Tag: sadness

+THE CHILD ABUSE CONTINUUM – THROW DENIAL TO THE WIND

alchemynowLeave a comment

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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

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

alchemynow2 Comments
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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.

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

alchemynow2 Comments

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Borderline Personality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available.

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

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

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

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

READER REVIEWS

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The Borderline Psychotic Child: A Selective Integration by Trevor Lubbe

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet, read editorial comments)

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Diagnosis – Borderline Personality Disorder: Visions for Tomorrow – The Basics by Nami Texas and Deborah Colleen Rose

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet – read editorial comments)

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Helping Someone You Love Recover From Borderline Personality Disorder by Tami Green

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet – read editorial comments)

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One Way Ticket To Kansas: Caring About Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder And Finding A Healthy You by Ozzie Tinman

READER REVIEWS

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Breaking Free from Boomerang Love: Getting Unhooked from Borderline Personality Disorder Relationships by Lynn Melville

READER REVIEWS

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I Love You Madly! Workbook: Insight Enhancement About Healthy and Disturbed Love Relations by Robert M. Gordon

READER REVIEWS

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Through The Looking Glass: Women And Borderline Personality Disorder (New Directions in Theory and Psychology) by Dana Becker

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet – look at editorial comments)

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The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide by Alex Chapman and Kim Gratz

READER REVIEWS

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Putting the Pieces Together: A Practical Guide to Recovery From Borderline Personality Disorder by Joy A. Jensen (Paperback – 2004)

READER REVIEWS

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Universe, Disturbed by Janice Brabaw

READER REVIEWS

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When Hope is Not Enough by Bon Dobbs

READER REVIEWS

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Living in the Dead Zone: Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison: Understanding Borderline Personality Disorders by Gerald A. Faris and Ralph M. Faris

READER REVIEWS

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Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger

READER REVIEWS

*This book has an Amazon.com sales ranking of #612 – if that gives us any idea of the prevalence of BPD and seriousness of public concern for Borderline Personality Disorder and its consequences.

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The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook: Practical Strategies for Living With Someone Who Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Randi Kreger and James Paul Shirley

READER REVIEWS

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My Enemy, Myself: Personal Journey through Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse & Borderline Personality Disorder by Meri R Kennedy

READER REVIEWS

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Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem by Kimberlee Roth, Freda B. Friedman, and Randi Kreger

READER REVIEWS

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Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder by Rachel Reiland

READER REVIEWS

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Sometimes I Act Crazy: Living with Borderline Personality Disorder by Jerold J. Kreisman M.D. and Hal Straus

READER REVIEWS

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I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality by Jerold J. Kreisman and Hal Straus

READER REVIEWS

This book has an Amazon.com sales ranking of #1,589.

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The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells by Randi Kreger

READER REVIEWS

This book has an Amazon.com sales ranking of #3,703.

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Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha M. Linehan

READER REVIEWS

This book has an Amazon.com sales ranking of #1,114

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Borderline Personality Disorder: A Clinical Guide by John G. Gunderson and Paul S. Links

READER REVIEWS

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Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: An Essential Guide for Understanding and Living with BPD by Robert O. Friedel, Perry D. Hoffman, Dixianne Penney, and Patricia Woodward

READER REVIEWS

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Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship by Christine Ann Lawson

READER REVIEWS

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The Siren’s Dance: My Marriage to a Borderline: A Case Study by Anthony Walker

READER REVIEWS

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A Peek Inside The Goo:: Depression & The Borderline Personality by Njemile Zakiya

READER REVIEWS

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Dialectical Behavior Therapy Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, & Distress Tolerance (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley

READER REVIEWS

This book has an Amazon.com sales ranking of #687

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New Hope for People with Borderline Personality Disorder: Your Friendly, Authoritative Guide to the Latest in Traditional and Complementary Solutions by Neil R. Bockian, Nora Elizabeth Villagran, and Valerie Porr

READER REVIEWS

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Lost in the Mirror, 2nd Edition: An Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder by Richard Moskovitz

READER REVIEWS

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The Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders : An Interactive Self-Help Guide by Ph.D. Joseph Santoro and Ronald Jay Cohen

READER REVIEWS

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Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha Linehan

READER REVIEWS

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Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescents: A Complete Guide to Understanding and Coping When Your Adolescent Has BPD by Blaise A Aguirre

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Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality: Focusing on Object Relations by John F. Clarkin

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Integrative Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder: Effective, Symptom-Focused Techniques, Simplified For Private Practice by John D. Preston Psy D ABPP

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The Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders: An Integrated Developmental Approach by James F. Masterson

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Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (Master Work Series) by Otto F. Kernberg

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The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approaches to Marital Therapy by Joan Lachkar

READER REVIEWS

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Borderlines: A Memoir by Caroline Kraus

CUSTOMER REVIEWS

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Mentalization-based Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Practical Guide by Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy

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Essential Papers on Borderline Disorders (Essential Papers in Psychoanalysis) by Michael H. Stone

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Women and Borderline Personality Disorder: Symptoms and Stories by Janet Wirth-Cauchon

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Self Help for Managing the Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder by Tami Green

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Psychotherapy Of The Borderline Adult: A Developmental Approach by M.D. Masterson

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Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: Mentalization Based Treatment (Bateman, Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder) by Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy

READER REVIEWS

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Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Of Borderline Patients by Otto F. Kernberg, Michael A. Selzer, Harold W. Koenigsberg, and Arthur C. Carr

READER REVIEWS

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Borderline Patients: Extending The Limits Of Treatability (Basic Behavioral Science) by Harold W. Koenigsberg M.D., Otto F. Kernberg M.D., Michael H. Stone M.D., and Ann H. Appelbaum M.D.

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet – look at editorial comments)

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Borderline Personality Disorder (The Facts) by Roy Krawitz and Wendy Jackson

READER REVIEWS

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Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide to Evidence-Based Practice by Joel Paris MD

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Dynamic Psychotherapy With the Borderline Patient by William N. Goldstein

READER REVIEWS (no review yet – read editorial comments)

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Understanding your Borderline Personality Disorder: A Workbook (The Wiley Series in Psychoeducation?) by Chris Healy

READER REVIEWS

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Borderline Personality Disorder: Clinical and Empirical Perspectives by John F. Clarkin, Elsa Marziali, and Heather Munroe-Blum

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet – read editorial comments)

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Borderline Personality Disorder: Struggling, Understanding, Succeeding by Colleen E. Warner Psy.D

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet – read editorial comments)

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Schema Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder by Arnoud Arntz, Hannie van Genderen, and Jolijn Drost

READER REVIEWS (no reviews yet – read editorial comments)

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Understanding and Treating Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide for Professionals and Families by John G. Gunderson and Perry D., Ph.D. Hoffman

READER REVIEWS

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Borderline and Beyond, Revised by Laura Paxton

READER REVIEWS

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Borderline Personality Disorder: The Latest Assessment and Treatment Strategies by Melanie A. Dean

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The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know about Living with BPD [BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDE] by Alexander L.(Author) ; Gratz, Kim L.(Author); Hoffman, Perry D.(Foreword by) Chapman (Paperback – Dec 31, 2007)

Dialectical Behaviour Therapists: Challenging Therapeutic Pessimism Related to Borderline Personality Disorder by Rachel Rossiter (Paperback – Jul 16, 2009)

Borderline Personality Disorder: The NICE Guideline on Treatment and Management by National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (section of the Colleges Research Unit) (Paperback – Jun 15, 2009)

Borderline Personality Disorder: New Research by Marian H. Jackson (Hardcover – Feb 2009)

Borderline Personality Disorder (Medical Psychiatry Series) by Mary C. Zanarini (Hardcover – Sep 14, 2005)

Borderline (The Toni Barston) by Terri Breneman (Paperback – Aug 20, 2007)

The Treatment of the Borderline Patient: Applying Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting by David P. Celani (Hardcover – May 1993)

Personalities: Master Clinicians Confront the Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorders by Henk-Jan Dalewijk (Hardcover – Feb 28, 2001)

Sexual aversion an issue for borderline patients: new observation. (borderline personality disorder).(Adult Psychiatry): An article from: Clinical Psychiatry News by Bruce Jancin (Digital – Jun 1, 2005) – HTML

A Developmental Model of Borderline Personality Disorder: Understanding Variations in Course and Outcome by Patricia Hoffman Judd and Thomas H. McGlashan (Paperback – Oct 1, 2002)

Borderlines: Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Life Writing (Postmodern Studies 33) by Gunnthórunn Gudmundsdóttir (Paperback – Jun 2003)

An analogue investigation of the relationships among perceived parental criticism, negative affect, and borderline personality disorder features: the role … from: Behaviour Research and Therapy] by J.S. Cheavens, M. Zachary Rosenthal, and S. Daughters (Digital – Feb 1, 2005) – HTML

From Borderline Adolescent to Functioning Adult: The Test of Time by M.D. Masterson (Hardcover – Aug 1, 1980)

The Metaphor of Play by Russell Meares (Paperback – Sep 29, 2005)

PTSD/Borderlines in Therapy: Finding the Balance by Jerome Kroll (Hardcover – Jun 17, 1993)

Memory of childhood trauma before and after long-term psychological treatment of borderline personality disorder [An article from: Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry] by I.P. Kremers, A.E. Van Giezen, and A.J.W Van der Does (Digital – Mar 1, 2007) – HTML

BORDERLINE CONDITIONS AND PATHOLOGICAL NARCISSISM (Unknown Binding – Jan 1, 1975)

Becoming a Constant Object in Psychotherapy with the Borderline Patient by Charles P. Cohen (Paperback – Feb 28, 1996)

Split Self/Split Object: Understanding and Treating Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Disorders by Philip Manfield (Hardcover – Jun 1992)

Schema Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder (Unknown Binding – Jan 1, 2009)

Mentalization: Theoretical Considerations, Research Findings, and Clinical Implications (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series) by Fredric N Busch (Paperback – Feb 25, 2008)

Trauma reenactment: rethinking borderline personality disorder when diagnosing sexual abuse survivors.: An article from: Journal of Mental Health Counseling by Robyn L. Trippany, Heather M. Helm, and Laura Simpson (Digital – April 25, 2006) – HTML

Drug Tx for borderline personality disorder.(EVIDENCE-B… PSYCHIATRIC MEDICINE): An article from: Clinical Psychiatry News by Jan Leard-Hansson and Laurence Guttmacher (Digital – Sep 20, 2007) – HTML

Borderline personality disorder in mom predicts teen’s social problems.(News): An article from: Pediatric News by Sarah Pressman (Digital – April 3, 2007) – HTM

Key Papers on Borderline Disorders: With IJP Internet Discussion Reviews by Paul Williams (Paperback – May 2002)

Let Me Make It Good: A Chronicle of My Life With Borderline Personality Disorder by Jane Wanklin (Paperback – Jun 1997)

My Work With Borderline Patients (Master Work) by Harold F. Searles (Paperback – Oct 1994)

Borderline Personality Disorder: A Practitioner’s Guide to Comparative Treatments (Springer Series on Comparative Treatments for Psychological Disorders) by Arthur Freeman EdD ABPP, Mark H. Stone PsyD, and Donna Martin PsyD (Paperback – Jan 29, 2007)

Approach by Michael H. Langley (Hardcover – Jan 1994)

Eclipses: Behind the Borderline Personality Disorder by Melissa F. Thornton (Paperback – Nov 1997)

Borderline Personality Disorder: A Patient’s Guide to Taking Control by Arthur Freeman and Gina M. Fusco (Paperback – Nov 1, 2003)

Cognitive characteristics of patients with borderline personality disorder: Development and validation of a self-report inventory [An article from: Journal … Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry] by B. Renneberg, C. Schmidt-Rathjens, R. Hippin, and Back (Digital) – HTML

A Primer of Transference Focused Psychotherapy for the Borderline Patient by John F. Clarkin (Hardcover – Jun 28, 2002)

Cognitive Therapy of Borderline Personality Disorder (Psychology Practitioner Guidebooks) by Mary Anne Layden, Cory F., Ph.D. Newman, Arthur Freeman, and Susan Byers Morse (Paperback – Mar 28, 2002)

Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality by John F. Clarkin, Frank E. Yeomans, and Otto F. Kernberg (Hardcover – Dec 18, 1998)

Borderline Psychopathology and Its Treatment (Master Work) by Gerald Adler (Paperback – Oct 1994)

Psychotherapy of the Quiet Borderline Patient: The as-if Personality Revisited by Vance R. Sherwood (Hardcover – Aug 28, 1994)

Current and Historical Perspectives on Borderline Personality Disorder (Current Issues in Psychoanalytic Practice : Monographs of the Society for Psychoanalyst) by Fine (Hardcover – Oct 1, 1989)

Relationship Management of the Borderline Patient: From Understanding to Treatment by David Dawson (Hardcover – Jul 1, 1993)

Treating the borderline family: A systemic approach (Family therapy) (Unknown Binding – 1989)

The Borderline Personality: Vision and Healing by Nathan Schwartz-Salant (Paperback – Jun 1989)

Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients by Glen O. Gabbard (Paperback – Feb 28, 2000)

Splitting, Protecting Yourself While Divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist by William Eddy (Paperback – 2004)

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder (Co-occurring Disorders Series) (Co-occurring Disorders Series) by Juergen E. Korbanka (Paperback – April 15, 2004) – Import

Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (American Psychiatric Association Practice Guidelines) (American Psychiatric Association Practice Guidelines,) by American Psychiatric Association (Paperback – Nov 2001)

Cognitive Analytic Therapy and Borderline Personality Disorder: The Model and the Method by Anthony Ryle

Imbroglio: Rising to the Challenges of Borderline Personality Disorder by Janice M. Cauwels (Hardcover – May 1992)

Borderline Personality Disorders: The Concept the Syndrome the Patient by Peter Hartocollis (Hardcover – Aug 1977)

Borderline Personality Disorder by John G. Gunderson (Hardcover – Nov 1984)

Borderline Disorders: Clinical Models and Techniques by Eda G. Goldstein (Hardcover – Oct 5, 1990)

Treating Borderline States in Marriage: Dealing with Oppositionalism, Ruthless Aggression, and Severe Resistance (The Library of Object Relations) by Charles C. McCormack (Hardcover – Feb 1, 2000)

The Angry Heart: An Interactive Self-Help Guide to Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders by Joseph, Ph.D. Santoro (Hardcover – Jul 2001)

An Introduction to the Borderline Conditions by William N. Goldstein (Paperback – Jul 1997)

Borderline and Beyond, Workbook and Personal Journal, Revised by Laura Paxton (Paperback – Nov 21, 2001)

The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tools and Techniques to Stop Walking on Eggshells [ESSENTIAL FAMILY GT BORDERLINE] (Unknown Binding – Oct 31, 2008)

The Legacy of Abandonment In Borderline Personality Disorder by A.J. Mahari (Kindle Edition – Jan 5, 2007)

The Fate of Borderline Patients: Successful Outcome and Psychiatric Practice by Michael H. Stone MD (Hardcover – May 4, 1990)

Borderline Personality Disorder: Tailoring the Psychotherapy to the Patient by Glen O. Gabbard, Jon G. Allen, Siebolt H. Frieswyk, and Donald B. Colson (Hardcover – Jan 15, 1996)

Six Steps in the Treatment of Borderline Personality Organization (The Master Work Series) by Vamik D. Volkan (Paperback – Jun 1995)

Advances in Psychotherapy of the Borderline Patient by Joseph LeBoit and Attilio Capponi (Hardcover – Jul 1979)

Comparative Treatments for Borderline Personality Disorder (Springer Series on Comparative Treatments for Psychological Disorders) by Arthur Freeman EdD ABPP, Mark H. Stone PsyD, and Donna Martin PsyD (Hardcover – Nov 18, 2004)

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BLOGGER’S CHOICE

The Metaphor of Play by Russell Meares (Paperback – Sep 29, 2005)

Buy new: $35.95 $32.53

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Excerpt – page 3: “… of the disturbance was officially given a name – the borderline personality. The aim of this book is to show how …”

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Editorial Reviews

Review

In my Opinion The metaphor of play is a profoundly important book by one of the greatest contemporary thinkers and researchers in the field of psychotherapy. – Dougal Steel, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
Product Description
Personality disorder can be conceived as the result of a disruption of the development of self. This thoroughly updated edition of The Metaphor of Play examines how those who have suffered such disruption can be treated by understanding their sense of self and the fragility of their sense of existence.
Based on the Conversational Model, this book demonstrates that the play of a pre-school child, and a mental activity similar to it in the adult, is necessary to the growth of a healthy self. The three sections of the book: Development, Disruption and Amplification and Integration introduce such concepts as the expectational field, paradoxical restoration, reversal, value and fit, and coupling, amplification and representation.

This highly readable and lucid presentation of the role of play in the development of self will be of interest not only to therapists but also to those interested in the larger issues of mind and consciousness.

About the Author
Russell Meares is Emeritus Professor of Psychitary at the University of Sydney and leads a program at Westmead Hospital, Sydney for the treatment of, and research into, borderline personality.

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+EXPERTS LEAVE US KNOWING WE NEED ‘SOMETHING MORE’

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I would like to recommend (with the following reservations) the book

Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem by Kimberlee Roth, Freda B. Friedman, and Randi Kreger.

The authors have created a recovery tool for anyone exposed in childhood to the whims and rages of a parent with this form of mental illness.  The book is clearly divided into sections which cover NEARLY every topic of interest for those of us who had to endure childhoods under the care (or more likely the lack of care) of a parent whose mind never worked correctly.

Yet while the book carries within its pages hundreds of tips for working out our adult ‘issues’ created within this malevolent kind of childhood, it does not, in my opinion, speak to the single most important FACT that those of us who were raised from birth by parents – particularly mothers – who manifested the most severe ‘style’ of Borderline Personality Disorder known within the human species know instinctively about ourselves.

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This book, like most others except The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook–What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz, does not discuss or present the very real brain development changes that occur as a result of an infant being raised in a truly malevolent environment.

I find that altered brain development is a completely ignored consequence of being raised by a severe Borderline parent.  I remain disappointed that the experts in the topic of working to recover a healthy self and a healthy life post-malevolent childhoods do not consider that for every word of their expert writing those of us who HAVE one of these altered brains read, we are still left ‘starving and alone’, bereft of the most important information we need in order to make use of the information all the experts are giving us.

No matter how helpful, how accurate, how comprehensive, how informed or how ‘scientifically based’ any Borderline Personality Disorder recovery book may intend to be, either for the BPD person or for their offspring, if altered brain development is not presented as THE SINGLE most significant consequence of a malevolent childhood, then the authors’ words are missing the point.

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Even though Roth, Friedman and Kreger at least mention insecure attachment disorders in their book, they do not develop the potential that exists within this one crucial sphere of thought to its REAL conclusion.  Insecure attachment patterns from birth, if they are not altered and improved by secure attachment patterns with other adequate early infant and childhood caregivers, result in the development of a changed brain.

These changed brains will NEVER process incoming information in the same way as a securely attached, benevolently formed brain will.  When this fact is ignored in any ‘self help’ book — which I might add currently includes ALL of them – the foundational brain of the person trying to make sense of the ‘help’ and apply it to themselves is left floating around without the information most needed in order to make improvements in their lives.

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This, to me, amounts to a situation similar to one in which instruction is given in how to drive a car safely without anyone ever acknowledging or addressing the single most important aspect of the task – one must not be completely sightless.  It’s like being instructed to build a modern day wood frame house while at the same time NOT being told that one must have something to measure with, cut the wood with, and drive the nails with.

In other words, every ‘self help’ book I have ever read, with the exception of those who specifically begin from the start by identifying the fundamental brain changes that result from infant and child development in a malevolent world, make major assumptions about their readership that leaves those of us with these changed brains flailing around in the dark.  We know from our insides that something is missing.  I am here to say the missing information is not due to any fault of ours.  The missing information is in the writing and work of the ‘experts’ who are presenting THEIR information while ignoring what some of us know absolutely to be true.

‘Un-ordinary’ infancies and childhoods create ‘un-ordinary’ brain-mind-bodies.  Those with severe Borderline Personality Disorder are among such people, and it is likely that without outside assistance during our childhoods that those of us raised by these BPD parents end up with ‘un-ordinary’ brains, as well.

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The tricky part of trying to locate, access and use information helpful to improving the quality of our lives is that those people with an ‘ordinary brain’ and those with an ‘un-ordinary’ brain might both be left needing to build the proverbial modern wood frame house.  The first have the box of tools, the second do not – and may well NEVER have them because the brain that was built inside their skulls from birth was simply not made to be an ‘ordinary brain’.

Yes, the brain is plastic and can accomplish incredible feats of adjustment.  But the fundamental brain regions, circuits, pathways and patterns of operation are built into the brain’s structure before the age of two.   These most fundamental aspects of a brain, once it has been built, cannot be changed in any fundamental way.  It would seem far more helpful to me to have experts tell me what these brain changes are, how to recognize how they affect me, and how to work most constructively in order to try to create a quality life in spite of them.

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Without information about my changed brain, I am left alone deep within a pitch dark cave without a source of light.  The ‘self help’ books can tell me what it’s like up there on the earth’s surface, but they do not describe where I am to start with, nor do they give me a single solitary clue how to find my way to the surface so that I can try to begin the journey they so helpfully describe for those who are already there.

Yet even if I do somehow miraculously make my way to the ‘ordinary surface’, my journey there would STILL be a far different one than ‘ordinary’ because of my brain-mind-body changes.  I would STILL be left trying to translate their helpful instructions about how to ‘drive safely’ even though I lack the sightedness these authors take completely for granted.  Where DOES this quandary leave me?  Let me ‘count the ways’ I know there’s a field on the surface that is not covered with daisies.

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I was raised from birth by a Narcissistic Psychotic Borderline.  At the same time I can say that my experiences were obviously an exception to the RULE, I can also say that this proves to me that what is considered to be the RULE is fallible.  Therefore in my thinking the RULE is not a RULE at all.  It is simply an assumption about brain formation based on what optimal caregiving environments produce.

Similar breaches of this RULE, as I experienced them, produced my mother’s changed brain during her own early development, as well.  Therefore, in my thinking, obviously the RULE cannot apply to my experience as all ‘self help’ authors seem to assume.

My mother and I, as exceptions to the RULE, must therefore exist in a world that operates under completely different rules, and we ended up with a brain-mind-body that resulted from our adaptations to this altered ‘un-ordinary’ world.  Because nobody tells me what these changes really ARE, I am left trying to figure them out for myself.

Most simply put, I do not receive ‘ordinary’ information in an ‘ordinary’ way.  From those beginnings, I do not process the ‘un-ordinary’ information I receive or act on it in an ‘ordinary’ way, either.  Just taking these simple facts into account, I cannot read any ‘self help’ book and make any ‘ordinary’ sense out of it unless I understand that those books are not addressing the altered reality that I was forced to grow up adjusting to.

Let me give you a few examples.  Because from the time I was born I had no way to count on a ‘good mother’ appearing in response to my infant needs, my brain’s processing systems had to expand themselves to accept that incoherent malevolent chaos was just as equally likely to respond to ME as was coherent benevolent niceness.   Well before the age of three months my brain would already have changed from ‘ordinary optimal’ development as a consequence.

When an infant ordinarily needs something and that something is out-of-sight, it can ordinarily begin to form brain circuits that allow it to WAIT HOPEFULLY because it can TRUST that its caregiver is going to return to take care of it.  If incoherent malevolent chaos is just as likely to appear as the alternative, it seems perfectly obvious to me that this tiny forming brain is not going to have the ‘ordinary’ experiences required to build an ‘ordinary’ brain – from the start.

Most simply put, because my mother lacked the capacity to respond to me as my own self, nothing inside of me was able to respond back to her from my own internal ‘self place’.  I simply have what I can most clearly describe as blank spots in my brain where ‘ordinary’ patterns and circuits were supposed to develop.  As a consequence I am NOT an ‘ordinary’ person and never will be, no matter what good use I try to make out of information contained in expert self help books.

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As a result of my development within the malevolent conditions my mother was just as likely to provide for me as her periodic – and undependable – benevolent conditions, my brain did not build within itself any ‘ordinary’ potential to process human interactions.  This is a complicated condition that I will not cover in detail here.  But I will say here that as a consequence, my right brain did not grow to include ‘ordinary’ processing of social or emotional information.  Its connection with information in my body is different.

Once the major development of the right brain is completed before the age of one, it is time for the left brain to begin going through its major developmental stages.  Under extreme malevolent conditions, there is no way that the left brain can develop ‘ordinarily’, either.  It is not possible for the corpus coliseum, the region of the brain that transfers information between the right and left brain for processing, to develop ‘ordinarily’, either.

That’s just the very earliest beginnings of what I know about changes in my own (and my mother’s) brain development.  We could move on in our understanding of how the development of an infant’s left brain ‘happy’ center’s neurons are affected, how the ability to process social cues is affected, how the brain’s ability to form understandings about trust and hope is affected, how the brain’s neurological information processing about the self is affected, and about how all aspects of communication from the molecular to the verbal are affected as a result of a brain’s ability to adapt a human being’s development to and under malevolent environmental conditions.

There is absolutely no way that the higher functioning cortical areas develop in any ‘ordinary’ fashion, either.  As a result, future planning, decision making, and the ability to understand consequences with cognitive flexibility are affected.

I personally know that my brain does not even process the fundamental concept of TIME in an ordinary way.  Yet I am even here only describing the proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’ of how extreme early infant and child abuse changes the fundamental ways a survivor’s brain-mind-body changes.

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In other words, even if we take every single expert self help book and put them together in one volume, the OTHER volume that some of us most need to read simply does not exist – yet.  We are left trying to find a fit for ourselves as we attempt to understand ourselves in relation to the more ‘ordinary’ world we were hatched into as adults.

I’m not saying that we can’t make good use of information found in books that do not recognize our ‘un-ordinary’ reality or what our changed brains are really like.  I’m simply making a point that no matter how hard these self help books might try to help us a create a more ‘ordinary’ life, they are evidently unable to address the specifics of what actually happened to some of us.

For any of us who have ever had the attempted-recovery-based feeling of “YES, but……..  “ when we try to apply what seems to make sense to everyone else but not QUITE to us, we are absolutely correct!!  There IS something missing – but the trouble is NOT with us.  The trouble is that what happened to us has yet to be truly recognized for what it is – the creation of ‘un-ordinary’ individuals who were able to adapt physiologically on our most fundamental levels to endure unimaginably malevolent early developmental conditions.

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We are truly extraordinary people, and it evidently remains for us to identify and describe exactly what that means!!  Nobody else seems able to do that for us!

We don’t have to look beyond ourselves to know what living with a changed brain is like.  We’ve made that quantum leap in understanding.  We were forced to, or we would not have survived the malevolent world we developed in.

The rest of the ‘expert’ world just has to catch up with us.  We know what we are talking about.  We are our own living proof!

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+AMAZING DISCOVERY – YET ANOTHER OF MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD STORIES

alchemynow1 Comment

Found 091109

[enclosed old piece of paper with April 22, 1959 homesteading letter mother had written to her mother, and that grandmother had returned to my mother.  The writing of this story on this paper is in my grandmother’s handwriting.]

Grandmother’s note on the bottom of the page says:

“Dictated by Mildred Cahill Lloyd when about 8 years old”

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The Laughing Brook

Once there was a beautiful, gurgling Brook.  Its name was “Laughing Brook.”  The animals in the nearby woods gave its name to it because the wind came and wrinkled it up and made it murmur, and gurgle, and smile all the way down the hillside.

The animals came to drink at this brook, never knowing it was a fairy brook.  Some animals were good and some were bad.  Those that were bad turned into snakes after drinking the water from the brook, but those that were good stayed as they were, beautiful and kind to each other.

There was one good fairy that lived in the Black Forest where this Laughing Brook flowed by.  That fairy had a firefly that lived with her near a waterfall.  The fireflies lit up her way as they flew about the country.

There was a lovely meadow near the brook where daisies and buttercups and clover grew.  In the meadow there was a big red barn where the farmer kept his cows and hens and pigs and horses.

One night as the fireflies were flying around with the fairies watching over the good people they saw a fire in the hay in the barn.  At once the [written they] fireflies and fairies flew in the window of the farmer’s bedroom and flash their lights so brightly and after that the farmer and his wife woke up, saw the fire from their window, and rushed out in time to save all the animals and most of the barn.

Ever after that the farmer and his wife watched every night to see the fireflies at work and play.

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Although I cannot at present access this article, in light of my mother’s childhood writings I find the following to be a fascinating concept, as reflected in this article:

Rites of Passage and the Borderline Syndrome: Perspectives in Transpersonal Anthropology By LARRY G. PETERS

The following seems to be all that is available as an abstract for this article, found in Questia, Vol. 17, 1994.

How, but in custom and ceremony, are innocence and beauty born?

— W. B. Yeats

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast certain prevalent contemporary pathological symptoms — parasuicide (especially im­pulsive “self cutting” or wrist cutting and other forms of self-mutilation), anorexia/bulimia, substance abuse, and a predisposition to frequent tran­sient psychotic episodes, all of which, as a constellation, combination, or in some cases individually, are identified by clinicians as presumptive signs of “borderline personality disorder” (BPD) — with those same behaviors in tribal societies. The focus is anthropological and cross-cultural; it is a study of rites of passage, many of which in­volve food deprivations (fasting and purgations), body mutilations (cir­cumcision, scarification), accompan­ied by episodes of altered or nonordi­nary states of consciousness (visions, loss of boundaries). It is argued that there is a relationship between BPD and the failure of Western culture to provide context and myth for mean­ingful rites of passage. The typical symptoms of borderline disorder have neither an appropriate cultural chan­nel nor symbol system to provide di­rection and consequently are not fully appreciated by clinicians. However, these “symptoms” may actually be at­tempts at self-healing gone astray in a culture bereft of an integrative spiritual and ritualistic context, and there­fore without an education for tran­scendent states of consciousness.

Cultural Bound Syndromes (CBSs)

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Peters’ writing seems connected to a field of study called ‘The Anthropology of Consciousness.’  The work of Dr. Larry G. Peters, a Tibetan Shaman, presents the most accurate link I have yet found between my mother’s Alaskan homesteading obsession, her spirituality, and her mental illness.

A child has a different consciousness than an adult does.  I have always been able to sense my mother’s childhood consciousness within her childhood writings:  +MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD STORIES.

Having tonight discovered this additional piece of her childhood writing confirms for me that her mind, even by the age of 8, was already grappling on a profound – though unconscious – creative level with archetypal issues related to death and destruction, salvation, punishment and consequence, transformations, relationships with the natural world, and with the fundamental issues related to GOOD and BAD, RIGHT and WRONG that connect to the Borderline Personality Disorder spectrum of symptoms.

I absolutely believe that my mother had child onset pre-borderline conditions that are reflected in her childhood writings – if anybody then could, or even anybody now can make those connections.  I know a lot about my mother.  I was the victim of her insane severe abuse for 18 very long years.

My mother’s inner mental structure was built from very early childhood and probably from her earliest infancy upon a BROKEN understanding of good versus bad.  Whatever psychotic break occurred during her delivery of me was enough to toss her completely over the edge.

I was not saved from the fire as her child.  She used the term ‘snake’ in reference to me.  She believed I was not human, that I was the devil’s child.  I was the outward personification of everything BAD she could not accept about herself.  The OTHER mother, the OTHER Mildred desired to live with the fairies and the fireflies.

I believe the homestead became the outward objectification of the good world her “Laughing Brook” existed in, and the act of homesteading itself became a perpetual rite of passage for my mother as she sought what could not ‘follow her around the bend’.  Homesteading was about her need for healing.  Even her abuse of me was about her need for healing (because if she could ‘deal’ with me her own projected badness would be healed).

The most amazing thing is that Alaska DOES have the power to heal.  It even now remains mostly pure and that natural purity is what raised-up humans throughout our evolution, and it does have the power to heal.  In my mother’s case, however, it was not enough.  (Read PRESENTING THE HOMESTEADING – her letters.)

The rites of passage that Peters makes reference to occur within a healthy brain, mind and psyche.  The sick psyche of my mother’s could not have been saved past the age of 8 no matter what culture she had been a part of.  My mother was born an extremely fragile, at-risk child.  The conditions within her childhood environment from birth might have been adequate to a less sensitive and vulnerable child.  I believe that the conditions of my mother’s childhood conspired to destroy my mother.  She, in turn, very nearly destroyed me.

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This work that I am doing with my mother’s letters does seem to be about retrieving a life of suffering from the ‘lost and found’ — both hers and mine.

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Mother’s letter to Grandmother May 23, 1959 about the homestead:

“I told Bill I hope to live to be 90 and never leave here.  (I want to be buried here!)  I told him I even yearn to be a child again and live here – such a kingdom….”

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+WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT TRAUMA?

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I would think that in their own way everyone in our great nation recognizes today as the 8th anniversary of one of the most terrible crisis that ever occurred within the boundaries of our country.  Our hearts continue to go out to all those who suffered terror and unimaginable trauma as a result of the destruction brought upon them by the acts of terrorists whose own agendas allowed them to kill and destroy wantonly.  At the same time we remember each person and their loved ones whose lives have been touched in the aftermath of war, destruction and bloodshed that has followed 9-11 and the World Trade Center attacks.

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The most devastating consequences of trauma to humans can never be measured in financial terms.  Neither do we yet know the true reality of the way humans respond to extraordinary traumatic stressors.  Continued research into the ongoing, intergenerational consequence of the Holocaust’s traumatic effects shows that trauma can be CLEARLY passed down to offspring.

Researchers will be working to uncover the long range consequences of trauma caused by 9-11 for a long time to come.  They know that babies of women pregnant during the 9-11 terrorist attacks have been found to be born with the ‘markers’ for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of their mother’s exposure to the attacks.

We are learning more and more both about how resilient humans are and about our fragility.  Every-day people do not usually pay attention to the results of millions and millions of dollars spent on research about the consequences of trauma to humans, and yet this research can inform our thinking in new and more enlightened ways.

The Atlanta study looked at genetic potential as it interacts with children’s responses to trauma.  It found, among other things, that a child’s safe and secure attachment to ANY adult in its life influences to the positive that child’s ability to overcome traumatic experiences.  In another corner of the world researchers have discovered the same thing.  Although exposed equally to unimaginable terrors and traumas, the children of South Africa end up with severe longterm traumatic responses while the children of Kenya do not.

The more damaged South African children live in a country long torn apart, in fact all but dismantled by generations of influences that have destroyed the secure social attachment fabric of their culture.  Kenya has not suffered this intergenerational destruction of its ongoing cultural strengths so that their children have the benefit – in spite of current terrible traumas and tragedies – of being ‘held’ within a culture that still has its social supports and secure attachment systems somewhat in place.

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We cannot realistically consider the long range consequences of traumatic experience without considering the attachment contexts that form and support (or don’t) the members of any human society.  These attachments begin before birth, as the responses of infants still very much physiologically attached to their mothers during 9-11 demonstrated.

Children are held and supported by the fabric of the attachment support net that their parents either do or do not have in their lives.  Without firmly safe and secure human attachments from the beginning of our lives, we are at astronomically increased risk of suffering long term devastation in our adult lives from any traumatic experience that we might later have.  It is time that all of us realize that attachment is the single most important aspect of our lives because we are a social species.

What this means to me is that all of us, including and perhaps most importantly any mental health expert that works with troubled people of all ages, must begin to include attachment disorder understanding, concepts and vocabulary into our cultural base of knowledge about what makes our lives ‘good’ and what makes them ‘bad’.  I doubt that more than a small handful of mental health experts EVER talk with their adult clients about insecure attachment disorders.

We reserve any discussion or awareness of secure and insecure attachment disorders ONLY as it might relate to ‘troubled’ children.  Where do we think child attachment disorders disappear to once someone magically crosses some invisible line into adulthood?  They go nowhere.  Our attachment orders or disorders are as much ingrained into us as any other physiological response system our brain, body, nervous and immune system has.

We HAVE to begin talking about our attachment system as it operates in our adulthood because it formed who we are and affects how we respond both to the good and to the bad in our lives – at all times!  Those who might be having the most difficult time recovering from the devastating trauma of 9-11 are no exception.  But has ANYONE ever talked to them about their attachment system?

I am willing to bet that any adult who was formed in an extremely malevolent childhood environment and who did not have the benefit of having a safe and secure adult attachment person in their childhood life, is among those who lack the necessary resiliency to recuperate fully from any traumas that they experience.  We are doing nobody any favors by ignoring the absolute, fundamental reality of how our secure or insecure attachment system governs our ability to cope with trauma.

I therefore encourage readers to spend some time investigating some of the information connected to the live-links provided in this post.  You might help yourself beyond belief, or be able to assist someone you know in their efforts to deal with any ongoing traumatic consequences in their lives – including their ability to parent effectively.

Trauma is not bliss, and neither is ignorance.  It is the response-ability of all of us to arm ourselves with any and all information that can help us understand what we can better do to improve secure attachments in the world – no matter who we are, what age we are, or what we have experienced.

Thank you for reading this post.  Comments are welcome and appreciated.

+ATTACHMENT: SMART AND STUPID RESEARCH

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+HUMAN AND HORSE MOTHERING – WHAT’S IN COMMON?

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I wanted to share something from a book I’m reading, The Body Language of Horses by Tom Ledbetter, Bonnie Ainslie.  My brother gave it to me while I was visiting him in Alaska.

I’ve never really had the longed for luxury of being able to spend time with horses.  I’ve always been too poor, too involved in keeping my children clothed and fed with a roof over our heads.

I find as I read this book that I feel like the authors are talking about me.  How can that be?  I am not a horse, yet I am like them.  Because of the extreme abuse I suffered from the time I was little, and because of the overall and overriding insanity present in the home I grew up in, I did not grow up to be an ordinary person.

I have tried to fit in.  I’ve tried to learn the ‘human language’ that others speak not most importantly with their words, but with their body language and the expressions on their faces.  Because my mother was psychotic, because she could not interact with me normally, I simply did not get the same brain circuitry.  Not even the regions of my brain developed according to ‘ordinary’ experiences or patterns, as I have been explaining in my writings.

I can, therefore, more closely relate to what these authors are saying about horses than I can any book I ever read about people.  I might understand a book about all sorts of other kinds of animals if one was written like this one is, but these authors express a rare and comprehensive understanding of how it is to be a horse.  I am amazed and I am feeling calmer as I read it.

Ainslie and Ledbetter explain that every time a human overwhelms a horse with human demands and misconceptions, the horse has no choice but to act like less than what it is – less than a horse.  I understand.  I was not allowed to be a child.  The way my mother treated me did not allow me to be a child just like some humans do not allow horses to be horses.

All the many parallels I find between horses and myself create inside of me a sense that I am so much more correct in my understanding of the changed body and brain of a severely abused child compared to how a child is SUPPOSED to have been allowed to develop that I really do feel like I am a member of nearly a completely different species than are ‘ordinary’ people.

And I know I am not alone.  Therefore, as I share this single paragraph from this book (so far) I wish readers to understand that human mothers create in their offspring the kind of person their infants and children grow into.  I am aware that genetics plays a part in who we become, but researchers are becoming more and more clear that severe abuse alters how genetic potential expresses itself.

Every time an infant and a young child is not given what it needs to develop into its optimal self some life long consequence to the negative is going to appear.  Only in situations where the most important resiliency factor of the AVAILABILITY of some other adequate early caregiver’s interference in the harmful influence of the severely maltreating mother is there, in the end, hope that the effects of the mother’s severe abuse will not permanently and seriously alter the person her offspring turns out to be.

I encourage readers to FEEL the following words.  Enlarge your perspective and imagine what these words are saying if you think about them in terms of the variances in the quality of human mothering and caregiving.  In human terms mothers are not forced, for the most part, to compete with other mothers for what is needed to care for their infants and children.

And yet the end result of a human continuum of living a quality, happy and successful life is still directly connected to what our mothers (or other early caregivers) gave to us.  Harm and hatred to infants DOES NOT allow them to develop into fundamentally happy people – and I don’t care how financially well-off such an offspring turns out to be.  Look at their relationships as well as financial standing.

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From The Body Language of Horses by Tom Ledbetter, Bonnie Ainslie:

“The lead mare wins dominance by physical and psychological means.  She rules as long as she remains vigorous.  Her powers serve twin purposes – first choice of food and space (a) for herself and (b) for her young.  By natural selection, the other mares organize in declining order of priority, with the lowest and most subservient getting the last and least for herself and her foal.  Unless the pasture is inhumanely crowded, everyone subsists.  But the psychological effects on the foals are substantially important.  As Number One in its own age group, the lead mare’s baby becomes habituated to the deference of its peers and their dams.  If well bred, soundly constructed and not too severely disoriented by premature weaning, the Number One foal emerges as Number One weanling, most likely to succeed in what humanity calls the Game of Life.”  (P. 64)

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We are not used to thinking about human success, including psychological success, in these terms.  We do not FIRST and FOREMOST understand that it is the health and well-being of mothers (early caregivers) that MOST affects the lifelong outcome of her offspring.

In American, in particular, we want to believe that everyone is equal, and that all can “make it” if they want to and if they work for it.  We do not want to face the fact that deprivations of a serious enough nature from conception to age 2 (and then through age 7) can so set a person off course that they will never be able to completely make up the difference.

Yes, humans may be far more complicated than horses are.  That means to me that we are at an even higher risk for negative consequences from malevolent mothering – not less.  Once our culture truly understands this fact, they will be able to give us the chances we TRULY need to find a way to live well in spite of our malevolent childhoods.

In my thinking, we have to be very clear and very careful about how we assess who and how we are in the world made mostly by people who had the benevolent childhoods we all deserved – and some received the opposite of.  Most do not become members of the ‘lower hierarchy’ because we choose to be there, any more than a horse chooses to me maltreated by a human being.

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