from Seattle!  I moved the buried tomb that contained all my mother’s writings into the big compost — and guess what?  For the first time in the four years I’ve lived on this property I saw centipedes — nested within my mother’s papers.  HOW GROSS!  I hate centipedes!  Very unsettling, but somehow didn’t surprise me — certainly not after my recent posts about eliminating the hideous oleanders!  The wonderful composting worms can have those papers now — and I KNOW they will make me wonderful garden soil out of them by spring!)

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+TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS AND THWARTED ATTACHMENT

alchemynow2 Comments

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As I sit outside in this morning’s sunshine and look at the huge lump of still-drying adobe that marks where the oleanders are entombed, encased and enshrined (and hopefully approaching their death) I have the strangest sense:  “Who put that thing there?  Were there ever giant oleanders stretched out over this piece of ground, or were they there only in my imagination?”

If I didn’t know what I now know about myself perhaps I wouldn’t even notice how I FEEL today — along with my thoughts in my mind that accompany how I feel.  And I sure wouldn’t have any idea in my mind what these thoughts mean and where they come from.

When I write about what the self-help books never told me, when I write about what I was never told about how and why being in a body in this lifetime has always been difficult for me, I am talking about ‘these kinds of things’.

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I woke this morning with a determination that I am NOT going to remain at the dead end ‘nose against the wall’ hope-less state that I found myself in yesterday.  I want to move forward.  At least during the terror, trauma and deprivation of my 18 year childhood I WAS able to access at least that one idea (although never consciously):  “Being alive means that I am moving forward in time, always forward.”

So what does forward mean to me on this glorious, still sunny morning?  What thoughts can I access today that might help me keep my terrible underlying-overlying, overwhelming perpetual sadness at bay?  What can I tell myself today in my mind that represents something I learned and am able to learn today that did not come from any therapist or self-help book?

Two words appeared in my mind:  TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS

So I did a quick Google search, adding ‘child abuse’ along the way.  Here are three links I came up with but there are plenty there online for exploration:

Read full article here by clicking on the link provided at this site:  Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena

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“I believe that transitional objects are indeed very important to a child’s emotional development. These objects help the child deal with transitions such as the transition from wakefulness to sleep and transition from being with parents to being with a baby-sitter. Security objects are usually very soft and warm. They can be items such as a blanket, cloth diaper, stuffed animal, or even a favorite pillowcase. Children’s transitional objects are usually something that reminds them of their parents.”

Read full article online here:  Transitional Objects

 

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“Children’s attachment to transitional objects is based on unique identity and not the properties or kind of the object. This reasoning is an early and spontaneous example of the same value that adults place of sentimental possessions.”

 

Read full abstract here:  Children Treat Infant Transitional Objects as Irreplaceable Possessions

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As you might take a look for yourself in an online search about this topic, notice words like ‘self soothing’, transition between states and experiences, ‘sentimental’ and of course ATTACHMENT.

Who in God’s Green Acres was there for me to BE ATTACHED TO?  Certainly NOT my mother — who was the last person on this green and blue earth that ever did anything but traumatize me.

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Looking at Websters online database I see that SENSE and SENTIMENT share the same roots.  As I think about how my body formed from birth in a malevolent environment, I know that way before I had the ability to think in literal thoughts my body-self knew without a doubt THROUGH THE SENSES OF MY BODY that I was NOT safe and secure in the world.

So to whom was I EVER going to form a safe and secure attachment to so that any possible physical ‘transitional object’ was going to help me sooth myself?

Nobody.

The conditions of malevolence that my body formed in — as I repeat again — built into the circuitry-wiring-patterns of my brain’s neuronal structures and in my body the ABSENCE of the ability to not only FEEL safe and secure in the world, but also the absence of a PERSON (other than my 14-month-older baby brother) to be safely and securely attached to.

THIS FACT MATTERS!

This fact changes how I am in the world.

When I wake this morning and see that giant lump of drying adobe where the old sprawling oleanders stood a week ago, it is ONLY within my conscious MIND that I can connect not only the fact that the oleanders once existed, that days of work were required to transition those plants into a lump of adobe, but most importantly THAT I, LINDA, MADE THIS CHANGE UPON THE PLANET.

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What is this all about?  I lack the ability to FEEL in the circuitry of my body-brain that I had a damn thing to do with the changes that happened in my yard — any of them.

This means to me that my entire home and yard are my CURRENT TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS.  I walk around outside and as I physically SEE (with my senses) the changes that have happened there and try to physically form a ‘feeling felt’ connection within my own self NOT ONLY that I am in this body, but AM this body doing the walking — and that I have been ‘here’ all along making these changes.

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When I write about the consequences especially of infant-toddler abuse as they impact development, I am talking about all of these kinds of experiences of having one’s own life experiences.

I encourage readers of this blog to spend some time with a Google search investigating what I am describing using terms such as ‘attachment feeling felt’, and ‘attachment child abuse feeling felt’.

During early infant developmental stages use of transitional objects is connected to not only the ‘feeling felt’ of SELF to others, but also the ‘feeling felt’ the SELF has TO OTHERS.   If an infant never is given what it needs to FEEL FELT in the world so that in response it can ALSO feel other people in the world, an entirely different FEELING pattern is built into the infant’s body-brain.

This does NOT mean such survivors are ‘mentally ill’ because we cannot access this very real kind of FEELING information.  We never got it built into us in the first place which gave us a CHANGED and DIFFERENT body.

If we are going to search realistically for the structural underpinnings of dissociation, depersonalization and derealization — along with an over or under active stress response system that feeds into depression and posttraumatic stress disorder, we need to be REALISTIC in our thinking — yes, within our mind.

Dr. Daniel Siegel, in his book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, states in the first sentence of his introduction:

“The mind emerges from the activity of the brain, whose structure and function are directly shaped by interpersonal experience.”

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How our brain is built, along with the body that feeds information to the brain, are directly guided in their fundamental development by the kinds of early caregiver interactions an infant has.

SO, as I try to understand my ACTUAL experience of being a self with a mind in a body in my lifetime in this world, I MUST go back and learn as much as I can about how what happened to me from birth changed how I am in the world.

Yes, I HATE how I am now.  There is NOTHING redeeming whatsoever about what was stolen from me!  How can I celebrate that I cannot remember in any ‘feeling felt’ way that I was the person who made ALL the changes not only in my yard, but over the course of my entire adult life?

I can’t FEEL myself transitioning along through moments of time unless I TRY to — which is NOT the same thing as actually being able to FEEL something.

My inability to feel connected to my own self in a body in my life of course impacts all of my human relationships, as well.  NO PERSON EVER ACTUALLY FEELS REAL TO ME.  How could they?  The only version of a human being that I can FEEL FELT with is within the range of early development similar to what my baby brother was when I was born.  He was the only human being who consistently looked into my eyes, talked with me directly (when he was old enough to have words), touched me gently with love, and recognized my ACTUAL existence.

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Adult Reactive Attachment Disorder.  What that means to me is that because the feeling of ‘feeling felt’ and of ‘feeling myself in my own life’ was NOT built into my body-brain, ALL I can do is react to what happens in my life AS THINGS HAPPEN.  I can factually remember things (as I could during my childhood) but I could not feel myself as a self having experiences then, and I cannot actually do it now.

Therefore there is no possible way for me to FEEL connected on the most fundamental physiologically-wired way.  I have to consciously work toward how I think I imagine experiences MIGHT BE LIKE for nearly all other human beings (the ‘upper 95%) who did not receive the horrendous malevolent treatment I did from birth.

No wonder I fight this sadness!  No wonder I have great difficulties when people who are important to me are not within my immediate physical range of experience.  I missed the opportunity to experience nearly every single positive early attachment building (body-nervous system-brain-mind-self) experience that would have led to my having an entirely different experience of myself in my life — NOW!

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Because I know every day more clearly how right I am about how trauma changes early development, hence changes the body we live in for the rest of our life — I KNOW there is no self-help book out there that tells us what these changes are, how they affect everything we experience in our life, and what it all means to us.

‘They’ can tell us until we are all blue in the face about this self-help clue/tip or another one, but nobody EVER told me I receive different information in the world, in a different way and process it differently — and because my experience was so ‘unique’ in its severity I might be one of the very, very few ‘lay people’ who could POSSIBLY have come to figure this out!

Yet I don’t believe that even all the attachment experts and developmental neuroscientists have figured out either because they are all divisional in what they know according to which separate Ivory Tower they operate from within.

In my particular case I can fit together what these experts have found out together into a single picture because I LIVE what they describe.  I do NOT agree with ANY OF THEM that who and how I am in the world is one single bit PATHOLOGICAL.

I (and other survivors like me) am simply a living example of what a trauma altered development changed being is like and how WE experience life!

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+SAVE THE BABY FROM ROTTEN EARLIEST CAREGIVING

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I am going to write something here for very selfish reasons.  I have been away from the peace and quiet of my home during the day for the better part of two weeks as I take care of my friend’s office while she recuperates from her illness.  The more time that passes for me away from the peace and calm of my little universe here at home the less able I am to stop the disturbances of emotion and thought that swirl, tumble and spin around in my body and in my thoughts.

So many thoughts whiz around me during the day.  I end up just feeling disorganized and disoriented, true to the insecure attachment disorder that built me through severe infant-child abuse in the first place.

Can I order some of my thoughts here now and feel a little bit better?  Let’s see…..

Everyone uses their attachment relationships to help regulate their emotions sometimes.  Humans, as members of a social species, are built to have human attachment as the mainstream of their being.  As I come to understand how profoundly my terrible infant-childhood insecure and unsafe attachment relationships affected my physiological development, I find overlapping thoughts tumble around my mind because of overlapping words we use to talk about our attachment relationships — the good and the bad.

“Oh, that person is SO insecure.”

“Oh, that person is being so paranoid — again.”

“Oh, that person has trouble with intimacy.”

“Oh, that person has abandonment issues.”

“Oh, that person just uses other people.”

“Oh, that person is SO dependent.”

“Oh, that person is so LOST without so-and-so.”

“Oh, that person is in an addictive relationship.”

What do any of these expressions really mean?

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If we suffered from unsafe and insecure attachment relationships with our primary caregivers from the time we were born and through our earliest years — as I have said so often — our development is changed and instead of having good ‘ole peace and calm at the center of our nervous system as its set point, we end up with a mid set point at anger, fear and/or sadness.  Forget the left brain happy center — if we have any neurons left there we have an extremely hard time FEELING them.

My peace and calm comes to me through some kind of manipulation of the OUTSIDE world I live in — if I can manage that.  Any sense of safety and security I might experience is dependent on what is happening around me in my world — NOT on my own nervous system’s set point.

This makes me very vulnerable.  It makes me dependent on all sorts of ‘things’ in ways that people who did not suffer early trauma and abuse probably cannot imagine.

Today I thought, “It’s like being on a life support system.  Because my nervous system-brain-mind-self DID NOT develop outside of a malevolent world, and because it adjusted its development to trauma, my well-being is far more dependent on external sources — just like if I was dependent on a life support system to stay alive.”

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I don’t LIKE IT that my body had to form this way.  But it’s a fact.  I would rather learn as much as I possibly can about my trauma altered development and what it did to change me than remain ignorant.

For example, two of my very close relationships are currently ‘threatened’ by the primary attachment person’s illness.

Enter guilt.  “Here I am, yes concerned about their recovery and sickness for THEIR sake — but the track running parallel to that concern is my own concern for my own self.  I NEED these people.  I cannot any more afford for anything to really happen to these people than I could afford having someone cut the power to my life support system if I was dependent upon it for my life.”

I am not at all sure that people who talk about abuse survivors being able to form ‘earned secure attachments’ when their primary attachment system is tuned to ‘insecure attachment’.  I don’t believe severe infant-child abuse survivors, who did not have at least ONE strong safe and secure attachment bond to some significant person when they were forming their body-nervous system-brain will EVER have anything like a normal attachment.

‘Earned secure attachment’ is NOT normal safe and secure attachment.  I believe if we look at the truth we will know that our attachment figures are our life support system in ways that non-early abused people DO NOT NEED.

I thought about this today in terms of the great sadness, fear and/or anger that built itself into child abuse survivors.  Those emotions have immense power.  They have a force within them, and because one of the consequences of NOT having safe and secure early caregiver attachment relationships is that we did not develop a right social-emotional brain normally so that we can regulate emotions normally or form social attachments normally.

My close attachment relationships contain an element of desperation because that element was built into me right along with my attachment system that can never turn itself off (this is NOT normal) — which is probably directly connected to the fact that my stress response system was set to ON ON ON ON through child abuse and cannot turn itself OFF (again, this is NOT normal — except for severe early abuse survivors).

So even when I am feeling the benefits of close attachment relationships, the undercurrent within my body is always running in the background.  I cannot regulate this sad-fearful-angry emotional current for the reasons described above.

So the PEOPLE that I am attached to actually act in my world like massive DIKES to hold back the ocean of my emotion and like massive retaining walls to hold back mountains of emotions, as well.

Knowing this at least alerts me to why my reactions are overly strong (think adult reactive attachment disorder) as I feel, yes, threatened, insecure, unsafe when my ‘earned secure attachment’ to these important people in my life feels shaky to me.  It is no different, I don’t believe, than how I would feel if my life was dependent on an external life support system.

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It is vital, I believe, for severe early abuse survivors and the people who love them to understand NONE OF THESE INTENSE REACTIONS ARE PERSONAL.  They are PHYSIOLOGICAL.  They are connected to a nervous system-brain that did not develop with peaceful calm at its center, that did not develop an adequate happiness center in the left brain, that did not acquire normal ability to read social cues others send out, did not learn how to react to social cues normally (including emotional messages others send in their facial expression, vocal tones, body language, etc.), that did not develop either an attachment system or a stress response system that can be turned off in normal ways, etc.  (Our empathic abilities did not develop normally, either — no matter how ‘sensitive to others’ we are.)

I am not BOOM-DOOM-GLOOMING it, either.  These trauma related alterations were built into us through early trauma AT THE SAME TIME WE DID NOT HAVE ANYONE TO SAFELY AND SECURELY ATTACH TO.  Ours (mine) are very real body-based changes that we can FEEL and that stimulate, modulate, and often control our reactions – including our emotional ones and then the reaction-actions we take in response to our own emotions.

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Perhaps the hardest aspect of being me is that the current popular terms our culture uses ‘against’ severe early abuse survivors (like I listed at the start of this post) do NOT describe what is really going on.  They do not address what matters most — not in terms of what caused our difficulties to be built into our body-nervous system in the first place and not in terms of the very real physiological body-felt consequences we live with all of the time.

This dearth of information about the long term consequences of ‘insecure attachment disorders’ that built us in the first place and that we then are forced to carry within us for the rest of our lives IS improving.  But for the most part we cannot really talk about what our body tells us about what is REALLY happening within us to anyone.

When our attachment relationships are threatened or end — for ANY reason — our world is rocked to its core.  There is nothing minor about what happens within us when our life support relationships radically change or end.

I am not even beginning to describe the fractured, fragile, altered relationship we are forced to have not only with the world around us, but also with our OWN severely traumatized relationship with our ‘self’ – if we are fortunate to have one.  The mirroring that we desperately needed from our earliest caregivers DID NOT HAPPEN, which means we are desperately needy for the rest of our lives on the mirroring that any of our present-day attachment people give to us.

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All is simply not what it might appear to be from the outside looking in at we severe early abuse survivors.  In some ways I wish I could have remained ignorant of the devastation early abuse caused me.  That didn’t happen.  Over time, over the length of my life, the reality of my trauma-changed development could no longer be kept behind dikes and retaining walls so that I could pretend to ignore it.

It does help me to know I can name what I experience — both in terms of what I experience and where-how what I experience came from.

Yes, I have great strength in many ways, but I am fragile.  I cannot tolerate being gone from the safety and security, the peace, quiet and calm of my home for very long.  If my friend is still sick much past the early part of next week someone else will have to be called in to take her place in that little office.  When it comes to what ‘ruptures’ my universe and to what I need to make some ‘repairs’, I know that my sensitivity to external stimulation of ANY kind severely limits what I can tolerate in my life.

This is classic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder — call it ‘complex’ or not — and it is directly tied to insecure attachment in our body and to the world we live in.  Because our stress response system cannot be turned off, we have to find ways to turn it DOWN so that our inner disorganization-disorientation can diminish.

Do I feel my ability to live a real and full life has been stolen from me as a consequence of trauma-altered development due to severe early abuse (even though it lasted 18 years – it was the early birth to age one abuse that so changed my body)?  Yes, I most certainly KNOW THIS NOW.  But this is the only body I will ever have to live in during this lifetime, and what was done then, even though in minor and positive ways it can be influenced, cannot be undone.

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The day I wrote one of my latest posts about my happy grandson I had another thought more akin to my own reality when I was his age:  “When a baby screams it hears the whole world screaming.  When a baby screams it feels the whole world screaming.  When a baby screams all that exists in its universe is screaming.  Everything everywhere is screaming when a baby screams until someone cares enough about the baby to come to it and help make the screaming stop.”

If nobody is there to consistently do this for an infant, and worse yet, if the primary caregiver hurts the baby and makes it scream, this scream and its physiological reaction in the entire body will build itself into this infant.

That’s what happened to me and to others who resonate with what I am saying here.

I realized very clearly last week that I fundamentally believe that if someone had removed me from my mother from my first breath so that I had been loved and cared for well for the first year of my life, and then had I been returned to my mother for all the exact same abuse I suffered until I left home at 18, my life would not have been stolen from me the way that it has been.

NOTHING anyone could have done to me after the age of one could have created the kind of body-nervous system-brain changes that the trauma of my first year of life built into my body.

It is the birth to age one changes that cursed me, that create nearly all of my difficulties now.  It is not that I wouldn’t have had serious ‘issues’ to deal with as a result of severe abuse after age one.  It IS that the body-nervous system-brain that I would have had to deal with and to process with and to integrate with and to heal from abuse with (no matter how severe) AFTER the age of one would have been 100% more ABLE and CAPABLE to accomplish exactly these things.

NOTE:  I call ‘earned secure attachment’ ‘borrowed attachment’.  All I say about trauma altered development includes changes to the immune system and to epigenetic changes and alterations in the expression of many genes and their combinations.

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