Tag: posttraumatic stress disorder

+MOTHER’S MAD MERCURIAL MIND – AND OUR RESULTING SUFFERINGS

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It is my continual hope as I work with my mother’s letters that sooner or later the ‘truth’ of our life with her will appear behind the façade, between the lines, or below the surface of her written words.  I believe these openings do exist in the Borderline’s wall between realities.

I found one of those openings today and it was contained in one simple word I found in her July 17, 1962 letter where she stated in reference to the certain probability of another move:

“We can’t stand thought of shifting back to log house.”

That’s it, the truth about how our continual moving was in my mother’s distorted mind.  We never really, actually MOVED from place to place to place.  We SHIFTED!

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Here is another letter that is a ‘snipit’ of the bigger picture that was the turbulent chaos of my childhood.  Please follow links at the bottom of the post for the fuller context for this letter (beginning particularly on June 1, 1962) , including her references to our trip ‘outside’ Alaska.

I am amazed and stunned as I go through these letters at how completely her thinking changed sometimes from day to day, often certainly from week to week.  She never was able to follow the trail of her own unpredictable and changeable thinking.  Very mercurial — jam packed with unstable elements of logic, emotion, thought and action.

Of course the consequences of her radical decisions drastically affected us all, though she does not seem capable of even beginning to grasp what her ‘sick self centeredness’ is doing to her family or even to herself.

Her chaos has created an ulcer in her own body.  My brother, who was turning 12 the day after this letter was written, was suffering from a terrible boil that erupted on his back.  The other, unseen side of life with my mother never appears in her letters — her chronic outbreaks of unpredictable, uncontrolled rage and violence against me.

Her moving frenzy thoughts have expanded by this time not only to include travel ‘outside’ of Alaska for a California ‘visit’, but also a possible ‘transfer’ to Europe.

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June 14, 1962

Dear Mother,

Tomorrow is John’s Birthday.  Thanks for the $ for him.  He’s saving it to spend in Calif. For we have rented the log house until school starts – unless the Army condemns the well water, as the house has to be inspected and the water has to be safe.  The Army prefers drilled wells and the log house has a dug well.  We rented to a military family as you can guess and they’re very nice.  We left all of the furniture etc. and we can have it back September 1st.  They pay $195 so we profit 40.00 a month.  GOOD!!

[Linda note:  Oh great!  In June 1, 1962 letters she says we’ve left homestead and moved back into log house.  Two weeks later we move BACK to the homestead?!?!?]

[We] pay 135 rent but pay for electricity and rubbbish [sic] collection so profit 40.00.  Now I hope they don’t move out.

If possible will come by SHIP – exciting.  There’s a big Army vessel due in Anchorage Port on July 11th and will leave July 15th and get into San Francisco on 15th.  [Linda note:  No, I don’t think so!]  If not will go by Army plane.  I prefer the boat but Bill thinks space will be all taken up.  I’ll try and get a clipping of the article about the boat etc. to send you!

Now this all came about because we figured that if we paid rent all summer we couldn’t go outside or anything so made a list of musts if anyone rented it.  We put a sign up FOR RENT and rented it next day.

Ives came and were there to dinner (long story I’ll tell you when I see you) when people came to look at the house.

The house was beautifully fixed and they came by surprise.  All went fine and next day and since all HAVOC broke lose.  Luck.

[Linda note:  I can just picture this.  Two weeks earlier she ‘moves’ us all from homestead to log house – then sets up her ‘homey stage’ so that to all appearances we are the happiest family in the world in our ‘beautiful home’!  Two weeks later everything has changed and back to the homestead we ‘move’ again!]

Well, now I hate to write you until Army approves house as that would really ruin plans.  These people I trust and feel they will take excellent care of everything.

Now I insist on not staying with anybody.  I wasn’t going to tell you we were even coming as I don’t want to upset anyone but you have to know so you won’t plan to come to Alaska.

I’m putting all our books etc. etc. in storage and although of course, we’re at homestead now, don’t plan to come here when we return.   [Linda note:  Go figure!!  Back ‘home’ again!  Any stability in our family?  I think absolutely not!  She’s already planning to move us back down the mountain – somewhere – again by fall!]

If we go to Europe will sell tractor, jeep etc. – in fact, plan to trade jeep in on new car which we will get in Seattle and I’ll drive back – want to come?  Bill will come down Friday before Labor Day and we will see Fair and he’ll fly back as will only have short time off.  I’ll have to drive back.  I’ll try to get someone (man preferred – and young – you better chaperone) to drive.

Thought I’d ask Roy who is in Kansas and rented our room and he’d have free trip back.  He went out with Mrs. Erickson in car.

I guess her house sold but she still plans to teach at Eagle River – 10 new classrooms etc. are to be added on to school!! – and new Highway completed too!

We think will just forget about homestead next winter and rest in log house and next summer take week end trips all over Alaska in our new car.

We’re going to get a Chevrolet Greenbriar – holds 9 passengers easily!  [Linda note:  Probably holds lots of junk for the moving frenzies, as well!  Doubt it has much traction for mountain glacial ice and mud roads, though.]

We can do all this if we don’t fight homestead.  We were going to add onto hut here this summer but now will wait and build cabin or basement of our house.

We may sell tractor and get 3,500 for it (!  Oh, how I wish you were here to talk to.  We may sell trailer for 750 – if we go to Europe.  Would have to put metal roof on hut then to serve as ‘prove up’ instead of trailer.

I want to get out of homestead rut for awhile – I still love it here but we need a change of wheels.

Now I’m dying to hear your reaction.

I felt good at log house but move through [sic] me again and stomach hurts again.  [Linda note:  So many examples of being a victim of one’s own madness!]

We moved on our Anniversary for three consecutive years and I had to get out in one day and next day (our anniversary) go back and clean house and made four trips over this damn road and was dong wash at Eagle River Laundromat at 12:00 P.M. and got so sick I felt I couldn’t get home.

This place was so neat and is a mess now.  I’m not going to sort a thing – things going in suit cases!  — already.

Gosh, I’m excited.

Baby is a jewel – so good, husky and smart.

I can stay down there [California] for as long as I like.

I may go to beach a week, mountains awhile – shall we go to Santa Barbara? – Laguna?  [Linda note:  “I” seems to forget she has 5 children with her?  Or should I say, ‘props’?  Touch of the manic here?]

Bill says I can come and go as I please.  I don’t want to be stuck in Pasadena.  I want to see and do things.

Such fun!

I may get our car in Seattle so as to have it down there.  It’s big enough to hold a crib.  [Linda note:  Hint.  Never happened.]

I’ll bring his stroller and car seat but will need a high chair – and small crib that folds easily!!

So much to plan and do!

I’ve got enough clothes – but need some light pants.

— David wants nap.  I’ll write soon.  Love, Me.

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Context for this letter can be found at the following links —

*June 1962 – Mother’s Letters

*1962 – MOTHER’S LETTERS

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+WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

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26 states in the U.S. still allow spanking and other forms of corporal punishment in public schools.

I have only a vague memory of something my sister remembers very clearly from my childhood.  She tells me that each of my elementary school years my mother walked into the principal’s office at the start of the school year and left a paddle with my name on it with permission for it to be used on me if needed.

The paddle was one of those toy ones with the ball and string removed.  How humiliating for me!  Yet, did her action send up any possible red flags about what a terribly abusive mother she was to me?  How could it when the school itself approved corporal punishment itself?

Nobody every hit me in school that I remember, though my sister remembers having a teacher that would whack student hands if they missed a multiplication problem presented orally in a class quiz format.  My brother had a teacher in school that hit him, and ironically my mother blew a gasket over this!

Two of my Texas nieces are no longer being home schooled and have found upon entering public school that spankings in the principal’s office are a very real threat of terror in their new world.

I would add in relation to the article below that many children who have been neglected, maltreated and abused OFTEN act out in school — myself included evidently.  When those children are not shown another way of interacting socially, aren’t the already existing abuse patterns of violence in their lives being reproduced and reinforced in the only other major arena of functioning young children have in their lives — their school zone?

What do you think of spanking in American schools?

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By Sue Shellenbarger

  • September 1, 2009, 9:18 AM ET

Spanking Kids in School Still Common, Especially Among Disabled

Spanking kids in school has gone the way of the buggy whip – right?

Wrong, based on a new study by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, as reported here and here. More than 200,000 U.S. schoolchildren were subjected to corporal punishment during the 2006-2007 school year, the study shows. And the South has a big lead in whacking schoolkids, with Texas, Mississippi and Alabama holding the top three spots.

Paddlings in school are still legal in 20 states, and the report suggests they are quite common, based on 202 interviews with parents, teachers, students and school officials, plus federal Education Department data. The courts haven’t afforded students in classrooms the same protection as criminals have against cruel and unusual punishment.

Many pediatricians now advise against corporal punishment; some research suggests spanking makes behavior problems worse. And while I admit to having harbored now and then a fleeting wish that my kids’ teachers could smack fellow students whose behavior disrupted class, I never would seriously advocate such a thing.

In the saddest finding of the ACLU study, children with disabilities, especially autism, drew corporal punishment at a far higher rate than others, the study found. Children with autism were often punished for behaviors linked to the condition, because teachers lacked the knowledge, training or patience to use other methods of behavior control.

Stefanie has posted before on how this touchy topic plays out in different families. I have known parents who occasionally spank their children, whose kids seem well-adjusted; my own mom and dad, who I thought were great parents, used spanking occasionally. Nevertheless, I find the idea of routine corporal punishment at school pretty appalling.

Readers, are spanking and other forms of corporal punishment ever warranted in schools? Should local school officials be free, as they are now, to choose disciplinary methods, in keeping with the values of their own communities? Or do we need a nationwide ban on spanking in schools?

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+RETHINKING MEDICINES THAT HEAL US

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I think it’s too easy to blame our relationship concerns on ‘addiction’.  Some people in our lives are our medicine and having them in our lives helps us heal, just as surely as some others are toxic poisons and make us sick and harm us.

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What does my all time favorite movie and my all time favorite man share in common for me?  Healing.  Plain and simple – healing.

I’ve been doing some thinking lately (of course) about the man I am in love with who has ‘dismissed’ me from his life.

I think about what I’ve heard people discuss about ‘addictive relationships’.  I have a related yet different take on the subject.

Humans, as a social species, are INTENDED to heal through human relationships.  We will be drawn to such healing powers like magnets.  Science has provided us now with quite a wide array of ‘psychotropic medications’ to attempt to ‘fix’ what ails our emotions, our brains, our minds.  But do they EVER heal our heart and soul?

Some people become addicted to ‘street drugs’, some to prescribed drugs.  What matters to me in my thinking right now is that there are times and conditions that cause us to NEED medicine.  Sometimes these required medicines produce side effects.  The complications of some love relationships, to me, are the side effects of the healing medicine the relationship itself produces.

I ask the question of myself, “Were you, are you, Linda, addicted to this man?”  No, but as I have no real choice but to inch my way forward in time without contact with him, I continue to search for ways to lessen my sadness.  If “knowledge is power” and “the truth will set me free,” then perhaps a combination of the two will allow me to put some gold in this pan of mine and allow me to toss back the dull, unappealing, useless gravel that serves the beauty of my life absolutely no purpose.

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In today’s world of media access I suggest that each of us probably has at least one favorite movie.  This favorite movie of mine fits like a key into the lock of my being.  It in-forms me of things I most need to know.  It provides me access to some of my most important inner feelings.  It resonates with my essence.  And, yes, not surprisingly it is a child’s movie.

I watch and re-watch The Secret Garden primarily because through the eye of the camera that filmed it, through the actions of the people who participate in the telling of its story, through its scenes and scenery, I can repeatedly glimpse the surest information I have ever had access to about what it MIGHT be like to be a child.

Watching living, breathing, active children in real life does not give me what I need to look into my own secret places and try to discover if I have ANY information within myself about what being MY OWN child was like.  So far, at 58 years of age, I still have no other clues but the ones that I discover anew each time I closely watch every second of this film.  This process, on some deep and very real profound levels, heals me.  I know it.  This movie, as a form of a work of art,  is one of my ‘medicines’.

Spending time with the man I am in love with was also a medicine to me.  I don’t even think the person himself is the medicine.  The medicine was what happened when I was with him, as if the combination of the two of us being together resulted in a lock opening to our own secret garden that freed me – and I believe at times him also – to exist for those times in a world where troubles dissipated.  In that world I felt calm, safe, peaceful, happy, joyous, entertained, connected. grounded, and well.

People in connected relationship DO heal one another as they also experience healing themselves.  Humans are created this way, of this I have no doubt.  Our entire feel-good chemical system in our bodies is connected to this fact.  That is what safe and secure attachments are all about.

However, neither the man I love, nor I, experienced what we needed of safe and secure early attachment relationships as our body-brain-mind formed in our early childhoods, which of course left us at greatest risk of – quite simply – letting our insecure attachment patterns destroy the ‘us’ of our relationship.

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When it comes to the very real ‘soft tissue’ of my heart’s ache, it is not to the technical information that I turn to.  Nonetheless, I have this foundational information to support my inner healing work.  The man of my love no doubt has what experts would call (using various technical explanations) a dismissive-avoidant insecure attachment disorder.

This simply means that his brain formed to operate primarily by categorizing, compartmentalizing and sealing off any incoming or inner information that feels uncomfortable.  He can dismiss and avoid discomfort because his brain-mind was formed that way.  At the same time, if his brain were to be scanned by an expert the actual emotional energy working behind the screen of his consciousness would STILL be visible.

All that his dismissive-avoidant (organized) insecure attachment style is really accomplishing is that what he feels can remain nearly completely ‘out of sight, out of mind’.  But because this insecure attachment pattern is included among the ‘organized’ rather than ‘disorganized’ ones, he can carry on his life just fine – and certainly that can mean without me.  He might appear extremely narcissistic from the outside, but so what.  He convinces himself he always gets what he wants – and he probably does.

Then, on the other hand, there’s me with my disoriented-disorganized insecure attachment disorder.  It is entirely ‘my problem’ that I ‘oriented and organized’ my emotional universe around my attachment to this man.  NOT his problem – nor should it be.  Yet none of this changes the fact that I am left — now that my 35 years of being a mother with a child under the age of 18 in the house has vanished as my orienting-organizing center, now also without this 8 year plus relationship in my life that also gave me an orienting-organizing center — to face the full splendor of what is really going on inside of me.

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Having a movie for a healing medicine is a whole lot simpler and easier to depend on than having a connection with a special person for a healing medicine.  In either case, both these medicines temporarily alleviate my deep, ancient-to-me underlying major sadness and depression that was ‘impressed into me’ by my extremely abusive mother.  Watching the movie vanquishes the depression for a time.  Being with the man I love also vanquished the depression for a time.  Is there, for me, anything like a more permanent solution?

I honestly don’t know.  I am as yet completely opposed to consuming psychotropics (or street drugs including alcohol) because I believe that my combination of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and identity, depersonalization, derealization and dissociation disorders are far, far too complex to be ‘healed’ with drugs.  I do not believe that they would act as medicines to me, and I am not willing to deal with the side effects.  [Please do not take my personal opinions regarding this issue over into your own pasture.  I am me.  You are you.  Always consult your medical providers about your own concerns.]

If missing this man in my life is one of the side effects of having spent many, many healing hours in his presence, so be it.  I discovered through my relationship with him the best of feelings I never – until then – ever even knew existed.  And of course I both miss those feelings as well as deeply miss HIM, the person who is most special to me of all I’ve ever met in this lifetime (my children, of course, being in a different category all of their own).

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We cannot ignore the tragedies created within human relationships caused by insecure attachment disorders.  Nor do I believe we have any chance of healing these relationships themselves if we do not and cannot address the insecure attachment systems that doom them. We need to be crystal clear that most often the ‘fault’ — or fissure that destroys many otherwise healing relationships belongs to the insecure attachment disorders themselves — not to the individual people that form these relationships.

I am not going to demean, disregard, or distort anything about my relationship and feelings in connection with this man.  I honor the whole of it all.  I can accept that healing of a medicinal nature was transpiring for me, but this does not indicate an addiction.  That both of our insecure attachment histories would prevent a sustaining, long term, two-way-committed relationship from blossoming between us seems obvious to me.  Knowing this does not make losing him in my life one single bit easier.

He can shut off awareness of feelings and conflicts and I cannot.  He lives his life.  I live mine.  Yes, I miss him.  Terribly with anguish.  Yet at the same time I can focus my efforts to find all the other experiences in this world that can each help to heal me.  I’m going to start by ordering myself my own copy of my favorite movie so I no longer have to rely on the public library when I want to watch it.  This might be just a small thing, but it will help me.

I must look for all the ways I can nurture myself.  After all, the very roots of the word ‘medicine’ are feminine, and the word relates to what affects our well being.  That is fundamentally what I am after – improved well being.  I need well being as much now as I did every time I was able to be at that man’s side and feel better than I did without him.  I never took one single second of that time with him for granted.  I was clear in appreciating every second I was with him.  I valued that time.  I was grateful.  I knew I was being given the gift of a precious blessing.  Of that I am certain.

Yet today I must search for and find my medicine elsewhere.  All this being said – I am going for a walk — as always, by putting one foot in front of the other so I can move forward.  Dick and Jane, see Linda go.  “Go Linda!  Go!”

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

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New Resource for Parents: CDC Parent Portal

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+THE CHILD ABUSE CONTINUUM – THROW DENIAL TO THE WIND

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Deception, denial, deflection – whatever the tactic abusive parents such as my mother was – and as my father was through his compliant complacency — may use, their intent is to find ways to confuse young abused children about the facts of their condition and situation.

I remember a time in my childhood when my mother described a TRUE child abuse case to me and my siblings.  Someone in Alaska had become so furious at their young toddler for soiling its pants during potty training that they had beaten the child and then taken it outside and placed it bare bottomed, in the middle of a freezing Alaskan winter night, on the top of a car hood.

After some period of time they had yanked the child off of the car, ripping all the skin off its bottom.  They took the baby to a hospital where the truth of their crime was then uncovered.

“Now THAT was child abuse,” my mother let us know – particularly me.  She did not make clear her intentions in telling this story, but I think similar tactics are often used to present in the minds of abused children – and even in the minds of adults who were abused as children – the distorted ‘fact’ that we are not abused ourselves.  We are only punished because we are bad children and have to get what we deserve to straighten us out.

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I have written in other posts that I figured out the bare minimum sentence that my mother – and my father through his passive participation in my mother’s madness – would have deserved for the abuse perpetrated against me in my childhood.  Theirs would have been a minimum sentence at 14,500 years each.

So what do we make of the kinds of abuse acts like those referenced below?  Does the abuse we suffered ourselves so pale in comparison to these kinds of cases that we ought not to consider that we ourselves were abused at all?  Are we tempted to compare our history to much worse cases so we can minimize our own history and thus vanquish our own abuse experiences into the oblivion of ‘not so bad’?

I think not.  I believe that altered brain development caused by malevolent early childhood conditions underlies all chronic and sustained adult abuse actions against children.  These evolutionarily altered brains can be extremely dangerous.  In my mother’s case, she was wise enough and narcissistic enough to usually know exactly where the line was that would have brought outside negative attention against her for her abuse actions toward me.

I also have to credit myself with the fact that from as soon as I was old enough to do so, I remained hyper-aware, hyper-alert, and hyper-involved while my mother beat me so that I could make every possible effort to protect my body from devastating impacts against hard objects as she threw me around in the midst of her frequent and extensive physical rage attacks against me.  During her severe attacks on my small body, preserving my life was not my mother’s concern.  Fortunately, it was mine.

I also know that she used food as a weapon against me, but that is substance for another post in the future.  She certainly did not starve me because she knew someone would make her pay for that act.  If she could have done so with impunity, I think she would have – and would have enjoyed doing so.

My point today is that hearing about cases such as these (below) brings to mind that child abuse exists on a continuum of damage caused by faulty brains in faulty human beings.  That child abuse DOES exist at all reflects faults within our entire society.  At no time does denial or minimization of the reality of ANY child abuse help anyone — most certainly not ourselves.

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Carnation-area woman pleads guilty in stepdaughter’s starvation case Local News A Carnation-area woman accused of starving and withholding water from her 14-year-old stepdaughter last year entered a modified guilty plea Friday to first-degree criminal mistreatment. Rebecca Long’s plea came just days after her husband, Jon Pomeroy, 43, pleaded guilty to the same charge. 9/5/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Woman pleads guilty in child starvation case Local News A 45-year-old woman accused of withholding water and starving her 14-year-old stepdaughter has entered a modified guilty plea to a charge of first-degree criminal mistreatment. 9/4/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Couple indicted in Texas starvation case Nation and World A grand jury in Dallas has indicted a couple accused of keeping the woman’s three young children starving in a hotel bathroom for at least nine months. 8/26/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Wash. man pleads guilty in daughter’s starvation Local News A Carnation man has pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal mistreatment, after his daughter was found severely emaciated last summer and told investigators she was allowed only about 6 ounces of water a day. Jon Pomeroy, 43, entered the plea Monday in King County Superior Court. 8/31/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Starvation abuse rare, shocking even to experts Local News …and the 14-year-old victim, but has studied cases of starvation involving children ranging in age from 2 months to 13 years…systematic and deliberate,” Wilson said. Kellogg said starvation victims such as the Carnation girl need far more than food… 10/14/2008 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Pa. social workers charged after starvation death Nation and World By all accounts, there is blame to go around for the 2006 starvation death of disabled teenager Danieal Kelly. Her mother pleaded guilty to murder this week for criminally neglecting the once-vivacious… 5/1/2009 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Vegan couple sentenced in baby’s starvation death Nation and World …sentences on Jade Sanders, 27, and Lamont Thomas, 31. Their son, Crown Shakur, weighed just 3 ½ pounds when he died of starvation on April 25, 2004. The couple were found guilty May 2 of charges including malice murder, felony murder and cruelty… 5/10/2007 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

New mental evaluations ordered for Kent mother in starvation case Local News …found Robinson passed out amid 300 beer cans. Officers also found a 6-week-old and a 16-month-old boy dead of starvation and dehydration. A 2 ½-year-old son survived, apparently by eating uncooked noodles and rice. 3/15/2007 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

Lesson In Death By Starvation Business …Red Cross, described the process of starvation. NAIROBI, Kenya – Starving to death…die of illnesses, rather than actual starvation. The victim initially feels hunger…of infection. The body copes with starvation by burning fewer calories, the fuel… 8/27/1992 | seattletimes.com | find similar results

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+I WAS ONLY A MOTHER TO MY CHILDREN

alchemynow1 Comment

092209 post Not My Children’s Friend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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+THE MAD WOMAN MOTHER MOVES US ALL AGAIN!

alchemynow5 Comments

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I was nine years old when my mother wrote the following letters to her mother (in Los Angeles).  My mother had given birth 2 months prior to my brother, the 5th child.  We had left the homestead fall of 1960 and moved into a one bedroom apartment in Anchorage.  Of course that apartment was too small for six of us, so everything was hauled up the stairs into a two bedroom apartment later in the fall of 1960, the one that we are in the process of moving out of the next spring — when these letters were written.

As I work with the very few of mother’s letters I can find for the early summer of 1961, I am beginning to understand why this process is the ONLY way to begin to construct anything like a coherent time line of my childhood.  At this time (see below) we were moving back into the log house in Eagle River AT THE SAME TIME mother intended for us to return to the homestead for the summer.

In effect, this meant that at least for May and part of June 1961 we were living in three places AT THE SAME TIME — all of them in a terrific mess with boxes of things packed, piled, loaded, moved — truly insane!

What is really interesting is that not one of the older four children, myself included, have any actual memory of the moves!!  That’s part of what motivates me to go looking for them — to solve this mystery!

I had no real idea until this point in my letter transcription process of how my mother’s insanity was completely reflected in the continual changing of our place of residence, and even in the overlapping of residences!!  The following letters act as ‘signifiers’ of the states of my mother’s mind that both created the moving conditions and was itself created by the moving conditions!

I notice again and again that her maniacal cleaning was a continual thread tying all the living environments together, even on the homestead without electricity or running water.  In fact, it was even so before we made it up the mountain — in her April 14, 1959 letter where she describes how we had no water for meals because she used it all up during the day scrubbing and waxing the tiny trailer floor as it sat in another homesteader’s snow covered field — as if dropped from the air by some giant passing bird.

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May 31, 1961

Dear Mother,

It hurts me terribly to write this but I must.  The dam has broken and the flood is loose – our home is threatened by it.  I must tell you now – please cancel your plans, at least temporarily.  You mustn’t come in July at least.  Please understand.  We cannot possibly have things straightened out by then.

The past 3 years have been HECTIC in so many ways.  I don’t know, I think I’ll wire Spoerry [landlord of log house] and cancel the house.  Perhaps we should spend one more winter in town and put all in storage for the summer.

The house is 135 plus 50 oil + + +.  We have more jeep repairs as of today.

I might come down instead and next summer you could come up.

All is a mess.  I’m very unhappy.  I can’t stand it any more.  My nerves are shot to hell.  [triple underlining]

Really Mom – please tell me you understand.  All is a mess – my private life too!!  [multiple underlining]

I love you – and will write later.  Love, Mildred

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June 13, 1961

Dear Mother,

Just a note – I’m sorry but I’ve so much to do.  It’s been this way ever since moving day – 13 days of it only it started of course away before then.

2 nites ago on our (ha, ha) anniversary I slept on bare floor here – last nite on a cot (work, work, work!)

Well this is [can’t read word] that you’re to cash our check for 150 [underlined 6 times] on June 20th.

All is O.K.  We’re just busy.  Log house has had all walls washed and floors scrubbed and waxed – it was absolutely filthy which made me furious after I’d had to per-fect apartment before I left for inspection!

Now I’m doing windows on inside and out and painting bed-rooms.

Last nite went to Anchorage and bought pots, pans, stainless steel flatware and towels etc. for the place.  It’s all strictly business!

I’m so tired I could die.

Well John is on his way so I want this mailed.  He received gift from you and opened it.  He loves it – so nice!  Will spend his Birthday at Homestead at his request.

I did get David’s ‘suit’ and it’s darling was so rushed forgot to mention it.

Will write later, Love, Me

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Rest of letters here:

PRESENTING THE HOMESTEADING

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

+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

alchemynow2 Comments
http://www.about.com/

Borderline Personality Disorder


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

In the Spotlight

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

Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Of all the psychosocial treatments for BPD, Dialectical Behavior Therapy or DBT has the largest body of research support. DBT is also now offered all over the world.
How to Get the Most Out of Treatment
Now that you’ve found the right therapy, how do you make sure that you get the most out of it? These tips will help you on the road to recovery.

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

+EXTREME STATES AND BRAIN REWIRING

alchemynowLeave a comment

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PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE BEFORE READING THIS POST:

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Mind & Brain / Senses

Extreme States

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

by Steven Kotler, Photo illustration by Josef Astor

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

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HERE ARE SOME POINTS I PONDER AND QUESTION:

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

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

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Interesting statement:

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

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

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Take a look at the information about this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What might they have to do with depression?

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

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

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

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

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What about religious experience?

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

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

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

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And, this article’s conclusion:

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

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For myself, I am most interested in this statement:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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RECOMMENDED – VISIT THIS WEBSITE!!

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

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

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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March 1, 1960

Dear Mom,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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letter is filed here:

*1960 (IN THE ACT) HOMESTEADING

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+WARNING! WATCH OUT FOR DEHUMANIZING DOCTORS!

alchemynow1 Comment

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When doctors dehumanize their patients they are actually dehumanizing themselves.

After a year of horribly misery, which included a toxic chemotherapy regime to kill my advanced, aggressive breast cancer, a year of herceptin treatment post-double mastectomy (at which point they discovered I actually had two different cancers in the same breast), my first doctor finished his treatment of me in the following way.

I had my last herceptin treatment and met with him inside the ‘little room.’  He concluded his exam, left the room while I dressed, and waited for me in the hallway.  He was standing there not to encourage me, not to congratulate me for completing a grueling year of cancer treatment, but to tell me the following.

“By the way,” he said.  “I wouldn’t bother having breast reconstruction if I were you.  You won’t live long enough to enjoy it.  Besides, we’d just have to cut them off again, anyway.”

His words and his attitude would have been enough to throw even the most emotionally healthy person into a tailspin.  For me, with an 18-year history of extreme abuse from birth, his words destroyed my confidence in him, in the treatment I had experienced, in myself, and in my hopes for a full recovery.

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It took the combined love, support and assistance of all my family members and friends to turn me around enough to search for another doctor.  A year ago I chose one, and yesterday I had my LAST encounter with that one.

To a large extent because of the multitude of forced confinements in my childhood, it is all I can do to stand being put into a small exam room with a closed door.  After sitting for half an hour in a frigid examination room yesterday with my little paper waist length ‘shirt’ on waiting for my doctor, he finally entered the door, walked directly to me and grabbed my hand in a handshake.  Looking me straight in the eye he gave an Oscar-quality performance of care and concern for my well being.

Which lasted the ten seconds it took him to withdraw his hand, perch himself on his backless swivel stool, open my case file and ask me, “How long has it been since you had a mammogram?”  Not giving me time to answer his question, he added, “You didn’t have chemotherapy, did you?”

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Mammogram?  I haven’t had breasts for a year and a half.  Chemotherapy?  It nearly killed me itself.  Care and concern for my well being?  I think not!

By the time I returned home after that appointment yesterday I felt as icky as if I had been violated.  Because I had been.  There is no excuse for doctors to treat patients this way.  Absolutely NONE.

With a 30-second scan of my chart before that doctor entered the exam room to see me yesterday he could have at least informed himself enough about MY case to have treated me as the human being that man has sworn to assist.

Any of us who have suffered severe maltreatment during the very early developmental years of our childhoods are at extremely high risk for developing adult onset serious diseases – cancer included.  Severe child abuse is a terrorizing experience.  Having cancer is a terrorizing experience.  Having doctors treat me as if I am less than a speck of dirt is – to me – a traumatic reenactment of terrorizing experiences.

Most thankfully there is nothing discernable about me today to indicate the presence of cancer in my body.  For some reason nobody has explained to me, even with the presence of advanced cancer in my breast – even with two cancers in my breast – there was absolutely no ‘cancer marker’ sign whatsoever in my blood that indicated the presence of either one of them from the start.  ‘Stealth cancers’, I call them.

This second doctor told me six months ago that I will know if and when the cancer is back, not a doctor.  OK.  Then I cut myself free of them.  At the same time I would warn anyone, especially those with severe child abuse histories, to be aware and use extreme caution in the presence of doctors!  They are not necessarily human.

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Your Brain after Chemo: A Practical Guide to Lifting the Fog and Getting Back Your Focus by Daniel Silverman MD PhD and Idelle Davidson (Hardcover – Jul 13, 2009)
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