Tag: dissociation

+TEARS, BEING LOST, ORGANIC CHOCOLATE CAKE BAKING IN THE OVEN…..

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 sympathetic branch, or the GO part of our ANS.

The other arm is the parasympathetic branch, or the STOP part 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:

+SCHORE ON BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

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

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“As episodes of relational trauma commence, the infant is processing information from the external and […]

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+WRITING LINDA NOT HERE

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Strange thing, can’t write since finishing last post — not entirely sure what that ‘transparent moment’ did to me — but the writing Linda isn’t here right now…..  wonder if she’ll come back.

Thanks for stopping by anyway!!

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+I WILL NEVER BE ORDINARY. IT IS TIME FOR ME TO KNOW THIS TRUTH.

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I try to be as positive as I can about the work I am doing with my writing about the permanent and lifelong trauma-centered changes that plague survivors of severe abuse and trauma that happened during their early infant-child developmental changes.

Today’s transcription of my quarter of a century old letters my friend just returned back to me has left me feeling anything but positive.  The reality of the kinds of childhoods like mine, and like the kind I am talking about and describing, is horrible.  There is no way to pretty up the picture about what was done to us and what happened to us as a result.

I am faced with the tragedy of what my mother’s abuse did to me — not just during my childhood, but throughout my entire life up until this very instant in time.  Primarily I balance my mother’s abuse by the other side of my child abuse history.  No one was there for me to form a safe and secure attachment with.  THIS LACK, I believe, had as much to do with how my body-brain-mind-self had to change in order to survive as did the abuse itself.

I believe that having a safe and secure attachment to at least one other person from birth particularly through age 5 is a critical resiliency factor to balance out the terrible harm of abuse in infancy and childhood.  When I consider the terrible abuse of my childhood, it is ALSO the absence of having any other person I could form at attachment to and with that profoundly harmed me.

It is not JUST the presence of abuse that truly creates a malevolent childhood.  It is also the complete absence of safe and secure attachment to ANYONE else.  That absence, I believe, amplifies the impact of the trauma of abuse nearly beyond belief.  That absence, in particular, coupled with the abuse, so changes a person’s development that trauma becomes the underlying pivotal factor of their ongoing existence.

No matter how benign our adult life may appear from the outside, the reality of this kind of childhood trauma within us manifests itself in every feeling, thought, action, decision and experience that we have.   How to live well in spite of the trauma-centered developmental changes that happened to us is so far past my ability to understand today that I can’t imagine it.

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I am having a transparent moment, as if all the illusions I have ever had about myself being an ‘ordinary’ person in an ‘ordinary’ world have now completely evaporated.  Is this a feeling of complete hopelessness that I am experiencing?  It can’t be.  I won’t let it be.

Having illusions about who and how I am in this body in this lifetime is not the same thing as having hope.  Just because today, finally, all my illusions have vanished because I have challenged them and found that they do not fit me, does not mean that I have no right to find a way to a better life in this world.

At this moment I feel as if I have one foot poised in the air over a threshold I am crossing into a new vision of myself in my life.  I can, for the first time ever, looking backward through the time of my life and see myself being born a pure and innocent child, full of potential, full of life, full of the ability to respond to the world I was born into.

That this world welcomed me with trauma and abuse, which held me firmly within its grasp for the first, formative, 18 years of my life does not mean that I, as a human being, have changed in my essence.  But I do have to work with this body, nervous system, and brain that changed itself to survive the horrors of that ongoing trauma.  It is my mind I am working to change, to the best of my ability, not because it is in any way ill, but because it is mine.

My mind can no longer afford to feed itself on a diet of illusion and false belief that what happened to me did not affect me in ways that I now KNOW it did.  And with this knowledge I now have the most profound hope I have ever had.  It is time for me to learn how to experience life MY way, my CHANGED way, without ever again expecting anything about myself to be — ordinary.

There is an invisible line that is crossed during a severely abused infant-child’s life where the option to develop in an ‘ordinary’ way is removed.  To deny this fact is to suffer from delusion.

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*Ages 29-33 – Eight Letters to a Friend

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*Commentary on the eight letters to a friend – ages 29-33

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SOME OF THE KEY TYPICAL TROUBLESOME WORDS, CONCEPTS AND EXPERIENCES THAT ARE DIFFERENT FOR SEVERE CHILD ABUSE SURVIVORS – SEEN FROM MY NEWLY INFORMED PERSPECTIVE.

These things connect to what continues to ‘trouble’ us because they are all connected to the changes that our body-brain-mind had to make in order to survive early severe abuse during our infant-child developmental stages:

Choice

Feeling guilty – the whole concept of guilty

Concept of procrastination as being a source of our problems

‘shirking’ responsibility – the whole concept of ‘response-ability’ as it applies to us

dealing with things on a self-honesty level

concept of ‘changing’

the concept of feelings, feeling feelings, experiencing feelings

emotional brain not form ‘ordinarily’; emotional dysregulation = chronic problem

feeling lonely, depressed, crying – all different for us than for ‘ordinary’ people

experience of ‘feeling low’ and low on energy is different

‘anger’ has a different meaning to us – both our own and other people’s

being with other people

feeling trapped

our experience of the experience of ‘being sick’ and recuperating is altered

our experience of being kind to ourselves

our experience of giving ourselves ‘permission’

how we experience anticipation of enjoyable experiences

experience of worry different

experience of ‘wishful thinking’ is different

experience of disappointment different

Experience of trust is different

Our experience of the passage of time is VERY different!

Our experience of friendships is different

Being willing to reach for and experience ANY kind of self-help we can find

Finding that it does not REALLY help us at all

blaming-shaming ourselves that it doesn’t

not being able to immediately and completely trust our impressions of people

my ‘who-to-trust/not-trust’ center in my infant brain could not form correctly

making a mess of our own thinking trying to change these first impressions!

Our sense of safety with others is THE number ONE issue – we have to trust it

Intense feelings of isolated-alone, trust them, they are REAL beyond belief

Realize that ‘ordinary’ people do not experience them with the pain we do

Yes, we will do everything possible to ‘protect our feelings’ – naturally

Have to be hyper aware of what feels threatening and scary to us – it’s real

There are memories and feelings we can’t touch because it isn’t good for us to

Repression of trauma is not the same thing as dissociation

we can’t ‘work through issues’ like others if we dissociate

not helpful to feel guilty-shame for what we cannot possible accomplish!

Terrible ambiguity can exist about our abuser(s) – ordinary people can’t imagine

Confused-meshed identity and relationship with abuser

Commonly called ‘defense mechanisms’ don’t begin to describe true insanity

Have to be realistic about ‘recovery’ goals – ours will be different than ‘ordinary’

Be careful of what we believe of what therapists who do truly not know us, tell us

We don’t really know what love is or what it feels like – we weren’t built that way

I strongly suspect that ‘love’ is different from ordinary for us

We will never stop learning about what ‘ordinary’ people automatically know

We did not grow into our thinking abilities like ‘ordinary’ people do

Not helpful to be told by others we are ‘rationalizing’ as a defense when we think

We need help learning about our thinking process because abuse changed it

Our disorganized insecure attachment means that we do not grieve the same

Extremely helpful to understand insecure attachment and love relationships

Our own pain-loneliness puts us at risk for attaching harmfully in relationships

Our sense of ‘time passing’ is different; things do not ‘end’ in time like ordinary

Difficulties with accountability if we don’t know source of our difficulties

Terrible troubles with goals-future plans, our higher cortex formed differently

We have a different version of a selfhood – not the ordinary one formed by age 2

When we feel alone in the world, a lot of it is because we are lonely for our self

(a self-centered-self is cultural and evolutionarily a recent luxury we didn’t get)

We had no say in the matter – we developed a trauma-centered self from birth

12-step program talk about ‘unmanageability’ = not from our ‘planet of origin’

12-step program talk about ‘acceptance’ = not from our ‘planet of origin’

12-step program talk about ‘powerlessness’ = not from our ‘planet of origin’

12-step program talk about ‘resentments’ = not from our ‘planet of origin’

the set-point for our nervous system is not at ‘calm’ like ‘ordinary’ is

(these points are included at the end of the link presented above)

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+SIMPLE MOMENTS OF HUMAN KINDNESS CAN SAVE AN ABUSED CHILD’S SELF-LIFE

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

Hope beats within the heart of these moments.

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+DEGREES OF CHANGEABLITY = HOW WELL WE CAN PLAY THE CARD GAME OF LIFE?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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)”

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This post follows these others in my exploration about secure versus insecure attachment:

+DISSOCIATION AND THE TRAUMA-SPECIALIZED BRAIN 11-11-09

+SECURE AND INSECURE ATTACHMENT AND THE CHILDHOOD NARRATIVE 11-13-09

+EXPLODING MOTHER, IMPLODING ME: SOME FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN US 11-14-09

+WHEN ABUSIVE PARENTS STEAL THEIR CHILD’S THUNDER 11-16-09

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+BREAKING THE TABOO — TALKING ABOUT SUICIDE

alchemynow2 Comments

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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?

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The following helped me when I read it today — written to a woman who had just lost her husband to suicide:

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“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

From the book Baha’i World Faith:  Selected Writings of Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha, published by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States, 1943, 1956.  This is from the 5th printing of the 1956 edition, 1971, pages 378-379

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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.

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The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study: New York’s Response

Posted: 15 Nov 2009 10:09 PM PST

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.

Proudly presented in partnership, the State University of New York at Albany’s School of Social Work, the New York State Parenting Education Partnership and Prevent Child Abuse New York are pleased to announce the next in a series of professional development webinars, presented by Professor Heather Larkin.

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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.
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+WHEN ABUSIVE PARENTS STEAL THEIR CHILD’S THUNDER

alchemynow2 Comments

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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.

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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.

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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

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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…..

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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.”

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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!

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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 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)”

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This post follows:

+DISSOCIATION AND THE TRAUMA-SPECIALIZED BRAIN 11-11-09

+SECURE AND INSECURE ATTACHMENT AND THE CHILDHOOD NARRATIVE 11-13-09

+EXPLODING MOTHER, IMPLODING ME: SOME FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN US 11-14-09

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MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

(IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER)

Borderline Personality Disorder

In the Spotlight | More Topics |
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.
More Topics

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.

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+EARLY ABUSE AFFECTS OUR REACTION TO ADULT TRAUMA EXPOSURE

alchemynow2 Comments

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My revised list — common reactions to a stressful event can include:

Shock and disbelief

Feeling powerless

(Short and/or long term immune system responses) headaches, back pains, and stomach problems

Sadness and depression (depression is an anxiety response)

Crying

Apathy and emotional numbing (dissociation, depersonalization, derealization)

(Denial – distortion or loss of memory)

Anger

Fear and anxiety about the future

(Over or under reaction to stimuli – hyper- or hypo-startle response)

Sleep difficulties

Nightmares and reoccurring thoughts about the event (left-right brain cannot process trauma information while awake or during dream sleep — ambidextrous  and left handed people at higher risk)

Difficulty concentrating

Difficulty making decisions

(Difficulty assessing meaning and prioritizing)

Loss of appetite (or increase)

(For children – disturbance in play activities)

(Difficulty with social interactions)

(Inability to use words to describe the experience)

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I cannot read information such as what is presented at the end of the post from any ‘ordinary’ perspective.  The list presented as “common reactions to a stressful event” describes the kind of traumatic stress reactions that are built into the growing body-brains of severely abused infants and young children.  On some level, these reactions have become our norm.  When additional traumas occur in our later adult lives all of these pre-existing traumatic reactions become stimulated and activated.  We are, therefore, at highest risk for having serious reactions to later traumas in our lives.

I hate having to write about these things.  I hate having to even think about them.  I hate it that my body knows far more than my conscious mind ever will about the reality of what the challenges of trauma can do to us.

Professionals call a reaction to trauma disordered when these reactions do not dissipate after a reasonable period of time goes by after a trauma has happened.  For those of us whose body-brain was built during trauma, we have never had the luxury of having a body-brain that does not include trauma reactions in its makeup.  We cannot return to a pre-trauma condition because we never had one in the first place.

That makes any childhood trauma survivor more vulnerable to post trauma stress disorders.  Personally, I don’t like the use of the word ‘disorder’ and would prefer a recognition that what happens to us after trauma exposure is as natural a reaction as what happens to us as the trauma occurs.  If our reaction is exaggerated or extended, there is a reason for this happening.  Until this fact, coupled with a complete recognition of how early infant-child abuse and trauma alter the developing body-brain from the start is recognized and respected, I do believe the word ‘disorder’ must be used carefully in trauma response considerations.  What ‘they’ see as ‘disordered’ is a different kind of ordering for the entire body-brain from the ground up, from the beginning of life onward for those who have survived severe infant-childhood traumas

Whatever words are used to describe the continued suffering from ongoing reactions to traumas, the long term effects are very real and can be debilitating in regard to quality of life and general well-being.  Adaptations in the body-brain of early trauma survivors means that we react to trauma differently than ‘ordinary’ people do.  We were ‘reordered’ and our ongoing processing of information reflects that condition in our body-brain.

To call us ‘disordered’ is to call us flawed.  We are different, not flawed.

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INFORMATION FROM:

Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog
Dealing with a Traumatic EventPosted: 14 Nov 2009 01:26 PM PSTIn the wake of the tragic events at Fort Hood November 5, 2009, it’s important to remember that when traumatic incidents occur, the Center for Disease Control’s Injury Center can assist by providing information that can help people cope and recover. Sometimes after experiencing a traumatic event, including personal or environmental disasters, or being threatened with an assault, people have a strong and lingering reaction to stress. When the symptoms of stress last too long, it can cause people to feel overwhelmed and have an effect on their ability to cope.Common reactions to a stressful event can include:
Disbelief and shock
Fear and anxiety about the future
Difficulty making decisions
Apathy and emotional numbing
Loss of appetite
Nightmares and reoccurring thoughts about the event
Anger
Increased use of alcohol and drugs
Sadness and depression
Feeling powerless
Crying
Sleep difficulties
Headaches, back pains, and stomach problems
Difficulty concentratingFor more information, tips on how to handle a traumatic experience, or to read this full article please visit: http://www.cdc.gov/Features/HandlingStress/ or http://www2c.cdc.gov/podcasts/player.asp?f=5256

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+EXPLODING MOTHER, IMPLODING ME: SOME FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN US

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I am revisiting what I see as the core differences between my borderline mother and myself.  I find that nothing has changed in my thinking about these differences in my past five years of research.  My mother’s childhood-onset dissociation became malignant while mine remained benign.

In my first ‘doodle’ I visualized the impact of infant developmental attachment deprivations she suffered from birth until age two.  Born into a family with marital discord and left with her primary care in the hands of a ‘nanny’, I envision that my mother’s developing brain-mind-self was already far off course before she reached the stage of developing a Theory of Mind.

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During the developmental stages from age 2 – 5 conditions in my mother’s childhood so severely impacted her brain-mind that I believe her later mental illness had already centralized the organization of her self.  From the age of 5 it was simply a matter of time before the bomb that was her Borderline Personality Disorder condition would explode – which it did during her terrible delivery of me.

The broader dimensions of the diamond figure that I drew show that in the bottom half powerful interactions with others in her life were feeding her unstable growing self.  She had reached what I call the ‘rage stage’ which was coupled with the following:

My mother was a victim of a lie.  She was told through word and deed by her early caregivers that sometimes she was good enough to be loved.  She was also told that sometimes she was so bad she was un-love-able.  The lie was that she had the power to change herself from being bad to being good, and if she changed into being good (made the bad go away) she would be love-able – and therefore would be loved.

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These conditions presented my mother with an impossible paradox for which there was no answer.  She never knew she was being lied to by her attachment caregivers.  She did not know that there was no solution to this paradox.  She was told she had the power to change herself into being ‘all good’, and she eventually found her solution – me.

The impossible solution to her fundamental betrayal problem was to spit off all her badness and project it onto me.  That left her being all good and me being all bad.  She never had the capacity to know she had believed a lie, found an impossible solution to an impossible riddle, or that she had been tricked and fooled.  Once her child brain-mind wrapped herself around the too-big problem of her early life, her brain-mind continued to grow with this malignant lie within it.

As she moved out of her childhood into her adulthood, and then into the stage of her childbearing years, her childhood dissociation, fueled by childhood rage and a broken Theory of Mind, meant that her children remained her doll-imaginary friends with me as her imaginary enemy (as I have previously described).  By the later years of  my mother’s life she had fewer and fewer people she could influence through her mental illness, and she died as alone and unconsciously troubled as she had been from the time of her birth.

I see this ‘main impact zone’ as being the mass of incoming information that hurt her, followed my the mass of information she later could displace and project onto others to hurt them (primarily me).

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My second doodle page (above) presents the basics of what I believe are the differences between my mother and myself.  Like her, my foundation from birth was in disorganizing, disorienting insecure attachment to early caregivers.  But unlike her, I was never fooled, tricked, or betrayed.  Her projection of her own badness onto me condemned me absolutely and permanently.  I was simply doomed to be hated without hope of reprieve, salvation, or any hope of implementing my own solution to solve any of the ‘problems’ I had with her.

The simplicity of my life saved me.  I was not faced with solving an impossible riddle.  I was not presented with the impossible paradox of “you can change yourself into a good and love-able child and then I will love you.”  My childhood was one continual ‘rupture’ without either repair or hope for repair.  My mother’s childhood contained ‘ruptures’ with faulty and deceiving repairs.

In the final analysis, I was far more fortunate than my mother was.  She was set up to fail at being love-able.  I was simply not love-able.  It was the constancy of my unloved-being hated state that saved me.  It was the inconsistency of her unloved-sometimes loved state that ruined her.

I believe her brain fixated a rigid solution to an unsolvable problem.  Her childhood dissociation organized in her brain-mind-self around this solution – which became her internal and unconscious fulltime goal.  I believe her mental illness was fueled by childhood rage.  Her childhood dissociation became malignant, and I became its operational target.

My childhood dissociation had no goal other than physical enduring survival.  My brain-mind-self was left in a fluid, continually changing and adapting state because I HAD NO GOAL and I had no hope, false or otherwise.  My mother’s treatment of me was made tolerable through what I call benign dissociation and my development occurred in a world of sadness.

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My mother ended up fighting to be love-able, fueled by rage.  Rage is tied to active coping skills, whether we want to admit this or not.  I did not grow up a fighter.  I grew up a sorrow-filled victim stuck in the passive coping skill state.  My mother was told she had the power to change what happened to her, even though it was a lie and it was not within her power to change the dynamics of her caregivers’ treatment of her.

My mother was damned and didn’t know it.  I was damned and I did know it.  I knew I had no power to change what happened to me.   Nobody ever fooled me into thinking otherwise — from the time I was born.  I believe that there are two entirely different trajectories of development set up by the two different childhood scenarios I am describing.  One leads to the development of a dangerous, demonizing mother and the other one does not.

Both my life and my mother’s of course ended up being extremely complicated with devastating consequences stemming from child abuse and neglect in a malevolent environment during critical body-brain-mind-self stages of early development that resulted in a changed brain for both of us.  Yet as I see it, I was never betrayed or set-up with an impossible task to accomplish like my mother was, and being free from these overpowering early forces allowed me to become who I am.

My mother’s mental illness prevented her from ever being able to tolerate becoming conscious either of how she behaved or of what had happened to so wound her in childhood.  I am not barred in the same way from consciousness.  As I continue to explore the underlying aspects of safe and secure attachment, I will explore how having the ability to be self-aware and self-reflective makes all the difference in how and who we become in our lives.

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This post follows:

+DISSOCIATION AND THE TRAUMA-SPECIALIZED BRAIN 11-11-09 and

+SECURE AND INSECURE ATTACHMENT AND THE CHILDHOOD NARRATIVE 11-13-09

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THIS INFORMATION COMES TO YOU FROM:

Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog
Improving Children’s Mental Health through Parenting EducationPosted: 13 Nov 2009 03:01 AM PSTGuest post by Michelle Gross, Projects/Public Policy Manager, Prevent Child Abuse New York In today’s difficult times, one of the most important skills one must possess is the ability to form healthy relationships and cope with life’s challenges. Our children are not born with these skills, but rather learn them through their social and emotional development.While providers have traditionally focused on physical development, in 2006, the New York State Legislature passed the Children’s Mental Health Act. The Act required the development of a statewide plan to address issues in children’s social and emotional health, zero to eighteen. As a result of this legislation, the Children’s Plan was developed in collaboration with nine state agencies and led by the New York State Office for Mental Health.The Children’s Plan serves as a blueprint for New York state agencies, providers, and communities to
improve the social and emotional development of children and their families. The Plan focuses on engaging children and their families in services early, ensuring that systems are collaborating to provide effective and efficient services and meeting families’ needs by focusing on their strengths and abilities.

Within the Children’s Plan is a directive for the Office of Mental Health to work with parenting educators to better support parents in raising emotionally healthy children.  The New York State Parenting Education Partnership has been chosen to play this pivotal role in educating providers who work with families and supporting a network of family support and information.

NYSPEP’s efforts to provide professional development sessions for parenting educators will enhance providers’ ability to communicate the importance of social and emotional development with parents, and offer both providers and families tools to facilitate children’s healthy development.

For more information, visit our web site at: http://www.parentingeducationpartnership.org.

Positive Parenting Can have Lasting Impact for Generations

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 07:15 PM PST

A new study that looks at data on three generations of Oregon families shows that “positive parenting” not only has positive impacts on adolescents, but on the way they parent their own children. ” Positive Parenting can include factors such as warmth, monitoring children’s activities, involvement, and consistency of discipline.

Researchers from the Oregon Social Learning Center conducted surveys on 206 boys who were considered “at-risk” for juvenile delinquency. The boys and their parents were interviewed and observed, researchers information about how the boys were parented. Starting in 1984, the boys met with researchers every year from age 9 to 33. As the boys grew up and started their own families, their partners and children began participating in the study. In this way, the researchers learned how the men’s childhood experiences influenced their own parenting.

There is often an assumption that people learn parenting methods from their own parents. In fact, most research shows that a direct link between what a person experiences as a child and what she or he does as a parent is fairly weak. The researchers found that children who had parents who monitored their behavior, were consistent with rules and were warm and affectionate were more likely to have close relationships with their peers, be more engaged in school, and have better self-esteem.

For more information relating to positive parenting techniques, please visit our website http://preventchildabuseny.org/parents.shtml

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+THE HEALING OF DISSOCIATONS – A 50-YEAR MISSING PIECE OF ME HAS RETURNED

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I woke up this morning thinking about all the wounds we received in the war zone of our abusive childhoods.  Often as the war raged on around us we ended up being the targets.  In this battlefield we were the victims.  Some of us received so many wounds they cannot be counted.

My mother’s war with the world began in her own childhood and so wounded her that her war never ended until the day that she died.  I was born a casualty of her war.  I had no choice, no weapon, and I could not escape.  I could not fight back or defend myself against her.  No one was there to tend my wounds when they were inflicted, either.  And yet for all the wounds I suffered both visible and invisible, my strength and resiliency still enabled me to survive and endure.

Like my mother, I carried all my wounds out of my childhood, but unlike my mother I did not carry on the war.  Perhaps that happened in part because she began to attack me on all levels as soon as I was born.  I was too young, too little, to begin to feel anger at her for what she was doing to me.  I continued to grow up through and past the age of rage without knowing what it even was.

But it’s not the rage that fueled my mother’s war against me that I woke up thinking about today.  I woke up thinking about the healing of wounds.

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When severe abuse begins so early it impacts the formation of the regions, circuits, pathways and operation of the brain so that we end up with what Dr. Martin Teicher and his Harvard Medical Group refer to as “an evolutionarily altered brain” as a result, the wounds that caused these changes to happen are most difficult to heal.  These wounds include dissociation.

I am thinking this morning about how long ago people lived for a much shorter time.  Their experiences were fewer and their universe was so much smaller than ours.  Their lives were centered on the core basics of staying alive in an often threatening and dangerous world throughout their entire life span.  In those worlds the ability to dissociate during or in the aftermath of traumas must have continued to serve a purpose that is difficult for me to define in the world I live in today.

Yet for those of us who endured unimaginable severe trauma during our infant-child developmental stages, the dissociation we were given as a result of our survival makes it more difficult for us to continue living in the ‘ordinary’ world we grow up to enter.  Nature has not evolved a way to ‘put us back together again’ to be like a pre-early trauma exposed person.  We are stuck with dissociational brain patterns and abilities that are directly linked to the hundreds if not thousands of near-mortal wounds from physical and mental injuries that we received many years ago.

Our wounds within can thus remain open, painful and at times extremely difficult for us to live with as we attempt to live an ‘ordinary’ life of well-being in an ordinary world without the kinds of dangers to our existence that we were programmed to survive because they existed in the times of our origins.

Without ‘medical’ care back then when we needed it most, and without access to the kind of help with our wounds and our resulting dissociation that we need now, how do we heal ANY of our wounds?

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The very length and complexity of our modern life experience is working against us now.  We cannot crawl wounded deep into a secluded cave and trust we will be protected and kept safe by our brethren standing guard over us while we receive adequate care and access the kind of quiet, unstimulated time that we need in order to heal.  (Yes, I believe we have these memories within our DNA that tell us what we need for our healing to occur.  These memories are available to us in the same way the memories in our bodies enable us to make adaptations to trauma from conception.)  If we cannot pursue nature’s intended courses of healing for even one of our childhood wounds, how do we carry on with hundreds if not thousands of them within us?

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Nature never planned for our species’ infants and children to be in danger without protection and adequate care.  Only under the most dire circumstances would offspring have been sacrificed.  The continuance of our species required that the most helpless tiny ones survive in the best condition possible.  And yet here we are at the most supposedly sophisticated period in our species’ evolution with harm being perpetrated in wars against offspring as if the little ones no longer matter as our species’ most prized hope for going forward into a better world.

Everything around us is busy and complicated.  Our multiple critical wounds are seldom if ever healed.  And then we are expected to live a ‘good life’ not only in spite of our wounds, but also as if the injuries never happened and the wounds do not exist.

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This again brings me back to healing.  Any wound has to go through a natural process of healing, often to the stage of creating permanent scar tissue at the end.  All healing requires our body’s immune system be involved.  I believe this includes the healing of our inner mental and emotional wounds as well.  On some level it is always some aspect of our physiological immune system’s negotiation on behalf of our increased well-being that accomplishes all of our healing.

I mention this today because last night I felt one of my many, many wounds close itself in healing.  I will never be able to forget how the wound originated in the first place, or how it has felt for these past 50 years to live with the wound open and unhealed.

This healing involves how I feel in relation to animals, especially to pets.  My healing came from a few simple words a trusted friend recently wrote to me about grieving the loss of both our human and our animal loved ones.  My friend was talking about her love and grief for a pet she lost years ago when she said to me, “Yes, pets are family and more.”

It was her last two words that healed me — “and more.”  Suddenly I understand that I can give myself permission to look into the eyes of not only my pets, but of all animals and SEE and FEEL and be connected with the life within them that is their SELF, and I can love them wholly – “and more.”

It feels like a channel of love and healing that has been blocked for the last 50 years has been opened so that the healing light and love that opened this channel can now flow through it unimpeded.  What I knew and felt when I was a little girl and my heart broke when my pet black rabbit, Peter, died has come back to me.

I have not asked my friend what her two simple words “and more” mean to her.  I needed to know what they mean to me.  It wasn’t the loss of Peter himself that most wounded me.  It was my reaction of dissociating myself from ever being able to feel again the loving connection I felt for that little animal.  Since that dark and rain soaked night he died, the part of myself that knows animals are not remote and distant objects that continue their own existence in a world separated from me has been missing.

My mother told me that night when Peter died that he was a bad rabbit who got what he deserved.  He was dead because that’s what is supposed to happen to all bad animals and bad children like me.  In the midst of the terrible depth of my grieving over the loss of my beloved pet through a violent death, she told me she wished I was dead just like Peter was because that is what I deserved.

The wound of this experience caused me to dissociate my ability to experience love, appreciation, and connection to and with animals (exception noted at the end of this post).  That part of me was removed from my existence until last night when I was in conversation with my sister about those two words, “and more” in relationship to animals in our lives.

Like my friend, my sister has never lost her ability to love animals, especially dogs.  I see this morning that the other side of this unhealed wound I have carried all these years has also prevented me from receiving the love that animals freely give to me.

I can understand today that the trusting innocence of who I was as a young child is reflected and mirrored back to me in the eyes of animals.  I have not been able to tolerate that kind of powerful experience with my own vulnerabilities for 50 years.  I have not been able to reclaim my own portion of passion regarding a deep love, valuing and sustaining friendship with animals until now.  Healing has touched that dissociated wound inside of me and – lo and behold – I can feel this fragmented piece of myself is back.

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I know every person alive has been wounded in some way at some time.  The healing of our wounds gives us an added dimension of awareness on an emotional and mental level about the better side of being alive.  Any healing that includes an improvement of connection between myself, myself and the living world I live in is especially significant for me.

Any healing gives me hope that more healing is possible.  Scar tissue might not be especially pretty to look at from the outside, but its presence means that a wound has healed, and I’m not sure there is anything I can experience that is better than that.  Yet at the same time that today I feel this wound has healed I can feel the blackness of overwhelming sadness that created this dissociational wound in the first place.

It helps me to know that I will not go backward in this healing process.  The sense of invading danger will leave me.  It will dissipate in the light of this new day.  (I will be extra tender to myself until this has happened as if I just went through surgery — because I did!)

Life can now pulse again for me where no pulse has been for 50 years.  I am different today as a result of this healing.  I know I am one step closer to being a more complete, integrated and whole ME because of it.  I have to practice being this bit-more-whole me now.  I feel different.  I see my animals around me differently.  They are back in the circle of my life and I am back in their world for the first time since before my black rabbit died.

I am reminded today that miracles of healing do happen – because they can.

This was a missing piece of myself I could recover, and that could be restored to me because it was one that was once an integral part of who I am.  I remembered my self before my rabbit died and my mother was so mean to me about his death.  I re-membered this part of myself so it can be joined with who I am today.  That’s exciting!

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NOTE:  Last summer when I visited my brother in Alaska I felt my love and connection with moose when one came to graze under my brother’s deck.  I was close enough to that glorious animal to have reached out and touched him if I had wanted to.  I realized then that my ability to love moose had never been removed from me.  Maybe having this August experience was a necessary step toward my healing so that I could again reclaim that same love and connection I felt as a child with all animals.  Now I also understand fully the “and more.”  It is my responsibility (ability to respond) to care for them at the same time that they take care of me.

1959 JUST homestead birthday - Copy
Holding that warm, fuzzy, whisker-wiggling little black rabbit, Peter, in my arms -- MY pet rabbit -- had made this sad little child happy.

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