The most important work we can do, individually and globally, is the healing and prevention of traumas so that we don't pass them down to future generations. This blog is a working tool to contribute to this good work.
I’m not at all sure why I feel safer on the planet knowing the Dalai Lama is here, but I do. The following links are to information related to the conference presentation to the Dalai Lama about the effects of maternal distress behaviors on her offspring – just a little T-Day light reading!
This is the gist of science told the Dalai Lama:
If a distressed mother rat raises all her own babies, they will all turn out distressed.
If a calm mother rat raises all her own babies, they will all turn out calm.
If you change the litters at birth, and give the calm mother’s babies to the distressed mother, all those babies will grow up distressed.
If you take the distressed mother’s babies at birth and give them to the calm mother, the babies will all grow up calm.
In essence, the distressed mother’s treatment of her babies triggers epigenetic changes in the way the babies she raises turn out because their genes are triggered differently by the distress.
“…in spite of all our advances in knowledge about mental disorders and the advances in technology that have resulted in an impressive smorgasbord of pharmaceutical agents, the overall prevalence of depression is increasing at an alarming rate. Moreover, the average age at onset continues to drop. Whereas patients once presented with their initial depressive episode in their fifth decade of life, the average age of onset has now dropped into the twenties.”
“Such changes are called “epigenetic,” to distinguish them from changes that affect the sequence of nucleotides in DNA. Epigenetics is arguably the next frontier in genetic research, promising to show why people with identical DNA, such as monozygotic twins, have different traits, including traits known to be strongly affected by genes. The answer seems to be that the events of our lives, including parental behavior, turns some genes on and some genes off. In this case, parental care (or, specifically, abuse) changed the expression of the crucial glucocorticoid-receptor gene in the brain.”
“Suicide victims who were abused as children have clear genetic changes in their brains…”
+++++++++++++++++++++
While the new research on neuroplasticity in the brain is important, those of us whose body and brain were changed as a result of severe early child abuse, again, may not be in the realm of ‘ordinary’ when it comes to the changes we can expect in our brains compared to others…..
“At the 12th mind and life conference in dharamshala, buddhism and modern science found points of convergence as the dalai lama and western scientists spoke about neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change with experience and focused training.”
“At the Dalai Lama’s private compound in Dharamsala, India, leading neuroscientists and Buddhist philosophers met to consider “neuroplasticity.” The conference was organized by the Mind and Life Institute as part of a series of meetings, beginning in 1987, for brain researchers and Buddhist scholars to share insights into the workings of the mind and brain. The 2004 meeting set out to answer two questions: “Does the brain have the ability to change, and what is the power of the mind to change it?””
The ‘transparent moment’ I experienced on November 19 was evidently deeply connected within my body to my present experience of myself in my life. Evidently transparency does not feel safe to me. Yet I have courage, stamina and willingness to move forward, though I do not know ahead of time where my writing process is going to take me.
I didn’t know on November 19 that I was writing myself up to that transparent moment. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t predict or anticipate where I was going or where I would end up. The experience of that transparent moment just happened – but it happened because of the writing. On some deeper level that I cannot actually SEE within me my instincts say to me – “DON”T WRITE! STOP! WRITING IS NOT SAFE. IT LEADS YOU TO UNKNOW PLACES, AND UNKNOWN IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR WELL-BEING!”
++++
Because it is my basic premise that I cannot separate any experience I have from the disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment system I have as a direct result of my mother’s abuse of me, I have to allow myself to understand that my current state of NOT WRITING is connected to how this system operates to try to keep me safe and secure in the world.
Hiding is, for me, a trauma related response. I can translate what is going on for me in the present to: transparency = dangerous = HIDE NOW! Hiding means that I am hiding from my own words, which are directly connected in the writing process to who I am – all my memories (even those only my body remembers), how I survived, what I am willing to think about, what I am willing to feel – and to the full consequence of the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that I have along with dissociation that does not allow me to KNOW things in a necessarily ongoing, coherent, integrated fashion.
So, I STOP!
At the same time I am willing to share with you in a somewhat transparent way the following words that are connected to this whole process – as I forced myself to write them across lined sheets of spiral notebook paper —
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Make a difference in someone’s life
I used to believe in this
Is this a different Linda?
This one doesn’t even want to write any more.
Transitions between states of mind
Sometimes they are WIDE and I fall in.
I don’t know where the writing Linda went
I don’t want the sad one here.
Sometimes things cost too much – does caring?
Without the grief, am I just numb to everything?
A Linda-safer-floating around on a raft – but fragile amidst the sharks of chaos I know are all around me.
Don’t tip the raft. Don’t look down.
Is that state mostly where I spent my childhood in between my mother’s attacks?
Out of nowhere she would attack me. The raft of numb would disappear from under me.
I’d be in the ocean full of sharks – attacked again.
++
Cancer was an attack from within.
++
What does that mean
Changing our minds?
Like changing gears?
Or changing jobs?
Or changing our clothes?
Or changing a baby’s diaper?
Making change with money
A change in one’s fortune
A change in the weather
++
Paving stones with spaces between them
Grout between tiles
Mortar between stones or bricks
In PTSD-Dissociation our traumatic experiences are separated by fear and confusion
Cracks in a sidewalk
Shifting plates of the earth’s crust
Water surrounding continents
If I go to a place of what seems ‘calm’ to me
I suspect I am really ‘numb’ instead
Because peaceful calmness was never allowed (and did not build itself into my body)
At times I do not wish to disturb this numbness
Once I leave the numbness I don’t know and can’t predict what will get triggered and what state I’ll end up in next
And I don’t know how long I’ll end up in some other ‘changed state’ or if, when or how I can get back to ‘numb’
So it seems best not to disturb or change anything
Like a great game of hop scotch only I can’t control or predict where I’ll end up next
Leave well enough alone
Don’t think
Don’t feel
Just be
Try to leave everything within me alone
Control = control where I am in the environment
I don’t want to be challenged there, either
For all the same
Reasons
++
It’s like skating on a deep lake with uneven ice
Places that are thick and solid and I’m safe
Places where the ice is thin and I can crash through
But from the top side I can’t tell which is which
Nobody WANTS to fall through
OPTION? Stay off of the lake
= do not write
I can’t predict where it will take me
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Please feel free to comment directly at the end of this post or on ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Currently, there are 130,000 children and youth waiting to be adopted. National Adoption Month urges Americans to “Answer the Call” to adopt children and youth from foster care. National Adoption Month intends to raise awareness about the adoption of children and youth from foster care.
The Ad Council’s latest public service “You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent” urges potential parents that perfection is not the goal. Children just need loving, caring environments with stability. This award-winning campaign is a partnership of the Children’s Bureau, the Ad Council, and AdoptUsKids. This year’s ads target the African-American community and finding homes for African-American children in care. The ads feature humorous everyday scenarios illustrating that parents need not be perfect to offer the stability and commitment that a “forever family” provides to a waiting child.
Additionally, The Children’s Bureau Express has a Spotlight on National Adoption Month webpage The CBE has information about how agencies celebrate National Adoption Month, and find out more about the latest adoption resources and research. They also offer more information and service on:
PSA Campaign Recruits Families for African-American Children
Adoption Month Calendar Features Innovative Activities
National Survey of Adoptive Parents Releases First Data
Post adoption Support Guide
Positive Outcomes for Late-Placed Adoptees
Court Collaboration Expedites Adoptions
Parent-to-Parent Support for Adoptive Families
Something so troubles me that I cannot sleep tonight. Could it be the sound of hurt and scared children crying, if only silently in their wounded hearts? Who is protecting these children?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A new page posted along the top of my blog has been added JUST FOR READERS to write any trauma-related thoughts that come to mind — either directly in response to something I have posted — or not!
Please feel free to click on the COMMENT link at the bottom of this new page that will always be at the top of the blog — and write! Your words are important!
Remembering what I wrote yesterday about the lack of playfulness and the ability to play being directly connected to the presence of trauma in a child’s environment, reading this new report about our nation’s children’s exposure to violence greatly troubles me.
++++
Please take some time to look at the report’s information, and also check out the information at the Safe Start Center website!
++++
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention published a new reportthat discusses findings from a survey examining children’s exposure to violence. The survey is the first to attempt to comprehensively measure exposure to violence for nationally representative sample of 4,549 children younger then 18 across major categories. Some of these categories were:
Conventional crime, including robbery, theft, destruction of property, attack with an object or weapon
Child maltreatment, other than spanking on the bottom
Sexual victimization
Witnessing and indirect victimization
Exposure to family violence
School violence and threat
Internet violence and victimization, including Internet threats or harassment and unwanted online sexual solicitation
Results suggest that most children in the U.S. are exposed to violence in their daily lives, with more than 60 percent of the children surveyed having been exposed to violence within the past year. Nearly half of the children surveyed had been assaulted in the previous year, and nearly 1 in 10 witnessed one family member assaulting another.
Safe Start Center is dedicated to teaching about the harmful effects of the exposure of violence on children. Safe Start’s website is packed with information and resources for parents and the community to help our children stay safe. To read the full report of to learn more about the Safe Start Initiative, visit www.safestartcenter.org.
The mission of the Crimes against Children Research Center (CCRC) is to combat crimes against children by providing high quality research and statistics to the public, policy makers, law enforcement personnel, and other child welfare practitioners. CCRC is concerned with research about the nature of crimes including child abduction, homicide, rape, assault, and physical and sexual abuse as well as their impact.
Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD
When we talk about the impact of BPD, we’re not just talking about symptoms; BPD also has a major impact on your quality of life. From work, to relationships, to your physical health, think about the ways that BPD may be interfering for you.
In the Spotlight
Your Life with BPD
What is it like to live with BPD? It’s not easy. Intense emotional pain, and feelings of emptiness, desperation, anger, hopelessness, and loneliness are common. But life with BPD is not hopeless, and you can create a life full of quality and meaning.
BPD and Relationships
Many of the symptoms of BPD can have direct impact on relationships, and other symptoms have an indirect (but not necessarily less disruptive) influence.
Physical Health Problems and BPD
People with BPD are more likely to report a variety of physical health problems, and are more likely to need to be hospitalized for medical reasons, than those without BPD
Mothers have evolved throughout the millennia to play with their infants.
Having the ability to engage in healthy play has evolved through the millennia to build healthy body-nervous system-brain-mind selves in our species. Play happens when the world is a friendly place to be. Play TELLS us that the world is a friendly place to be.
When the environment surrounding mother and infant-child is benevolent, healthy play is most usually present. This benevolence in the environment is then built into the growing-developing offspring.
When the environment surrounding mother and infant-child is hostile, toxic, lacking in essential survival qualities and therefore is malevolent, a mother’s ability to engage in healthy play with her offspring is interfered with.
Thus, the absence of healthy playfulness between mother and offspring signal the developing infant-child on every physiological level that trauma exists in its world. The offspring will then be forced to change and adapt to the best of its physiological abilities to prepare itself for a lifetime within a malevolent world.
++++
Healthy playfulness between a mother and her offspring only happens to the degree that the environment is safe and secure enough to allow this play to happen.
If a mother grew and developed in her own early childhood in a world that signaled her body-nervous system-brain-mind self that the world was malevolent, she is most likely carrying unresolved trauma within herself that then signals to her offspring that the world is malevolent. Her offspring will then have to change according to the trauma-present-in-the-world message just as its mother did.
Both mother and infant-child will then suffer from a lack of safety and security perceived as permanent and real by their physiological development. When trauma is present, healthy play is interfered with because our evolution has designed our species so that degree, quality, kinds of, presence of healthy play and playful attitudes directly indicate the degree of either benevolence or malevolence in the world.
++++
I am not talking about play as we might think about it in today’s world. This kind of play has nothing to do with toys or ‘stuff’. Healthy play that signals to offspring the condition of the world is about direct face-to-face interaction between mother and infant-child. The presence of a world safe and secure enough to allow for this kind of play between early caregivers and offspring has operated throughout our evolution.
It was only when the world because safe and secure enough, adequate and benevolent enough for this level of play to grow and thrive that humans ever achieved powers of speech at all (only about 140,000 years ago). The physiological systems within our body and brain had to have already evolved sophisticated organizational and orientational abilities to have ever allowed our powers of speech to manifest in the first place because speech uses all those preexisting abilities.
Any time trauma happens it always disrupts ongoing coherent life. If trauma cannot be resolved, consequences happen. Dissociation represents one of the fundamental consequences of a being’s inability to resolve trauma. Dissociation continues to affect a mother because its very existence means that something malevolent occurred that was not able to be resolved.
A dissociating mother thus communicates her state of unresolved trauma to her offspring primarily through an interruption in her ability to engage in healthy play and playful attitudes with her offspring. The key to healthy playfulness between a mother and her offspring is that it is APPROPRIATE.
Appropriate, and therefore healthy play and playfulness between a mother and her offspring, the kind of play that then signals the offspring to grow an entire body geared for life in a benevolent world, happens when the mother’s entire focus is on fostering the well-being of her infant-child.
Mother’s have evolutionarily evolved to respond appropriately to their offspring so that their play-filled responses do not overwhelm, over stimulate or under stimulate them. When a mother has experienced enough trauma during her own development that incoherency in the form of dissociation has been built into her entire body, she is not likely to be able to operate from this optimal, benign, benevolent-world-condition state within herself. She will then communicate her own preexisting, unresolved trauma states directly to her offspring.
++++
Terror, pain and trauma interrupt play and the ability to play. This lack of play and the ability to play then acts as a direct signal that communicates malevolence in the world. When healthy play and playfulness exist, they happen in a safe and secure world, not in the midst of trauma.
A mother who does not carry unresolved trauma into her interactions with her offspring will be able to focus on the well-being of her offspring and demonstrate the benevolence of the world to her developing infant-child through her healthy, appropriate play and playfulness with it.
These interactions operate from birth to form first the right, limbic, emotional, social brain. As the infant-child continues to grow, the foundation of play or its absence, built within its body-nervous system-brain-mind-self will further influence the development of its later-forming left brain, the connection between the two hemispheres of its brain, and the development of its higher-processing cortical abilities.
A non-dissociating mother is able to have appropriate hopes, dreams, wishes and desires for the well-being of her offspring. She will automatically be able to orient herself and organize her interactions with her offspring. Her goal, destination, direction and purpose regarding her offspring will be benevolent. This benevolence will be communicated through safety and security that manifests itself in healthy play and playfulness toward her offspring.
A dissociating mother will experience breaks in her ongoing interactions with her offspring that will vary in degree according to the changes that had to happen to her during her own development in a malevolent early environment.
In my case, my mother’s dissociation toward me was extreme, fundamental and complete. In her psychosis she believed that I was evil, that I tried to kill her while I was being born, that I was not human, and that I was sent to be a curse on her life. Her psychotic dissociation in-formed every interaction she ever had with me from the time I was born.
My mother’s unresolved trauma, manifesting itself in her dissociation, prevented her from ever being able to respond to me with anything like appropriate, healthy play or playfulness. She was not able to consider my well-being because she could never understand that I was a separate entity from her. I was merely and continually the recipient of her slit-off projection of her intolerable perception of her own badness.
She not only could not have playful interactions with me that I needed to build a non-trauma centered body-nervous system-brain-mind-self, but her psychosis was so severe that she prevented ME from ever being able to play at all.
++++
The absolute disturbance in the necessary operation of play in my childhood directly ties into my own dissociation. The trauma I experienced in the malevolent environment of my childhood could not possibly be integrated into a coherent self. However, as a mother to my own children I was able to know they were separate beings from me, and I was able to focus as much as I possibly could on them and on the development of their well-being.
In other words, I was able to organize and orient a ‘mothering self’ within me that existed to foster the development of my children. Because I could do this, I could offer to them enough play and playfulness that it communicated to them a relative lack of trauma in the world and enough of a sense of safety and security in the world that I did not pass my unresolved trauma onto them.
They did not have perfect childhoods because the unresolved trauma and the changes that had to happen to me so that I could survive my childhood affected every other aspect of my being-in-the-world, and therefore DID affect them. But these problems were MINE and I was able to keep them myself. I did not force them INTO my children the way my mother forced her unresolved trauma INTO growing and developing me.
++++
As we return in our thoughts to consider our infancy and childhood through the lens of playfulness and play or its absence, we can become much more clear about how our caregivers’ unresolved trauma — or the absence of it — operated to directly communicate to our growing and developing body on all its levels what the condition of the world was like.
If appropriate and healthy play and playfulness was there for us, it is during those experiences that we were developing in an ‘ordinary’ way. If it was absent, some degree of trauma was present, and we were forced at those times in our development to try to adapt to that malevolency.
Who we are today and how we are in our bodies in the world is directly connected to play and playfulness because it is only in times of safety and security that play exists at all.
Has there ever been a time since the moment I was born when I wasn’t lost? I don’t think so. (Maybe I didn’t even find my way to my right mother!)
I just found a piece of paper lying face down on the floor by my computer chair. I was looking for something to write a telephone number down on so I could order some yarn so I can warp my loom. I tore the bottom off of this paper and used it. This is what was on the top half:
January 14, 1988
The years go by.
I want a dream
a vision
something I can live by
Art Therapy
living in Albuquerque
Yet if I’m empty inside — then what?
It’s so easy to forget what I’m doing and why.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
This must have fallen out of something in my pile of journals. The cats love to tumble around and must have knocked it loose. I feel disheartened reading this, realizing this was written just after I made the decision to apply for art therapy graduate school.
Whenever I have stopped to think back at that stage of my life, I have always ‘remembered’ that I knew what I was doing then, or certainly that I didn’t know what I know now about how lost I’ve been all of my life. I didn’t know I felt lost — even then — even after making such a big decision for my life and my future. Or so I thought….
This paper shows otherwise. It makes me MAD and SAD to see this lostness I still feel now WAS with me back then — yet why would I think it would not have been? Has any decision I’ve ever made in my life ever moved me off of my dead center spot of being lost?
What have I been thinking these past 21 years? That I have only been lost some of the time? That I have ever had a reprieve? True, I had hope then that led me to move with my children from northern Minnesota to New Mexico by fall 1988 and complete graduate school (1990) to become a nationally registered art therapist. But what good did that effort do me?
I guess I better scoot back from my keyboard. My tears might short circuit it. Then where would I be? It surprises me how quickly the tears came once I began to write this. It’s a good thing I have a soon-to-be delicious organic chocolate cake (mix from our local food co-op) baking itself in my oven; I hear the egg timer ticking.
Healthy, right? And it has a matching organic chocolate frosting mix to go with it!
Tick, tick, tick. There go the years of my life. I would not be this lost if I had not had my mother for a mother. I wouldn’t even be this lost if she had at least let me PLAY — at all — in my childhood. What a strange realization. What a true one.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
I was going to make the following easier to read, but just don’t have it in me right now. There’s a lot of information here — even just for scan reading. I know it is about my dissociated mother, who was a professional at making me her dissociated daughter! It’s about everyone’s mother who was borderline or otherwise dissociated, including depressed.
Maternal dissociation is directly connected to a mother’s inability to play with her infant, a critical participatory activity between mother and infant that builds the right limbic emotional social brain and conditions the infant’s nervous system.
My mother was so sick that her inability to be playful with me she ended up so abusing me that she interrupted my play-brain-growth by preventing my play and by distorting my attempts to be a child throughout my entire childhood.
When a mother dissociates (especially in rage) while in interaction with her young infant the infant’s developing brain-mind essentially ‘falls through its own cracks’. Dissociation is, I firmly believe, directly communicated from the mother’s brain and nervous system to the infant as it grows and develops its own brain and nervous system. The long term consequence of this harmful degree of dissociation is being lost in one’s own life.
++++
You will need to know this before you take a look at the link below:
Dissociation in mothers affects how the nervous system in her infant develops.
The ANS, or autonomic nervous system has two branches, or arms.
One arm is the sympatheticbranch, or the GOpart of our ANS.
The other arm is the parasympatheticbranch, or the STOPpart of our ANS. I remember which is which by thinking ‘pair a brakes’ for ‘para’ — STOP.
Dissociation in the mother is communicated to the infant and destabilizes the ‘ordinary’ development of the infant’s ANS. The information below relates to maternal dissociation:
ANS – Dr. Allan N. Schore – “Affect Regulation and the repair of the self,” chapter 4
Selves on the brink between imploding and exploding
Dissociation: “The neurobiology of the later forming dissociative reaction is different than the initial hyperarousal response (for models of the neurobiology of dissociation (see Scaer, 2001; Schore, 2001c) (schore/ar/125)” Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and DISSOCIATION
++++
“As episodes of relational trauma commence, the infant is processing information from the external and […]
I woke up on this sunny, warm morning thinking about the post I wrote last night, feeling concerned about the darkness in it. Somehow two topics came into my mind almost like they came to me as a balance weight against that darkness that was the history of the making of Linda. One topic is about the Brownie scout leader I had when I was eight. The other topic is my strange cat, Gerri.
I will only know by writing this piece how the darkness and the light within the story of the Brownie scout leader and my cat fit together. I know attachment lies at the root of this piece of writing.
++++
I will start with Gerri because she is here with me in the present. She is (I know nothing about cat breeds so I will do the best I can to describe her) a mostly black tortoise shell calico cat. She has splashes of white markings and light tan, almost peach legs, with some tan speckles throughout her fur. Her coat is so thick I can scrunch my fingers into it, but also a little oily and waxy. It reminds me of a soft version of the undercoat a buffalo might wear.
Her eyes are round and always big, yellow with a pitch black slit in them. She reminds me of an owl when she looks at me, and her look is always a stare as if she is continually looking for threat and danger. She often looks worried as if I might eat her. There is always tension in her small body (she is not a big or heavy cat). I will never know her whole background or history, but what I do know explains for me why she is such an unusual and strange cat. I don’t expect her to ever be ‘ordinary’ the way the three now mostly grown kitten-cats I rescued are. But I am seeing the REAL Gerri emerging within this precious original cat!
Those of you who read my postings on my 1982 journal remember that I reached a point all those years ago when I packed up my spinning and weaving and put it all away when I entered college, and my life changed. As I transcribed those journal pages I realized how sad it was that I let go one of the few parts of myself that were really an important and positive part of me. I looked at the beautiful maple loom sitting in the corner of my living room and realized that I can place some important energy in my present life getting that part of myself that loves to work with fleece and yarn back into my life.
++++
Now the story about the loom and Gerri intertwine. About four years ago I happened to hear about this loom that someone in a town about 50 miles from where I live had to give away. I was fortunate to get this woman’s number and called her. The following weekend the loom was in my house. The woman who brought it here was a friend of the woman who owned it, whose Alzheimer’s had progressed to the point she had to be placed in a full-care institution. It turns out this woman who owned the loom (I never met her) also had two cats that needed a home, too. I offered to take the cats.
The next weekend the cats arrived, Gerri being one of them and a huge fat white cat named Poe being the other one. The wisdom of my hindsight came very quickly into play as the woman who brought the cats in their cardboard cat carrier boxes brought them into my house, opened them up immediately, and the cats got away. I should have insisted immediately that the cats be left in their boxes for awhile until I had time to meet and greet them before I let them out.
Poe only disappeared for a few hours. The little black one was gone for four months. I hoped she was still in my house and had not escaped at some sly moment when the door was open, but I didn’t know for sure. All I could do was keep food, water and litter filled and wait.
Eventually I heard the black one. I had not written her name down when she had been left at my house, so I called her by the name the little neighbor boy suggested. Gerri. After her four months of sneaking out at night and hiding thoroughly during the day, I began to see fleeting shadows of Gerri darting along the outside walls of the house from hiding place to hiding place. As she became more trusting and daring she would appear here and there away from the walls. That’s when I began to realize that big fat Poe bullied her.
I ended up finding a home for Poe. No bullying allowed in my home! It has taken 3 ½ years for Gerri to transform into my pet. Gerri is missing her front left paw. She was stepped on by a horse when she was so tiny she could barely walk, and the woman who owned the loom had taken her to the vet’s and saved her life. The more I come to know Gerri, the more I realize that she has cat version posttraumatic stress disorder. I would call her absolutely ‘mentally ill’ and neurotic if I didn’t know better.
Also, the more I have gotten to know Gerri, the more I wonder if her previous owner’s increasing dementia didn’t severely further traumatize this cat. It makes me worry for pets who are under the care of Alzheimer people before they progress into total near-oblivion. The hyper startle response this little cat has, her nervousness, her obvious distrust of the world she lives in, her difficulty in forming attachment to me, all make me think that there were many times in her 14-year life that she was threatened not only by a giant horse, and a huge bullying white cat, but also by her increasingly demented owner.
++++
But Gerri seems to realize more every day of her life that she is now safe from harm and secure in my care and affection. Nothing will ever take away from her either the background experiences of suffering that she’s had, or her physiological responses to those traumas. But I am watching her become, a little more every day, more and more of the fine cat, Gerri that she is.
She loves to be brushed, and I don’t mean she’s a little fond of it. She gets ecstatic! I keep a brush on the bathroom floor, and every time I use the toilet Gerri gets some profoundly happy moments! I have even seen her let herself be chased by the sweetest of my three half grown kittens. Gerri is queen of the house now. She will never eat while the other three do, but she watches them from the middle of the kitchen floor with interest. She will even curl up now on a corner of my sheet-covered bed in the sunlight during the day, allowing herself to be present with three other cats on the bed!
But it is what happens at night when I first go to bed that tickles me most. I don’t know why she just started this a week ago. It’s like some ancient Gerri-is-a-cat genetic memory has kicked into gear. She always knows about 15 minutes before I head to bed that it is TIME, and she begins to prance around me, waiting. As soon as the lights are off and I am snuggled under my covers and stop moving, Gerri rushes into the living room. It took me a couple of days to put two and two together to figure out what her new routine actually was.
I would here her return to my room as she made the strangest cat deep growling cat talking sounds. Then they would stop, she would leave the room, and soon she would be back repeating her verbal display. After awhile she would jump onto my bed and nestle down somewhere near my feet where she spent the night. Eventually I noticed the pile of cat toy soft balls piled under my bed near my head. “Oh! She’s HUNTING for me!”
In order for this game to repeat itself for the first few nights Gerri had to move all the balls back into the living room during the day so she could hunt for them again at night. Now I round them all up and hide them for her. At first I kept the hiding simple and obvious so she would have no trouble finding them. I didn’t want to discourage her from hunting for them. Now I can be a little more challenging in where I put them in the morning, because she still finds them all at night and brings them back for me.
Now HERE is the connection to my Brownie scout leader when I was eight. I am Gerri’s attachment person. She hunts for me because she loves me and she is taking care of me like a momma cat would hunt and bring her kill to her kittens. I am like her mother at the same time she is mothering me.
++++
When I was eight, shortly after my family had left Los Angeles and moved to Alaska, my mother was still practicing the “Let’s be a GOOD (public face) mother so I make an impression on all these new people I am meeting here!” façade. Eventually, and it only took less than two years, she stopped caring a hoot what anyone thought about her in her new location and became again completely the mean mother she was to me.
In the meantime, I was allowed to attend Brownies for about a year, which culminated in my being allowed to attend Brownie day camp for a week the June we first began homesteading. Mother drove me to the Eagle River Shopping Center parking lot and the Brownie leader picked me up and drove me to camp and back again.
I am thinking about how the attachment and child development experts tell us that the ability to form secure attachments lies within each individual child. When insecure attachment happens instead, the ‘fault’ does not lie within the victim-child. It lies with the inadequate early caregivers. I have never forgotten the time I spent at that Brownie camp. It was one of the very, very few times I actually GOT TO BE A CHILD! I loved the activities, enjoyed being with the other children, and was treated grandly by every one of the adults.
Yet one particular experience that happened on a return trip back to the shopping center that remains a ‘flashbulb’ memory for me (the same as trauma can create flashbulb memories, so also can extremely positive events, especially when a child is immersed in the darkness of trauma on an ongoing basis). We had left the camp a little early, and the Brownie scout leader asked me on the return trip if I liked flowers. I trusted this woman completely by now, and I can remember my own ecstasy when I responded back to her with the full life-force and enthusiasm I was capable of, “Oh, YES! I LOVE flowers.”
“OK,” this woman responded back to me with a smile. “Just wait. I am going to show you something very special.”
She turned off of the paved highway and drove down a narrow dirt road and parked near the edge of the great Knik River. She walked ahead of me on a slippery damp wet packed black mud pathway along the shore until we came to a small open area where she showed me the Chocolate Lilies growing there.
So beautiful, I thought! I had never before seen a brown flower! But when I smelled them, the STUNK! How could something that looked so beautiful smell so bad?
Well, I have NEVER forgotten those shining moments or the kindness of that woman. Yet I also realize that woman’s attention and generous kindness to me where probably not one single bit out of the ordinary for her. I had no idea at all that people ordinarily treat children that way, treat each other that way. For me, that week at day camp, and my ‘commutes’ with this woman remained the safest, most secure, most kind and happiest days of my entire childhood.
Hope from human kindness means the universe to abused children -- budding flowers in spring -- the Chocolate Lily
++++
Which again takes me back to myself and little traumatized kitty Gerri. I understand that getting stepped on by a horse and losing your paw can be put in the category of trauma that just happens sometimes. But neither Gerri nor I ever deserved anything less than perfect kindness. That we didn’t get it, changed us. But just as there is a perfect cat Gerri inside that furry body sleeping in the sun at the foot of my bed right now with her three furry companions (the first she has ever let into her life), there always remains a perfect Linda present in this body no matter how difficult it is for me to remain ‘in touch’ with her.
++++
So, in response to the dark reality of the post I wrote last night, I want to remind all of us that because we are still alive there HAD TO BE shining moments of safe and secure attachment with someone somewhere and some time in our childhood. I won’t talk here about the unspeakable tragedy it is that abused children have to make a few tiny moments of glowing kindness into enough of a sustaining memory to last them throughout their terrible, dark, dangerous, traumatic childhoods.
But I also believe that I would have had a different life course in the end than I did if I had NOT had those few shining moments with that perfect stranger. Her kindness sustained me throughout my childhood because those moments with her were the only true Linda being Linda and being accepted, treated kindly and being genuinely and completely happy that I can think of. But the quality of my attachment experiences with this woman kept the channel of secure attachment open for me within my own body-brain-mind.
I have no doubt that in those few joy-filled moments with that woman who cared enough about me to take a little detour to show me new flowers that I loved, in those few secure attachment moments borrowed from the ‘ordinary’ world, that woman saved my life in the same way I am saving little Gerri’s and she is saving mine.
Please be sure to take a look at the slide show presented in this link I included at the bottom of last evening’s post about the Center for Disease Control’s latest research on the long term suffering caused by severe child abuse that occurs during the early stages of brain-body development:
I believe it is critical that this kind of “new” information be coupled with understandings about the body-brain-mind evolutionary changes that those of us who survived the kind of malevolent experiences that the above research is highlighting had to make.
The kinds of life long difficulties the research points to happen not only because of the abuse itself, but because of these changes our body-brain-mind had to make. Our bodies were designed in, by and for trauma. We were never designed to live an ordinary life with an ordinary body-brain-mind. We have to become completely clear about what these changes are and how they affect us.
Researchers and clinicians are going to continue to try to apply a piecemeal solution to an extremely complicated problem just as they always have. Their efforts will NOT bring about any more positive a solution than they have thus far — which is PATHETIC — if the evolutionary adaptation to trauma during early development due to trauma and abuse is not the PRIMARY and PIVOTAL information used to assess ‘damage’ and effect lasting positive change for survivors.
Otherwise we will continue to be looked at as flawed people. We are not remotely flawed. We were terribly wounded as little infant-children, and we endured. We are perfectly designed to survive what we had to survive or we would not be here! Even though the adaptive changes we had to make prevent us from smoothly ‘fitting into’ an ordinary world, they can still be not only recognized, but respected, honored and even applauded and celebrated for being the amazing human resiliency factors that they are. If we value human life at all, we will know this truth in our bones. And I believe for any healing to occur for us at all, this point of truth is where all efforts must begin.
The flip side of the coin of surviving intolerably horrible childhoods is that our body adapted for short-term heavy duty survival in trauma. We are not adapted to a quality of life for the long haul. THAT portion of our lives is what we need appropriate help with if we are to keep on living in a ‘benevolent’ world.
Nature designed us to live to our childbearing years and not much longer. The ‘ordinary’ world we grew up into grants us a longevity we were not made for. Sorry folks, this is the truth as I understand it as a survivor with this kind of trauma-changed body. No wonder we are likely to contemplate or commit suicide. I believe our body knows this truth. This can make just staying alive yet another choice we have to make with conscious effort.
Everyone needs to get their thinking straight on these issues! What ARE the priorities? We survivors cannot magically remake our body-brains into ‘ordinary’ ones once the traumas of our childhood have ended. These changes are with us for the rest of our lives. Nobody tells us this fact or truly helps us live better with the changed body-brain that we have. Surviving severe infant-child trauma and abuse is a costly affair.
Please, take a look at that link at the top here. The Center for Disease Control is not a lightweight institution. Their findings leave indelible marks on minds within the professional community. To allow child abuse to continue at all, and to allow those adults who survived the kinds of abuse the ACE study highlights to continue to suffer, can only happen in a culture without a conscience. For our culture to not consider the evolutionarily altered body-brain-mind development that survivors were forced to make in order to stay alive is even worse.
We will never be able to solve the problems related to severe early abuse and trauma — and survival of it — if we refuse to correctly describe and name what happens to change the course of our human development and how we responded.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A WORD TO WISE WOMEN:
IF YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF SEVERE CHILD ABUSE, CONSIDER YOURSELF AT HIGH RISK FOR GETTING BREAST CANCER. Today’s release of the news article at link below does not apply to you in the same way as it does to ‘ordinary’ women. A mammogram beginning at age 40 should always be considered necessary for child abuse survivors who choose to be proactive on behalf of their well-being.
If your insurance requires a referral from your doctor, never hesitate to tell her/him the truth about your abuse history. You can also mention the Center for Disease Control’s newly published findings on the major link between child abuse and the risk for serious adult disease. We are not ‘making this up!’
The Theory of Mind that a child forms by around the age of five is built upon the brain-mind bedrock that was itself built from every single early caregiver interaction that child experienced from birth. If those early experiences were unstable, unpredictable, toxic and malevolent, there is no possible way that child can move on to their Theory of Mind developmental stage with an ‘ordinary’ foundation of benevolent safe and secure attachment. Abused children have no choice but to end up with alterations in their eventual Theory of Mind.
++++
Having “the capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior” is, according to developmental neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Siegel, critical to being able “to provide sensitive and nurturing parenting.” (see his writing at bottom of post) Siegel calls having this capacity ‘mindsight’. This is a BIG subject, and is directly tied to our early childhood development of a Theory of Mind (TOM).
Having this “capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior” affects ALL of our interactions with others, and I would add, all of our interactions between our self and our self, and our self and the whole world around us – because we are human and we process all information by using our human faculties. Theory of Mind is HOW we are in the world.
Theory of Mind is directly tied to a developmental process that begins at birth that allows humans to understand others’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions behind actions. Without an adequate (ordinary) Theory of Mind, an abused child cannot possibly understand EITHER others or their own self in an ordinary way. The ability to recognize states of mind, to tolerate them in self or others, and to transition between them is connected to how an individual’s Theory of Mind operates.
This is a HUGE and critically important concept. I encourage readers to follow some of the links above and to think about Theory of Mind as it affects all of our lives from the first thoughts we have until the last ones. We are a social species. If our Theory of Mind cannot develop through safe and secure early attachments, it will be ‘off center’ and ‘out of balance’ for the rest of our lives. If we have a history of early and severe abuse, we have been given no choice but to try to understand and apply consciously to ourselves the kinds of ‘rules’ and ‘patterns’ of interaction with self and others that securely attached from birth people have built within themselves and never have to think about.
Ongoing life happens because of ongoing communication that involves patterns of signaling (down to the molecular level). The signals must be sent, received and understood accurately for life to continue at all. Any problems with communication signaling will be reflected in some kind of lack of well-being. It is, to me, as simple as that.
++++
When I consider the statistics that tell us between 50% and 55% of us were raised from birth under ordinary safe and secure attachment conditions, I have to wrap my thinking around the fact that the other 50% to 45% of us were not, and that loss left us with some degree of insecure attachment disorder. Given the vastness of degrees of difference among us according to how we were treated from birth, it is hard to make any blanket statements. But I will say that I don’t like to think in terms of ‘damage’ due to irregular or malevolent early caregiving experiences. I think in terms of ‘changed from the ordinary’.
I envision it like all of us are prepared one way or the other to get along in the ‘game of life’. If I think about this like we are all prepared by our early experiences to join in a game of cards, I can see how all the problems we experience then play themselves out.
Somebody has to know the rules to the game. Let’s say the securely attached half of us know these rules. The rest of us don’t. We end up with varying degrees of confusion, varying ideas about what this card game is about, how we are to participate, and what all aspects of the game MEAN to self and others.
I think about personality disorders like my mother had, or like someone who has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I am beginning to understand that their difficulties in forming a solid, ordinary Theory of Mind in their early childhood left them prepared to take their place in the Card Game of Life in a very particular way. My mother’s rules were rigid, bizarre and enforced – period. Anyone who was forced to be a part of her card game had no choice but to play by her rules.
What if you and I were playing a card game and I drew a 2 of clubs. But I had no tolerance for a 2 of clubs. I believed I HAD to have a queen of diamonds. If I was my mother, that 2 of clubs would BE a queen of diamonds, and there would be nothing you could do but play the game by my rules in spite of my delusion. To try to challenge me or convince me of a different reality would cause WWII X to break out (at the very least).
Or, what if you were playing cards with me as I am in the world as a result of my having to grow up under my mother’s rules. I simply would never really understand any part of this game. Anything that I might know about playing remains illusive to me. I have to reinvent myself in the game with every card that’s played – by me or by anybody else.
++++
My mother’s version of getting along in the world worked for her because she could exclude any incoming information that she believed on some level to threaten her. I have great difficulty with excluding any information. It all comes in, and I am left in the opposite camp from my mother. I have to continually deal with everything on some level as if it is a new situation that I have never experienced before.
My way of being in the world is costly and exhausting. My mother’s way, or the way of people with personality disorders (I believe) works better in many ways because it eliminates or greatly reduces the amount of information that has to be consciously experienced and dealt with. Personality disorders simply allow a person to continue to play the Card Game of Life by a constricting set of rules that was set in place in their childhood and is not subject to change. Only through a costly application of personal conscious will and effort can those patterns of interaction between the self in the world with others be changed.
I, on the other hand, have to apply great effort to find any kind of an ongoing structure from which to order, organize and orient myself in this world of others. My mother built herself a mental box that she remained within her entire life. It was her version of safety in the world. That her version didn’t match external reality was not of the least concern to her. She couldn’t afford to let it be.
I don’t have such a box, so I am not limited in my ability to feel unsafe and insecure in the world. I am forced to recognize that I don’t really have much of a clue about how ordinary people get along in the world with each other. My mother really didn’t, either, but her personality disorder protected her from ever having to experience that fact.
My mother did not have to feel the experience of being completely baffled, confused, disoriented, disorganized, unsafe and insecure in the world. She could not have tolerated that reality, so from a very young Theory of Mind developmental stage, she invented her own reality. Because her version of reality so completely included the need to project her own sense of badness out onto me, and because her focus was so intense, powerful and all consuming, there was absolutely NO ROOM for me to develop any sense of my own cohesiveness as an individual self. I could only exist entirely as a fixated-upon card within the deck of playing cards she held in her hand for the first 18 years of my life.
The only tiny fragments of self identity that I could form happened in spite of my mother’s focused hatred of me. They could not become integrally connected to one another because of my mother’s nearly constant interruption of my process. I could not think with a Theory of Mind of my own because there was no room in my mother’s card game for that to happen. I am left now trying to piece together all the millions of tiny fragments of my self into a beautiful vase that is Linda even though that vase was never allowed to exist in the first place. This has left me with a Dissociative Identity Disorder without the identities. And yes, this CAN happen because it DOES happen.
++++
Where does this leave me in regard to Siegel’s statement about having the“capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior?” I am nearly at ‘ground zero’ where anything and everything is possible.
I came out of my childhood with 2 strong and related missions in life: “Be good so you don’t get into trouble,” and “don’t hurt anybody else if you can help it.” I at least had those two cards in my hand, and as it turns out they both acted as wild cards. I have been able to ‘act as if’ I had a clue about playing the Card Game of Life, but this is a very expensive way to get along in life.
I have always felt as if I am on the outside looking in on ‘ordinary’ life. I am conscious of what this state feels like. I see my condition as being the opposite of my mother’s. She was locked up on the inside of herself looking out, and had to manipulate every possible experience to fit her inner reality. She did not have to be conscious of how her reality operated in the world or how she affected others. I am continually left trying to figure everything out as I go along.
In the end, the price of my mother’s way of being in the world cost her every single caring, loving relationship that she could have had. In the end there was no way around the fact that she was locked in the box of her personality-disordered, insecurely-attached self and was absolutely alone.
At least with my way of being in the world I can keep on trying, always trying to understand, to re-form my Theory of Mind and the way I am with myself and others in the world. I understand I have never had, nor will I ever have, the benefit and luxury of being an ordinary person in ordinary relationship with ordinary people in any ordinary way. But I do have the luxury my mother never had of at least being able to comprehend this truth so that I can try to change some things about how I am in the world for the better.
I suffer from having too much flexibility in my being while my mother suffered from having too little. My state of being in the world involves uncertain and nearly constantly changing reflections. My mother had no ability to tolerate any reflection at all. I retained the gift of changeability. My mother (and others with severe personality disorders) left that gift behind them in their early childhoods.
I would rather suffer from too much changeability in myself than have none at all. At least having my wild cards, having the capacity to know that they are wild cards, having the capacity to learn how I am different from ‘ordinary’ people and knowing I can realistically change lets me stay in the game.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Moreover, the capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior is associated with the capacity to provide sensitive and nurturing parenting….this reflective function is more than the ability to introspect; it directly influences a self-organizational process within the individual…..the reflective function also enables the parent to facilitate the self-organizational development of the child….the coherent organization of the mind depends upon an integrative process that enables such reflective processes to occur….integrative coherence within the individual may early in life depend upon, and later facilitate, interpersonal connections that foster the development of emotional well-being. (Siegle/tdm/312)”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This post follows these others in my exploration about secure versus insecure attachment:
It is time for me to break my own self imposed vow of silence about the subject of suicide. I am certainly not responsible for anyone else’s thoughts about the subject, or for anyone else’s actions. I feel like I am breaking a social taboo by mentioning it at all. Can we learn to talk as openly and honestly about suicide as we can talk about any other realistic health concern or threat to our well-being?
++++++++++++++++
The following helped me when I read it today — written to a woman who had just lost her husband to suicide:
++++++++++++++++
“SEVERANCE FROM THIS WORLD”
“Thou hast written of the severe calamity that has befallen thee – the death of thy respected husband. That honorable personage has been so much subjected to the stress and pain of this world that his highest wish became deliverance from it. Such is this mortal abode – a storehouse of afflictions and suffering. It is negligence that binds man to it for no comfort can be secured by any soul in this world, from monarch down to the least subject. If once it should offer man a sweet cup, a hundred bitter ones will follow it and such is the condition of this world. The wise man therefore does not attach himself to this mortal life and does not depend upon it; even at some moments he eagerly wishes death that he may thereby be freed from these sorrows and afflictions. Thus it is seen that some, under extreme pressure of anguish, have committed suicide.
As to him rest assured; he will be immersed in the ocean of pardon and forgiveness and will become the recipient of bounty and favor.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha
There is barely a single moment of a single day of my life that my ‘not wanting to be here on this earth’ does not overshadow me. I consider myself fortunate that I have friends and a sister that I can talk about my feelings about suicide openly and completely honestly with. I hate the thought, and I hate the feelings within me that are connected to it. I have even asked my favorite astrologer, Zane, for a reading that might explain where in my natal-birth astrological chart there might be something I can learn about myself to club this thought to death! Permanently would be awfully nice.
I have reason to believe that not being loved or wanted and instead being loathed, hated and greatly abused from birth has something to do with my not wanting to be here even now. I know I have overwhelming pain and sorrow within me from my 18 year history of severe abuse. It has always been there. How my not wanting to be here in a body is tied to that pain, I will probably never know for certain. The important thing is that one day at a time, I am still here.
I do not believe that guilt-tripping, shaming, denying, avoiding, or judging myself for my difficulties being alive in this body on this earth are helpful. Having received a serious diagnosis of advanced breast cancer 2 ½ years ago put me in direct contact with my dilemma. I fought the cancer primarily because of my children, and I think they know that. (My boyfriend also told me at the time if I didn’t finish my chemotherapy treatments he would not see me any more. I have some resentments about this!)
My children also clearly know my child abuse history and my struggles to live with the consequences of that abuse. I might wish that not to be true all I want – but the facts about surviving a torturous childhood are best allowed to breath in the bright light of conscious day.
The ending last June of my relationship with the man I am in love with has not made being inside myself any easier. I continue to suffer greatly from this loss. Because I have a severe insecure attachment disorder stemming from my extremely abusive childhood (which also affects my attachment in my body to this world), I understand that there is not a single fiber of my being that has not been painfully touched by my continuing loss. I also understand that probably most of this blog’s readers know exactly what I am talking about.
The choice to take one breath after another, to continue living each day as it comes, is not a minor one. It is one we all make from our first breath until our last, whether we choose to think about it consciously or not. The excerpt I placed at the beginning of this post uses the word ‘anguish’. I use the word ‘agony’, because on some level I feel it every moment of my life (yup, that good old Substance P).
The advanced and I believe sophisticated dissociational survival-protection system within my body-brain-mind cannot erase all of the pain that I am split-off from consciously identifying. Fortunately, I believe that about 90% of it is remotely being stored away from my ongoing experience of being alive. But what my body does know and remember affects me continually.
I can ‘make it go away’ more sometimes than others, but it remains a part of me constantly because the pain is a part of my body. Living with that level of pain is not easy. Readers, I believe you know what I mean – and I take comfort in that knowledge – as much as it profoundly saddens me that any single one of us had to endure the kind of sufferings that we have.
Recent medical research on “adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs) reveals a compelling relationship between the extent of childhood trauma and serious later in life health and social problems. The social science knowledge base and the practical experience of social service providers become important in terms of understanding and responding to adverse life experiences in childhood and adolescence. The ACE research can be linked with prevention and intervention knowledge that involves evidence-based mental health practice, prevention of health risk behaviors, substance abuse treatment, integrated treatment of co-occurring disorders, community development, and service delivery and policy evaluations. Social workers located in discrete professional settings can mobilize comprehensive responses to address the causal role of adverse childhood experiences by bringing together various professions to create more coherent systems for the development of children and the support of parents.
Capital Region ACE Think Tank and Action Teams have utilized ACE research to connect various areas of concern (workforce issues, trauma-informed practice, prevention and intervention, treatment of co-occurring disorders, cross-systems/service integration). This webinar outlines the ACE research, emphasizing this connection to social service knowledge for response strategy, and reports on new research on the Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences Among Homeless People. The mission and purpose of local ACE Think Tank and Action Team Meetings is discussed, outlining the policy journey in the NYS Capital Region along with next steps. NYS has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in ACE response, promoting resilience, recovery, and transformation.
Why has it taken so long to ‘figure out’ something as obvious as the connection between child abuse and long term life difficulties OF ALL KINDS? STUPID is as STUPID DOES! Am I a little bitter? You bet!! Try “Too little, too late!” on for size, folks.
Experts say that we cannot be truly autonomous and secure adults if we lack the ability to have safe and secure attachments.
I wanted to write today about Dr. Siegel’s next statements about secure-autonomous attachment. I find, as usual, that I am nearly completely lost in trying to understand what he is saying (see bottom of this post) because I do not come from a childhood of safe and secure attachments. Instead my 18 years of abuse from birth gave me the opposite – a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder. To begin to understand what Siegel is saying, I have to turn his words upside down and backwards so that they can make sense to ‘opposite’ extra-ordinary ME.
++++
In order to keep my thoughts from appearing and flying away in their often random way, I had to find my own internal image to attach them to so that they could have an order I can understand. What came to me in relation to what Siegel is saying about secure versus insecure attachment was: “stolen thunder.” In working with my own internal image I came to understand three basic questions about how parents raise their children. In fact, I think it might be the simplest ‘test’ possible to determine the quality of the parenting we received and of the parenting we give our own children.
++++
1. Does a parent help their child’s own personal power, uniqueness, expression and self to grow? In other words, do they help their child’s thunder to grow or do they interfere with their child’s growing thunder (self=personal power)?
Yes or No
2. Does a parent actually steal their child’s thunder away from them so that the child is diminished rather than helped and allowed to grow and thrive?
Yes or No
3. Does the parent then project their own garbage onto and into their child?
Yes or No
++++
These questions are, of course, only showing us what the very tip of the iceberg is like about how parents can act toward their children. But I think the answers give a pretty clear indication about what lies below the surface:
As I thought about my mother’s interactions with me from my birth, I realized that 1. was No; 2. was Yes; 3. was Yes. N-Y-Y. She did not allow my personal thunder to grow, she stole it away from me and projected her garbage onto me. (This is exactly what I believe my mother’s mother and grandmother did to her in her childhood.)
I thought about my father and 1. was No; 2. was No; 3. was No. N-N-N. He did not help me to grow my own thunder, but he did not steal it away from me, either. Nor did he project his garbage onto me. I basically did not seem to exist in his world at all.
I thought about my interactions with my own children and 1. was Yes; 2. was No; and 3. was No. Y-N-N. My foremost effort with my children was to allow them and to help them grow into their own self and to grow their personal thunder. I did not steal their thunder away from them or deny them the opportunity to grow their own strong, clear self. I did not confuse, overpower or disempower them. I did not project my own garbage onto them. I had what the child development attachment experts would call an ‘earned secure’ attachment with my children. (I think about this from my own perspective as my having built a ‘borrowed secure’ attachment with my children.)
NOTE: Our patterns of trying to give our thunder away is a topic for some future writing…..
++++
Out of curiosity I wanted to know where the phrase “steal my thunder” even came from. At trivia-library.com I found it to be 300 years old:
Origins of Sayings – Steal My Thunder
About the history, origin and story behind the famous saying
STEAL MY THUNDER
Who Said It: John Dennis
When: 1709
The Story behind It: John Dennis, English critic and playwright, invented a new way of simulating the sound of thunder on stage and used the method in one of his plays, Appius and Virginia. Dennis “made” thunder by using “troughs of wood with stops in them” instead of the large mustard bowls usually employed. The thunder was a great success, but Dennis’ play was a dismal failure. The manager at Drury Lane, where the play was performed, canceled its run after only a few performances. A short time later, Dennis returned to Drury Lane to see Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As he sat in the pit, he was horrified to discover that his method of making thunder was being used. Jumping to his feet, Dennis screamed at the audience, “That’s my thunder, by God! The villains will not play my play but they steal my thunder.”
++++
I have a different association with thunder. I used to be terrified of electrical storms. Gradually, after more than 25 years spent in friendships with traditional-believing Native Americans in northern Minnesota, I came to understand another perspective on these storms.
I had a friend who was a lawyer and Chief Magistrate, and not given to ‘flights of fancy’. One time she told the story of driving a stretch of deserted 2-lane highway after leaving Canada as she headed home. She glanced in her rear view mirror and saw a massive bird speeding towards her along the line of road. It shone copper, and when it reached her car it lifted over it and swooped down in front of her and continued down the road. It was so big its wing tips reached over the shoulders on both sides of the road. My friend was stunned and shaken, and pulled off the road and stopped as she watched it disappear ahead of her.
Traditional Anishinabeg (Ojibway, Chippewa) and other Tribal teachings tell of how thunder is the sound of the voice of these great Thunderbirds, and lightning is the light flashing from their eyes. I am no longer afraid of electrical storms. Finding, claiming and growing my own personal thunder remains a bit more of a challenge!
++++
My entire recovery from the terrible child abuse I suffered has been about the healing of myself and the claiming of my personal power to be my self, in my power, in my life. How does having one’s personal thunder — or not — apply to my understanding of the following words by Dr. Daniel Siegel? I guess my discussion of this information now belongs in tomorrow’s post:
“Moreover, the capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior is associated with the capacity to provide sensitive and nurturing parenting….this reflective function is more than the ability to introspect; it directly influences a self-organizational process within the individual…..the reflective function also enables the parent to facilitate the self-organizational development of the child….the coherent organization of the minddepends upon an integrative process that enables such reflective processes to occur….integrative coherence within the individual may early in life depend upon, and later facilitate, interpersonal connections that foster the development of emotional well-being. (Siegle/tdm/312)”
from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD
Most people with a diagnosis of BPD have at least one (if not more) co-occurring disorders. Common comorbid conditions include mood and anxiety disorders and substance use problems. But other disorders can occur alongside BPD as well.
In the Spotlight
Eating Disorders and BPD
Recent research is revealing how often BPD and eating disorders co-occur, why they may be related and how to treat these two types of disorders when they do co-occur.
Alcoholism and BPD
There is a remarkable overlap between substance abuse disorders and borderline personality disorder. One study found that about 60% of patients in psychiatric hospitals who have been diagnosed with BPD also have a co-occurring substance use disorder such as alcohol dependence.
Stop the Storm 
You must be logged in to post a comment.