Tag: infant abuse

+’DEPERSONALIZATION’ AND ‘DEREALIZATION’ – HOW CLEAR AM I ABOUT THE SOURCE OF THESE ‘SENSES’?

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My next realization following my writing of my previous post (+INFANT ABUSE AND NEGLECT: THE PERVASIVE IMPACT OF ‘WHAT IS MISSING’) has to do with a major set of manifestations of the physiological reality I live with in my body.  Related to ‘dissociation’ is the frequent (and to me common) related experiences of feeling ‘depersonalized’ and ‘dereal (derealization)’.

I am suffering today from strong senses related to both of these states.  Nothing from this past week feels ‘real’ to me, and I feel the ‘depersonalization’ related to my own self AND to the other people I just spent the past week with.  This seems like a pervasive sense that I am not ‘real’, that my experiences of the past week were not (are not) ‘real’, and that the people were not ‘real’, either.  I HATE this feeling!

My ‘realization’ is that perhaps I just clearly learned that when I have this sense in part it is an exactly very real (true) reaction to having spent time with people who are perhaps not ‘real’ to their own self or to others, either!  If, as I strongly suspect many, many people suffer from degrees of the same emotional-social early right brain formation attachment-related difficulties that I do, it would make sense then that I can learn to understand that it is often very true that these senses of depersonalization and derealization exist OUTSIDE of myself within other people and thus my own sense of what is real and of who/what a person actually is can often be impacted by this fact.

If a human being’s true state is meant to be one of healthy well-being, and if degrees of early abuse, trauma and deprivation diminish this true state, then those of us who are extremely sensitive beings WILL NOTICE when another person has ALSO been trauma-changed during their earliest developmental stages.

Can I now begin to pay closer attention to how I feel when the depersonalization-derealization senses ‘come over’ me?  Can I begin to separate (as per become more clear about ‘boundaries’) about where these senses are actually originating when I experience them?  Is there anything I can do for myself that will help me keep ‘their stuff’ from affecting how I feel?

Is there a great risk that survivors of harmful early developmental trauma naturally respond to one another within these ‘dereal’ and ‘depersonalized’ places because they happened to be our first and therefore primary and ‘natural’ states (built into our body-brain)?

How much of the smothered feeling I feel today of being overwhelmed by ‘derealization’ and ‘depersonalization’ actually — and very really — existed within the patterns present in the OTHER people I just spent my week with?

How exactly DOES it feel to me as a ‘dissociational’ person when I am around and interacting with other people who are this same way — and don’t even have a clue about their condition?  Well, if there was ever a day for me to work on my clarity about this topic, today certainly is a prime one!

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+INFANT ABUSE AND NEGLECT: THE PERVASIVE IMPACT OF ‘WHAT IS MISSING’

alchemynow4 Comments

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I can’t say I want to write this post.  I HAVE to write this post, because I don’t believe there is anyone — not ANYONE — who will truly understand what I have to say except for infant abuse survivors.  Even if we don’t know that we know what I am going to say here, we DO KNOW it because we live with this condition all of our lives because it was built into our body-brain from the time we were born (or even before that time depending on our pre-birth experiences).

It won’t be until we realize consciously as survivors that we have this ‘condition’ that we will be able to talk about it.  Conscious realization might not so much change HOW this condition operates so much as it might change how we feel about ourselves and other people.

A week of out-of-town guests (family) has concluded.  I am left feeling confused and bogged down by (almost) unnameable feelings from this past week’s experiences of being around people I love and who love me.  But at the same time I am working to gain some clarity about all of this I realize that I have nobody to verbalize my process or insights with.  While our nation is itself increasingly suffering from this unnameable and invisible malady to one degree or another, it is those of us who suffered from the most trauma, neglect, abuse and maltreatment from birth (and/or before birth) who — I believe — have the truest capacity to recognize this first (other than developmental neuroscientists who very well know what this condition is and where it comes from — though I don’t believe they know PERSONALLY what it FEELS like as we infant survivors do).

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How can we talk about a condition that seems to be so unnameable and so invisible?  Where are the words we can use to talk about something that is becoming dangerously prevalent in our culture in the degrees of damage it creates within people — and within all of our relationships to self, others and the world around us?

My first comment would be that I can’t say (or feel as if I KNOW) the true reality of any single human transaction that just happened during this past week.  Next, I would say that I am a survivor of such severe infant abuse (followed by the next 18 years of abuse) that I am far, far, far over on the ‘this sure happened to me’ continuum.  So although it is therefore easier (and even possible) that I would be the one to identify that whatever it was that happened this past week,  it was the HOW of HOW it all happened that most disturbed me.

Don’t get me wrong.  There were no fights, no cross words between any of us.  All that happened remained in the realm of the ‘silent and unspeakable’.

When experts talk about less-than-optimal infant-caregiver attachment interactions in disturbed early relationships they speak – yes – of resulting insecure attachment disorders.  They are ALSO saying at the same time that ’empathy disorders’ directly connect to the same painful, neglectful, frightening, inadequate and non-loving interactions.

As I look around at our nation and consider that our cultural and societal platforms of safety and security that are needed to provide support on all levels to young infant-children and their parents, I recognize that degrees of these ‘insecure attachment disorders’ and their related-connected empathy disorders are GOING to be the lifelong ‘condition’ of most little ones that are suffering today.

While it might take obvious and direct abuse to create such a trauma-changed body-brain in survivors of the worst of infant maltreatment, there is no possible way that little ones who experience deprivation even unintentionally committed against them can escape having some form of insecure attachment-empathy disorder created in their developing body-brain.

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We will recognize these patterns as confusing interactions between others (and within our self) as they contain emotional messages that are communicated within social exchanges.  We are members of a social species, and all the ‘wiring’ we receive during ESPECIALLY our first year of life establishes the physiological capacities we will use the rest of our life to relate as social-species members.

I just went through a week where most interactions I experienced fell squarely into the GUESSWORK category.  When the emotional-social circuits in a little one’s body-brain form under duress, patterns of communication and interaction simply WILL NOT work RIGHT (optimal-health).  Emotions existed on all levels this past week and NONE of them were directly expressed — or even recognized — for the entire week.

I will never claim that I have the ability — or ever will in this lifetime have the ability — to be able to clarify or make clear any aspect of human exchange that the OTHER person can’t do the same for within their own self.  When OTHER people have suffered in their earliest developmental stages enough trauma that their own body-brain wasn’t built to process emotional-social information ‘correctly’ (optimal health) — I am LOST LOST LOST!

I can ONLY function smoothly (safely and securely) when I am around people who had enough safety and security in their earliest attachment relationships that they were able to form a body-brain during the first year of life that processes emotional-social information ‘correctly’.  Certainly not one single person connected to my own family of origin received what they needed for this to happen.  Even though I was most definitely the ‘chosen one’ to receive the horrors of the direct abuse, all of my siblings were witness and also grew from birth being ‘trained’ by a mad woman who NEVER processed emotional-social information correctly.

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I HATE how I end up feeling — like every single tiny interaction this past week was a ‘misdirect’.  I will NEVER truly comprehend or be comfortable with human emotional-social exchanges.  I am absolutely dependent upon the ability of the OTHER PERSON to know how all those interactions are SUPPOSED to work.  If the other person suffered from some degree of ‘damage’ to their physiological development in their RIGHT emotional-social development I am LOST LOST LOST.

The problem nearly ALWAYS IS that the other person (people) don’t even begin to realize that these trauma-altered patterns are going on.  The problems appear invisibly, are unnameable, are left unidentified and unresolved.  The ‘ruptures’ in conversations and in the communication of need and intent are left without ‘repair’.  The most critically important quality of human interaction that relates to FEELING FELT does not exist, and everything lands in the murky world of ‘what the heck is actually going on here’?

I don’t understand myself how to overcome these difficulties because I was nearly entirely built in a world of trauma and extreme abuse.  All I know at this point is that what I just experience this past week was very, very real — and equally invisible.  It is NOT, however, completely unnameable to me because I have spent a great deal of time and effort trying to learn about how I was trauma-built in my body-brain.

In addition I can FEEL what just went wrong last week even though I have no clue how I personally could have made anything ‘better’.  So this is one of those ‘I am writing a message and stuffing it into a bottle hoping someone will know what I am trying to say’ posts.

We are obviously not living in an infant-child friendly culture, no matter what words we mouth as a nation to the contrary.  Problems with empathy and its resulting potential for true compassion and for truly feeling felt and for helping others to feel felt are flying into our nation’s past the same way they flew into my past when I was born.  I NEVER was allowed to experience these most precious and vitally important emotional-social patterns of interaction from the time I left my mother’s womb.  Those deprivations built themselves into me at the same time they built me during the formation of my emotional-social earliest-forming right brain.

To know that I am not alone in this, and that many, many others experienced ‘degrees of damage’ through the same process (though not so extremely) actually greatly disappoints me!  What hope do I have to find large numbers of optimally love-formed, non-early-traumatized people that can help ME understand what it means to be a well-being-human?

I KNOW all this now!  I know that anything less than clear, open, loving, appropriate and stable patterns of interaction between a mother (and other earliest caregivers) and an infant ESPECIALLY until age one  cannot possibly create those same optimal patterns and their corresponding capacities-abilities within a growing infant’s body-brain.

When these optimal patterns are missing all emotional-social patterns for a lifetime will be reflecting their absence.  As a consequence, healthy empathy, quality compassion and complete communication between suffers will be missing.  What is left, then, are patterns of missing information, distortion of priorities, incomplete communications (transmissions), misdirected efforts to interact with others, absent critical emotional information, vague recognition of self and others, and some degree of dismal-abysmal relationships that do not (because they most often cannot) include the fullest potential of what human beings can actually accomplish as emotional-social beings.

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+LOOKING AT THE NURSERY AS THE SEAT OF VIOLENT CRIME

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I suffer no delusions about the source of my mother’s ability to commit her 18 years’ worth of violent crime against me.  All survivors of infant-child abuse, neglect and maltreatment were victims of violent crime that happened to them in particular ways, at particular times that impacted their physiological development before the age of TWO YEARS OLD.   For some survivors the maltreatment they received during these earliest months of life created the patterns within their little growing body-brains that led down a very straight road to an end result of becoming capable of perpetrating violent crime.

I have written on this blog in the past that the minimum prison term my mother as the abuser and my father as her enabler SHOULD have received would have been no less than 14,500 years.  I arrived at this figure simply my generalizing at a minimum how many times I was forced to endure a violent attack.  This figure does not begin to match a justified consequence for the related verbal violence that happened or take into account the 18 years of continual terror and trauma that the environment of my home of origin actually contained.

The source of all the violence I (and other survivors) experienced started somewhere, and that somewhere was the nursery.

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“Though we have been greatly concerned about government spending on the U.S. health care system, which many deem to be in crisis, we have not noticed that the cost of the criminal justice system is three times the cost of the nation’s entire health care budget.”

I am beginning my study of the book, Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence (1998) by Robin Karr-Morse, Meredith S. Wiley.  I hope I have the commitment and strength to read this book cover to cover.  It will not be an easy read – but will be an important one.  As an 18 year infant-child-teen victim of severe and consistent violent abuse and battering by my mother, I am reading this book not only to gain a more clear understanding of violence that happens to others, but also as a survivor looking backwards into the nursery in which my mother was so pathetically, invisibly and malevolently raised to learn more about what happened to her.

The authors state on page 9:

“Media coverage of violence – murder and rape, gang violence, serial killings, the murder of parents, children, and coworkers – treats violent behavior as if it suddenly emerges from a developmental void.  It is a rare story that looks for the sources of this behavior even in preadolescence or grade school.  And this is far from the real root in most cases.  In order to understand the tide of violent behavior in which America is now submerged, we must look before preadolescence, before grade school, before preschool to the cradle of human formation in the first thirty-three months of life.  Those months, including nine months of prenatal development and the first two years after birth (33 months), harbor the seeds of violence for a growing percentage of American children.  In the violence equation…this is chapter one, the missing chapter.

“The ghosts of children lost to rage and despair, overlooked or abused by a community unaware of their existence, do retaliate.  These children – like all children – “do unto others.”  It may be easy and politically expedient to ignore them or to close eyes to the appalling circumstances of their lives while they are voiceless and powerless – little bodies tucked away where no one is looking.  But these children – grown larger and angrier – are swelling the rising tide of violent young offenders in our communities.  Range-filled adolescents only seem to come out of nowhere.  They come, too often, from the nursery.”

“As we begin to discover the previously unimaginable impact of the smallest insult to the brain at crucial times in development [and the stress hormones released during maltreatment of infants creates brain insult], we are beginning to see that much of what we have formerly written off as unknowable in origin and therefore unchangeable, can and must be prevented.  The current upswing in violent behavior is a clear sign of systemic distress.  If human life is to continue, our entire species needs to attend differently to our young.”  [addition of bold type is mine]

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+WHEN TRAUMA-DRAMA IS ALL OUR BODY KNOWS

alchemynow9 Comments

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It occurs to me after writing my last post that Trauma Drama is about all that my body knows.

Realizing this fact I immediately thought about soap carving!  I tried this once, only rather than finding the soap malleable, I found it to be fragile and everything I tried to make simple shattered in the course of carving.  Pieces flaked off the bar of soap where I didn’t intend them to, and my project ended up on the ledge of my bathtub where it met the end I believe – at least for me – soap is intended to meet!

So, now that my right brain and body has made the image-connection between trauma drama and soap carving I need to explore how these two factors of life might be connected.

When I left home and throughout all of my adulthood until I began my own research into what REALLY happened to me as a severely abused infant-child I was actually living a life of trauma drama – and of course didn’t even begin to know it.  Looking back, I own this truth because at the same time I realize that’s all my BODY knew about being alive.

I listened to my ‘deadbeat’ neighbor’s 18-year-old grandson and his comparable girlfriend yesterday as I labored on my yard project.  She screamed and cried.  He yelled and swore.  Over the years I’ve watched that boy (and now his girlfriend!) follow a pattern that I can not call anything BUT trauma drama.  With all the brilliance of a scholar and all the motivation of a chronic pothead I have watched with disappointment and some amazement as this boy (and obviously his girlfriend) simply toss the full potential of a wonderful life away.

Their drama yesterday had to do with her throwing a snit-fit that had evidently ended with her throwing his cell phone over the Mexican-American border fence behind our shared backyard line.  He was out there scrambling around searching for it.  It could not be found.  To these two young people this is the way to live life.  How sad is that?

And yet as I turn my own searchlight on my own life, I know I did little better.  Sure, I ‘sought recovery’ when I was thirty, but not even that did very much to help me except to get me ‘off of pot’.  Nobody back then actually knew what was wrong with me.  In fact, I don’t believe I could find maybe more than one ‘therapist’ in the whole state of Arizona (where I reside) that even now would have the savvy to know that what I am is a trauma-changed in my earliest development person with a body that knows only more of the same.

So, as I try to gain clarity and self-possessed choice, free will and control over how my life GOES now and how I FEEL in my body, I have to increasingly understand how absolutely and fundamentally NORMAL trauma actually feels for and in my own body.

Trying to carve for myself a non-trauma-drama life is something like trying to carve something exquisite and remarkably beautiful out of something as fragile as a bar of soap.  Only I don’t want the rest of my life to wash away as easily as a bar of soap does.  I will keep trying – with every breath – to avoid letting the DRAMA of TRAUMA reenact itself through MY life.  Giving it words in thought, giving myself the power of knowledge about how what happened to me from birth changed my development, finding my own way out of the repetitive darkness that trauma drama creates on the stage of human life is a worth – creative – and very artistic endeavor.

After all, even in the most glorious sunrise Creation has created beauty.  I want to follow THAT path – and not the OTHER one – however I am able to do that today.  If I have to teach my own body about this better way of life every step of the way, then I intend to do that.  Like driving a car with four bad tires, worn-out shocks and no front end alignment, I dare not take my hands off the wheel.  I cannot afford to take my eyes off my target.  I cannot carve out my better life with my eyes closed!

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+A LIFE COMPLICATED BY TRAUMA-ALTERED DEVELOPMENT (CHILD ABUSE RELATED)

alchemynow2 Comments

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Understanding how to live well in a body that was trauma-changed during its earliest physiological developmental stages due to abuse, neglect and maltreatment in an extremely unsafe and insecure malevolent environment is the challenge of many (if not most-all) adult survivors.  While I will never find a way to live free of this challenge, the more I can learn about the kinds of trauma-related developmental changes I experienced and how those very real changes affect me every instant of my life can help me to recognize when my trauma-changed BODY has taken over the reins of my life in the present moment.  Once I can recognize when I am experiencing something PHYSIOLOGICALLY I can try to apply a workable solution to live better today.

I did have a better day yesterday than I had the day before.  The terrible pain of my underlying overwhelming sadness (‘major depression’) was hiding yesterday like a water monster asleep somewhere near the bottom of the sea.

And in the space away from the sadness yesterday I was able to think somewhat more clearly about the triggers that contributed to the emergence of that sadness the day before.  As I tracked what had happened the ‘sadder day’ I realized the connection the triggering of that sadness had with my insecure attachment patterns (disorder).

I know enough to know that the complete absence of safe and secure attachment to any human being in my earliest years (as I at the same time experienced chronic and terrible abuse) fundamentally changed the way my body experiences life so that my so-called ‘anxiety’ (the foundation all my so-called ‘disabilities’ rests upon and stem from) can be said to ACTUALLY be an insecure attachment disorder.  Whatever the ‘later’ adult names, titles, diagnosis might be that are given to me, the actual problems I live with in my body ALL stem from how my dangerous and secure attachment-deprived earliest environment forced my body to change in its development as a consequence – so that I could endure and survive into this adulthood I work so hard to enjoy today!

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I can name my insecure attachment pattern ‘disorganized-disoriented’ and I am correct.  I also know I can name it an adult ‘reactive attachment disorder’ and I am also correct.  The nature and quality of our earliest attachment relationship environment signals our body to develop along lines designed for survival in either a mostly benevolent world or a mostly malevolent world.  If especially an infant-toddler does not get to develop in a safe and secure attachment universe, biological-physiological development simply takes an alternative route.   I live with the consequences of building a body-brain-mind-self along this alternative route every moment of my life.

So, what I learned yesterday about the day before yesterday is that my reaction to what is happening around me is very often exactly that:  a reaction.  I use activity patterns in my life today that sooth me.  Because my right brain-body did not form with internal self-soothing (and flexible emotional regulatory) abilities within in it, I am extremely reactive to everything that happens in my present-day world.  My gardening and my adobe-building takes the place as an external-to-me series of external activities that I use instead of internal abilities to get through my days.

I realized yesterday that what helps me feel more organized and oriented (in counterbalance to my internal patterns of dissociation-disorientation-disorganization) is to move through the projects of my day in a straightforward LINEAR way.  I don’t often plan my adobe building out very far ahead of time.  The next steps always seem to appear naturally as I move around the yard – transforming it into something more beautiful.

That’s all fine and good until I hit detours and snags and complications.  And that’s exactly what happened to me on my ‘sad trigger day’.  If I can’t dig where I want to next because the ground is far to cement-hard, and then when I soak it and discover there is no red clay there suited only for adobe work but rather there’s somewhat better (darker, browner, looser) soil that I best save for planting in – well, there’s an obstacle and a detour.

I can’t just USE this ‘better’ dirt.  I will have to move it and work around a ‘saving pattern’ for it until I can sift it later to get the Bermuda grass roots out.  Meanwhile I need to find another place in my yard to find the truly terrible red clay dirt – and then soak it so I can dig it, find a way to transport it – and often I have to dig in areas full of stones which is very unhappy work!

I noticed this yesterday as I closely paid attention to how I FELT – how my BODY felt – how I FELT in my body – yesterday as I began to detect a pattern:  When my work is going smoothly I am organized-oriented, relatively positive, happy and NOT so terribly sad.  When, on the other hand, my work hits serious (to me) obstacles I begin to disintegrate, fall apart, dissociate and become disorganized and disoriented again.

THIS state creates a wide open vulnerable space within me that seems to act like an actual arena for an ‘infection’ to set in.  My WOUNDS are triggered in my body from LONG AGO because those wounds built my body at the same time they built themselves into my body.  The trauma of my earliest years was so severe that it never leaves me – never never – because that trauma built me.  As long as I live in this body I am at risk for experiencing full-blown detours away from well-being back to the FEELING state of Hoororville.

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This self-awareness information might help me now and in the future to avoid the full slide into my overwhelming sadness.  If I can notice as immediately as possible when the upset occurs (when my patterns of order and orientation in the present moment become threatened) so that I can ACT before the REACTION (‘full infection’) takes a hold, maybe I can avoid that full slide into an emotional feeling state that quite frankly – totally sucks!

Otherwise the dissociation happens in the blink of an eye – and I end up ‘somewhere’ inside of myself I don’t want to be.  Then I most often don’t have a clue (a) how to get out of it, and (b) how I got into it so fast in the first place!

It seems sometimes like a gigantic Trauma Falcon just flew over me as if I were a tiny critter, snatched right out of an ‘ordinary’ day, carried me off against my will and devoured me while I helplessly did the one thing by body was formed to do best.  I suffer and I survive.

Well, my mission in life is to do A WHOLE LOT BETTER THAN THAT!  And to do that requires of me that I learn to do what nobody ever did for me while I grew up.  I need to care-give myself.  I need to pay as very close attention as I can to how patterns operate between me-myself-my body and the conditions of the external world.  At the very least I could say I am fragile (vulnerable).  And yet there’s a contradiction there.

I can imagine that Trauma Falcon snatching me out of ‘ordinary’ and thinking its going to get an easy meal out of me – only to find that I am TOUGH – too tough to devour, tough enough to survive – and more.  I am tough enough to continue to apply myself every moment I possibly can to empower myself to be so far ahead of that Trauma Falcon that I can sense even its shadow coming at me.

I am SICK of being its wanna-be meal!!

 

I respect YOU - but I will not be your meal!

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+STANDING IN THE EAST LIGHT: WHAT TRIGGERS MY ‘WORSER’ DEPRESSION?

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Yesterday I had a bad day.  I hurt.  All day.  And while I don’t know exactly why yesterday was one of my pretty-bad-days, I do know that what I suffered from is most commonly called an attack of ‘major depression’.  The thing is, those feelings that overwhelmed me yesterday are very real.  They FEEL like something.  And the best I can tell is that ‘something’ was pain.

Pain.  Here came that Substance P again (if this link goes dormant Google search “stopthestorm substance p”).  Pain.  I could name it sadness, but that’s exactly what my sadness is – PAIN.  Pain-full.  Pain-filled.  A very sad, painful day.

What was it about yesterday that dropped me squarely into that mire?  I don’t know.  And my not knowing scares me because it tells me nothing about what I can do differently TODAY to keep that pain away.

I DO remember that pain filled sadness, though.  Now that I have spent the time re-searching my own self, my own body, my own life, I can directly connect those feelings I had yesterday to how I felt every single day of my abusive childhood.

“Slow,” is what my Borderline mother called me.  “There’s Linda again, slow as always.  There’s Linda again being slow ON PURPOSE to irritate me, to drive me mad.”

My mother was mad all right, but her madness NEVER had a single thing to do with me, no matter how she labored night and day to convince the entire universe that everything, every solitary thing that was wrong in her life, wrong in my father’s life, wrong in my siblings’ life was my fault.

Wrong.

So first she built this terrible sadness into me with her terrible abuse of me, and then she punished me more and more and more ALSO because I was so sad – which manifested in my little growing body as SLOW.

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There have been times when I have super sad days and nights that I wonder if I am ‘picking up on’ or ‘tuned into’ the sadness of the world.  Heaven knows there is plenty of sadness in the world today, showing its signs nearly everywhere a person turns to look at it.  Might a sensitive person be able to feel something in their body with the knowledge that fully one billion human beings are starving to death while there’s plenty of food on the planet that lies out of their reach?  Might a person feel sad if they pay attention to all sorts of troubles that afflict all species on our glorious planet right now?

Yes, I do believe that humans can feel one another’s pain and sadness.  We are designed so that we are supposed to feel it – so we can in our caring compassion do something to help.  But not on a day like I had yesterday.  Simply surviving those days takes all I have within me – all of my personal resources I can find.

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Because since I was a little girl I have always had an affinity to plants, I think today as I prepare to go out to work on my garden about how much the plants love the morning’s east light.  I am just learning that.  I couldn’t figure it out at first.  Sunlight is sunlight.  How could EAST light be better than light streaming from any other direction?

Well, it is.  And evidently – especially here in the high desert – west light and south light past noon taxes the plants, stresses them out, demands of them that they use their resources not for growth and ‘flourishment’ – but rather they have to use their resources in anything other than the east light simply to survive the heat of those other kinds of light itself.

So whatever triggered my deeper levels of pain filled sadness (‘depression’) yesterday, I would avoid today if I knew what it was.  The only thing I can think of is that perhaps it is my blog writing itself that sometimes awakens feelings within me that just plain don’t fit the reality of my current life in its mainstream.  Yes, that tempts me not to write!  And as readers can tell there are periods of time when I fully back myself away from my keyboard and simply go spend my time in my own world’s east light.

There are other days when the writing IS connected to the east light.  Knowing when to approach and when to stay away is part of health, part of the health I strive for all of the time.  East light is the gentle light.  East light is the awakening growing sustaining light.   I can’t argue with that fact.  Neither can the plants.

It’s just that recognizing the quality of light I stand in isn’t always quite as simple for me to do as it is for a plant.  That’s OK.  That’s part of what my gardening will always be about — learning from the plant kingdom what promotes life and health and what does not.  So out I go today to learn some more — in the hopes that this day will be a gentle one for me.

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+WHY MY MOTHER ABUSED ME: POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER AFTER CHILDBIRTH

alchemynow2 Comments

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I absolutely believe with every fiber of my being that the horror, suffering, trauma, violence and terror that happened to me because my mother hated me would NOT have happened if my birth had not been a difficult one – that IN ITSELF traumatized my mother.  I believe that every horrible thing my mother did to me could be traced back to that ONE event:  My breach birth and the abusive medical treatment my mother received during it.  THIS event is what left me the target of my mother’s resulting madness.  Her abuse of me never had ANYTHING to do with me as an individual infant-child-person.

When I look back at my very long 18 year infant-childhood so full of my mother’s severe abuse of me that there wasn’t much time or room left for me to do anything else but survive it, today I have my inner spotlight focused on just THIS one thing:  The circumstances surrounding my birthing as they impacted my mother.  (See also:  *Litany from Start to Finish)

Out of all the children in my family (there were six of us) I was undeniably the sole and main focus of my mother’s terrible abuse.  At the same time it is obvious to all of my siblings now that my mother’s mind had not been ‘right’ well before I was born, it was the trauma of her birthing of me that created within her the severe psychotic break that created the inner conditions in her mind that found their way into the reality of my every breathing moment of the 18 years I spent enduring her violent and vicious wrath.

Today is the first day I have ever specifically NAMED what happened to her:  Birth trauma.  In my online searching I found some excellent websites that are designed to convey information, hope and help for mothers who experience birth trauma.  I have a very special point of view when I consider these sites because the birth trauma that my mother experienced LED DIRECTLY to the overwhelming and nearly unimaginable 18 years of torture I suffered from my mother as a direct result of this birthing trauma.

True, my mother no doubt suffered sexual abuse, neglect, infant maltreatment along with a whole array of difficulties in her earliest years that acted like a burning fuse to the bomb that FINALLY went off at the time of my birth.  But there is a chance – perhaps a very good chance – that if anyone had recognized how disturbed and traumatized my mother actually was as a result of her (and my) near death as she tried to deliver breach-me and had intervened to help her with her trauma IMMEDIATELY – perhaps none of what I suffered would have come to be.

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From:  Solace for Mothers – Healing after traumatic childbirth

Solace for Mothers is an organization designed for the sole purpose of providing and creating support for women who have experienced childbirth as traumatic. Birth trauma is real and can result from an even seemingly “normal” birth experience.

“ A traumatic event is defined as “The person has experienced, witnessed or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others and the person’s response involved fear, helplessness or horror” (DSM-IV). This certainly can happen during the birth of a child and can have long lasting effects on mother, baby and witnesses present at the birth.

The effects of trauma after childbirth include flashbacks of the birth, nightmares, avoiding and feeling stressed by reminders of the birth, feeling edgy, and experiencing panic attacks. Often these symptoms are confused with postpartum depression by mothers, doctors and mental health providers. To learn more about PTSD and trauma after childbirth, click here.

The resources available through this site offer immediate, personal support to mothers and others who are struggling with birth trauma, PTSD after childbirth and anxiety caused by their birthing experiences.

If you believe that you have been traumatized by your experiences of giving birth to your child, or by witnessing a birth of someone else’s child, Solace for Mothers has resources and supportive communities available for you.

Please browse our web site to learn more about Solace for Mothers. If you work with birthing women, please offer us as a resource. We are pleased to host two online communities where women and those who support them can connect around birth trauma concerns.”

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As my mother’s daughter, I was the living reminder of ‘the traumatic birth experience’.  Even though all the past negative experiences of my mother’s life contributed to the psychotic break she suffered during her birthing of me, the fact remains that it was the circumstance of MY BIRTH that led to the torture my mother did to me.

I also found this information online:

When a bad birth haunts you

The information provided at this link (above) is worth a read.  I was never ‘the baby’ to my mother after I was born.  I was the devil’s child who was sent to kill her while I was being born.  I do suspect that the anesthesia ‘Twilight Sleep’ (see also:  Twilight Sleep here) was given to my mother during labor, but even without the addition of that horrible drug my mother’s pre-Borderline Personality Disorder condition prior to my birth left her completely open and vulnerable to severe disturbance due to a difficult birthing experience.

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Healing the Trauma: Entering Motherhood with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by Jennifer Jamison Griebenow

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Birth Trauma:  Stress Disorder Afflicts Moms – Study suggests that PTSD may be more common than previously believed

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Birth Trauma Can Cause Women to Develope PPD & PTSD:  A Discussion About Birth Rape and Its Results

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Post Natal Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

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Birth Trauma: In the Eye of the Beholder

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The Birth Trauma Association (BTA) was established in 2004 to support women suffering from Post Natal Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or birth trauma. We are not trained counsellors or therapists or medical professionals. We are mothers who wish to support other women who have suffered difficult births and we aim to offer advice and support to all women who are finding it hard to cope with their childbirth experience.

The BTA is the only organisation in the UK which deals solely and specifically with this issue. We aim to tackle the problem with work which is focused on three main areas:

(1) Raising awareness of birth trauma
(2) Working to prevent it
(3) Supporting families in need

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“What do mothers, who perceive they have had traumatic childbirths, experience each year as the anniversary of their birth trauma occurs?  No research to date has focused on this phenomenon.  The purpose of this study was to describe the essence of women’s experiences regarding the anniversary of their birth trauma.”  Read article HERE

(In all my childhood my mother never joyfully celebrated my birthday – today I realize the birth trauma experienced was a DIRECT contributing factor to this part of my childhood reality, as well as to ALL of the abuse she did to me.)

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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder After Childbirth

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I am not saying in this post that my childhood and that of my siblings would not have been a living hell due to my mother’s mental illness.  What I am saying is that I – ME! – would not have been the target or the recipient of the kind of abuse that I was.  I also do suspect, however, that the progression of my mother’s Borderline Personality Disorder mental illness would have taken a different course had this birthing trauma not occurred, and whatever that course would have been  — had my mother not suffered the trauma of my breach birth in that particular hospital or had she received immediate and appropriate help even if trauma had occurred — nobody will ever know.

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+LEARNING HOW TO CHANGE PEACEFULLY (leaving the trauma-drama OUT!)

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Those of us who are committed to our own lifelong growth and development no doubt will experience periods of rest followed by periods of angst followed by periods of searching followed by periods of learning and then by periods of trying to find ways to expand our life to include changes that happen to us as a consequence of this entire process.

Sometimes the changes we see in our self and in our life are very DRAMATIC.  Many severe infant-child abuse survivors know DRAMA best because the entire universe that formed us was without healthy patterns of movement in any direction other than the directions fostered by despair and accomplished by violence (of all possible kinds).  Thus, for we survivors, learning to find a healthy, balanced pace for ourselves as we go through our life changes often doesn’t feel ‘normal’ to us.  We are used to the kinds of dramatic-traumatic UPHEAVALS our body-brain was formed by.

THOSE changes are to me kind of like PRIMORDIAL ones, and I think about volcanoes and earthquakes, tidal waves and forceful winds.  Nope!  I don’t want my own changes to follow THOSE kinds of courses anymore.  I want gentle change, change that I would recommend to happen as if they were happening in the presence of a little tiny infant.

Can there be such a thing as ‘peaceful change’?  Isn’t that an oxymoron-contradiction in words?  Is ‘peaceful’ something that happens when everything is staying EXACTLY the same (status quo), while ‘change’ is something that must ALWAYS mean trauma lurks somewhere?

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Being alive is always about change – or so I have heard.  I have also read over and over again in the writings of neuroscientific developmental experts that the best possible safe and secure infant-mother (caregiver) attachment relationships build a little one’s body-brain to be MOST flexible and LEAST rigid in its abilities to adapt to an ever-changing world over the course of a lifetime.

Severe abuse survivors adapted a body-brain in their earliest developmental growth periods in the midst of trauma that most usually remains most centrally in a ‘stress response-anxiety state’ nearly all of the time.  That kind of a body (and I sure have one) must learn over a long, long haul what the feeling of being peaceful even is.  At the same time, what we really ONLY know is continual change.

Infant-child abuse (to me) means that something bad and harmful is ALWAYS coming at the little one’s developing body, and this ‘always coming at’ creates continual threat to continued life and to continued survival.  All these ‘coming ats’ happen to the little one when it is most defenseless to prevent, predict, fight back or escape the really awful things that happens to it.  In other words, the ‘center of control’ is NOT within the power of the infant except as it can possibly find ways to adapt within its growing physiology.

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Finding ways to move past THIS kind of change reaction is probably actually what all survivor healing is truly about.  Our empowerment comes as we learn to recognize both internal needs for change and external demands for change while we remain at as close to a ‘peaceful-center’ as we can find within our self.  Not an easy task for survivors, but POSSIBLE as we make progress in our healing and growth.

This process for me seems to be like widening and improving the roadway I move down in my life.  My pathway in life began (and stayed for my first 18 years) nearly impassably treacherous.  I want to widen it now, level it, smooth it, make it so I can see behind me and in front of me so I can anticipate where I am going as I view where I have been more clearly.

Maybe my own ‘artistic and creative’ way of working on all of this is part of the motivation for all the adobe pathway-walkway work I do in my ever expanding own yard!  Who knows?

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+PRIMARY CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION – NEW YORK CUTS

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Cuts to Healthy Families New York Will Cost Us Dearly

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:36 PM PST on Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog

While I was happy to recently read about the successes Mt. Hope Family Center’s Building Healthy Children, a few days later the Governor’s budget proposal was revealed, and with it the complete elimination of funding for New York’s largest program that uses similar means to achieve similar outcomes.

The science of preventing negative childhood experiences, such as abuse, neglect and pre-term birth, before they happen is called primary prevention. Healthy Families New York has been a leading primary prevention program in New York state for sixteen years, and has fantastic data proving that mothers who enroll in it experience fewer low birth weight deliveries, lower rates of substance abuse and depression, and are less likely to abuse or neglect a child, even if they have abused or neglected a child in the past. After seven years, mothers who enroll in the program are less likely to have their child repeat a grade or receive special-education services, and they are more likely to have a child in a gifted program.

It is wonderful to give lip service to things like child abuse prevention and school readiness, but by eliminating funding to primary prevention programs, the governor’s budget actually costs us money in the short and long term. Healthy Families NY has been proven to save $50 in taxpayer money per family enrolled the year the family enrolls, and those savings increase as time goes by. The program has served between 4000-5000 families throughout the state in the last few years, so the savings are considerable. Leading economists have agreed that the best way to stimulate long-term economic growth is to invest in evidence-based early childhood programs such as Healthy Families NY.

In his race to close this year’s budget gap, the governor has managed to cut so deep as to lacerate a system that already saves us money. And he is doing it by dooming thousands of children to suffering needlessly throughout their lives.

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www.ted.comTED Talks Brene Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity

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+24 HOURS LATER – MORE BAD NEWS FOR VULNERABLE CHILDREN

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I just wrote a post on about the wonderful results the Healthy Families project has been generating for at risk children in New York: +NEW YORK’S ‘HEALTHY FAMILIES’ PROGRAM — GREAT FINDINGS! However a day later this distressing news comes through from the Prevent Child Abuse New York blog:

Governor Cuomo’s Budget Proposal Eliminates Funding for Healthy Families New York

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed state budget eliminates funding for one of New York’s most cost-effective and cost-savings programs, Healthy Families New York home visiting. This proposal would dismantle a program that has a proven record of preventing child abuse and also would make New York ineligible for federal grants that would improve the lives of more of our states’ most vulnerable children and families.

Healthy Families New York (HFNY) serves at-risk pregnant and new mothers in 38 of the state’s highest need communities. Cost savings begin immediately with healthier babies delivered, and continue for years with fewer incidents of child abuse, lower child welfare costs, and greater success in school leading to less need for special education services.

“We are dismayed that the Governor proposes ending the Healthy Families New York program, given the proven outcomes for children and the potential for significant additional federal funding for the state,” said Christine Deyss, Executive Director of Prevent Child Abuse New York. “This action would undo 16 years of work to develop one of the best state systems for early childhood home visiting in the country.”

A seven-year randomized trial evaluation of HFNY demonstrates:

  • Low birth weight deliveries are reduced.
  • Children’s preventive health care is improved.
  • Physical abuse is reduced and parents’ use of non-violent discipline increased.
  • Parents at the highest risk have fewer founded cases of abuse and neglect.
  • Fewer children need special education or repeat a grade.
  • More children do well on standardized test and are in gifted programs.

The average annual cost to provide HFNY services to a family is about $4,600. For low birth weight babies, additional medical costs in the first year of life range from $25,000 to $90,000, primarily paid by Medicaid and state sponsored insurance plans. The average annual cost to the state for foster care for a child who has been abused is more than $24,000; total federal, state and local expenditures on child welfare services in our state are approximately $2.7 billion. Special education services more than double the cost of a child’s education.

For families who had prior histories of child abuse or neglect, the program generated a return of more than $3 for every dollar spent in seven years, due to reduced involvement with the child welfare system and other government programs.

Prevent Child Abuse New York brought Healthy Families New York to the state, and we’ll continue to fight to keep the program going. We need all the help we can get! Please join our movement to reinstate funding for HFNY. You can start by signing up for our e-newsletters and action alerts so you can stay up-to-date on the latest developments in what will surely be a long and difficult struggle on behalf of New York’s most vulnerable children.

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This is exactly what I have been posting about!  As if we should EVER have to beg for help for our nation’s children by assigning a dollar value to their lives — as if they are objects with price tags attached!!

See series:

WE the U.S. and the WORLD

AND – OH OUR POOR BABIES!!!

Veteran Suicides Outnumber US Military Deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan

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