Tag: Trauma and Its Consequences

I do not believe that there is any more important action to be taken in this lifetime than the healing of the effects of trauma — both individually and globally.

+I CAME HOME TO DEAD HENS

alchemynow11 Comments

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Everything I have been going through for the past month has been processed by me with clear awareness of how my disabilities caused by the way infant-child abuse changed my development impacts on a continual basis how I can – and cannot – live my life.  In a nutshell — this sucks!

Other than the big obvious, that I am completely exhausted by my travels north and back again, I was met with a nasty complication once I reached my home – my sanctuary.  The woman who so kindly and competently took care of my home, my garden and my animals had to sadly report to me that the second night after I left my neighbors’ dogs scrambled over the fence and brutally mangled and killed 3 of my 5 hens.

This woman did not actually witness these dogs – a German shepherd and a pit-bull — kill the chickens.  Neither she nor I will lie so that charges could be brought against the owners of these two dogs.  However, on another day these two dogs were in the yard again.  The shepherd was intent on killing my small dog.  Both dogs came tearing around the corner of the house.  My caretaker was knocked down by the big dog – yet she managed to scream at the dog loud enough it turned tail and ran, jumping back over the five foot chain link fence in the back that my yard shares with its owner.

The wire of my coop is also mangled in two places.  I spoke with both owners.  The immediate neighbor to my west, owner of the shepherd, laughed.  The next neighbor over, owner of the pit bull, at least sincerely apologized.  My caretaker had also watched the pit bull snatch a cat on the street out of the air as it tried to escape over a brick wall and tear it to pieces.

Neither dog was in its owner’s yard on Wednesday when I got home, and neither dog has been seen since.  Nobody has offered restitution to me.  All of this has been very very upsetting to me.

But what bothers me most is that because of the disabilities I in consequence of having been severely abused from my birth until I left home at age 18, I don’t have the ability to stick up for myself.  I really, really don’t.

I have no idea what the ‘right’ thing to do is.  I spoke with the county dog catcher who assured me that because the dogs were witnessed being in my yard that charges could be pressed for this, for the shepherd knocking my caretaker over and for that dog trying to kill my dog.

I can’t press charges.  My anxiety will not allow me to do this.  I could NEVER guarantee that my troubles with dissociation would not completely sabotage any effort I could make to be ‘reasonable’ while enduring the stress of dealing with a court situation.

I have nobody to do this for me.  I can’t follow through and stick up for myself.  I have NO IDEA how to do so, and NO ABILITY to do so even with an option such as pressing charges.

I miss my chickens.  I imagine the horror of their undeserved vicious death.  The two hens left are still stunned.  They are not happy.  My sanctuary has been violated.  I did not need this, not one bit.

And I DO expect people to be NICE!  I don’t understand myself why this is so.  How could I, a person who experienced the horrors of such intense and constant abuse for the first 18 years of my life EVER believe that people are supposed to be nice?

I blame and shame myself for being angry at my neighbors.  “How could you, Linda?  You are never supposed to be angry!!  You are supposed to be NICE!  You are supposed to forgive.”  I guess I think I am supposed to excuse the behavior of mean people.

Obviously, I am all tangled up.  I do believe that people who were raised in good-enough infant-childhoods have the inner resources to deal with such things in far better ways than I can even imagine.  All I can really do is suffer through whatever my reactive reactions are until enough time eventually goes by that this entire experience becomes history.

This sucks.  But at least the dogs appear to have permanently gone away.  I have not seen them since my return.  My guess is that they ran out to the desert and became dinner themselves for some coyote gang.  Or terrorized a ranch and got themselves shot.  “YAY” for small blessings!

I can barely give myself permission to be angry at these blood thirsty dogs!  There are just too many things to think about, too many angles — and I can’t even get ONE OF THEM RIGHT!

My neighbors have always let these dogs run.  I knew that.  I just didn’t ever guess things would get this bad.

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+MORE LINKS TO DISSOCIATION INFORMATION ON THIS BLOG

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I have had my need to respond to a commenter (at this link:  EARLY TRAUMA BUILDS DISSOCIATION INTO THE BRAIN) who wrote while I was up north visiting my children, and realize that I do not have the motivation or the inclination to go into great depth in my response even though I am now back home in Arizona.  I am exhausted in MANY significant ways.

So for now this information will have to do because it has appeared over and over again in my thoughts since I read the blog comment.

First, there is this link on ‘Remembering the Self’.  It contains information and my working notes on —

Remembering the self

Includes mirror neurons

Dissociation

Empathy

Theory of Mind

Rules

Self

*Chapter 1-Remb self

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A series of other previous posts related to my personal research also comes up.  I am hoping blog readers will find some interesting and useful information here to think about today in these working notes:

*Siegel – early left brain development

*Chapter 2 – on neurological consequences of early trauma

*Chapter 5 – Attachment cannabinoid system

*Siegel – Emotions and states of mind (attachment)

+SIEGEL ON MINDS CREATE MINDS

+RISK, STRESS AND DISTRESS

*Chapter 4 child adverse experience

*Chapter 2 Learning

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In essence the thoughtful information that is in the back of my mind regarding the questions the blog commenter asked me about center on research that may or may not actually be referenced in these post links.

Humans were finally able to access and develop our verbal language skills and abilities at some very recent time point in our evolution BECAUSE language could ‘borrow’ the massive left brain abilities we had ALREADY strongly and competently evolved to accomplish our actions through a sequence of activities.

I believe ‘dissociation’ is greatly about a breach in the sequencing patterns related to altered formation of our left brain through early and severe abuse and trauma.

I picture a little one going down the road of their own life – desperately trying to develop into an individual person — in an environment rampant with insanity and abuse.  Every time an inappropriate traumatic response from adults in its earliest attachment environment sideswipe a child, dissociation HAS to occur.  The ongoing development of self-related experience in SEQUENCE is interrupted – which affects a little one in all areas related to ongoing experience of self in the world.

I am not going to take time to search around today in my own study notes or in anyone else’s research to document this next strong suspicion I have about dissociation, either.  I have too many things currently that I need to attend to.

Our brain DOES NOT actually allow for multitasking.  There is a bottleneck in our brain’s operation that allows for one thing and ONLY one thing to be processed at a time.

This bottleneck region/operation is supposed to be supremely fast and exquisitely efficient in its ability to get information through the bottleneck so the next action/activity can move through for us.

I strongly suspect that severe trauma and abuse during critical stages of early body-brain development detrimentally impact how this bottleneck operates.  Perhaps it is something like, “What’s in the cue gets interrupted and cannot be processed in cue as it is supposed to.”

I don’t know.

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Dissociation for someone like me, traumatically abused from birth, is a CONTINUAL threat to my ongoing experience of myself in the world.  That I DO know!

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+ME, THE ‘BUSY MOVEMENTS’ PRO

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It would be impossible to say that throwing out the Spanish dancers – and their related compatriots – is anything like a pleasant part of my trip up north here to see my children and grandchildren.  Nope!  NOTHING enjoyable about what occupies me this morning except for my hope and expectation that once THIS job is completed, I will feel better (somehow).

“Direct thy busy movements toward God…”

Now that I discovered this statement I can use it as a tool to help myself carve out a better life as I move around in time and space.  Believe me when I say, “I have a LOT of busy movements!”

I would otherwise feel entirely disheartened and condemning of myself this morning.

Four-plus years ago as I was coming along in my healing out of the terrible sickness in every cell of my body from having participated in a heavy-duty chemotherapy regime that DID eradicate the aggressive breast cancer cells that were taking charge of my body so that I am still here to notice all of this five years later……

I kept myself busy with small glimmerings of hope for the future by experimenting with making things out of laminated cloth.  I made earrings, tree ornaments (including the many, many Spanish dancers and an impressive collection of cats), wall plaque (thingies) – etc. – which I sent up north to my daughter to sell at some craft shows she attends.

I am now dealing with the aftermath — and as I tear apart each and every carefully created and bagged and priced little emblem of my busy movements — I try to remember it IS NOT MY FAULT my crafty creative attempts failed.  I was not responsible for the fact that the materials available for me to work with did NOT, well, WORK!

Layering fabric together with double-sided iron-on interfacing, then sealing surfaces with Modge Podge and/or varnish to make then stiff and durable (so I could carefully cut, clip and shape the individual separate images) – well, it ALL remained essentially sticky – so everything now has bonded with its paper label, with parts of itself, etc.  A disappointing, frustrating, aggravating FAILURE!!

It accomplishes nothing for me to continue to burden my daughter with these failed items – now I am removing and trashing everything but the little plastic bags the items were so carefully placed into with high hopes of — selling — and making at least a little bit of money — which we ALL need more of in this family!!

I am left, it seems, back exactly where I started all those years ago — and what do I have to show for this??

OK.  So if directing my busy movements toward God matters — then it is my effort, and most of all my INTENTIONS toward goodness that I offer as some kind of gift back to the One Who made me that truly matters, and not the material results no matter how successful OR how flawed these turned out to be.

What a concept!!!  I need this concept right now because there are literally HUNDREDS of various little material objects created as a result of my busy movements that I am still dismantling this morning.  I could throw the entire hopeless mess into the trash — but NOPE!  By golly, I am going to rescue these clear little bags — why?

No doubt so I can make something else in the future with my busy movements — and — Tell me again, how and when does this process end?

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+TO BE ‘WALKED RIGHT THROUGH’ – WHAT MY BODY REMEMBERS ABOUT MY NONEXISTANT SELF

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I suspect that knowledge of the threat of death, even if existing only on a cellular level within our DNA, must accompany a newborn infant into this world.  Why else would a person’s life force naturally accomplish all that is possible to remain alive?  Is safe and secure attachment to caregivers designed to somehow banish this awareness of the threat of death?  Is this part of the mechanics of change that severe infant abuse/trauma (especially) maltreated survivors never lose when we never had those attachments?

When the caregivers are NOT the source of protection but are rather the transmitters of harm and great violence, what THEN happens to this awareness of the threat of death?

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It seems almost strange to me that as I wait this morning for the HUD housing inspector to park in my yard this afternoon it is the awareness of the continuity throughout my entire life since my birthing of this awareness of the threat of death that is being fed into my thinking directly from the way my body is feeling right now.

As I pay attention I understand that ‘being walked right through’ is a big part of what I am sensing in my body connected to its memory.  Yes, this inspector will ‘walk right through’ this entire personal, sacred, precious space of my home that is so much a part of ME right now.

The ‘being walked right through’ feels both extremely threatening to me right now and extremely familiar.  It brings to mind my memory of being 21, walking around the northern town I lived in alone late at night in a snowstorm as I stood with my bare hands out in front of me, looked at my palms and heard a ‘voice’ say to me from within:  “I am a wraith.”

At that time I didn’t even ‘logically’ know what the word wraith meant.  Searching online I find that it is used mostly this way:

1 –an apparition of a living person supposed to portend his or her death.

2 — a visible spirit.

The origins of the word appear to be unclear though either Scottish or Celtic origins are suspected.  Most of my genetic heritage is linked to these cultures.

For all the thousands of physical attacks I endured during the 18 years of my childhood, never – not one single time – did I experience of a sense that I as a person-self existed in the body that was being pummeled.  I didn’t have that sense because I DIDN’T exist.  And it wasn’t until that instant in that snowstorm that the first vague and distant clue arrived that I, in fact, did exist.

Until that instant there had never been a connection for me between my BODY and a ME-SELF capable of realizing anything about my own existence.

The two pieces of information had simply never built themselves into the associational networks in my brain.  For this connection between body and awareness of self to come to me, and then for a connection to be made between the self as being connected to that body to happen SO LATE in my life would be nearly unbelievable to me if I didn’t know my own life story.

MY SELF-self HAD always been ‘walked right through’.  My self, as existing not connected to my body, did not receive the physical blows that would have let it know it existed in time and space.  My body obviously knew this information.  It had suffered greatly.

My invisible self, my wraith self – contrary to definition in the dictionary – appeared for the first time when I was 21 not because I was on the verge of DYING but because I was on the verge of COMING ALIVE.

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Today I struggle with staying in and with my body as I go through this distress-provoking experience related to my well-being.  My body, with its in-built ancient DNA instinctual wisdom DID endure, DID persevere.  But this SELF I am with my awareness of my SELF existence remains only tenuously connected.  The two can very easily become disassociated rather than associated with one another.

My SELF does not want to become nonexistent.  I am very aware that in my case, given my unique history, that the fight to self-preserve happened IN MY BODY, but not in any way with this SELF I work to identify with today.

It is this self, who recognized herself for the first time when I was 21 in those words, “I am a wraith,” who knows what it was like to have no existence so that it could be ‘walked right through’ for my first 18 long years of torture.

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This is not an easy day……

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+BLOGGING AND THINKING WITH A TRAUMA-CHANGED BRAIN

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I live in and with an over-sensitized, over-sensitive, anxiety-trauma-built body.  Among the changes that happened in my physiological development is that ALL of me was changed in adaptation to severe abuse and violent trauma from the moment I was born and during the following 18 years I could not escape my mother.  This includes how my brain was structured from the beginning of life so that NOW it operates differently from ‘ordinary’.

These facts of course affect not only my thinking, but my writing as well.  I FORCE myself to think in words, which is an essential process that I do not obscure in my writing.

Although I am not ‘autistic’ my patterns of thinking can be as disconcerting to follow verbally as an autistic person’s can be.  I do not – because I really cannot – attempt to obscure from my writing how my brain (hence, I) move forward in time within the realm of words.

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Blogging has comfortingly allowed me to write in loops and circles.  What my body knows (as with everyone’s) provides information through my right brain that must then be handed over to my left brain for linear-logical-verbal exposure to consciousness.  In order for this process to happen, all this back-and-forth has to involve the ‘bridge’ between my two brain hemispheres – my corpus callosum.  As is well known and is much written about today, the development of both brains and the bridge between them is greatly affected by severe abuse, neglect, trauma, violence and malevolent treatment during the brain’s most critical early stages of growth.

I suffer from these consequences.  But I am determined and courageous.  It is my intent to make the most good possible come out of my disastrous early beginnings, and as is my prayer every day of my life, to at least offer something that might help someone else.

When I began this blog in April of 2009 I could not go back and reread or edit in any way anything that I wrote.  Whatever state I was in when I wrote was not one I could return to even in the immediate future.  I had no tolerance for my own words as if I was deadly allergic to them.  What I wrote about had been deadly toxic to me – and remained so.

I have made SOME progress, although most of the time I have to ‘look the other way’ as the words come out.  Having entirely lacked any concept of ‘being a self’ or of ‘having a self’ for the first 18 years of my life has left me with that all too familiar dissociational condition of being ‘depersonalized’ so that once a single instant of time has passed by in my life it becomes the ‘dereal’ past – not directly connected to me in any way unless I consciously, logically FORCE an awareness of a connection.

But I do not FEEL connected to myself as a ‘past entity’ or as a ‘future entity’.  All perception of time was built into my body-brain in the midst of ongoing severe trauma, and I now believe that if there is NEVER a sense of safety or security (as expressed in human attachment relationships), when there is no safe and secure time to REST between experiences of trauma, the acute trauma stage with its altered sense of time becomes permanent.

This also affects me as I think in written words.  I am ‘mind blind’ to words that are going to follow one another.  I have to, again, ‘look the other way’ rather than anticipate where my thoughts are going.  I believe when Dr. Daniel Siegel speaks of ‘Mind Sight’ he is referring to consequences such as I suffer from.  In my courage and determination I do not let these alterations stop me.

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Sometimes my posts must seem redundant to this blog’s faithful readers.  Every post I write has to have enough inner integrity that it can be found through someone’s future online search, read, and understood in context.  This is an example of this process in motion over time:

Posted yesterday in comment to a post:  +A LONG, THOUGHTFUL LOOK AT VERBAL ABUSE AS MALIGNANT TEASING

Word Count: 5876

“I googled “teasing as verbal abuse” because i wanted to read something exactly like this.”

This post is a long one.  Yet somehow within its structure of words it held something of helpful meaning to this reader – and I am glad it did!

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Because of my brain being built in the midst of severe trauma my emotional right limbic brain and the body that feeds it information IS overly sensitive-sensitized.  I will struggle with ‘failure’ on a primal level within me for the rest of my life, so when a comment comes in like this one, I struggle directly with the ‘rejection’ that it triggered:

Posted yesterday in a comment to post:   +INSECURE INFANT ATTACHMENT, DAY CARE AND EMOTIONAL NEGLECT

Word Count: 1234

“I’ve been skimming your recent posts (sorry, they’re a little long)”

And this post was a relatively short one.  Of course I welcome all comments.  My discomfort has nothing to do with the words of the commenter – nearly everything about being alive in my body is a trauma trigger to me, so pervasive was the malevolent trauma that built me!

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Now, THIS post is a very long one and I thought about perhaps figuring out a way to impose some structure on it at the time it was posted.  And yet dividing one of my thought stream writing processes into segments, like chapters, doesn’t work well in this blog’s format.  Although it easily contains enough words for 4-5 posts, it needs to remain a ‘stand alone’ piece for someone to discover sometime in the future as a ‘whole thing’ with its context intact.

January 16, 2011 post:  +TO BE OR NOT TO BE — HUMAN OR OBJECT: EARLY ATTACHMENT PATTERNS DECIDE AS THEY BUILD OUR ANS

Word count: 4095

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Computerized reading is nicely designed to allow for scanning and skimming.  Any post can also be read in parts over time – put down and picked up again like a book.

Somehow, to me, the nature of my writing-thinking process is integral to the purpose of this blog.  Nothing comes easily.  Nothing comes without effort.  When a severe infant-child abuse survivor attempts to accomplish a lifespan in a body-brain that was altered and changed in its development by trauma, nothing about our life happens in a simple straightforward way.  This can be especially true with our patterns of processing words that match our experience.

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NOTE:  It is always best to come directly to the blog post as it exists in real time because I DO now often go back after the post is published and make changes — exactly as I am at this moment.

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+THE ABSENCE OF SAFE AND SECURE ATTACHMENT AND THE NEED TO SELF-PRESERVE

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This will not be an easy day for me, nor did the event I anticipate happening today let me have much sleep last night.  Because I try as hard as I can to learn something useful out of every difficulty I encounter, the experience I am having right now must have a pearl at the center of it somewhere.

Being quite low income (fixed disability) I put my name on the local HUD Section 8 Rental Assistance program waiting list over three years ago.  My name came up.  Fortunately my kind, supportive, caring, helpful, loving and very clear-thinking daughter was willing to take care of the first level of paperwork when she came down to visit earlier this month.  This afternoon the housing inspector comes over to take a look around.

There is no way that I can escape the anxiety this entire scenario creates for me.  And this level of anxiety, because it threatens the entire safety and security of my life, disorganizes and disorients me.  In short, it hurts.

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Older houses in this border region were never built by rich people.  They don’t match anyone’s ‘building code’.  In the four plus years I’ve been renting this one I, and my loving brother when he comes to visit, have made every improvement that my limited budget could afford.

I have been cleaning and painting – and rearranging – and waiting – and stressing in my own unique distressed way for weeks.  Knowing the wiring in this house is really inadequate, and that my usual string of extension cords would be a dead give-a-way to that fact, I have worked to eliminate them.  Then there’s heating the inspector won’t like.  There’s all kinds of things about this house the inspector might not like.

Will he, can he make exceptions to his rules?  Will he overlook things in this poor house so its poor tenant can continue to live here?

Not knowing.  The unknown.  The helplessness and powerlessness and vulnerability and fear – no terror – I feel.  Dare I hope?

This is my home.  This and my gardens.  This spot on the earth I have found.  I do not want to move.  I cannot imagine moving.  Moving would be a malevolent traumatization to me that I can not imagine enduring or surviving.

If this house does not pass inspection, will my landlord alter-fix what needs to be done to make it pass?

I don’t know that, either.

If it comes to having to move from here to keep my valuable rental assistance voucher – what will I decide to do?

I do not know.

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Vulnerability is not good for me.  Being of low resources is not good for me, but it is the way my life is and I am grateful for all the programs I receive help from – at the same time I feel guilty, and feel sad for all those much needier than me, those with young children, all those who struggle – and I think I should have let my expiration date pass when my cancer came instead of fighting it, enduring, remaining alive, consuming resources that I cannot earn or pay for on my own.

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There’s a lot at risk.  There’s a lot at stake.  This strange man will come into my house, do his job, prowl around with his critical and meticulous eye, doing his job.  Will he look into every crack and crevice, every cupboard, every closet, peer here and there asking his questions, and will I be able to remain calm enough – not panic – not dissolve into the too-familiar tears that often come now when my anxiety erupts into escalated disaster-based emotions?

My home is my solace.  My infant-childhood abuse and trauma-related disabilities keep me mostly HERE in this place of my safety, security and comfort – such as I can wrest now from this world I abide in.  I do not leave here often, and do not go very far.  I can’t.

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Yesterday as I forced myself through the final stages of preparation for what FEELS LIKE an attack on my hard won well-being in my tiny corner of the world, I became very aware of my heightened depression and of its connection to one critically important state of existence.

In part because of my recent readings and study about how ALL attachment relationships are about PROTECTION first and foremost – protection of the BODY that holds the SELF – I realized that what triggers my deepest sadness (and it was triggered yesterday and certainly here it is today) – is the most ancient pervasive overwhelming state that I spent the first 18 years of my life in:

NOBODY is here to help me.  NOBODY is here to protect me.  NOBODY cares if I live or die (as an infant-child I was very aware they wanted me dead).  I am IN THIS ALONE.  I am desperate.  I am threatened.  My extinction is imminent.

I have to pause here and wait through my disorganized-disoriented storm, searching for words, for a pattern of thinking in words that I can reach for, grab onto, and follow as if dragged forward through time from this moment into the next one and the next one.

What?

I know I know it.  I know I know what I want to say.  I know that I am a self and that this self knows.  I know this scrambling is directly connected to how trauma formed my brain – my right brain, my left brain, the middle of the two – all changed by trauma so that thinking in words can be impossible at the same time emotions consume my body.

What?

I go back to the beginning.  No protection.  AHH!  That’s the word:  Self-preservation.

From the instant I was born if I was going to stay alive in the midst of violent trauma and abuse, if I was going to stay alive it was up to me to preserve my own self.

NOBODY as a tiny infant-toddler-child born tiny and helpless and needy and vulnerable and dependent SHOULD EVER HAVE TO KNOW THIS FEELING.

This is what I felt so strongly yesterday as I dragged my great depression and growing sadness about this inspection and all that hangs weighted in the balance.  This terrible sadness I drag around through my life as a ball-and-chain.

Being deprived by violent trauma and abuse without having a safe and secure attachment to ANYONE for 18 years – and surviving that IN SPITE of this fact – I self-preserved.  I persevered in my self-preservation – but there was and is a high, high cost.

That cost is sadness.

That cost is hurt.

When I read in the article posted yesterday about child abuse consequences that Substance P IS INVOLVED – as I know it is – I can now hang my sadness on that hook.  Being not only deprived for 18 years of ANY protection because I was deprived of ANY attachment – at the same time I was continually attacked by those same people nature had designated to be my caregivers – self-preservation grew and grew and took the place of what I needed and was SUPPOSED to have at the same time great pain and sadness grew within me at the same time.

Facing this inspection today with all the threat to my safety and security it entails, threatens also to overwhelm me with this sadness.  My abilities to self-preserve are coupled with this pain.

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