Tag: maltreatment

+DISSOCIATION: PRESERVING A SELF IN HIDING

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We are born with the capacity to learn about who we are, and to remember ourselves throughout our many and varied experiences.  This is meant to happen as we grow from birth being cared for by loving caregivers, people who give us care consistently over time.

It is natural that caregivers understand an infant is not them, but is somebody else, a separate unique individual.  They communicate this knowledge by everything they say and do with the infant.

These patterns of interaction are building the infant’s growing brain.  Humans are designed from birth to be able to see their own separate and unique self as it is mirrored back and reflected to them by their caregivers, who are their attachment humans.

If a parent such as my mother was lacks the capacity to understand that her infant is NOT her, she will overwhelm her infant with information from herself that has absolutely no relevance to her infant’s developing connection with itself.  The infant will miss the critical interactions with its caregiver that are meant to feedback to it information about its own self.

If the infant has access to additional caregivers who are themselves of healthy brain-mind-self, the infant can get at least some of the feedback about its own self from them, and this information will be critical to the infant’s brain-mind-self growth and development.

Without access to other appropriate (secure attachment) caregivers, the infant’s brain-mind-self will not develop in an ordinary way.  Its body will of course continue to develop, but the self of the infant-child cannot possibly find its way into being a cohesive, integrated, clear and affirmed self-hood.

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Whatever the break was that happened within my mother’s brain-mind-self, it had consumed her by the time I took my first tiny breath into my body in this world in my lifetime.  She was prevented from ever looking at me and being able to allow my individual self to be born.  She could only see some split-off part of herself in me that she hated and wanted to destroy.

Her mental illness (I believe psychotic borderline) left no room for Linda to be present in my body or in my life.  All I could do was remain buried alive, hidden from her view, protected only by the miracle of life that demands that people remain intact, separate from one another.

In the meantime all the trauma she caused me from birth built my brain, the only one I have to use to get along in this world.  That my brain could not include clear and definable connections to my own selfhood HAD to be the result of my mother being not only my primary caregiver, but with the exception of early contact with my 14-month-old brother and very occasional exposure to my father or grandmother, she was my sole caregiver.

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I can try to describe every resiliency factor I can think of that probably contributed to me being able to survive my childhood with my mother so that I appeared on the adult end of my life to be mostly intact and ‘ordinary’.  At the same time, however, I have to include my dissociational abilities as being the most important resiliency factor I have.

The real me I was born as could remain hidden and protected from my mother where she could not reach me.  At the same time the self of me could not come out into the world to play, grow, learn and live.  My self could not be recognized, could not express myself.  My needs were not met except as they invisibly allowed me to continue to exist without my mother ever being able to stop me except by killing my body (which I helped her not to do).

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Evidently I was born strong.  But who and where and how the essential me is in the world still remains extremely difficult for me to detect.  I can sit here writing on this pad at this moment in time with this pen in my hand and hope I am at this moment able to open a clear, true pathway that allows the real me, the hidden-away-from-my-mean-mother me, to speak these words.

It’s like I have to keep the deep, pure waters within myself perfectly still without a single small ripple in order for the real me to appear in my life.  I do not believe this is the way ordinary people have to engage their self.  Life is busy.  It is full of stimulation and changes.  One’s self is supposed to be able to maintain its integrity in spite of external (distracting) factors.

It is only when the environment I am in is quiet, peaceful, safe and predictable that I can experience my core self.  Once anything hits my inner still pool and causes a ripple, my inner me vanishes and I cannot reach her.

When a disturbance happens, a frantic feeling that translates into anxiety follows, as professionals call this state along with the host of other labels they insist on using to describe what my fragile connection to my own true self looks like or seems like from the inside of me.

I am left having to be so careful – so full of care concerning my self in this world — now at 58, because nobody was there in the beginning to do it for me.  I can think about my connection to my self in today’s world as being like a frequently ‘dropped call’.  When life challenges me, the resulting disturbance inside of me causes a ‘call lost’ reaction.  Then some version of Linda has to keep on going, the best way that it-I can until circumstances change and complete calm around and within me returns.

Believe me, this is a hard, hard way to be in this world.

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This is a duplicate of *Age 58 – November 5, 2009 – A hard way to be in the world

written for my adult story pages on dissociation

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+DISSOCIATION IS ORDINARY AND NORMAL WHEN OUR CHILDHOODS ARE NOT

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Breaking free from denial (magical wishful childhood thinking) about our histories of child abuse is essential at some point for any recovery to be initiated.  In these next journal pages I began my attempt at that process.

This section of my age 31 journal covers my entry into trauma and addiction treatment.  My childhood experience of severe trauma was recognized and validated in this treatment process, but evidently once therapy began in earnest I was expected to turn my journal writing into my therapists and I complied.  I have no record of that treatment process.  The treatment center closed when the owner died about 10 years ago and evidently all records were destroyed.

From my 2009 perspective of today, I suggest that very few, if any severe child abuse survivors made it through their childhood without dissociating.  I now understand that even though I did not dissociate during the incidents of abuse I experienced for 18 years, I did dissociate BETWEEN them.  This means, as I have said before, that my experience of my own childhood is in dissociated fragments.  What I know now is that “as it was in the beginning, so shall it forever be.”

I do not believe there is any way to ‘heal’ myself from this fact.  It is just as important, however,  for me to recognize the dissociation built within me as it is to recognize the horrors and traumas that caused it from the time of my birth.  No therapist I have ever had helped me to understand what dissociation truly is, how it affected my childhood development and how it affects me today.

And as I begin to understand these aspects of myself now, I also am coming to understand that I am NOT BROKEN, I am simply different from ‘ordinary’ people as a result of having survived extraordinarily traumatic childhood experiences that changed me during my critical stages of child development.  In my case, I do not see dissociation as the proverbial and supposed ‘defense mechanism’ professionals seem fond of naming it.

My dissociation is not ‘psychological’ in any Freudian sense.  There is simply more than one way to ‘be’ in the world because there is more than one kind of world to ‘be’ in.  How our body-brain-mind-self gets made in the first place is a result of which kind of world we were living in while our development took place.

My dissociation happened because the separate incidents of horrible trauma that happened to me as an infant-child made no sense.  There was therefore no way for my brain to ‘associate’ them together.  The only pattern present was unpredictable, violent, scary insane chaos and nobody’s brain can build itself in any ‘ordinary’ way under these kinds of malevolent circumstances.

I was not, of course, even remotely aware of my dissociation as I wrote the June pages of my 1983 journal.  I simply recorded what I thought I remembered from my childhood, but even this was a significant step.  I had never done it before.  In the end, it is not the details of the traumas themselves that I may or may not remember (over 90% of them I’m sure I never will remember consciously) that matter.  It is how my growing body had to adapt and change as a result of experiencing these traumas that matters to me now.

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*Age 31 – Journal Starting June 10 to 27, 1983

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I do not wish to leave the information contained in these links behind as I continue with my posting.  Please consider them for your study:

+RETURNING WITH AGE TO HOW I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AND DIDN’T KNOW IT: DISSOCIATED

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1 t-shirt mat
From the time we are conceived life in this world it is full of stimulation and changes. In a mostly safe and secure world we can accept them all and our experiences of transition and change moves smoothly along as we grow into a person with a self that can connect all our experiences together into some kind of fabric that is the whole of our life. This image reminds me of a safe and secure organized attachment!
2 t-shirt mat
The reverse side of my little crocheted T-shirt rug reminds me of organized insecure attachment. The transitions between 'events' has been made, but on the inside some vestiges of lack of smooth transtions between experiences remains like little loose ends that most organized insecurely attached people remain completely unaware of.
3 t-shirt mat
This would be an extreme illustration of a disorganized and disoriented insecure attachment disorder. Life has been too traumatic, and without safety and security to make transitions between traumatic and nontraumatic early experiences, the body-nervous system including the brain, the mind and the self of someone raised in a malevolent world will not be able to put things together to make a solid, coherent 'story' of their self in their life.

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This is me at 11 months old, all dressed up with curls in my hair. This is me looking 'happy' during a picture taking event.
11 month old 'happy' me - mother allowed it at this moment -- it was 'be happy, picture taking time' -- which had nothing to do with my 'other' ongoing realities
1952 closeup - 11 mos baby pic
Yes, 'happy' for this instant, but I now know this is a dissociated state. It was not part of any ongoing safe and secure organization of my baby brain as it had formed itself through chaotic, unstable and dangerous early caregiver interactions. (I can't get the scratch damage off of the photo at present)

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When I first found this photograph of me two years ago in MY BABY BOOK I was pleased to see that I could ‘still be happy’ when I was eleven months old.  It gave me hope that at least some of my developing baby brain’s left hemisphere happy center neurons had been activated, and gave me hope that I can find them today and build on them.

Then the more I considered my baby picture, the more I realized that this happy picture was not showing me ‘sun and roses’.  I have come to understand that this was a dissociated state that baby me was not going to be able to transition  smoothly in my baby brain to any other kind of state that was likely to follow. What I first saw as an expression in my baby eyes close to ecstatic I have come to see as over-stimulated, too intense, and most likely a sign of my dysregulated right limbic brain development due to my mother’s psychotic abuse of me.

The early and ongoing environment I formed in was chaotic, unstable, unpredictable, often terrorizing, terrifying, violent and painful.  Safe, secure peaceful serenity and calmness did not form itself at the center of my body-nervous system-brain-mind self as it was supposed to.

My set point of balanced equilibrium is not at calm.    Patterns of adjustment and adaptation to my infant-child malevolent environment, which happened to a large extent through dissociation,  had to build themselves into me so that I could survive and ‘go on being’ — and now I clearly know they are still there.

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I had an experience last night that gave me a clear insight about how I am in the world.

Around the time of my 1980 – 1983 journals I am transcribing from around my age of 30, I could function in the world in a relatively ‘ordinary’ way.  Now, through circumstances of my life, I have returned to who-how I have always been in the world and didn’t, until now, have to know about.  Just using the experience I had last night as an example, I can see that

(1) first I learned how to get along in both of the worlds of my childhood, the chaotic, malevolent, insanely abuse world of my home life with my mother, and in the ‘ordinary’ world outside my home such as school.

(2) Once I left my childhood abusive home, I found myself living entirely in an ‘ordinary’ world.  I could fake it by then so that only those in my most intimate circle of friends could have known that things were not all right with me on my insides.

(3)  I continued down that trying-to-be-ordinary road all of my life until two things happened to me that brought into focus in the forefront how ‘unordinary’ I really am.

(4) After 35 years of having a child under the age of 18 in my care, my baby left home nearly six years ago.  I didn’t know what was happening to me at the time, but looking back the disorganization and disorientation of my insecure attachment disorder reared its head.  Breast cancer manifested itself in my body immediately, although I was not to discover its presence for another 3 years.  It seemed that the entire world of my life dropped out from under me and I tumbled down Alice’s not so wonderful rabbit hole, disoriented and disorganized and not having a clue what that was.  Then

(5) happened.  Finding out I had cancer so completely threatened the only true source of safety and security I had ever known, my body itself, and coupled with the terrors of treatment and the consequences that chemotherapy had on my brain, left me where I am today — on mental and emotional disability with an extremely limited arena of activities that I can tolerate with any degree of comfort.

I have lost any way I developed (learned) to transition into an inner feeling state of calm, serene, safety within my body no matter where I am in the world.  This ability never developed at my core as it was supposed to from infancy.  For me, a state of calm equilibrium has evidently always been a dissociative state, and seems to be one that I now have lost access to — unless I can ‘get there’ through remaining in a very controlled, calm and quiet external environment which then ‘soothes my soul’.

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This leads me to last night’s adventure.  A close friend of mine encouraged me to attend the local Fiber Arts Guild meeting that was preceded by a fantastic presentation on African textiles.  Of course I am not presently comfortable with people at all, certainly not with groups of people, certainly not with strangers.  I am not comfortable in small closed environments.  I am not comfortable with ‘noise.’  But, in light of my recent journal transcribing realization about how important weaving and spinning and related textile arts are to me, and considering that I want to TRY to ‘get better’, I went to this meeting.

Nothing disastrous happened, which is great.  But what I felt on the inside, and can still feel today is both intensely disappointing and creatively illuminating.  We cannot work with trying to change or improve what we cannot see about ourselves — so now I have some clearer information.

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In light of what I now understand about how insecure attachment disorders exist in the brain as a result of changes that happen when we are very young and our brains are growing and developing in the first place, I can FEEL and begin to understand the damage done by these changes.  My right, social, limbic, emotional brain does not receive or process ordinary information in ordinary ways.  For all the years that I was able to ‘function’ in the ordinary world in a ‘good enough’ fashion, I was able to work around and hide what my brain was really doing.  I can’t do that any more.

Too much stimulation.  My brain does not regulate input or experience correctly.  I cannot do what experts call switch states, or move smoothly and comfortably through what is called transition states.  In that group of around 40 women last night, the walls began to close in, sound became a noisy roar.  Faces became super animated, and people began to get larger and larger in relation to me.  Noise and more noise as I lost the ability to focus on one single pattern of sound or conversation.  I tolerated nearly three hours of this mayhem and madness (to me), and began to crave silence, calmness, peace and simplicity.

Because my internal self cannot provide these things for me, I am nearly completely at the mercy of where I am and what is going on around me physically and externally on the outside of my body.  It is not supposed to work this way — not in ordinary situations.  Our right brain, in balance with our reasonable left brain and our rational cortex, is supposed to be able to navigate throughout life with the peace and calm on the INSIDE of us.

++

I feel I am failing at a description of what I am trying to explain and describe, so I added some visuals here that might be able to convey an image on the OUTSIDE that relates to what I know on my INSIDE.  Part of what I did to self-soothe my ‘anxiety’ level from too much stimulation last night that continued to reverberate in my brain and body, was to pick up the closest thing I could find and begin working with my hands which always calms me, focuses my attention, and provides a transition space for me to deescalate.

(My condition makes me think about the increase in ADHD and autism and about how little researchers know or are willing to admit about what they know about what is causing this condition among today’s children.  I suspect it will eventually be tracked back to inadequate conception to age one brain development — because we are losing our ancient wisdom about taking care of our babies right during early critical brain and body developmental stages.)

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Those women last night were ordinary women who meant me no harm.  They were not threatening.  They were not dangerous.  I was not in danger of being further traumatized.  But the oldest part of who I am and how I operate in this body in this world does not seem able to any longer put on the town dress, put curls in my hair, walk out into the world and be able to smoothly handle multiple stimuli from the environment and the required transitions that would enable me to be comfortable.

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+TRYING NOT TO GET CAUGHT IN THE ‘OLE DICHOTOMOUS THINKING

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All or Nothing: Dichotomous Thinking

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Borderlines are certainly not the only ones who practice dichotomous thinking,  and yet the second website popping up on a Google search on the topic is one on Borderline Personality Disorder and dichotomous thinking.  Most simply put, this way of thinking looks like this:

  • black or white
  • good or bad
  • all or nothing

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I believe that this type of thinking pattern is completely entrenched in Judeo-Christian traditions.  Seems obvious to me!  And yet our culture finds its way into our growing infant-child brain so that we seldom question what the basis of our thinking is or where it comes from.

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I need to remind myself of this as I work with my quarter-century old journals.  It seems a pattern for me to think dichotomously, and then assign blame, guilt, shame and other toxic labels to the simple facts of what went on ‘back then’.  I was not the bad guy, nor was my husband.  I was just thinking back, and remembered how I found out in January 1985 as our divorce was finalizing that he had been seeing another woman (nine years his junior and eight years mine) for three years, starting winter 1981-1982.

What I might call my indiscretions – and what others might see as my indiscretions, tended to be out-front, blatant and obvious.  I never had one single clue for those three years he was ‘seeing’ another woman that this was going on.  It had progressed to the point where he brought her home to his mother and father’s house, introduced her to his family – all the while nobody ever said a thing to me, and I did not know.  Not consciously, anyway.

Supposedly his indiscretion didn’t matter and didn’t count because they ‘controlled themselves’ and did not have intercourse.  Give me a break.  They met in 12-Step meetings, and their relationship evidently flourished.  They married shortly after my husband and I divorced, and are still married.  That relationship wasn’t a fling in the park, and all honesty would have made sure I at least knew they were involved.  I could say “So much for ‘working an honest program’.”  Oh, I guess I just DID say it.

I found out when I received a telephone call from my small-town neighbor, also an Al-Anon member, who told me the facts 3 days before our divorce was final.

“Everyone in town knows,” this lady told me.  “I thought you should know, too, in case you don’t.”  I didn’t.

(More to this story will be told when I get to the 1984-1985 journals.)

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I realized that demonizing and angelizing was something my mother was a professional at.  She was an expert in dichotomous thinking.  Of course I was immersed in an environment thick with it, both in my home and in my culture.  But I do not want to think that way now if I can catch myself and stop it so that I can take another course in my thoughts.

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I am also thinking about how the signs of the endings of all my relationships were present in their beginnings.

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+PETER PANELLA AND ALL MY LOST GIRLS – AGE 31 JOURNALS, THE NEXT STEPS

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Nine months.  That’s the length of time this next of my age 31 journal entries covers.  This would be the same length of time it takes for a baby to travel from conception to birth.

It seems strange to me that over a quarter of a century later I cannot begin to be objective about myself, my story, or my process as contained in these writings.  I still distance myself from myself, and can give myself total permission to do this distancing now because THAT was a different Linda, in a different set of circumstances at a different place in a different time.  I also continue to distance myself from myself because I have no other choice:  I was made that way.

It strikes me how remote I have always been from myself in my life except for the very NEAR past and the in-the-moment experiences I have as each moment of my life unfolds into the future.  It seems that my past carries me, not that I carry it.  It is too vast, too painful and in too many pieces.

I cannot think of a story that could be more closely like the reversal of the ordinary Peter Pan and the Lost Boys story than mine is in these pages.  What would that story look like if the sexes of all the characters were reversed?  I would be Peter Panella with my Lost Girls.   My mother would be the Wicked Captainella Hook.  Marlin (name changed) in my story would be the male reversal-same character of Tinker Belle!  Leo (named changed)  would be the ever-devoted, right thinking and well-intentioned Wendy.

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In the nine month period of time that elapses in the pages here, I left my husband and my children in ‘their’ home and rented a ‘Room of My Own‘.  I completed my BA college degree.

It has never until this moment struck me that the trials and tribulations of a recovery-from-abuse journey happens in its own story version of a Trauma Drama.  If we had never experienced the trauma of abuse in the first place, there would never be a need for this Recovery Trauma Drama story to ever happen, either.

As Peter Panella in my story, all the Lost Girls were part of my self.  There was a dissociated me not only for every developmental stage of childhood I had missed going through ‘normally’, but also hundreds and hundreds more of them that had each experienced some horror caused by my mother along each step of the way.  Each Lost Girl holds her piece of my memory along with the experience of having her experience of her experience of trauma.  In this way each one of them holds her own consciousness about what the Main Me, Linda, cannot remember except through the emotions held within the body that all of us share.

Nobody ever told me that these unintegrated shards of my existence could not magically become part of some magical WHOLE PERSON named Linda.  Nobody ever told me that what I was really accomplishing in my recovery journey was the recognition, identification, and naming of all these separate dissociated Lost Girl pieces of my self.  Nobody ever told me that they were NEVER going to become anything else.

Nobody told me my brain-mind-self had formed from the beginning of my life under so much trauma that continued for 18 years that I will NEVER be able to obtain or create a single-self-entity that resembles the one that ordinary-childhood people are created with.  Nobody told me that as a consequence of my childhood I was made into a different sort of person.

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In these journal writings I am describing a catching-up-to-Linda-at-31 process that was going on at the same time I was beginning to identify the trauma and the individual pieces of me that it had created.  I tried to accomplish an exploration and solidification of self that should have automatically and naturally happened throughout my childhood and young adulthood years — and didn’t.

Every single step I took in my journey included some confrontation and encounter with my profound woundedness.  The 18 years of abuse I endured had affected — and infected — me so profoundly and pervasively that I could not find anything but a shell of Linda, packed full to overflowing with pain, confusion, and the defenses that had enabled me to survive.

By the time these journal entries end I had found my way to the only place, both internally and externally, possible for me to go to next:  Another treatment center.  This one was designed specifically to address both severe trauma and addiction.  I remained apart from both my husband and children, now 130 miles away, and walked through the next doorway of my trauma drama recovery story.  The steps that I took to get to this next doorway are described here:

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*Age 31 Journal – Sept. 1982 thru June 10, 1983

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EXCERPTS:

January 19, 1983

“What do I see as my boundary problem with Leo?

My mother = my conscious

Her right and wrongs = mine

Leo’s rights and wrongs = my rights and wrongs

I use Leo:  the whole part of me that would love Linda isn’t there and Leo is that part of me that loves me

Doesn’t feel healthy

My mother is the part of Linda that hates Linda

Kathy [therapist] says:  “In some ways what you’re talking about is pretty profound.””

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January 26, 1983

“Talked to the girls tonight about my moving out for awhile.  Kathy [therapist] says it should be for at least 6 weeks.”

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February 8, 1983 Tuesday 11 PM

“Had class tonight on child abuse issues.  Sue told her story.  Makes me think about my unvisited “cave” where I’ve hidden all my childhood issues.  Wonder when I’ll get in there and poke around.”

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February 24, 1983

From notes on Rollo May talk, “Creativity as Significant Form”

“Without anxiety = heightened sensitivity, there’s no creative person.”

“Creativity:  The divine madness.  The anxiety of being lost leads to creativity.”

“The pause is not nothing.  Listen to the silence.  Technology calls pauses depressions.  PAUSING – the kind of aloneness of a creative person.”

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March 4, 1983

“Well, it’s 9:15 PM and at last I’m here in my room.  Made the move.”

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March 13, 1983

“(I’m losing tears again).”

“I’m creating a safe place here for myself to be with myself, and, finally, cry.”

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March 22, 1983

“I don’t want to die – I don’t want to be dead.  I want to live.”

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March 23, 1983

“I feel angry tonight.  Very lonely, too.  In that lonely place nobody else can come to.  Maybe lonely for myself.”

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March 28, 1983

“There’s a point where you go numb and you have to choose not to feel any more in order to survive.”

“I used to think my mother was “just” an overly critical perfectionist.”

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April 2, 1983

“7 PM – I’m in Glyndon now [visiting].  Leo and girls are at Larry and Echo’s.  The house is very neat and clean.  It’s my home, and yet I also feel like I don’t have a home.  Alienated – That’s how I feel.  From people, my family, pets, home, even my body and myself.  I feel sad, like I want to cry, but I can’t.”

“I feel hopeless like I got made wrong and I can’t get fixed.  My body is healed of the childhood wounds, bruises; but inside I haven’t healed yet – I don’t even know if I’ve started yet.  I don’t have the option of getting high to forget this all like I used to.”

2009 note: I know now, finally, that I didn’t get made ‘wrong’, I got made different.  I could not have survived my abuse if I hadn’t adapted and adjusted in every possible way that I could.  Fortunately, our human species has that ability — to adapt in order to survive.  I also know now that I could not possibly re-make myself into the same kind of person I would have been if the abuse had never happened to me.

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June 9, 1983

“There’s someone inside wanting to get out and not knowing how.”

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NEWS FROM:

Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog
Recent Surge in Recession RunawaysPosted: 30 Oct 2009 02:46 AM PDTThe intersection between the recession and family stress may be causing an increase in runaway kids and teens, according to a recent article in the New York Times.   Job loss, foreclosures, and poverty have added to the stresses at home which have been trickling down and effecting teens.  Reporter Ian Urbina recently spent time with teen runaways in Medford, Oregon.  He learned the desperate measures they take in order to survive everyday rather than return home.  Most runaways aren’t even reported missing by their guardians, and if they are reported to the local police, most times they don’t make it into the national database.  Without national recognition, it is very hard for police to identify and return these runaways.  Police claim that runaways are not a top priority because most of the time they do not want to be found or returned home.  Unfortunately of the 267 runaways reported nationwide 58 of them were found dead.  “These kids might as well be invisible if they aren’t in National crime information center (N.C.I.C.),” said Ernie Allen, the director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  While federal officials are expecting a rise in homelessness this year, most social programs aid homeless families, not unaccompanied youth.   At the same time, many financially troubled states have severely cut social services, leaving little to no help for homeless runaways.  This presents a significant challenge for society, as runaway children are more likely to become homeless adults who are forced to live a life of crime.For information please visit the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, The National Coalition for the Homeless, and The National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

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+THE GLIMMER OF BEGINNING TO KNOW WHO I AM

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I was feeling better in this section of my journal that ends on my ‘Golden Birthday’ of turning 31 on the 31st of August, 1982.  I was beginning to take form as a person, becoming less hollow and less like a ghost-girl in my own life.

I think the successful definite steps forward I had made by working through some very difficult school work bolstered me.  My feet might have still been mired in the unknown of my past, my ‘true self’ was still missing in action, but the woman I was becoming had begun to find some sunshine for herself.  The vigorous exercise workout I was doing made me physically strong and began to anchor me into my body.  I was gaining a sense of self-confidence for the first time in my life.

I now had nearly two years ‘clean and sober’ (from nonprescription drugs), had a sponsor and faithfully attended at least one AA meeting every week.  I also attended a weekly woman’s growth and support group through the local mental health center.

Part of my transformation was coming through my ‘discovery’ of so-called ‘feminism’ as I began to understand that women experience their lives very differently than men do.  I believe I was for the first time beginning to collect for myself a sense of my own personal empowerment.

*Age 30 – Journal from May 1982 through August 1982

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May 22, 1982

“Things OK in the water bed – Leo is keeping to himself.  I think he’s afraid to touch me – sometimes I’d like to be touched; not sexually — just touched.”

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We could not get anything larger than a double bed up our little stairs, so the king size water bed was the only solution we could think of.  Well……

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I knew inside on some level there was something ‘wrong’.  I really knew.   I found this in one of my little poems on this date —

“Do I have a personality

When there’s no one here but me?”

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June 9, 1982

“Perhaps calcium now

Will help calm me down

But I don’t feel like myself

My spirit feels larger

Than my body

Like a wad of bread dough

Or play dough

Yellow”

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June 16, 1982

“Decided I may try writing an autobiography –”

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I record a 2009 note with this journal entry about two statements made, on two occasions by two different people — that changed the course of my life — because I heard them and I knew they were true.

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June 26, 1982

“Been cleaning – sorting clothes in closets and dressers all day.  Felt real depressed yesterday – [Doctor] decided to up the Imipramine to the 150 mg.  I was taken off of Desipramine – slow the thoughts down – don’t handle being alone very well.”

I could not handle letting my own inner reality surface — not yet, anyway.  I can sense my insecure attachment disorder here, like an invisible electric current running inside a live wire.

++++

July 2, 1982

“I’m feeling my wild feeling, and walked down the “trail” to an old grain wagon parked in the grasses.  The sun is still above the horizon, and it is hot.  Clouds below the sun will soon swallow it.

Wind is rustling the trees, and I am reminded of the homestead – the trees on the mountainside and the river on the valley floor.

I’d like to be that wind – free – from thought.”

++

“Oceans lie where we can always find them.  Why can’t I?”

++

“And as I write, capturing time,

I can reread, and see my past

In my present.”

++++

August 3, 1982

“Now

I’m a spider

Expertly spinning

My thoughts

Into miraculous

Flowing webs

When I’m depressed

I’m a fly

Tangled

Frightened

Captured

By these same

Silken

Threads”

++

I just had a 2009 thought as I read this.  I wasn’t only unaware of HOW to feel, I did not know HOW to think, either (not about anything personal).  I did not grow up in my insanely abusive childhood being able to think.  ‘Ordinary’ childhoods, without a need for continual and nearly constant dissociation, no doubt allow children to grow up THINKING, and to grow into their thoughts.  I never had that opportunity to get familiar with my own thoughts, to practice being a person WITH thoughts.  No wonder ‘thinking’ felt so foreign, uncomfortable and dangerous to me!

(Also glad to see at least I was still doing some spinning and weaving at this time.)

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AND A GIFT OF INFORMATION FROM:

Prevent Child Abuse New York Blog

 
Making Kids a Priority

 

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 10:57 AM PDT

Guest post by Michelle Gross, Project/Public Policy Manager, Prevent Child Abuse New York

In this recession, working families are struggling to meet their children’s basic needs. Five out of six children in low-income families have at least one adult who works.   These families are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table, and gas in the car so they can get to work. The stress of these difficult financial times takes the heaviest toll on at-risk families. More than ever before, programs that support families, like home visiting, parenting education, family resource centers, fatherhood and kinship support, and child advocacy centers play a pivotal role in ensuring a stable and more prosperous future.

Yet, these services continue to be in danger of funding cuts. New York’s families’ health and well-being rests on the voices of advocates like you.  As we prepare for the New York State Budget proposal for 2010-11, we must be vigilant in continuing to contact our state government representatives, from the governor to the legislature, and even locally. Regularly updating your elected officials on your program’s successes helps to reinforce the important role it plays in supporting families. Every voice counts, and it is up to us to speak for those who cannot. It can be daunting to contact your representative, but your advocacy can make the difference between a program funding cut and a program funding expansion. Here are a few tips on calling your elected official’s office:

  • When calling, you will likely reach a staff member rather than your representative directly. Staff             members can be just as influential as the legislator themselves.
  • Be sure to tell the staff member your name and where you live. It’s important that they know you are a constituent.
  • Inform the staffer of the reason for your call. It can  be as simple as saying that you’d like to make sure the program does not get cut in the state budget.
  • Tell the staffer why the program is important and what difference it has made in your life or the lives of those around you.
  • Thank the staffer for their time and ask for a follow  up if you feel its necessary.
  • Always follow up a phone call with a letter restating your call.
  • Call again in a month just to check in, and ask others to call on behalf of the program. Persistence is key in advocacy!

Again, remember that what you have to say matters. As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Children’s needs, long overlooked, should receive the highest priority during critical discussions leading to cuts in the New York State Budget. Far too few services are available at a time when demand is increasing greatly. We encourage our legislators to support programs that work, and to support families through this fiscal crisis.

For more information about Prevent Chils Abuse New York’s Advocacy Programs, please visit our website: http://preventchildabuseny.org/advocacy.shtml
Traumatic Childhood Can Reduce Life Expectancy

 

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 08:27 AM PDT

A difficult childhood reduces life expectancy by up to 20 years according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The study found that participants who were exposed to more then five different types of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were over 50 percent more likely to die during the 10-year period of the study. On the other hand, people who reported fewer than six ACEs did not have a statistically increased risk of death compared with the control group.

Listen to a podcast Adversce Childhood Experiences and the Risk of Premature Mortality.

To explore the effect that childhood trauma could have on life span, Kaiser Permanente mailed questionnaires to adults who were 18 years and older, and who had visited the Kaiser clinic in San Diego from 1995 to 1997. Overall, the study subjects were middle-class and had good health coverage. Of those surveyed, 75 percent were white, 11 percent Latino, 7 percent Asian, and 5 percent African-American. They’re educated: 75 percent attended college and 40 percent have a basic or higher college education. When they filled out the questionnaire, their average age was 57. Most of them had jobs. Half were women, half were men.

The participants were asked about their exposure to eight categories of abuse or dysfunction based on previous Kaiser studies. One third of the 17,337 participants who replied to the questionnaires had an ACE score of zero, meaning they had not been exposed to any of the eight types of abuse or household dysfunction. The majority of the remaining responders registered a score of between one and four, whereas about 8 percent of the scoring participants were rated five, and roughly three percent, six to eight.

During the next decade, the study authors, kept records of which of the 17,337 participants passed away by matching identifying information such as Social Security numbers from the questionnaire with data from the National Death Index. In total 1,539 of the participants died during the follow-up period. When the increased number of deaths in those subjects with an ACE score of six or greater was compared with the control group, their mortality risk was 1.5 times higher than for people whose childhoods had been free of all eight types of abuse. They lost about 20 years from their lives, living to 60.6 years on average, whereas the average age of death for the control group was 79.1.

It is unclear why the authors saw more death ages during the 10-year period only for the group with an ACE score of six or greater. Previous studies by these authors found that the risk of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, lung disease and cancer, was greater only for people with these high ACE scores. In contrast, the risk of substance abuse and suicide increased stepwise from low to high scores. The authors found that ACE-related health risks, namely mental illness, social problems and prescription medication use, accounted for about 30 percent of the 50 percent greater risk of death seen in this population. “As would be expected, the documented ACE-related conditions among participants appear to account for some, although not all, of the increased risk of premature death observed in the current study,” wrote David Brown, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and lead author of the study.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

+MISSING IN ACTION: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SELF OF LINDA?

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I went ‘Missing In Action’ in the combat zone of my childhood with my severe Borderline mother from the moment I was born.  That I was still MIA at age 30 should not surprise me as I continue  my forensic autobiographical search for whatever happened to the self of Linda — even half my lifetime ago:

*Age 30 – Journal from January 1982 through April 1982

Here are a few snippets from the journal:

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January 19, 1982

“I was never socialized or given any experience as I grew up in getting along in this “real world.”  I was practiced in being extremely obedient, being isolated.”

++

2009:  For most of my life all I was able to do in any of my thinking regarding the reality of the abuse in my 18 years of childhood was to make observations as if I was a mechanical reporter, as per the above.  I never understood the implications or the ramifications.  We take for granted that we are supposed to KNOW things even though nobody ever TOLD us.  I completely lacked any basis for comparing my life to an ‘ordinary’ childhood, even when I was 30 years old.

I’ve always had a sort of “vacancy” feeling.  Nothing about my childhood connected to anything in this “real world.”  It was as if I was hatched out of an egg the day I landed at boot camp at 18.  There was nothing to do with or about what had happened to me before that time.  Everyone was busy with their own lives, lived in their realities, and did not care about one person who appeared in their lives — at any time — that person being me with my past history that nobody cared about, either.  I was either going to ‘make it’ on my own, or not at all, just as it had been in my childhood.

++++

January 26, 1982

“Received a beautiful cream sweater and a blue skirt from Mom today.  It feels good that she loves me and I need to write thanks and love.”

++

2009:  Classic example of my continued delusions about being the daughter of the mother who tormented and abused me for 18 years.  Except for very limited in-school contacts, my childhood consisted of fear, abuse and dissociation.  My internal state was a void, a vacuum.  I lived the days of my life no differently than an android would.  Once I went through treatment and stopped self-medicating myself with pot, the medication was simply switched to prescription antidepressants.  The same purpose was served.  “Zombie juiced.”  Just keep Linda doing what Linda does because she knows nothing different.

My life could have been far worse.  I was safe.  I lived with a reasonable, kind man.  The people in my life were reasonable.  I thought what I was doing was reasonable.  I tried to parent my daughters the best that I could, and certainly I did not abuse them.  But how can an empty hollow shell of a person be a ‘good enough’ parent to children?  I can only believe that with kindness and the best love I could give them, the life force and personality of my children carried them forward as they grew up — but perhaps more like growing plants would than children who lacked a securely-attached mother.

This is where professionals coin the term “earned secure attachment.”  But I KNOW it wasn’t as good as the ‘real thing’.  How could it be, to be raised by a mother who does not have her self intact?

Yet I can see that with my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder I was able to organize and orient myself around a life as portrayed in my journals.  But it was a hollow life.  I was a hollow person.  I did not know what questions to ask anybody about what was ‘wrong’ with me, and nobody offered me the information I needed to understand what was REALLY going on with lost-soul Linda.

How I could I know that what I DO is not who I AM?  Now I would see that what I do is like a reflection of who I am, like light rays from the sun are reflected in a mirror.  I had no sun, no self — not that I knew or knew of, anyway.  Today I’m not sure I’m much better – but I do know the difference.  I can FEEL it, especially now that my children are gone from home.

Humans are not designed to organize and orient themselves around external factors of any kind.  We can, of course, organize and orient how we spend our TIME around external factors, but not our SELF!  Without a clear, strong, healthy sense of a non-dissociated self, I have been left all my life with a nearly unbearable sadness at my center.  That sadness is what the doctor was medicating with those antidepressants, and that I used to medicate with nonprescription drugs.

Is there another way for those of us who have such histories of terrible abuse of one kind or another to MEET, GREET and FEEL our true inner self — a process that is supposed to be firmly in place before we are two years old?

++++

April 6, 1982

“I don’t question myself all the time anymore on what I’m doing and am much better at getting through days and doing what needs to be done and what I want to do.

I’ll have to watch this as meds change and be sure it’s not something that is really affected by the depression.

My head feels clear and I like that.”

++

The doctor was decreasing my antidepressants, and that concerned me.  He was talking about taking me off them completely by summer for a ‘drug holiday’.

Why did I believe that questioning “myself all the time…on what I’m doing” was a BAD thing?  I had a lot of questioning that needed to be done — a life time of questioning!!  Did I need stasis or did I need to make real and legitimate changes in my life?  Nobody supported me in asking the questions, or in trying to discover who I was or what I needed.  People did support me when I was ‘nice’ and did not rock the proverbial boat.

Obviously, I believed that I liked myself better that way — why would I want to FEEL FEELINGS and learn the truth about myself?  Yet, there was a Linda in there somewhere, hiding in the shadows of my life, who needed to peek herself out and begin to ask questions about her self in the world.  I needed answers.  It has taken me a very long time to begin to get some.

++++

April 21, 1982

I found a poem-story of my daughter’s father and her birth written on this date here in this journal.  I wonder what I meant by

“I had a child to catch

my man”

I sure don’t remember that being the case at the time!  It’s a whole story I have yet to tell, the story of being pregnant and giving birth and what followed.  But this poem is an introduction.

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I do not wish to leave the information contained in these links behind as I continue with my posting.  Please consider them for your study:

+JUST A LINK TO A LITTLE “HAPPY” AND A LITTLE “BREATHER” TECHNIQUES

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

Here’s a link to a couple of ‘feel good’ tips that caught my eye!  It’s a cool and very wet and gray day here today after last night’s wind.  Excellent to have the moisture, but we desert rats always miss the sunshine!  Thought these ideas might help….

HIT YOUR ZOOM BUTTON TO SEE THESE BETTER!

**Happy Tips and “Take A Breather”

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*Age 21 – Photograph of Me in 1973

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+LIVING IN THE ACCEPTANCE ZONE: WAS THE REAL ME PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR?

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

I question the whole 12-step requirement for ‘acceptance.’  I think we can accept ourselves into terribly destructive and unhappy situations, while we all the time blame ourselves if we DARE to whimper or question our lives.  In 1981 the antidepressants I was given (and took) just further erased Linda from the scene of my life.  I was quiet, complacent, and busy trying so hard to BE good and to DO good…..

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

I have to say, never in the 10 years I’ve lived down here in the Arizona high desert right on the Mexico line have I ever heard such furious wind gusts as are appearing and disappearing around here tonight.  They come barreling through like they are on rails, intent on taking the house roof with them, and then they are — GONE — and an eerie silence fills my ears.  No big deal, I’m sure.  The power hasn’t even flickered.  I am SO GLAD I no longer live up north with those winters — like my kids in Fargo do!  In 1981 I just accepted living in a place with harsh and long winters — not any more!

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

I had just turned 30 when this part of my journals were written in 1981-1982.  I post the writings here just in case there’s something from my “recovery” past that might be of use to someone going through the new stages — or even the later ones — of their own recovery.  There’s nothing spectacular here.  Just one woman, still young, living a humble life, trying to grow, always hoping…..but was I really even there?

My antidepressants have kicked in by this time, and I am zoning along doing what I (and everybody around me) thinks is best.  It really didn’t matter if I was REALLY there in the show or not!  Nobody, myself included, knew the difference.

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

*Age 30 Journal – Sept. through Dec. 1981

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

Excerpts:

September 7, 1981

“Got in touch with a lot of pain and loneliness and realized on a deep level for the first time that is what my “wild” feeling is.”

I used to think about this feeling when it came over me as being like the wind — only a wind that blew right through the outline-shape of who I was in my body.  I knew I had felt it in Alaska, most remembered in the wilderness — hence my name for it, my “wild” feeling.

++

Recovery in families often begins with one single person.  In my case, following my entry and completion of treatment both my husband and his cousin both began recovery for alcoholism.

In that process I entered treatment again out-patient as the spouse of Leo when he began his treatment.  Minnesota treatment models for addiction focus on it being a “family disease.”

I noted on October 1, 1981:

“Afraid to look at myself.  I am self-centered to the max and would control everyone around me if I could and yet Lief [therapist] said tonight a lot of anger comes from me not being willing to take the risks I need to get my needs met.  I’m not sure I even know what my needs are.  Everything seems complicated – feels confusing.”

++

October 24, 1981

Oh, and then there were the sex problems……never a good sign!

++

November 17, 1981

“Sometimes I feel as though I were haunted by things from my past.  Not as many as before, but just a general feeling like the “real me” is not all here.  Maybe it is the “real me” that haunts me, or the “ideal me” that will never be.”

++

November 19, 1981

“Spent an hour reading to the girls tonight and read old Raggedy Ann book from Mom’s and my childhood.  Also Kay saw film about menstruation in school today.  She felt good and so did I that she can talk with me.  She said she used to think her mom was mean because I wouldn’t let her go to the store, etc. but now she sees we can talk where many of her friends can’t talk to their moms.  Thank you God for helping and healing.”

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

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

I do not wish to leave the information contained in these links behind as I continue with my posting.  Please consider them for your study:

+I FOUND MYSELF TODAY AT HALF MY AGE – MY AGE 29 JOURNAL ENTRIES – 30 DAY ROAD TRIP TO FIND MYSELF

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

I went visiting around on Borderline Personality Disorder (my mother = extremely abusive Borderline) blogs this afternoon.  I got the sense that many readers and posters are probably at a completely different stage of their lives than I am.  What do I remember of my own years of being a mother with young children in my home?  What do I remember, really, of being a much younger adult than I am today?

I decided to randomly pick one of my journals from the many I have written over the years of my adulthood and have never again opened since the day I wrote them.  I ran my fingers over the journals, picked one, pulled it out an opened it.  It turns out that it was written when I was exactly half of my lifetime younger than I am today.

I went through my 7-week alcoholism treatment program in October and November of 1980.  This journal’s first entry is from February 17, 1981, just 3 months after my completion of treatment and entry into the new-found world of my first steps into ‘recovery’.

I had left my children in the care of their father, my husband, and left on a 30-day Greyhound bus trip by myself.  The pages in the following link were written during that trip.  I returned to see my first husband’s parents on this trip.  I returned to the ocean where I met and fell in love with their son when I was 18.  I returned to the town on the beach where our daughter was conceived.  I was trying to heal the hole in my heart that relationship gave me.

I went to see my sister and her family, and we talked about all kinds of things, including about being mothers.  We had not spent any time together as adults, and this was the first time I had confronted any of my feelings about my childhood.  In fact, I was brand new to the concept of feelings at all!  The Minnesota model of alcoholism treatment pioneered the idea that addictions are ‘feeling diseases’.  My journal writings on this 30-day journey show the new baby-feeling-Linda’s first steps into a world I should have been introduced into from the time I was born.

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*Age 29 – Greyhound bus trip started February 17, 1981 – Journal entries

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