+CRIMES OF MY FATHER: WAS HE AS BAD AS MY MOTHER WAS?

September 29, 2009October 5, 2009 alchemynow7 Comments

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Comment today on *1962 November – The 5th Year Moose Hunt

“My belief is that my father was a sensitive man” You’ve got to be kidding? He allowed your mother to severely abuse you for 18 years! He lacks any kind of sensitivity at all.

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Reply

Well, as I say, I have to work my way through this regarding my father. Unfortunately, I’m not kidding — yet at the same time I simply cannot yet look into my own self and KNOW anything about him. Denial? I don’t know. Do I continue to ‘parent’ him in my feeling that he was nearly as much abused by her as I was, except not physically?

I don’t understand the fuller context of my father’s life. All I know is that I remain completely STUCK in regard to the reality of my father in my life. I must need to BELIEVE that my father was a good man caught in a terrible, terrible situation he did not have the mental or emotional resources to cope with. There was no social context for understanding mental illness or child abuse during the years of my childhood.

I was talking to my sister last night about — *AGE 7 – MUD PUDDLE INCIDENT https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/the-devils-child-my-childhood/vignettes-from-my-abusive-childhood/age-7-mud-puddle-incident/ —-

Neither she nor I can YET understand what he could have done that night. Stop the jeep and throw HER out? Stop the jeep and throw himself out? Throw me out? Drive to the police shop? They wouldn’t have cared? If he had done anything else other than simply stare straight ahead and drive that jeep she would have turned that rage equally on him (except physically) and there would have been two equal hellfire rage attacks going on at the same time — instead of one.

Did he believe her actions toward me were justified? Had she convinced him I was such a BAD child that I deserved everything I ‘got’? Did he hate me? Did he wish I’d never been born? Did he agree with her actions every step down the road of my childhood? Did he not care?

Or was he a good man caught in hell, in a situation he was helpless to understand or to cope with? He never left us. He never cheated on my mother. He never raised a hand to her. He seems to have done more than what was humanly possible in his efforts to meet her demands, to please her, to make her happy. Nothing ever worked. She was a seriously mentally ill woman. Did he understand this?

What were the resources available to my father – both inner and outer? Who was available to intervene from the outside? Was I more a ‘burr under his saddle’ than a real live child – his child — who deserved a childhood that included protection and love? THAT this was true I don’t seem to understand, either. That’s what really matters to me.

Perhaps I share with him the inability to comprehend the reality of the situation. Certainly my mother’s reality did not include loving Linda. My identity was eroded and overwhelmed from the time I was born. Did/do I love my father? My mother, for that matter? Is my love for them an issue? What do I gain by not putting blame, responsibility, and culpability squarely onto the person that was my father? Maybe, more importantly, what do I lose BY DOING so?

Can a person such as my father was actually be of two minds in the world? Could he be one person toward me and a different person in relation to everything else in his life? That’s the way it seems to me right now. It seems that I can look at him and see the person he was regarding everyone and everything ELSE in his life – except me.

I don’t think I can just know either side of that man without looking at both. Maybe he was really just like my mother was – like a doll with two completely different faces, one on either side of their head. Well, that would make a hell of a conspiracy – and that might be exactly what I find. Can a person legitimately be ‘BOTH’ – two or more different people in different situations? Does either ‘side’ of them negate the other one?

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But I won’t know if I don’t have the willingness and courage to look. Readers are welcome to comment as I move through my process. This is an inside job. Others can tell me how they feel, what they see, what they know from the outside. That will help me. Meanwhile I choose not to feel ashamed – or even for that matter at all bullied – into believing about my father what might SEEM to be true.

Innocent until proven guilty? What are the clues? What is the evidence, all the evidence I can find? This work IS forensic autobiography. Am I solving a crime? Is this a mystery? It still is to ME!

Was my father such a victim of abuse from my mother that he and I shared a platform of victimization in the home of my origin? Can I stop excusing, defending and feeling as if I want to protect my father? Are my ‘issues’ with my father as much at the root of my ‘terrible sadnesses’ – and damage done to me — as are the ones I have with my mother? Can I fundamentally know that my father hurt me? Do I need to know this? Why?

Maybe down the road of this investigation I will draw upon ‘technical’ mumbo-jumbo-jargon. Right now I want to simply put together a collection about my father and my current in-process responses to what I find.

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Right now I seem to have plenty of questions. I need to let myself find and know answers. This is a process. The more specific and concrete readers’ comments are the better. In the reality of the time frame I was raised in, of the social beliefs about the roles of fathers and mothers (including availability of information about parenting and mental illness), in the reality that law enforcement did not recognize either child or spousal abuse ‘back then’, what could and should my father have done differently? Was he no different than a Nazi participating in the crimes of a Holocaust?

Given the facts as I best can lay them out – what were the alternatives?

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Was I like that cow moose that stood before my father that day, who did not even try to escape as he took her life?

I could not escape when I was a child. He did not help me even as he provided for his family.

Was my father as guilty as my mother was?

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+TIME HAS COME FOR ME TO ASK THE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT MY FATHER

September 28, 2009 alchemynowLeave a comment

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The following are the words that begin a new chapter in my healing journey. Tonight I give myself permission to get to know what I can about my father. I have created a new heading page for him.

WHERE WAS MY FATHER?

Under this tab I will begin to accumulate information about my father. I will be brave enough to let my inner self guide me in my searching and re-searching.

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Today, September 28, 2009 I feel I am finally ready to begin to face down my own feelings about my father. I want to do this because I have NEVER made any progress toward finding my own truth about who and how my father was in my life — either when I was a child or when I was an adult — by continuing to ‘try’ to be angry with him.

My truth today is that there’s a mystery here. I don’t KNOW my father. He is talked about in my mother’s letters. I even have access to letters that he wrote himself. I have a right to explore and examine my father — as much a right as I have to do this in regard to my mother.

These pages will reflect my efforts to find my father. I have nobody to answer to about him but myself. I am granting myself permission to do my own explorations, find my own ‘evidence’, search for my own understandings, come to my own conclusions — about my father. Nobody stops me but myself.

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+TERRORISM – FEAR AND THE THREAT OF BRUTAL ATTACK

September 28, 2009September 28, 2009 alchemynowLeave a comment

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What is life like for the millions of our globe’s population that are destined to live their entire lifespan under the threat of brutal attack?

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Do we remember the community terror instigated by the fear that Russia was going to launch nuclear weapons at America?

The following letter (link below) was sent home from public schools after the events of the Bay of Pigs April 15 – 21, 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 14 – 28, 1962. This was the closest the world has ever gotten to all-out nuclear war — so far.

— I remember my parents sending all of us older kids outside the Jamesway where I could still clearly hear through the canvas walls mother’s rantings at father about what she wanted him to do if/when the Russians invaded. She told him to shoot her first and then gave him the order in which she wanted him to shoot the rest of us before he shot himself.

I remember standing at the kitchen of the log house doing dishes probably in the spring of 1962. I kept looking over my shoulder out the window at the woods in back of the house waiting for the Russians in full military regalia to appear at the door. I knew Alaska was only two miles from Russia at the narrowest passage point, and based on the adults’ terror at this time I was quite certain that an invasion was likely.

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I could THINK about this externalized terror — and I could fear it. I had no capacity, however, to ever think about the terror that existed within my own home. There was a concept for attack from ‘the outside’ enemy. There was no concept for attack from ‘the inside’ enemy — the mother who birthed and abused me.

The entire culture surrounding me in my small childhood world feared the Russians and a devastating attack from them. There was no culture about fearing my mother!

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*Age 10 — 1962 Civil Defense Letter from School

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+IMMUNITY AGAINST INSECURE ATTACHMENT DISORDERS BEGINS AT CONCEPTION

September 26, 2009October 1, 2009 alchemynow6 Comments

092609 post Origins of Emotional Abuse

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Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW

Annie Kaszina offers free assistance on her site and through her free email support to women who have experienced emotional abuse. I personally find it disheartening that she does not equally offer her advise and expertise to men as well as to women, but I am mentioning her work here because I want to consider information presented in her writing about emotional abuse.

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Emotional abuse is not JUST a woman’s issue, it is a human issue. Emotional abuse is not JUST an adult issue. The seed potential for being both a perpetrator and a victim of emotional abuse begins – believe it or not – even before our conception.

No matter our sex, no matter what our genetic potential makeup may be, a mother’s emotional state influences her body to such an extent that her hormones and other body chemicals affect whether or not conception even takes place, as well as affects whether or not the tiny new human can or does implant itself on her uterine wall to further its growth and development from that time forward.

A mother’s hormones and internal chemical environment constantly signal through molecular communication what the world is going to be like that this new human is going to be born into. Those signals about stress, distress or future well being influence how the genetic potential of a human manifests itself – from conception onward.

These early signaling processes particularly influence the future sensitivity of the new human. I mention this now because Ms. Kaszina’s words this morning, as they arrived new and shiny in my email inbox, are concerned with emotional sensitivity.

Emotional sensitivity is not something that some of us have and some of us don’t have. All humans have emotions. All humans also vary in degree of sensitivity according to their fundamental genetic makeup, according to the information all kinds of molecular signaling has given them about the benevolence or malevolence of the world their body is growing up to live in, and according to the information that a newborn infant’s body-brain-self receives from its first early caregiver environment.

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We cannot possibly disentangle the topic of secure and insecure attachment disorders – from conception onward – from any discussion about so-called emotional abuse. What we are actually considering when we talk about emotions and sensitivity, in my opinion, has to do with the quality and kind of human attachment system we developed from conception.

If adults do not provide safe and secure attachments to infants and young children from the beginning of their lives, HOW this tiny person develops will be affected on every level. This most certainly includes emotional sensitivity. If the safe and secure attachments do not exist in an infant’s life, its body-brain-mind will be forced to take a pathway in its development that is less-than-optimal. An insecure attachment pattern, or insecure attachment disorder, WILL result from these conditions. That is the way our social species is designed.

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If a person could actually weigh information, tons of it exists at our fingertips about secure and insecure attachments. My purpose is to encourage readers to go poke around and take a look at this information for themselves. Without including the facts about our human attachment system in our thinking about ANYTHING that has to do with ANY human relationship, we are like children ourselves who might expect to sit in a broken down car out behind a weathered barn in some countryside – hoping and hoping if we just hope enough that useless car will take us out away from our miseries.

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Every human being whose brain-mind did not develop in an early environment that included a caregiver to whom that infant could safely and securely attach – on a predictable and sustained level – will end up with an altered brain-mind that includes an insecure attachment disorder built into it. All humans are amazingly resilient, and even a tiny infant can make amazing use of whatever safe and secure human attachment opportunities that DO actually exist in its early environment.

But at the same time we ARE human, and we are vulnerable and fragile. Degrees of damage are exactly that! If you spend some time following links included above, you will discover enough information for yourself to begin to understand what Dr. Allan Schore says about all insecure attachment disorders include empathy disorders. Nobody is immune to the consequences of forming a body-brain-mind in a malevolent world.

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With this very brief survey as an introduction to the following words written by Annie Kaszina, I encourage readers to begin to realize that both ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ of emotional abuse most likely suffer from an adult version of an insecure attachment disorder – either an ‘organized’ one or a ‘disorganized’ one. If our first displays of our emotions were not consistently appropriately and adequately responded to from the time we were born by one or more early caregivers – our emotional self will have altered the way it developed. This naturally affects both how we respond to our own and to others’ emotions.

If we are going to refer to these changed patterns as ABUSE, we need to include in our thinking that all these emotional patterns exist in our brain’s construction and operation. They can sometimes be changed to some degree, but our emotional construction is as much a part of our body as are our organs and limbs.

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From my own childhood experience I can say that the environment of the home I grew up in, with my Mad Monster Mother at the helm, contained no real emotional health and well being except as it was accidentally provided – mostly to my siblings. My entire blog is devoted to this HUGE topic. My point this morning is that I encourage every reader to read the following words as if they are simply and completely referring to interactions between parents and children – not between adults.

Focus your inner vision. Consider your childhood – whether you were a girl or a boy — for awhile ONLY as it either sustained the development of your authentic self emotionally – or did not. Parents are not their offspring’s’ partners. They have assumed the job of raising their children so that they themselves can later be other human’s partners.

Please ‘translate’ this information provided below through the lens of your own very young childhood perspective. What you were given THEN is reflected in how you are NOW! We had no choice as infant-children but to build into our growing body-brain-mind the attachment patterns our early caregivers ‘fed us’.

Down the road, the following is exactly how insecure attachment disorders (systems) can show themselves when we are all grown up. We can repeat them with both the adults and the children in our lives. We need to understand what this means by beginning to in-form our thinking about how these patterns established themselves PHYSIOLOGICALLY into our very young developing bodies — and remain within us for the rest of our lives. Once recognized consciously, we can begin to alter the effects our inner attachment system has on the quality of our life.

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Emotional Abuse Recovery NOW

Written and published by Annie Kaszina
Women’s Self-Discovery Coach
www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com

To sign up to this ezine, go to www.EmotionalAbuseRecoveryNow.com

“My name is Annie Kaszina and I spent over twenty years in an abusive marriage, before I learned how I could become the woman I want to be. Now I work with women who have been in controlling and abusive relationships, to facilitate their journey into joy and self-realisation.”

“You’re just too sensitive!”

“Has an abusive partner ever told you: “You’re just too sensitive?”

Okay, let’s be more precise about this; has your abusive partner repeatedly told you that you are too sensitive? Because the chances are, if he has said it to you once, he’s said it a thousand times. That’s how abusive relationships work; an abusive man throws the same complaints at you over and over again.

Why?

We’ll come to that in a moment. First, let’s deal with the really important question: How has that left you feeling?

Clearly, I don’t know you, and I can’t know how you think, but I’m guessing that it leaves you feeling small, needy, pathetic and very, very flawed. Accusing a partner of being ‘too sensitive’ tends to make them feel as if someone has exposed a very dark, unlovable, immature feeling at the very heart of their being.

In short, it makes them feel unlovable.

There is a reason for this. When an abusive man says his partner is ‘too sensitive’, that is not just a throwaway remark, triggered by frustration; it is, actually, a well-calculated barb with a venomous hidden agenda.

“You’re too sensitive”, is code; a code that, I suspect, you have not been translating correctly, until now. If you had, you probably would not have given your accuser the opportunity to wound you with that well-honed barb, time after time.

“But”, you might object, “I am very sensitive.” You might even say: “I am too sensitive.”

There is a distinction here that we need to clarify. When you say that you are ‘very sensitive’, or even ‘too sensitive’, what you actually mean is this: “I can feel hurt very easily; it doesn’t take much. I really wish that it wasn’t like this, but it is. There doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it.”

Acknowledging the acuity of their sensitivity tends to be a kind of apology that I often hear form abused women. They wish they could change it, but they can’t; at least not with the tools currently available to them.

When an abusive partner, or other near one, tells you that you are ‘too sensitive’, it is, apparently, because they wish you could change. (The subtext is that if you could change that it would, somehow, transform the abusive relationship.) Not that they are offering you any clues as to how you might reduce that sensitivity.

In reality, they don’t know how you could reduce that sensitivity; nor do they care. Much as they may criticize you for it, your sensitivity fits very nicely with their agenda. But they are not in a rush to admit that to you.

Think for a moment about the circumstances in which have been told that you are too sensitive. Most probably it happens when you feel hurt by something your abusive partner said; or else something they did, or did not do. Had you been ‘less sensitive’, they figure, you would not have reacted. In other words, you would have just ‘got on with it’, and spared them the trouble of having to consider your feelings.

This holds true for other circumstances in which your ‘hypersensitivity’ means that you would like to receive comfort or reassurance.

That is not what your abusive partner, or other near one, had in mind.

When they say: “You’re too sensitive”, what they really mean is this: “Please don’t visit your feelings on me, I don’t want to hear about them.” There’s more as well – and it doesn’t get any better.

“You’re too sensitive” is shorthand for; “I’m really not prepared to take your feelings into account. In fact, I thoroughly resent your visiting them on me. As far as I am concerned, this is the way I believe our relationship should work: I can say whatever I like to you, and you will get on and deal with it, without making a fuss and trying to make me feel bad about it. What’s wrong with you, anyway? Why can’t you just get on with being in an abusive relationship without moaning about it?”

The question, “What’s wrong with you, anyway?” is the key to your partner’s thinking. There must be something wrong with you, or else you would respond to whatever it is that they said or did in exactly the way they would have you respond. In other words, what they wanted was no response from you. (In an abusive relationship, all communication is intended to be a one way street.) Whatever it was that they said or di, they hoped that you would let them ‘get away with it’. And you did not.

It’s not as if you took a strong stand; anything but. A strong stand would have meant saying: “This is unacceptable.” You would then make yourself scarce, as far as they were concerned. Your abusive partner would duly get the message that they were out of order, and would need to clean up their act, or else lose you.

Whether or not they would clean up their act is another story. If, instead, your refusal to accept abuse led to the earlier end of a damaging relationship that was bound to end in unhappiness anyway, then your strong stand has paid off handsomely. That would save you time and misery. And if it concentrated their mind, and led them to behave better in the future, even better.

But just asking an abusive man to behave, and/or speak to you, differently, is as ineffectual as saying to a child: “Oh, don’t do that!” All it conveys is your weakness and your reluctance to act.

It leaves your abuser free to repeat the pattern time and time again. He will continue to speak and act as he pleases and, when you object, he will reproach you, again, for ‘being too sensitive’.

With that one simple phrase he has laid the blame for the hurt in the situation on you. With one simple piece of sleight of mouth, he has dumped blame for the situation on you, so that he comes up smelling of roses. Or, at least, as close to smelling of roses as he is ever likely to get.

How did you get into an abusive relationship like that in the first place?

Here’s the irony: it happened, in part, because of your sensitivity. Not that there is anything wrong with being sensitive; there is not. However, an abusive man has a finely tuned nose, and can smell sensitivity a mile off. He knows that he can exploit that sensitivity to gain control over another person. He knows just how to do that – as you have discovered, to your cost.

So what will you do differently about your sensitivity in the future?

First, you need to become much more vigilant; you learn that someone who is prepared to disregard your ‘sensitivity’ is telling you that they will completely and utterly disregard your feelings. You give such people a very wide berth. Second, you learn to honour and manage that sensitivity; treat it with respect and other people will treat you with respect, also.”

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— SEE ALSO —

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

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New Resource for Parents: CDC Parent Portal

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+CHILDHOOD DISSOCIATION, DEPERSONALIZATION, DEREALIZATION – I NEVER HAD A CHOICE TO BE OR NOT TO BE

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+I WAS ONLY A MOTHER TO MY CHILDREN

September 22, 2009September 22, 2009 alchemynow1 Comment

092209 post Not My Children’s Friend

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I am thinking this morning about disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorders as they exist – in my thinking – at the root of every supposed ‘mental illness’ known to the human species. I believe that as time marches on scientific research is going to find out that what I know at the center of my being is true.

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It is the nature of every organism to orient and organize its being around something. I see a massive sunflower field in my mind’s eye. Every single flower in the field turns its head continually from sunrise to sunset, following the rays of the sun. Just as there are plants that organize and orient their existence to sunlight, there are those that have to orient themselves in the shade.

As members of a social species humans are designed to orient themselves first and foremost to other members of their species. This organization and orientation begins with conception. When the optimal patterns do not exist to create optimal orientation and organization as members of our social species, alterations, adaptations and distortions will manifest themselves in the body, including the brain-mind, of every ‘deprived of optimal’ member.

I cannot understand why this fundamental fact seems to be the last one specialists in human beings seem willing to consider. To me, it is first and central. Put any growing sunflower under a closed barrel and watch what happens to it!

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Thinking about orientation and organization today has led me to a consideration of how I parented my 3 children differently than how my parents parented me. How did I know what I knew and do what I did? I am not entirely sure what the answer to this question is, but I do know what it seems like to me.

I innately knew, primarily, that I did not want to raise my children the way I was raised – particularly by my mother. Following that, I knew that my intention was to help my children to know exactly who they were as individuals. Next my job was to help them in any way possible to better know who they were, and to be the BEST at being themselves as they possibly could be by the time it was time for them to leave home and enter their own adult lives.

In order to accomplish my above stated mission, I somehow absolutely knew that I was not ever supposed to be my children’s friend. There are lots of words and ideas that could be pasted on top of this most simple concept, but when all is pared away, that is the MEANS by which I was (and my children will agree with me) able to be a nonabusive, successful mother.

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My thinking runs up against a fork in the road at this point. On the one hand I want to say that for the 35 years I had a child under the age of 18 in my home, being their mother was the single, most powerful orienting and organizing factor in my life. I did not know this, and my blindness set me up for an absolute and near total collapse of my being once the youngest walked out the door and stepped onto the Greyhound bus that took him off to Air Force boot camp when he was 18.

The other fork in the road of my thinking continues forward with the time that is passing in my life and in my children’s lives. Ultimately today – just at this moment – I am facing a strange version of a fact. Even though my mother appeared to despise me and abused me in one fashion or another for 18 long years – ultimately, she had me in the ‘friendship’ rather than in the daughter-mother role.

We can either hate or love our friends, but in the end we owe them nothing vital. Yet even as they exist separately from ourselves, we can project as much of our own internal messiness onto them as we can get away with. I see that the same problems my mother had with every single other person in her life, she also had with me, even though her troubles with me were on the most extreme end of her relationship continuum because I was the most helpless and vulnerable.

Because she did not make it out of her own early childhood with a strong, clear self, and hence could not possibly have a good relationship with this non existent self, I was simply a projected extension of her inner psychic world. If, as adults, we are anything less than perfectly well adjusted and healthy, every relationship we are likely to have with another adult – FRIEND – can contain within it some degree and version of projection.

Even if we were deprived of the development of a strong, clear and healthy self, we can – down the road – take responsibility for ourselves and begin to realize what projections from within our self we are sending ‘out there’ onto others. We can make a commitment to ‘bringing it all back home’. Piece by piece, bit by bit, we can learn to recognize when we are in the process of participating in a trauma drama with those around us by realizing that what we are seeing ‘out there’ is most often simply a projection of what is messed up within ourselves.

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By making that simple decision as a mother to never place my children in a role of friendship with me, I freed myself to be their mother and I freed them to be my children. I understood – and still understand today – that they are completely separate entities from me. They are their own individual selves. They are my children. They are not my friends. They exist within their own boundaries, are sovereigns of their own separate nation of their selfhood. In other words, I bore them into this world, assisted them the best that I could to turn around, take their selfhood and walk away from me, marching off into the future that is their own life.

My mother could not do this. Because of the way her brain-mind worked, she did not have this choice available to her. Her orientation and organization around her family was anything BUT healthy. She spewed out her own psychic traumas and contaminated her relationship with her children — and with everyone else who ever came into range of her. I cannot say that I don’t project out my own trauma ‘issues’ on all kinds of other people in my life. But what matters to me is that I somehow – through a miracle I am MOST GRATEFUL for – am able to spare my children from being included as pawns in my dramas.

In the last analysis, there is nothing in this lifetime that could possibly matter more to me than this. I was able to mother my children. I was able to let them be free to be themselves. I do not today orient or organize my being, my existence, or my life around them.

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I continue to have intense and major problems with my own disoriented-disorganized insecure attachment disorder – and with the multiple so-called ‘mental diagnosis’ that originated from the horrible experience of childhood that I had. I do not have a strong and clear self, or a strong and clear connection with my non-self. It’s my job to find my own way, however. It is not the job of my children to parent me.

Today I have a few wonderful friends. I see that the fundamental quality that they share most in common is that they all have a strong, clear sense of their own self – and their connection to their self is a good one. They do not in any way project their ‘garbage’ onto me. We do not, therefore, share any form of trauma drama between us.

I could not and cannot yet say this about the intimate relationship I am trying to emotionally extricate myself from – but I am in the process of learning, learning and learning some more of what I most need to learn for centered calmness to enter my life instead of either joy or suffering connected to this person.

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Each day I have to take conscious tiny steps as I try to locate and identify my self, LINDA, as she exists in this body, in this life, in this world. I try to attend to every detail about what she-I orients herself toward and organizes herself-my self around. I doubt that I will ever in my lifetime be able to take for granted what my children fundamentally know – that they ARE a self, that they know who that self is, and that self is absolutely FINE!

By not placing any other relationship construct onto them – including friendship, by allowing them to be ONLY my children, by my being ONLY their mother, I was able to keep my trauma drama propensity away from them. By being ONLY my children’s mother, I was able to provide what they needed to grow up to be ONLY their own individual self. There is nothing more important I could possibly want for each of them.

Yes, I have a great relationship with all my children, but as their mother, not as their friend. This, to me, is what parental love is all about.

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

September 21, 2009September 21, 2009 alchemynow2 Comments

http://www.about.com/

Borderline Personality Disorder

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD
People with BPD and their family members are often desperate to find help. Unfortunately, this leaves the door open for opportunists who pedal phony treatments or therapies with no research support. This week, learn about some therapies for BPD that you can trust– all of these treatments have solid research backing.

In the Spotlight

Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder
An overview of empirically supported psychosocial treatments for BPD – all of these treatments have been shown to be effective in reducing BPD symptoms.

		More Topics
		Conditions Related to Borderline Personality Disorder Treatments for Borderline Personality Disorder Getting Help for Borderline Personality Disorder Life With Borderline Personality Disorder For Family and Friends of Individuals with BPD Diagnosis of BPD Treatment of BPD

Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Of all the psychosocial treatments for BPD, Dialectical Behavior Therapy or DBT has the largest body of research support. DBT is also now offered all over the world.

How to Get the Most Out of Treatment
Now that you’ve found the right therapy, how do you make sure that you get the most out of it? These tips will help you on the road to recovery.

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+EXTREME STATES AND BRAIN REWIRING

September 19, 2009September 19, 2009 alchemynowLeave a comment

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PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE BEFORE READING THIS POST:

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Mind & Brain / Senses

Extreme States

Out-of-body experiences? Near-death experiences? Researchers are beginning to understand what’s really going on.

by Steven Kotler, Photo illustration by Josef Astor

From the July 2005 issue, Discover, published online July 24, 2005

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HERE ARE SOME POINTS I PONDER AND QUESTION:

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”…I was also watching the chute’s open-close-open routine, despite knowing that what I was watching was technically impossible to see.”

Those of us with extreme early and chronic child abuse histories are very likely be able to ‘do this’. We can have access to information about ourselves in the world that seems to defy ‘scientific’ or ‘rational’ explanation. What’s more, these abilities appear to have been built into our growing brains.

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Interesting statement:

“…most out-of-body tales do not take place within the confines of an extreme environment. They transpire as part of normal lives.”

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“The out-of-body experience is much like the near-death experience, and any exploration of one must include the other. While out-of-body experiences are defined by a perceptual shift in consciousness, no more and no less, near-death experiences start with this shift and then proceed along a characteristic trajectory. People report entering a dark tunnel, heading into light, and feeling an all-encompassing sense of peace, warmth, love, and welcome. They recall being reassured along the way by dead friends, relatives, and a gamut of religious figures. Occasionally, there’s a life review, followed by a decision of the “should I stay or should I go?” variety. A 1990 Gallup poll of American adults found that almost 12 percent of Americans, roughly 30 million individuals, said they have had some sort of near-death experience.”

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Take a look at the information about this:

“When Whinnery reviewed his data, he noted a correlation: The longer his pilots were knocked out, the closer they got to brain death. And the closer they got to brain death, the more likely it was that an out-of-body experience would turn into a near-death experience. This was the first hard evidence for what had been long suspected—that the two states are not two divergent phenomena, but two points on a continuum.”

It makes me wonder about how a very young growing brain processes traumatic information. Because an infant-child person is too young to even have a completely formed sense of self when traumas occur, how would their brain even process information related to “Am I out of my body or am I dead?”

It seems to me that a very young child would first have to develop enough of a brain ability to even know they were a self-alive-in-the-world before these kinds of concepts could even apply. What happens if the trauma-generating experiences build the very question itself into the growing brain – “Am I alive or am I dead?”

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“The simplest conclusion to draw from these studies is that, give or take some inexplicable memories, these phenomena are simply normal physical processes that occur during unusual circumstances.”

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“What researchers have studied is the effect of a near-death experience. Van Lommel conducted lengthy interviews and administered a battery of standard psychological tests to his study group of cardiac-arrest patients. The subset that had had a near-death experience reported more self-awareness, more social awareness, and more religious feelings than the others.

“Van Lommel then repeated this process after a two-year interval and found the group with near-death experience still had complete memories of the event, while others’ recollections were strikingly less vivid. He found that the near-death experience group also had an increased belief in an afterlife and a decreased fear of death compared with the others. After eight years he again repeated the whole process and found those two-year effects significantly more pronounced. The near-death experience group was much more empathetic, emotionally vulnerable, and often showed evidence of increased intuitive awareness. They still showed no fear of death and held a strong belief in an afterlife.”

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So what might that mean for those of us severely abused and traumatized at a very early age? Might there be something about those experiences that makes us perceive our being-in-the-world in a different way – from the very start?

“Morse, too, did follow-up studies long after his original research. He also did a separate study involving elderly people who had a near-death experience in early childhood. “The results were the same for both groups,” says Morse. “Nearly all of the people who had had a near-death experience—no matter if it was 10 years ago or 50—were still absolutely convinced their lives had meaning and that there was a universal, unifying thread of love which provided that meaning. Matched against a control group, they scored much higher on life-attitude tests, significantly lower on fear-of-death tests, gave more money to charity, and took fewer medications. There’s no other way to look at the data. These people were just transformed by the experience.”

To me, there’s obviously an incomparable difference in experience between what a 10-year-old might know from a childhood near death experience and what a 10-week or 10-month old infant might know.

What happens when a very young infant-child perceives that their survival is being threatened LONG before they can even begin to THINK?

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So what might out-of-body experiences, near death experiences, coma experiences and religious experiences share in common?

“Britton hypothesized that people who have undergone a near-death experience might show the same altered brain firing patterns as people with temporal lobe epilepsy….Britton thinks near-death experience somehow rewires the brain, and she has found some support for her hypothesis regarding altered activity in the temporal lobe.”

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What might they have to do with depression?

“She [Britton] then asked a University of Arizona epilepsy specialist who knew nothing about the experiment to analyze the EEGs. Two features distinguished the group with near-death experience from the controls: They needed far less sleep, and they went into REM (rapid eye movement) sleep far later in the sleep cycle than normal people. “The point at which someone goes into REM sleep is a fantastic indicator of depressive tendencies,” says Britton. “We’ve gotten very good at this kind of research. If you took 100 people and did a sleep study, we can look at the data and know, by looking at the time they entered REM, who’s going to become depressed in the next year and who isn’t.”

Normal people enter REM at 90 minutes. Depressed people enter at 60 minutes or sooner. Britton found that the vast majority of her group with near-death experience entered REM sleep at 110 minutes. With that finding, she identified the first objective neurophysiological difference in people who have had a near-death experience.

Britton thinks near-death experience somehow rewires the brain, and she has found some support for her hypothesis regarding altered activity in the temporal lobe: Twenty-two percent of the group with near-death experience showed synchrony in the temporal lobe, the same kind of firing pattern associated with temporal lobe epilepsy.

She also found something that didn’t fit with her hypothesis. The temporal lobe synchrony wasn’t happening on the right side of the brain, the site that had been linked in Penfield’s studies to religious feeling in temporal lobe epilepsy. Instead she found it on the left side of the brain. That finding made some people uncomfortable because it echoed studies that pinpointed, in far more detail than Penfield achieved, the exact locations in the brain that were most active and most inactive during periods of profound religious experience.”

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What about religious experience?

“Over the past 10 years a number of different scientists, including neurologist James Austin from the University of Colorado, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, and the late anthropologist and psychiatrist Eugene D’Aquili from the University of Pennsylvania, have done SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) scans of the brains of Buddhists during meditation and of Franciscan nuns during prayer. They found a marked decrease in activity in the parietal lobes, an area in the upper rear of the brain. This region helps us orient ourselves in space; it allows us to judge angles and curves and distances and to know where the self ends and the rest of the world begins. People who suffer injuries in this area have great difficulties navigating life’s simplest landscapes. Sitting down on a couch, for example, becomes a task of Herculean impossibility because they are unsure where their own legs end and the sofa begins. The SPECT scans indicated that meditation temporarily blocks the processing of sensory information within both parietal lobes…..

When that happens, as Newberg and D’Aquili point out in their book Why God Won’t Go Away, “the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real.” They use the brain-scan findings to explain the interconnected cosmic unity that the Buddhists experienced, but the results could also explain what Morse calls the “universal, unifying thread of love” that people with near-death experience consistently reported.

These brain scans show that when the parietal lobes go quiet, portions of the right temporal lobe—some of the same portions that Penfield showed produced feelings of excessive religiosity, out-of-body experiences, and vivid hallucinations—become more active. ….”

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And, this article’s conclusion:

“None of this work is without controversy, but an increasing number of scientists now think that our brains are wired for mystical experiences. The studies confirm that these experiences are as real as any others, because our involvement with the rest of the universe is mediated by our brains. Whether these experiences are simply right temporal lobe activity, as many suspect, or, as Britton’s work hints and Morse believes, a whole brain effect, remains an open question. But Persinger thinks there is a simple explanation for why people with near-death experience have memories of things that occurred while they were apparently dead. The memory-forming structures lie deep within the brain, he says, and they probably remain active for a few minutes after brain activity in the outer cortex has stopped. Still, Crystal Merzlock remembered events that occurred more than 19 minutes after her heart stopped. Nobody has a full explanation for this phenomenon, and we are left in that very familiar mystical state: the one where we still don’t have all the answers.”

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For myself, I am most interested in this statement:

“…in the parietal lobes, an area in the upper rear of the brain. This region helps us orient ourselves in space; it allows us to judge angles and curves and distances and to know where the self ends and the rest of the world begins. People who suffer injuries in this area have great difficulties navigating life’s simplest landscapes.”

I think when severe threat-to-life trauma in a malevolent early brain-forming stages of brain development happens, the entire orientation of a forming ‘self-in-the-world’ is changed. Such a growing self does not receive the right information to orient themselves in the world. That is why, in my considerations, malevolent early developmental caregiver interactions create a disoriented disorganized insecure attachment between the growing self and the world.

How does a growing brain orient itself in an environment of trauma and chaos? Are we to believe that such an infant-child translates its threat-to-life experiences into expressions of ‘love and bliss’?

How ludicrous an idea is that one? Yet I do believe all these same states of being described in this article – as they exist as human potential – are involved with the alterations a trauma-built brain has to go through in order to survive in a malevolent early world.

Something to think about considering the ‘injuries’ to the development of the self-in-the-world that an abused infant-child experiences.

How do we know we are we alive in a body even though we are not dead – and where exactly IS the line between the two? After all, the experience of trauma is itself an extreme state experience — and our brain knows it no matter HOW YOUNG WE ARE. It is entirely possible for trauma to ‘rewire the brain’ just as any other ‘extreme state’ experience can.

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RECOMMENDED – VISIT THIS WEBSITE!!

Randi Kreger
* http://www.BPDCentral.com
* Stop Walking on Eggshells
* Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook
* The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder

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+MOTHER’S MELANCHOLY, LONELY LETTER 3-1-1960

September 17, 2009September 17, 2009 alchemynowLeave a comment

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One of the things I suspect about a severe insecure attachment disorder — like the disorganized-disoriented one my mother had and gave to me — is that we perpetually long for the closeness of the ones that love us most, and those we most love.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but in part our longing is bigger than life because we cannot summon the inner feeling connection with these people to sustain ourselves comfortably in their absence.

I believe there exists in our brains a fundamental breach or dissociation between our left brain’s attempts to ‘understand and know’ logically and verbally that we are loved and our right brain’s inability to FEEL that we are loved.

Our insecure attachment disorder also manifests itself in the fact that we cannot feel sustaining emotional connections with ‘regular’ people we might encounter or seek out in our lives, either. Our lack of ability to form safe and secure attachments means that we ache inside all of the time except when we are in the actual, physical presence of our most important attachment figures.

This ache seems permanent. I believe it is fundamentally connected to the unbearable pain of isolation from secure attachments when we were our youngest and needed them most. Because sustaining early caregiver attachments were missing, unbearable pain and sadness built itself into our young growing right emotional-social-limbic brain instead of a sense of safety, security and attachment to others in the world.

I think my mother is expressing some of that unbearable pain in this letter, some of her deepest longing for HOME — for the safety and security of loving attachments connected to the HOME of the self in the world.

(Her words in this letter are unusual because she is acknowledging that not even being on the homestead will ease the longings of her heart.)

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March 1, 1960

Dear Mom,

Just walked over to mail box and got your long very much appreciated letter and also received your gorgeous — how do you find time to do it – knitting. Oh Mom they’re really expert – really!! The hat is a real beauty and the blue mittens just match her hat – and the socks are so warm. I love hand knits….

Last week I felt absolutely marvelous – cold cleared up and I had too much pep. Then Friday evening within one hour I came down with bad cold again! Head stuffed up – feverish etc. – went to bed early but didn’t help. Saturday I had so much to do and Sunday went to church again but felt horrible. Came home and had promised kids to go in town to walk around as Fur Rendezvous – Bill won’t even take time to go to movie but each has allowance and could spend it (Linda lost her purse and all her $ saved for camp – 3.50!) Why she brought it to town I don’t know! I felt too sick but we went and Monday I was ill. George Washington’s Birthday but there was school but Bill was home and I stayed in bed all day – believe it or not. Had sinus so bad it ached and felt sick all over. Had the girl coming Tuesday (60.00 per month and ho how we need it) – luckily that broke the cold and loosened it. This is Wednesday and I’m better but oh such mucous and my voice sounds hoarse but over sick part. All kids have coughs – Linda was sick several days and Cindy threw up other nite all over sleeping bag that I had just finally gotten out of cleaners because it cost 5.00 to be cleaned. (They’re off to nap and I’ll write more)

Well, they’re in bed for a nap and I find we’re on a better schedule with Suzie here – she’s 5 and so good – quite a homely plain child but so obedient and smart and a very nice play mate for Sharon who was lonely.

We do papers, paint etc. and eat at noon and they nap plus the extra $. I almost had another child but her neighbor is caring for him. Well what with more time to put in on homestead – just as well and Suzie’s $ will pay to have La Verne here then. I wish I could save it but Bill and I will do well if we can get up and down – the kids couldn’t walk that mountain every nite.

We had planned for me to go in with Bill Monday and he was to drive the tractor out but I couldn’t have! Maybe this week-end. I dread the bill. Oh Mom I too will be glad when we hold title.

I worry over where we’ll live next year but we’ll have to wait and see. I wrote Spoerry one month ago about this house and she never answered (?)

I’m so glad you’re not rushed – it’s most upsetting. By the way, you asked me if I wanted anything – I would love any of anything if you have it and I guess we could have Army ship up when we come on trip – we’ll wait and see. Lately I’ve been wishing for a big old house – with library, dining room and all!! I’m so tired of not having a home and kids are so big now and need their own rooms. It seems so long since we’ve had a home. I’ve been wishing we kept my bedroom set, our piano [from her childhood, mentioned in her 1945 diary before they left Boston for L.A.] and all. Oh Mom, we had such a wonderful home – I wish ours had same now. I marvel at how you did all you did – I really do – more and more. Oh Mom, I wish we’d kept that chair Grandpa made – I wish I had our old things, altogether and a road to our homestead and house and all but honestly sometimes it seems it will never be and I get more discouraged now than before.

I wish you were settled or knew at least what you want.

Gunter’s plan to sell their house and build up the street this summer.

Poor family with 5 children got burned out Monday up the street.

I never go anywhere or see anyone. Wish I had 6 children all day – I only charge 15.00 per week (includes lunch) [in her nursery school]

Lately I’ve felt so blue and lonely. I need to be out and do things. I’m tired of staying home and dread the lonely, long summer [on the mountain homestead].

Bill will be so busy again – I really dread it – terribly.

Wish you were coming up – I’d be so happy then – oh, that you were – for the entire summer. I’d sing, I’d fly! – but as it is I dread [underlined 8 times] this summer.

It’s not even as if I had water to make a garden and I refuse to sit up there all summer again – and yet, what else??

Well, as I said no news and on I rattle about nothing. Hope C and C aren’t mad I didn’t send $ for your hospital bill – oh that I could.

Write me – I wish I could see you. Take care. I love you so!! Mildred

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letter is filed here:

*1960 (IN THE ACT) HOMESTEADING

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+LINKS TO MILLIONS OF WORDS ABOUT THE BORDERLINE (BPD) CONDITION

September 16, 2009September 16, 2009 alchemynow2 Comments

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Borderline Personality

I am coming to the conclusion that those with a Borderline Personality Disorder are the most likely group of parents to severely abuse their children — and are especially at risk for picking out one single child to be The Chosen One for the worst of their abuse.

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LOTS OF HOT LINKS FOR YOUR CLICKING (RESEARCH) PLEASURE!

The comments that book readers post in their reviews of books in response to published titles on Borderline Personality Disorder are enlightening. (Even if they don’t address developmental brain changes caused by early childhood malevolent environments!)

I am posting some links this morning both to the titles themselves and to the comments readers have made in response to them.

Many of the comments describe actual real-time, real-life experiences that people have had (and are still having) with the disordered, disoriented brain that both creates the Borderline condition and is a response to a turbulent, malevolent childhood that in combination with genetic potential has manifested in BPD.

(Please note that the editorial reviews, separate from the reader reviews, are presented on the Amazon.com page below a book’s selling information. Be sure to scroll down the page when you follow the ‘READER REVIEWS’ links!!)

ALSO remember that you don’t have to buy one of these books to read it. If your local public library doesn’t carry a title, you can request them to find a copy for you!!

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Bleeding Out: A Memoir of A Borderline Personalityby Merri Lisa Johnson (Paperback – May 31, 2010)

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Buddha & the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder Through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating by Kiera Van Gelder (Paperback – Jul 2010)

Buy new: $16.95 $11.53 — Available for Pre-order

Blogger’s Comment: THIS book won’t be at the top of my ‘Must Buy’ List!

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Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies (For Dummies (Health & Fitness)) by Charles H. Elliott and Laura L. Smith

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