Tag: empathy disorder

+BLOGGING HISTORY – NEW WAYS FOR OUR SPECIES TO REMEMBER ITSELF

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Blogging our way through time — recording our histories — recording our histories in the making — reading histories in the moment — What I found at the end of one of Dr. Bruce Perry’s articles (link below) makes me think about how new and different our perspectives on the passage of time and our places in it are today as we participate with advances in technology to record ourselves as a species in a new way.

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“Learning the language of trauma and translating the verbal and non-verbal elements of this language will require many more years of investigation. Yet, as this investigation is underway, it is the task of all of us working with maltreated children [ME:  and adult survivors] to educate our peers and the rest of society that this language exists…. To educate our society that traumatic events, like other experience, change the brain. Further, that the brain stores elements of the traumatic events as cognitive memory, motor memory, emotional memory and state memory, altering the functional capacity of the traumatized individual. And, in the end, by robbing the individual potential of millions of children each year, childhood trauma and neglect robs the potential of our families, our communities and our societies. (page 16)”

Info above and below is from this article:  Memories of Fear: How the Brain Stores and Retrieves Physiologic States, Feelings, Behaviors and Thoughts from Traumatic Events by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

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Beginning at the end of page 16 Perry talks about trauma and history – and what is human history but what we remember of what happened?  I am copying this portion of the text found at this link into this post – in part because it reminds me so much of what all bloggers are doing today – recording our history and our perspectives on history-in-the-making in the ongoing moments of the present.

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“The memory of trauma is carried not only through the life of the individual by their neurobiology but it is carried in the life of a family through family myths, childrearing practices and belief systems. Major traumatic events in the history of a people or culture become memorialized, as well, and carried forward across generations in our literature, our laws and our very social structures.

“It is the unique property of living systems to carry forward elements of past experience – indeed, for all living systems, the present is contingent upon and a reflection of that past experience. In a very true sense, a body collective – a group – is a living, dynamic system. And, as the individual carries its own history forward using the apparatus of neurobiological mechanisms related to memory, each living group carries its memories forward in time. Yet living groups – families, clans, societies – carry this information forward using different mechanisms of recording and storage.

“Over the history of humankind, the methods for recording and storing the experiences of the group have evolved. In our distant past, humans living [in] groups passed experience from generation to generation using oral tradition – and sociocultural practices – language, arts, belief systems, rules, law – all were reflections of the past – and with each generation, modification, amendment, and alteration of the past ‘memory’ was modified by present experience. With the development of written language, information could be passed across generations more efficiently. Sociocultural advance occurred at an increased rate, made possible by more efficient ‘remembering’ of the lessons (good and bad) from the past. The ‘brain’ of humankind – the libraries of the world — kept ‘civilization’ alive through its darkest moments – and even if generation after generation during a given period in history did not take advantage of this ‘memory’ – the information was not lost to humankind.

“Later in history, again, with the introduction of the printing press, the past was more efficiently stored and passed on. Books became available for everyone. More people became literate. Information of all sorts – arts, science, social studies– was stored in books. Again, a tremendous advancement in human sociocultural evolution can be traced to this process – to literacy and widespread education. Information from the past – primarily cognitive information – enriched the present. The rate of creativity was accelerated; invention and innovation – new ideas, machines, products, processes – were facilitated by the more efficient sociocultural ‘memory’ allowed by books and literacy. Now, in the span of a lifetime, the accumulated and distilled experience of thousands of generations could be absorbed – and acted upon to create sociocultural advances.

And now, we are in the first generations of a new era of recording, storing and transmitting information – electronic media – tapes, photographs, videos, films – all immortalize the experiences of humankind. The electronic media allow a unique and

different form for the memory of an individual, family, community and society to pass from generation to generation.

“There is great hope for humankind in these advances. In the past, the inefficient methods of recording, storing and passing on the horror of war, rape, neglect, abuse, starvation, misogyny, slavery – allowed these lessons of living to be edited, modified, distorted and, with tragic consequences, forgotten. Only elements of the experience of war were passed across generations – the heroism of an individual, the success of the nation — and the emotional ‘memory’ of war – the hate, rage, death, loss – has been transformed, altered and, all too often, forgotten.

“Creative artists have always played the role of ‘emotional’ memory for a culture. In ways that standard recording of simple facts and figures cannot convey, a painting, poem, novel, or film can capture the emotional ‘memory’ of an experience. But in a society where access to and ‘artistic’ literacy is low, the emotional lessons of the past are easily lost. And when the last veteran of each distant war died, an element of the emotional ‘memory’ of that horror died as well. Unable to carry the emotional memory of war to the next generation – history could much more easily repeat itself – or more honestly, we could much more easily repeat history. But with documentary and creative film and video, which can convey both the fact and the emotion, maybe it will be harder for us to forget the past – and we, therefore, will be not so doomed to repeat it.

“Yet the ever present danger of recording, storing and passing on false images, false stories, false history can be equally destructive. The responsible use of film, video, electronic storage may allow us to use these advances to promote and pass on those qualities which create, sustain and grow our humanity and, over many generations, to leave behind those qualities which rob our humanity (racism, misogyny, factionalism).

Can we change our world to create fewer traumatic memories to carry into the next generations – fewer traumatic events to shape our children who will create our future social structures?

“How can we heal the scars of individual and group trauma that haunt us today? Can we ever make racism, misogyny, maltreatment of children – distant memories? There are solutions. These conditions are not the inevitable legacy of our past. When an individual becomes self-aware, there is the potential for insight. With insight comes the potential for altered behavior. With altered behavior comes the potential to diminish the transgenerational passage of dysfunctional or destructive ideas and practices.

“And so it must be for groups. As a society, we cannot develop true insight without self-awareness. Enduring socio-cultural changes in racism, misogyny and maltreatment of children cannot occur without institutional and cultural insight and the resulting altered institutional and cultural behavior. The challenge for our generation is to understand the dynamics and realities of our human living groups in a way that can result in group insight – which, inevitably, will lead to the understanding that we must change our institutionalized ignorance and maltreatment of children. (pages 16 – 18)”

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+HONEST THINKING ABOUT DISSOCIATION AND DEATH

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I have an honest yet disheartened post in me today.  I might as well write it so I can move on.  I am spending time working to digest the information presented in visual form on a PowerPoint page I posted the link to recently that comes from the work of Dr. Bruce Perry.

Neurodevelopmental Impact of Childhood Trauma:  Adaptive Responses to Childhood Trauma – Focus on Dissociation

A ChildTrauma Academy Presentation

I haven’t yet gone to look for any text that might accompany the diagrams, graphs and images that this site presents.  Nor can I tolerate considering the facts on this webpage for very long at a time.  Because this information concerns me so personally as a severe infant-child abuse survivor who suffered Trauma Altered Development, it all just plain hurts too much.

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This webpage is visually clarifying the difference between an infant-child who responds to trauma with HYPERAROUSAL compared to one who responds to trauma with DISSOCIATION (as a HYPO- rather than a HYPERarousal state).

As I have been outside working on building my garden today I have found myself thinking that having patterns of HYPERAROUSAL built into one’s body from birth might be far more useful in the long run that DISSOCIATION can ever be.

It seems that hyperarousal would give one a fighting chance.

Then I think about my mother and HER fighting chance!  Oh my GAWD the harm she was able to do, particularly to little tiny ME!  (Considering the link between shame-dissociation as an opposite physiological response to trauma than hyperarousal is, maybe I don’t have to wander very far at all in my wondering about why-how my mother never had a shame reaction for what she did to me — as her FIGHT over-arousal escalated for my entire 18-year infant-childhood into violence against me.)

Dissociation, even as it is contrasted to hyperarousal on this webpage seems to be directly connected not only to the vagus nerve system, but in the bigger picture to the calm end of the stress response system — the “STOP” arm of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) that halts the overwhelming experience of TOO MUCH “GO!”  When I am dissociating my body is regulating the physiology of my body back to CALM in the way that was built into it from birth.

(“Rest in peace.”  Death must be the ultimate calm!  I find it interesting that in online Google searching there does not appear to be the same direct line of thoughts appearing that connect DISSOCIATION with suicide like there are connecting DEPRESSION to suicide.  Someone is missing a very BIG BOAT!)

(By the way:  The neurological-physiological dissociation response pattern that the above webpage describes appears to be nearly indistinguishable from the neurological-physiological reaction of SHAME that developmental neuroscientist Dr. Allan Shore describes as a one-year-old infant experiences it as soon as their body has developed far enough to have the physical capacity to feel its first shame reaction. See also:  The Shame Transaction and PTSD AS A SHAME DISORDER)

Also see:

Childhood abuse, household dysfunction, and the risk of attempted suicide throughout the life span: findings from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study.

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Because I have an appointment with and oncologist on the 6th of January I find myself thinking a lot about what I want and what I need.  I have suffered increasing stress complications most definitely escalating my preexisting PTSD, depression and dissociation I suffer as a consequence of being a survivor of sever infant-child abuse after having the doctor who treated my advanced and aggressive breast cancer (there were two cancers) tell me on my last session 2 ½ years ago, “By the way, I wouldn’t bother having breast reconstruction if I were you.  You aren’t going to live long enough to enjoy them anyway.  Besides, we’d just have to cut them off again when the cancer comes back.”

I am going to request a body scan that will show whether or not I have cancer NOW or NOT.

Then I think about the fact that I have no desire or intention of fighting the cancer if I do get it back.  (Knowing I felt this way when the first diagnosis came around created a profound conflict of emotions within me during the grueling chemo-surgery treatment regime I went through so that I can be alive today.)

Then I think about how the dissociation reaction described visually in the webpage I am referring to MUST be tied to both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ suicide.  Dissociation as a ‘going away’?  Death as the ultimate ‘going away’?

Then I think about my mother’s mother who gave up and died.  I think about my father who gave up and died.  I think about my mother who gave up and died.

The deaths of both of my parents was directly tied to a lack of desire to seek and receive appropriate medical care for conditions that were treatable.

That’s exactly the same thing I see myself doing if cancer returns in my body.

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Hyperarousal?  It looks for this webpage as if this is a reaction that older children and adults utilize, not helpless tiny infant-toddlers who are overwhelmed by abuse and trauma from the time of their birth.  I don’t HAVE a useful hyperarousal reaction.  I believe I experience all the ‘symptoms’ of it listed on page 2 on this webpage (keep track of page numbers in the gray bar at the top of the pages).  But all that hyperarousal response does to me is open my dissociation floodgate – and I am DISSOCIATED again.

And what if the link between hypoarousal-dissociation means that sometimes people simply cannot find the hyperarousal energy continuum necessary for them to continue using their will-life force to FIGHT for their own continued life?  This seems especially likely if dissociation was formed into a person’s body due to extreme abuse and trauma during infant-toddlerhood so that a person has been forced to dissociate all of their lives due to overwhelming pain.

See: +SUBSTANCE P – IT’S OUR BODY’S BIOLOGICAL LINK TO FEELING EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL PAIN

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I found this post online today.  I believe it’s critical to realize that people like me (and my parents) who suffered ENOUGH ALREADY do not want a LONG LIFE.  Some do not want their suffering to continue and continue and continue.  I believe I am one of those people.

What I do know is that refusing medical care must be related to dissociation in some way — dissociation from pain?  Dissociation from a future?  I will be spending much more time on the site I mention above — it has certainly gotten me thinking about connections with me that go all the way back to how my body-brain was made in/by nearly continual trauma and abuse from my mother from the time I was born.

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Suicide and Mental Health: They’re Cooking the Books

— Thought provoking post on a healthyplaces.com blog

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+THE MISSING MONTHS OF THE ‘ANTWONE FISHER’ MOVIE-STORY: WHAT WE MOST NEED TO KNOW

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I rewatched the movie “Antwone Fisher” yesterday.  This movie is about an adult working to heal from terrible child abuse inspired by a true story and marks Denzel Washington’s directorial debut.

From my point of view, what the movie never describes is what probably makes the biggest difference in the outcome of this story.  What were Antwone’s first foster parents like?  Did they love that parentless infant RIGHT?  Did they form a safe and secure attachment with the baby?

According to the story Antwone was removed at age two from his first foster home he had been placed in when he was two months old.  For all concerns about interfering with early bonding-attachment relationships, I do not believe that age two is a permanently damaging age to change primary early attachments.  In this case the child was moved to a horribly abusive home, but nothing in the story addresses the nature and the quality of the earliest, most critically important caregiver attachment patterns BEFORE the age of two that impact the direction that all fundamental physiological development follows.  (See update in comment section to this post.)

I would say by looking at the story as it is presented in this movie that Antwone’s first two years HAD to have taken place within an adequately non-malevolent caregiver-attachment environment.  The remarkable recovery that occurs post-terrible LATER abuse would NOT have followed the same course it did if Antwone’s physiological body-brain development had been changed by severe trauma during his infancy.

When looking at our own recovery from our own severe child abuse it remains MOST IMPORTANT that we understand how profoundly our physiological development is impacted by our earliest experiences in our environment.  If we continually struggle to overcome the horrors of severe abuse experiences that we KNOW about, and can never manage to ‘get our wings’ and soar out of the ugly mire of abuse we know we experienced, I would ALWAYS say that it’s most likely that our body-brain development was changed by trauma in profound ways during the earliest months of our life.

I personally know that if the first two years of my life had been perfectly FINE I would not be in the same body NOW that I am in – no matter how severely I had been abused post-two-years-old.  It is the Trauma Altered Development that happened to me before that age because I was BORN into a malevolent, abusive and traumatic malevolent environment that has created these lifelong difficulties that I (along with all infant-toddler severe trauma-abuse survivors) continue to struggle with.

Because the presentation of Antwone’s story in this film completely ignores those first two MOST CRITICAL years of the child’s life we are left guessing that all infant-child abuse survivors could recover by following a pathway such as this survivor did.  Not so.  Not so.  Not so!

It is not ‘getting lucky enough’ to benefit from high quality therapy that makes the biggest difference.  It is not ‘being willing enough’ to face our traumatic childhood memories of experience that makes the biggest difference, either.  It is not ‘being genetically superior’ or even ‘being resilient enough’ that matters most.

As Dr. Bruce Perry clearly states, children are not born resilient.  They are born MALLEABLE.  When the earliest environment deprives a rapidly growing and developing infant-toddler of what it needs for its body-brain to follow an optimal pathway, Trauma Altered Development will occur – BECAUSE of this malleability.  The resilience a little person needs in order to develop a body most able to ‘deal with’ severe traumas anytime after the age of two comes in ONE WAY and ONE WAY only – FROM THE PEOPLE WHO CARE FOR THAT BABY from the time it is conceived UNTIL it has ESPECIALLY reached the developmental milestones a body has built into it by two years of age.

As far as I can tell a description of these first critical months of experience are complete missing from the Antwone Fisher story.

Is this same time-frame description missing from your child abuse story?  If you continue a struggle to heal from early traumas you DO know about in a body that does not seem to be operating ‘quite right’, my guess is that whatever description of your first months of life that you GUESS happened to you needs to be closely examined in the bright light of reality.

None of us just happened to end up in a Trauma Altered Development body through bad luck.  We were built this way because we grew from (conception) birth in a caregiving environment that did NOT do exactly that:  Give us the care we needed prior to age two so that we could have a body healthy and resilient enough to fully process and recover from our later abuse.

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+BOYCOTTING FACEBOOK – A COMMUNITY OF NON-CARERS ABOUT INFANT-CHILD ABUSE?

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For any human being to care about infant-child abuse SHOULD be, in my thinking, a part of BEING HUMAN — a part of one’s life, and NOT merely a ’cause’ that some people choose to be concerned about while everyone else ignores it.

Today for some reason this topic flashed into a raging inferno for me, and in response to my Facebook friend community’s complete non-reponse to even ONE of my occasional postings about the topic of infant-child abuse, I have canceled my membership in that community.

The suffering of any infant-child under the terrible burden of maltreatment HAS to be the concern of EVERY MEMBER of a healthy human community.  Those of us who are survivors of the kinds of trauma I write about on this blog know absolutely that what happened to all of us happened because NOBODY cared enough to notice, to prevent it, to intervene, to protect us, or to STOP IT.

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I am not talking about a trivial matter.  I am talking about CRIMES against helpless, powerless infants and children.  From what I see around me — on Facebook included — “If it didn’t happen to me and it isn’t happening to my children, WHO CARES?”

A HORRIBLE attitude in my thinking that makes those who refuse to place the well-being of ALL infants and children at the top of our personal and societal pile of concerns as guilty as the perpetrators!

The body-brain that severely abused, neglected, traumatized and maltreated infant-children develop is NOT maladaptive in the bigger picture because it suited a specific environment surrounding the infant-child that REQUIRED that these adaptations happen so that the victim could survive – PERIOD.  Most often perpetrators of the abuse I write about are among trauma-altered survivors themselves — and the abuse they cause is merely a symptom of that fact.

+’SUPER INFANT-CHILD ABUSE’, WORSE THAN WAR CRIMES, IN THE REALM OF GENOCIDE-INFANTICIDE

EVERY responsible and humane adult in our society needs to take infant-child abuse most seriously.  EVERYONE needs to educate themselves about what it IS, what it does to its survivors for a lifetime, how to notice, how to intervene, how to help prevent — and evidently HOW AND WHY TO CARE.

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The neurobiological consequences of early stress and childhood maltreatment.

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 27 (2003) 33-44

Martin H. Teicher, Susan L. Andersen, Ann Polcari, Carl M. Anderson, Carryl P. Navalta, Dennis M. Kim

“In our hypothesis, postnatal neglect or other maltreatment serves to elicit a cascade of stress responses that organizes the brain to develop along a specific pathway selected to facilitate reproductive success and survival in a world of deprivation and strife.  This pathway, however, is costly as it is associated with an increased risk of developing serious medical and psychiatric disorders and is unnecessary and maladaptive in a more benign environment.  [page 39 – found by clicking on article title above]

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The same super-materialistic, spiritually deprived, selfish, object-oriented society that allows infant-child abuse to exist at all is the same one that DOESN’T care.  Facebook appears to me simply a mirror of that society and I want no part of it.

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+REPAIRED YESTERDAY’S LINKS – CRITICAL INFO FOR EARLY ABUSE-TRAUMA SURVIVORS

+EARLY ABUSE AND TRAUMA SURVIVORS NEVER GET A HOLIDAY

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+REPAIRED YESTERDAY’S LINKS – CRITICAL INFO FOR EARLY ABUSE-TRAUMA SURVIVORS

alchemynow2 Comments

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My apologies for the trouble with the links in yesterday’s important post

+EARLY ABUSE AND TRAUMA SURVIVORS NEVER GET A HOLIDAY

I think I have them all straightened out now.  As I Googled myself around regarding the titles and topics represented by those links I found myself being awed for those of us severe infant-child abuse and trauma survivors who actually MOSTLY are able to function!

What a menu of terrible difficulties this area of study contains!  I don’t believe there is ANYTHING more important for us as survivors to understand than the information is you will find at the end of these links.

That no  professional EVER even MENTIONED how early severe trauma and neglect can change an infant-child’s physiological development is, to me, CRIMINAL!!!

There is NO, and I MEAN NO psychological or psychiatric ‘theory’ that can begin to remotely help us if it does not address the neurobiological CHANGES that happened to our growing and developing BODY on all of our levels as we survived our traumas!

The kinds of changes that are described in these articles presented in yesterday’s post are what happened to my mother, to my father — and most definitely happened to ME!

We CANNOT consider our healing as severe early abuse and trauma survivors without understanding the FACTS as these articles present them.  THEORIES are of no use to us WHATSOEVER!

We have to educate ourselves with this critically important information.  Any survivor who is seeing a therapist must determine if that person KNOWS this information.  If they don’t, give them this actual link to my post of yesterday,

+EARLY ABUSE AND TRAUMA SURVIVORS NEVER GET A HOLIDAY

https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/early-trauma-survivors-never-get-a-holiday/

If your therapist will not listen to you about this critically important information, I would suggest that you find one that WILL!  So-called ‘mental health treatment’ that does not operate for survivors from this informed foundation of information is no better than BLOODLETTING treatments for disease.

The Trauma Altered Development we endured changed our PHYSICAL body — the same one we have to live within for the rest of our life.  Any treatment for a ‘physical problem’ that is not based on facts is useless!!

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+EARLY ABUSE AND TRAUMA SURVIVORS NEVER GET A HOLIDAY

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I know that I am not alone on this 2010 Christmas Day in my awareness that nothing special about this cultural holiday is going to alter who I am or how I am in the world as a severe infant-child abuse and trauma survivor.  Forty three people have come to my Stop the Storm blog already this morning – and it for them that I offer this post because considering the lifelong forced physiological adaptations an abused-traumatized little body makes leaves us on EVERY day of our life to face its consequences.

For all of us who on this Christmas Day find ourselves having to think about this topic, I say that what follows is the tip of the iceberg of what truly happened to us as a consequence of the early infant-child severe abuse and trauma that we have survived — and that changed our physiological development.

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Although this article isn’t the newest one on the block (1995), I absolutely trust its foremost author, Dr. Bruce Perry, and therefore know that it is an important one for what I am thinking about today.  This entire article can be read online by clicking on the following link:

Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and “Use-Dependent” Development of the Brain:  How “States” Become “Traits”

Abstract

“Childhood trauma has profound impact on the emotional, Behavioral, cognitive, social, and physical functioning of children.  Developmental experiences determine the organization and functional status of the mature brain.  The impact of traumatic experiences on the development and function of the brain are discussed in context of the basic principles of neurodevelopment.  There are various adaptive mental and physical responses to trauma, including physiological hyperarousal and dissociation.  Because the developing brain organizes and internalizes new information in a use-dependent fashion, the more a child is in a state of hyperarousal or dissociation, the more likely they are to have neuropsychiatric symptoms following trauma.  The acute adaptive states, when they persist, can become maladaptive traits.”

Conclusions

“Children and infants use a variety of adaptive response patterns in the face of threat, and, in a use-dependent fashion, internalize aspects of these responses, organizing the developing brain.  There are a variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms that result when these patterns of neural activation persist.  This has implications for research, clinical assessment, intervention, and prevention.

“More important, however, is that understanding the impact of experience on the developing child by using a neurodevelopmental conceptualization offers certain directions for our culture….  Profound sociocultural and public policy implications arise from understanding the critical role of early experience in determining the functional capacity of the mature adult – and therefore our society.  Persistence of the destructive myth that “children are resilient” will prevent millions of children, and our society, from meeting their true potential.  Persistence of the pervasive maltreatment of children in the face of decreasing global and national resources will lead, inevitably, to sociocultural devolution.

“It need not be so.”

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In other words, these patterns not only BUILD the brain, they are BUILT INTO the brain (and nervous system, stress-calm response system, immune system).  This is the same process that Dr. Perry is describing is the one Dr. Martin Teicher concludes leads to “an evolutionarily altered brain.”

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Maltreatment and Its Effects on Early Brain Development

Language Development and Reactive Attachment Disorder in Children

Attachment Disorders

The post-traumatic response in children and adolescents

Aggression and Violence: The Neurobiology of Experience Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Altered brain development following global neglect in early childhood by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and Ronnie Pollard, MD

Biological Relativity: Time and the Developing Child by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Brain Structure and Function I: Basics of Organization by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Brain Structure and Function II: Special Topics Informing Work with Maltreated Children by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Child Development And Post-traumatic Stress Disorder After Hurricane Exposure by Alan M. Delamater, PhD, and E. Brooks Applegate, PhD

Childhood Experience and the Expression of Genetic Potential: What Childhood Neglect Tells Us About Nature and Nurture by BRUCE D. PERRY, MD, PhD

Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation and Use-dependent Development of the Brain: How States become Traits by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, Ronnie A. Pollard, MD, Toi L. Blakley, MD, William L. Baker, MS, Domenico Vigilante

Curiosity, Pleasure and Play: A Neurodevelopmental Perspective by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, Lea Hogan, MEd, and Sarah J. Marlin

Curiosity: The Fuel of Development by Bruce Duncan Perry, MD, PhD

Decoding Traumatic Memory Patterns at the Cellular Level by Thomas R. McClaskey, DC, CHT, BCETS

Dysregulation of the Right Brain: A Fundamental Mechanism of Traumatic Attachment and the Psychopathogenesis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Allan N. Schore

Emotion: An Evolutionary By-Product of the Neural Regulation of the Autonomic Nervous System by Stephen W. Porges

Homeostasis, Stress, Trauma and Adaptation: A Neurodevelopmental View of Childhood Trauma by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and Ronnie Pollard, MD

Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the ‘Cycle of Violence’ by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Memories of Fear: How the Brain Stores and Retrieves Physiologic States, Feelings, Behaviors and Thoughts from Traumatic Events by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

NEUROBIOLOGICAL SEQUELAE OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA: Post-traumatic Stress Disorders in Children by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopmental Adaptations to Violence: How Children Survive the Intragenerational Vortex of Violence by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopment and the Psychobiological Roots of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Texas Youth Commission Prevention Summary

NEURODEVELOPMENT AND THE PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF TRAUMA I: Conceptual Considerations for Clinical Work with Maltreated Children by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

NEURODEVELOPMENT AND THE PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF TRAUMA II: Clinical Work Along the Alarm-Fear-Terror Continuum by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopmental aspects of childhood anxiety disorders: Neurobiological responses to threat by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

The post–traumatic response in children and adolescents by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neuroscience Tutorial The Washington University School of Medicine

Neurodevelopmental Impact of Childhood Trauma: Adaptive Responses to Childhood Trauma: Focus on Dissociation (A ChildTrauma Academy Presentation) by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopmental Impact of Child Maltreatment: Implications for Practice, Programs and Policy (A ChildTrauma Academy Presentation) by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

The Meaning in Words by Dr. Bruce Perry

Noradrenergic and Serotonergic Function in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Steven M. Southwick, MD, John H. Krystal, MD, J. Douglas Bremner, MD, C. A. Morgan III, MD, Andreas L. Nicolaou, PhD, Linda M. Nagy, MD, David R. Johnson, PhD, George R. Heninger, MD, and Dennis S. Charney, MD

Persisting Psychophysiological Effects of Traumatic Stress: The Memory of ‘States’ — [DOC] Download by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, Leslie Conroy, MD, & Al Ravitz, MD

Phenomenology and Psychobiology of the Intergenerational Response to Trauma by Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Jim Schmeidler, PhD, Abbie Elkin, BA, Elizabeth Houshmand, BA, Larry Siever, MD, Karen Binder-Brynes, PhD, Milton Wainberg, MD, Dan Aferiot, MSW, Alan Lehman, MSW, Ling Song Guo, MD, Ren Kwei Yang, MD (1997)

The Effects of a Secure Attachment Relationship on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health by Allan N. Schore

Smaller Hippocampal Volume Predicts Pathologic Vulnerability to Psychological Trauma by Mark W. Gilbertson, Martha E. Shenton, Aleksandra Ciszewski, Kiyoto Kasai, Natasha B. Lasko, Scott P. Orr, and Roger K. Pitman

The Effects of Early Relational Trauma on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health by Allan N. Schore

The Impact of Abuse and Neglect on the Developing Brain by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and John Marcellus, MD

The Neurophysiology of Dissociation and Chronic Disease by Robert C. Scaer

The Neuropsychological Basis of Potential Co-occurrence of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Robert B. Sica, PhD, BCETS

The Contribution of Early Traumatic Events to Schizophrenia in Some Patients: A Traumagenic Neurodevelopmental Model by JOHN READ, BRUCE D. PERRY, ANDREW MOSKOWITZ, AND JAN CONNOLLY

Effects of Traumatic Events in Childhood by Bruce Perry

Surviving Childhood by Bruce Perry

Traumatized Children: How Childhood Trauma Influences Brain Development by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Violence and Childhood: How Persisting Fear Can Alter the Developing Child’s Brain Special ChildTrauma Academy Web Site version of: The Neurodevelopmental Impact of Violence in Childhood  Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

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May we find increasing peace and calm -- photograph "Quinault Waterfall" by Robert Kraft from publicdomainpictures.net

+ALL MY MOTHER’S ABUSE? IT WAS THE FORCED ISOLATION THAT HURT/CHANGED ME THE MOST

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I feel today like a survivor of an evil experiment designed to determine exactly  how much a human infant-child could be deprived of and still go on living.  I feel like an inhabitant of a freaks-only sideshow as I realize gradually over the span of my lifetime how completely, thoroughly and vilely abusive the first 18 years of my life truly were.

In some ways the absence of overt sexual abuse just makes my own personal experience all the stranger because that’s about all that was missing short of broken bones and actual death to make the first 18 years of my life so unique that I doubt I will ever encounter anyone who will ever be able to share with me what their own experience of a similar infant-childhood was like — or what it did to them.

My mother’s sense of her own needs for self preservation was enough to keep me from ending up at a doctor’s office or a hospital as a result of her violence toward me.  That and the fact that as soon as I was old enough I participated actively with her violent beatings to prevent my body from being broken to bits as I avoided calamitous crashes into solid objects.

Yet after all the years I have spent trying to ‘get real’ about the reality of my infant-childhood, it is only now at age 59 that I am finally finding myself face-to-face with one of the most critical factors of my mother’s unique abuse of me — the solitary confinement and isolation she encapsulated me within.

As a survivor of the 18-year abuse experiment I endured, right now I would say that for all the thousands of physical beatings, for all the nearly constant verbal abuse I endured, for all the terror and sadness I felt, my reality today was probably most powerfully and negatively influenced by extreme isolation.

And again, the same as with all the other abuse my mother did to me, she isolated and confined me as early as she could after my birth — because she COULD.

My mother was perfect at what she did.  She was perfect at making sure nobody interfered, nobody questioned, nobody noticed.  She created the perfect prison for me, the perfect trap, the perfect living tomb that I had no hope of escaping from.  She spun me into the center of her madly abusive psychosis and kept me there for 18 years.

Yet today I would say that for all the voracious physical and verbal attacks against me it was the fact that she completely disallowed me from having any meaningful human contact that was the aspect of her abuse that has most contributed to my lack of well-being.  All the damage my mother did to me impacted the way my body-brain physiologically developed, but with the theft of my opportunity to engage in positive meaningful human contact nearly all of my permanent internal ‘wiring’ was created to operate within a human vacuum.

Understatement:  NOT GOOD for me as a member of a social species.

Does it give me any consolation and comfort to know that, given parallel deprivation and abuse from birth, there isn’t a member of any mammal species on earth whose physiological development wouldn’t have been as equally and negatively interfered with as mine was?

No.

My only ray of hope is that there is something about my extreme and bizarre story of infant-child abuse that can offer something of vital importance to somebody about what humans truly NEED from birth to live a life of well-being.

What I would say today is that for all the different kinds of abuse, neglect, trauma and malevolent treatment little ones might be forced to endure and survive it is the deprivation of caring, positive meaningful human contact that damages us the MOST.  The absence of this contact, call it safe and secure human attachment for ease of translation across the various fields of human developmental study, most detrimentally alters the physiological developing wiring in the body-nervous system-brain of an infant-child.

Given the most extreme and severe cases these changes are permanent and irreversible, and in members of our human species they are accompanied by corresponding FEELINGS of suffering and awareness of loss.

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I don’t write to gain sympathy or pity.  I write to document as accurately as I can what the long-term permanent consequences of severe abuse and deprivation from birth can and will most likely do to its survivors.

Through my own process I am clarifying what I see as priorities — no matter how severely abused an infant-child abuse survivor was.  Digging around for the actual specifics of this event or that one — no matter how fundamentally overwhelmed with sorrows someone’s formative years actually were — pales in importance when compared with what we need to understand about the entire array of human contact experiences we had.

Social species’ members are NOT designed to be raised in solitary confinement or isolation.  Without positive and caring human contact within our immediate circle of infant-childhood life — no matter what other abuses are going on — we cannot escape the consequences of physiological developmental changes that happen to us and leave us as outsiders in the great circle of humanity.

As I become increasingly clear about the worst damage I suffered during the 18 years of abuse I suffered from my mother, and as I reconsider some of the stories I have written of my experiences, I am realizing that it was the power my mother had to remove me from human contact that has made me continue to suffer in my life.

It was the isolation my mother enforced to keep my father, my grandmother and my siblings away from me that removed the most important resiliency factor I needed to have come out of those terribly abusive years better than I did.

It was the thousands and thousands of hours of being made to lie in my bed as a child and the thousands of hours of being stood in corners all alone while everyone else went on with their lives as if I did not exist, as if I were dead that created the internal isolation burden that I suffer most from today.  It wasn’t the beatings or the terrible screaming and verbal abuse or being dragged around by my hair, not the bruises and cuts and abrasions to my flesh that damaged me most.

It was the being forced to be absolutely alone.

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*Age 5 – THE BUBBLE GUM

*AGE 6 – FIRST GRADE — NIGHT ON THE STOOL

*Age 7 – Sad me, homestead birthday BBQ

*AGE 7 – MUD PUDDLE INCIDENT

*Age 9 – BLOODY NOSE

*Age 10 – 1960-61 fantasy locked in the semi trailer

*Age 14 – SILENT TREATMENT

*Age 14 – Gardening and the Sabotage

*Age 15 – FORCED TO WATCH AN ALASKAN SUNRISE

*Age 15 – MY ‘VISION’ – ALONE NAKED IN THE WOODS SINGING

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+MY HOLIDAY BLUES — ANY WORSE THAN USUAL?

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Well, if this is the jolly time of year I sure don’t feel one bit jolly.  Family is too far away.  Trying to go ‘out in public’ to make some kind of human connection is, well, just about hopeless.  So here I am home alone again, as usual.

by Petr Kratochvil -- on publicdomainpictures.net

I wouldn’t MIND that so much if the ratio weren’t so completely lopsided.  Maybe one percent of the time when I am ‘out there’ where the ‘other people’ are I MIGHT feel a little bit connected to someone.  But like a groove worn all the way through one of those old fashioned LP vinyl records, my being alone just seems to be a fundamental fact of my existence – no matter how much I wish it (I) were otherwise.

I will go out on Christmas day to a local community dinner and that will help — in part because I know the people who have no other place to go that gather there are more like me than most people are in the world.  That still won’t guarantee that I will feel CONNECTED, though, because of my lack of ability to feel connected to other people is a consequence of the serious insecure attachment pattern built into my body-brain from the time I was born (thanks to my insanely abusive mother who was able to pull off her horrific abuse of me without anyone’s intervention).

So while I would much rather be able to write of a different tale, I am left with the one that is the true one for me.  It is NOT that I ‘don’t need people like other people do’ as someone told me once.  It’s that I desperately need people and always have — but I honestly don’t believe I have the internal wiring necessary to ever feel true connection with others even when I am around them (with the exception of a very very very few people who are closest to me).

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Even though I am living in the same body that trauma built during my first 18 years of life, I didn’t know THEN that I would eventually, as an adult, have to try to consciously PRETEND that my being around others is the same for me as it looks like as I watch most everyone else.  In fact, I didn’t even know as an adult that I pretended to be a socially-engage-able person.

Now I know that I didn’t have a safe and secure attachment with ANYONE during my childhood — not ANYONE — and therefore all of the incredibly complex wiring didn’t get put into place for me.  I can no longer genuinely pretend that being with others is remotely satisfying or soothing to me.

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There is always The Watcher.  The Watcher is not alone, of course.  There are a multitude of Others who watch the Watcher.  The Watcher is never truly engaged with other people.  The Watcher ‘goes away’ if I am EVER truly and wholly engaged.  But that is so seldom that it rarely happens.

There are The Coaches, too.  There is the one that tries to help me keep up with others during social engagement, trying to give me cues to help me read other people’s social cues.  I can’t keep up.  I can’t trust or know or believe or act like I know what all the social cues people learned through human interactions from the time they were born even ARE — let alone how they operate and how I am supposed to respond to them.

There is a Verbal Coach who tries to help me stay in synch in conversation, tries to keep me in beat with the rhythm of the verbal exchange.  The Watcher is always there watching me AND the coaches — because The Watcher has no emotion (more like a Razor’s Edge).

Mostly when I am attempting to engage with other people I am extremely aware of being The Outsider.  I was an outsider in the life of my family for the first 18 years of my life.  Being The Outsider is probably as natural a state for me as being an adequately engaged human social being is for most other people.

I say ‘most other people’ because the ONLY people who are not naturals in their essence at social engagement are those who were either born with rare shyness genes, autism spectrum genes (etc.), or are those of us who suffered from extreme trauma, abuse and unsafe and insecure attachment relationships — alone — birth to age one and most usually AT LEAST birth to age two while the social-emotional-preverbal language brain-nervous system was forming itself.

ALL of these people who are not ‘naturals” (with the exception of the shyness gene people as long as they were not an abused/neglected infant) are NOT native language speakers and are missing most of the most primary and fundamental human social connection body-brain wiring/circuitry necessary to truly be able to connect — and to FEEL connection to and with other people.

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So here come the holidays.  At least I am fortunate that I do not have to deal with any negative family charades which must be very difficult for severe infant-child abuse survivors that DO.

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I used to pretend to be a socially OK person because I used to be able to BORROW the attachment patterns of other people.  I was very very good at being an attachment-chameleon — which by itself was NOT a ‘bad’ thing.  Being able to borrow the attachment patterns of other people enabled me NOT to abuse my own children because I could borrow the attachment abilities they were born with at the same time I was able to respond appropriately to them so that their attachments could grow and develop in safe and secure ways.  Borrowing attachments also allowed me NOT to be as socially isolated all of my adult life as I am now.

I know this now, looking back from my age-59 vantage point at all the different kinds of relationships I used to be able to maintain at different stages of my adult life.

Borrowed Attachment is directly connected to having a Disorganized-Disoriented (Reactive) Insecure attachment pattern.  I simply was able to organize and orient myself around other people’s attachment patterns.  (And yes, as I have said before on this blog, being this dependent upon others was like being on life support.  I was borrowing from them what I did not and could not have myself — like being dependent on a life support system.)

At least in my life my own insecure attachment patterns have not caused undo hardships on others.  While these others might WISH that I was able to form strong, clear and sustained attachment connections with them, I simply can’t, and these others are not harmed.  They are simply unable to form the kinds of connections with me that they might rather have because I cannot form attachments of my own with them.

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Rather than go into any more detail here about any of this, I just want to present a stark contrast to how I am feeling and to how I am as an isolated being unable to form attachments in the world (except with the ‘chosen few’ who love me enough in spite of all my difficulties).

My daughter told me of how my 9-month-old grandson attended a meeting with his mother and father today at a bank.  One of the women there wanted to take the baby off so that his parents could concentrate on paper signing.  Back came the woman in only a few moments with baby and his tear streaked cheeks and hearty bawling.

Back to his parents he quickly quieted back to contentment.

“Most excellent!”  I assured my daughter.  “That’s EXACTLY what you want the little one to be doing at this age.  He is wonderfully demonstrating his secure attachment.”

I also told my daughter that a baby that will, at this age and up to around the age of one, happily go off with strangers is NOT likely to have a happy life.  A healthy infant HAS to have powerfully strong safe and secure — loving and happy — attachments with its earliest caregivers FIRST AND FOREMOST because EVERYTHING else in its growth and development has already depended on this and will for the rest of its life depend on this firm, good and RIGHT foundation.

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Given my mother’s severe Borderline (abusive) condition I never stood a chance and I will the price for what she did to my attachment system as it built itself into my growing body-brain for the rest of my life — holidays or not.

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+INSECURE ATTACHMENT: WHY I WORRY ABOUT WORRYING

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It’s 7 a.m. now, and I’ve been waiting since 2 this morning for the sun to rise.  Silly me.  My waiting doesn’t make the sun come up one second earlier than it will otherwise.

Maybe my waiting is connected to my worrying, the same worrying that no doubt got me up out of bed so early this morning.  I have a whole palette of things to worry about, yet worry itself seems like such a complete waste of time.

Because I already know that my insecure attachment pattern-disorder to and in the world forms the bedrock of EVERYTHING about me, I have cause to wonder this morning what the connection might be between ‘attachment’ and worry.  Let’s see:

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Expectation and Attachment – The Anti Buddha Consciousness of Anxiety, Fear and Worry

By Glen Russell

“Expectation and attachment are the worst enemies of man. These two simple words keep humanity trapped in a place of anxiety, fear and worry. Fear can only exist if you have an expectation and an emotional attachment to an outcome either happening or not happening.

In Earth society expectation and attachments are actively promoted and humanity is encouraged to adopt these as part of its psyche. Humanity is conditioned to chase after this and to chase after that. Humanity is conditioned to form emotional attachments to many different things. Yet the cost is great.

The cost is humanity suffers and its inner peace is now gone. Whenever you “expect” an outcome to happen or not happen – and it either does happen, or doesn’t happen, or doesn’t happen quickly enough, anxiety, fear and worry is created within your mental body and your emotional body. You then feel disappointment, anger, frustration, inner turmoil and suffering. Your inner peace is now gone.

It is not the outcome that stole your peace – it is your decision to have expectations and emotional attachments to a specific outcome that stole your inner peace.”  (Click on above link to read the rest of this article)

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My “inner peace,” huh?  Severe early infant-child abuse survivors are not likely to have had any ‘inner peace’ built into them in the first place.  Can we find it NOW?  Infants don’t ‘decide’ to expect their early caregivers to do exactly THAT – take care of them!

Yet as I think about all the things I can find to worry about in the middle of the night (and in the middle of the day), I realize that every one of those worries is fundamentally about TAKING CARE OF SOMETHING, OR HAVING SOMETHING I WORRY ABOUT INVOLVE TAKING CARE OF MYSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE I CARE ABOUT.

“Where do I get the money I need to pay my heat bill?  How do I get rid of those ugly finger-sized “C” shaped grubs lying in wait in my soil to eat every root of every living plant I cherish in my garden?  How do I baby proof my house before my very very active 9-month-old grandson comes with his mommy to visit the first week of January?  Why don’t I want to do a single dang thing for Christmas and will that make my children upset with me?  How do I build yet ANOTHER stretch of fence to keep my stupid neighbors’ stupid rampaging buffalo dogs out of my yard?  When I go to my early January oncologist appointment will they find my cancer is back?  Etc.”

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Perceived attachment: relations to anxiety sensitivity, worry, and GAD symptoms.

Viana AG, Rabian B.

“This investigation examined the relation between perceived alienation from parents and peers, anxiety sensitivity (AS), and current worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms with the goal of expanding the knowledge base on factors that may contribute to the development of AS and its role in worry.”

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Worry and Coping:  An Attachment Perspective

By Colleen J. Allison

“Attachment anxiety…associated with the tendency to worry.”

(Contains excellent references for further reading)

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Fostering Healthy Attachment
An Interview with Dr. Karen Walant

“Creating the Capacity for Attachment looks at how we, as a society, have raised our children with the expectation that they become totally self-reliant and autonomous rather than with the hope that they have the capacity to form close, loving, intimate relationships with others.”

“This unhealthy pattern of reliance on objects is encouraged in the detached parenting styles so common in Western society, and it’s easy to see how, from this tendency, as adults we continue to seek comfort in other non-human objects, such as drugs, food, money, etc.”

“Very early on, children are generally taught not to disclose to others when feeling “weak” or scared, “needy” or alone. Many of the emotions we felt in childhood – what people call the “negative” emotions – we were taught not to share. So, we sought comfort from blankets, pacifiers, and teddy bears, and we learned not to seek comfort from our mothers, our fathers, our family. As we got too old for blankets and teddy bears, we turned instead to other comforts – food, alcohol, money, etc. As adults, we struggle with holding our emotions within because we fear that by sharing our inner souls with others, we will – as in childhood – be discounted, dismissed, or denied.”

“Many people spend their lives feeling like nobody hears their cries – they feel alone, afraid, and powerless. When children are not responded to, in their earliest and most primary relationships, they learn that their thoughts and feelings are burdensome to others and that their needs are shameful. As adults, these same people often go underground with their feelings and seek comfort in substances. Or, alternately, these same people become so vocal in their neediness that, again, they are met with disdain from others and go on to find comfort, as well, in non-human substances.”

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OK, I get it – yet again.  Worrying about the fact that I worry is just another piece of my insecure attachment puzzle.  Dropping the worry bundle and looking at myself instead as a whole person living in and with a body that was altered in its development due to terrible trauma as I grew this body in the first place allows me to look up at the brightening skyline with hopes that today I will heal some part of myself rather than worrying that I won’t.

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+RISK AND COMPASSION (5 DEAD PUPPIES AND A HEADLESS FROG)

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While I have not spent time sitting down to further contemplate the amazing attachment-compassion article I posted the link to earlier (Attachment, Caregiving, and Altruism:  Boosting Attachment Security Increases Compassion and Helping), I haven’t stopped thinking about it.  Because ‘exploration’ really describes our entire LIFE actions, I believe it is the end-product of the quality of early attachment patterns that build our body-brain.  This article also clearly describes how our ability to feel compassion and empathy, and to ACT response-ably with the information we receive in relationship with all of life — and in some small way this post is about that compassion.

(I add a WARNING to this post that it contains descriptions that might be difficult for some people to read!)

Yesterday I received transportation to a doctor’s appointment for a bone density scan from a medical agency.  The driver, I will call him Fred, was a 73 year old man who talked about himself on that 75-mile round trip.

As I sat down to write this post I realized that for all the difficulties I have been describing recently about my inability to process verbal information when I am under stress/distress/duress, when I feel OK (as per the article noted above) I have a GIFTED ability to listen to what I will call ‘genuine people’ who are speaking from their heart.

After some of these kinds of conversations I later wonder why I didn’t respond with ‘this or that’, yet I realize that it is often another person’s NEED to simply speak and receive the listening I have to offer.

We were traveling in the medical transport van past the low-lying hills that crop up at the tail end of a line of higher mountains along the highway.  Perhaps there was something about Fred’s gazing along the rising hills that reminded him about what he spoke of next.

Fred told me that from childhood hunting had been an important part of his life.  He told me that among his many truck driving jobs he drove for a cement mixer company.  One day (I think about 20 years ago) as he was delivering a load out to a house in the desert he was gazing along the road to the right and then as he turned his head to the left he saw them coming.

Out of the desert shrubbery right at the edge of the highway appeared in a line five pure white puppies heading straight out in front of him.  He told me there was no possible way he could swerve that massive loaded truck to miss them, and sure enough, ‘thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk’ he heard the sound of each of them being crushed to death under the wheels of the truck he was driving.

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As the writers of the above article describe compassion, it was evident to me as this man who had been a complete stranger to me when he picked me up at my house for medical transport must have had the need to express to SOMEONE the fact that he has never hunted again since that day.  As he told me all of this tears were streaming down his face.  He said he sold his $8,000 gun collection to his son for $1,000, having kept for his own possible need only one handgun.

I wondered to myself if this man could ever possibly shoot another person even under the most extreme circumstances.  Then I thought perhaps he could do so if his beloved wife was threatened.  At the same time I marveled at Fred’s wide-open expression of absolute sorrow for his actions the day he killed those five pure white puppies.

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Now, my next image — not a pretty one at first glance but an important one to me nonetheless…..

I shed my town clothes as soon as I arrived home around noon yesterday and put on my work clothes to go outside and work on my adobe garden.  I am preparing an adobe walkway that runs along the western line of my back yard, along the new tall metal fence I just built where it runs along behind the big ‘berm’ I built to kill those ancient monster oleander bushes.

The desert soil here is now extremely dry and hard and cannot be dug into unless it is first thoroughly soaked with water.  In preparation for this next extension of my adobe work I laid the gray water hose from my outside-perched washing machine along the fence the other day and let that water do its work so I could follow with mine.

I am well aware that there are parts of my yard that I am digging into now that include soil that has never been dug into since time began making it millions of years ago.  Even though I live in a small town, there is something profound for me in knowing that.

As I dug into an area of dark red clay (normally hard as cement when dry) I began to find ‘stored’ frogs sleeping.  One by one as I dumped a load of soil off of my shovel and found these tiny guests in my yard I picked them up quickly and cupped them gently in my stiff black plastic work gloves so I could move them as fast as possible over to one of my damp, soft compost areas in my garden.

As I carried them each I talked to them, thanking them for being, and for being here.  I apologized for bothering them, and wished them a long happy winter sleeping now in a safer place where they will not be further disturbed by my digging.  (My compost areas are covered with layers of leaves I have raked up in town and hauled out here, and are being kept moist through a drip irrigation set-up I have carefully installed in each bed full of worms.)

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As I dug along the fence yesterday I began to hear myself telling me that the odds were pretty dang good that one of the times I stuck my shovel edge into that red clay I would sooner or later accidentally kill a frog.  I thought about Fred and his story about the five puppies.  I told myself to prepare myself for this possibility.

Five dug-up frogs later it happened, I am very sad to say.  I saw the little frogs movements within the dirt on the end of my shovel and yet again reached for its little body to save it.  Oh, dear! —

Now I only  tell you this because there is something here I believe is important (again, what opportunities all traumas offer us for learning something new in a new and different way — if we can).

That little frog a-wiggling its body was upside-down in the loosened dark red dirt on my shovel.  I could tell it was trying by flailing its little legs to right itself, to turn itself right-side up — to right itself, to restore its ‘normal orientation’.  So I reached to help it, gently moving the dirt from around its body — at the same time I realized — Oh, dear! — that the tiny little being was missing its head.

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Of course I will always feel bad when I think of this, just like Fred does about those puppies.  I wondered this morning about both Fred and myself, and about self-compassion and forgiveness — and about whether or not we can ever release ourselves from the feelings we have if we hurt another life in some way.

I don’t know.

But what came to me about the frog reminds me of the writings on healing our woundedness from trauma that Diana Fosha writes about in regards to attachment.  I remember that she says every living being knows exactly how to heal itself — given a possible chance.  She says that human attachment-related body-brain wiring remains in existence in us from before we were born — no matter how traumatized we were later by our earliest caregiver interactions of trauma, neglect and abuse.

Fosha says we all know HOW TO RIGHT OUR SELF INSTINCTIVELY in the same way we can all look at a picture hanging askew on a wall and INSTANTLY know which way to move it to RIGHT it — to make it RIGHT.

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One of the things that strikes me about the headless frog was that EVEN WITHOUT ITS HEAD its BODY absolutely knew that it was upside down.  Its body knew exactly what to do to make its body RIGHT by taking body actions to turn itself over.

Yes, this is all unsettling — and perhaps a bit preposterous in what I am concluding from my strange line of experience yesterday.  There seems to be something about the words Fred spoke to me yesterday — and something about his obvious caring emotional compassionate nonverbal expressions — that primed me for what happened as I dug in my backyard.

It seems very likely to me that we all know instinctively IN OUR BODY exactly what we need so that we can heal.  In our culture, what we learn IN OUR BRAIN-thoughts is probably likely to interfere with what we actually need to do for ourselves to heal.  How do we listen to our own BODY as it tells us what it remembers both about all that has happened to us AT THE SAME TIME it can tell us what it needs so that it can heal?

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I am going back out today to work some more on that walk way — at the same time I don’t really know how to miss harming another little friend-frog as I do so.  Digging just carries that risk — and I can not set aside the softness I feel for those frogs even though I am going to run the risk of a repeat from yesterday.  I will be as care-full as I can at the same time I know that living carries risk — for all of us.  And sometimes it carries healing.

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