Tag: trauma memory

+IS THERE ANY OTHER WAY FOR ME TO ‘BE’ IN THE WORLD?

alchemynow3 Comments

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Is it possible to be very nearly a species of one?  That’s how I feel today as I realize that nowhere in the ‘professional’ literature can I find much of a match for my infant-childhood experiences and how I became a changed being as a consequence.

It seems very rare that researchers ever talk realistically (from my point of view) about the ‘freeze’ response when they talk about the ‘fight or flight’ response.  I think about it as an infant-child abuse survivor because I suspect, more than anything else, it was the freeze response that I most often used in response to my mother’s abuse.

Because I never knew anything OTHER than my mother’s abuse from the time I was born, there was never a time when the flight response came to me.  There was one occasion I know of when I was a preteen that I actually ran from her.  If I hadn’t done so that time, she would probably have killed me.

The rest of the time, beginning in my infancy, I suffered, endured and persisted to live on in spite of my mother’s abuse.  But what was going on inside of me during all these experiences of trauma?  If I could not fight, and I could not escape her, was I forced to use this freeze response that nobody seems to want to talk about?

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I wonder about this today in regard to this image presented in the book by Dr. Kerstin Uvnas Moberg, The Oxytocin Factor: Tapping the Hormone of Calm, Love, and Healing.

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I located this excellent online source of articles on trauma, although I wish the page were more up-to-date!

– David Baldwin’s Trauma Information Pages –

Contained among these pages is this:

Introduction to Survival Strategies

Paul Valent

This is a modification of a key chapter (chapter 7 by the same name, pp. 115-123) in From Survival to Fulfillment: a framework for the life-trauma dialectic, by Paul Valent (1998). Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel. Copyright© by Paul Valent.

Valent presents a chart (about half way down his pages) that includes many aspects of the trauma response in detail:  Table 2 – Survival Strategy Components.  This article and table are useful, and worth reading, but Valent does not mention the freeze response, either.

Something is missing.  I don’t find what resonates with me in trauma-response writings because the authors of these writings are missing the point I need in their own thinking about trauma as it applies to many severe infant-early childhood abuse and trauma survivors.

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I found this article:

Inducing traumatic attachment in adults with a history of child abuse:  Forensic applications

By Felicity De Zulueta published in The British Journal of Forensic Practice * VOLUME 8 * ISSUE 3 * SEPTEMBER 2006

It presents typical theory and understanding about how particularly disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment is created and how it manifests in infants as well as in adults.  This author, as do others, suggests that the biggest problem with insecure attachment happens when the early caregiver is the source of fear to an infant.  The infant has no one to turn to for safety and security, and is left in a state of ‘fear without resolution’.

Researchers and theorists assume that an infant will do everything in its power to try to get its earliest attachment figure to respond to it appropriately (according to the infant’s needs).  What happens when absolutely nothing the infant can do – within its very limited natural abilities – works?  What happens when the efforts of the infant to generate an appropriate response from its caregiver results in unpredictable, painful, terrifying and completely inappropriate responses to its efforts?

From my point of view, I believe infants and very young children are forced to deal with this state of ‘fear without resolution’ — so that they can ‘go on being’ while in situations that present what other developmental experts call, ‘the unsolvable paradox’ – in ways that all but the most thorough-thinking and astute researchers miss completely.

The infant is left in a frozen state of helplessness that is like suspended animation.  This response shares some of the typical patterns of response assigned to the fight-flight response, but is inherently different.  I do not agree with professionals that assign the term ‘coping mechanism’ to the processes that these severely abused infants and young children are forced to develop within their growing body-brain.

Some discussion of the child response to trauma can be found here:

Childhood Responses to Threat/Coping Strategies

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Because my history of severe infant-child abuse happened on the far-far-from-normal range of parenting practices, I personally know that there is a whole other level to early trauma survival that even this information (above) does not address.

“A child experiencing abuse develops strategies, which become coping mechanisms which enable day-to-day functioning, but yet help the child detach from the emotional and physical pain of events, especially when abuse continues over a long period of time….”

In my thinking a CHILD is a far different entity than an INFANT is.  Most all research statements, like this one, make the assumption that the two stages of being human are the same.

When severe abuse occurs during fundamental, critical window-of-development stages, these so-called ‘coping mechanisms’ do NOT exist as such.  What I experience is a life lived within a body-brain that was changed in its development as a direct consequence of the trauma I was forced to endure.  I know that very real epigenetic changes occur.  I know that nervous system-brain circuitry changes.

SOMETHING ELSE results from early severe abuse.  I even believe it is more than so-called dissociation.  I believe it is more than the fight-flight response.  It is more and different even from the freeze response as presented in these writings.

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I am left to explore from within what I can detect about how my body-brain operates in the world – and to try to determine the nature of my experience.  I often return in my thoughts to the presentation of the unique child-woman in the movie “Nell.”  I will never forget my response to this movie the first time I watched it.

For the first time in my life I was presented with an image of a person who was more like me than anyone else I had ever imagined.  And yet even this imagined character was far different than I was.  This character had a bonded attachment at least at one point in her life to her twin sister.  She had a bizarre mother, but not a mother that hated, tormented and abused her.  Unlike me, this character did not seem bonded to the life of the natural world around her as I was growing up in Alaska.

Yet the difference between this character and other people was portrayed adequately enough to let viewers know that there was something so different about Nell that she would never in ten million years ‘be like other people’.

Thoughts of this movie comfort me now.  If you’ve never watched it, please consider doing so.  There are many realms of human experience that can only be presented through forms of art, and the state of being I am more familiar with than not is at least alluded to in this story.  But the film presents no suggestion that Nell was remotely concerned with whether or not she was like other people or if others could understand her.  How freeing that would be to me, if I could ever attain that state!

Nell did not wish to be any other way than how she was in the world.  My problems probably stem mostly from the fact that I do.

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+EARLY ATTACHMENT ORIGINS OF EMPATHY

alchemynow1 Comment

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What is empathy?  The definition given by the authors whose research article on the topic I am presenting today define empathy as “an emotional and behavioral response to another’s emotional state, which is similar in affective tone and is based on the other’s circumstances rather than one’s own.”

Because my blog is concerned with the ongoing consequences a person acquires from having experienced severe abuse, trauma and maltreatment during their infant-childhood, knowing what empathy is and is not matters because we did not grow up – obviously – within an early environment where empathy was shown to us by our earliest caregivers.

At least that’s what I have always assumed to be true until this moment as I prepare this post.  My life as my mother’s victim was entirely distorted by her psychosis and mental illness.  At this moment, a thought has occurred to me that seems almost too bizarre to print – but might also be close to the truth.

Given that my mother did not seem able to operate from a conscious stance in regard to me, it might be possible that she WAS practicing her version of empathy with me.  What if, as an infant and very young child she suffered so much that on her unconscious level she KNEW nobody empathized with her.  What if her treatment of me was (bizarrely) intended to create a human being that COULD empathize with her early feelings?

It is often suggested that a person like my mother splits off her own ‘badness’ and projects it out onto the chosen child so that this child becomes the container for the intolerable self hatred.  That picture matches what I can see of my mother’s treatment of me as she hated and abused me from birth and for the next 18 years I lived in her home.

What if, as a component of this sickness, she also was directly projecting out onto me her own experience of how awful it felt to be made to feel that BAD in the beginning of HER life?  How better to create another human being who could empathize with her own feelings than to reenact patterns of abuse with me that would have the end result of making me feel as BADLY as she did?

I was not human to my mother.  I was the devil’s child.  That much I know.  I was not a separate, unique (wonderful) individual person to my mother.  I was her projection of her own evil badness that somehow she internalized as a very young person herself.  How better to make ME absolutely understand what this process of being bad, of being treated as a bad child could feel like than to force me to ALSO experience this reality?

Of course making someone feel as badly as we do is NOT what the process of empathy is about.  I think about a story my mother used to tell from her young adulthood.  She went horseback riding one summer’s day and happened to be on a misbehaved horse that she evidently lacked the skill to control.  The horse wanted to be in the barn, and solved its problem by racing across a meadow directly under the low lying branch of a tree.  The end result, predictably, was that mother landed on the ground and the horse returned home.

My mother used this experience as a reason that none of her children should ever ride horse.  But more importantly, I want to use this event as an example of bizarre empathy potential.  What if my mother needed to know that somebody else could directly empathize with what that ‘being knocked from the back of an out-of-control horse’ felt like to her?  What if the only way she could guarantee that someone else could empathize with her was by reenacting the same event?

What if she had the power to place her child, say me, upon the back of a similar run-away horse and recreate the experience for me — so that I might exactly know what she felt like on the day it happened to her?  When I look at my mother’s interactions with me from this perspective, I could say that she knew EXACTLY how her treatment of me made me feel.

This is twisted.  There is no better word I can think of than twisted to describe how a mind could work like this.  But twisted my mother’s mind was in regard to me – completely, fundamentally and absolutely.  I would say the same thing about the perpetrator of maltreatment of any helpless victimized infant-child.  At the same time, now that this strange perspective has entered my thinking about what my mother did to me, I understand that my thinking might be absolutely correct.

To the degree that she retained within her own unconscious the terror, pain, misery, helpless hopelessness, and feeling of being overwhelmed as a victimized child (if, in fact, she was – we will never know her true infant-childhood circumstances completely), she certainly communicated to me through her treatment of me what it was like to grow a body-brain-mind-self that included abuse experiences that created similar feelings within me.  She worked very hard to make sure that I felt as terrible as was humanly possible, and she did a very good job.

My mother’s pattern of interacting with me was, of course, the opposite from the definition of empathy as “an emotional and behavioral response to another’s emotional state, which is similar in affective tone and is based on the other’s circumstances rather than one’s own.”  Her only concern was for her OWN experience.  She was not remotely concerned with mine as a separate ‘other’.  She never recognized that I even existed as a person or had my own ‘circumstances’, let alone was separate and different from her self.

My mother’s patterns fit the extreme end of what these authors (below) describe as ‘anti-empathy’.  Whether or not she intended it, my mother certainly communicated to me what it felt like to be an abused child, just as my father communicated to me what it felt like to be a dismissed and avoided child.  As we continue to reenact with others the patterns of attachment that were built into us through our earliest caregiver interactions, we correspondingly ‘help’ others to know how we felt being the recipient of those same attachment experiences our self.  (Be sure to take a look at the EMPATHY MATRIX below.)

NOTE:  When I fell in love with a man that some people might say is like my father, what I now recognize is that they share the similar avoidant-dismissive attachment pattern/disorder that I am extremely familiar with – and that I resonate with!  It is, thus, the attachment pattern that I internally and automatically recognize.  Otherwise, as people, they are far different from one another.  Did I unconsciously recognize this dismissive-avoidant attachment pattern because the feelings created inside myself in response to it are identical between the two relationships?

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Today I am presenting information from an article about how early caregiver attachment experiences intertwine with the later ability or disability to experience true empathy.  This article is about ground breaking research on how empathy can be seen to operate within preschooler interactions.  These empathy patterns persist over time.  They do not appear out of nowhere.

For those of us who suffered from abuse, trauma and maltreatment in our infant-childhoods, this information can help us to understand the empathy process that we were prevented from benefiting from when we needed it most – as our body-brain-mind was forming patterns of attachment into our growing and developing self.  (All bold type and underlining is mine, my notes are in italics)

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“Individual Differences in Empathy Among Preschoolers:  Relation to Attachment History” — By Roberta Kestenbaum, Ellen A. Farber, L. Alan Sroufe, in New Directions for Child Development, Vol 44, 1989, 51-64

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EMPATHY

“The ability to express emotions clearly,

to recognize others’ expressions of emotions,

and to react appropriately to them

are all important for accurate communication and regulation of relationships.  (Kestenbaum/ID/51)”

“…what an individual comes to understand about emotions in the self and others in early relationships may have an impact on later responding to emotional reactions of others.  (Kestenbaum/ID/51)”

EMPATHIC RESPONSE to “another’s emotional state”

“…recognizing and experiencing the emotion of the other.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“Individuals who in the past have had their emotional needs met (for example, through a caretaker’s sensitive and consistent responding) may be better attuned to the emotional needs of others

without confusing them with their own needs,

thus allowing for a truly empathic response.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

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“affective perspective taking”

cognitive orientation

“empathy as the knowledge or understanding of another’s feelings.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“affective perspective taking is necessary but not sufficient for empathy  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

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empathy defined also “in strictly affective terms, as a vicarious affective response.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

COMBINING THE TWO APPROACHES ABOVE:

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“…in essence, both cognitive and affective elements are involved in this response.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

DEFINITION:

AUTHORS’ DEFINITION:

“…an emotional and behavioral response to another’s emotional state, which is similar in affective tone and is based on the other’s circumstances rather than one’s own.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

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“…empathy is defined as

being able to discriminate the affective states of others, knowing how another feels, and vicariously experiencing the aroused emotion (Feshback, 1982; Underwood and Moore, 1982).

Similarly, Iannotti (1978) has defined empathy as an emotional response to the perspective of another.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“Hoffman (1978) suggests a broad definition of empathy, with the major criterion being that the individual’s affective response is more suited to the other individual’s situation than to his or her own circumstances.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

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[author mentions “emotional contagion” without clarifying how it can “contaminate” (my word) the response of empathy]

“Another issue is whether, for a response to be empathic, an exact match of affect should be required or only a match to positive or negative tone…..Some responses, particularly those by young children, may be excluded not because of insufficient arousal, but because of immature cognitive and motoric abilities to produce an exact match.  (Kestenbaum/ID/52)”

“This investigation is concerned with how the quality of early relationships predicts later responding to emotional distress….relationship experiences are internalized and carried forward to other relationships.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“The present study was undertaken to look at later effects of early relationships and to compare children who had secure attachment histories with children who had avoidant and resistant attachments.  Infants were tested at twelve and eighteen months of age with their mothers in the Ainsworth Strange Situation.  They were classified as securely attached, anxiously attached-avoidant, or anxiously attached-resistant.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“Because securely attached children presumably have had their emotional needs met as infants and have received responsive, empathic caregiving, they should have developed the capacity to readily respond empathically.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“In Bowlby’s (1973) terms, in the context of early relationship experiences, infants and young children develop inner working models of self and other.  This is more than the learning of roles; rather, children internalize the very nature of relationships themselves.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

SECURLY ATTACHED

“Thus, in experiencing sensitive caregiving, the securely attached child not only learns to expect care, but more generally learns that when a person is in need, another responds empathically.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT

“In sharp contrast, children who show avoidant patterns of attachment are thought to have experienced repeated rejection in times of emotional need….though they may become aroused at another’s distress, they will have no framework for responding adequately.  (Kestenbaum/ID/54)”

“They may defend against the feelings that are aroused.  Thus, avoidant children are most likely to appear unempathic, at times displaying attacking behavior or (Kestenbaum/ID/54) inappropriate affect.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

ANXIOUS-RESISTANT ATTACHMENT

“…children who have anxious-resistant attachment histories are thought to have experienced inconsistent care.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

“In the face of strong feelings, they remain anxious, confused, and uncertain.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

“They may show arousal and some responsivity, but because of their disorganization and anxiety, they have difficulty acting empathically.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

“Due to problems in maintaining distance between themselves and others, they may be confused as to who is experiencing the distress.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

In this study:

“Empathy was measured in naturally occurring situations of distress during free play in a preschool setting….we chose to focus only on reactions to others’ distress….Children’s responses to others’ distress were rated for the

degree of empathic responding.  To more clearly delineate differences between the groups, we also included

measures of inappropriate affective responding (anti-empathy) and

occurrences of blurring the boundaries between what is happening to another and what is happening to the self.  (Kestenbaum/ID/55)”

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EMPATHY MATRIX

Matrix, matron and matter are all related to Latin word “matre”

Thirteen Things to Think About:

WHEN INTERACTING WITH HER INFANT

+ 1.  Degree of accurate versus inaccurate perception of infant’s feelings by the mother.  Projection of her feelings onto the infant is a form of inaccurate perception.

+ 2.  Degree of accuracy of the mother’s perception and consciousness of her own feelings

+ 3.  Degree that the mother can set her own feelings aside when interacting with infant

+ 4.  Degree of accurate versus inaccurate perception of infant’s needs.  Projecting her needs onto the infant is a form of inaccurate perception.

+ 5.  Degree of accuracy of mother’s perception and consciousness of her own needs

+ 6.  Degree that mother can set her own needs aside when interacting with infant

+ 7.  Degree of genuine yet exaggerated-staged quality of emotional reaction in response to a young infant.  (This playful way is what an infant needs to grow its brain correctly.)

+ 8.  Degree of literal quality of emotional reaction in response to a young infant (Young infants cannot tolerate a direct and literal response to their feelings.  This response overwhelms and scares them.  I am not using literal to mean the same thing as genuine.)

+ 9.  Degree of appropriateness of response (expectations – whose need/emotion is it?)

+ 10.  Degree of intent to help – safe/benevolent

+ 11.  Degree of intent to harm – threat/malevolent.  Projection of an ulterior motive onto the infant that it has the intention of harassing the parent in any way is harmful.

+ 12.   Degree of availability and accessibility to infant (investment – attention – two edged sword if the interactions are traumatic and threatening).

+ 13.  Degree of consistency and dependability to infant (builds trust and hope or chronic fear)

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[Due to the condition of my mother’s mind, she never had a genuine interaction with any of her children.  Everything my mother thought, did or felt was from the “pretend mode” thinking place as she never left the magical world of her early childhood.

She could not, therefore, experience empathy with anyone.

I don’t think there is anyway to “fix” this.  It might be like color blindness.  If we don’t have empathy, don’t have mindsight, don’t have the ability to mentalize, it’s like not being able to see the color red.  And if a person is color blind, they cannot become a military pilot.  They must do something else.  And that something else might be “choice therapy.”]

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Mean age of the 24 children in the study, split equally between girls and boys, was 48.7 months.  Children were part of a longitudinal study at the University of Minnesota.

[I note that they never mention insecure disorganized attachment.  Did those mothers not participate in the overall study]

B – securely attached

A – anxious-avoidant

C – anxious-resistant

“When they were twelve months old and eighteen months old, they participated with their mothers in the Ainsworth Strange Situation to assess the quality of the mother-infant interaction.  In this procedure, the infant has the opportunity to explore a novel situation with and without the mother present, and with and without a stranger present.  Based primarily upon behaviors when the child is reunited with his or her mother after brief separations, the children are classified into one of three groups.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

“Securely attached (B) infants respond positively to mother’s reappearance and can use the other as a source of comfort if distressed.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

“Anxious-avoidant (A) infants actively avoid their mothers when they return and do not respond differentially to mother and stranger.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

“Anxious-resistant (C) children become very distressed during separations but on reunion are not readily calmed.  They often show anger but resist efforts to comfort them.  (Kestenbaum/ID/56)”

[they have a table of empathy and anti-empathy scales used to score the children on p. 57]

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teacher’s reports:

items that “form a coherent factor, named empathic relatedness (Kestenbaum/ID/58)”

– Is considerate and thoughtful of other children.

– Is helpful and cooperative.

– Shows concern for moral issues (for example, reciprocity, fairness, and the welfare of others)

– Uses and responds to reason

– Tends to arouse liking and acceptance in adults

– Shows a recognition of the feelings of others; is empathic

– Tends to give, lend, and share

– Can be trusted; is dependable.

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“There were few responses of anti-empathy, but of the twelve that were observed, nine incidents were by children with anxious-avoidant attachment histories, two incidents were by children with anxious-resistant attachment histories, and one incident was by a child with a secure attachment history.  (Kestenbaum/ID/59)”

“Six instances were observed in which children appeared to blur the boundaries of who was transgressed.  Of these, four involved children with anxious-resistant attachment histories, and two involved children with secure attachment histories.  (Kestenbaum/ID/59)”

measured children in distress

“…behavioral responses, such as approach or vocalizations of concern, were observed much more often than emotional response…..Thus, it is still not clear what the relation is between affective and behavioral indexes of empathy.  (Kestenbaum/ID/59)”

“…teachers can capture affective-behavioral dimensions of empathy in the Q sort.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

++

“…if prototypic models of self, other, and relationships are forged in early attachment experiences, it is expectable that children experiencing responsive care not only will be able to seek care later, but will be emotionally responsive to others as well. (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

“…we consider this work on empathy to be strong confirmation of Bowlby’s theory.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

++

“It could be argued that the empathic behavior that we are seeing is a product of current parenting.

Bowlby’s theory states explicitly that development is always a product of past history and current circumstances.

Yet an infant that does not experience empathy gets a different brain.

If a child’s circumstances had changed dramatically, an early history of secure attachment would not guarantee empathic responsiveness.

And yet their brain did form secure circuits.

In this sense, early secure attachment is not seen as causing later empathy.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

Nonetheless, early attachment assessments are viewed as reflecting a developmental process commonly associated with individual differences in empathy.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

++

“The quality of the attachment relationship in infancy was indeed related to empathic responding in preschoolers.  Specifically, children with secure attachment histories were  more likely to have a greater empathic response (behaviorally and emotionally) to another’s distress than were children with avoidant histories.  (Kestenbaum/ID/60)”

“How an individual is accustomed to interacting with early relationships, particularly with a caregiver, will be carried forward as expectations in later relationships.  This creates a self-perpetuating cycle [expectations] in which an individual who expects to interact with others in the same (Kestenbaum/ID/60) way as in previous relationships creates a situation that will realize that expectation.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

creates a situation that will realize that expectation –[ I don’t see how they are explaining this part of things.  The children here reacted to situations as they existed.  They did not create them.]

“Thus, children with secure attachment histories have in the past received consistent, sensitive caregiving in times of distress.  These children come to develop a sense of trust and identify with caregivers who respond empathically toward them.  Because their own emotional needs are presumably satisfied, they develop the capacity to respond emotionally, sensitively, and empathically toward others in later relationships.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

“Children with avoidant attachment histories, on the other hand, experienced rejection from their caregivers in times of emotional need.  Without an empathic model to identify with, they are less capable of responding appropriately to another’s distress.  [This is more than having a model – these patterns of responding and processing information are built into the brain circuitry of these children!] As infants, they did not experience consistent emotional support, and later in life, they do not seek it.  Accustomed to avoiding emotions [and this related to their bodies also.  Is this a form of dissociation?] , they continue to do so in later relationships, by not responding emotionally or by responding inappropriately.  Of the twelve incidents of anti-empathy observed in this study, nine were by children with avoidant histories.  The differences observed between the secure group and the avoidant group are probably not due to differences in cognitive abilities such as affective perspective taking, since responding maliciously also requires the ability to realize that another person is experiencing emotional distress.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

“As infants, resistant children had trouble being comforted, and it was expected that as preschoolers they would continue to have difficulties controlling their own affect.  Based on their past histories of inconsistent, ambivalent relationships, it was predicted that children with anxious-ambivalent [they are being inconsistent with their labels here] attachment histories would be

too preoccupied with their own discomfort to react as empathically as the secure group or as unempathically

as the avoidant group.  Statistically, however, the resistant group could not be differentiated from either of the other two groups on present measures of empathy, though their average score fell between those of the other two groups, as predicted.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

IMPORTANT

“Although the anxious-resistant group could not be differentiated by empathy measures, the observations of children who seemed to have

trouble separating another’s distress from their own suggest a more appropriate way of beginning to distinguish this group.  Although only six instances occurred of children

appearing to blur the boundaries of who was experiencing distress, four of them were by children with anxious-resistant attachment histories.  If anxious-resistant children have more

difficulty differentiating between the self’s and other’s emotional states, they will experience the other’s emotional state as their own personal distress and be

less likely to respond empathically…..

Behaviors indicating boundary problems, such as seeking comfort from teachers when another is distressed, should be explored more fully.  (Kestenbaum/ID/61)”

need to “look at the extent of the blurring as well as the cognitive aspects of differentiating the self from other  (Kestenbaum/ID/62)”  — suggestions for future research

It would seem that this is all tied to their preoccupation with their own discomfort.

This would cause them to have difficulties separating another’s distress from their own.

I would suggest that there is a direct link between their inconsistent experiences and this boundary blurring, as well as with the preoccupation.

Because of their preoccupation and blurred boundaries, they will not SEE another’s distress —  so similar to the avoidant group, there would be nothing to respond TO.

– communication patterns and rhythms.

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+LIVING WITH THE AFTERMATH OF INFANT-CHILDHOOD TRAUMA AND TERROR

alchemynowLeave a comment

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In light of the formative nature of the mother-infant interactions that lead to the development of the human right limbic emotional-social brain as presented in my last post, +HOW DOES THE SELF GET FORMED? HERE’S A WHOLE LOT OF IMPORTANT INFO, it is perhaps one single range of related emotions that creates the most ongoing, lifelong problem:  Terror.

See search:  fear and infant brain development

For those of us who were maltreated as infants, it might well be that this emotional range was not only NOT regulated by our interactions with our mother as this last post describes, but our terror was also AMPLIFIED by the very person who was supposed to protect us and keep us safe and secure.

I suspect that within this emotional range related to terror we live the rest of our lives with both the inability to adequately regulate it — but also with far more terror experience built into us that most people might be able to imagine.

The terror range includes not only fear, anxiety and panic, but also dread, foreboding and uneasiness that includes the sense that we are always waiting for something bad to happen – something scary and overwhelming.

As my last post explained, these emotional reactions were created in us long, long before the reason-able abilities of our brain were formed and developed.  They exist on a very physiological level within our body itself.  Our body, in its feedforward and feedback information signaling loops, keeps us continually aware that danger and threat are not far away.  We cannot rest, relax, or ever assume that we are safe and secure.  Instead, we are always prepared to survive what we cannot see – that which we have anticipated (and often received) since the earliest times of our life = trauma.

Ours is a cellular early warning system.  Ours is a continual state of warning and high alert, operating often well outside our range of conscious awareness.

Our terrorizing and terrifying experiences happened to us often way before we had words to think thoughts with.  They happened while the very brain that we NOW think with was forming itself.  If the mothering we received was inadequate and/or scary, the nameless fear became a fundamental part of who we are from the time of our beginning.

Most of us are thus naturally so used to the presence of this ‘structural terror’ that we cannot imagine ourselves in the world feeling any other way.  This state is a ‘given’ one for us.  If we can be honest with our self, the times when we have truly felt (while not under the influence of a drug) absolutely safe, secure, relaxed and calm are the exception in our life rather than the rule.

If we don’t consciously feel this state of ill-at-ease all of the time, we know it is never far away because we know we risk this terror state overwhelming us unexpectedly and often seemingly out of nowhere.  Our entire body-brain-mind-self exists as a trauma alarm system that never runs out of batteries and never turns itself off.

We can experience this undercurrent of trauma-response in our body as a hypersensitivity to anxiety (e.g. anxiety, PTSD) or as a hyposensitivity (e.g. depression).  If our earliest caregiver-infant interactions were not as positive as the one’s described in my last post, we need to understand and expect that our vagus nerve system and its connection to our autonomic nervous system (ANS – ‘stop’ and ‘go’ branches) have been disrupted.

I just wanted to point this out today in response to the post I just published.  I KNOW what this chronic state of underlying dread feels like.  I live with it nearly every single moment of my life.  I have become unbelievably aware of this fact since my children have all left home.  During the 35 years of my adult life I had dependent children living in my home, my caregiving system’s operation superseded my awareness of my chronic inner state of alarm.  Now that they have left home and live on their own, I notice that my alarm system runs nearly all of the time.

Being able to dissipate the power my inner alarm system has over my states of being requires nearly continual conscious monitoring.  I do not know how to shut it off or how to regulate this inner state of foreboding so that it will go away.  I doubt that is even possible.  At least by studying the kind of information I posted earlier today I at least have a much clearer understanding of where this alarm system came from and how it was formed very early into my right limbic emotional-social brain and body through traumatic early experiences with my out-of-control violent and abusive mother.

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

+HOW DOES THE SELF GET FORMED? HERE’S A WHOLE LOT OF IMPORTANT INFO

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Browse through or study the information presented in this post about attachment and the early forming right brain – but it is IMPORTANT!  There is a nitty-gritty to attachment and the part it plays in our brain-mind-self development.  When we think about our own self in the world, and as we interact with our self and with others, we are exercising our attachment system as it formed us and formed itself into us.  Empathy may well be what connects the operation of our emotional and social brain – because these operations happen in the same place – our earliest forming right limbic EMOTIONAL-SOCIAL brain.

The information I am going to present today seems complicated because we are not used to thinking about ourselves and others in the terms that most accurately describe our human, social specie’s inner workings – or the behaviors and actions that we accomplish because of how our body-brain actually works.

This information today comes from the writings of Dr. Allan N. Schore, presented in his book, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self (2003).  This information comes from the second chapter in his book:  Minds in the Making:  Attachment, the Self-Organizing Brain, and Developmentally-Oriented Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (pages 33-57)

There’s plenty to think about here.  I left some of my own musings in italics interspersed within these quotations from when I first encountered this information several years ago.  Bold type and underlining throughout is mine.  This is as close to a human operating manual as I think we could find.

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

IMPORTANT

++ the attachment relationship directly shapes [through certain maternal behaviors] the maturation of the infant’s right-brain stress-coping systems that act at levels beneath awareness (schore/ar/44)

++++

“The orbital cortex matures in the middle of the second year, a time when the average child has a productive vocabulary of less than 70 words.  The core of the self is thus nonverbal and unconscious, and it lies in patterns of affect regulation.  (schore/ar/46)”

++++

“If attachment is interactive synchrony, stress is defined as an asynchrony in an interactional sequence, and, following this, a period of reestablished synchrony allows for stress recovery. (schore/ar/39)”

[This is what Schore elsewhere calls ‘rupture and repair’.]

++++

“Indeed, psychobiological attunement, interactive resonance, and the mutual synchronization and entrainment of physiological rhythms are fundamental processes that mediates attachment bond formation, and

attachment can be defined as the interactive regulation of biological synchronicity between organisms…. Attachment is thus the dyadic (interactive) regulation of emotion….(schore/ar/39)”

++++

“Thus, regulation theory suggests that attachment is, in essence, the right-brain regulation of biological synchronicity between organisms. (schore/ar/41)

++++

Schore wrote this chapter in 2001, a presentation for the Seventh Annual John Bowlby Memorial Lecture

Bowlby’s ideas on attachment are “the dominant model of human development available to science”  (schore/ar/33)

Research is demonstrating the “clinical relevance of the concepts of mental representations of internal working models and reflective functions” are two fundamental characteristics of “minds in the making”  (schore/ar/33)

“…the new developments that are recoupling Freud and Bowlby come from neuroscience.  (schore/ar/34)”

Schore states that in his ongoing writings he writes “from a psychoneurobiological point of view, a specification of the structural systems of the developing unconscious in terms of recent brain research.  This work on “the origin of the self”…attempts to document the ontogenetic evolution of the neurobiology of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, which I equate with specifically the experience-dependent self-organization of the early-developing right hemisphere.  (schore/ar/34)”

“the structural development of the right hemisphere mediates the functional development of the unconscious mind…. [and is] the repository of Bowlby’s unconscious internal working models of the attachment relationship.  (schore/ar/34)”

“…the system unconscious” … has, according to Schore’s discussion on Freud’s work, “regulatory structures and dynamics”  (schore/ar/35)

is describing a scientific trend toward convergence of “the study of the brain and the study of the mind.  (schore/ar/35)

“The early developing right brain…is the neurobiological substrate of Freud’s system unconscious….A body of research now indicates that the right hemisphere is dominant in human infancy, and indeed, for the first 3 years of life.  (schore/ar/35)

I feel as though I am on the trail of unraveling a great mystery as I approach this chapter.  I want to understand how it was possible that I had so little independent thought before the age of 18.  I want to understand how I endured the thousands of hours of enforced isolation as a child.  I want to understand how I could sit on the side of a mountain at 18 and not think a thought.  I want to understand how exactly I GOT my mother’s mind.  And I want to understand how she GOT her own.

“the right hemisphere contains an affective-configurational representational system, one that encodes self-and-object images

“while the left utilizes a lexical-semantic mode.  In (schore/ar/35)

“greater right than left hemispheric involvement in the unconscious processing of affect-evoking stimuli” in (schore/ar/35)

“unconscious processing of emotional stimuli is specifically associated with activation of the right [unconscious mind] and not left hemisphere [conscious response]” in (schore/ar/35)

“…I suggest that structure refers to those specific brain systems, particularly right-brain systems, that underlie these various mental functions [such as internal cognitive processes like representations and defenses, and content like conflicts and fantasies].  In other words, the internal psychic systems involved in processing information at levels beneath awareness…and structural …models, can now be identified by neuroscience.  (schore/ar/36)”

“…one of the major questions of science, specifically [is], how and why do certain early ontogenetic events have such an inordinate effect on everything that follows?  (schore/ar/36)”

“period of the brain spurt that continues through the second year of life” in (schore/ar/36)

“attachment transactions mediate “the social construction of the human brain” in (schore/ar/36)”

“specifically the social emotional brain that supports the unique operations of “the right mind.”  Attachment is thus inextricably linked to developmental neuroscience.  (schore/ar/36)”

Bowlby placed “attachment at the center of human development.  In (schore/ar/36)

“We now know that an infant functions in a fundamentally unconscious way, and unconscious processes in an older child or adult can be traced back to the primitive functioning of the infant.  Knowledge of how the maturation of the right brain, “the right mind,” is directly influenced by the attachment relationship offers us a chance to more deeply understand not just the contents of the unconscious, but its origins, structure, and dynamics.  (schore/ar/37)”

“attachment theory is fundamentally a regulatory theory.  (schore/ar/37)”

“…the psychobiological regulatory events that mediate the attachment process and the psychoneurobiological regulatory mechanisms by which “the right mind” organizes in infancy.  (schore/ar/37)”

++++

“The essential task of the first year of human life is the creation of a secure attachment between the infant and primary caregiver.”

“Indeed, as soon as the child is born it uses its maturing sensory capacities, especially smell, taste, and touch, to interact with the social environment.  (Schore/ar/37)”

++++

“But at 2 months a developmental milestone occurs in the infant brain; specifically, the onset of a critical … period in the maturation of the occipital cortex …  This allows for a dramatic progression of its social and emotional capacities.  In particular, the mother’s emotionally expressive face is, by far, the most potent visual stimulus in the infant’s environment, and the child’s intense interest in her face, especially in her eyes, leads him/her to track it in space, and to engage in periods of intense mutual gaze.  (schore/ar/38)”

“The infant’s gaze, in turn, reliably evokes the mother’s gaze, thereby acting as a potent interpersonal channel for the transmission of “reciprocal mutual influences.”  (Schore/ar/38)

“…Face-to-face interactions, emerging at approximately 2 months of age, are highly arousing, affect-laden, short interpersonal events that expose the infants to high levels of cognitive and social information.  To regulate the high positive arousal, mothers and infants…synchronize the intensity of their affective behavior within lags of split seconds.”  (schore/ar/38)

“In this process of affect synchrony, the intuitive … mother initially attunes to and resonates with the infant’s resting state, but as this state is dynamically activated (or deactivated or hyperactivated) she fine tunes and corrects the intensity and duration of her affective stimulation in order to maintain the child’s positive affective state.  As a result of this moment-by-moment state matching, both partners increase together their degree of engagement.  The fact that the coordination of responses is so rapid suggests the existence of a bond of unconscious communication. (schore/ar/38)”

“In this interpersonal context of “contingent responsivity” the more the mother tunes her activity level to the infant during periods of social engagement, the more she allows him/her to recover quietly in periods of disengagement, and the more she contingently responds to his/her signals for reengagement, the more synchronized their interactions becomes…. The primary caregiver thus facilitates the infant’s information processing by adjusting the mode, amount, variability, and timing of stimulation to its [the infant’s] actual temperamental-physiological abilities.  These mutually attuned synchronized interactions are fundamental to the ongoing affective development of the infant.  (Schore/ar/39)”

“Reciprocal facial signally thus represents an open channel of social communication, and this interactive matrix

promotes the outward expression of internal affects in infants.

In order to enter into this communication, the mother must be psychobiologically attuned not so much to the child’s overt behavior as to the reflections of his/her internal state.[I don’t have a clue what this means?  I’m probably running into my own “wall of damage” here – How could the infant’s overt behavior deviate from it’s internal state at this point?  Wouldn’t they naturally be in sync?  An infant at this age would not be able to lie!] In light of the fact that misattunements are a common developmental phenomena, she also must modulate nonoptimal high levels of stimulation that would trigger hyperarousal, or low levels that engender hypoarousal in the infant.  (schore/ar/39)”

“Most importantly, the arousal-regulating primary caregiver must

participate in interactive repair to regulate interactively induced

stress states in the infant.  If attachment is interactive synchrony, stress is defined as an asynchrony in an interactional sequence, and, following this, a period of reestablished synchrony allows for stress recovery.  [Boy, I sure missed this one, too!!  Yet I am sure I had lots of “interactively induced stress states” from my mother’s abuse of me!  I am sure I had lost of stress states, and they sure weren’t repaired!  All asynchrony, no synchrony.}  In this reattunement pattern of “disruption and repair” the “good-enough” caregiver who induces a stress response in her infant through a misattunement, self-corrects and in a timely fashion reinvokes her psychobiologically attuned regulation of the infant’s negative affective state that she has triggered.  [My mother certainly invoked a lot of stress with no repair.] The key to this is the caregiver’s capacity to monitor and regulate her own affect, especially negative affect.[And in course when parents were abused themselves as infants, they lack this ability – except with “earned attachment.”] (shore/ar/39)”

“These regulatory processes are precursors of psychological attachment and its associated emotions.

“An essential attachment function is “to promote the synchrony or regulation of biological and behavioral systems on an organismic level”…  Indeed, psychobiological attunement, interactive resonance, and the mutual synchronization and entrainment of physiological rhythms are fundamental processes that mediates attachment bond formation, and attachment can be defined as the interactive regulation of biological synchronicity between organisms….(schore/ar/39)”

IMPORTANT

“To put this another way, in forming an attachment bond of somatically expressed emotional communications, the mother is synchronizing and resonating with the rhythms of the infant’s dynamic internal states and then regulating the arousal level of these negative and positive states.

Attachment is thus the dyadic (interactive) regulation of emotion ….  The baby becomes attached to the

psychobiologically attuned regulating primary caregiver who not only

minimizes negative affect but also

maximizes opportunities for positive affect.  Attachment is not just the

reestablishment of security after a dysregulating experience and a stressful negative state; it is also the

interactive amplification of positive affects, as in play states.

Regulated interactions with a familiar, predictable primary caregiver create not only a sense of safety, but also a

positively charged curiosity that fuels the burgeoning self’s exploration of novel socioemotional and physical environments.  (schore/ar/40)”

“Furthermore, attachment is more than overt behavior, it is internal, “being built into the nervous system, in the course and as a result of the infant’s experience of his transactions with the mother… in (schore/ar/40)”

“…transfer of affect between mother and infant…processes whereby the primary object relations become internalized and transformed into psychic structure…. Work of Trevarthen on maternal-infant protoconversations…”The intrinsic regulators of human brain growth in a child are specifically adapted to be coupled, by emotional communication, to the regulators of adult brains:….  In these transactions, the resonance of the dyad ultimately permits the intercoordination of positive affective brain states.

“Trevarthen’s work underscored the fundamental principle that the baby’s brain is not only affected by these transactions, its growth requires brain-brain interaction and occurs in the context of an intimate positive affective relationship.  These findings support Emde’s assertion that “it is the emotional availability of the caregiver in intimacy which seems to be the most central growth-promoting feature of the early rearing experience” (1988, p. 32) in (schore/ar/40)

“There is consensus that interactions with the environment during sensitive periods are necessary for the brain as a whole to mature.  But we know that different regions of the brain mature at different times.  (schore/ar/40)”

right hemisphere matures before the left – infant’s emotional experience is stored in the right brain in sounds, pictures and images during early brain formation stages —  primary process

left matures later – secondary process functions

“I suggest that in these affectively synchronized, psychobiologically attuned face-to-face interactions the infant’s right hemisphere, which is dominant for the infant’s recognition of the maternal face and for the perception of arousal-inducing maternal facial affective expressions, [boy, talk about magnified arousal when the infant is so sensitively attuned to the mother’s face and her face is full of hate, rage and violence!} visual emotional information, and the prosody of the mother’s voice, is focusing her attention on and is therefore regulated by the output of the mother’s right hemisphere, which is (schore/ar/40) dominant for nonverbal communication, the processing and expression of facially and prosodically expressed emotional information, and the maternal capacity to comfort the infant.  (schore/ar/41)

“In support of this, Ryan and his colleagues, using electroencephalogram (EEG) and neuroimaging data, reported that “the positive emotional exchange resulting from autonomy-supportive parenting involves participation of right hemispheric cortical and subcortical systems that participate in global, tonic emotional modulation” …  In (schore/ar/41)  [this quote isn’t saying if this is in the adult, in the infant’s brain, or in both]

IMPORTANT

CONSCIOUSNESS

SHARING A MOTHER’S BRAIN

“There are clear experimental and theoretical indications that this emotional exchange also effects the development of the infant’s consciousness…. Tronick and his colleagues described how microregulatory social-emotional processes of communication generate

intersubjective states of consciousness in the infant-mother dyad.  In such there is “a mutual mapping of (some of) the elements of each interactuant’s state of consciousness into each of their brains” ….  (schore/ar/41)

++++

“Tronick and his team (1998) argued that the infant’s self-organizing system, when coupled with the mother’s, allows for a brain organization that can be expanded into more coherent and complex states of consciousness.  I suggest that Tronick was describing an expansion of what the neuroscientist Edelman (1989)

called primary consciousness, which relates visceral and emotional information pertaining to the biological self to stored information processing [what does “stored information processing” mean?] pertaining to outside reality.  Edelman lateralized primary consciousness to the right brain.  (schore/ar/41)

++++

“Thus, regulation theory suggests that attachment is, in essence, the right-brain regulation of biological synchronicity between organisms. (schore/ar/41)

According to Schore, Bowlby (1969a) asserted “…that attachment behavior is organized and regulated by means of a “control system” within the central nervous system.  (schore/ar/41)

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

MATURATION OF AN ORBITOFRONTAL REGULATORY SYSTEM

Mature orbitofrontal cortex – “acts in “the highest level of control of behavior, especially in relation to emotion: … and plays “a particularly prominent role in the emotional modulation of experience” …  (schore/ar/41)”

“The orbitofrontal regions are not functional at birth.  (schore/ar/41)”

“Over the course of the first year, limbic circuitries emerge in a sequential progression, from amygdala to anterior cingulated [is this the limbic cortex?  See figure 22 p. 43] to insula and finally to orbitofrontal …  And so, as a result of attachment experiences, this system enters a critical period of maturation in the last quarter of the first year, the same time that working models of attachment are first measures.  (schore/ar/42)”

++++

below – this is all one paragraph

“The orbital prefrontal cortex is positioned as a convergence zone where the cortex and subcortex meet. (schore/ar/42)”

It is the only cortical structure with direct connections to the hypothalamus, the amygdala, and the reticular formation in the brain stem that regulates arousal, and through these connections it can modulate instinctual behavior and internal drives.  (schore/ar/42)”

++ The orbital prefrontal cortex is positioned as a convergence zone where the cortex and subcortex meet.

++ only cortical structure with direct connections to the hypothalamus, the amygdala, and the reticular formation in the brain stem that regulates arousal

++ through these connections it can modulate instinctual behavior and internal drives

But because it contains neurons that process face and voice information, this system is also capable of appraising changes in the external environment, especially the social, object-related environment.  (schore/ar/42)”

++ contains neurons that process face and voice information

++ capable of appraising changes in the external environment, especially the social, object-related environment

Due to its unique connections, at the orbitofrontal level cortically processed information concerning the external environment, (e.g., visual and auditory stimuli emanating from the emotional face of the object) is integrated with subcortically processed information regarding the internal visceral environment (e.g., concurrent changes in the emotional or bodily self state).  (schore/ar/42)”

++ cortically processed information concerning the external environment is integrated with subcortically processed information regarding the internal visceral environment

In this manner, the (right) orbitofrontal cortex and its connections function in the “integration of adaptive bodily responses with ongoing emotional and attentional states of the organism” ….  (schore/ar/42)”

++  (right) orbitofrontal cortex and its connections function in the “integration of adaptive bodily responses with ongoing emotional and attentional states of the organism

++++

“The orbitofrontal system is now described as “a nodal cortical region that is important in assembling and monitoring relevant past and current experiences, including their affective and social values”  .….”(T)he orbitofrontal cortex is involved in critical human functions, such as social adjustment and the control of mood, drive and responsibility, traits that are crucial in defining the ‘personality’ of an individual”  ..  (schore/ar/42)”

++ assembling and monitoring relevant past and current experiences, including their affective and social values

[I did not have a sense of my self over time.  My memories were not connected to one another or to me.  Every incident of abuse was a “first time”]

++ is involved in critical human functions, such as social adjustment

++ control of mood

++ drive

++ responsibility

++ traits that are crucial in defining the ‘personality’ of an individual”

[Well, this area of my brain was damaged —  this has something to do with time – past and current experiences – it must have something to do with what I call dissociation, then – if all the experiences are just left somewhere to languish, without ever being “assembled” and nothing was ever considered “relevant” —  nothing had value —  I had no “right” to be a person, no right to value anything – and I could not override my mother’s injunction that I was not worth anything, and therefore nothing mattered to me – no value, no matter.

The word “drive” is in here – but if this part of the brain is not functioning at birth, do we have any drives at birth?]

++++

cortical-subcortical limbic network

“This frontolimbic cortex is situated at the hierarchical apex of an “anterior limbic prefrontal network” interconnecting the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex with the temporal pole, cingulated [limbic cortex] and amygdala.  “This cortical-subcortical limbic network is involved in “affective responses to events and in the mnemonic [related to memory] processing and storage of these responses” …  (schore/ar/42)”

++ affective responses to events

++ the mnemonic [related to memory] processing and storage of these responses”

[I did not have a sense of my self over time.  My memories were not connected to one another or to me.  Every incident of abuse was a “first time”]

“The limbic system is thought to be centrally implicated in the implicit processing of facial expressions without conscious awareness … in the capacity “to adapt to a rapidly changing environment,”  and in “the organization of new learning” …(schore/ar/42)”

[++ implicit processing of facial expressions without conscious awareness — reading social cues?

++ adapt to a rapidly changing environment — this is very hard for me, part of what is hard about the substitute teaching (that I am going to try again) —-  also, maybe why it takes me more time to answer a question!

++ organization of new learning —  reminds me of this summer, and of learning trig!!]

“Current findings…the limbic system is the site of developmental changes associated with the rise of attachment behaviors.  Indeed, it is held that “The integrity of the orbitofrontal cortex,” the highest level of the limbic system, “is necessary for acquiring very specific forms of knowledge for regulating interpersonal and social behavior”  … in (schore/ar/42)”

++ the limbic system is the site of developmental changes associated with the rise of attachment behaviors

++ the orbitofrontal cortex is the highest level of the limbic system

++ its integrity is necessary for acquiring very specific forms of knowledge for regulating interpersonal and social behavior

++++

Western (1997, p. 542) who asserted that “The attempt to regulate affect – to minimize unpleasant feelings and to maximize pleasant ones – is the driving force in human motivation.”  (schore/ar/46)”

++++

“The orbitofrontal system, the “Senior Executive” of the social-emotional brain, is especially expanded in the right cortex (Falk et al., 1990), and in its (schore/ar/42) role as an executive of limbic arousal it comes to act in the capacity of an executive control function for the entire right brain.  This hemisphere, which is dominant for unconscious processes, performs, on a moment-to-moment basis, a “valence tagging” function, in which perceptions receive a positive or negative affective charge, in accord…with a calibration of degrees of pleasure-unpleasure [pleasure seeking or avoiding]…. It also contains a “nonverbal affect lexicon,” a vocabulary for nonverbal affective signals such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocal tone or prosody …. (schore/ar/43)”

++ orbitofrontal system is Senior Executive” of the social-emotional brain, especially expanded in the right cortex

++ role as an executive of limbic arousal  and has role of executive control function for the entire right brain

++ This hemisphere is dominant for unconscious processes,

++ performs, on a moment-to-moment basis, a “valence tagging” function, in which perceptions receive a positive or negative affective charge

++  in accord…with a calibration of degrees of pleasure-unpleasure [pleasure seeking or avoiding]….

++ It also contains a “nonverbal affect lexicon,” a vocabulary for nonverbal affective signals such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocal tone or prosody

[I think this is what goes way back to the beginning of human life.  SEEKING attachment as a basic survival drive to meet the need of belonging, from which we will assign, discover, discriminate, differentiate all other positive or negative things the rest of our lives.  This is NOT a minor aspect of what is damaged and skewed with infant abuse.  It is core and central.  “appraisal and arousal” system

“good-enough” attachment lets this valence tagging system work well enough for us to function in the socioemotional world.  Without it, we will never be able – automatically or simply or accurately or quickly – to discriminate between what gives pleasure and what doesn’t – what to approach and what to avoid]

“The right hemisphere is, more so than the left, deeply connected into not only the limbic system but also both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) that are responsible for (schore/ar/43) somatic expressions of all emotional states.  For this reason, the right hemisphere is dominant for a sense of corporeal and emotional self …  Indeed, the representation of visceral and somatic states and the processing of “self-related material” … are under primary control of the “nondominant” hemisphere.  The ANS has been called the “physiological bottom of the mind” …  (schore/ar/44)”

++ right hemisphere is, more so than the left, deeply connected into the limbic system

++ right hemisphere is, more so than the left, deeply connected into both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) [physiological bottom of the mind]

++ that are responsible for somatic expressions of all emotional states

++ right hemisphere is dominant for a sense of corporeal and emotional self

++ right hemisphere is responsible for representation of visceral and somatic states and the processing of “self-related material

[I did NOT have a sense of self]

“…connections of the highest centers of the limbic system into the hypothalamus (the head ganglion of the ANS and anatomical locus of drive centers)…central role of drive in the system unconscious.  The fact that the right hemisphere contains “the most comprehensive and integrated map of the body state available to the brain” (Damasio, 1994, p. 66) indicates … “drive” as “the psychical representative of the stimuli originating from the organism”… [reaches] the “right mind” …”  (schore/ar/44)”

++ right hemisphere contains “the most comprehensive and integrated map of the body state available to the brain”

++ connections of the highest centers of the limbic system into the hypothalamus (the head ganglion of the ANS and anatomical locus of drive centers)…

++ “drive” as “[to Freud] the psychical representative of the stimuli originating from the organism”… [reaches] the “right mind”

“For the rest of the lifespan, the right brain plays a superior role in the regulation of fundamental physiological and endocrinological functions whose primary control centers are located in subcortical regions of the brain.  Because the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical axis and the sympathetic-adrenomedullary axis are both under the main control of the right cerebral cortex, this hemisphere contains “a unique response system preparing the organism to deal efficiently with external challenges”  …and thus its adaptive functions mediate the human stress response.  It therefore is centrally involved in the vital functions that support survival and enable the organism to cope actively and passively with stress …  In support of Bowlby’s speculation that the infant’s “capacity to cope with stress” is correlated with certain maternal behaviors (1969a, p. 344), the attachment relationship directly shapes the maturation of the infant’s right-brain stress-coping systems that act at levels beneath awareness.  (schore/ar/44)”

++ For the rest of the lifespan, the right brain plays a superior role in the regulation of fundamental physiological and endocrinological functions whose primary control centers are located in subcortical regions of the brain

++ Because the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical axis and the sympathetic-adrenomedullary axis are both under the main control of the right cerebral cortex, this hemisphere contains

++ “a unique response system preparing the organism to deal efficiently with external challenges”

++ and thus its adaptive functions mediate the human stress response

++ the right hemisphere is centrally involved in the vital functions that support survival and enable the organism to cope actively and passively with stress

IMPORTANT

++ the attachment relationship directly shapes [through certain maternal behaviors] the maturation of the infant’s right-brain stress-coping systems that act at levels beneath awareness

“The right hemisphere contributes to the development of reciprocal interactions within the mother-infant regulatory system and mediates the capacity for biological synchronicity, the regulatory mechanism of attachment.  Due to its role in regulating biological synchronicity between organisms, the activity of this hemisphere is instrumental to the empathic perception of the emotional states of other human beings…..According to Adolphs and colleagues, “Recognizing emotions from visually presented facial expressions requires right somatosensory cortices” and in this manner “we recognize another individual’s emotional state by internally generating somatosensory representations that stimulate how the individual would feel when displaying a certain facial expression”  (2000, p. 2683).  The interactive regulation of right brain attachment biology is thus the substrate of empathy.  (schore/ar/44)”

++ the right hemisphere mediates the capacity for biological synchronicity, the regulatory mechanism of ++ the activity of the right hemisphere is instrumental to the empathic perception of the emotional states of other human beings [mindsight]

++ right hemisphere somatosensory cortices are required for us to recognize visual presentation of facial expressions

++ we recognize others’ emotional states by internally generating somatosensory representations that are simulations of how that person would feel when displaying that particular facial expression [how did I learn what I did learn of this?  It is an area of shortcoming/disability for me at times.  I understand this to be the beginnings of “thought” – is that why I did not think?  Wonder?  I was thinking today, one must have some experience of something that is different or “other” in order to miss it, or even to imagine it – certainly to be able to hope for it or to have any expectations]

++ The interactive regulation of right brain attachment biology is thus the substrate of empathy [again, this makes me wonder about earned attachment – did I just watch my children and follow their lead?  Did I “join” with them?]

++++

MEMORY

“The right brain stores an internal working model of the attachment relationship that encodes strategies of affect regulation that maintain basic regulation and positive affect even in the face of environmental challenge (schore, 1994).

Because the right hemisphere is centrally involved in unconscious processes and in “implicit learning” … this unconscious model is stored in right-cerebral implicit-procedural memory.

Neuropsychological studies now also reveal that the right hemisphere, “the right mind,” and not the later forming verbal-linguistic left, is the substrate of affectively laden autobiographical memory …  (schore/ar/45)

[So what on earth happens if there is no attachment relationship?  Therefore no encoding of strategies of affect regulation that maintain basic regulation — and certainly no positive affect no matter how challenging the environment is!

Does this lack, then, also affect the right-cerebral implicit-procedural memory storage process?  AND, I did not, for 18 years, have “affectively laden autobiographical memory.”  I never thought about what happened to me.  But I do remember like in 5th grade imagining that I was kidnapped and left alone tied up in the back of a large truck – wondering and hoping if my parents would even care about me to look for me – let alone find me – and the strange thing is, I couldn’t imagine anything else but just this one thing – and I WANTED them to find me.  I wanted them to love me.  Yet even now, I can’t really handle it when people, even my kids, love me – like that part of me is numb, dead, or never developed that had the ability to feel love.  That is a tragedy of my life.  I have no trust of anyone. How do I know that I love others, what I feel is a HUGE feeling, but not be able to feel it if/when somebody loves me?  I think this is related to earned attachment and borrowed attachment. All I know is that I begin to feel a great sadness as I write this, and I fight to keep my distance from it – is it the hopeless despair I am really feeling?

This is part of where I think the “contamination” in professional thinking is – is this truly dissociation, not to remember the incidents once they occur?  And because they are not remembered, there was no possibility that they would or could be linked together.  I would think this would be a huge aspect of having no continuity, no continuousness, no coherent life story!  What does this have to do with consciousness?

Makes me think of that one time I was a senior and I stood and looked at the bathroom in our apartment and said to myself, “Now I am going to look at this and make a choice and decision to remember it.”  I still do.

Which reminds me of what happened – that whole summer of torture – related to leaving that note torn up in that bathroom’s wastebasket.  Why did I leave it there?  I had no consciousness –of the possible, probable consequences – so how well did I know mother’s mind – or my own?  (No reflective function – see below)]

++++

“Psychobiological models refer to representations of the infant’s affective dialogue with the mother that can be accessed to regulate its affective state [NOPE, didn’t happen – unless I had models both of her public interactions with me and of her terrible private ones?] …  The orbitofrontal area is particularly involved in situations in which internally generated affective representations play a critical role …  Because this system is responsible for “cognitive-emotional interactions” … it generates internal working models.  These mental representations, according to Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985), contain cognitive as well as affective components and act to guide appraisals of experience.  Recent findings – that the orbitofrontal cortex generates nonconscious biases that guide behavior before conscious knowledge does … codes the likely significance of future behavioral options … and represents an important site of contact between emotional information and mechanisms of action selection …– are consonant with Bowlby’s (1981) assertion that unconscious internal working models are used as guides for future action.  (Schore/ar/45).”

++ orbitofrontal area is particularly involved in situations in which internally generated affective representations play a critical role

++ this system [orbitofrontal area] is responsible for “cognitive-emotional interactions”

++ this system [orbitofrontal area] generates internal working models

++ mental representations contain cognitive as well as affective components and act to guide appraisals of experience

++ orbitofrontal cortex generates nonconscious biases that guide behavior before conscious knowledge does

++ orbitofrontal cortex codes the likely significance of future behavioral options

++ orbitofrontal cortex represents an important site of contact between emotional information and mechanisms of action selection

++++

SOCIAL EDITOR

“According to Fonagy and Target (1997), an important outcome of a secure attachment is a reflective function, a mental operation that enables the perception of another’s state.  [And, as Siegel certainly states, of one’s own mind] Brothers (1995, 1997) described a limbic circuit of orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulated gyrus, amygdala, and temporal pole that functions as a social “editor” that is “specialized for processing others social intentions” by appraising “significant gestures and expressions” (Brothers, 1997, p. 27) and “encourages the rest of the brain to report on features of the social environment” (p. 15).  The editor acts as a unitary system “specialized for responding to social signals of all kinds, a system that would ultimately construct representations of the mind” (p. 27).  Neuropsychological studies have indicated that the orbitofrontal cortex is “particularly involved in theory of mind tasks with an affective component” (stone and the others) and in empathy (Eslinger, 1998).  (Schore/ar/45)”

++ limbic circuit of orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulated gyrus, amygdala, and temporal pole that functions as a social “editor” that is “specialized for processing others social intentions” by appraising “significant gestures and expressions and “encourages the rest of the brain to report on features of the social environment

++ The editor acts as a unitary system “specialized for responding to social signals of all kinds, a system that would ultimately construct representations of the mind

++ orbitofrontal cortex is “particularly involved in theory of mind tasks with an affective component and in empathy

[So, do I have empathy?  I don’t know!  I think I have compassion – but I don’t really know anything at this point except that I know I have damage here – I have great difficulty with social intentions and the social environment.  How could I not?  I had no social environment – after the first grade coat abuse I never dared play at school again!

I can’t even understand what most people “mean” when the ask me a question – there are always so many possible meanings – and possible answers to each of those possible meanings – at the same time!  (like the Sioux Falls video store incident when I was there with Jan)  I can’t understand humor.  I can’t tell if people mean what they say – not even if they say they love me.  I mean, not even my siblings or my kids!  Love is a social emotion —

Trouble:  limbic circuit of orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulated gyrus, amygdala, and temporal pole that functions as a social “editor]

++++

“As previously mentioned, the orbitofrontal control system plays an essential role in the regulation of emotion.  This frontolimbic system provides a high-level coding that flexibly coordinates exteroceptive and interoceptive domains and functions to correct responses as social conditions change; processes feedback information; and thereby monitors, adjust, and corrects emotional responses and modulates the motivational control of goal-directed behavior.  It thus acts as a recovery mechanism that efficiently monitors and regulates the (schore/ar/45) duration, frequency, and intensity of not only positive but negative affect states.  Damasio has emphasized that developmental neurological damage of this system in the first 2 years leads to abnormal development of social and moral behaviors ….  (Schore/ar/46)”

++ orbitofrontal control system [frontolimbic system] provides a high-level coding that flexibly coordinates exteroceptive and interoceptive domains and functions to correct responses as social conditions change

++ orbitofrontal control system [frontolimbic system] processes feedback information

++ orbitofrontal control system [frontolimbic system] thereby monitors, adjust, and corrects emotional responses

++ orbitofrontal control system [frontolimbic system] modulates the motivational control of goal-directed behavior

++ orbitofrontal control system [frontolimbic system] acts as a recovery mechanism that efficiently monitors and regulates the duration, frequency, and intensity of not only positive but negative affect states

++ orbitofrontal control system [frontolimbic system] neurological damage in first 2 years of life leads to abnormal development of social and moral behaviors [this happens when there has been an insecure attachment – or no attachment — with a primary caregiver who has had misattuned interactions with the infant in abusive, neglectful, and traumatic environments]

++++

CORE SELF FORMED

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below here is all one paragraph

“The orbital cortex matures in the middle of the second year, a time when the average child has a productive vocabulary of less than 70 words.  The core of the self is thus nonverbal and unconscious, and it lies in patterns of affect regulation.  [So, if there has been no affect regulation, I guess that means there is no self by this age.  And if whatever interactions that have occurred between infant and caregiver are extremely violent and terrifying, and peritrauma is chronic, then the brain must, to my thinking, form itself in disassociated fragments – although I don’t think schore uses “disorganized” in this book]

“This structural development allows for an internal sense of security and resilience [NOPE!] that comes from the intuitive knowledge that one can regulate the flows and shifts of one’s bodily based emotional states either by one’s own coping capacities or within a relationship with caring others.

“In developmental neurobiological studies, Ryan, Kuhl, and Ceci (1997) concluded that the operation of the right prefrontal cortex is integral to autonomous regulation, and that the activation of this system facilitates increases in positive affect in response to optimally challenging or personally meaningful situations, or decreases in negative affect in response to stressful events.

“Confirming earlier proposals for a central role of the right orbitofrontal areas in essential self-functions … current neuroimaging studies now demonstrate that the processing of self occurs within the right prefrontal cortices … and that the self-concept is represented in right frontal areas (…  (Schore/ar/46)”

++ orbital cortex matures in the middle of the second year, a time when the average child has a productive vocabulary of less than 70 words.

++ core of the self is thus nonverbal and unconscious, and it lies in patterns of affect regulation

++ This structural development allows for an internal sense of security and resilience that comes from the intuitive knowledge that one can regulate the flows and shifts of one’s bodily based emotional states either by one’s own coping capacities or within a relationship with caring others. [this is the ideal, and happens when there has been a secure attachment with a primary caregiver who has facilitated attuned interactions with the infant in adequate ways – happens in 50 – 55% of the population – otherwise, there are degrees of damage to this region of the brain and its functioning]

++ operation of the right prefrontal cortex is integral to autonomous regulation

++ activation of this system facilitates increases in positive affect in response to optimally challenging or personally meaningful situations

++ activation of this system facilitates decreases in negative affect in response to stressful events.

++ central role of the right orbitofrontal areas in essential self-functions

++ the processing of self occurs within the right prefrontal cortices

++ the self-concept is represented in right frontal areas

++++

“The functioning of the “self-correcting” orbitofrontal system is central to self-regulation, the ability to flexibly regulate emotional states through interactions with other humans (interactive regulation in interconnected contexts via a two-person psychology) and without other humans (autoregulation in autonomous contexts via a one-person psychology).  The adaptive capacity to shift between these dual regulatory modes, depending upon the social context, emerges out of a history of secure attachment interactions of a maturing biological organism and an early attuned social environment.  The essential aspect of this function is highlighted by Western (1997, p. 542) who asserted that “The attempt to regulate affect – to minimize unpleasant feelings and to maximize pleasant ones – is the driving force in human motivation.”  (schore/ar/46)”

++ the orbitofrontal system has a “self-correcting” function that is central to self-regulation

++ the ability to flexibly regulate emotional states through interactions with other humans (interactive regulation in interconnected contexts via a two-person [and on a more social level, more than two people] psychology)

++ and without other humans (autoregulation in autonomous contexts via a one-person psychology)

++ The adaptive capacity to shift between these dual regulatory modes, depending upon the social context, emerges out of a history of secure attachment interactions of a maturing biological organism and an early attuned social environment.

++ “The attempt to regulate affect – to minimize unpleasant feelings and to maximize pleasant ones – is the driving force in human motivation,” and is the essential aspect of this “self-correcting” function

[I suspect that I found a way to “self-correct” as an infant in a world of the monster and me.  There wasn’t anyone else there to help me do it.  It was like being given a spoon and being told to go dig the Panama Canal.  But I did it.  My brain built itself the best way that it could under those conditions.

Now at 55 as I attempt to discover what happened to me and what really went wrong, through studying these books that I have found because I have no other alternative or option available to me, I look around at the people I encounter in the world around me and I don’t see their “affect.”  I see people in “social” environments all being “smiley” to one another.  I don’t see people being real.  And I think to myself, “This must be because I don’t know what their version of being “real” is.”

How could I?  I didn’t get anything like what most of them did.  Not what at least 85% of the population around me did.  I got what the invisible rest of us 15% got, what the “experts” call “suboptimal parenting.”  I received disorganizing chaos of violence and trauma, and I am being told by these books that the only way to “fix” what ails me is to spend lots of time in long-term therapy with the best psychotherapist money could buy.

++++

“optimal developmental scenario[s]…[facilitate] the experience-dependent growth of an efficient regulatory system in the right hemisphere that supports functions associated with a secure attachment. (schore/ar/46)”

“On the other hand, growth-inhibiting environments negatively impact the ontogeny of self-regulatory prefrontal systems and generate attachment disorders, and such early disturbances of personality formation are mechanisms for the transmission of psychopathology.  (schore/ar/46)”

[So he is saying that there is a direct link between disturbances of personality formation and the negative impact on the early development of the self-regulatory prefrontal systems – which generates attachment disorders AND “are mechanisms for the transmission of psychopathology.  He is not specifying WHICH “level” of attachment disorder (or type).

Does one have an “altered” personality under these circumstances, then?  Especially when the SELF does not develop by 18 months correctly?  Or is it that at 12 months, if there is an insecure “enough” attachment that the self doesn’t form?]

“Very recent neuropsychiatric research demonstrates that reduced volume of prefrontal areas serves as an “endophenotypic marker of disposition to psychopathology” …

“…various forms of attachment pathologies specifically represent inefficient patterns of organization of the right brain, especially the right orbitofrontal areas…(schore is quoting himself with refs here)  (schore/ar/47)”  refers here to his writings on trauma

“Yet all [forms of attachment pathologies] share a common deficit:  Due to the impaired development of the right-cortical preconscious system that decodes emotional stimuli by actual felt emotional responses to stimuli, individuals with poor attachment histories display empathy disorders, the limited capacity to perceive the emotional states of others.  An inability to read facial expressions leads to a misattribution of emotional states and a misinterpretation of the intentions of others.  Thus, there are impairments in the processing of socioemotional information.  (schore/ar/47)”

“In addition to this deficit in social cognition, the deficit in self-regulation is manifest in a limited capacity to modulate the intensity and duration of affects, especially biologically primitive affects like shame, rage, excitement [anticipation], elation [joy-enjoyment], disgust, panic-terror, and hopelessness-despair [hopeless despair].

[He is saying “like” here, not that these are all of them – but these are, in slight variation, all he has mentioned thus far]  Under stress such individuals experience not discrete and differentiated affects, but diffuse, undifferentiated, chaotic states accompanied by overwhelming somatic and visceral sensations.  The poor capacity for what Fonagy and Target (1997) called “mentalization” leads to a restricted ability to reflect upon one’s emotional states.  Right-cortical dysfunction is specifically associated with alterations in body perception and disintegration of self-representation (Weinberg, 2000).  [not that I had a self-representation in the first place}  Solms also described a mechanism by which disorganization of a damaged [this is the FIRST I have seen them use this word – oops, go back to quote from top of p 46!!!]  or developmentally deficient right hemisphere is associated with a “collapse of internalized representations of the external world” in which “the patient regresses from whole to part object relationships” (1996, p. 347), a hallmark of early forming personality disorders.  (schore/ar/47)”

[OK and WOW!  That is quite a paragraph!]

++ growth-inhibiting environments generate attachment disorders

++ attachment disorders are attachment pathologies of “various forms”

++ attachment disorders are early disturbances of personality formation – early forming personality disorders

++ attachment disorders are mechanisms for the transmission of psychopathology

++ attachment disorders all share a common deficit

++ attachment disorders represent inefficient patterns of organization of the right brain

++ especially the right orbitofrontal areas

++ growth-inhibiting environments negatively impact the ontogeny of self-regulatory prefrontal systems [making them literally smaller, of “reduced volume”]

++ development of the right-cortical preconscious system that decodes emotional stimuli by actual felt emotional responses to stimuli is impaired

++ right-cortical hemisphere — is centrally involved in attachment functions — is dominant for the perception of the emotional states of others — by a right-posterior-cortical mechanism involved in the perception of nonverbal expressions embedded in facial and prosodic stimuli – is also dominant for “subjective emotional experiences (quoting Wittling)” – and for the detection of subjective objects (quoting Atchley)” – interactive “transfer of affect” between right brains of members of a dyad best described as intersubjectivity” (schore/ar/48)”

++ attachment disorders cause individuals to display empathy disorders

++ their capacity to perceive the emotional states of others is therefore limited

++ an inability to read facial expressions leads to a misattribution of emotional states and a misinterpretation of the intentions of others

++ thus there are impairments in the processing of socioemotional information

++ this is a deficit in social cognition

++ attachment disorders have a deficit in self-regulation

++ this manifests in a limited capacity to modulate the intensity and duration of affects

++ especially biologically primitive affects like shame, rage, excitement [anticipation], elation [joy-enjoyment], disgust, panic-terror, and hopelessness-despair [hopeless despair]

++ under stress such individuals experience not discrete and differentiated affects, but diffuse, undifferentiated, chaotic states accompanied by overwhelming somatic and visceral sensations

++ attachment disorders create a poor capacity for “mentalization”

++ a restricted ability to reflect upon one’s [or others’] emotional states [not having the ability to have a “theory of mind,” which is probably a distinctly human ability]

++ attachment disorder create right-cortical dysfunction, which is specifically associated with alterations in body perception and disintegration of self-representations

++ attachment disorders create a mechanism by which disorganization of a damaged or developmentally deficient right hemisphere can cause a “collapse of internalized representations of the external world” in which “the patient regresses from whole to part object relationships”

++ this is a hallmark of early forming personality disorders

++  I would also add that there is an interference with the development of “consciousness” and “awareness” and there is an interruption in processing the passage of time.  There is also great difficulty with “transitions” between “states of mind.”

++++

“There is consensus that the psychotherapy of these “developmental arrests” [remember:  Damasio has emphasized that developmental neurological damage of this system in the first 2 years leads to abnormal development of social and moral behaviors …Schore/ar/46)” and “Solms also described a mechanism by which disorganization of a damaged or developmentally deficient right hemisphere is associated with a “collapse of internalized representations of the external world” in which “the patient regresses from whole to part object relationships” (1996, p. 347), a hallmark of early forming personality disorders.  (schore/ar/47)”] is directed toward the mobilization of fundamental modes of development … and the completion of interrupted developmental processes …  This development is specifically emotional development. (schore/ar/47)”

[If they are ONLY talking about delay of emotional development, that is ONE THING.  But I believe that as the severity of infant abuse increases, and the severity of insecure attachment increases, so also does the severity of the damage.  If there is ONLY a delay in developing skills to regulate emotions, that is one thing.  Even though these authors are agreeing that a part of the brain, specifically, has not developed properly, I think there is much much more to the picture – and it is a continued disservice to people and to clients not to recognize and then communicate the WHOLE truth – that there is STILL much we don’t know, and that in the more severe situations, it is not merely a “developmental delay” or a “developmental arrest, “ or an “emotional immaturity” that is the problem.  It is in severe cases irreversible brain changes and/or damage.

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

+IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER; LINKS TO INFO ON BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

In memory of my mother, and of the monster that ate her, here are some links I am behind on (catching up!) on information about Borderline Personality Disorder.

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

But — First This, with gratitude to the person who sent me this link:

Eavesdropping on Happiness

Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations

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From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD

Your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder.

It is not uncommon for people with BPD to be misdiagnosed with another disorder before getting the correct diagnosis. Many clinicians who are less familiar with BPD might assign someone a diagnosis of chronic depression, or bipolar disorder, or even an anxiety disorder. Learn more about diagnosis of BPD.

BPD and Violence – The Facts, Not the Stigma Do men and women who have BPD commit more violent acts that the general population? Are all people with BPD violent? To what kinds of violence are people with BPD most prone?

Understanding the Cluster B Personality Disorders While BPD is associated with impulsive violence, there are other personality disorders that are associated with premeditated violence. Learn more about the Cluster B personality disorders.

What is Phone Coaching and How Can It Help You? One important aspect of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for borderline personality disorder is phone coaching. What is phone coaching, and how can it help you cope with symptoms?

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Learn more about the symptoms and associated features of borderline personality disorder, including emotional and relationship instability, impulsivity, suicidality, self-harm, and more.

Proposed Revisions to the DSM – Are Big Changes on the Way? The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recently posted the proposed changes to the upcoming edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fifth edition). Find links to the relevant changes and share your reaction.
The Current BPD Diagnostic Criteria If you want to see just how big the changes are, here are the DSM diagnostic criteria for BPD as they currently stand.
What’s In a Name? Many are surprised that the term “borderline” is not being replaced in the DSM-V. Learn more about the history of the name controversy here.
Stigma and BPD For years, in the United States and abroad, public information campaigns have tried to combat the stigma associated with mental illness. Unfortunately, these campaigns don’t seem to have been successful.

BPD versus Bipolar Disorder – How to Tell the Difference The primary reason that some clinicians confuse BPD and bipolar disorder is that they share the common feature of mood instability.

Learn how to tell the difference between BPD and bipolar symptoms.

How is a BPD Diagnosis Made? How is BPD diagnosed? What symptoms contribute to a BPD diagnosis? And who made up these diagnostic criteria anyway? Learn all about BPD diagnosis.

What to Expect from a Good BPD Assessment Many people have been misdiagnosed after an inadequate or incomplete assessment. What should an assessment look like? How do you know you’ve been thoroughly assessed? These guidelines will help you understand how to get a good BPD assessment and what to expect.

Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder Learn more about the symptoms and associated features of borderline personality disorder, including emotional and relationship instability, impulsivity, suicidality, self-harm, and more.

How to Create a Safety Plan This article covers the steps in making a clear and comprehensive safety plan. This is not something that can be done when you are already in the midst of a mental health emergency.

If you don’t already have a safety plan, bring this article to your therapist!
The Pros and Cons Tool This is a great tool to add to your safety plan – at lower levels of crisis, the pros and cons tool helps you make decisions about high risk behaviors.

Build a Social Support Network A key to a good safety plan is to have many sources of social support to rely on so that someone is always available (and so that you don’t burn-out existing supports). But how do you find support when you need it?

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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+NOTHING SIMPLE ABOUT THE TOPIC OF ‘PRIDE’

alchemynow2 Comments

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

How necessary is the “Who is proud of whom for what?” game?

I feel strange.  I am face-to-face with some part of my self that can do things some other parts of my self know nothing about.  I was going to back for a few minutes today and write about something I introduced the other day when I mentioned feeling proud for our children (an for our self?).

From the blog post:  Pride in the successes, achievements and accomplishments of one’s child is just another emotion and state of being that abusive parents are deprived of.  The children of these parents are then deprived of having parents who truly appreciate them for the wonderful people that they are.

I was going to return to one of the chapters I skipped in Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life.  He included a chapter on ‘awe’ that I wanted to read this morning because I suspected that the ability to feel awe, an experience connected to the feel good-be good happiness, compassion and connection arm of our vagus nerve system is involved in the experience of pride as well as of awe.

Problem is for me at this moment, I cannot find his book anywhere in my house.  True, I was having problems sorting out what I could believe, accept and understand in Keltner’s writing from what I suspected was grounded in arrogance and bias, but how did I manage to vanquish this book from my sight at the same time I have no memory of doing so?

I have many books on trauma on my book shelves.  Keltner’s book is not among them.  I have searched through every pile of papers, on every table top, every book shelf, in short I have looked everywhere in my house where I could have possibly placed that book once I was done reading it, and the book is nowhere to be found.  I can’t believe I would have either trashed or donated the book without having some memory trace of having done so.  Evidently I really DIDN’T like that book!  Hum…….

So I guess I will have to wing the writing of this post about pride and the vagus nerve as I figure out what I know on my insides about this experience.  Meanwhile, this me of today is very curious about where Keltner’s book is eventually going to make its reappearance in my life!  It HAS to be here some place, but I sure have managed to hide it from myself.

This experience of missing this book makes me wonder how much can we and do we manage to hide from our own self in our life, not even realizing that we are doing so?  I have to wonder at this moment.  How much do we put away, disguise, place ‘out of sight, out of mind’ in our life because our ability to tolerate has diminished something to the point we simply cannot or will not deal with it any more?  (Was I THAT sick of Keltner?)

++++

So at this point, as I continue down the pathway of “What is pride?” on my forensic autobiographical journey, I call not Keltner as my first witness, but my dear sister, Cindy.  When we spoke about the topic on the telephone last night, she mentioned that from the Christian training she had in her young adult lives, she knows that the word and concept of RESPECT is directly tied in its roots to AWE.

She also affirmed that never once to her knowledge was my mother ever proud of me.  Also, in her memory, she knows of only one single instance where she knew absolutely that our mother was proud of her.  That happened when my sister trained our family’s dog for an obedience dog show and they won first place.  Mother didn’t SAY anything to Cindy, but Cindy knew mother was proud of her.

One of my own questions about pride enters my thoughts right now, though I’ll wait for a moment to consider it.  I find myself wondering, “Is the feeling of being proud of another person tied more to conditional love than it is to unconditional love?  Is there a difference between the experience of feeling proud – really for the other or for one’s own self – based on a conditional valuing based on what a person DOES rather than on who a person IS irregardless of what they actually DO?”

But, first, to finish the thoughts from last night’s conversation with my sister, I have to mention that she told me that in all her 56 years, it has been her observation that the topic of pride is a VERY SENSITIVE ONE to many if not most people.  She believe that all of these people suffer their entire lives from a wound that means they continually ACT in ways that they WANT to create a demonstration of pride for them from their parents.

The saddest part of this is that this lack of feeling ‘proud for’ existed in their earliest years and continues to be a part of adults’ feeling reality for their entire lives – and is rarely if ever fulfilled so that the DESIRE is gone.  As a consequence, people then feel empty in a place that is never filled.  It sounds to me like there’s a wound that never heals about this, a hole that’s always there, a continually unmet attachment need that then affects how a person IS in their body, in relationship with their own self and with others, for their entire life time.

My sister understands for herself that the root of ‘awe’ that is a part of ‘respect’ means that when we hear someone say to us, “That is awesome,” we are really receiving from that person a fundamental recognition of our worthiness based on fundamental respect.  My sister believes that once we lose respect for another person, our relationship with them changes – often instantaneously – forever.  Evidently being able to have respect for another person is somehow directly tied to our ability to feel pride for them.

++++

If this is true, I have some searching to do in order that I can understand with clarity within my own self how this respect-awe-pride pathway might actually work.  Even though I cannot locate Keltner’s book anywhere in my house, I know he connected ‘awe’ to the healthy operation of the vagus nerve system just as he did embarrassment, genuine D-miles and compassion – or he would not have included a chapter on ‘awe’ in his book.

I already know that something was wrong with the operation of my mother’s feel good-be good vagus nerve system branch.  I can understand that her stress response was “ON” all of the time.  As a result, her “STOP” arm of her vagus nerve system and of her autonomic nervous system (ANS) could never be activated toward true peaceful calmness and connection to others.  She was not safely and securely attached to her own self or to anyone else.

Now I can add her lack of ability to feel pride for me, and just barely for any of her other children, to the list of ‘symptoms’ of her infant-childhood changed growth and development from trauma, abuse and neglect.

++++

From this point forward in today’s writing I have to make it clear that I think the way I do in a particular way that gives me a bias on the topic that most people do not have – either most fortunately or most unfortunately.  I evidently have some strange immunity regarding the subject of whether other people feel proud of me or not that came from my mother’s abuse of me.

I have written in previous posts that my mother’s demise that led her development down a pathway where she was incapable of experiencing either well-being for her own self or in connection to anyone else happened (I suspect) because of the very traumatic experiences she had with her earliest caregivers as they gave her so-called love that was insanely and unreasonably conditional.  She grew up believing that her personal ‘badness’ caused her caregivers to hate her.  If she could only be ‘good enough’ she could bask in the warmth of their love.

Hers was an environment of terrible and terrifying betrayal.  This betrayal broke her.  I had the benefit of having never been betrayed.  I knew she hated me from the first breath I took.  My mother did not vacillate.  She did not wander away from her first stated course of action toward me from the time I was born.  My mother never swerved off of her course.  In her mind, I was not human.  I was the devil’s child, bad beyond possibility of redemption.

I was never tricked into believing in any way, ever, that there was anything I could do NOT to be hated and abused.  I was never fooled into believing that if I could be ‘good enough’ that she would love me.  I was never given false hope either than I was loveable or that my parents could possibly love me.

True, I am painting a grim picture almost beyond belief.  I can see this even though I know that the picture I am painting was absolutely real.  At the same time I am saying that the absolute devastation of my infant-childhood gave me at the same time the possibility of surviving it as I grew into the person I am now.

I will give you this bizarre yet accurate image:  If we could imagine an infant being born into a world where no air was ever available either that infant would die or it would find a way to endure in spite of the absence of air.  If this is the reality this infant faced, and it did manage to adapt and survive anyway, the concept of ‘air’ and the experience of needing it or of being dependent upon its presence would simply never exist.

Of course we know no human can live without air.  But if we substitute love for air in this image, I can assure you humans can manage to endure without it.  I basically did.  What little bit of love-air I found came from my 14-month-older brother, and very occasionally from contact with my grandmother and father.  Eventually I became an absolute professional at being able to endure and survive on such a pitifully inadequate supply of love-air that it’s almost beyond belief.  But because it was love that I was deprived of rather than of air, my body kept on enduring and growing through its developmental stages because it could adapt to these devastating conditions.

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As a consequence, I cannot conceive of the world the way my sister seems to, or in the way that evidently MOST people do.  I have no ability to imagine ever wanting or desiring my mother or father to feel proud of me.  It is not possible for me to do so.  Therefore, I cannot probably empathize with all the other people who ‘have issues’ concerning their need or desire for this ‘feeling proud’ of them by their parents – or anyone else.

On some levels, having just realized this about my self is very scary.  Yet at the same time the benefit of the pattern of abuse I received seems obvious to me.  Nothing my mother did or did not do to me altered my ability to feel proud of or for my own children.

That’s pretty darn amazing!  I could call this miracle, but I understand that in no possible way are my abilities, as they are so different from my mother’s, a miracle.  My abilities, as are everyone’s, lie within me because they are physiologically possible.  My mother lacked these abilities because they were physiologically impossible for her.

My body-brain-mind-self development did not ever include the possibility of my mother loving me, or with the possibility she could be correspondingly proud of me.  Impossible is exactly just that – impossible.  Only when the POSSIBILITY exists of something happening do we ever wish for it, desire it, hope for it, anticipate it, or expect it.    I knew from the moment I was born there was no possibility my mother loved me, conditionally or unconditionally.  Her love for me or her lack of it was never an issue.  Things were simply the way that they were and that was that.

In other words, the issue of ‘sometimes’ or of ‘some of the time’ didn’t exist for me.  Ever.  My mother did not play the tug-o-war, and I mean WAR, game with me of ‘sometimes I will love you’ or of ‘some of the time I love you’ or of ‘I would and could love you if only……”  She just fundamentally hated me.  How strange, and looking at this from this present moment, how freeing for me this ACTUALLY was.

I did not learn how to conditionally love.  I did not learn how to conditionally BE loved.  At the same time, though I don’t call it a miracle, I will say the blessing of this whole pattern in combination with my own particular makeup as a person was this:  I came out of my infant-childhood completely free to love, and I DO.  How cool is that?  Cool, I would say, beyond words or measure!

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Physiologically, even though I suffer from trauma and abuse in-built anxiety problems of many kinds, my vagus nerve system as it connects with my STOP and GO autonomic nervous system remained able to operate so that I am free to feel a range of emotion that includes the feel good-be good emotions and their corresponding range of options for actions.  My problem lies in that RECEIVING love and affection in all its forms is difficult if not impossible for me to FEEL.  But I CAN feel these feelings for others, and if I had to make a choice, this is the better one.  It means I can offer to others what I never had myself.

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I want to go back for a moment here to the ideas contained in the words ‘respect’, ‘awe’ and ‘pride’ and to very real human experience of and with them.  I suspect that my sister’s thoughts on the root of ‘respect’ might be tied to the Bible’s Hebrew translation into English text rather than to the roots in English of the word itself.  I turn to Webster’s:

RESPECT

Etymology: Middle English, from Latin respectus, literally, act of looking back, from respicere to look back, regard, from re- + specere to look — more at spy

Date: 14th century

1 : a relation or reference to a particular thing or situation <remarks having respect to an earlier plan>
2 : an act of giving particular attention : consideration
3 a : high or special regard : esteem b : the quality or state of being esteemed c plural : expressions of respect or deference <paid our respects>

This description doesn’t go back far enough in its origins for my liking (14th century).  I’ll follow ‘respect’ back to ‘spy’:

SPY

Etymology: Middle English spien, from Anglo-French espier, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German spehōn to spy; akin to Latin specere to look, look at, Greek skeptesthai & skopein to watch, look at, consider

Date: 13th century

transitive verb 1 : to watch secretly usually for hostile purposes
2 : to catch sight of : see
3 : to search or look for intensively —usually used with out <spy out places fit for vending…goods — S. E. Morison>intransitive verb 1 : to observe or search for something : look
2 : to watch secretly as a spy

This goes back further, to the 13th century, but this still isn’t far enough for my liking.  I want to find the connections as far back as the dictionary will track them (before the 12th century) because only then to I feel at rest knowing I am getting at a root image and concept.  I find that both the word ‘look’ and ‘see’ originated in the English language before the 12th century:

LOOK

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lōcian; akin to Old Saxon lōcōn to look

Date: before 12th century

SEE

Etymology: Middle English seen, from Old English sēon; akin to Old High German sehan to see and perhaps to Latin sequi to follow — more at sue

Date: before 12th century

Under ‘see’ I can follow ‘sue’.  I find we are now moving forward in time to the 14th century and away from older images in the word, except any reference in word origins to Sanskrit always intrigues me:

SUE

Etymology: Middle English sewen, siuen to follow, strive for, petition, from Anglo-French sivre, siure, from Vulgar Latin *sequere, from Latin sequi to follow; akin to Greek hepesthai to follow, Sanskrit sacate he accompanies

Date: 14th century

The word ‘accompany’ connects to ‘companion’:

COMPANION

Etymology: Middle English compainoun, from Anglo-French cumpaing, cumpaignun, from Late Latin companion-, companio, from Latin com- + panis bread, food — more at food

Date: 13th century

And here I find what makes me happy – a reference to a fundamental image – FOOD!  The necessity for, the procurement, provision, consumption and sharing of this basic element of FOOD is connected to safe and secure attachment in and to the world:

FOOD

Etymology: Middle English fode, from Old English fōda; akin to Old High German fuotar food, fodder, Latin panis bread, pascere to feed

Date: before 12th century

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OK, so I don’t see ‘awe’ in this family of word connections in relationship to ‘respect’.  What do I find if I specifically follow the meanings and origins of this word, ‘awe’?  This is interesting, and not what I would have expected (someday if I find Keltner’s book it will be interesting to see how he defines ‘awe’.):

AWE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old Norse agi; akin to Old English ege awe, Greek achos pain

Date: 13th century

1 : an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime <stood in awe of the king> <regard nature’s wonders with awe>
2 archaic a : dread, terror b : the power to inspire dread

Uh-oh!  Follow that link to pain and find reference to ‘punishment’ and ‘grief’.  So, what about the word ‘pride’ itself?  Can this idea, with roots in our language before the 12th century, be in any way connected to a sense of amazement and awe at and for another person?  The concepts of ‘pride’ and ‘proud’ are fully RELATIONSHIP oriented, contextual ideas that involve social judgment:

PRIDE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English prȳde, from prūd proud — more at proud

Date: before 12th century

1 : the quality or state of being proud: as a : inordinate self-esteem : conceit b : a reasonable or justifiable self-respect c : delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship <parental pride>
2 : proud or disdainful behavior or treatment : disdain
3 a : ostentatious display b : highest pitch : prime
4 : a source of pride : the best in a group or class
5 : a company of lions
6 : a showy or impressive group <a pride of dancers>

PROUD

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English prūd, probably from Old French prod, prud, prou advantageous, just, wise, bold, from Late Latin prode advantage, advantageous, back-formation from Latin prodesse to be advantageous, from pro-, prod- for, in favor + esse to be — more at pro-, is

Date: before 12th century

1 : feeling or showing pride: as a : having or displaying excessive self-esteem b : much pleased : exultant c : having proper self-respect
2 a : marked by stateliness : magnificent b : giving reason for pride : glorious <the proudest moment in her life>
3 : vigorous, spirited <a proud steed>

Pause for a moment and take a look at the social judgment loading and weight related to this concept.  Look at the synonyms and try to imagine how it is possible that beginning from the time of our birth, as social beings in social interactions beginning with our earliest caregivers, we might move through our childhood and into our adulthood REALLY being able to both understand these concepts let alone being able to negotiate the billions of ways human interactions involve them:

synonyms proud, arrogant, haughty, lordly, insolent, overbearing, supercilious, disdainful mean showing scorn for inferiors. proud may suggest an assumed superiority or loftiness <too proud to take charity>. arrogant implies a claiming for oneself of more consideration or importance than is warranted <a conceited and arrogant executive>. haughty suggests a consciousness of superior birth or position <a haughty aristocrat>. lordly implies pomposity or an arrogant display of power <a lordly condescension>. insolent implies contemptuous haughtiness <ignored by an insolent waiter>. overbearing suggests a tyrannical manner or an intolerable insolence <an overbearing supervisor>. supercilious implies a cool, patronizing haughtiness <an aloof and supercilious manner>. disdainful suggests a more active and openly scornful superciliousness <disdainful of their social inferiors>.

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We have to consider the cultural environment that creates the social context of our human interactions – including the religious underpinnings of our culture.  These look to me to be anything but serene, calm, peaceful, safe and secure waters to negotiate!!  How can a very young child, moving through its age 4-6 stage of developing a workable Theory of Mind, even begin to comprehend what’s what socially?

My guess is that for anyone who has a reason to think about the idea of feeling proud for self or others, or of having others feel proud of them, would benefit from taking some time to explore in the real world, in real time, and in the language of the REAL words we use to talk and think about the topic, how incredibly complex it is.  We need to understand that when considering the idea of ‘proud’ we are considering what really is a war zone with mine fields of explosively emotionally dangerous, if not devastating, concepts.  This idea, ‘pride’ and feeling ‘proud’ deserves a warning:  DANGER ZONE!  HIGH RISK HERE!

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While all this might look like a Pandora’s Box, if I look among the above definitions carefully, I find the words that can best assist me in my thinking about the topic.  They are not the bold-typed words; they are the humble ones:  ‘just, wise’, ‘reasonable’, ‘having proper self-respect’.  Even the word ‘bold’ is up there, having to do with our ability to exercise our courage (within the origins of the word ‘proud’).  These, to me, are the important words related to the healing possibilities of how we can learn to think about our concerns related to absence and presence of ‘pride’.

These words are connected to the center point of calm in our vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system as they connect our experience within our body and brain.  They reside in the quiet, in the place of cooperation and acceptance, not of competition and judgment.  These are not frenetic words.  They are not restless or demanding words.  At the same time, we need to realize that at whatever point in the continuum of the pride-proud spectrum we stand as we consider our potential related losses and our gains, it is our ability to reach that center point on the teeter-totter that truly matters.

THAT point is where, I believe, our hope for increased resiliency and well-being lies, not with our worrying about who has what or who gives what to whom.  In the end, once a pride-proud transaction has occurred, what matters is that we feel safe, secure and attached within our own self with and to those we care most about.  This is an experience of acceptance, or peaceful ‘OK-ness’ in the world.  What matters is the love expressed, felt and shared.

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When I said the other day that abusive parents are deprived of the feeling of being proud of and for their offspring, which then deprives the offspring of the feeling that their caregiver IS proud of them, what we are talking about is actually degrees of love and of attachment as they connect to our emotional experience negotiated in our body-brain by our vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system.

The presence or absence of the positive transactions related to pride-proud happen physiologically just as the shame reaction does.  Both are about ‘rupture and repair’, rejection and acceptance.  Both of these are STOP and GO interactions that share their existence in the same physiological systems that our rest and stress responses do.  We can pay attention to the emotions (and how they feel to us in the body) as we experience them related to both kinds of experiences.

How our earliest caregivers treated us had HUGE influence on how our physiological body-brain developed, but our body-brain-mind-self BELONGS to us, not to them.  My mother’s hate-full treatment of me did not fill me with hate.  Yes, there are many levels of my being that are connected to my corresponding RAGE from being traumatized by her the way I was, but rage is not the same thing as hate.  But even the word ‘hate’ cannot be dissociated from its fundamental root concept in ‘care’:

HATE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English hete; akin to Old High German haz hate, Greek kēdos care

Date: before 12th century

1 a : intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b : extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing <had a great hate of hard work>
2 : an object of hatred <a generation whose finest hate had been big business — F. L. Paxson>

Looking carefully at what it says here I have to think about my mother’s hatred of me, and what her hatred REALLY tells me – not about me, but about her:  “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.”

Not even a consideration of the word ‘care’ or of all the actions that are connected to it – including early caregiver interactions that we experienced from infant-childhood (and beyond) is a simple or straightforward one:

CARE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English caru; akin to Old High German kara lament, Old Irish gairm call, cry, Latin garrire to chatter

Date: before 12th century

1 : suffering of mind : grief
2 a : a disquieted state of mixed uncertainty, apprehension, and responsibility b : a cause for such anxiety
3 a : painstaking or watchful attention b : maintenance <floor-care products>
4 : regard coming from desire or esteem
5 : charge, supervision <under a doctor’s care>
6 : a person or thing that is an object of attention, anxiety, or solicitude

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Over and over and over again I will say that if there is any one single simple idea I can help to introduce to people, especially to survivors who have suffered early trauma and abuse, it is the idea of what I call INFORMED COMPASSION, which is a reason-able response.

Being gentle and kind within our own self as we seek to heal and grow DEMANDS AND REQUIRES of us that we learn how to expand this gentle kindness to a consideration of those who harmed and hurt us.  I don’t think we can grow gentle kindness within our own self while at the same time withholding it from the stance we take regarding others – because this stance we take comes from within our own self.

Compassion comes from the same systems in our body that create our stress and calmness responses.  It is an option we can exercise with our conscious intention, will, awareness and reflective abilities.  Informing ourselves by thinking about the words we use to think WITH is a critical part of this healing process.  It’s a part of our continued growth and development.  It’s a part of our continuing to grow up as we ‘grow out’ an expanding circle of understanding how incredibly complex it is to be a human being, let alone to be one WELL, in multiple senses of this word.

When we think in terms of pride and proud, we are really at the threshold of thinking about our truest concern:  Are we accepted or isolated?  Are we together-with or isolated and alone?  Are we approved of?  Are we deemed and proved worthy of being a part of the whole – which has to do with our very survival?  Because if we follow these concepts far enough back in our language that is what we are really talking about:  To be or not to be.  It’s about living or dying, being built up or being destroyed.

Fortunately, I was so busy growing up with my own survival in mind that I didn’t have time to learn to worry if the same woman who was so busy trying to destroy me was at the same time feeling proud of me for avoiding her destruction.  (Or proud of me for any other reason:  She was not a reason-able person.)  Looking at the roots of the word ‘proud’, it is my ability to recognize what is wise and just, along with my ability to be bold in pursuing what I know in my own self to be GOOD that I have, access and use my own power.

Nothing my mother did to me took these abilities away from me.  Her unconditional hatred of me seems to have been better for me that would have been her conditional love.  The trade-off seems to be that I have the ability to love unconditionally, which means I feel proud of and for my children because I CAN.

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+STOPPING INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA – EVEN WHEN THE CHOICES ARE HARD

alchemynow4 Comments

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The thing about trauma triggers is that they create a break in one’s pathway through life beyond which we cannot easily pass in the present moment.  They always come because the trauma from the past has not been able to resolve itself within us.

Today might be one of those tests of the healing power of writing.  Will I be more whole at the end of this post than I am right now as I start it?

My dear daughter who is pregnant with her firstborn, a son who will be named Connor, who was due to pop into this world on April 20th.  Because of a surgery my daughter had last year everyone has known from the beginning that he would be born c-section.  All has been well through the pregnancy, and all is well with mother and baby at this moment.  The only problem is that my daughter’s water broke last night and her labor began early.

In today’s world of modern medicine I guess any delivery after 34 weeks is considered to be very low risk, even though the babies have to spend the first two weeks of their lives not cuddled within their loving mother’s tender arms, but instead have to live inside a neonatal intensive care ward being watched over as their temperature is artificially regulated as their lungs continue to develop.

There are evidently times when a person can know too much.  I know how critically important mother-infant bonding is to the well-being of both baby and mother.  One of the biggest risk factors there is for attachment disorders is complications at birth.

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So this brings me head-on to my own trauma triggers and my natural tendencies to overlay my past experiences onto a situation in the present that really is NOT about me, and in fact really has nothing to do with me, even though this infant is my first grandchild.  I am not his mother, and what happened to me and my firstborn daughter has nothing to do with either of THESE children – my daughter or her son.

Last night when I spoke with my daughter, who lives well over a thousand miles away from me (I’m on the Mexican border and she’s nearly on the Canadian border), I could hear all the love and connection in that hospital room where my daughter and baby have to live for as long as it takes for this process to play itself out.  My son, soon to be 25, is out of the Air Force and moved in to stay with his sister and brother-in-law in their home a week ago.  He was there.  My oldest daughter was also there.  Father of the baby was there.  His very best friend, like a brother, was there, so excited that he could barely contain himself!

So much love.  So, so much love.

It is such a miracle to me that given my own past of an infant-childhood of 18 long years of hatred and abuse from the first breath I took that I could have participated in the creation of a family where there really is NOTHING but love between my three children and those who love them.  While I know it really isn’t a miracle in some sort of objective, detached way, but rather is a consequence of lots of choices that everyone has BEEN ABLE to make along the way that were so different from the unconscious ‘choicelessness’ that was the way of my mother and father regarding me.

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My daughter has been given antibiotics.  She was given a shot to stop the labor.  She is not allowed to leave the hospital now.  The clock is ticking.  Everyone will do whatever is in their power to keep that little boy, who is a healthy six pounds, 11 ounces, inside of his mommy for as long as is safely possible.  Nobody knows now if that will be 3 more hours or three more weeks.

My daughter has excellent insurance, but no paid maternity leave and very high bills.  Her husband is underemployed, and like nearly every young family they have little savings and already worry about daycare and separation of mother and child because my daughter will have to go back to work shortly after Connor is born.  I certainly am poor and have nothing to offer them financially.

My daughter and her husband are in their early thirties.  They waited to have children until they were more mature, and I can count absolutely on their maturity.  That is something I did not have when I got pregnant, unmarried, at 18.  My daughter does not have a background of trauma and abuse.  She does not have an attachment disorder.  But what she evidently now will have is a major challenge to get through the first two weeks of her son’s life without him in her arms.

My daughter is very wise, very practical and very resilient.  She and her husband are very much in love and have been together over 12 years already.  They have close and dear friends.  My daughter has a flexible and supportive work environment.  She is in good health.  There is nothing about my worrying that is helpful right now.

Yet how do we get ourselves internally to an emotional hands-off state when the need arises?  Faith and hope and trust are all about our increasing our margin of feeling safe and secure in the world no matter WHAT is going on.  Admitting helplessness and an inability to affect outcomes is never easy when there is an investment of love and caring.  I will, of course, not rest until this whole birthing drama has completed itself and everyone is fine.

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Life is full of risk factors and their corresponding resiliency factors.  As parents, we continually work to build up the latter while trying in any way we can to lessen the possibility of the former.  Giving birth to a preterm baby is a risk factor.  Interference with the natural bonding process at birth is a risk factor.  Even the fact that in our nation we do not put preterm babies into rocking incubators is a decreased resiliency factor for the infant.  I would want to send my daughter links like these, which of course I won’t:

Tips on Sensory Stimulation of Your Premature Infant in the NICU

Common Drug For Stopping Preterm Labor May Be Harmful For Babies

Infant Massage Research

INFANT HOSPITAL BED

“At birth, the rich intrauterine environment is suddenly replaced with a whole new world of sensations. The gamut of stimuli given the fetus before birth suddenly stops. Recent investigations indicate that kinesthetic stimuli such as touching, movement, sound and definition of space, stimuli provided by rocking.”

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My daughter’s life is hers.  I can’t be up there with her, which of course is hard.  It is hard knowing that I, as her mother, have such a trauma-changed body-brain that I’m not much good, honestly, in any kind of crisis.  That makes me mad and sad, but it’s a reality.

The other part of this relates to the ‘preoccupied insecure attachment’ pattern I mentioned in my recent post.  My own birthing experiences with my first born were traumatic.  Her current circumstances are triggering all my memories of that experience.  Most simply put, it all went something like this:

I was oblivious at 18 when I left home both about the 18 years of abuse I had just survived.  I had no frame of reference that would have allowed me to know how terribly hurt I was.  Four months out of Naval boot camp I was pregnant.  I carried the baby with no family support, not even from the father.  I was terrified about the future, and didn’t know if I could keep my child.

I counseled with a social worker through the pregnancy who told me that I did not have to rush to make any decisions.  She told me that I even could wait until the baby was born, hold the infant in the hospital, and make my decision then.

Because I conceived while still in the military (in those years a woman was thrown out if she got pregnant, married or not), the military was committed to covering my delivery.  I entered Balboa Naval Hospital in hard labor on a Monday afternoon.  I was left in hard labor, all alone, until late Wednesday afternoon before they finally decided to take X-Rays to find out what was wrong.

My daughter’s head was pushing hard against my spine and could not come out on her own.  The treatment I received during my extensive labor was anything but kind or compassionate, or even helpful.  When they decided to take the baby by turning her with forceps, they gave me a spinal block.  Once she was born, the doctor ripped the afterbirth out of my body.  I remember the flashing stabbing pain and then I was gone.  I woke up late the following Saturday, having spent the interim days unconscious and hemorrhaging.

I had friends who had driven me to the hospital but because they were not family the hospital refused to release any information to them about what had happened to me or to the baby.  I didn’t dare tell my parents I was delivering.  Their reaction to my pregnancy had been abusive and terrible.  Obviously I could have easily died in there and nobody would have known.

Once I was placed in a regular hospital room I waited for my daughter to be brought into me.  I watched one by one while all the other babies were wheeled down the hallway past the doorway of my room in their little bassinets to their mother as I eagerly waited for mine.  No baby came, and nobody would tell me why not.

I was an incredibly passive victim, but eventually I found my demanding rage.  Only when I began to scream, cry, yell and shout for my BABY did the pediatrician enter my room to tell me the following as he stood in the doorway of my room:  “You are an unwed mother and your baby is going to be given up for adoption.  She has a cut on her cheek for her forceps delivery, and if I allow you to touch her that cut will become infected and she will have a scar on her cheek for the rest of her life.  What prospective adoptive family is going to want a baby with a scar on her cheek?”

For the first time in my life I erupted with emotion.  I picked up the full stainless steel pitcher of water on the table next to my bed and screamed “You mother f****r” at him as I heaved the pitcher at his head.  I missed him by a fraction of an inch.  The pitcher dented the wooden door jam and crashed to the floor.  The doctor disappeared.

During the next several days I was in the hospital I was allowed to touch my healthy, beautiful nine pound baby girl only once.  In the middle of one night a nurse wrapped me in a sterile gown, put a sterile mask over my face, and quietly led me into a room off of the nursery as she settled me in a rocking chair.  She brought me my baby and a bottle of milk so I could feed it to her.

I can never describe how I felt in those few stolen moments.  But the next day, somehow, the doctor found out that nurse had broken his law and I could hear him screaming at her from a hallway away.  She came to talk to me later, apologizing from the bottom of her heart for how my daughter and I were being treated, and told me she had been put on probation.

I left that hospital without my baby girl.  She went into a foster home for the first month of her life.  But as I had stood with my face pressed to the glass of the hospital nursery window and watched my daughter – not crying, looking around as if she owned the place – I had vowed to her that if this was the kind of world she was going to get adopted into, there was nothing worse I could do to her if I raised her even though I had absolutely nothing to give her.

Nobody had told me how to prepare for a baby.  In my destitution and confused aloneness while being pregnant, I had not been able to take a single step in preparation for OUR future.  Looking back now, I can see that I might as well have been living in a next of poisonous vipers.  That’s how dark and lost and traumatized I was as a terrible abuse survivor.

I was not mentally capable of conceptualizing ANY future, let alone one that included me as a mother of a child.  Nobody helped me.  But I went home, took a city bus to the local Salvation Army office, and received an entire baby layette with hand crocheted blanket, sweater, bonnet and booties.  It had bottles and diapers, everything we needed except for what we needed most:  Love, guidance, connection, and hope for the future.

I had thought I would bring my daughter home from the foster home during the second week of her life.  There’s an entire story about what happened then, and why it took another two weeks before a social worker came to pick me up and drove me over to the foster parent’s home.  I never entered that house.  The social worker retrieved my daughter and brought her to me and laid her in my arms as I stood on the side of the road outside the social worker’s car waiting.

Thirty nine years later the rest is history.  Included now in this history is the moment-by-moment wait while my second daughter is watched over with her own tiny boy inside of her.  My heart aches knowing my own pain of separation I went through with my first newborn baby.  I see no way that my daughter and her son are not going to experience some of these feelings if he does have to stay in a preterm incubator without her.

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It is not ideal that I am not up there with my children right now, either.  What I am describing to you here is a big part of the reason I am not.  I can never magically evaporate the effects my traumatic past has had on me.  There is no magic wand that can make me forget, and no dissociation so complete that I can be in my daughter’s presence without my own emotional turmoil being present with me.

Right or wrong, I am here and she and baby are there.  I have, in effect banished myself because I know full well that I cannot predict or control how my posttraumatic stress disorder can or could or might or will manifest itself, and I want no part of the presence of my trauma in her life at this critical point in her and her husband’s new parenting experience.  I absolutely trust that they will work out every single tiny detail, each instant of this process, together – and well, no matter how this all plays itself out.

Nothing I am going through HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH MY DAUGHTER.  Nothing.  I do not wish to have any part of my trauma, as it is contained in the body of my daughter’s mother, to have any chance in HELL of contaminating or toxifying what she is going through right now.  Of course I am sad.  Very, very sad.  But this sadness belongs to the relationship I had with my own mother.  Her trauma and traumatized reactions did this to me – and now through intergenerational ripple effect is depriving both my daughter of having a happy, healthy present mother beside her right now as it deprives me of being there.

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So, where does writing this post leave me?  Mostly in a state of resignation.  My own integrity, the same integrity that has given my children a chance at a better life that they have grabbed and run with, does not let me ever lie or pretend with my children.  I am not a carefree mom.  As much as I might WISH that I could set aside all of my own problems to benefit my daughter right now, reality is that my absence is what is best for all of us.

Just because the psychotic break my mother suffered in her difficult labor with me prevented her from ever boding with or loving me, and just because the difficulties of my 18-year-old mothering life complicated my bonding with my firstborn, does not mean that my daughter NOW won’t be perfectly able to establish the vitally critical bond with her own son when he is born — even if she cannot hold him in her arms for the first two weeks of his life — that this little boy will need to experience his own life in the fullest.

But at the same time I am perhaps more consciously aware of the risk factors present, the resiliency factors needed, and of the obstacles that my daughter (and her husband) will have to overcome to create a bonding after birth with her newborn than nearly anyone else could possibly be.  When push comes to shove, and the most important priorities of life are considered, other than the most basic, fundamental necessities that staying alive in a body require, there is NOTHING in this world more important than the bond a mother has with her newborn.  NOTHING.

I think more than any other time in my life with my daughter, this time – exactly NOW – is the testing point.  Every resource she has a person will be tested, both inside and outside of herself.  Life has its critical moments, and this is certainly one of them.  I have always done the best that I possibly could to parent my children well so that they could live their own life in the best way they possibly can.

My daughter has her wings.  I know that.  She can fly.  It is my job as her mother to let her.

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+HEALING TRAUMA WITH THE TIME ASSET

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I have a few other thoughts related to my encounters with people-families-children at the Saturday children art festival where I did the spinning demonstration.

One collection of thoughts has to do, again, with small and big people and how humans relate to one another in ‘tearing down’ or ‘building up’ ways.  A young man about 12 years old stopped by my demonstration and immediately showed not only rapt interest but quite a bit of knowledge about spinning, weaving and the fiber arts.  His mother was with him, and in talking with these two I was given a picture I’ll try to relay to you here.

Last year this boy enrolled in a beginning weaving class held by Bisbee’s local Fiber Arts Guild.  He was fascinated, learned quickly, warped his own loom at the Guild studio and made his mother a scarf along with a baby blanket for his newborn cousin.  In the middle of the weekend class schedule his mother became ill.  The Guild was notified, and the boy missed three of the 10 week class sessions.  When he was able to return he found not only that the Guild members had passed off his loom with his next project on it to someone else, but they had not bothered to call and ask or tell him this was being done.  The adults participating in these activities were evidently quite demeaning, rude, disrespectful and hurtful to this child.  They let him know they did not want him around.

I have been given a solid and working handmade table top loom that I told this boy I will bring into town and leave off at his home for him.  I will collect all of the related items I can find here that go with the loom, look for a book or two I might have here at home that can help him, and also see what I have in the way of extra yarn I can give him.  Once I have all of this collected, I will pile it all into my trusty 1978 rather worn El Camino and drop it off at his house.

With all the troubles our nation is having in engaging our youth in their own lives, let alone in the life of their community and nation, it is beyond my comprehension how ANYONE could be rude to any child, period!  Let alone to a child like this boy is who is obviously motivated with passion to learn the fiber arts and is committed to doing so!

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The next collection of thoughts I have is related to an 8-year-old boy and his parents who stopped by my demonstration.  This child is obviously brilliant, as are his parents.  His father is a professional musician, a drummer.  His mother is a computer programmer web designer.  The child is fortunately home schooled and very much loved.

From the first instant this child spotted the very simple and basic, actually rudimentary gizmos and gadgets that are used in the process of preparing wool and spinning it, I could see that his brain did not work like an ordinary child’s.  His parents sat most patiently for over two hours on a stone bench in the middle of the Central School hallway while their son explored every avenue not only of the wool preparation process, but most noticeably of the equipment – how it was constructed, how it worked, why it worked.

Not knowing anything by fact here, I can still think that this child’s tool region of this brain is forming major connections.  The child certainly wasn’t intimidated by people.  In fact, he hawked the process from his newly found and claimed station at the drum carder.  He instantly memorized every step of the process when I first told him, and continued to instruct every passerby he could rope in about how this all worked.

At one point I was vaguely aware of him giving his spiel while I sat at my spinning wheel visiting with his parents.  All of a sudden I hear the boy say in a rather loud, commanding voice, “Hey!  What’s wrong over there!  Why aren’t’ you working?”  I had to laugh.  There I sat like a broken machine.  He had educated his audience completely up to the point where they needed to see the final stage in process, and there I was having dropped my end of the bargain.

The boy was not being rude, though certainly his attitude could have been interpreted that way.  This boy, I could tell from watching him, treated human beings exactly as if they had gears and mechanisms and programming that made them tick.  He is a brilliant, absolutely brilliant child, but I would not expect him to ever have an ordinarily developed right social-emotional limbic brain.  His brain is special, as he is.

This brings me to mentioning the Asperger autistic spectrum giant, Temple Grandin.  A made-for-television movie about her life has just been released:  “The HBO movie “Temple Grandin” honors its heroine’s priorities, stressing deeds over tearful setbacks and joyous breakthroughs.”  If you haven’t heard about Grandin and her work before now, please spend a little time checking her out.  In the meantime, I will specifically mention that Grandin has a LOT to say about so-called GEEK children who have brains that are gifts to the world.  This little boy might well fit into the schemata of the children Grandin is talking about.

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This brings me to my third thought collection for today which is related to yesterday’s post, +SO MANY NEEDY PEOPLE IN DENIAL OF THEIR NEEDINESS.  Due to the insane and terrible abuse I suffered during my childhood from birth, complete with extended manipulation of any opportunities I might have had from tiny on to interact with people, my right limbic emotional-social brain did not have the chance to build itself in an ordinary fashion (as this blog’s readers have heard me write about repeatedly).

As a part of the spectrum of consequences to the adaptive brain changes my body made, I do not read, understand, process, or respond to the emotional-social signals other people send out easily or well.  In some ways, I am realizing that I have a rather unique ability to not automatically buy into the send-receive-respond social signal-cue communications cycles that people with ordinarily built early brains (through safe and secure early caregiver attachment exchanges) are designed for.  I can notice, attend to and translate actions that ordinary-brained people probably miss — because they CAN.

(Similarly, I suspect, to how the 8-year-old boy’s brain gains and processes information about machines that few other brains would, or can, notice.  Temple Grandin’s brain gets this altered information about animals.  These are abilities that do not come primarily from choice.  They reflect in manifestation different body-brain constructions — changed in part or wholly by combinations of genetics interacting with the environment.  Our abilities give us resources that more ordinarily-brained people probably do not have.  These differences and changes are part of what makes us exceptional and extra-ordinary people.)

Lest any of my readers suspect that I am exaggerating the differences I experience in my emotional-social interactional abilities with people, let me again mention that these transactions normally occur in the hundredths of a millisecond response signaling range.  They are happening physiologically about at the speed of light, or however quickly electrical signals are sent and received between neurons and other bodily cells.

These extremely fast, and supposed-to-be automatic electrical signals are operating according to how a person’s body-brain was constructed primarily from conception through age one.  Connections between pathways, circuits, brain regions and the body are constructed very early on and all growth and development past these early critical window stages of development follow along accordingly as we finish our early (and later) development.

This matters in many, many ways.  When, as a commenter to yesterday’s post mentioned (See: +SO MANY NEEDY PEOPLE IN DENIAL OF THEIR NEEDINESS) those of us with these changed brains are faced with awkward, uncomfortable, disquieting if not down right mean interactions with other people, we have an extremely difficult time doing what this commenter suggested when she noted:  Eleanor Roosevelt said “no one can make you feel inferior without your permission.”

Our body-brain does not read social-emotional cues and signals in the same way as Ms. Roosevelt’s no doubt did.  As a result, our attempts to decipher all of the signals other people are sending out in the hundredth of millisecond range do not mean the same thing to us as they do to ordinary brains.  If we are even going to get a clue about what is actually happening in our interactions with others, we need the one thing to happen that SO RARELY DOES HAPPEN that we could consider it impossible.

We need time to slow way, way down.  Because these communication signals are designed (normally) to occur near the speed of light, because they are outward manifestations of electrical impulses traveling invisibly within a person yet STILL manifesting themselves in visual and auditory signals that we are supposed to automatically read, understand and be able to respond back to in kind, we are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to doing what dear Ms. Roosevelt (and this commenter) suggest.

There is a universe, and I MEAN A UNIVERSE of information necessary to process information between people according to this maxim:  “no one can make you feel inferior without your permission.”  The brain has to know who-what the self is completely, it has to know who-what the other is completely, it has to process what-where the boundaries are between them, it has to be able to process the “feel” emotional information appropriately (and FAST), it has to make determinations as to what the emotion means, what the value is connected to the emotion, whether it is an ‘approach’ signal or an ‘avoid’ signal, it has to assess what’s at stake, what the degree of risk of threat to self and/or life is, what is being asked or demanded by this nebulous ‘other’, who has the power, what are the control stakes, where free will and choice (higher cortical functions) can fit into the picture……..  In other words, there is NOTHING simple about humans interacting with humans!  NOTHING!

This brings me to my last critical point.  When infant-children do not enjoy body-brain development in interaction with SOMEONE in the earliest caregiver department that allows for a safe and secure attachment to others, to the self, and to the world as a whole, none of the emotional-social processes the early brain is building itself upon will include the same information as will the body-brain of those who DID have the benefit of these more optimal developmental experiences.

We would be better off to NEVER automatically assume that the person we are engaging with in any way has a NORMALLY built optimal body-brain.  I would never expect that the woman I mentioned who needed to put me down regarding my spinning had an optimal emotional-social brain any more than I would ever expect that the rage filled passive-aggressive (in complete denial) worker at the laundromat I mentioned has one either.  They are operating in survival mode just as I do, just as my mother did.

True, individual personality blends with individual experience to create individually unique selves (by ratio with conscious awareness).  I recognize more and more my own inability to negotiate complex human transactions and interactions BECAUSE I no longer opt out by assuming that my automatic responses are the ones that are best for me.  At the same time – quite literally – TIME is RARELY my friend.

In a culture of hit-and-miss, hit-and-run, of brushing past one another at near breakneck speeds, very few of us are allowed or given the kind of TIME we would need to slow these interactional processes down far enough that we could manage to HONESTLY, with integrity, and ACTUALLY do the kind of processing Ms. Roosevelt must have assumed could happen automatically for everyone always – IF ONLY a person chose to do so.

When the emotional-social brain has not been built optimally, and the corresponding wiring in the body is not either (i.e. vagus nerve, autonomic nervous system, stress versus connection system, etc.), the only hope we have of processing information in any other way than the automatic trauma-built way we are designed for is to have TIME to include conscious processing.  Our social milieu is too invested on shallow and speedy interactions to let this happen.

We end up operating without enough information relevant for the present instant of time we find ourselves in with other people.  Our version of automatic creates ripples upon ripples of inward discomfort that we don’t even usually know about.  As we DO begin to become aware of the changed way other people and ourselves process emotional-social information, we begin to notice details of information – in our feelings, emotions, grounded in our body – that time does not let us process within usual fast moving social interactions.  That does NOT mean we are WRONG if we claim that many of our interactions with others leave us feeling sour inside as if we swallowed a toxic poison.

To no longer deny the truth behind many of the intentions, needs, demands, assessments and assumptions humans in our culture are wont to dish out back and forth – often in disguise so as to appear socially appropriate – means that we are returning back to the very beginning of our emotional-social brain’s formation so that we can do things differently than was done to us.  We are learning to no longer deny what we know on our insides to be true for us.

I believe this is healing, no matter how uncomfortable the process might be to our self or to anyone else.  We must take the TIME we need to figure out these uncomfortable interactions with others and our responses to them.  This, to me, is where the hope for change truly lies – not in therapy chambers, not in pills and drugs.

Hope and healing lies

in our being willing and patient enough

to find our own questions

so that we can find our own way

to answering them.

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+A WORD ON TRAUMA TRIGGERS AND FALLING APART

alchemynow17 Comments

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Have you ever played the Jenga Stacking Game?  Have you ever felt so emotionally and mentally fragile that if even one block of what gives you calmness and stability is removed that you and your life will topple into a pile of rubble?  It is far too easy for severe infant-childhood trauma and abuse survivors to stumble and crumble if our inner and outer resources are at times not adequate to meet the unforeseen challenges of our adult lives.  We need to anticipate events that might trigger our trauma overload reactions ahead of time if we possibly can.

I’ve never played this game, but my sister brought the image of it up tonight in our telephone conversation about the life long consequences of living within a body that was built in childhood by trauma.  Players are supposed to pull blocks out of the stack with care without toppling the tower.  My sister was talking about how fragile infant-child trauma survivors really are, and about how we have to be so very careful when changes have to be made in our lives not to topple over whatever precarious sense of safety and security we might have constructed within our lives.

I am thinking again about the image I posted yesterday:

I have no idea how life is for people who were not abused as children.  From my point of view as a survivor, finding ways to fill the positive side of this scale is a full time job.

I also want to note that as hard as I try to be in my posts about the possibilities and opportunities we can find for healing, trauma survivors have to ALWAYS be realistic.  When the trauma side of the scale is overloaded, and when our body-brain formed within these terrible conditions, not only is our center point not set at calm and balanced equilibrium in our body-nervous system, but terrible pain and suffering is also built into us.

We need to know, identify, understand and recognize not only the factors in our lives that trigger our pain, but also the signs that we are being triggered and are in danger of melt-down.  We need to know the nature of our woundedness.  Because of the unsafe and insecure attachment experiences we had as our body-brain formed, we can think of our vulnerabilities to threats to our present safe and secure attachment to and in the world as if we have a severe, deadly allergy that if triggered without adequate resources to combat our reaction can destroy us.

If and when we reach a point where our full-blown trauma reactions have been triggered, we are in a state of emergency that is every bit as life threatening as any other kind we can imagine.  The emergencies happen to us when in-built, body-brain based infant-childhood traumas (or any other unresolved, overwhelming traumas) emerge beyond what we have the inner and outer resources to handle, regulate and resolve.  We need to learn how to avoid, if at all possible, reaching these critical states because once we do reach them, we will be caught within what is, for severe trauma survivors, a reaction that is as completely understandable and natural for our body-brain as it CAN be predictable.

As we begin to understand how trauma built our physiology we begin to realize that we have to be as careful as possible to not topple our internal tower.  Not only did our emotional right brain not receive what it needed so that we can smoothly and easily regulate our emotional states, but our emotions were overloaded early in our lives.  These emotions for the most part have gone NOWHERE.  They remain in our body and can overwhelm us in our present life when stress, threat, danger and trauma threaten us just as they did when we were very small.

I remember years ago telling someone that if I ever (so-called) “got in touch with my pain” that I would start crying and never stop.  I knew there was an ocean of tears inside of me.  One time I got myself into a relationship with a man — well, skipping the story — I will just say that the relationship patterns triggered my insecure attachment patterns.  I of course did not know this.  At one point my ancient infant-childhood emotions caused by my severely traumatic childhood exploded through a fissure created in my present within this relationship.

I started crying.  I could not stop crying.  I cried for three weeks.   I cried myself to sleep.  I woke up crying and I could not stop.  (Talk about puffy, sore eyes!)  I fortunately had many close women friends at that time in my life.  One by one they came to visit me, sitting beside me on my bed, stroking my back, patting my hand, bringing me and my children food.  I could not talk about the pain, I could only cry it out and it took a long time for this pain outbreak to begin to diminish.

I do everything I possibly can in my life today to avoid that precipice.  I cannot afford to let the depth of my pain overwhelm me again if I can possibly help it.  That kind of crying is like having an emotional jugular vein sliced wide open.  We can hemorrhage tears like we are imploding and bleeding to death.

As I have written about the chemical that signals our body that we are in pain — Substance P.  Pain, the physiological signaling of it and the experience of the pain itself,  is equally as real for emotional pain as it is for any physical pain.

We cannot afford to allow this pain we carry to be triggered if we can find any way to avoid it.  We need to realize our well-being is at best precarious.  We need to realize that a proactive consideration about how to make changes in our lives, especially major ones, can mean the difference between life and death.  We have to understand that there are times when our inner resources will not be available to match the demands of situations that stress and distress us.

No matter what else happened to us, our deepest and truest childhood trauma, at its core, was our lack of safe and secure attachment at the time of our beginnings.  We have to remember that child trauma survivors who were deprived of the benefits of safe and secure early attachments that would have built a well-regulated emotional right brain translate stress immediately into distress on occasions in adulthood when their safety and security is threatened.

These threats can be caused by such things as change in relationship status including loss and absence of loved ones (including ’empty nest’), threat of loss and of actual loss of financial security including job loss and change, moves, sickness — you name it, anything that makes our precarious tower of safety tremble if not collapse.

Even though these types of situations might not seem to be directly related to our infant-childhood traumas, we need to realize that anything that threatens our degree of safety and security is a trauma trigger because we did not escape our earliest trauma with a strong sense of safety and security built into us as it should have been.  It is also important to realize that some people will react violently, radically and drastically to threat that triggers pain, loss and sadness because they CAN come up with ways to escape the experience of their own pain (dismiss-avoid and/or fight back actively or passively).

These people cannot tolerate the experience of their own childhood pain and will defend themselves against it (often true of men but also true for my mother).  These people will protect and defend themselves first, and anyone dependent upon them is at risk for some kind of harm.  All trauma reactions are un-reason-able because they are automatic and come directly from body memory connected to an unregulated right emotional brain and trauma built nervous system.  Our body-brain does not process threat or stress information ‘normally’ in a way that includes the slower reason-able processes of the higher cortex.

At those times that circumstances of our life threaten to or actually trigger the pain of our deepest traumas, we can so lose our sense of safety and security, of calm, peacefulness and connection in the present that our self seems to completely disappear.  We can become overcome and overwhelmed with the physiological experience of our body, including its emotions.  In this maelstrom it is critical that we find ways to reestablish the anti-distress, anti-trauma conditions that support and affirm our SELF so that we can regain the functions of our higher cortex as we find ways to address the conditions that triggered the severe trauma reactions in the first place.

As my sister mentioned tonight, we need to be careful not to topple the tower of our lives if we can possibly avoid it.  If we have found ways to begin to fill up the un-stressed side of our inner selves, the sense of balance we might be able to finally feel in our lives MUST be maintained.  Our life can depend on it.

We need to understand what our trauma triggers are so we can avoid inner disaster.  The threat and the danger of crumbling inside is very, very real and I do not believe we can survive it without supportive and appropriate help from others.  (So few of us can access the kind of quality therapy we need that I can’t even consider therapy a realistic resource.)

I believe that human beings are more than the sum of our parts.  We are more than the automatic physiological reactions that our body creates in response to threat and trauma in our lives.  We most need to find a way to connect with our own sense of our strong, clear SELF at those times that we experience our ‘falling apart’.  Of course proactive prevention is best for us, but when our trauma is triggered knowing that we are able to accomplish this critical action of regaining our own SELF in the midst of the storm empowers and heals us beyond words.

PLEASE NOTE:  The experience of severe and overwhelming emotion that is related to right limbic brain sensitivity, irritability and lack of adequate ability to regulate emotion — due to having been formed in early infant-childhood malevolent environments — not only FEELS like some kind of ‘seizure activity’, but actually IS closely related.  Please spend some time taking a look at some of the online information about emotional KINDLING in the right limbic brain and its connection to infant-child abuse.

Think of our emotional injuries affecting us like deep splinters and bad burns and other wounds do — all sharing the Substance P physiological pain signaling systems within our body-brain.  Severe infant-childhood trauma and abuse leaves us bruised and battered inside.  Even as we heal gradually over time, we will always still have scars.  Some of us have a broken heart that will never heal in this lifetime.  We have to try to be as gentle and kind to ourselves as we possibly can.

This process must include our being as aware as we can possibly be of what is coming down the road at us so we can be prepared to take wise and protective steps to take care of our self before we get overrun with the ongoing changes and traumas that everyone’s life is prone to.

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+HEALING TRAUMA AT OUR BODY-BRAIN CENTER

alchemynow2 Comments

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I didn’t realize it when I wrote my post last Sunday, +TRAUMA TELLS THE BODY WHAT TO DO, that I was preparing my own way for the study of Dr. Kerstin Moberg’s book, The Oxytocin Factor: Tapping the Hormone of Calm, Love, and Healing.  But then I don’t imagine that Dr. Moberg knew exactly as she was writing her book how much its information can help severe infant-child abuse survivors and other traumatized people.

When I take a look at this next image that I scanned here from her book, I think about how it is for a tiny growing body-brain when it has to develop in adaptation to the environment it was born into when the stress scale has bottomed out and the calm and connection scale (of safe and secure attachment) has completely inadequate weight to it – or is nearly completely empty.

It is important to realize that what this image is showing is a required balance between stress and calmness.  Adequate early body-brain forming environments must include this balance for a body-brain to form and operate correctly.  Obviously too much stress and the wrong kind of stress for anyone is not a good thing.  But too much calmness isn’t good, either. Infant-child neglect often causes such a lack of stimulation during early developmental stages that critical regions of the brain do not receive the stimulation they need to grow hardly at all!

Another point I want to make is that if grave imbalance exists in an infant-child’s developmental environment the set point of the nervous system is NOT set at this central balance point where calm is even possible.  For people who survived terrible trauma in their early lives such as I did, the set point for our nervous system is AT the stress reaction point.

As odd as it might seem, looking back at my own infant-childhood with my new neuroscientific and physiological development insights, I can see that the long, long periods of forced isolation that were part of my mother’s patterns of severe abuse of me where probably – and actually – a very good thing.  During these periods when she had me ‘out of her sight’, even though during these times I was also out of any kind of loop that would have offered me normal infant-child opportunities to interact with others and with my environment in play and discovery, overall these times offered my developing body-brain opportunities for NOTHING TO HAPPEN.

These periods were actually rest and restoration times when my overwhelmed and over stimulated senses, forced into overload from the beginning of my life through the terrorizing and terrifying actions and presence of my Mean Mother, during which my body could actually calm itself down so that internally the effects of her nearly continual earthquake-tsunami abuse of me could somewhat dissipate before the next attack came.

Of course these patterns of wild, severe, over stimulating and overwhelming abuse paired with long periods of my being forced to endure the silence of remote, isolated aloneness harmed me greatly.  This pattern became a most fertile ground for patterns of dissociation to build themselves into my body-brain because nothing but the deprivation of being left completely alone to physiologically try to end my suffering alone (unconsciously, of course), offered me to possible way to connect my ongoing experiences to one another on any level other than the physiological one.  Nothing ever made sense, and nobody or nothing ever helped me to make sense of my malevolent experiences, either.

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So leading back to the topic at hand, oxytocin and Dr. Moberg’s book, I want to say that importantly I completely TRUST everything this researcher says.  Because I have continual problems with trust that happens in relationship to a sense of my feeling safe and secure in the world (and NOT), I hold this trust in high value.

At the time Moberg published this book she had already published over 400 scientific articles.  She is considered the world’s leading expert on oxytocin and on the calm-connection half of our autonomic nervous system (ANS) and all the processes that are connected to it.  She is talking about what severe infant-child abuse survivors missed most during our earliest growth and developmental stages:  The opportunity to experience safe and secure attachments that would have allowed us to experience peaceful calmness and connection to others so that our body-brain could build into us a body-brain-nervous system with the balance depicted in the above image included.

Because my infant-childhood was filled with extreme, chronic, ongoing and severe abuse and trauma, I read Moberg’s book from a perspective that means I want to know how things SHOULD have been so that I can better know what I am MISSING at the same time I hope to find information that can help me to consciously CHANGE this set point within my body-nervous system-brain for the BETTER.

As I read Moberg’s account of current research patterns being weighted at 90% study of the stress response compared to 10% of study on the other half of the system, I understand why I am still searching for help, healing and answers.  There is no hope for truly understanding what was so damaging during our early physiological development about being immersed in continual overwhelming trauma if we don’t have the information we need about how things were truly SUPPOSED to be different.  I believe the best hope for healing ourselves on every level does not lie in the drugs we might take to override systems in our body.  We need to get the true picture of what is REALLY GOING ON.

No matter what we read, no matter what anyone tells us, we cannot fool our body.  Our body, the Earth Suit we live in, absolutely knows the truth.  When we encounter the truth in research it will resonate inside of us.  Our body knows the truth when it-we hear it.  Moberg’s book, her work and dedication to research about the calm connection system in the human body as it is designed to operate in counter-weight with our stress response system holds truth that I believe is imperative for us to understand.  As we gain these understandings, we will FEEL them in our body and know them in our brain-mind.  Once I have completed my reading of this book, I will enter the universe of the internet to look for research related to this topic that has occurred in the 6-7 years since the book was written.  I can only hope that the scientific world has taken Moberg’s work seriously enough to pick up this critical study of what contributes to the other half of our well-being as a species:  The ability to calm ourselves down and connect to others.  This is absolutely the study, in my mind, of safe and secure attachment of ourselves in our body in the world we live in.  Again, I will keep you posted.

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I wanted to make a little note here today at my sister’s suggestion about my present experiences as I teach myself to read music and play this amazing piano keyboard that I was blessed with being able to bring into my life.  As my sister pointed out, as I continue applying myself to this study and practice and as I gradually improve, I will probably not remember the process of learning itself.

I don’t remember learning to tie my shoes, but I do have faint memories of being at the age of trying to learn my right hand from my left.  I invented a learning strategy that involved remembering a pattern of freckles on my right wrist where I would have worn a watch if I had one (like the one my father wore).  All I had to do was connect the freckles with ‘watch’ with how right in my mind a watch would have looked on my wrist to learn which side of me was right and not left!

I know this music learning experience is similar also to when I learned to ride a bicycle.  Once the motor learning has taken place, I expect that I will never have to consciously think about it again.  In the meantime, my actual process of learning is fascinating.  There’s nobody here to judge my process or progress but myself, and in the clear, plain and good spirit of PLAY I am able to leave all self judgment out of the picture.

What I am left with is the process of literally and consciously experiencing what it is like for ME, in this body, with this brain, to learn something this new and strange.  I also know that because of the severe trauma I was immersed in as my brain developed, neither my left nor might right brain hemisphere formed themselves ‘normally’.  I also know that the corpus callosum that transfers information between my brain hemispheres did not form correctly, either.

As I teach myself this new language of music and gain the motor skills required that will let me actually PLAY music, I am experiencing what I believe is a true healing in these regions of my brain.  Last night I began to practice playing scales with both hands at the same time.  I figured there is no way I am going to get my hands to be able to each first play different notes in different ways in different timings if I can’t get them to cooperate and first play the same notes in the same patterns at the same time.

Well, I am here to tell you I can’t remember the last time I experienced such a giggle session!  Part of me was directly the physical process complete with the intention of desired result – while another part of me fell into giggling bursts of delight to watch what my hands were ACTUALLY doing!  Instead of tangoing they were tangling, each finger with a mind of its own tumbling and fumbling over the keys.

Yet I believe that learning good things is healing.  All the healing I have ever done has been about learning.  Learning how to let myself learn is a learning itself both about what learning is like AND what healing is like.  That process is delightful in itself as I gently and kindly, slowly, patiently and firmly open my own channels for change within myself so that I can let something good and new grow itself into my body-brain-mind-self.

I have hopes, a goal, a direction.  I want to play music.  I know I can do this.  I give myself permission to move forward, to make the mistake-errors, to correct them, to learn-heal at my own pace. As I experience such delight even in this process of learning itself I realize this is just a bonus gift I could not anticipate and did not expect to love and enjoy.

So, needless to say, I have a long long way to go to begin to even get the two hemispheres of my brain to operate harmoniously, cooperatively and well together.  But what I look forward to and DO EXPECT TO HAPPEN is that eventually the two hemispheres of my brain will dance on that keyboard in relationship to one another.  Sometimes they will follow the same patterns together.  Sometimes they will be able to ‘say’ something musically that will be very different, one from the other.

I nearly absolutely and entirely and completely missed the opportunity as an infant-child to be safe, secure, and to play.  And I certainly did not get to giggle.  So, if at 58 I am finally able to giggle myself into this amazing new skill of reading and playing music, that’s a very good thing indeed!  No doubt I am helping myself heal at the center of who I am in this trauma-changed body.  I’ll keep you posted on this process, as well!

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