Tag: trauma memory

+GROWING UP IN THE MAD BLENDER OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER’S MIND

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I cannot move forward in my current writing process right now if I don’t stop right here and now to write a post that will clear a pile of mental obstacles out of my way that have been accumulating over these past few days of working with my mother’s letters.

The image came to me a few days ago that I feel like a bowling ball right now sailing down a lane toward a neatly arranged collection of pins that represent the end goal I am working for at this stage of my writing process.  I have been trying to stay on track and not get sidetracked, distracted or bogged down as I go through what is the first edit of the body of my mother’s letters.  I am stuck.

It’s like the lane I have been rolling down has suddenly ended.  Broken, it has disappeared into space.  No, I am not going to let this stop me.  I am going to look at this current blockage (I just wrote ‘blackage’ here) as something I can tackle in words and eliminate.

Where do I start, though?  What is it I ‘have to say’?

As so often happens, I will only know for certain as I write the words that follow next.

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First of all I want to say something about two little, common, seemingly insignificant words in the English language that my mother found a way to leave out of her letters without losing the meaning of what she writes about:  “a” and “the.”

The online Webster’s dictionary lists 99 separate entries for the word, “a.”  It lists 43 for the word, “the.”  My mother’s style of writing did not require either of these words to communicate her meaning in her letters.  Yet now that I have bowled my way through a first edit of her letters covering 1958 through half of 1963, I realize that it is only NOW that I am seeing that I missed – until now – the significance not of her having left these two words out of her letters, but the significance of me blindly choosing to drop them into her text during my editing process.

The English patterns of usage for “the” follow most commonly along pathways related to its use as a ‘definite article’, an ‘adverb’ or as a ‘preposition.’  Patterns of common usage for “a” include ‘noun’, ‘indefinite article’, ‘preposition’, or ‘verb’.

In my commitment to myself to allow the main body of my mother’s writings to remain as a chronicle (the way she wrote them without adding ‘analysis’ or ‘interpretation’) I have tried to be very careful as I roll along down my lane of first edit NOT to alter her text.  By adding “the” and “a” occasionally I have merely been attempting to clarify for ‘outside’ readers the meaning of some of my mother’s phrases.

It has only now finally struck me how stunningly accomplished my mother was in writing without including these two small English words into her letters.  Because very occasionally she DID include them, I am not going to be able NOW to go back and ‘edit backwards’ and remove “the” and “a” where I have inserted and included those words.  Nor do I think I need to or have any desire to do so.

Yet at the same time this morning I am finding myself marveling at the skill my mother had as she wrote in her own shorthand without using these words.  Today, 50 years after my mother wrote these letters, many readers are familiar and comfortable with modern skills in text messaging that certainly have followed similar communication patterns.

For the sake of attaining consistency for ‘outside’ readers of my mother’s words in published format, I have to make some decision of my own about what I am going to DO with “the” and “a” in the body of her verbal text.  Do I let reference to ‘homestead’ stand?  Or do I consistently alter sentences to read ‘the homestead’, or ‘the log house’, or ‘the mountain’?

How am I going to reach a point where I can trust my own writing ‘flow’ ability to overlay-insert occasional word changes within her text without feeling I am compromising my intention to allow my mother’s words to stand as HER chronicle?

This is one of my mental quandaries right now.  Once I have ‘bowled my way through’ this first edit of her work, I will need to return back to the beginning and set myself yet again to rolling down the ‘bowling lane’ toward yet another edit of the entire body of her writings.

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If I were working with a collection of writing under different circumstances this ‘issue’ about “the” and “a” would not have the importance I believe it does to me at this moment.  I suspect that in line with what experts might talk about as ‘object relations’ difficulties, my mother’s early forming brain-mind-self never grew to understand in normal ways what a PERSON actually was.

When the brain pathways that form in early infant-child developmental stages do not have the necessary information to build the early forming right limbic social-emotional brain correctly, all sorts of later appearing confusions about who a person is, including the self, appear.

‘Splitting” and ‘projections’ are aspects of these early brain forming changes that appear in my mother’s ‘mental illness’.  She did not, for example, have the ability to recognize that I was a PERSON because of her ‘splitting’ and ‘projections’ onto me.

As I work with her writings I am beginning to see more of what I hope to confidently name at some point as clearly repeating patterns and themes of her disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder and its symptom – her mental illness (most likely Borderline).

So when my mother neglects to add “the” to “the homestead” I cannot instantly assume that ‘homestead’ wasn’t real to her as if it was a PERSON in her psyche and/or a projection of her mind.  “The log house,” or “log house” or simply “house,” or “mountain” (“the mountain?”) in my mother’s written lingo very well might have represented externalized projections from her mind, just as “ALASKA” itself probably did.

People do not speak-write about “the Alaska.”  We refer to Alaska by its name.  I am also questioning how to ‘handle’ my mother’s use of capitalizations in her writings.  Sometimes ‘Mountain’, sometimes ‘mountain’.  Sometimes ‘Homestead’, sometimes ‘homestead’.  Sometimes ‘Log House’, sometimes ‘log house’.

Even though we don’t often think about it, established rules we use for capitalization always reflect relationships and values.  In my mother’s dichotomous thinking, sometimes places were just as closely connected to the ‘friend-or-foe’ dichotomy as people in her life were.

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When ‘normally’ considering a ‘normal’ person with a ‘normal’ brain-mind-self, we can assume that seriously considering the words “a” and “the” (their inclusion or deletion) in sentences is a trite and trivial affair – perhaps a silly waste of time and mental energy.

I am working in ‘a twilight zone’ here.  I believe my Borderline mother existed in ‘a twilight zone’.  In fact, I probably share this belief with many others who still have serious questions about exactly what kind of a reality the Borderline brain-mind-self actually operates within.

Personification of mental projections IS a problem!  In the same way that I was ‘personified evil’ to my mother, not a child, not a human being – I suspect that ‘the log house’ and ‘the homestead’ and ‘the mountain’ and even Alaska itself represented something not ordinary to my mother.  In fact, I suspect that I will eventually be able to clarify that even ‘the dream’ that my mother seemed to organize and orient her entire being in relationship to was as much a literal THING to my mother as her own body was.

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When we consider the terrible reality of severe child abuse I believe we are actually looking at actions committed by human beings whose earliest forming emotional-social brain did not include the necessary information that would have allowed them to KNOW what a person was as clearly differentiated from an object.

This entire area of thought is one that I think about continually, though I am not ready yet to explore my thoughts in words other than to say that the human mirror neuron system, as it is connected to the motor neuron regions of the brain, has been designed from it origins to help humans use TOOLS to better ensure survival.

Whether or not the mirror neuron is ACTUALLY involved as part of the human empathy experience seems to be a matter that is open to great debate in scientific thinking.  I am not going to perpetuate any myth in this area.  I am also not ready to thoroughly explore the scientific facts in this debate, either.

I tend to agree with research I have read that states that the human mirror neuron is NOT actually involved in the brain region activational patterns that operate during the experience of true empathy.  In other words, empathy DOES NOT use the mirror neuron system.  Empathy is ‘something else’.

If this is true, then it seems entirely possible to me that someone like my mother with her Borderline brain had problems with circuits and pathways that ordinary, normal people do not – but that at the same time ALL of us experience a ‘borderline’ just at the interface between empathy and the mirror neuron system.  My guess would be that this ‘borderline’ exists just at the interface where our social-emotional brain understands the difference between human beings as being something MORE than, DIFFERENT than being object-tools.

If this distinction between humans as BEINGS versus humans as object-tools does not form right as the body-brain is forming in the beginning – a developmental process that is entirely dependent upon the quality and kind of earliest caregiver interactions that we have for its formation – then never will this person EVER be able to ‘normally’ know what a person is, including their own self.

As I understand it, the process that is supposed to normally occur that allows us to KNOW the difference between a person and an object-tool HAS to include emotional FEELING FELT, mirroring early infant-caregiver interactions.  If these resonating, mirroring interactions do NOT allow the feeling felt experience to happen for an infant-child, the ‘borderline’ between human-as-human or human-as-tool-object never forms correctly.

Without ‘proper’ formation of this ‘boundary’, true empathy (and we could say corresponding conscience) will not exist.  Such was my mother.  And as readers of this blog already know, these changes in early development also completely affect-direct the infant-child’s development of their entire nervous system, including their brain, their autonomic nervous system (vagus nerve system, stress response system, calm and connection system), and their immune system.  As Dr. Martin Teicher states, an evolutionarily altered being comes out – basically at the far end of the baby-human being assembly line!

Looking backwards in time at human evolutionary development, these evolutionarily altered beings are, in my thinking, simply ones like those who existed before the period in our specie’s development when having the luxury of knowing the ‘boundary’ between human and tool, human and other, or even what a HUMAN even was, existed.  (Way back before we had spoken verbal language).

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Of course as often happens, this post is becoming lengthy.  That doesn’t matter to me.  I need to clear this blockage, this ‘wreckage’ out of my ‘bowling lane’ so that I can return to my task of accomplishing the first ‘once completely through’ edit of my mother’s writings.

Considering all that’s being dumped into this post, that’s a lot of blockage-wreckage!

Tied to these thoughts I am having is the miracle that happened last Friday.  I just happened to be on the telephone with my daughter as she was holding her son (my first grandchild who was born premature and is now three months old) as he did something so important most everyone actually MISSES its significance.

He saw his own hand for the very first time, and recognized what he was seeing!

My daughter had noticed over the previous 48 hours that her son had loosened the tight fists he has waved around since he was born, and had begun to spread out his fingers.  Then, suddenly, within a single infitesimally minute segment of time – he SAW his own hand, and from there began to move it around while following it with his vision.

There you have it, folks!  The beginning moment of the conscious development and recognition of the individual human self with, “OH, MY!  Look at THIS!  There is a hand and that hand is connected to ME and I can move it around and determine what it does!  How COOL is THIS?  Here I AM!”

In a normal safe and secure, loving attachment environment, which my grandson has in super abundance, this developmental stage is taking place as just another stage in the ongoing emotional-social body-brain’s formation.  All those nerve cells and neurons, circuits and pathways and connections being made one tiny instant at a time – that form a human being.  But without these developmental stages occurring within a loving, adequate, safe and secure attachment environment, the inclusion of BEING A FULLY FUNCTIONING EMOTIONAL-SOCIAL HUMAN BEING will NOT be included in the final product!

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My grandson’s mirror neuron system is already developing, but because he is growing in a ‘feeling felt’ attachment environment, his feelings will be involved as a separate PERSON as he grows, as he watches and ‘learns’.  At the same time the invisible ‘boundary’ between person-as-person, not person-as-object-tool will be appropriately forming all his other physiological development will be properly forming in relationship to this fundamental fact.

Most every person, my mother and my self included, can say, “Of course I know what a person is,” and “Of course I know a person is not an object-tool,” we do not FEEL it.  We report this fact as a SEMANTIC piece of information.  This is NOT the same thing as feeling the difference on the ‘AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL’ level.  It is a difference in the way memory operation has formed in the beginning.

This being said, I will simply add here that in my mother’s June 17, 1963 letter to her mother, when she wrote, “I figured the other day we’ve moved 17 times in six years – no wonder we’re sick and tired of moving,” she is not aware that she has no more of an idea how her children (or her husband) felt through all of these chaotic place-changes than she did how the household items felt.

My mother’s brain did not have the capacity to ACTUALLY tell the difference between how a fork or a piece of carpet FELT and how her living, breathing children FELT.  She dragged every-THING around with her equally oblivious of consequence.

My mother could have no empathy for a couch differently than for a person.  Her own ‘feeling felt’ brain-mind-self ‘boundary’ had never formed correctly in her infant-childhood that would have meant that on a FEELING level she could tell the difference between a person-as-a-person and a person-as-an-object.

Without having formed this fundamental ‘point of referencing’ my mother could not appropriately organize and orient herself – PERIOD.  The changes that happened to her as a result of no ‘feeling felt’ experiences as her body-brain developed also left her with a disturbed, disoriented and disorganized sense of time-distance-space, a fact that is noticeably splashed throughout the chronicle of her life journey that I am working with in her letters.

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I will make one more point here and then hope that I have accomplished the ‘bowling lane clearance’ that I was hoping for by writing here this morning.  Over and over again in my mother’s letters she says to her own mother that all she ever wanted was to recreate for her own children (us) ‘the wonderfully happy childhood’ that my mother’s mother had (supposedly – and NOT) created for my mother.

In the end, that attempt to recreate her own nonexistent happy childhood was the DREAM that drove my mother’s homesteading, Alaskan pursuits.  That my mother lacked the capacity to actually differentiate her children from her self meant that what she was doing was attempting to recreate her own ‘happy childhood’ for her OWN self.

Several months ago I realized that along with ‘playing baby dolls’ with her own children as the projected ‘doll babies’, my mother was at the same time ‘playing house’.  Over and over and over again in these letters my mother describes her homemaking efforts as if she was talking about setting up a doll house.

Until this parallel struck me, I had never thought about whether or not my mother actually had a DOLL HOUSE in her young childhood nursery where she played in solitaire for unending hours, days, months and years.  I bet that she DID!  This would have been in addition to all the trappings of ‘housedom’ she DID have for the bigger dolls such as beds and bedding, rocking chairs, dish sets, etc.

So it was not ONLY a recreation of her doll play that manifested itself in her distorted mental projections upon her adult life that I can see in the patterns of her activities.  It was ALSO the recreation of the perfect doll house that appears repeatedly with ever one of the moves my mother did.  (Seventeen moves in six years by her count is a lot of moves, although I believe once I get to that level of detail analysis within my mothers writings I will count far more than that.)

Add to this confusion the fact that my mother didn’t know the difference between her attempts to ‘recreate her own perfect childhood for her children (for herself)’ and the actual hell she created for her own children – especially for me – I realize that working with my mother’s ‘story’ is a bit like trying to calming read a book while spinning around inside a blender at top speed.

My!  How ‘Twilight Zonesque’ is THAT image?  There we all were, husband, children, animals, props, homestead, log house, etc. — along with the past, present and future combined — all tossed together into the blender of my mother’s deeply disturbed ‘dream’ mind and held captive while she pushed the ‘go fast’ button.  Off we would all go over and over again, spinning around and around and around, up and down, in and out, here and there, willy-nilly without end.

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+I SEEK NOT TO JUDGE MY MOTHER, BUT TO UNDERSTAND

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I just spoke in length with my daughter again about my current predicament about this stage of work with myself and with my mother’s writings.  I need to regain the position that she helped be obtain several weeks ago that allowed me to remain more remote and objective as I work this intimately with the words of this woman, my mother, who tortured and abused me for 18 long years.

Part of what I recognize at this moment is that I am summoning an immense amount of personal courage and determination as I pursue this work.  What I am trying to do seems almost like an impossible task.  I am hoping to find something good and useful, helpful, truthful and beautiful within a context of terror, trauma and unspeakable suffering.

I am believing in the GOODNESS of humans.  All humans, even those who commit terrible crimes – as my mother did against me.  I want to be fair, truthful, and I want to do this work with my own integrity intact – beginning to end.

I want to honor my species.  I want to recognize our amazing powers of resiliency.  Yet at the same time I can feel the damage within me.  I cannot make that damage go away.  As I work with my mother’s writing I also understand that how she was so hurt as a child damaged her, also.  If it is true that there is goodness in all of us — I want to be able to recognize that goodness within my mother.

At the same time I am also looking for the damage.  Where the brokenness of my mother met her goodness, a human being lived her life.  I do not seek to judge her.  I seek to understand.

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+FALSE STARTS AND BLIND INNER PROMISES

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There must be a post that needs to be written this morning that goes along with this title that is resounding within my mind this morning:  ‘False starts and blind inner promises’.  In thinking about the comment made to yesterday’s post about the beauty of tree burls and how as severe early abuse survivors we cannot grow our first early twigs out into the world because we are in continual danger of being attacked, and about how tree burls ARE formed in response to threats in the environment so that the growing tree must form scar tissue into itself – I am also thinking about how I feel ‘at dead center’ here in my home now, and in my yard.  I can only venture out once in a great while and when I do returning home within two or three hours seems to be essential for me to regain any calm equilibrium inside of myself.

I haven’t met my first grandchild yet who was born last March 11th.  I have three grown children all living in Fargo, North Dakota.  They want me to come up to visit them this summer, but the truth is that I cannot find a Linda who can make that journey.  I am not strong enough.  I don’t feel well enough.  Now they are talking about flying down to see me.

This all leads me to thinking about how at 58 years old, as a direct result of all the trauma I survived during the first 18 formative years of my life, I don’t so much not ‘have a leg to stand on’ as I ‘don’t have a limb to go out on’.  Yes, this also brings to mind ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ and what happens ‘when the bough breaks’.

I knew about all of the rest of my ‘knowing’ about the implications contained in yesterday’s tree burl post, but I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t want to write it.  I didn’t want to ‘be negative’ at the same time I didn’t want to be realistic.  I just wanted to END with the beautiful part and not acknowledge the serious ramifications and implications of growing a body-brain-mind-self in such a malevolent environment that most of who I had the potential to become was never able to branch out into the world and grow strong and true.

Being all bound up with my gifts, talents, strengths and abilities, with most of my potential hidden within the inside of me – rather than being expressed and formed and extended out into the ‘bigger world’ is a reflection of the physiological changes that happened to me as I tried to grow and development within the horribly toxic, threatening and truly dangerous world my mother created for me in my infant-childhood.

BUT I went off into that ‘bigger world’ at age 18 without having one single clue about what I had been through or about what had happened to me.  This is where the title for this post appears.  I have lived a life of ‘false starts’ and ‘blind inner promises’ because I had determination, a powerful will to do what it took to survive, to always move forward, to always do the best that I could as I organized my whole life on my most fundamental levels around trying to provide the best care I could for my children.

I was running blind.

I need to go outside this morning and trim the suckers that are growing in great masses at the base of my Pomegranate tree.  When my brother was here in April we completely decked the suckers, but they only came back as fast as they possibly could.  They grow thick and green like a thicket from the underground roots, but they are weak and wild and will not be productive as they crowd out the fruit-bearing branches and suck water and nutrients from the rest of the tree.

I had the thought in contrast to the tree burl image that in so many ways, being as blind as I was when I left home, that I simply set off into whatever direction I saw in front of me as I made decisions about my life and went off and ‘did things’.  Things could certainly have been far worse then they were, but now at age 58 most of what I have done appears to me now to be little more than a ‘false start’ like these tree’s suckers.

I had ‘blind hopes’ because I had no idea about who I was or what I wanted in my life.  I didn’t know what was possible, what was realistic, what motivated me, what I was searching for.  I could not miraculously form good strong fruit-bearing branches upon the tree-that-is-me at age 18.  I did not know about dissociation.  I did not understand that I could create branches in my life by going off in disconnected directions, spending the time of my life and my life force while I THOUGHT I knew what I was doing — but didn’t.

I don’t have a life history now of having continued to build a strong foundation of roots in my life, connected to a good strong self-trunk with wide healthy branches out there soaking in sunlight so I can celebrate my participation in my OWN ongoing life.

I have been burning up my inner resources all of my life and never knew it until now.  The amount of inner resources it took to endure and survive my childhood alone were probably equal to what a safe and securely attached person would use over the span of their entire lifetime.  When I tell my children now that I am ‘too tired to travel’ I know I mean exactly that:  I am resource-less rather than resource-full like my inner bank account is empty.

This, to me, is the long-term consequence that appears in so-called clinical terms as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that has all its own ‘suckers’ within me (depression, dissociation) that siphon off my strength.

Nobody stopped me at the threshold where I left my ‘childhood’ and crossed into my ‘adulthood’ and helped me take inventory of where I was coming from, how I had been formed, what I had endured, what had done to me, what I had to take with me and what I had left over after surviving hell itself.  Nobody then helped me to realize where and how I had to heal before I could move forward.

The major branches that I SHOULD have formed as a growing and developing self in a body were nearly ALL turned within.  I entered adulthood chasing after what I thought was a life as the life that had formed me chased after me – because it was all still inside of me.

While I am thankful I found resources to raise my children so that they are stable and able to continue to grow good, strong branches of self into their world and into their future, I have to say that my ability to take care of myself has been very limited.  Today even the chirping of birds can ‘irritate my nerves’ as I live and breath too close to the edge of continual sensory overload.  The world seems too busy, too fast, too loud, too noisy, too demanding, too stimulating — and far more than I can easily handle.

I live in a rural area.  Yet knowing that even the sound of a crinkling plastic bag irritates my senses as I remove a slice of bread lets me know that the body I formed growing up from birth in an environment of continual threat of harm and of harm itself is very real and has its own very real limitations that I was able to somehow ‘outrun’ during most of my adult life.  But I cannot do it now.

When we think about stopping child abuse, awareness of this kind of damage that child abuse often causes is what needs to motivate us.  There is long term physiological cost to surviving malevolent childhoods.  Yes, we are beautiful — but our ability to form a body-self that can grow our beauty out into the world with joy and wellness has been greatly injured by all the early wounds we have received.

No, I don’t want to have to say this.  No, I don’t want to have to know this.  No, I don’t want to have to live with these long term consequences that changed the physiology of this body I have to live in for my entire life.  But when any of us think that ‘infant-child abuse is a serious matter’, these changes, along with the difficulties and life-loss they create, are a great part of what we HAVE TO consider.

At the same time survivors of severe abuse deserve to know the degree of harm that was done to them so that they can more fully understand how their development and their entire life has been affected.  There is no magic band-aid to FIX the changes that happened to our body.  But there is information about these changes, how they affect us and how we can live better with the help of this wisdom.

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+DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER HAPPENS FOR FAMILIES!

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I went outside to work on my adobe landscaping project after I finished my last post, but here I am back again to capture my next sequence of thoughts:  A family can have a Dissociative Identity Disorder just like an individual person can.

Duh!  That makes perfect sense to me now that I noticed this!  I was thinking outside that if good ‘ole Newton had had to rely on a piece of a seed falling out of an ant’s mouth and hitting the ground to come up with his theory about gravity rather than relying on an apple falling off of the branch of a tree, maybe none of us today would quite understand what keeps us stuck into our shoes other than our laces (or velcro).

It’s no less true that the same forces that bring an ant’s lost scrap of food down to earth is the same force that dropped the apple, but without being able to witness a process within the format of a bigger picture, things can be easy to miss.

My story, my mother’s story, my family’s story is an extreme one.  Therefore it perhaps offers the opportunity to discover something that might happen within many families but is just as easy to miss as the ant’s dropped fleck.

Anyone who ends up in adulthood with an insecure attachment disorder due to inadequate good caregiver interactions from birth forward during critical stages of development simply ‘catches the ball’ that was passed to it by its caregivers and carries that ball forward.

It makes sense to me to say that NOBODY who suffers from major dissociational problems in their adult life could help but ‘catch’ those dissociational patterns from their parents just like offspring can catch AIDS or any of us can catch a contagious disease.

Therefore, if we consider Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) within the larger context, we will know without a doubt that the dis-order came from being raised in a family that ALSO had Dissociative Identity Disorder.

In a culture hep on believing that everyone is born ‘equal’ and therefore equally autonomous, we need to remember that being a fully healthy autonomous person ONLY happens if adequate safe and secure attachment interactions were available to build a truly healthy autonomous body-nervous system-brain-mind-self from the start of life.

It the safe and secure attachment requirements were not met a fully healthy and autonomous person will not be the end result.  Lack of autonomy goes right along with an insecure attachment disorder because they are essentially the exact same thing.

Without the development of autonomy (for reasons just stated) an individual will NOT have a stable, healthy, balanced, fully formed and benevolently functioning IDENTITY.

Humans are not designed in the biological factory of life to hatch from an egg.  We are designed to manifest our genetic potential interactively with the environment we are born into and formed by.  Ours is an adaptive, flexible, and highly purposeful design.  This design is the reason our species is still here.

Our developmental process – which continues to happen during every millisecond of our lifetime in our body as our genetic code continues to form us – happens through feedforward and feedbackward information loops.  If a major piece of information we receive and process is about a malevolent environment, we have no choice in our beginnings but to form our body in adaptation to these malevolent conditions.

That my mother was formed within an environment that was not benevolent enough and was too malevolent so that she formed an insecure attachment disorder meant that she was destined — without intervention or healing — to pass it onto her offspring.  Her attachment disorder included major dissociation due to the malevolent environment she was formed in.

My father also suffered from certain conditions from his birth that created his body-brain-mind-self to be less than autonomous, which made him a perfect match for my mother.  They meshed, enmeshed, and became ‘one person’ as their summer 1957 letters so clearly describe.  They formed a secondary identity based on their mutual interdependence on one another BECAUSE they lacked true safe and secure attachment within their own self.

This secondary identity could ASSUME the ‘outfits’ (like a wardrobe of clothing) of identity from external environmental influences that were NOT representative of WHO each of these persons COULD HAVE BEEN if they each had been raised within a safe and securely attached early environment  or of who they actually were (or could have been).

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This led me to thinking about what a challenge healing and positive change can be for a family just like it can be for an individual.  If the family is made up of insecurely attached people who have no fully formed healthy autonomous identity as separate individuals, the family will have a secondary identity that might as well BE not only the family but the individuals within it.

Family Dissociative Identity Disorder would mean that whatever systems are operating within the family, whatever patterns, actually ARE the family because there is no other autonomous identity present.  It would be not only extremely disorganizing and disorienting for a family to attempt to alter their family DID but also could be a nearly impossible goal if the autonomy of the individual members is not IMPROVED first.

This means to me that addressing the patterns of individual people’s insecure attachment within a family becomes the only reasonable first step that will be effective.  Every other change that is attempted will actually be just a continuation of ‘let’s assume another identity like a new suit of clothes’ patterns and will actually build up and add to the DID problems rather than offer the start of a solution.

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If I am correct, and in looking at the extreme picture of my family I think that I am, any so-called therapy or treatment offered to any member of a family that does not address the lack of autonomy that an unsafe and insecure attachment as the body-brain formed FIRST is actually supporting the Dissociative Identity Disorder of the family because it is feeding it.

Trying to insert ‘recovery’ into a family as if it is an outfit they can add to their repertoire of ‘things to wear’ is NOT addressing the core problem of the insecure attachment patterns within every family members body-brain that WILL be there to some extent.  The only alternative for any individual family member’s health and well-being happens ONLY if and when there is some safe and securely attached (and attachable-to) person in their life.  This is the number ONE resiliency factor.

Outside people (external resources) trying to assist a family to heal are not being representatives of safe and secure attachment if they are feeding the DID within the family rather than offering autonomous support based on the core facts of what caused a family to become so ‘sick’ in the first place and what will truly help them to heal.

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From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder Have trouble articulating who you are, or what you like? Do you find yourself conforming to whatever others in your current setting want you to be, with no real anchor? This week, learn more about identity issues in BPD.

Who Am I? BPD and Identity
Plenty of people without BPD struggle with identity issues, too. But people with BPD often have a very profound lack of sense of self.
Finding Meaning – The First Steps Toward Identity
If you struggle with your identity, you may wonder if there is anything you can do to “find yourself.” There are some things that can help you down the path– finding meaningful moments in your life can get you there.
Does Impulsive Behavior Interfere With Identity Formation?
Some clinicians believe that people with BPD struggle with identity issues because their behavior is so impulsive they have trouble defining “who they are” through their behaviors (which can be erratic and unpredictable). Learn more about impulsive behavior in BPD.
For Family and Friends of Individuals with BPD
Does someone you care about have BPD? BPD can affect all types of relationships, including friends, family members, and romantic partners. Learn more about how BPD may be affecting your relationship, how to cope when a loved one has BPD, and how you can help.

Must Reads

What is BPD?
Symptoms of BPD
Diagnosis of BPD
Treatment of BPD
Living with BPD

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+A WORD ABOUT INSIDIOUS INFANT-CHILD ABUSE

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Before I take my friend’s eleven-year-old Chihuahua to the vet, I have something to say about this three-word combination echoing in my thoughts this morning:  INSIDIOUS CHILD ABUSE.

One thing that I know about insidious child abuse is that it does not have a beginning, a middle or an end.  Insidious abuse has always been there, is always there, will always be there.  For this reason, if not for any other, insidious child abuse remains undetected because it operates the way it does because its insidiousness makes it undetectable.

Turning to Webster’s online dictionary I find:

INSIDIOUS

Etymology: Latin insidiosus, from insidiae ambush, from insidēre to sit in, sit on, from in- + sedēre to sit — more at sit

Date: 1545

1 a : awaiting a chance to entrap : treacherous b : harmful but enticing : seductive <insidious drugs>
2 a : having a gradual and cumulative effect : subtle <the insidious pressures of modern life> b of a disease : developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent

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What is more enticing to a child from birth but to receive the affection of its caregivers?  In cases where mental illness that leads to infant-child abuse exists from the time an infant-child is born, the caregiver SITS with a trap baited with the hope of affection that the innocent little one is biologically destined to be caught by.

SITTING in wait to trap one’s prey is not a natural state for a mother to be in.  Obviously when this is the set-up, there is something terribly wrong.  The last possible person to detect the existence of the trap is the victim.

Infants and children who are born to Borderline mothers such as mine was are ambushed from the start and ambushed every single step of their way through infancy and childhood.

Part of what brought these thoughts into my head this morning relates to the post I wrote this weekend – +EXAMPLE OF MY MOTHER’S BORDERLINE ‘GOOD VERSUS BAD THINKING’

Not only could I not expect any version of natural mothering response if I ever was sick as a child, I could not express my SELF in misery, either.  I was doomed, ambushed, trapped in insidious abuse I did not understand that meant my mother would rather I be sick than her other beloved offspring.  Many times over the years of my childhood she brought this up – that in essence I couldn’t even be sick RIGHT, which meant NOT SICK ENOUGH.  She hated it that I was not the one to get the worst end of any childhood illness that came through our family.

What was the possible way for me to escape her ambush about this?  There wasn’t any.  I never felt jealous, envious, or angry that her beloved ‘good’ child received her entire approval and resulting loving care.  I had no ability to perceive the world in any other way than the way it was.  Her abuse of be was insidious, had been there since I was born, and was erosive and corrosive of my quality of life and my well-being, and I never even knew it.

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+MAKING IT CLEAR: MY SYMPATHIES ARE NOT WITH BORDERLINE PARENTS

alchemynow4 Comments

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I believe that these blog comments posted in the past few days about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (and how I use the term ‘Borderline’ to describe my own mother) are worth a careful, thoughtful read.  If you follow the live links posted below with the comments you can see the original posting the comments were made to and my replies.

Before I launch into my discussion of some of the points of view expressed in these comments, I want to mention some facts as they are appearing in the scientific community about what I call ‘The Borderline Brain’.  Each of these live links below leads to related information in a Google search – and represent the very tip of the proverbial iceberg about how different a Borderline’s brain, nervous system, mind, self, are changed from ‘ordinary’:

(1)  Difficulties in early caregiver infant-child interactions create developmental stress that can lead to a person developing BPD.

(2)  BPD involves a developmentally ‘changed brain’.

(3)  These changes affect all interactions in the brain regarding ‘self reference’

(4)  BPD most often involves an insecure attachment disorder

(5) BPD affects memory

(6)  BPD brain and nervous systems do not process emotion in ordinary ways.  These changes affect someone with a Borderline brain in significant ways that include:

– their brain’s self-referencing resting default mode

– their ability to regulate emotion

–  their ability to experience empathy for others

– their ability to process their life experiences and interactions with others because the development of their Theory of Mind is altered

– their ability to use a human-social skill called ‘mentalizing’ is affected

– all these alterations affect how the Borderline brain-mind operates – and their ‘mind sight’ abilities

(7)  Epigenetic factors that change development are beginning to be recognized in BPD – that affect the way the genetic code manifests (see phenotype and genotype)

(8) All these changes are known to affect a BPD mother’s interactions with her infant and her ability to form safe and secure attachment with her offspring

(9)  The BPD central nervous system is involved, their autonomic nervous system, their vagus nerve system, their stress response, their oxytocin connection system, their immune system, their hormones, and their neurotransmitters – to name just a few of the major influences that Borderline Personality Disorder can create in the body

(10)  BPD can involve delusional disorders and dissociation

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Would you place YOUR well-loved child in the care of someone with life-disorder complications like those described above?  We have to use our common sense – not a BPD strong suit.

When I use the term, ‘my Borderline mother’ I am describing a woman whose physiological existence was probably entirely influenced by the kinds of changes I mention above.  My story is about my life as the abused daughter OF my Borderline mother.

I make no claim to be an expert about BPD.  I am, however, an expert at being the daughter of my Borderline mother.  I had nothing like an ordinary mother.  I had a mother who was a Borderline mother – and a severely disturbed one.

My concern in writing for this blog is ONLY about people who have BPD physiology as it might relate to their ability to safely and securely parent their children.  My concern is WITH THE WELL-BEING OF INFANTS AND CHILDREN.

I do not believe that my mother had any CHOICE about how she behaved toward me and the rest of my family.  The only CHOICE that could have influenced positive change for my mother would have needed to come from the outside and would have needed to be court ordered and professionally enforced.

In essence, I firmly believe that in cases like my mother’s, her children needed to be permanently removed from her care.  Any contact she might have then been able to have with her children would have needed to be strictly (professionally) supervised.

In today’s world of not wanting to be ‘politically incorrect’ we put ourselves at risk for leaving infants and children in dangerously abusive, unsafe and insecurely attached environments with Borderline parents – especially mothers.  There is no comparing – as the commenter below suggests – between an inadequate and/or dangerous BPD parent and a ““lesbian mother” or “over-eater mother”.”  My Borderline mother had no problem with bashing my 4-year-old head in the toilet, for example.

The very last people on this great green and blue earth that we can afford to listen to about the dangers to infants and children of Borderline Personality Disorder parents are PBD parents, themselves – for ALL of the reasons I just pointed out above.

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Comment posted by reader to:  MY BORDERLINE MOM

Hi,
It is okay for me if you want to post my comment and also okay if you don’t. Mostly I would like to express my personal feelings about your blog (basically one particular thing).

First, I read your blog on occasion. I am DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder] and can relate to what you write about. I think you do a wonderful work with your blog and it does help others (at least it helps me).

The thing that bothers me is how you slam your “BORDERLINE” mother. I know everything you went thru was terrible (I have my terrible experiences) but as a BPD [Borderline Personality Disorder] mother it really hurts me how you always refer to her as “Borderline Mother” as if all borderline mothers are terrible monsters. I am DID and Borderline and anorexic and . . . . I have 4 outside kids who belong to a 14 yr. old alter who no longer wants them because they are not “babies” any more. I have stepped in and am working really hard to be the best mom I can be. Most of the time my BPD is contained inside (comes with a lot of “inner self-harm” because it does not get released). I do not want that crap released onto these kids.

When other people read your site and are not real familiar with BPD they will assume all BPD moms are out right crazy. Then if they come across my blog and read that I am BPD they will assume I unleash that same crazy stuff onto my kids and I do not. I wish you not refer to your mom as terrible, crazy “Borderline” mom (though I am sure she was). Maybe you could mention she was (is) borderline once or twice and then just refer to her as “crazy, horrible, terrible” instead of slamming the borderline word around when referring to her.

I cringe somewhat when I come to your site, though I like it, because I believe all borderline moms do not behave as such on the outside. I have begged my psychiatrist to remove that label from me but I know I have it. I just hate the way people out there slam it so frequently.

Thanks for listening to me rant! I only wanted to point it out to you. I will still read your site anyway I just do not need to be reminded about how terrible I am.

Thanks

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Next comment posted by this same reader to:  +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

Hi, I appreciate you listening to my feelings, posting my comments, and leaving it open for others to post also. I am not sure what you are saying in this new post. It seems like you are still saying bad things about borderline mothers, borderlines in general. But I could be totally wrong. When I see borderline and “yanking out the jugular” that does not feel good. Yank YOUR mom’s jugular, not all borderlines behave that way. Why can’t you just say “My Mother” instead of always attaching the BPD with it? You can mention her detailed issues, BPD being one of them, in another place where you explain more about you and your family.

I do not know where I am on the spectrum of borderlines but I can tell you it has to be a conscious effort on my part to think through things before I react. It is a work in progress. I am not the best mom and I lose it at times. I believe any mom can admit that.

One of the beliefs of Dr. Colin Ross (DID expert in Dallas) is that all DID people first split into BPD (that is the FIRST split) then DID comes next. The more I think about it the more I can see this making sense. Some in our system ARE BPD while others are not.

I wonder how others would feel if you were referring to your “lesbian mother” or “over-eater mother”. I do not think it is necessary to continue slamming the BPD label down with the abuses your mother did to you. It is like saying BPD is completely uncontrollable and all of us are crazies who should be in a mental institution.

My mother launched BPD stuff on me all of my life but I would not refer to her as my BPD mom repeatedly. She is my mom and she had a choice not to behave that way but she chose to. I have a choice NOT to behave that way. I am learning a new way.

I understand your anger, your frustration. It just seems you are SO focused on just BPD and not all of the other ways moms abuse their kids. If you abuse kids you abuse them no matter what your diagnosis.

Anyway I am sure my therapist will recommend I stop reading this blog as she does a lot of the blogs I read because it upsets our system. I am thankful to be able to speak up for all of us and express how we feel when we read the BPD references.

Post or not I am okay either way.

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Followed in time of posting by this comment by another reader also to:  +WORD WARRIOR NEWS: “GO IN PEACE, MY MOTHER.”

Linda, In reading your blog, I would assume that your mother was on the severe end of the borderline spectrum. Borderline personality can manifest itself as extreme anger and violence–it is what it is! The label itself explains much of your mother’s bizarre behavior. I know not all borderline’s are like your mom just like all depressed people don’t stay in bed all day or commit suicide. It’s a matter of degrees but it is what it is!

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Followed by yet another reader to +FOOLED BY AN ABUSIVE BORDERLINE? – MY MOTHER’S EXPERT DISTORTION OF REALITY

Linda,
There would be a quite a lot of people who would call it a bluff. But rest assured, I completely agree with you on this count. Your assessment of BP (borderline personality) is just about perfect. In my case however it is my father and his mother (my grandma) who appear to be the culprits. It appears that BPs are compulsive control-freaks and their entire life revolves around a desperate and somewhat diabolical obsession to take charge of everything and everyone around them. The best option for a non-BP in most situations would be to walk-out on these scheming maniacs without prior warning. As I have observed trying to warn these people of dire consequences if they do not stop their abuse is usually counter-productive. It simply strengthens their resolve to find more innovative ways of abuse. It is only when they [have] no fall-guy left to flog, that they are faced with the terrifying reality of their madness and usually break down irreversibly.

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Infants and children born to a Borderline Personality Disorder parent DO NOT HAVE THIS CHOICE:  “The best option for a non-BP in most situations would be to walk-out on these scheming maniacs without prior warning.”

It is up to outside informed and compassionate adults to protect ALL children.  In my opinion, we cannot trust those with Borderline Personality Disorder to parent their infant-child appropriately.  While this fact might not be true in SOME BPD parent cases, my strong suspicion is that as long as we continue to turn away with our blind eyes to the possibilities for severe distortion of reality with a BPD parent’s brain-body-mind that can lead to their offspring’s’ maltreatment, we are risking being contributors to this infant-child maltreatment.

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Prevalence:

BPD has a higher incidence of occurrence than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and is present in approximately two percent of the general population. BPD has been evidenced in all cultures. It is estimated that between 10 percent of clients in outpatient clinical settings and 15 to 20 percent of those in inpatient psychiatric settings meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD.

Thirty to 60 percent of those presenting with a personality disorder have BPD.

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+UNSPEAKABLE MADNESS: INSIDE A CHILD ABUSING BORDERLINE MOTHER’S MIND

alchemynowLeave a comment

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Oh, lordy, I see that the entire article Dr. Bruce Perry refers to about Borderline Personality Disorder — in his new book, Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential–and Endangered by Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz  — is available for public viewing online at this link:

The borderline empathy effect: Do high BPD individuals have greater empathic ability? Or are they just more difficult to ‘‘read’’?

By Judith M. Flury, William Ickes, William Schweinle

While I haven’t begun yet to read Perry’s book, I have begun to thumb through it, beginning with a search of his index for information specifically about the Borderline condition as it might relate to my understanding of my abusive mother and what she did to me.

As Perry succinctly summarizes this article he mentions, this study found that Borderlines are very likely to have enough of a ‘social’ right brain to be able to read other peoples social cues-minds, but nobody else can read the Borderline’s – because a Borderline brain is JUST TOO DIFFERENT from normal for anyone with an ordinary mind to comprehend.

Because I am nowhere near ready yet to approach the reading of this article, I will take Perry at his word that both he and these researchers know what they are talking about.  Perry also mentions in his two paragraph presentation of this Borderline mental condition that the “character in the film Fatal Attraction, a movie I don’t intend to ever see, was a Borderline.

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While this ‘weird brain-mind’ information is affirming and confirming to me about what I have experienced, learned and know about my mother and the 18 years of abuse I went through thanks to her advanced Borderline condition, it doesn’t improve how I feel at this moment.

My return to complete the transcription of my mother’s remaining letters has put me on trauma-trigger overload.  I could say I’m like a space shuttle with damaged heat tiles trying to approach reentry back to earth.  At the same time I know that reading my mother’s 1957 (from the time right before my 6th birthday), I also know that I have vowed to myself to complete this job.

Perry’s reference to the ‘different mind’ of the Borderline that ordinary people cannot comprehend (I’d have to read the article above to see if they mention whether or not Borderlines are better equipped to read EACH OTHERS minds) does give credence to my sense as I read my mother’s letters that NOBODY CAN SEE HER MADNESS IN THEM.  “It’s NOT just me,” I can tell myself.  “NOBODY could see the madness of her mind.”

This also confirms that I have found exactly the right title to stick onto the front end of her writings when I publish them:  UNSPEAKABLE MADNESS.  If nobody can comprehend the Borderline mind, then OF COURSE we then correspondingly lack any ability to speak about it.  That’s true for those of us who were raised from birth by an abusive Borderline, and it’s true also for those on the outside who could not see what was happening THEN and are inexplicably (to us) prevented from understanding the depth of our stories when we try to speak about them NOW.

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My mother’s letters are triggering implicit, or body memories that are so impacting my body that I cannot eat or sleep right now.  I have to talk to myself when I step into the shower (I don’t have a bath tub) about being able to tolerate the feel of the water hitting my skin.  The water seems to POUND on the surface of my body.  All the thousands of blows I received as a child are in my body in memory that is very close to the surface right now – way too close.

Until I have finished transcribing these 50 or so remaining letters, I will be in some risky and very uncomfortable limbo danger zone – like out in space without the ability to protect myself completely from the consequences of this work.  My ‘heat tiles’ that will allow me reentry back into my present time and space of my life will be repaired when this job is done, though I will remain bruised and ICKY for some time afterward.

I know this.  I also know that I cannot afford an editor to prepare ALL of her letters for print and publication.  This last job has to be done by ME, even before a single one of her words can be uploaded through Kindle publishing.

But by the time I reach the final reading of her letters for editing I will be able to know that her ACTUAL words I am encountering now in her handwriting, in these envelopes, in these physical, material paper forms that she touched as she created this written record I have to face in the transcription process, will be buried outside in my compost pile for the worms to eat.  I will then be working ‘with a memory outside of a memory’ because her digitalized words on my computer screen are one step more remote to me than are these physical remnants of her life I am confronting right now.

Right now I am unwrapping my mummified mommy in every envelope I touch, every piece of paper I pull out, unfold and begin to read.  The contaminated dust of her mind is still here, preserved in her writings.  The implications for good with this collection as they provide this comprehensive view of a child abusing Borderline mother is profound.

I can do this job, I can complete it because I WILL it so.  My greatest hope is that someone will pay attention to her words as they reflect the mysterious and nearly unknowable-from-the-outside view of am abusive  Borderline brain-mind.

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I am reminded of the well-chosen title of this book about Borderline Personality Disorder:  Lost in the Mirror, 2nd Edition: An Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder by Richard A. Moskovitz

Although I haven’t read this book because I do not want to ‘contaminate’ my own thinking, sensing and knowing about my mother and her condition, I recognize the truth in this book’s title.  I think about the value that the collection of my mother’s writings will offer to anyone interested in understanding this ‘unknowable, unseeable, incomprehensible, invisible, undetectable’ kind of human brain-mind we now call Borderline Personality Disorder.

It is my opinion that because most people who suffer from so-called mental illness DID suffer from unsafe and insecure early attachments to their caregivers — and Perry’s book on empathy goes into great detail about how our current society is creating a national condition of ‘relational poverty’ that I see as nearing a national crisis of insecure attachment disorders —  suffered from neglect, maltreatment and abuse on some level.  Those deprivations along with direct malice change the developing body-brain.  They directly change the physiological ability to utilize human empathic abilities.

Our growing national ‘relational poverty’ is creating an increased risk for Borderline conditions within our population.

Any professional who works with ‘mental illness’ (as well as infant-child abuse survivors themselves) must be able to recognize patterns within their infant-child abuse survivor clients that mirror or mimic  Borderline.

My mother’s letters and diaries, I still believe, will provide the most comprehensive published opportunity to actually experience the reality of the Borderline condition as a Borderline sees it within ONE set of their brain-mind mirrors – in my Borderline mother’s words.

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In today’s modern world of electronic communication and cell phone connections, I believe it would be nearly impossible for any survivor of Borderline madness in their childhood to put together the kind of comprehensive, serial pattern of Borderline thinking that my mother’s letter contain.

Although her letters after she arrived in Alaska, written to her own mother who HAD to be one of the main contaminating influences that impacted my mother’s development, it is particularly within this batch of 1957 letters that my mother’s and father’s patterns of relational insecure attachment disorder becomes most clear and apparent.  Facing this picture of my parents in these 1957 letters is the most difficult part of the entire letter transcription process, and is the reason I know I put this part of my job off until the end.

Although Perry’s work and the work of all the attachment experts and developmental neuroscientists are providing valuable and necessary steps in the right direction, naming what is going on within our culture as ‘relational poverty’ still lets us avoid the extremely painful reality of what insecure attachment disorders and their corresponding empathy disorders are DOING to us as human beings:  They are making us suffer in nearly inconceivable and unmentionable ways.  They are HURTING US!  This hurt is rocking ‘n rolling itself right on down the generations.

When the day finally arrives that the experts at last agree, and the public finally understands, that nearly every single malaise that humans experience with other humans is because of INSECURE ATTACHMENT DISORDERS – and that nearly every known so-called ‘mental illness’ comes about directly through the influence of ‘relational poverty’ in early body-brain forming stages of development in INSECURE ATTACHMENT ENVIRONMENTS that builds the insecure attachment right into the body-brain — well, I fully expect to have left this world far behind.

That does not mean that as many people as possible can’t join me way out in front of ‘the envelope’ (of air, like a jet pushes through) and begin to understand NOW, way ahead of the pack, that we all suffer from insecure attachment disorders.

As I work my way through these paper edifices that contain what was wrong with my mother’s body-brain-mind, I know that first SHE made this great contribution by writing her words down and by holding onto these papers for the rest of her life, that I made a contribution in my commitment to paying her words serious attention no matter what the cost is to me personally, and that someone somewhere at sometime is going to read her words and my introduction to them and BEGIN to comprehend how extremely damaging insecure attachment patterns are in the very months and years of a human being’s growth and development as they determine the developmental trajectory of a person’s body and brain.

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The genesis of a Borderline is reflected in my mother’s writings.  Because of this fact, the genesis of an extremely violent infant-child abusing parent is ALSO contained in her writings.  That those of us on the outside – with me being still on the outside, fortunately, because I did not end up with a Borderline condition – are being given the chance to share an insider’s view of a Borderline brain-mind along with my mother by carefully reading her written words as they unfold this large section of her life, is really a miracle with great potential for helping us all understand what can happen when safe and secure infant-child attachment goes so very, very wrong.

Meanwhile, I am going into town to pick up some needed supplies as I take a short recess from hell, and then I will return to my work.

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+BORN AS A COMPONENT OF A BORDERLINE MOTHER’S MIND-LIE

alchemynow4 Comments

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How I remembered what memories I do have that are written in my childhood stories was affected-infected by the obsession my mother had with ‘telling the truth’.  Her perception of every experience involving me including those she added to ‘her abuse litany’ involved somehow involved a deception and a lie.  Because she continued to repeat these perception-lies verbally every time she ‘punished’ (beat) me for the rest of the years of my childhood, not only were her versions of the events kept alive, but also mine because my version and her version simply never matched.

How was it that I, a child that had never been affirmed by my mother as ever existing at all as a human being but rather as a nonhuman child of the devil, could so clearly KNOW the truth (my truth) about what had ACTUALLY happened every single time my mother repeated her attacks on me through the years because of my supposed transgressions that existed only within her distorted mind?

It is affirming to me at this moment to recognize that as far back as I can remember my own memory of what actually happened for each of her twisted abuse litany versions of my actions was carried forward in time within my own mind-self intact.  Nothing my mother ever said or did to me changed the truth of what I knew.  I find comfort in realizing that obviously Linda WAS present.  I WAS there as a glimmer of a reflection of a self within my own experience of my own life.

I was the one being viciously verbally and physically attacked without having any possible way of avoiding, escaping, preventing or of understanding what was happening to me.  But I WAS there, in my body, having my life experiences.  I had them.  I knew what they were.  I knew the truth of what actually happened, and I remembered the experiences intact – every single one of them – in spite of how my mother twisted the facts and in spite of what she did to me along with twisting the reality of the facts.

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At this moment I am also detecting where one of my biggest problems originated.  As the brain-mind-self grows and develops, a person’s memory abilities are supposed to expand and become more complex and advanced.  When I say I had no ability to THINK about myself in my life in any kind of self-reflective, awareness-based way for the 18 years of my childhood, what I realize I am actually saying is that within the horrific abusive environment I was developing within, I could only go so far in my development and no further.

There is something called ‘semantic memory’ which is a term that “refers to the memory of meanings, understandings, and other concept-based knowledge unrelated to specific experiences.”  Tied to the development of semantic memory abilities is a following stage of memory development called ‘episodic memory’, a term refers to “the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual knowledge) that can be explicitly (consciously – which is versus ‘implicit’ memory that is unconscious and exists in the body but is not accessible to the brain-mind) stated.”  Not only did I not develop this remembering ability at the appropriate age, but I have only with effort been able to exercise it in my adult life.

As memory abilities develop in the body-brain from birth, they form what I think of as links in a memory chain.  The next stage of memory ability development I should have been able to obtain was nearly completely obliterated by my mother’s abuse of me.  ‘Autobiographical memory‘, is not a simple process.  It is meant to allow us to connect our self from the inside out not only with the experiences of our life as we have them, but also involves being able to experience our experience (having a self to remember having an experience).  Then, we are supposed to be able to remember our experience of our self having had the experience.

We can refer to the end result of the abuse my mother did to me ‘dissociation’, but what I know is that her abuse interfered with my brain’s development, including the development of memory abilities.  I had a deadly predator in pursuit of me throughout the 18 years of my childhood.  I never had the luxury to pause for the length of time it would have taken to consolidate my memory of my life or of myself living it.  I certainly was never allowed to pause long enough to form the ability to remember myself having an experience, or to remember myself remembering having experiences.

The reality of my abusive childhood resulted in such profoundly altered brain development that I simply managed to escape my childhood with the memories of my own reality that were directly tied to the incidents my mother repeated over the years in her abuse litany.  Even then, it was only because I had been able to develop some version of semantic memory abilities so that I could not only recognize certain literal facts in the world, I could remember the details of my experiences that were directly associated with these remembered facts.

My mother always had an altered version regarding the facts than I did.  I did not think in terms like “My mother is lying” so that I could have evolved further into thinking about “Why is my mother lying?” or “What is wrong with my mother?” or “Gee, I am so angry at my mother for lying.””  I simply knew for a semantic fact that what had actually happened on each abuse litany-included occasion factually happened as they did in fact happen.

The truly strange addition to this entire pattern was my mother’s insistence on every occasion that I was lying to her if I tried to contradict her version by daring to assert myself and tell her the facts.  I never thought of these facts as real, or as being something so abstract as ‘the truth’.  I learned very young as a child, certainly by the age of six, that not only could I not ‘make things right’ by trying to tell my mother the simple facts of what happened, but my trying to do further fueled her rage like pouring gasoline on a roaring fire.

But – and this is extremely important to me – I always remembered the facts of every event she ever attacked me for the way things actually happened.  Every single time my mother viciously attacked me, verbally and/or physically for one of these events (or for her later recalling of these events), I COULD NOT LET GO OF THE FACTS as I knew them to be.

I did not recall the facts with emotion.  I did not recall them with any sense whatsoever that either the original experience of the experience belonged to me, or that the facts of the experience were a part of me or of my life.  Facts were facts.  They existed like physical objects exist in space and time.  They were literal realities and were nearly as physically tangible in my mind as any object can be.

These fact-objects only reappeared to me when my mother brought them up again and again over the span of my childhood.  They had nothing to do with me that I knew of.  I just simply and clearly recognized them as if they were a fork or a spoon or an automobile.  Although I can be grateful that at least physical objects existed for me with words attached to them, and can be equally grateful that at least I retained the facts-as-objects with names for each incident my mother kept remembering for me, I cannot be grateful for the fact that objects and object-facts had some existence in the world while I, as a human being did not.

All I was, all I knew, and all I continued to be for 18 years was a one single fact-object:  I was the devil’s child.

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How a person begins from infancy to recognize and develop their individual self is dependent upon their ability to be seen, heard and responded to by others in their environment.  This begins with the earliest primary caregiver, usually the mother, being able to recognize the needs of her infant when they are expressed, mirror back to the infant its own emotional states, and appropriately respond both to the infant’s emotions and to its needs.

Thinking this through is a strenuous exercise for my mind.  From the first instants in my infancy that I should have been having my own self recognized and responded to appropriately as my brain-mind-self was forming in relationship to the world through the interactions my mother was having with me, I was fed the opposite of the truth about who I was in the world.

My mother could never respond back to me by mirroring my own existence, my own emotional states, my own needs and desires because I was ALWAYS invisible to her from the moment I was born.  She could not reflect ME back to ME because all she ever saw when it came to me was her own projected reflection of badness that her mind had split away from itself and cast onto and into me.

I did not exist.  No infant can exist to itself fully and automatically from the time it is born.  Everyone requires this mirroring of the self back to it for the identification of self to be made.  Now that I understand how the nature of caregiver-infant mirroring interactions actually physiologically determines how an infant’s brain and nervous system develops makes my effort to understand what happened to me because of my mother’s madness even more scary.  I understand how profoundly her disturbed mind affected the development of everything about me from the ground on up.

The truth is that everything that ever happened between my mother and I was based on a lie.  Because I was at ground zero, because I not only existed at the center of the lie but actually WAS the lie my mother’s deranged mind created, I never had a chance or a way to gain an alternative perspective about what was happening to me.

When I say I spent 18 years being the center of my mother’s psychosis and being the target of her hatred, rage and abuse, I mean this as a literal fact.  I WAS the target and nothing else but a target.

That target came into the world not as a human being, but as the spawn of the devil who tried to kill my mother while I was being born – because the devil sent me on a mission to do just that.  I was raised knowing not only that I was owned by the devil, that I belonged to the devil, that I was not human, but also that the devil had given me the power to ‘take’ my mother’s other children ‘to the devil’.

The last time I heard my mother verbalize her unwavering beliefs about me was on the telephone when I was 30.  She launched into her abuse litany in our conversation as if a switch had been flipped on.  The words she used in her litany were always the same.  They would defy belief it I didn’t have the continued ability to recognize facts when I encounter them.

What I never had in my entire life until the moment in that conversation when I was 30 — as these exact familiar words yet again spewed out of her mouth and into my ear through my telephone’s receiver, “The devil sent you to kill me while you were being born and because I survived, you have been nothing but a curse upon my life ever since” – was the ability to do what I did on this day.  I suddenly recognized the lie in the span of a heartbeat and just as quickly in the next heartbeat my finger flicked through the air as I pushed the phone button that hung up on her.

In that span of a heartbeat, for the first time in my life, I caught a glimpse of a glimmer that my mind existed separately from my mother’s.  It took that long, 30 years, to begin a process of differentiating my own self in my own mind from the mind of my mother that should have started when I was born.

Before this instant there had never been a boundary formed between my mother and myself so that I could have been on one side – busy developing my own self in my own brain-mind – while she was on her side of the boundary dealing with her self within her own brain-mind.  I was included as a part of her mind from the time of her difficult and near-death labor with me.  I was nothing but her mental projection of ‘evil’ before I took my first breath.

I was a captured and encapsulated part of my mother and could not escape.  I was not allowed to form a self to escape with even if escape had been an option.  And that option did not really appear for me until I was already 30 years old, 12 years after I had walked out my mother’s front door into my adulthood.

I believe my mother suffered from just about the most severe case of Borderline Personality Disorder possible, and she forced me to share the turmoil of her mental experience with her as if I was an incorporated part of her self.  She kept me on the psychotic side of her Borderline mind for my entire 18-year childhood and for the rest of her life from the time of my birthing.  I was not born free.  In fact, until I somehow managed to step across the line out of her Borderline lie and into my own reality during that telephone conversation, I had not been born as a human being at all.

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+WRITING ABOUT WORDLESS TERROR IN A CONTAMINATED CHILDHOOD

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I am about to set my feet upon a path today that I will at times lay upon as if I am dying, at times crawl upon, at times slink along, and hopefully at times march along strongly as I try this week to prepare a manuscript of my childhood stories to send to an editor I am blessed to have found who is willing to help pull together this first book on my childhood.

There is bound to be some spill-over as I fight out this battle over words to describe what happened to me in enough detail to convince readers of two things:  I am telling the truth and it matters.

In order to tell this truth I have to use words, and because words were used from the time I was born as viscous and deadly weapons by my mother, all words that I consider and use to tell my story are contaminated by definition.

At this moment as I prepare myself for this week ahead I am afraid.  I can use logic all I want to tell myself that “It’s OK.  You are all grown up.  You survived what was done to you by your mother.  She can’t reach you.  She can’t touch you.  She is dead dead dead.”

But I cannot do this work without going “back there” into the 18 years of hell I spent being inhuman, being evil, being The Devil’s Child sent as a curse upon my mother’s life.  With all the information I now have about how broken my mother was, about how the neglect, maltreatment, abuse, lack of love and acceptance, lack of WHATEVER coupled with WHATEVER dark and toxic forces that shaped my mother’s genetic constitution to permanently remove her from the universe of sanity and reason – I see at this moment no way to take this factual information into my past with me so I can be two places at the same time – here – and there.

It might help to wrap myself tightly within a sort of invisibility cloak as I travel back there to retrieve some version of MY childhood story.  The fabric of this cloak is woven of threads made up of the awareness that I only have to do this once.  One time only.  THIS one time only.

But in order for this journey to be a ‘one time’, I am aware that I have to do it right.  I need protection.  I need a gas mask.  I need a suit to keep my mother’s contamination of my childhood, her contamination of me as her growing daughter off of my skin, out of my airways.

My mind wants to KNOW what the title of this book is as if having the title shuts Pandora’s Box forever with the scary, awful stuff inside.  I don’t WANT to jump inside that box and wrestle again with the demons that infected and overwhelmed, in fact consumed and BECAME the mind of my mother.  I cannot tell my story without being there with her madness because WHO and WHAT she believed me to be WAS the darkness within her.

Only I didn’t know it.  How could I have known it?  From the first breath I ever took on this earth I was already guilty of being a murderess.  “The Devil sent you to kill me while you were being born.”  That being the beginning of my life, the beginning of my relationship with my mother, being just the BEGINNING of her verbal attacks, nothing ever got any better.

My infancy and childhood with my mother happened within a thick, gooey, sticky, slurpy poisonous stew of malevolent darkness.  Sometimes this stew was volcano hot.  Sometimes it was glacial cold.  My mother had all the power in the universe to keep me a hidden captive underneath its scummy, putrefying crust.

But I stop myself here.  I have the power to CHOOSE the words I will put in this book of my infancy-childhood.  I will encounter words that suck me into that horrible place.  I do not want those words.  I am hopeful that I can JUST do my best to tell what few stories I have about what few memories I have and let THAT be THAT.

As I work to write staying on MY path I will need to watch carefully for the defining edges of it so that I don’t fall into the infernos of my mother’s madness.  My mind did not form itself for the first 18 years of my life having any idea at all where the boundary line was between my own self and my own mind – and my mother’s.  Because she was a severe (though undiagnosed) Borderline, the borders of the universes that separated us did not exist.

My childhood was contaminated.  I was born contaminated.  There really is no story to tell.  There is a description of profound contamination that has more in common with being born out of my mother’s womb into a deadly radioactive environment – that exploded while she was in labor with me.

The truth of what happened to me, even of what happened to my mother IS beyond words.  The core of trauma that shaped her and hence shaped me does not exist where words are.  In fact, this trauma acted itself out beyond the range of anyone’s detection as if what cannot be named does not exist.  It is time to name it.

The so-called stories of my childhood?  They are no more about the reality of what happened to me than is my cat’s lose hair stuck to the cushion where she sleeps ACTUALLY my cat.  (Great line for the book’s intro, by the way.)

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I think about my piano keyboard right now, and imagine that there are notes that are so high and so low that they don’t actually exist on the keyboard because they lie outside the range of human ability to detect them.

My life with my mother was like that.  What actually happened DID happen because NOBODY detected the ‘notes’ my mother was playing for me.  It is my challenge as a writer to transpose the experience of being raised as my mother’s inhuman, evil devil’s child into a range of notes-words that CAN be heard by others.

Because in the reality of my childhood with my mother words were contaminated weapons, I have to chose words now carefully and run them through a filter so that they can be cleaned and detoxified, decontaminated and made safe for human consumption.

What happened to me from the moment I was born and continued over the next 18 years of my childhood happened ‘under the cloak of darkness’.  My mother was able to effectively construct and maintain two worlds.  One of these worlds on one side of her Borderline was designed to deceive the public.  On the other side of her Borderline was the world that she designed, constructed and maintained JUST FOR ME as her evilness projection.

It is evidently my job to transpose what happened to me on the darkest side of her Borderline into language that can be understood by ‘the public’.  I ask two questions:

(1)  Is it possible write about wordless terror?

(2)  Is it possible to write of this terror beautifully?

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In other words, it is time for both me and my newly found writing assistant to become WORD WARRIORS.

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+IN THE EPIC OF MY ABUSIVE CHILDHOOD THE MOUNTAIN RAISED MY SOUL

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I have been doing a lot of pondering about my writing over these past few days.  It seems that it’s the same $250 to apply for ISBN numbers if for one or ten book titles.  I believe I can publish the first title simply on Amazon.com’s Kindle and hopefully generate some capital to publish in print.

I know of two people in town whose cancer is back.  If doing this writing, and publishing it is connected to my life’s mission, I am becoming less and less comfortable with putting this off.

So, that’s about it for the moment.  I am preparing to spend my Mother’s Day outside working some more on my yard projects.  That means I will also be continuing to think about all of this.  What I wanted to mention here today is that I am thinking about a title for a collection of essays at some point that will be directly about the ‘rupture and repair’ aspects of attachment.

That thinking brought me face-to-face with a thought I’ve never considered in this light before.  While I’ve suspected for a long time is that my attachment to Alaska and to our mountain homestead kept alive and exercised my body-brain’s attachment-related circuitry (so that I could later form at least a skeleton of attachment with people in my life).

What struck me this morning is that our pattern of moving up and down the mountain, on and off of the homestead, was probably VERY helpful to me.  While our family was off of the mountain homestead, I grieved for it.  I had such a powerful emotional connection with that place that I thought I would die if I could not go back to it.

As soon as I could read it, this book became my personal bible because it contained what I saw as the story of my childhood:  Heidi by Johanna Spyri, Scott McKowen.

Even though I never had the thoughts, feelings or words to consider anything about the abuse I endured, I DID understand love for the land and for the place that was home to my soul.

But this morning it came to me that because of the coming and going I was able to expand the operation of my body-brain-mind-self’s attachment related circuitry specifically BECAUSE of these continual patterns of ‘rupture and repair’ that our family’s moves created.

These patterns of rupture and repair – of being there, of leaving there, of my sadness of grief in my absence from the mountain, of my hopes in returning, of my deepest fears that we might not, and my joyful bliss when we did return,  all led to exercising my attachment circuitry so that it could grow into a part of me.  Certainly no HUMAN relationship offered me that opportunity!

As I think about these processes and about my new discovery, I am understanding that it isn’t JUST having safe and secure attachment to people that matters.  In the absence of any safe and secure attachment to humans, children can substitute attachment to pets and to place.  If I were to find the simplest words to describe my relationship with our family’s homestead and the place of that mountain valley, I would say:

“I was at home there in the soul of the world.”

Leaving that place and returning to it allowed me to grow myself as I grew into attachment to something outside of myself.  The whole process became a part of me so that when I finally had to leave that place for good, I took with me the good of that place and my relationship with it.

Had we simply found the land and stayed there without interruption, the rupture and repair patterns that form the bedrock of safe and secure attachment would not have built themselves into me.  Otherwise, as is the reality of unsafe and insecure attachment patterns, I would have been left with nothing but rupture without repair in my life because I would have taken for granted my relationship with that mountain place.

And I experienced the experience of ‘feeling felt’ in seeing my own heart reflected back to me in the story of Heidi.  Of course, this fictional character had human relationships of love.  But as the story makes very clear, it was not a permanent absence from these people she was attached to that mattered most.  It was clear in the story that it was THE MOUNTAIN that was her life.  Being taken away from the mountain (rupture) and not being able to return (for repair) made her sick.  She was dying so the adults brought her back home – and she thrived.

I’m not sure that there has ever been a child alive who could have known the essential truth within that book the way that I did.  My parallel story of rupture and return to that mountain DID save my life.  I am sure of it.  And through that ‘salvation’ I received I was able to raise my children with as much love as I can muster and without abuse.

Being able to experience the kind of love I had for the homestead AND being able to experience the kind of longing I felt in my absence from it AND being able to experience reunion like a securely attached one-year-old infant will feel when it returns to the safety of its loving mother’s lap is a major part of how I am who I am today.  In the epic of my childhood with my mother, whatever took her to that most sacred place enabled me to survive her abuse with a dignity, magnanimity and goodness that I don’t think I would have otherwise known.

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