Tag: trauma

+THE ‘DESPERATE FEW’

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I don’t want to write this post at the same time that I know I must write it.  I don’t believe that what I am about to say is going to make any sense at all to very many people.

When I think about the malevolent (not pampered) world that is being described at the end of Dr. Martin and Fellow’s paper here *SYMTPOMS: 120909 Scan of Teicher’s Research – Trauma Altered Development Paper I think about my mother — and about others like her.

If we wrote books so that when we reached the very end of the story we found ourselves exactly right back at the beginning, we might more easily understand that as we look at some things from the inside, we are at the same time looking at them from the outside, as well.  I don’t think we would be comfortable realizing the truth of being alive as members of our species if we were forced to understand that what we value so influences our judgments that we cannot easily find that line — the one that separates beginning from end or inside from outside.

My mother judged the world differently from normal — on every single level.  Who she was made to be at the beginning of her life was exactly the same person that she was at the end of her life.  Looking at my mother this way I understand that there really WAS no middle.  Everything that happened to my mother and everything that she did for her entire life was the same — beginning to end — as she followed a pattern that was built within her body from birth.  That pattern WAS the choice of her life, and I do not believe that my mother could EVER override it.

She never changed because she could not.

And the pattern that was my mother meant that she could never distinguish what was inside of herself from what was outside of herself.

I believe that it is fortunate that very, very, very few people would ever be able to understand who-how my mother was in her life.

I also believe that as we look around at some others within our species whose actions seem to defy all that we judge to ‘be human’ we are at the same kind of loss-to-comprehend that we would be should we try to understand my mother.

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I believe that there are extremes at the very, very, very far ends of the pampered-not pampered, of the benevolent-malevolent continuum of environmental conditions infants are born into and formed by.

I can’t imagine an outcome where too much benevolence (too much pampering as I define it as the absence of abuse and the provision of what we consider normal and necessary) could create truly desperate variations in human development that are as destructive as what too much malevolence (too much being not pampered) can and do create.

I do envision outcomes for infant-child development where the malevolence is mixed with inappropriate and false pampering that pushes development off the charts on the destructive-outcome end.  (This is a combination that I believe destroyed my mother.)

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What I need to say here requires for understanding a perspective that lies beyond how I believe most people think.  I believe there are circumstances that combine malevolent early infant-childhood deprivation and trauma in such a way that the result is on the long, far end of what Teicher describes as the ‘evolutionarily altered’ brain-being.

I see this as happening when enough external and internal pressure is put on a tiny developing person that something inside of them literally SNAPS.  A break occurs that destines the not pampered infant-child down an impossible road of such desperation that no recovery from it will ever be possible.

These little ones grow up to become dangerous people.  Their physiological development (I think) so closely matches the most ancient human patterns that kept our species alive in the most desperate circumstances in the most desperate environments we lived in — that few among us today can even begin to imagine those conditions.  When THESE people change in their development, all hell breaks loose.

Yet we are doing ourselves a disservice to believe that just because we cannot easily ‘begin to imagine’ something that this something isn’t real.

If we continue to believe this way, we will not be able to critically think about the implications and consequences that are as equally real as ‘that which we cannot begin to imagine’.

We have to recognize this challenge to both our belief and to our ability to think about what we do not want to believe.

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Enough of wandering in circles here.  I will go for the big circle — as ‘long ago’ trauma altered developmental response to terrible malevolent conditions meant the exact same response THEN that it still can today.

There are circumstances where the trauma-altered development of infant-children create monsters.

My mother was such a monster.

Yet if my mother had been a bitch wolf who found herself with a litter to raise in the worst environment of scarcity, deprivation and threat — and if THEN she had chosen to parcel out her attention and resources in such a way that perhaps some of her litter would survive and others wouldn’t — we would not raise our eyebrows very high over her actions.

Truly terrible terrifying trauma can, in some infant-children, trigger altered development that creates horrendous results:  “Mothers, limit and/or kill your offspring.”

My mother was astute enough NOT to kill me, but the pattern was there.  But I was tough, and I survived the worst she gave me anyway.

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Picture a primitive, hostile human world of tough times, much threat, dangerously scarce resources:  Sexuality and violence changes.  Males, having their own physiology,  are more likely to end up creating havoc in the wider world (under a biologically-based imperative to ‘find food, create more offspring, expand territory, gather possessions, eliminate competition’), while females create their havoc close to and within their home — which always impacts their children.

We call what these people do in today’s world ‘crimes’ — the most serious, heinous crimes we cannot imagine — until they happen.

My mother was one of these desperate few.  And if I am correct in my thinking there is absolutely no mystery whatsoever on its most basic level about why and how she was able to do what she did to me.

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+ANYONE WANNA EAT BARK AND BUGS?

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When, in my adulthood, I first heard people using versions of a saying, “The table was turned,” I envisioned in my mind someone being angry and turning a table upside down so that its legs stuck up in the air.  It took me a long time before I overcame my embarrassment enough to ask someone what they meant when they said this.

“Oh,” this person said to me.  “It’s like four people are sitting playing cards.  Each of them has their hand laying on the table top and someone turns the table so that everyone has someone else’s hand and THAT hand, rather than their original one, is what each plays the game through with.”

I mention this today because as I described what I have been thinking about pampered versus not pampered people to someone I am very close to yesterday that person responded to me with, “But the word pampered has such negative connotations!”

In other words, they were expressing a sentiment that would probably be common among those people I would say were raised from birth in a ‘benevolent’ world that I am now calling a pampered one.

I can see where this sentiment could come from.  Looking at Webster’s online dictionary for this word I found:

Definition of PAMPER

transitive verb

1 archaic : to cram with rich food : glut

2 a : to treat with extreme or excessive care and attention <pampered their guests> b : gratify, humor <enabled him to pamper his wanderlust — New Yorker>

— pam·per·er\-pər-ər\ noun

Examples of PAMPER

  1. They really pamper their guests at that hotel.
  2. She pampered herself with a day at the spa.
  3. He was pampered all his life and doesn’t know how to function in the real world.

Origin of PAMPER

Middle English, probably of Dutch origin; akin to Dutch dialect pamperen to pamper

First Known Use: 14th century

Related to PAMPER

Synonyms: cocker, coddle, cosset, dandle, indulge, mollycoddle, nurse, baby, spoil, wet-nurse

Antonyms: abuse, ill-treat, ill-use, maltreat, manhandle, mishandle, mistreat, misuse

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Well, how about that?  I have my sense of the contrast between being pampered and NOT being pampered just about right for what I am intending to describe!  Look at the antonyms!

We are not commonly used to using one word to describe in contrast its opposite, but in this case my meaning is extremely clear when I use it to describe how severe infant-abuse survivors experienced their world — yes, when they NEEDED to and SHOULD have been treated exactly the opposite from the way that they actually were.

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How many people among ‘the masses’, however, ever bristle and become concerned and defensive when someone calls someone else ‘mentally ill’, for example?

In contrast, how many of the pampered people are going to bristle and become concerned and defensive when someone calls them pampered?

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We are very comfortable in our society in using definitive explanations for things that rely on a linear black-and-white, either-or pattern of thinking.  It’s EASIER than making sure we understand the full meaning of what we are talking about.

It is EASIER to simply say, “I was abused when I was little,” or “I was not abused when I was little” than it is to say “I was not pampered” versus “I was pampered.”

I could continue to accept this simplistic thinking if there weren’t so many drastic and terrible lifelong consequences for survivors of severe infant-child abuse that society THEN feels completely comfortable in blaming and shaming the survivors for.

It is THEN that I want to ‘turn the tables’ so that the pampered would need to play THEIR entire lifetime out living in the reality that severe abuse survivors know with their every breath.

And the survivors?  What would we survivors know of living the truly, from-birth pampered life even if someone were to suddenly give us one?

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My case in point if ye be of those who can make this gigantic leap!  Nature has mirrored the experience of those whose body was built in ONE kind of world ONE way — and not the other way — permanently.

Pampered-from-birth (‘good enough’) people have a body that knows that reality.  Not pampered-from-birth people have a body that knows that reality.

Nature and its ways cares nothing for the individual personal comfort zone of anyone.  Nature only TRULY cares that a species does what it needs to do to ‘continue on being’.  This entire array of possible body building options that happens in direct response to either the pampered world that raised us or to the not pampered one is — and I am going to the Bigger Picture here — meant to accomplish this ‘continue on being’ by creating bodies that THEMSELVES signal-convey the kind of world that built the person who lives in it.

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So we could turn another table of laid-out card hands here so that Nature received the personalized individual’s perspective on the experience of being alive and the individual people received the hands that clearly expresses what Nature cares about, intends and accomplishes.

How I am  in the world, having been raised in a not pampered infant-childhood directly signals to others (who could detect and understand these signals) exactly what the condition of my early world was like — because those conditions built me to be the way that I am.

Jump to the peacock’s tail.  A brilliant, resplendent, gorgeous and healthy peacock tail is simply a signal and a sign that the experiences of that bird happened in an environment rich in resources.  The tail has nothing PERSONAL to do with the peacock at all!

Another peacock with a pitifully shabby, dull and sickly looking tail is simply signaling to its hoped-for mates that this bird was not pampered in a world of plenty.

Which peacock’s tail is going to attract which kind of mating partner?

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Well, as the ‘superior species’ we don’t like to be pared down to our actual size so that we can not only recognize but also accept that HOW we are in the world (based on the conditions of the world that formed us) does exactly the same thing.  HOW we is a signal that expresses the NOT personal reality of THE CONDITIONS OF THE WORLD and actually, as Nature intends, doesn’t have much to do at all with our personal wishes or concerns as individuals.

So again I will say when you read particularly the last paragraphs of Dr. Martin and Fellow’s paper here *SYMTPOMS: 120909 Scan of Teicher’s Research – Trauma Altered Development Paper you are reading a description of the MISMATCH that happens when not pampered people are born into a not pampered world and at the end of their earliest years are hatched out into a pampered one!

The problem is this mismatch.  The problems we endure as individual severe early abuse survivors IS THIS MISMATCH.

If pampered people were the only ones who lived in a pampered world — OK.  If not pampered people were the only ones who lived in a not pampered world — OK.

How can I say OK to a resource-scarce and traumatizing world?  Think about what our species had to go through so that we could be here asking that question.  Our species was able to experience pampering ONLY under conditions of plentiful resources.  When times were really, really tough, we were able to use an INNER resource that nature has NEVER let us lose:  We contain within our very young body the ability to ADAPTIVELY AND FLEXIBLY adjust to the conditions of the world we are born into.

Then we are able to move forward in time in a not pampered body — surviving — continuing on as individual representatives of our species — into a future where resources were better.  THEN the future generations could adaptively and flexibly adjust to these more pampered conditions — and babies could grow a body that reflected those improved conditions.

In other words, as I write this, I understand that ‘the tables’ are DESIGNED to turn.  Without that ability to adjust and adapt flexibly we would not have had the resilience we needed to survive — not as a species, not as individuals.

We need to understand the bigger picture so that we can depersonalize the facts.  Pampered people do not need to take offense when someone points out the truth of the benefits they received from a resource-rich environment from the time they were born.

AND not pampered people need to be FREE to be people who are not condemned and judged for the fact that our body did EXACTLY THE SAME THING that pampered people’s did:  Adjusted in development to the conditions of OUR environment — which happened to be a resource-scarce one.

If our proverbial turning table were laden on one side with rich and nutritious food an on the other side tree bark and bugs — and THEN this table were to be turned so that pampered and not pampered people had to consume a diet they were not familiar with — my points here in this post might be a little easier — or tougher — to swallow.

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(Of course, I suppose ALL the female peacocks would go for the prettier tale, and in this example of female selection, who wins?  I don’t know……  What I do know is that this version of a mate selection process is about finding who came from the richest world that had the best resources — and who got them.)

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+PLEASE DON’T SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD

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“Oh, Mary’s dead.”

“How did Mary die?”

“She died of breast cancer.  You know she had both her breasts cut off several years ago.  But you know Mary.  (No, I didn’t know Mary.)  She was so messed up on drugs.  Always doing something.  What a mess.  And she kept on saying, “My cancer’s going to come back.  I know it’s going to come back.”  She invited it back, you know.  It did come back.  It killed her last week.”

No, I didn’t know Mary, but I guess most in the small town of Bisbee knew Mary.  Knew her as a druggie, as a “really messed up woman.”

“Please don’t speak ill of the dead,” I wanted to say to the gathered four people in my friend’s little office when I stopped in to see how things were going there on my way back from an appointment.  “Please, don’t speak ill of the dead.”

My heart pleaded, turned to soup, cried for this dead woman I never met.  I know too much now.  I know the signs, the signs of a truly sad and tormented life.  I know where it usually starts, way back at the beginning when these dead bodies were new and little ones, all pure and innocent, so ready for life and so tormented and tortured when still small — so many — they never recover from that.

Mary?  She never recovered.

And please, those of you who have never lived through cancer either, don’t tell us “You brought that cancer down on yourself.  You thought your cancer back.”

What these people are saying of this dead woman, “Shame on stupid you!!  Shame!  Shame!  How could you be so stupid, so dumb?  We are SO MUCH better than you.”

“Please, don’t speak ill of the dead!”

I heard this before from people when another man who lived here blew his brains out.  There wasn’t QUITE such a clamber in conversations I heard about him, but still people spoke ill of him — dead.  I spoke up for that man.

“Please don’t speak ill of the dead.”

Where is the respect?  Where is the love?  Where is the compassion for people who suffer, who fall through all the cracks, who try and try and try and try and still cannot hold on any longer.

I think of the Center for Disease Control’s study where they found their subjects with the worst childhoods died 20 years earlier on the average than everyone else.

PLEASE!

DO NOT SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD!

I hear of the troubles — I can tell the infant-child abuse history — my heart grows so sad.  “God help me!  May I never speak ill of the dead.”

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+ABUSE SURVIVAL: NOT A TRIVIAL PROJECT

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As I began my re-search over six years ago in my desperate need to find information about how what had happened to me during my abusive childhood was affecting my adult life, I began to find the ‘bits and pieces’ of truth that eventually I was able to fit together into the bigger picture that I live with today.

The more I read about how trauma in infancy-toddlerhood changes development the more hopeless I felt.  All I could interpret from the facts I read was DAMAGE!  DAMAGE!  DAMAGE!

Finally I stumbled over the paper you will find scanned at this link:

*SYMTPOMS: 120909 Scan of Teicher’s Research – Trauma Altered Development Paper

The proverbial light went on, and suddenly all thoughts about my being DAMAGED by the severe abuse I experienced from birth turned into thoughts about how I was a CHANGED being!

Yet I still believe that I carry my own internal light into my continued personal study about the topic of abuse-caused early trauma altered development.  Although there certainly were years during my own ‘recovery’ attempts that began in 1980 where I bought and swallowed all the various self-help ideas about ‘what was wrong with me’, I now know looking back that while I might have put these thoughts in my mouth and chewed on them — they didn’t taste good and they didn’t taste right.

Something within me knew better — and knew that something very critical was missing from all the ‘recovery’ information I could find.  The information I found didn’t feel right deep at my core.

Even though the attachment and developmental neuroscience information that I have most recently studied certainly applies and is a far better fit, I still don’t 100% swallow it?

Why?  Because at my core I value myself too much to eat, chew, swallow and digest ANY information that simply tells me I am damaged, changed in such a way that I ended up ‘mentally ill’ or suffering from pathology, or am in any way FLAWED as a being due to the trauma altered development I was FORCED to go through as my body adapted from birth to a malevolent, traumatic and extremely toxic interpersonal world.

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Although my discovery of Dr. Martin Teicher’s writings elevated my re-search to a platform above writings that did nothing but highlight ‘damage’ that happens from infant-child abuse, I still have always known SOMETHING IS STILL MISSING!  Even though Teicher seemed to see ‘the bigger picture’, I knew instinctively there is a bigger picture still.

Teicher’s work (and his fellows’) cannot be disputed as it stands, but I don’t believe it goes far enough that it can truly serve those of us who have experienced early trauma altered development through severe abuse so that we ended up with an ‘evolutionarily altered brain’ such as his work describes.

It is NOT ‘just’ our brain that changed.  Not in my thinking.  It is our ENTIRE BODY.  All of it down to our innermost molecule and genetic operation including our entire nervous system and our immune system (I still believe future research will find that it was our immune system that instigated our trauma altered development from the beginning).

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO US AS SURVIVORS TO BE AN ‘EVOLUTIONARILY ALTERED BEING’?

I will NOT buy it that we are ‘mentally ill’ or ‘damaged’ or ‘suffering from pathology’ SIMPLY because we are these beings.

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Most simply put I, as the survivor I am, quite simply NOW live post-childhood in a world that does not belong to me, nor I to it.

Teicher’s paper (as you will find it at the link above) might put in a kingpin for true understanding of who-how we are as survivors, but his information is ONLY the beginning.

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As I write this post following the post immediately preceding this one, I think about the DIFFERENT world I would probably fit into a whole lot better than I do this one.

If I could locate people whose body formed in similar ways that mine did, I could discuss this topic on its most REAL and important level.  For starters, my guess is that as a whole we are far less egotistical, self-centered, self-possessed, self-righteous, arrogant, greedy and selfish than are many others who live in ‘that other world’.

We survivors could get together and talk about ‘them’ from our point of view with the information that OUR body tells us and come up with conclusions that very few in ‘that’ world would want to hear — I guarantee it!

If we could escape together from our quarantine in the ‘pathological’ pantry, we could discover our own wisdom — and what I suspect we would find as a group is that we are very closely connected in our experience (and in our body) to our specie’s ancestors — the Most Ancient Ones who lived in a world and during a time when most certainly nobody assumed anyone was ‘safe and secure’ for very long!

THOSE Most Ancient Ones?  I feel proud to think that I have developed in such a way that I could share along with them what OUR reality is like.

That we as survivors, and WE as the Most Ancient Ones were NEVER a part of the PAMPERED group does NOT make us damaged, ill or pathological!  In fact, people from ‘that’ world might find us downright frightening (Are they envious of us?) in our power, our strength, our resilience, our toughness, our determination, our courage and our endurance.  We know things that PAMPERED people are not likely to know in their lifetime — and what WE know is built into our body down to our essential core.

So what if we experience life differently, remember differently, gather different information and process it differently than those who have always lived in ‘that’ world?

Somebody needs to expand their thinking, and I am not at all sure that it is the severe abuse survivors that most need to do this.  Every attitude that belittles us, judges us, criticizes us, condemns us and does NOT value, honor and respect not only WHO we are as beings in the world but HOW we are beings in the world is a victim of their own ignorance, bias, stereotyping, prejudice and superstition.

IN FACT, we severe infant-child abuse survivors are probably the closest to being physiological SUPERHEROES as our current generations of humans are ever going to know!

The problem seems to be for me that I can’t find the boat with my own kind on it.  I am left feeling pretty darned alone with this information.  Those superhero ancestors of ours that were tough enough to endure so that our species is still here are pretty silent these days!  But what they knew we know — how to endure the unendurable to the end of our days.

That’s not a trivial project, folks!  Infant-child abuse survivors share with our Most Ancient ancestors the most important piece of information any living being can have.  In spite of all the distractions one might encounter along life’s way only one single thing matters:  Keep moving forward — no matter what!

So, I will no longer take a bite of, put into my mouth (mind), chew on, nor swallow any information about myself (self-help or not) that in any way discounts not only WHO I am, but HOW I am in the world.  I will no longer believe that I am flawed, damaged, mentally ill or pathological because I am not like the Pampered People are.  I will not try to change myself to be more like them just because they determine that I need to.

I WILL attempt to learn as much as I can about myself so that I can empower myself to be a better me living a better life.  The Pampered People can obviously also do what they want to do, but I now understand that what they know, how they know it, what they believe, and how they might judge me has NOTHING to do with me — and it never did.

We survivors are no more pity-able or pathetic than our Most Ancient Ancestors were — and THIS thought does NOT contribute to my sadness — not even one single, tiny bit!  Hooray!

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+CLARIFYING MY PERSPECTIVE: INFANT ABUSE IN THE 5%

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Members of our culture are familiar with information that streams down to the general public from the TOP.  Unless our current view of society is suddenly flipped over completely, I certainly hold a position as a human being close to the bottom, not the top.

Here is an image for something known as The Bell Curve.

Whether we are talking in general about the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots’, or talking in terms of diagnosed ‘mental illness’, or talking about degrees on a continuum of insecure versus secure human attachment acquired during the first year of life as it designs and builds the human nervous system-brain, etc., we can consider the degrees of human well-being as they can be expressed using a Bell Curve image.

The healthier, happier, and more safely and securely attached an infant’s mother is, the same will correspondingly be true for her offspring — for a lifetime.  These are the people who will suffer and struggle less and enjoy more over their life span.

The opposite direction happens when the opposite conditions exist.  These are the people who will suffer and struggle more and enjoy less over their life span.

Intervention and education can directly improve the odds that well-being for an infant will improve for its lifetime when the quality of earliest caregiver interactions is improved.  The degrees I am describing become physiologically wired and built into an infant’s body.  I fully believe that increases to the positive will travel on down the generations just as the negative ones do.  Which do we desire as individual parents and as a society?

We are not helpless victims.  If we truly desire the best well-being possible for all (and this always starts with the quality of care to our infants), we have the power to accomplish what we want.

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To be very clear, I write as a survivor of the kind of infant-child abuse that probably ONLY exists in the ‘lowest’ (on the left end of this image) severe maltreatment, trauma and abuse.  I was a despised and hated baby from my first breath.  My advantage now is that I know this at the same time I know a great deal about how this malevolent treatment changed my physiological development.

Having been born to a severely ‘mentally ill’ (no doubt Borderline) mother who, herself, existed on the devastating neglect and abuse end of the infant attachment spectrum, puts me in what I consider either the LOWEST 5% or the HIGHEST 5% depending upon how one looks at the Bell Curve of infant-child treatment.

I ‘definitely’ received a megasized dose of maltreatment at the same time I was mega-deprived of the RIGHT kind of treatment.

So I write from society’s bottom 5% while most so-called ‘experts’ write from the TOP 5%.  This means that much of what I say is as equally challenging for the TOP group of humans to comprehend and believe as THEIR information is to those of us in the bottom 5%.

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I am completely comfortable in expanding the size of the group I write to and about from 5% to 15% of our population.  While the ‘a little bit higher’ additional 10% above me did not perhaps experience outright hatred from their earliest caregivers, they did NOT receive the quality of tender, loving, adequate care they needed.  Their entire physiological development was, I believe, altered in adjustment to their malevolent, insecure and unsafe earliest caregiving (!) environment.

At the same time, even though most attachment experts suggest that fully 50% of our population’s infants DO experience ‘good enough’ early caregiving to end up with a body-nervous system(NS)-brain-mind-self to carry on with the rest of their lives having a primary safe and secure attachment system, I believe that it is ONLY the top 15% who REALLY experience the blessing of ‘optimal’.  Those beneficiaries, as a result, can suffer from a kind of blindness that they DO NOT ADMIT.  This ignorance stems from their position of privilege.

I believe nearly ALL of our top high-powered ‘professional experts’ came from this top 15%, which means to me that if I am going to wholeheartedly accept as TRUE everything that they tell me, I am accepting their reality as REAL at the same time I discount and deny my own reality.

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While I cannot argue with the generalized view point that approximately 50% of our population had a first year of life that has given them a safe and secure attachment system (matched by a properly operating nervous system/brain-stress response system-vagus nerve system-immune system), I ask myself the question, “Why is such a large percentage of our population reliant upon antidepressants to get through their life?”

Developmental neuroscientists know that mothers as an infant’s earliest primary caregiver — and it remains mothers due to biological heritage of our species that has not changed — quite literally download their brain and nervous system patterning into their offspring’s rapidly growing and developing body-brain at the same time they are passing along their own attachment system patterning.  This means that in spite of our best intentions NOT to pass trauma patterns on to our offspring — we do.

Yes, while it can be said that much depression is ‘genetic’, it is also true that many genetic combinations that lead not only to depression to also to a wide array of physiological ‘problems’ are directly triggered into operation during the earliest months and years of our human development because of the influence our earliest caregivers have upon us.

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So what I would hope could be a ‘clarion whisper’ to others in my writings is this:  In today’s complex and hectic mothering environment we need to understand and make very clear that what a mother has experienced in HER life directly impacts the body-brain that her baby will grow.

Perhaps the ‘top 50%’ of our society do not need to directly THINK about this fact.  They can go on passing down to their offspring the goodness they have received in their benevolent infant-childhoods.  The OTHER 50% needs to understand as much as they can — hopefully PRIOR to creating their children — something we do not talk about in our culture:  How their body-NS-brain-immune system-mind-self was formed at the beginning of their life.

This is not so much about thinking, “WHO am I in the world?”  This is about thinking about, “HOW am I in the world and HOW did I get to be this way?”

It is very common to see an infant growth and development chart or list of what to look for in regard to visible external signs of advancement.  I want to see either a separate chart-list that talks about the INNER invisible critical growth and development of an infant’s attachment system as it affects development of its entire nervous system-brain AND body, or see this information included along with the mention of when to expect rolling over, sitting up, the first tooth and crawling.

Only in rare situations does an infant NOT develop its outward signs of health in a normal-ordinary fashion.  And yet we accept that at least 50% of these same infants are NOT being given what they need to develop their INNER responses in a normal-ordinary way.

This means to me that we are willing to accept that less-than-best for half our population’s infants, which will directly influence their lifelong well-being on the down turn, is perfectly OK with us.

It is NOT OK!  We CAN influence how the Bell Curve of human safe and secure attachment and BEST physiological development ON THE INSIDE turns out.  We can ‘raise the bar’ for everyone and we can at the same time ‘raise the bottom’.

My own terrible infant-childhood maltreatment harmed my development greatly.  I did not even begin to understand that what happened to me growing up for 18 years under extremely traumatic conditions was not only NOT NORMAL, but was NOT OK and was extremely harmful.  It has only been in the last 6-7 years that I have learned what that ‘harmful’ means in terms of my trauma altered development.

It so happens that so much new information has become available about the needs of infants for optimal development due to advances in scientific technologies paralleled my own need and desire to find out the truth about what happened to me where it mattered most.  That information is out there for all of us to find, but it needs to be made accessible and understandable to everyone, especially to new parents.

Even though I came a long, long way in not passing the trauma my mother, and through her that I experienced to my own children — I did so anyway on some significant levels.  A very sad and traumatized mother who does NOT know this about herself, and who does NOT know how she is going to pass these patterns down to her infant through her innocent (and best) interactions with it during its first year of life — is going to pass those patterns down to her infant.  That is nature’s design.

The very best and most accurate measure of the state of a human society’s well-being is to look directly — and with an informed eye — at its infants prior to the age of one.

What we want to see are infants who are well fed and physically cared for — yes.  But what we ALSO and at the same time need to see are infants who are being attended to in safe and secure attachment interactions.  These interactions are very real actually PHYSIOLOGICAL ways.  Yes, they involve caregiver-mother touch, smell, voice, words, tone — but they also happen through face-to-face expressions that are designed to download particularly a mother’s experience of being in the world to her infant so that her infant can, in turn, adjust its physiological development ON ALL LEVELS to the condition of the world it has been born into.

A baby needs to be attended to and comforted in such a way that its entire nervous system will develop with a state of peaceful calm (safety and security) as its middle set point.  Some excitement.  Not too much.  The right kind of stimulation.  Modulation of excitement (both positive and negative) ALWAYS BACK TO THIS CENTER POINT OF PEACEFUL CALM.

The baby needs interactions that stimulate its happiness and joy center’s development in its brain.  This happens FROM THE CENTER SETPOINT OF PEACE AND CALM.  The baby needs to gradually and eventually begin to tolerate the survival experiences of discomfort, anger, fear and sadness — but always within the best possible parameters set by its caregivers so that the infant is NEVER IN ANY WAY OVERWHELMED BY ANYTHING — EVER!

An infant from birth to one is building its brain neuron and nervous system directly based on the kinds of early caregiver interactions it is receiving.  The information it gets from these caregiver interactions are telling its genetic material exactly how safe and secure (benevolent) or how unsafe and insecure (malevolent) the entire universe is — and will be — for the rest of its life.  The infant’s physiological INNER development will adjust itself accordingly — and in most ways, permanently.

An infant from birth is at the same time building within itself the platform foundation for its thoughts, beginning with the underlying images that are directly connected to its experiences with its earliest caregivers — primarily its mother.  “Can I absolutely trust that someone loves me, knows that I AM HERE, and will come to take care of me?”

From this knowledge — either with a “YES” answer or a “NO” answer (or a “MAYBE?” one) comes not only the foundation of trust, but also the foundation of hope.  Eventually an infant around the age of one will be able to HOPE for that wonderful caregiver to come take care of it when the infant experiences a need.  With this foundation of trust and hope — or its absence — an infant advances into its stages of being able to move out into the world and explore it on its own knowing on its most basic physiological levels that it can count on being safely and securely attached to and in the world — or not.

AND the infant begins to add into its growing body-brain the ability to THINK in more than senses and images. Every single interaction an infant has with a human being before the age of one is directly influencing where its neurons are going to land in the regions of its brains, whether these neurons will live or die, and how these brain regions will process information — including information the infant needs to build its SELF and its relationship with this SELF.

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All of these interactions a billions more directly affect where a maturing human being will end up on this Bell Curve of well-being.  Although I was born down there at the lowest 5% point within an extremely malevolent, traumatizing and abusive environment, I can now look upwards and SEE the whole range of possibilities.  I can do this because I found a way to learn about how degrees of safe and secure attachment — and its opposite — directly influence the development of ALL OF US.

True, all of us can learn throughout our lifespan, but reality is reality.  There are early infant-child critical windows of development during which certain aspects of our physiological development are finalized — and cannot be changed.  We need to know as much as we can about what human developmental stages are ON THE INSIDE.  We need to know the best we can what happened to us that changed us.  Readers of this blog will already know exactly what I am talking about.

As a society we can make up our minds that LESS THAN BEST is not acceptable when it comes to infant care.  While we mouth the words ‘everyone is created equal’ we are NOT making sure that everyone is given the same BEST chance to grow and develop the BEST body-brain-mind-self possible.  Shame on us.

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Based on what happens in the womb and during the first year of life, additional critical brain development takes place in the second year of life — and onwards.  But ALL future development will be directed by and adapted to the information the infant receives from its earliest caregiving environment before the age of one.

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Aug 3, 2009 … Antidepressant Use in U.S. Has Almost Doubled … The study found that 5.84 percent of U.S. residents aged 6 and over were using …

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+INFANT-CHILD MALTREATMENT DURING EARLY DEVELOPMENT – WOUNDS THAT NEVER HEAL

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Perhaps this is really what I believe:  I am living a documentary on the physiological changes that severe early and chronic child abuse can cause within a human being and what it is like to live a life with these changes.  If this is what I believe, than what I am doing at age 59 is living a documentary and recording what I notice about this experience as a survivor.  It just seems that life moves too fast for anything else to be accomplished.

I finished four days of working in my friend’s small office while she recovers from her illness — only she isn’t well enough yet to return so next week I will probably be gone from  home and in the office another four days.  This SHOULDN’T BE A BIG DEAL for me, but it is.  I can feel the powerful impact of stress in my body — and what I have been doing is NOT STRESSFUL in any ‘normal’ person’s way.  I know it isn’t.  But it nearly more than I can bear.  I have the weekend to try to calm myself down — on all my levels.

So from my documentariast point of view I would say that any time I am out in public and interacting in ANY way with other people I am nearly completely overwhelmed by the complexities of human interactions.  At the same time I notice this, it’s like I can look backward through a long time tunnel to my infancy and feel the affects of my mother’s maniacal, violent, unpredictable, inappropriate,  chaotic interactions with little infant me — and what those interactions did to my body, nervous system and brain as I tried to grow and develop in that insanely abusive and malevolent environment.

I did not have the opportunity for experience I needed in face to face mirroring, reflective, compassionate interactions that would have built into my right brain the ability to ‘read social cues’ or to send back and out to others ‘social cues’ that they could read, either.  Every interaction I participate in with others borders on panic.  All the information that passes back and forth is moving so fast — just like it is supposed to — but is also well beyond my ability to understand correctly or to process.

As a result, I am easily just plain exhausted in ways that are difficult to describe.  It all seems to damn NOISY to me — and it IS noisy.  And all the interactions just amp up my stress-distress level, which my continually turned-on stress response/attachment system DOES NOT NEED.

There is no possible way to turn everyday human interactions into slow motion events.  If my ‘documentary’ was able to run at the speed that allowed me to work with human social information, nobody except someone like me who had suffered from a truly MAD, insane mother birth to age one would be able to tolerate watching it.  The tables would be turned.  Instead of ME being the one out of my element and lost in the mad panic of the high speed communication patterns between people, I would be far more comfortable in ‘slow-mo’ while others would amp up their stress levels.

And in the end the result is I am terribly lonely.  Normal social interactions do not ‘feed me’.  They drain me, and I have to escape them back to the only comfort I now know — my quiet home.

I can’t say to other people, “Slow down!  You are so loud, you talk so fast, you move so fast, you send out far too many signals all jumbled up and tumbled over one another.”  I am supposed to ‘be normal’ and ‘act normal’ — just like they do with one another.

My mother overwhelmed every sense I had from the time I was born.  There was no reciprocal, balanced, compassionate, tender loving interactions between us — ever.

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I was thinking about all of this when I got back from a series of errands I had to do in town today (I didn’t have to go to my friend’s office).   I realize that much of my life — all of my 18-year childhood and most of my adulthood — I have survived and endured through using an invisible (to me) ability to dissociate so that masses of information could remain separated from one another so that they did not overwhelm me by being present at the same time.

Thinking about it today I realized that this process allowed me to have large ‘areas’ of quiet within me that were actually empty because information was segmented and presented to me in little pieces not connected to one another — but only present as the information was immediately needed.  Other information was somehow put away where I did not have to focus on it, be aware of it, be distracted by it — or have to FEEL it or pay it any attention.

Something about my cancer diagnosis July 2007 and my subsequent experience of treatment and survivorship changed all of these patterns — or ways I had of being in the world that seemed to work for me all those years.

Most simply put in this documentary as I experience it today, I would say that the NUMBNESS disappeared.

Now I would say I have too much information without having any other in-built adequate ability to process or tolerate it.

I still experience dissociation, but not from one numb state to another.  Now I can distinctly note that most dissociation happens in response to very clear demands being made on my processing abilities (brain-nervous system-mind-self) that surpass my in-built ability to flow along smoothly and comfortably in response.

This lets me know very clearly that numbness is NOT calmness!  I never needed to clarify this or name it for myself before now.  Now, not only can I not get to a state of calmness within, I cannot get to a numb state, either.

In other words, I cannot turn down the volume of noise that comes from too much stimulation in too short a period of time, too much information, too many demands on my inadequate abilities to receive, understand, tolerate and appropriately respond to information coming to me continually from the world around me — most especially when I am in contact with other people.

In other words, I am living my life now post-trauma of cancer directly with the body-brain-nervous system my MOTHER built into me before the age of two — and not with the systems that I put together, instinctively and intuitively figured out and Gerry-rigged all on my own throughout my life that allowed me to make-do with how abuse built me in the first place.

Now I live with the whole raw deal.  And that is, I will note in my documentary, very often how I feel — very raw.  I think about the terrific harm that was done to me while I was a developing little person.  I think about the wound that has created in my trauma altered body as a consequence.  I think about burned skin, how sensitive beyond belief it is, and I realize that my whole being is wounded, not my skin — at least not the OUTSIDE of my skin.

It might take generations past mine to begin to comprehend what trauma altered infant-child development really is, let alone how to truly begin to live well in spite of these changes.  Meanwhile we of the current generations have to make do the best that we can — and document what we have and do experience so that our understandings can help those in the future both STOP infant-child maltreatment at the same time its survivors are respected, honored and assisted to live better with what nature gave us as a result of the terror-able tempest that was our physiological formative beginning — that enabled us to stay alive at all.

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+A COLLECTION OF POSTS RELATED TO — CALM — AND ABUSE RELATED COMPLICATIONS

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Here is a big collection of posts on this blog related to CALM — CONNECTION — (NOTE:  WordPress does not automatically create a new tab or page when you click on one of these links – be sure to right click and choose!  Or, click on a link, check it out and hit your back button up at top left of your screen!  WordPress does, however, automatically correct the capitalization of its own name — SPOOKY!)

*EMOTION AND ATTACHMENT

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+CALM THE CRYING BABY — IMMUNE SYSTEM STIMULATES VAGUS NERVE TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

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+TRAUMA DRAMA: WHEN IS THERAPY MORE OF THE SAME?

alchemynowLeave a comment

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I would like to highlight a recent comment-reply about ‘therapy’ that is at the end of this post:

+THOUGHTS – INCLUDING DISMISSIVE-AVOIDANT INSECURE ATTACHMENT DISORDER

I have said this before on this blog, and it’s time to say it again.  If you are in therapy, there is nothing about the experience that means you need to set aside what you know about yourself.  “Listen to your gut.”

It is a fact that our earliest forming right social-emotional brain is the part of our brain that gathers all the information our body has to tell us about ‘its’ experience in the world.  When you hear the expression, “I had a gut reaction” or “I knew it in my gut,” the right brain with its physiological roots in our body experience and awareness is what the ‘gut’ truly is.

The other, more accurate way to say this is, “I am having a visceral reaction.”

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VISCERAL

Date: 1575

1  : felt in or as if in the viscera : deep <a visceral conviction>

2  : not intellectual : instinctive, unreasoning <visceral drives>

3  : dealing with crude or elemental emotions : earthy <a visceral novel>

Definition of VISCERA

plural of viscus

1  : an internal organ of the body; especially : one (as the heart, liver, or intestine) located in the great cavity of the trunk proper

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We are taught that ‘feelings’, including the identified physical ones like touch, heat, physical pain, are not ‘reasonable’.  That is a myth.

What we all need is for the information our right brain knows to be passed over the ‘wall’ to our left brain so that they can — TOGETHER — cooperate jointly, equally and in a balanced way with our living.

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I meant what I said in the reply to the comment I mentioned above.  There is nothing particularly extraordinary about therapists.  Most of them, I would guess, come from troubled pasts of their own.  If they have not explored the new research about the formation of our ‘attachment’ circuitry from birth — especially as it is altered through traumatic early infant-child conditions of unsafe and insecure with our caregivers — a therapist really has no REAL (and therefore reason-able) idea what ‘attachment’ really is, what it does, what it is meant to do, what it does NOT do if our early development was changed by trauma, or how to FIX our attachment ‘problems’.

Simply being told that we ‘won’t make progress’ or ‘won’t get better’ if we don’t ‘form an attachment with them’ belongs — in my thinking — to the trauma drama side of the fence.

With these simplified, often inaccurate demands often made by therapists clients are left believing there is ‘something wrong’ with them that they can’t or won’t or don’t want to form one of these illusive ‘attachments’ to their therapist.

Your gut (your viscera) will tell you when the trauma drama wheel is in full motion in your therapy.  There is nothing more important in my thinking than for a ‘client’ to be allowed to trust the information their gut (through their right brain and in cooperation with their left brain) is telling them.

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True, most clients in therapy today probably have had traumatic pasts.  If the trauma happened early in their life, if they were born into trauma drama, they will be caught in the web of trauma drama in their own life at the same time that they have an unrecognized, unexplored, and unexplained INSECURE ATTACHMENT DISORDER.

Telling a client whose physiology was changed early in their development because their entire body-brain-mind-self had to change and adjust to survive trauma that what will ‘fix’ them is the formation of an ‘attachment’ with their therapist is like telling that same client that, like Dumbo, all their problems will get better if they only do what it takes (being told “You can do it if you want to and are willing”) that they can FLY.

HOGWASH!

If, as I mentioned in my reply mentioned above, any therapist has not thoroughly studied current developmental neuroscience about human attachment, in my book they do not know what they are talking about.

CONSUMER BEWARE!  CONSUMER, BE AWARE!

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What I have been writing about in my recent posts about insecure attachment styles-patterns-disorders, resentments, Grice’s maxims and trauma drama applies here.

If our body, through particularly the experience of our right brain, is telling us that we are NOT feeling peaceful calm, then at the same time we are not feeling safe and secure (the essence of secure attachment).

If we do not have peace and calm built into the center of our nervous system-brain because of our altered development in infant-child environments of trauma and abuse, having someone, even a therapist telling us to ‘get there’ – form ‘an attachment’ – ‘feel safe and secure’ – feel peace and calm — will NOT magically make this state appear in our body, our brain, our nervous system, in our mind — or in our self!

What, in my opinion, so often happens in therapy IS a continuation of trauma drama if

(1) there is too much of the wrong information given

(2) there is not enough of the right information given

(3) the information being given is not REALLY (or reason-able) accurate to what is really important and is therefore ACTUALLY IRRELEVANT

(4) the TRUTH about the facts is MISSING

When this happens a client’s BODY will tell this this is the current state IF peace and calm is not an increasingly more present state between the client and the therapist.

True, there are many therapeutic theories and strategies that encourage what is called PROJECTION — whereby the client explores feelings from the PAST in therapy as if they are connected to the therapist rather than to the person who actually committed the abuse and harm in the first place.

These same schools of thought (and therapist thinking and action) also ASSUME that if a client forms this mysterious ‘attachment’ to the therapist this entire process will not only HAPPEN — but effectively help a client to ‘heal’.

I am not going to argue with these thoughts.  What I am going to say is that if no one — not the therapist, not the client — REALLY knows what human attachment is PHYSIOLOGICALLY — what it does and why — the core difficulties within the client are not going to be changed in the way both the therapist and the client hope that they will.

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Anyone who is reading this post has access to relevant information necessary to become — most of the time — more educated about attachment than their therapist is likely to be.  Simply Google search attachment and child abuse, or attachment and brain development, or attachment and ANYTHING and begin to educate yourself by exploring what pops up on your screen.

In my book, it is critically important that trauma survivors, especially infant-child abuse survivors, find and learn this information.  All of our physiology is affected by our human attachment system — no matter how it was formed.  Please follow the links presented in the comment-reply cited above!  To be in therapy to resolve trauma drama difficulties while being exposed to more of the same patterns in the therapy itself is NOT helpful — in my book.

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+THE JOY OF SAYING ‘NOPE’ TO OPRAH

alchemynow13 Comments

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“Well, tickle me pink!”  I have no idea what the history of that cliche is, but it comes to mind as I entertain myself with a little humor, Linda style.  I give myself full permission to access anything that I can use to prepare for my next task — and to accomplish it — with great success!

I have (literally) a hell of a story to tell.  I am not alone in this.  Anyone who has suffered abuse in life has the same kind of story to tell, but it is those of us who were raised from birth (and perhaps from conception) within the earliest possible truly malevolent environments that have the worst stories to tell.

Not that there is some sort of new-fangled “GONG” show especially for people who want to march up to some television stage and compete for “Who has the very worst infant-child abuse story to tell” kind of prize.  But there ARE critical differences in the long term consequences of differing kinds of early abuse.

A week or so ago during my conversation with my friend I was having lunch with the topic of Oprah came up.  “Oh,” my friend said.  “I heard that now Oprah passed 50 she has decided to let her abusers go.”

“Well, I’ll be horn swaggled,” I think to myself.  Not THE great and powerful Oprah?  Such a public example of the “should do” for all other infant-child abuse survivors.

I’ve never been an Oprah fan.  That could be because I am not a personal fan of either television or magazines.  But in the last week that I have been sitting in an office taking care of its business so my friend could take her vacation I have honed my anti-Oprah insights.

Now, I can in part thank my daughter for this.  She is a very busy professional woman with a marriage and new baby to tend to.  She hasn’t much time left over for one of her simple pleasures:  Making gorgeous, creative, stunningly artistic switchplate covers out of collage.  So I am taking advantage of the quiet time I have at the office to cut apart magazines and prepare a delicious palette of tiny images for my daughter to work with should she ever find the time to sit down and make some of her designs.

In this process I found a pile of ‘used’ Oprah magazines at our local thrift store.  This is the first time I have ever opened one of those magazines — and quite frankly what I found inside appalled me though it did not surprise me.  For all the rumors in the wind I have heard about the ‘do good’ doings of this most-rich woman in America’s spotlight I found nothing in that magazine but continued promotion of the ‘be gorgeous’ make believe woman image in VERY expensive advertising.

Putting aside what I might think about anyone who devotes an entire magazine to their self, and putting aside what I think of anyone with that kind of money who doesn’t avidly reinvest it on the level of ‘who truly needs what for a better life’ down at the bottom of America’s society, I have to be honest and tell you that my motivation for writing a hell of a book with my hell of a childhood story of abuse in it is entirely (self) motivated by my not being responded to on Oprah’s website when I left two separate emails mentioning my story.

No response then, no response ever as far as I am concerned.  I can’t think of anything more delightful than for me to actually write a bestseller that attracts someone of Oprah’s staff, who then invites me onto the Oprah show — so that I can utter back one word and one word only:  Nope.

Now maybe if they were holding my grandson hostage I MIGHT not say “Nope,” but as that’s unlikely I am quite certain there is nothing, absolutely nothing on this blue and green earth of ours that could drag me anywhere near that woman.

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My point being — I can guarantee that no matter what abuse of what kind Oprah experienced during her childhood years, someone loved her — and someone from the instant she was born provided her with safe and secure attachment.

And I WILL be the one to say this:  That is all that really matters.

Without having safe and secure earliest caregiver interactions nobody’s body-nervous system-brain can grow a safe and secure attachment pattern in it.  Without these patterns, there is nothing EVER to be done about truly leaving one’s abuser(s) in the past.  The changes (the damage) is IN THE BODY of early abuse survivors because it was built in during development.

Now, I honestly don’t care one bit what Oprah’s abuse history is.  But I will bet everything I own (inventory sight unseen for any takers) that someone was there to help Oprah’s body-brain-mind-self form correctly during the first year (ESPECIALLY!) of her life.  Once that happens, every other trauma a person experiences for the rest of their lifetime will be processed in a different way than it will be by those whose earliest experiences were not safe and secure — with SOMEBODY.

On top of conception to birth, birth to age one, we have to consider next what happens to age two, and then through age five.  All of these experiences are building the body-nervous system-brain — step by step, foundation stone upon foundation stone.  I am not saying that childhood sexual abuse is not devastating, but processing the experience (any and ALL experience) is very different between those who had safe and secure earliest caregiver interactions and those who did not.

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Out of curiosity I did try to locate the cost of placing an advertisement in “O” for my book.  As far as I can tell the least expensive ad placement is well over $50,000.  Signed.  Sealed.  Delivered.  The answer to O-Oprah is “Nope.”

My ‘bone to pick’ with the O-Oprah Empire has to do with my concerns that NOT acknowledging the existence of resiliency factors of all kinds during early infant-child development depletes the truth of any claims for so-called ‘recovery’ – no matter who makes them.  All RISK factors are always balanced by RESILIENCY factors — not by magic, not by magical thinking, and not by the power of persuasion or suggestion by anyone who is a member of the Magic Kingdom — and I don’t mean Disney’s.

As long as our society does not acknowledge risk and resiliency factors equally, we will not come to the truth about how early infant-child abuse changes physiological development so that early abuse can create very different kinds of body-brains.  The HAVES don’t have to be grateful for what they DID receive on the resiliency side of their existence at the same time they can maintain and perpetrate the MYTH that ‘everyone can be as I am, do as I do’.

NOPE!

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+WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN GROWING – OR WE WOULDN’T BE HERE NOW

alchemynow1 Comment

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It stuck me this morning that maybe what I have always thought of as ‘healing’ really is something else, and that something else is growth.  Maybe it doesn’t even matter what I call it, just so I continue to experience it!  But if I think in terms of growth rather than healing, an entirely different set of images comes to mind — and a whole different set of metaphors, as well.

I have a little plant growing in a Styrofoam cup that my sister started from its seed and brought over to me a few months ago.  I have it right by my kitchen sink so I can keep my eye on it and notice when it is too dry and begins to wilt so that I can take good care of it.

This is a Mexican Bird of Paradise plant, but we won’t know which variety it is until it lives long enough to bloom.  Is it the hardier (for my altitude and climate) yellow one, or is it the more warmth-oriented red one?  I hope for red, but either way I admire that my sister was able to get this seed to sprout in the first place because doing so requires some special treatment.

I don’t know what actions my sister actually took, but I have heard that the seed must be pounded to crack its shell.  It is a desert native, so on its own the species has provided its offspring with some way to make it forward in the world.  I am just glad to have this little plant, and today I am going to move it into a bigger container, but I will still keep it where I won’t be likely to ignore its needs.

As I watch the little stems bud and lengthen I think about this healing vs growth idea of mine.  That plant isn’t healing, at least I wouldn’t name its process that.  I would say it is growing.  And as it grows I certainly cannot predict the shape it takes.  It’s growing in its own way although of course it depends on me to give it what it needs to do so.

Perhaps every single thing I have done in my life, and certainly as I try to ‘heal’ from the terrible trauma of 18 years of severe abuse from my mother as I grew a body-brain, was not and is not about healing.  Maybe it was simply about growing — then and now.

Somehow as I think about this growing angle rather than a healing one I feel less pressure to do ‘it’ right!  Certainly this little plant I am watching doesn’t care if it grows right or not.  It just does what it naturally does — and grows!  If it didn’t grow, it would die.  That’s a simplicity I can understand.

I have intuitively always found today’s emphasis on ‘recovery’ impossible to swallow.  Now I know that due to the circumstances of my early abusive environment that changed how my body-brain-mind-self developed I have nothing to go back and get — nothing to ‘recover’ unless I go all the way back to my body as it grew within my mother’s womb and try to find something back THERE that wasn’t permanently altered by my trauma-influenced development during all the stages after my birth.

I’m not going to be able to ever ‘go back there’ and recover any sense of being a safe and securely attached person in the world.  I didn’t get to grow and develop any safe and secure attachment patterns or circuitry into my body from the start.  As I recognize how my experiences changed my very body forever, I am also recognizing the patterns of my life that happened to the largest extent because my development WAS so changed in a malevolent environment of trauma.

Yes, I survived.  And yes, I have looked at what I do now as ‘healing’.  But I am beginning to think that I might just want to throw that word out completely as ‘not relevant’.  What I am doing is what everyone does who is breathing their way from one past moment, through a present one, and hopefully into a future.  I am growing.  Simply growing.

As I begin to think in this new way I understand that my growth is not always predictable.  I am often surprised by what ‘comes up’.  My new little leaf here, my new little root tip there, my branches extending off in this direction or that one.  Learning how to not only watch my own growth happen, but to begin to understand that I ONLY have to be willing to let it happen frees me to appreciate all the interesting twists and turns I have always taken along the way — throughout my life — from the moment I was born.

Looking at my life in terms of growth rather than healing might also change how I look at ‘surviving’.  Perhaps all that my survival really has been from the beginning is my growth.  I just continued to grow from the time I was born through horrific experiences in a very nasty environment.  Somehow I had and found what I needed to do my growing in spite of all of it!

I am free to anticipate all the interesting and clever ways my growth takes place each day.  And because I am my own little plant, I don’t have to compare myself to anyone else’s growth process, either.  If I can see and appreciate that what I needed for my continued growth was there for me from the start of my life, I can more easily appreciate that whatever I need to continue my growing is also right here, right now for me today.

Some good soil, a little water, just the right amount of sunlight, a little darkness at night, no weeds to crowd me out and nobody to trample on my little sprouting branches and I am all set to go.  If healing happens while I am busy growing, that’s OK with me.

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I suspect I need to pause to notice all this because I am preparing to go back into the past of my horrible childhood to retrieve my own story — so that I can write it.  I need to remember that I am never actually going backwards.  Growth is a forward affair.  No matter what crap I may encounter as I remember myself in my childhood, I know that all it can do is act as good fertilizer for the growth I am doing today.

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