Tag: malevolent world

+DOES OUR NATION HAVE A CONSCIENCE REGARDING ADULT SURVIVORS OF SEVERE CHILD ABUSE?

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Please be sure to take a look at the slide show presented in this link I included at the bottom of last evening’s post about the Center for Disease Control’s latest research on the long term suffering caused by severe child abuse that occurs during the early stages of brain-body development:

“adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs)

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I believe it is critical that this kind of “new” information be coupled with understandings about the body-brain-mind evolutionary changes that those of us who survived the kind of malevolent experiences that the above research is highlighting had to make.

The kinds of life long difficulties the research points to happen not only because of the abuse itself, but because of these changes our body-brain-mind had to make.  Our bodies were designed in, by and for trauma.  We were never designed to live an ordinary life with an ordinary body-brain-mind.  We have to become completely clear about what these changes are and how they affect us.

Researchers and clinicians are going to continue to try to apply a piecemeal solution to an extremely complicated problem just as they always have.  Their efforts will NOT bring about any more positive a solution than they have thus far — which is PATHETIC — if the evolutionary adaptation to trauma during early development due to trauma and abuse is not the PRIMARY and PIVOTAL information used to assess ‘damage’ and effect lasting positive change for survivors.

Otherwise we will continue to be looked at as flawed people.  We are not remotely flawed.  We were terribly wounded as little infant-children, and we endured.  We are perfectly designed to survive what we had to survive or we would not be here!  Even though the adaptive changes we had to make prevent us from smoothly ‘fitting into’ an ordinary world,  they can still be not only recognized, but respected, honored and even applauded and celebrated for being the amazing human resiliency factors that they are.  If we value human life at all, we will know this truth in our bones.  And I believe for any healing to occur for us at all, this point of truth is where all efforts must begin.

The flip side of the coin of surviving intolerably horrible childhoods is that our body adapted for short-term heavy duty survival in trauma.  We are not adapted to a quality of life for the long haul.  THAT portion of our lives is what we need appropriate help with if we are to keep on living in a ‘benevolent’ world.

Nature designed us to live to our childbearing years and not much longer.  The ‘ordinary’ world we grew up into grants us a longevity we were not made for.   Sorry folks, this is the truth as I understand it as a survivor with this kind of trauma-changed body.  No wonder we are likely to contemplate or commit suicide.  I believe our body knows this truth.  This can make just staying alive yet another choice we have to make with conscious effort.

Everyone needs to get their thinking straight on these issues!  What ARE the priorities?  We survivors cannot magically remake our body-brains into ‘ordinary’ ones once the traumas of our childhood have ended.  These changes are with us for the rest of our lives.  Nobody tells us this fact or truly helps us live better with the changed body-brain that we have.  Surviving severe infant-child trauma and abuse is a costly affair.

Please, take a look at that link at the top here.  The Center for Disease Control is not a lightweight institution.  Their findings leave indelible marks on minds within the professional community.  To allow child abuse to continue at all, and to allow those adults who survived the kinds of abuse the ACE study highlights to continue to suffer, can only happen in a culture without a conscience.  For our culture to not consider the evolutionarily altered body-brain-mind development that survivors were forced to make in order to stay alive is even worse.

We will never be able to solve the problems related to severe early abuse and trauma — and survival of it — if we refuse to correctly describe and name what happens to change the course of our human development and how we responded.

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A WORD TO WISE WOMEN:

IF YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF SEVERE CHILD ABUSE, CONSIDER YOURSELF AT HIGH RISK FOR GETTING BREAST CANCER.  Today’s release of the news article at link below does not apply to you in the same way as it does to ‘ordinary’ women.  A mammogram beginning at age 40 should always be considered necessary for child abuse survivors who choose to be proactive on behalf of their well-being.

If your insurance requires a referral from your doctor, never hesitate to tell her/him the truth about your abuse history.  You can also mention the Center for Disease Control’s newly published findings on the major link between child abuse and the risk for serious adult disease.  We are not ‘making this up!’

Task Force Opposes Routine Mammograms for Women Age 40-49

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

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The Theory of Mind that a child forms by around the age of five is built upon the brain-mind bedrock that was itself built from every single early caregiver interaction that child experienced from birth.  If those early experiences were unstable, unpredictable, toxic and malevolent, there is no possible way that child can move on to their Theory of Mind developmental stage with an ‘ordinary’ foundation of benevolent safe and secure attachment.  Abused children have no choice but to end up with alterations in their eventual Theory of Mind.

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Having “the capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior” is, according to developmental neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Siegel, critical to being able “to provide sensitive and nurturing parenting.”  (see his writing at bottom of post)  Siegel calls having this capacity ‘mindsight’.  This is a BIG subject, and is directly tied to our early childhood development of a Theory of Mind (TOM).

Having this “capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior” affects ALL of our interactions with others, and I would add, all of our interactions between our self and our self, and our self and the whole world around us – because we are human and we process all information by using our human faculties.  Theory of Mind is HOW we are in the world.

Theory of Mind is directly tied to a developmental process that begins at birth that allows humans to understand others’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions behind actions.  Without an adequate (ordinary) Theory of Mind, an abused child cannot possibly understand EITHER others or their own self in an ordinary way.  The ability to recognize states of mind, to tolerate them in self or others, and to transition between them is connected to how an individual’s Theory of Mind operates.

This is a HUGE and critically important concept.  I encourage readers to follow some of the links above and to think about Theory of Mind as it affects all of our lives from the first thoughts we have until the last ones.  We are a social species.  If our Theory of Mind cannot develop through safe and secure early attachments, it will be ‘off center’ and ‘out of balance’ for the rest of our lives.  If we have a history of early and severe abuse, we have been given no choice but to try to understand and apply consciously to ourselves the kinds of ‘rules’ and ‘patterns’ of interaction with self and others that securely attached from birth people have built within themselves and never have to think about.

Ongoing life happens because of ongoing communication that involves patterns of signaling (down to the molecular level).  The signals must be sent, received and understood accurately for life to continue at all.  Any problems with communication signaling will be reflected in some kind of lack of well-being.  It is, to me, as simple as that.

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When I consider the statistics that tell us between 50% and 55% of us were raised from birth under ordinary safe and secure attachment conditions, I have to wrap my thinking around the fact that the other 50% to 45% of us were not, and that loss left us with some degree of insecure attachment disorder.  Given the vastness of degrees of difference among us according to how we were treated from birth, it is hard to make any blanket statements.  But I will say that I don’t like to think in terms of ‘damage’ due to irregular or malevolent early caregiving experiences.  I think in terms of ‘changed from the ordinary’.

I envision it like all of us are prepared one way or the other to get along in the ‘game of life’.  If I think about this like we are all prepared by our early experiences to join in a game of cards, I can see how all the problems we experience then play themselves out.

Somebody has to know the rules to the game.  Let’s say the securely attached half of us know these rules.  The rest of us don’t.  We end up with varying degrees of confusion, varying ideas about what this card game is about, how we are to participate, and what all aspects of the game MEAN to self and others.

I think about personality disorders like my mother had, or like someone who has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  I am beginning to understand that their difficulties in forming a solid, ordinary Theory of Mind in their early childhood left them prepared to take their place in the Card Game of Life in a very particular way.  My mother’s rules were rigid, bizarre and enforced – period.  Anyone who was forced to be a part of her card game had no choice but to play by her rules.

What if you and I were playing a card game and I drew a 2 of clubs.  But I had no tolerance for a 2 of clubs.  I believed I HAD to have a queen of diamonds.  If I was my mother, that 2 of clubs would BE a queen of diamonds, and there would be nothing you could do but play the game by my rules in spite of my delusion.  To try to challenge me or convince me of a different reality would cause WWII X to break out (at the very least).

Or, what if you were playing cards with me as I am in the world as a result of my having to grow up under my mother’s rules.  I simply would never really understand any part of this game.  Anything that I might know about playing remains illusive to me.  I have to reinvent myself in the game with every card that’s played – by me or by anybody else.

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My mother’s version of getting along in the world worked for her because she could exclude any incoming information that she believed on some level to threaten her.  I have great difficulty with excluding any information.  It all comes in, and I am left in the opposite camp from my mother.  I have to continually deal with everything on some level as if it is a new situation that I have never experienced before.

My way of being in the world is costly and exhausting.  My mother’s way, or the way of people with personality disorders (I believe) works better in many ways because it eliminates or greatly reduces the amount of information that has to be consciously experienced and dealt with.  Personality disorders simply allow a person to continue to play the Card Game of Life by a constricting set of rules that was set in place in their childhood and is not subject to change.  Only through a costly application of personal conscious will and effort can those patterns of interaction between the self in the world with others be changed.

I, on the other hand, have to apply great effort to find any kind of an ongoing structure from which to order, organize and orient myself in this world of others.  My mother built herself a mental box that she remained within her entire life.  It was her version of safety in the world.  That her version didn’t match external reality was not of the least concern to her.  She couldn’t afford to let it be.

I don’t have such a box, so I am not limited in my ability to feel unsafe and insecure in the world.  I am forced to recognize that I don’t really have much of a clue about how ordinary people get along in the world with each other.  My mother really didn’t, either, but her personality disorder protected her from ever having to experience that fact.

My mother did not have to feel the experience of being completely baffled, confused, disoriented, disorganized, unsafe and insecure in the world.  She could not have tolerated that reality, so from a very young Theory of Mind developmental stage, she invented her own reality.  Because her version of reality so completely included the need to project her own sense of badness out onto me, and because her focus was so intense, powerful and all consuming, there was absolutely NO ROOM for me to develop any sense of my own cohesiveness as an individual self.  I could only exist entirely as a fixated-upon card within the deck of playing cards she held in her hand for the first 18 years of my life.

The only tiny fragments of self identity that I could form happened in spite of my mother’s focused hatred of me.  They could not become integrally connected to one another because of my mother’s nearly constant interruption of my process.  I could not think with a Theory of Mind of my own because there was no room in my mother’s card game for that to happen.  I am left now trying to piece together all the millions of tiny fragments of my self into a beautiful vase that is Linda even though that vase was never allowed to exist in the first place.  This has left me with a Dissociative Identity Disorder without the identities.  And yes, this CAN happen because it DOES happen.

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Where does this leave me in regard to Siegel’s statement about having the “capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior?”  I am nearly at ‘ground zero’ where anything and everything is possible.

I came out of my childhood with 2 strong and related missions in life:  “Be good so you don’t get into trouble,” and “don’t hurt anybody else if you can help it.”  I at least had those two cards in my hand, and as it turns out they both acted as wild cards.  I have been able to ‘act as if’ I had a clue about playing the Card Game of Life, but this is a very expensive way to get along in life.

I have always felt as if I am on the outside looking in on ‘ordinary’ life.  I am conscious of what this state feels like.  I see my condition as being the opposite of my mother’s.  She was locked up on the inside of herself looking out, and had to manipulate every possible experience to fit her inner reality.  She did not have to be conscious of how her reality operated in the world or how she affected others.  I am continually left trying to figure everything out as I go along.

In the end, the price of my mother’s way of being in the world cost her every single caring, loving relationship that she could have had.  In the end there was no way around the fact that she was locked in the box of her personality-disordered, insecurely-attached self and was absolutely alone.

At least with my way of being in the world I can keep on trying, always trying to understand, to re-form my Theory of Mind and the way I am with myself and others in the world.  I understand I have never had, nor will I ever have, the benefit and luxury of being an ordinary person in ordinary relationship with ordinary people in any ordinary way.  But I do have the luxury my mother never had of at least being able to comprehend this truth so that I can try to change some things about how I am in the world for the better.

I suffer from having too much flexibility in my being while my mother suffered from having too little.  My state of being in the world involves uncertain and nearly constantly changing reflections.  My mother had no ability to tolerate any reflection at all.  I retained the gift of changeability.  My mother (and others with severe personality disorders) left that gift behind them in their early childhoods.

I would rather suffer from too much changeability in myself than have none at all.  At least having my wild cards, having the capacity to know that they are wild cards, having the capacity to learn how I am different from ‘ordinary’  people and knowing I can realistically change lets me stay in the game.

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“Moreover, the capacity to reflect on the role of mental states in determining human behavior is associated with the capacity to provide sensitive and nurturing parenting….this reflective function is more than the ability to introspect; it directly influences a self-organizational process within the individual…..the reflective function also enables the parent to facilitate the self-organizational development of the child….the coherent organization of the mind depends upon an integrative process that enables such reflective processes to occur….integrative coherence within the individual may early in life depend upon, and later facilitate, interpersonal connections that foster the development of emotional well-being.  (Siegle/tdm/312)”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This post follows:

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

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

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THIS INFORMATION COMES TO YOU FROM:

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

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

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

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

Positive Parenting Can have Lasting Impact for Generations

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 07:15 PM PST

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

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

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

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

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+SECURE AND INSECURE ATTACHMENT AND THE CHILDHOOD NARRATIVE

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This post follows +DISSOCIATION AND THE TRAUMA-SPECIALIZED BRAIN from November 11, 2009

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I woke today as if in a different world than usual.  The wind is tearing around my house as if it is demanding something from me and I don’t know what it wants.  The wind is angry.  It rips leaves off of trees and chases them madly around the yard.  With its roaring and whistling it has stolen all my peace away.  It is harder to remember who and when and where I am.

If only the wind would stop and the sun would come out so calm would again surround this body I am in.  Then I could be more certain that my past was in the past and I am in the here and now.  I can I not help feeling challenged and disturbed, made uneasy and agitated in this wind.

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I wanted to continue to write this morning about secure-autonomous attachment.  I read Dr. Daniel Siegel’s words again:

“The abilities to reflect upon one’s own childhood history, to conceptualize the mental states of one’s parents, and to describe the impact of these experiences on personal development are the essential elements of coherent adult attachment narratives.  (Siegle/tdm/312)”

I do not understand these words.  I do not have the “abilities” Siegel is describing.  I cannot possibly begin to “conceptualize the mental states” of either one of my parents.  I cannot “describe the impact of these experiences” on my development without consulting complicated information from infant and child brain scientists’ research.

If having the ability to “reflect” on my childhood, to “conceptualize” the minds of my parents, to “describe” the impact my childhood experiences on how I developed “are the essential elements of coherent adult attachment narratives,” then I am forced to admit I am coming up empty and confused as if some drastic, terrible wind ripped any chance I might have to begin to think about myself in my life ‘coherently’ from the beginning of my life away as surely as this morning’s wind is forcing away any semblance of a calm and peaceful day.

I feel angry that I have been robbed.  There is no corner of my childhood I can return to without being engulfed in turbulence and trauma.  I am as incapable of ‘conceptualizing’ particularly the mind of my mother at age 58 as I was the day I was born.  That children and the adults they grow into are SUPPOSED to be able to conceptualize the minds of their parents seems beyond belief to me.  I cannot begin to make an attempt in that direction, any more than I can begin to conceptualize the mind of the wind.

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Can I begin to understand that my lack of ‘abilities’ to convey even to myself a coherent story of myself in this life from the time of my beginnings is NOT because I am personally deprived, but that this lack of abilities comes directly from the kinds of terrible experiences I had to survive in my parents’ home?  It doesn’t FEEL that way.  It feels that somehow there is something wrong with me that I do not possess these essential requirements Siegel lays out for being an ‘ordinary’ safe and securely attached individual.

Do I understand that I cannot control the wind?  Do I understand that the only way I can ensure that the force of the wind is not directly affecting me is by seeking shelter from it?  Was there any possible shelter I could have sought as an infant-child to escape the terrible storm of my childhood?  No, there wasn’t, except as I could isolate myself in my brain-mind because the only hope of remaining apart from the traumas that I endured ONLY existed within the walls of my own skin.

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The words, “There are many rooms in my Father’s mansion” come into my mind.  Because from birth I had no choice but to try to survive within my body as my only protection from insane abuse, it was within me that I had to create these ‘many rooms’ so that the overwhelming traumas I had to endure did not engulf me, swallow me up and destroy me.  My mother’s mind was a cauldron of malevolent chaos.  I am sorry, child development experts, but conceptualizing that kind of mind is not only humanly impossible, it is against all instinct for ongoing survival.

In order to ‘reflect’ on another person’s mind so that it might be ‘conceptualized’, one must be able to make some connection between one’s own mind and the other’s.  Do attachment researchers understand how humanly impossible it is to do this when a parent’s mind is ‘on the other side’ of being human?  My mother was the antithesis of being a mother.  I know I am not alone in my experience.  But I take issue with the suggestion that there’s something wrong with me that I lack the abilities necessary to accomplish the impossible!

The only people I can imagine that could possibly ‘conceptualize’ the mind of my mother would be other mothers who had minds nearly exactly like hers.  What a fantastic delight of an experience it would be to put my mother and the other two mothers I know of like her in an observation room and then ask them all the ‘right’ questions!  Now THERE would be an opportunity for learning!

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Short of having this kind of opportunity to explore my mother’s mind – which is, of course impossible because she is dead – I am fighting against having to take on the burden of believing I am at fault in any way for not being able to conceptualize her mind.  Ability is not the right word.  I was born with the ability to accomplish what Siegel is suggesting IF I had been provided with parents whose minds were ‘conceptualizeable’!  Nobody can conceptualize what is impossible to conceptualize!

“The abilities to reflect upon one’s own childhood history” – I have the ability to state today that my mother was insane, that my father supported her madness, that my childhood was chaotic, malevolent, dangerous, traumatic, and only survivable because I had the ability to survive it!  That the thousands of abuse memories I might have are stored in their corresponding ‘many rooms’ in the ‘mansion’ of my body where I cannot get to them does not mean that I am in any way more ‘disabled’ than anyone else would be if they had endured the same experiences.

The mansion of my body DOES coherently remember everything that has ever happened to me.  However, it is also a physiological fact that if there were enough stress hormones present at the time the traumas occurred, they would have fried the brain cells designed to store the facts of my experience so that only the emotional memories remained — in my body.

Coherency, as the developmental brain specialists are using the word, applies to their version of remembering the FACTS that tell the linear (left brain) story in words (narrative) of a person’s childhood.  These researchers neglect to mention that an intact, living, breathing, moving, sustainable body is proof enough that coherency is a much larger concept than they seem willing to conceive of.

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If I am fighting for the right to stand on my square foot of ground upon this earth in dignity without being judged as being somehow deficient or insufficient or unable to tell a coherent life story, if I am making the statement that I was born with the ABILITY to do so, that I still have this ability, and that the problem is in NO WAY because of any fault of mine but rather lies in the fact that my childhood was simply NOT COHERENT – and that nobody could tell a true story of madness and MAKE it coherent – then where do I go for my proof?

I am going to the dictionary.  I want to learn about this word ‘abilities’ (root word being ‘able’) that Siegel has thrown out as his defining qualification for everything else he says about being the kind of parent who can provide safe and secure attachment to their offspring.

What did I find in my exploration about the word and its family of relatives?  When I try to find ‘coherency’ or understanding about words I always try to find how they are connected in the language of English at the time of their appearance into our language as far back as I can find them – which is always ‘before the 12th century’.

I find that ‘able’ is a young word in our language.  So are its relatives ‘habit’ and ‘give’.  I tracked the word back to its older ancestor words ‘have’, ‘heave’, ‘hold’, and ‘take’.  Interestingly, the word ‘heaven’ is connected through its origins to ‘heave’, and by association of opposites, I find ‘hell’ connected to the word ‘conceal’ and from there to ‘hide’.

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I would understand that a dive into the origin and meanings of words might not be something many readers have found to be useful in the past.  Yet we are talking about a BIG subject – our lives and our well-being as it began either in a childhood close to heaven, or in a childhood closer to hell.  If you keep an open mind and meander among the following words, you can see that in our language such subjects as entitlement appear.

Being ‘able’ involves having resources to accomplish a goal.  I was born with and have retained the ability to tell a coherent story about my childhood if I had been given a coherent childhood to tell about.  I have the skill, but I cannot accomplish an impossible task to make madness, chaos and insanity into anything else other than what it was:  incoherent.

I was ‘given’ that childhood’  It was a nasty ‘present’, and I would much rather have had a different one.  The experiences of terrible trauma that I went through were put into my possession and I work as hard as I can to make the best use possible that I can out of what was done to me-given to me.

I cannot make my childhood into anything other than what it was.  It is the childhood that I have.  It is a part of the whole of who I am.  Under the definition of ‘have’ we read:  “to experience especially by submitting to, undergoing, or suffering.”  I performed the best that I could both to endure it and to survive it.

What is the relationship between this subject and ‘heave’ as it relates to ‘heaven’?  ‘Heave’ being related to labor and struggle.  Yet in the origins of this word we can directly see the same origins connected to our word for ‘heaven’.  Both words contain an image of ‘’lifting and heaving something up into the air’.  We are talking old language thinking here.  We are talking about trying to conceive of a ‘place’ beyond comprehension.  Where else would we put our conception of heaven but ‘up there’?

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Children are supposed to have good childhoods.  Good childhoods provide no challenge to telling a coherent story about them.  The reality is that some of us have the opposite kinds of childhoods, and it is through no fault of ours that we cannot make them into coherent childhood stories.  On our end, where hell was the norm, ‘concealing’ and ‘hiding’ from our conscious mind experiences that would have overwhelmed our self to death was our only alternative.  Dissociation allowed us to do this.

We cannot possibly tell a coherent childhood story in words about what is hidden and invisible, which is where most of our childhood realities are stored.  We have to believe ourselves!  We have to trust what we do know about our childhoods, even if we simply reduce what we know to our sense of ourselves when we were little.  We know.  Nothing was ever hidden FROM our body.  What we cannot access directly is hidden WITHIN our body.  There is no other possible place for it to be.  I AM my life story.

That means to me that being here alive today IS my coherent story.  My body IS my coherent story – all of it, every single last minute detail of it.  Seigel and other developmental experts are suggesting that it is in the telling of a coherent VERBAL narrative that all hope of having future and ongoing safe and secure attachment lies, including those with our children and mates.  I have to think bigger, because I know better.

I am not my mother.  My mind is ordered in a very particular trauma-survival-based way, but it is NOT in chaos, even if I cannot detect in words what I most know about having been raised through 18 years of terrible abuse.  ‘Coherent’ is a young 1555 word in our language.  Where did it come from?  What meaning is it connected to?  What are its ancestors?

It is related to the idea of sticking things together.  ‘Stick’ has been in our language from before the 12th century:  “to put or set in a specified place or position.”  I am here to tell all the attachment experts that I am stuck together just fine!  Everything I have been through is stuck somewhere inside of me, as well.  That I don’t have words to neatly spin a tidy heavenly story from my childhood in hell does mean I COULD NOT if I had an entirely different story to tell.

To me, what Siegel is really saying is that most patterns of ongoing intergenerational transmission of safe and secure attachments happen among adults who can put their childhood narrative into words.  OK.  I get it.  I can tell my childhood narrative with a three word statement about my childhood.  “It was hell.”  If I tell someone that and they do not understand what I am saying, there are not enough words in the universe to explain to them what my childhood was like.

Meanwhile, the wind has stopped blowing.  All is calm outside my house now.  I like that.  Peace and quiet now mean the world to me.  The version of hell I endured was a very wild and noisy place!  Those of you who have been there, too, know exactly what I am talking about, and I don’t have to spin a coherent narrative to tell you what I mean!  How cool is that?

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HERE ARE THE WORDS RELATED TO THIS POST’S  SEARCH:

able

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin habilis apt, from habēre to have — more at habit

Date: 14th century

1 a : having sufficient power, skill, or resources to accomplish an object b : susceptible to action or treatment
2 : marked by intelligence, knowledge, skill, or competence

habit

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin habitus condition, character, from habēre to have, hold — more at give

Date: 13th century
3 : manner of conducting oneself : bearing
5 : the prevailing disposition or character of a person’s thoughts and feelings : mental makeup
6 : a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior
8 : characteristic mode of growth or occurrence

give

Etymology: Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Swedish giva to give; akin to Old English giefan, gifan to give, and perhaps to Latin habēre to have, hold

Date: 13th century

1 : to make a present of
2 a : to grant or bestow by formal action b : to accord or yield to another

3 a : to put into the possession of another for his or her use

have

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English habban; akin to Old High German habēn to have, and perhaps to hevan to lift — more at heave

Date: before 12th century

transitive verb 1 a : to hold or maintain as a possession, privilege, or entitlement  b : to hold in one’s use, service, regard, or at one’s disposal  c : to hold, include, or contain as a part or whole

3 : to stand in a certain relationship to

4 a : to acquire or get possession of
5 a : to be marked or characterized by (a quality, attribute, or faculty)

6 a : to experience especially by submitting to, undergoing, or suffering b : to make the effort to perform (an action) or engage in (an activity)

heave

Etymology: Middle English heven, from Old English hebban; akin to Old High German hevan to lift, Latin capere to take

Date: before 12th century

intransitive verb 1 : labor, struggle

heaven

Etymology: Middle English heven, from Old English heofon; akin to Old High German himil heaven

Date: before 12th century

1 : the expanse of space that seems to be over the earth like a dome : firmament —usually used in plural
2 a often capitalized : the dwelling place of the Deity and the blessed dead b : a spiritual state of everlasting communion with God
3 capitalized : god 1
4 : a place or condition of utmost happiness

hold

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English healdan; akin to Old High German haltan to hold, and perhaps to Latin celer rapid, Greek klonos agitation

Date: before 12th century

transitive verb 1 a : to have possession or ownership of or have at one’s disposal  b : to have as a privilege or position of responsibility  c : to have as a mark of distinction
4 a : to have or maintain in the grasp
6 a : to enclose and keep in a container or within bounds : contain

take

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English tacan, from Old Norse taka; akin to Middle Dutch taken to take

Date: before 12th century

transitive verb 1 : to get into one’s hands or into one’s possession, power, or control

4 a : to receive into one’s body (as by swallowing, drinking, or inhaling)

hell

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old English helan to conceal, Old High German helan, Latin celare, Greek kalyptein

Date: before 12th century

conceal

Etymology: Middle English concelen, from Anglo-French conceler, from Latin concelare, from com- + celare to hide — more at hell

Date: 14th century

1 : to prevent disclosure or recognition of <conceal the truth>
2 : to place out of sigh

hide

Etymology: Middle English hiden, from Old English hȳdan; akin to Greek keuthein to conceal

Date: before 12th century

transitive verb 1 a : to put out of sight : secrete b : to conceal for shelter or protection : shield
2 : to keep secret
3 : to screen from or as if from view : obscure
4 : to turn (the eyes or face) away in shame or angerintransitive verb 1 : to remain out of sight —often used with out
2 : to seek protection or evade responsibility

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+DISSOCIATION AND THE TRAUMA-SPECIALIZED BRAIN

alchemynow4 Comments

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Because of my traumatic experiences with my mentally ill mother from birth, I did not form an ordinary brain.  My thought processes while writing this post reflect some of the difficulties I have always experienced because my brain formed differently.  Similar to the way an air flight might experience turbulence, I have turbulence in my thinking whenever I try to follow an ‘ordinary’ brain’s train of thought.

This does not mean that I am wrong or broken.  Yes, I was wounded, but the resiliency within me coupled with my determination to endure and survive allowed me in the end to become a very special sort of person.  I will just always think in my special way, and I will always struggle to bridge the chasm that can exist between the way my extra-ordinary brain works and the way ordinary-formed brains work in an ordinary world.

I will continue over time to process the secure and insecure attachment information as I try to understand what the experts know and match it in some way with what I know from within myself about, in particular, dissociation.

Here are my thoughts for today on the brain science concept of ‘coherence’.  I am not going to try to edit them or to give them any other organization or orientation than they had when they lined themselves up on this page as a result of my thinking process.

Yes, these thoughts feel turbulent to me.  That would not be my choice, but then I had no choice about how my brain-mind had to form itself in the beginning of my life.  Nor do I have much choice about how my brain-mind regards and processes information today.  This is what happens for me when I try to even begin to understand what forms the basis of a safe and secure organized attachment system.

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The advantage of my writing about the topic of secure-autonomous adult attachment is that I can take what ‘ordinary’ brained researchers say about the subject and translate it for myself though my ‘extra-ordinary’ brain.  I have the powerful advantage now of knowing absolutely that my childhood was just about as devoid and empty of secure attachment people as it could possibly have been.  I no longer even try to find out who exactly might have been there for me to give me what I needed to form secure attachments.  I know there was nobody.

Whatever attachment I had with my mother’s mother was contrived.  It was set up by my mother according to her rules so that it could fit within her reality, or should I say, fit her ‘dis-reality’ and ‘un-reality’.  My mother’s mind was nothing less than bizarre and distorted when it came to her thinking about me.  I can’t say it was ‘disorganized’ because her psychosis gave her the most rigid organization possible without possibility of rearrangement – ever.

When I read what the experts tell us about safe and secure infant-child attachment I have to stretch my thinking as far as I can manage in order to try to begin to understand on a deep and honest level within myself what it is these people are saying.  I am coming from the position of being raised in a world just about as far away from what researches consider ‘optimal’ early conditions as it might be possible.  Just as I do not believe those researchers can stretch their minds far enough to begin to comprehend my reality, I am not sure that I can stretch mine far enough to begin to understand theirs.

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Dr. Daniel J. Siegel makes this statement, “…the way adults can flexibly access information about childhood and reflect upon such information in a coherent manner determines their likelihood of raising securely attached children.”  (siegle/tdm/312)

Taking the meat of the nut out of its shell, I read this as if it is a directive not only about how to be an adequate parent, but also how to get along in the ‘ordinary’ world in an ‘ordinary’ way:  “flexibly access information about childhood and reflect upon such information in a coherent manner.”

But what does Siegel mean by ‘coherent’?  My guess he knows what it means because he has it.  Very few, if any people who lack his version of coherency in their brain-minds make it to the top levels of any professions – for all kinds of reasons I won’t go into at this moment.  I still want to know what this key to secure attachment means because from my own experiences, and in my world, coherency as Siegel describes it does not exist.

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Siegel states:  “Integration establishes a sense of congruity and unity of the mind as it emerges within the flexible patterns in the flow of information and energy processes of the brain, both within itself and in interaction with others.  This is coherence. “

Wow.  Those words are a mouthful.  I cannot comprehend what he is saying without applying an incredible amount of effort.  I will try to break this apart as I hunt for some meaning that I can make sense out of from inside MY version of an abuse-formed extra-ordinary brain-mind.

Integration

Sense of congruity

Unity of the mind

Well, right here I get lost because I cannot break apart the next group of words:  unity of mind as it emerges within the flexible patterns

But then it goes further:  mind as it emerges, not just any mind, but a unified mind – and this living unified mind emerges, but does not emerge in any old way, does not emerge in a disorganized, disoriented, inflexible-rigid way.  This ‘sense of congruity’ and this ‘unity of the mind’ emerges continually along with every breath of life.  This happens (or not) through flexible patterns that were built into the brain by – yup! – by our experiences with our early caregivers from birth.

When the mind has this sense of congruity, and has its unity, it can continually engage flexibly within all interactions a person has in life.  These flexible patterns are, according to Siegel, “in the flow of information and energy processes of the brain.”  Well, it should not surprise us that under varying degrees of reverse conditions this entire process suffers from some degree of break down, or deviation from what Siegel is not only describing as optimal, but also as what is supposed to be ordinary.

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I am rapidly finding out as I try to make sense of Siegel’s description of ‘coherence’ is that I cannot understand what he is saying because I have a brain built in the opposite way from what he is describing.

I see an image of me being dropped from an airplane from a mile up in the air with a parachute attached to me.  I land in a fresh, hot wad of bubble gum the size of an average Wal-Mart.  That’s how I feel trying to grasp what he is saying.

It is hard to imagine that this finely working brain Siegel is describing would have been built entirely by appropriate early infant-child interactions with safely and securely attachment autonomous early caregivers!  But that is exactly what he is saying.

And the problem here for me is that Siegel knows exactly what he is talking about and says what he means PERFECTLY in these few words in this single sentence – that I cannot possibly begin to understand!  Believe it or not!

So, I will write my version of a statement about what having a brain built by my disorganized and disoriented insecurely attached, unsafe psychotic borderline mother gave me!  I have the opposite of a ‘coherency’ built brain, so OK, here goes —

SIEGEL’S VERSION OF AN ORDINARY BRAIN’S OPERATION:  Integration establishes a sense of congruity and unity of the mind as it emerges within the flexible patterns in the flow of information and energy processes of the brain, both within itself and in interaction with others.  This is coherence.

MY VERSION OF AN EXTRA-ORDINARY TRAUMA FORMED BRAIN’S OPERATION:  Disintegration establishes a (non)sense incongruity and disunity of mind as it attempts to emerge within the inflexible (rigid, disorganized and disoriented) patterns in the (disorganized and disoriented, interrupted and often chaotic) flow of misinformation and disturbed energy processes of the brain, and all of these disturbances exist and are experienced both within this brain itself and in all its interactions with others.  This is incoherence.

BUT, I would have to add from my own experience, that this ‘incoherence’ is experienced as DISSOCIATION.

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OK, great.  How exactly are we supposed to get along in the ‘ordinary’ person’s world of coherence when our brains were built under opposite conditions so that we have changed brains that will NEVER work the same as these ‘ordinary’ brains do?  We cannot return to our early infant-child body-brain-mind developmental stages so that the foundation and formation of our brain can be done over again!  Never.  Never.  Never.

The first step to improving our chances for experiencing anything like well-being in the world is to begin to understand what these researchers know about ordinary brain development and combining it with what we know about our own early experiences and what happened to our forming brains as a consequence.  We need to learn how our brains process life with a different kind of logic.

Because my personal experiences happened to me under the care of a mad woman, I am nearly completely on the opposite end of the brain-formation spectrum that Siegel is describing.  BUT, I AM STILL HERE!  I might be completely stuck in a bubble gum mess trying to understand Siegel’s description of an ordinary, healthy brain-mind, but I can also at the same time understand that the way my brain formed, even though it is very different in many fundamental ways from the one Siegel describes, DOES WORK.  It kept me alive throughout my childhood and it keeps me alive today.

But, my brain IS DIFFERENT!  It is NOT BROKEN.  Now, to all reasonable description, my mother’s brain was broken.  The changes her growing and developing brain had to make did not allow her to possess even temporary or sporadic flexibility in her thinking.  I can think flexibly, but not in a continual, ongoing ‘mind emerging in the moment’ way.

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Dr. Temple Grandin, autistic author of many books and world renowned expert on communicating with animals, talks about how she sees the world in pictures.  I believe I feel the world in pictures and think about it in dissociated pieces, or ‘packets’ of information.  Access to and transition between these dissociated packets of information is not frequently either smooth or predictable.

I am most fortunate that depending on the day and on the topic, my brain can link some or many of these pieces together at one time or another.  But never will I have a continuous, feeling, integrated, coherent story to tell myself or anybody else about myself in the world.

Any version of a continuous story I might form will be contrived, artificial and primarily constructed by my ‘logical’ left brain that has learned some things about how others make sense of their lives – and therefore how I OUGHT to be able to do the same.  Some days I can do this better than others by consciously pretending that I know all the experiences that happened to this BODY that Linda is attached to belong to the thinking, feeling, remembering person that Linda is supposed to be.

Yet the Linda that I MOST am feels like a bird might that soared over some particular piece of geography ten years ago, or 30 years ago, or 2 days ago without picking up the actual place and carrying it along.  I pass through ‘things’, pass by them, pass over them – or they pass through me.  But I feel very transparent, like the true form of who I am has never become embodied in my life in this world.  I absolutely and fundamentally do not process myself in  ‘time and space’ experience in ordinary ways.

Thanks to my mother, my body-brain-mind-self didn’t grown ‘down into the world’ as Dr. James Hillman calls it.  Whatever pieces of me made it into myself in my body in my life in this world are not completely integrated in the ordinary brain that Dr. Siegel has described.

I actually do not believe that neuroscientists or infant-child brain development specialists have ANY IDEA how big a deal dissociation can be!  I don’t think they can understand this kind of a reality any more than I can understand theirs.  I suffer today from a similar problem I had with my mother in the beginning.  There is nobody around to help me make sense of a sensible world, so I have to figure it all out by myself.

There is no retreat, no seminar, no self-help book, no religious text, no university class, no philosophical approach, no kind of meditative practice, no psychological theory that will ever ACTUALLY be able to help me understand how my changed brain operates in this world.  I was forced to grow a specialized brain, a very well-adapted-to-ongoing-trauma body-brain-mind.  I can take what developmental neuroscientists say about how things work when early brain formation experiences go RIGHT and try to translate that information into what happens when early brain formation experiences go terribly WRONG.

I am somewhat of an expert about that field of study!  In a more perfect world, or in a more advanced one (silly thought because in THAT world the kind of abuse that changes an infant-child’s developing brain would not be happening) I would be able to easily access information that would tell me how ordinary brains work, how extra-ordinary brains work, and how I can better experience well-being BECAUSE of how special my brain-mind is.  Well, evidently in THIS world, I will try until my dying breath to figure this out for myself.

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In this post I am trying to comprehend and make use of the information contained here:  *Attachment Simplified – Secure Attachment (Organized)

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+I’M HAVING AN IRRITABLE DAY! AND SOME BPD INFO….

alchemynow2 Comments

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If I were going to anything today, I would apologize — because I am the most irritable and irritated that I can remember being.  Between the 3 hour wait with ‘the group of poor people’ last week (part of the hoop-jumping process as all they did was tell us to come back a week later and wait again), and the 5 hour wait today — outside, fortunately in beautiful weather — waiting for some winter help with fuel assistance.

When it was my turn to go inside, finally, I was told they ran out of money for the program over an hour earlier only nobody bothered to poke their head out the door and tell those of us out there still waiting — well, I am more than a bit crabby!

I didn’t realize I could GET this crabby.  It turns out there was money for anyone with an overdue utility bill through a completely different program than the one I thought I was jumping through all the hoops to participate in.  Fortunately I did have a $20 light bill that was due last Friday, so I SHOULD feel grateful that one got paid.  They told us we can come back in early December, although they don’t know exactly when yet, and go through the double-wait all over again.

But at the moment I am so irritated and irritable I can only be grateful I can return home where there is nobody to bother — and work to calm myself down.

Now at 58 it seems I have an entire lifetime of irritable-crabby that has been sitting here inside me all these years!  I know intellectually that irritability is tied to ‘depression’ and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but I think this is just another one of those emotional-dysregulated-right-brain experiences that today has taken over my body!

This is a part of my disability, but fortunately my contact with others can be very limited right now.  This was way too much stimulation for one day!  I am very much reminded of what the child diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) can feel like as an adult.  Where do the professionals think RAD vanishes to once our body gets bigger?  There are just some times I can no longer find the ‘nice Linda’, today — right now — being one of those times.

I mean, even the song of the Mexican ice cream truck running down the street behind my house on the other side of the Border Wall is jangling my nerves!

If I had a horse, I’d go riding.  But then if I could afford a horse, I wouldn’t be standing in line to try to get help paying my utility bills this winter.  Just more of the same:  History of Childhood Maltreatment Linked to Higher Rates of Poverty

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THIS FROM:

Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog
Child Abuse Prevention Programs at Risk: Call Your Legislators Today!Posted: 09 Nov 2009 09:53 AM PST

Special Session of the Legislature Tomorrow: Home Visitation, Trust Fund, Child Advocacy Centers, Kinship Care at Risk

Call Your State Legislators Today!

Governor David Paterson has called for a special session of the New York State Legislature to commence tomorrow, November 10th, to address the growing state deficit. While we are not certain what will take place during the special session, we know that the Governor’s proposed Deficit Reduction Plan is the wrong choice for children and families and the wrong choice for New York’s economy.

The Deficit Reduction Plan will cost New York millions in federal funding for home visitation and Community-based Child Abuse Prevention dollars, in addition to the short and long-term cost of maltreatment to our social welfare, law enforcement, education, and healthcare systems.

A champion for New York’s children is Senator John Sampson, who has committed his vote against the Governor’s Deficit Reduction Plan. Today, we ask all advocates to:

  • Call Senator Sampson at 518-455-2788 and thank him for making the right choice for kids and protecting New York’s economy.
  • Call your local Senator and Assemblymember and encourage them to follow Senator Sampson’s lead and vote against any reduction in necessary services for children and families. The script can be as simple as follows: “Hello, my name is _____ and I’m a constituent of Senator/Assemblymember _____ and I’d like to ask my legislator to vote against any cuts to services for children and families.”

If you don’t know who your elected representatives are, you can simply call the New York State Legislative Switchboards at: 518-455-2800 (Senate) and 518-455-4100 (Assembly), or look them up online.

Remember when calling to be polite, leave your name, address, and phone number, and follow up your call by encouraging another friend or colleague to make one of their own.

Read Prevent Child Abuse New York’s testimony against the Governor’s DRP (PDF).

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So, I am not going to write today.  There isn’t one single productive thing I can think of to say!!  Just to offer the following information — in memory of my mean Borderline mother.

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Borderline Personality Disorder

In the Spotlight   |  More Topics   |

from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD

BPD isn’t just about how you feel emotionally. It can affect everything in your life, from your job to your friendships to how you feel physically. Knowing what to expect can help you prepare for what may be to come.

In the Spotlight

What is Life with BPD Like?
Living with borderline personality disorder is not easy. Intense emotional pain, and feelings of emptiness, desperation, anger, hopelessness, and loneliness are common. These symptoms can affect every part of your life. However, despite the suffering that borderline personality disorder (BPD) can cause, many people learn ways to cope with the symptoms and lead normal, fulfilling lives.

BPD and Your Physical Health
BPD does not only have an impact on your mental health. People with BPD are more likely to report a variety of physical health problems, and are more likely to need to be hospitalized for medical reasons, than those without BPD.

BPD and Your Relationships
Many of the symptoms of BPD can have direct impact on relationships, and other symptoms have an indirect (but not necessarily less disruptive) influence.

More Topics

+History of Childhood Maltreatment Linked to Higher Rates of Poverty

alchemynowLeave a comment

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The following study confirms what common sense would tell us:

“Adults who were physically abused, sexually abused, or severely neglected as children were significantly more likely to be unemployed, living below the poverty line, and using social services than people without a history of childhood maltreatment.”

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION FROM:

Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog

 
History of Childhood Maltreatment Linked to Higher Rates of Poverty

Posted: 05 Nov 2009 02:18 PM PST

 

The long-term impacts of childhood maltreatment include higher rates of unemployment, poverty, and use of social services in adulthood, according to a new study by David Zielinski, Ph.D., of the National Institute for Mental Health. Research has shown that negative early life experiences can adversely affect a person’s physical and mental health in adulthood. Zielinski evaluated data on childhood maltreatment and socioeconomic well-being from the National Comorbidity Survey.

Adults who were physically abused, sexually abused, or severely neglected as children were significantly more likely to be unemployed, living below the poverty line, and using social services than people without a history of childhood maltreatment. Having experienced more than one type of maltreatment increased these risks further. Maltreatment was also linked to lower rates of health care coverage and greater use of social services such as Medicaid, especially among adults who had experienced childhood sexual abuse.

In the first comprehensive study of the long-term socioeconomic effects of abuse and neglect, Zielinski shows that childhood maltreatment carries significant costs to the individual and to society. Not only does the public share the burden in supporting maltreatment-related social services, but also those related to unemployment insurance, poverty-based public assistance, and publicly funded health insurance. Other societal impacts include the loss in employment productivity and tax revenues, from federal and state income taxes as well as state and local sales taxes.

Previous research has shown low socioeconomic status to be a risk factor for the perpetration of child abuse and neglect. Additional research has found that parents who were maltreated as children are more likely to abuse and neglect their own children than those without a history of maltreatment. Targeted assistance for maltreatment victims may help break this cycle. For example, Zielinski suggests that enhanced access to job training and job counseling programs may be especially helpful for victims of physical abuse or multiple types of maltreatment, who were most likely to be unemployed among those who had experienced maltreatment.

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+BEING THE ‘ME’ I DISSOCIATE FROM

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I believe there is a difference between being a self and having a self.

‘Having a self’ is complicated for those of us who grew up under severe abuse situations that created dissociational patterns in our brains.   Sometimes it seems I have a different self for every single moment of my life that passes by me in time that is especially dependent upon whatever demands are being made of me at any given moment.   All of them are, of course, specifically confined to this body I was born with.  The whole process, whatever it is, seems connected to memory and to feeling because it involves ongoing experience and the passage of time.

Fortunately, I do have a single self that is the one I call ‘being in the world’.  It seems to be the ME that all the other versions are a dissociation from.

As I grew up from birth,  ‘being a self’ only happened when my mother was absent from being near me, and therefore from hurting and terrifying me.  ‘Being a self’ only happened when I had no feelings, and no thoughts, as I describe here:

*Age 58 – The simple state of just being in the world

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NOTE:  For me, writing itself can be a disorganizing and disorienting experience.  Many times I am acutely aware that the version of Linda that writes a post vanishes as soon as the post is completed and published.  I cannot then go back and edit a post, remember what I wrote, or often even reread it.

I am having this experience today in relation to the post I wrote yesterday.  I can only hope that there is something in it that touches the minds, hearts and lives of all those much-appreciated readers who have stopped by my blog today as the count is the highest it has ever been since I began this blog last April.

Please always know you are welcome to leave your comments!  They are always welcome and appreciated!  Linda

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+SUNFLOWER, SELF, DISSOCIATON AND THE SEEDS OF LOST MEMORIES

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I have had the image of sunflowers (in relation to the self and dissociation) in my mind for days now, so I guess I need to go ahead and write what I am thinking so  my thoughts can move off to something else.

Under ordinary conditions an infant is born into this lifetime with the potential to create a wonderful whole and healthy self.  All its experiences are integrated and stored at its center as they grow to fruition during a lifetime.

When severe trauma in a malevolent environment surrounds an infant-child, and dissociation has to take over the job of handling the memory of traumatic experiences, all this person’s ‘seed memories’ will not be central at the center of the flower of self.  The self will not be able to organize and orient itself in the ordinary way.  Instead, many or most of the seeds of experience will be missing, not connected and integrated at the center of self.

Perhaps it’s like the birds steal all the seeds away.  Perhaps it is like the seeds are simply missing, or scattered somewhere so we cannot find them.

seeds - sunflower
How can a self form right if trauma steals all the seeds of our memories?

Yet our trauma memories and reactions can pop up, unanticipated, unexpected, any time they are triggered.  We cannot control this.  It makes life hard.  It makes us different.  We cannot search for and find all our lost memories, all the lost parts of our self and put all the seeds back in our center where an  ‘ordinary’ person’s seed-memories have been stored all along — even if we want to.  And some part of our self flies away or gets lost with each disappearing part of our history.

Yet we are the same as everyone else.  We are all STILL sunflowers, even if our self is a different kind of self.  We are still beautiful, turning to follow the sun as we stand with everyone else in the field of life.

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sunflower
Sunflower -- I am thinking of the sunflower as an image of a self -- Photo courtesy PDPhoto.org
sunflower-sunset
Lots of sunflowers, lots of people in the field of life

Sunflower as the image of self, all the seeds organized as a part of the flower, in the center, memories of our expriences -- unless - - - -

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IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER:

Borderline Personality Disorder

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD
BPD is a disorder that is often misunderstood and frequently stigmatized. Do you dread telling people about your diagnosis? Are you tired of trying to correct the myths about BPD that are out there? This week’s newsletter is for you!

In the Spotlight
The Stigma of BPD
The general public today is as afraid or more afraid of people with mental illness than they were decades ago. And people with BPD are among the most highly stigmatized groups.
More Topics
BPD Mythology – Help Challenge These Myths!
Borderline personality disorder is a very real and serious mental illness. It is not a “personality problem” or just a set of maladaptive ways of coping with the world.
Should You Tell Others Your Diagnosis?
Lots of you report that you’re afraid to tell other people about your BPD diagnosis. When is it safe to tell? Here are some guidelines…

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+TODAY’S ARTWORK – A BORDERLINE MOTHER’S DAUGHTER –

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*Age 58 – Artwork October 29, 2009

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I could wonder if my spontaneous, quick art work images will ever come out innocuous instead of intense and unsettling, but then I would be contradicting myself.  When I write about not believing images come from any invisible ‘inner child’, I am at the same time very aware of how people could interpret this kind of creative process I am doing as being related to having an experience with such an invisible entity.

3 102909
From today's artwork link - Borderline Mother

What I know about how my child abuse altered brain operates helps me to understand my artistic process in a different way.  Particularly because my Borderline mother’s abuse of me began when I was born, neither of the hemispheres of my brain nor the way they operate together developed in an ‘ordinary’ way.  All of us have access to an unending storehouse of images.  The biggest problem is trying to get around our left brain’s inner critic, as  Betty Edwards describes in her excellent books about drawing.

Perhaps because of the affects my early abuse had on my developing brain, I have an almost literal switch I can flip, or a door I can simply open, that turns my left brain critic off and allows my creativity to escape.  I don’t believe my left and right brain hemispheres ever developed an ‘ordinary’ working partnership with one another, so I-Linda am learning that I can tell them what to do.  I can tell my left brain to just get out of the way, making an art image is not its concern.

There is no reason for any of us to worry about how we make our images, what they contain, or even what they look like.  To me, the important part of the process is simply to trust ourselves with the process of creating a representation of any image our right brain passes ‘out’ to us.  As humans, we have a clear inner sense of imagery.  What I really suspect is going on is that, as Alice Miller considers in her book I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Pictures of a Childhood: Sixty-Six Watercolors and an Essay, is that being an adult in our ‘modern culture’ makes us afraid of the image making process because we are afraid of what we will see.

Images cannot hurt us.  Giving them tangible visibility will not hurt us.  Most likely we will be helped, not harmed.  If we ‘give birth’ to an image that is intense or unsettling, all we have to do is put it away somewhere and keep it for as long as it takes for us to be able to be able to tolerate our own images so that we can witness our own expression.

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Every image has something powerful to say.  Because we are often raised, particularly those of us with severe child abuse histories, unable to stand in our own power as individual selves, it is often the experience of the power of creating itself that feels frightening to us.  Making art is a personal-power-enhancing process that belongs to all of us.  It is very simple.  We simply have to give ourselves permission and that whole world of making art is ours.

I am working with dollar store art supplies.  I use larger 5″ by 8″ index cards.  These ones happened to be included in a metal file box designed for that sized card I bought at the thrift store to save my childhood-related photographs in once they have been scanned and posted.  I like that size, though any size will do.  One advantage of choosing a size to begin an art image exploration series is that the limitation of size becomes a freeing factor because it does not need to be renegotiated as a choice every time a person begins to work.  I also have glue and colored paper, cheap paint, markers and crayons.  I am wishing for some oil pastels, but I don’t have any and that lack is NOT going to stop me.

I am, of course, encouraging every single one of my readers to get themselves some basic art materials and something to put them on, and go to work playing with their own image making process.  You will be amazed at the process and the results.  Show your images, keep them, hide them, post them.  One thing I strongly recommend is that on the back of whatever you make, always put the full date and the sequence number of the piece for the date you make them.  I can — and probably will at some point — explain why this matters.

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If I wanted to ‘work with’ my own images as an art therapist, I would have my work cut out for me.  They seem simple, they produce themselves quickly, but each one holds a universe all its own of ‘in-form-ation’.  I’m not at all concerned with that right now.  I only want to make them as a part of my commitment to myself to allow my self to ‘speak’.  I am eager to discover what this process has to teach me — both the process of making and the art images themselves.

But I do not wish to fly too close to the sun.  I have no intention of overwhelming myself by being too brazen about ‘digging out the truth’.  Whatever I do or don’t do, the truth already exists.  I simply need to get strong enough to visit it.

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Don’t miss this

Traumatic Childhood Can Reduce Life Expectancy

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