Tag: trauma

+FALSE STARTS AND BLIND INNER PROMISES

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was running blind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+TRAUMA DRAMA REENACTMENTS CONTINUE IN AN UNSAFE AND INSECURE WORLD

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

I remember as a little girl living in the Los Angeles area being in the car when my parents passed road construction projects where steam rollers were being used.  I was fascinated by them, and even though of course I didn’t know it, it is very possible that my imagination recognized the metaphor contained within the actions of this monstrous piece of machinery that was designed specifically to roll over and completely flatten anything within its path.

My Mother the Steam Roller.  That’s just ONE of the things my mother was very good at:  flattening the life out of anyone in her way.  She flattened me, and I must have been aware of how effective my mother was at flattening my grandmother any time my grandmother tried in any way to say something or do something ‘nice’ for or about me.

Actually it never mattered WHO it was who might have tried to cross my mother.  My mother was a predatory fighter and could with ease flatten anyone within her family just like she was this piece of equipment — a steam roller.

++++

I will need to spend quite a bit of time eventually with the letter I posted last evening in +”GRANDMOTHER GETS A NEW CAR” – AND . . . . . because it contains so much information about my mother and her relationships with family.  From the stories my mother repeatedly told about how mean both her mother and her brother were to her in her childhood, I can see both of them also as if they were steam rollers who steam rolled right over my mother.  She was not empowered to fight back against them when she was young (even all the way into her teens).

But what a way to live.  What a way to CONTINUE to live, always being at war with those a person is supposed to feel most safe and secure with, most loved and cherished and cared about by.  I found myself thinking as I dug my way through the transcription of my mother’s words last night, “Is EVERYONE’S family like mine?  Does everyone have patterns of insecure attachment, of trouble and pain, sorrow and suffering, of war and inner emotional blackmail, hostage-taking, kidnapping of the soul, brutalization of the imagination, blocking and distortion of gifts and talents, destruction of relationships that my entire family and its history seems to have contained within it?

That led me to wondering how many people read on this blog with the words, “That could have happened in my family” ringing in their thoughts?  Different times, different participants, different versions of trauma drama, but trauma drama and terribly insecure human-to-human attachments just the same.

++++

It might seem like an odd connection, but this information is not randomly dragged into this post.  If you Google search for the terms ‘Israel genetics dance’ you will find some amazing research about the new discoveries about how there IS a genetic link between ‘professional dancers’ and their genes evidently related to this very ancient human activity –DANCE.

I mention this in connection with my mother’s letter I posted last night because I wish I could discover research about genetics and drama like I accidentally discovered the research about genetics and dance.  If there truly IS a genetic ‘loading’ for dramatic abilities just as there is for dancing, then I would suspect that my mother, as the amazing trauma drama specialist that she was, had those genes.

After all, human expression through gesture and sound, movement and pantomime, and reenactment of experience belongs to our species way back to our ancient beginnings – way back to before we had the ability to speak to one another with anything like a word.  Stories were transmitted, told, expressed, conveyed in all kinds of ways without words, and today we STILL watch this happen or participate in these trauma dramas if we happen to have been born into a family where the WORDS expressing the truth about trauma resounded in their empty silence.

++++

This leads me to the important insight that came to me last night about the trauma drama reenactment patterns in my mother’s life as they operated around her nearly continual moving around.  I have noted before that I think my mother projected ‘imaginary friends’ and ‘the imaginary enemy (me)’ onto her children.  She resonated with her infants as being her play baby dolls.  But what I didn’t GET until last night as I transcribed the letter I posted is that IN HER MOVING SHE WAS PLAYING HOUSE.

I had a “Duh, Linda!” moment!  Of COURSE that’s what she was doing.  I only SAW this last night because I was working my way through a collection of letters I had saved separately in a ziplock bag throughout the years that I have been ordering and organizing my mother’s collection of writings.  As I’ve mentioned before, it strikes me as being so unbelievably strange that all the while my mother wrote these letters over the years she ALWAYS intended to ‘put them into a book’.  Yet NEVER did she actually DATE a single one of them!

Often she put the day of the week on the letter, and most letters are at least contained in an original envelope with a post mark.  But this ziplock bag collection contained letters and parts of letters that had NO indication of date for me to work with.  I had to wait until the entire body of my mother’s letters was put into the best order I could make of them before I could add these letters into the newly coherent story I am forming of my mother’s words (and of her offspring’s childhood).

So, the letter that I posted last night was one of these ‘floating’ letters.  As I added it into the main body of the sort-of-coherent story of my mother’s life contained in her letters, I was FINALLY able to GET IT.

If you were to read through this collection of letters as I have transcribed them thus far (and there still might be missing letters to add into these files), you will see the pattern of my mother’s playing-house-by-constant-moving-around that I am talking about:

While I am not going back at this moment for the exact late June-early July letters where she begins to tell my father that she is moving herself and four children out of the one-room motel living situation into a rental house that she found in Glendora, you will see those letters as they describe her ‘playing house psychosis’.

She describes how she can NOW make a temporary cozy home (meaning safe and secure for herself) in that rented house.  But it doesn’t take long after she’s managed to accomplish the MOVE itself into that house that her whole fantasy begins to disintegrate, crumble and fall apart.  As this begins to happen my mother summons – as she ALWAYS did no matter WHAT household move trauma drama she was enacting – all the supposedly LOGICALLY BASED reasons why she HAS to make the move.

As readers it is time to take our stand and begin to understand that my mother’s madness was NEVER about logical reason.  My mother was not reason-able.  At least in this letter I posted of hers last night she is able to plead with and beg my father to help her.  Most often she so completely disguised her ‘mission’ that she fooled even my supposedly ‘reason-able’ father to move right along with her.

Because (even though I lived through 18 years of moving with my parents) I ONLY saw the pattern last night of the Fairy Tale nature of my mother’s PLAYING HOUSE with her imaginary friends, enemies (which came to include members of her family and other people other than just me), and doll babies exactly as I dropped this very important letter I was transcribing into its ‘coherency slot’ within her story I can finally say, “I get the whole picture.”

Human beings are born with the genetic capability to use our specie’s dramatic imagination in the process of becoming people who live within a massive web of drama that includes all of life.  We are supposed to develop a stable-self-core that allows us to make good sense of the constant interactions that are going on as we are forming within our earliest caregiver-attachment environments.

When these interactions, when our earliest body-brain forming attachment environment is malevolent, the nature of trauma drama begins to form itself into the patterns of our body-brain – and therefore into the life we live.  We can ‘clinicalize’ and ‘sanitize’ and ‘legitimize’ how we choose to talk about the end results of forming a body-brain-self-life within malevolent early environments, but in the end we are simply being prepared in a trauma-drama world to live a trauma-drama reenactment life – UNTIL WE LEARN THE LESSONS THE TRAUMA IS TRYING TO TEACH OUR ENTIRE SPECIES, not ‘just’ the individual members who ‘play the parts’ in this great drama that is the ongoing life of our species.

A trauma drama life is not a coherent one if the lessons contained within the drama itself are never learned.  It is only as we learn these lessons that words can begin to dissipate the vague fog of illusion that envelope the ongoing dramas themselves.

My very young mother, already as an infant being neglected if not also abused, was left isolated and all alone in a world with her dolls and her story books to try to figure out what SHE and her life – as well as that of other people – meant and how it all fit together.  Yet when I think about how in our specie’s ancient beginnings there were no warnings about keeping children away from the ongoing reenactments of trauma drama that the other members of our ‘family’ and ‘tribe’ were demonstrating, I realize that there is no corresponding magical line within the human brain-psyche that says ‘this dramatic reenactment belongs to childhood’ and ‘this dramatic reenactment belongs to adulthood’.

All the story telling and story acting belongs to the same mythic imagination that IS human life.  The psychologist Carl Jung might have divided the main characters in human drama into what he called archetypes, but in the end all the individual parts that CAN be played by humans in human drama simply either act themselves out in ongoing dramas OR are talked about in ongoing stories.

The evolutionary advantage for our entire species is the same one that operates for us each as individuals:  Trauma has something to teach us.  If the lessons are not learned they will continue to act themselves out until somebody ‘gets it’.  The GETTING of the lessons of trauma happen when we get to the more evolutionary advanced level of being able to USE WORDS to convey to our own self and to others what the traumas ARE and what they are teaching us.

++++

In the case of my mother – as I am now quite convinced is the case for every single human being – the MAIN theme of every drama and story of our life is about how safe and secure the world is for us to be living in.  The ongoing drama-story of our life IS about degrees of safe and secure attachment in the world – or degrees of its opposite.  The kicker is, though, that the messages are NEVER JUST meant either for the individual people who endured and survived traumas, or even for the immediate peer generation that individual is a part of.

The messages of degrees of trauma, of degrees of safe and secure attachment to and within the world are telling about the STATE OF THE WORLD, the condition of the external environment because it is THAT state of the world that the future generations are going to be left to survive in and better know something about.

We have to learn how to ‘read’ trauma and the dramatic reenactments trauma creates when it remains unresolved.  In its unresolved state the critical information about continued survival of the individual AND the species to which it belongs is NOT being understood.  Without learning something from trauma about survival the trauma will simply continue to be included in the patterns of life itself as these patterns repeat themselves like persistent and obvious nightmares until somebody pays attention.

++++

Nobody looked from the outside (or from the inside) at the patterns of trauma drama that unfolded within my family of origin and recognized what was going on.  Nobody said, “Gee, that family moves around too much, what’s wrong?”  Nobody said, “Gee, those children are not happy, what’s wrong?”  Nobody said, “Boy, that one little girl named Linda is the absolute picture of being lost, frightened and forlorn, what’s wrong?”

Nobody pierced through the smokescreen illusion of make-believe justification for all of the abuse, all of the moves, all of the madness that WAS the trauma-drama reenactment that WAS our family’s life.  Did any of it matter?  Did it matter that lives were being flattened within my family?  Did it matter that potential for joy, health, self-directed expression of talent and potential for a lifetime of well-being had been destroyed and continued to be destroyed within the horrible trauma drama reenactment that WAS our family?

No, evidently it didn’t matter.  Nobody saw any reason to pay attention, ask any questions, become involved, find a way to STOP what was going on.  It evidently wasn’t anyone else’s business.

But if we think we want to help prevent and STOP infant and child abuse we will have to cross that imaginary line between giving a damn and not giving a damn about the messages that trauma drama reenactments continue to convey within child-abusing — within ANY abusing — environments.  We have to allow ourselves to understand that the messages contained in these traumatic dramas are for ALL of us, not only for those who are captive within them.

The messages trauma conveys are ALWAYS about the degrees of safety, security and well-being that exist in the whole world, and are NOT SIMPLY messages about the conditions within any single family.  The human drama, the good and the bad of it, involve and belong to every member of our species.  Trauma itself is like a steam roller smashing the joy and well-being out of every member of every generation that remains in its path until somebody, somewhere, at some time FINALLY notices, pays attention and reads the signals contained within the trauma drama reenactments that tell us all what is WRONG in the world so that we can ALL do something to make what is WRONG in the world we all share  – well, quite simply, RIGHT.

This healing will not happen unless and until we find and use WORDS to think about and to talk about what needs to be changed to end as many traumas as we can so that we can make everyone’s world a safer and more secure place to be throughout everyone’s life span.  Is this too much to hope for, too much to ask for?

Nope.

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

+IN THIS 1957 LETTER – THE WORDS MY FATHER WROTE ABOUT HIS MOTHER

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

It seems easier to focus my search light for understanding on my mother’s earliest beginnings in my efforts to see if I can learn anything useful about how she ‘got made’ to be the Borderline abusive mother that she was rather than spend the same effort looking at my father’s early beginnings.

Part of this neglect on my part of attention to my father’s early history is that we did not have his family AT ALL in our childhoods as we had my mother’s mother.

I’m not going to go into detail about this right now, but did just find this statement my father made about his parents – and his mother – in this June 17, 1957 letter he wrote to my mother.  Evidently my mother had definitely had ‘words’ with my father’s parents, and my father states here that he supports my mother:

“I wrote a note to my parents yesterday.  I told them I wasn’t sorry for anything you said to them, that my only regret was that I’d failed to do it myself a long time ago.  Don’t think that I have any idea of making up to them – I simply wanted to put them straight.  I don’t want them to have any idea that this was your doing.  I think that woman has things just the way she wants them and to H – with her!”

In considering the profoundly critical influence that mothers (and other early caregivers) have on infant-child body-brain development – including attachment patterns – these words my father wrote seem to indicate that he DID NOT have a warm, easy, loving, caring attachment relationship with either of his parents – including his mother.

What influence did my father’s mother have on the way he developed that led eventually to my father’s ability to be such a ‘perfect match’ for such the abusive and ‘unstable’ woman that my mother was?  I would have to include a lot of thinking in my forensic autobiographical study to try to figure out as specifically as I might be able to – what on earth happened early on during his development TO MY FATHER that made him so willing and able to support my mother no matter what she EVER did – during all the years of my childhood (and beyond, though he finally divorced her after 37 years of marriage).

I am too tired to go off on THAT search.  But neither could I ignore my father’s words in this 1957 letter I am transcribing today…..

[We do know that my father’s only brother and his only sister both died of alcoholism as did my father’s father.  How happy could his mother have been?  In 1990 my father told me that while he was growing up his mother never left her house except for required shopping and never had anyone come over to visit.  I strongly suspect depression – and if she was depressed from the time my father was born (he was not a wanted child), her depression would have greatly impacted my father’s body-brain development.]

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

+DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED INSECURE ATTACHMENT – AT THE CORE OF ‘BORDERLINE’

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

When I wrote my reply to the comment at the end of my last post, saying that with my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder I feel BETTER when I am outside organizing the dirt in my yard, feel better when I am oriented during daylight hours with my massive adobe yard project – I meant exactly what I said.

Now I had to take off my sweaty gloves and stand my shovel up against the tree so I could take a little break and come in here to my computer to write these words:

While I am not a ‘professional expert’ and cannot make any statements of fact about insecure attachments or Borderline Personality Disorder unless I dig around to find what the ‘legitimate’ researchers are saying about both conditions, I do know an awful lot about my dead Borderline mother and about myself as the survivor of her 18 years of terrible abuse.

While I believe it is possible to have a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment ‘disorder’, or pattern set within the very early developing infant-child body-brain WITHOUT ending up with the particular constellation of physiological body-brain patterns that we name Borderline Personality Disorder, I believe that EVERY Borderline HAS a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment ‘disorder’-pattern built within their body-brain.

I do not believe it is incorrect to say that Borderlines suffer with the following (please follow these active links for the source of these words):

“The Abandonment Wound in and of Borderline Personality Disorder

At the heart of Borderline Personality Disorder lies abandonment. Abandonment trauma, abandonment depression, abandonment fears, and the deep and most primal narcissistic intra-psychic injury a human being can ever hope to survive – the core wound of abandonment.”

I do, however, believe that the best hope for understanding the dynamics of this kind of wounding and the best hope for healing is naming this ‘disorder’ by the closest name we REALLY have for it – a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder.

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

I am becoming more clear every moment I am alive now about how my attachment disorder creates the patterns by which I organize and orient my self.  This serious attachment disorder, I believe, originates when early caregiver interactions harm a developing infant-child in an unsafe and insecure attachment environment so that the development of a healthy, stable, whole autonomous SELF cannot possibly happen.  Rather than being organized and oriented within our own body-brain with good strong super highways of information flow back and forth between the world and our SELF, we pattern our lives by attaching to person, places, things, and processes that we can ASSOCIATE with rather than DISSOCIATE from.

Through this process we create our ongoing existence as we find meaning in our life.  This is what my mother did as she organized and oriented herself around her babies and children (for good and for bad), around her super housewife activities, around ‘friends’ and ‘neighbors’ who she first loved and then hated, around her husband, around the many, many locations she moved herself to – including Alaska and ‘her’ mountain homestead.

But my mother had no ability to consciously reflect upon her insecure attachment disorder.  I can now see how this same disorganized-disoriented attachment works within my own self, but I cannot make myself WELL.  Fortunately I manage to not harm others.  Fortunately I can turn my need to connect to my version of a self through work with my hands – organizing cut strips of cloth into crocheted rugs, organizing shards of old dishes I find in the abandoned city dump into mosaics, organizing letters on my keyboard into lines of text, and by organizing the dirt in my yard so that I can then organize little plants out there that I will orient myself to take care of.

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

It is, then, this disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment ‘disorder-pattern’ that I was forced into developing within my own infant-child growing body-brain as I survived my mother’s terrible abuse of me that I ‘inherited’ from her (with my father’s involvement in her abuse).  Yet while I have this insecure attachment as she did, complete with all the dissociations and re-associations that it brings, I did not develop the patterns of Borderline Personality Disorder within my growing body-brain as she did.

I am very lucky, more fortunate than words can ever possibly tell, that this did not happen to me.  At the same time my life of well-being was ‘stolen’ from me, just as my mother’s was.  Until we actually NAME the insecure attachment patterns that are at the physiological foundation of Borderline Personality Disorder, I do not believe we can truly address the source-cause of BPD or recognize the damage it does to the offspring of these parents.

I can at least tell that people exist as entities unto their own self.  My mother could not do this.  She could not detect where the ‘borderline’ was that keeps people separate from one another.  She could not keep her continual and massive projections within her own mind out of the world around her.  We ALL need to understand what this really means, because it matters.

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

+INFANT-CHILD ABUSE: WE NEVER STOP TRYING TO HEAL

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

If there’s one thing I have learned from my work with words it is that if words have something they want to say they will not only haunt me, they will swarm around inside of my head like a cloud of busy, nasty gnats that will pester me continually until I write them down.  Who am I to argue?  I have some errands to run and I need to leave the house and go into town, but before I do I choose to give these words their say.

For the resource-hungry among you, I am thinking this morning about something I read in the writings of Dr. Diana Fosha a few years back.  Without taking the time at this moment to explain what her Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy is all about, I will simply suggest that you follow these active links as well as do a Google search about the work that Dr. Fosha is involved in.

What my words want to say this morning is that when Dr. Fosha says that human beings ALWAYS know deep inside of their self at their core what they need to heal and how they need to do it – like we instinctively know which way to tip a picture hanging at a crooked angle on the wall to straighten it out – when early infant-child trauma, neglect and abuse change the way a person’s body-nervous system-brain-mind-self develops from the start, well, we can simply lose ‘our way’.

In the grand picture of life, my mother did no more and no less than any other living organism, on their most basic, fundamental cellular level will do.  Everything my mother did was in effort to correct something within her that was wrong so that she could make it right.  In other words, taken from this perspective, all of life only has one choice if it is going to continue on being alive:  HEAL or DIE.

When I wrote the other day about the human specie’s opioid system as it is designed to help us form our required life-sustaining attachment systems (see post:  +FEELING GOOD AND A FULL TOILET TANK) I wasn’t joking.  Being born as a healthy infant into an early safe and secure attachment caregiving environment means that when we have a need someone appears to help us so that the blissful state that is innately ours (when our opioid system’s receptors are full) is continually reinstated.  That, to me, is what heaven on earth is all about no matter how we want to think about it.

When early attachments to caregivers are NOT safe and secure, something changes inside of our body as we develop and, as Dr. Allen Schore describes, our inner SET POINT that is supposed to be developed to return us to a state of balanced equilibrium and calm (what I call bliss) simply never gets formed in the right way or at the right ‘place’.

So when a survivor of the kind of early experiences during development doesn’t get this calm center set point, it doesn’t mean that the body won’t continually try to balance itself out, anyway.  This, to me, is the fundamental task of any immune system.  A continual, never-ending quest for healing in ones lifetime will happen, but unless there is enough of the right information, healing itself will not happen.

My mother’s life followed this pathway.  Everything she did, although of course she had no way of knowing it, was in some way related to her physiological need to reach this calm, safe and secure balance point of inner equilibrium that was denied her in her earliest development.

I have some things to do right now, so hopefully letting these words line themselves up in order across these pages will be enough to stop them from pestering me for awhile.

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

+OWNING THE BURDENS CREATED BY CHILD ABUSE

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

I’ve been thinking about my mother all morning as I worked out in the heat adding onto my adobe walkway.  I am trying to define my feelings about her and about her life.  I thought about ‘pity’, ‘compassion’ and ‘regret’.  I can’t become clear about my feelings or define them until I understand more about what these three words actually mean in our language.

I have always shied away from using the word ‘pity’ even in my thinking because, to me, the word has a tinge of a self-righteousness, a stance and perspective that I consider to be connected to a personal shortcoming rather than to an asset.  I looked this word up online and Webster’s defines the word this way:

PITY

Etymology: Middle English pite, from Anglo-French pité, from Latin pietat-, pietas piety, pity, from pius pious

Date: 13th century

1 a : sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy b : capacity to feel pity
2 : something to be regretted <it’s a pity you can’t go>

synonyms pity, compassion, commiseration, condolence, sympathy

++

With this clarification I can tell that my concern about taking a ‘self-righteous’ perspective IS tied to how I feel about ‘piety’ and ‘pious’ in general.  I don’t like either of those words for some reason I can’t quite grasp.  Yet words by themselves do not contain either negative or positive.  What is it about this word that causes me to want to shudder and run?

PIOUS

Etymology: Middle English, from Latin pius

Date: 15th century

1 a : marked by or showing reverence for deity and devotion to divine worship b : marked by conspicuous religiosity <a hypocrite—a thing all pious words and uncharitable deeds — Charles Reade>
2 : sacred or devotional as distinct from the profane or secular : religious <a pious opinion>
3 : showing loyal reverence for a person or thing : dutiful
4 a : marked by sham or hypocrisy b : marked by self-conscious virtue : virtuous
5 : deserving commendation : worthy <a pious effort>

++

The word ‘pious’ is a young word in our English language, and no doubt directly entered our cultural awareness through the influence of ‘the church’.  Knowing my mother’s focal obsession with ‘good versus evil’ was also tied in some vague yet powerful way with ideas contained in Christian religion does not make me eager to embrace this concept.

Yet while the definition of ‘pity’ does coincide with the thoughts I have been having about my mother and her life today, it is not a word that ‘rings true’ to me about how I feel in response to her and her life today.  So I will look further into this synonym for ‘pity’:

COMPASSION

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French or Late Latin; Anglo-French, from Late Latin compassion-, compassio, from compati to sympathize, from Latin com- + pati to bear, suffer — more at patient

Date: 14th century

: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it

synonyms see pity

++

This word, ‘patient’ did come into my thoughts as I sloshed wet mud into my adobe mold this morning.  I don’t know which way this word is connected to compassion – as a suffering ‘patient’ or as one who needs to ‘be more patient’?

When this word appeared in my thoughts it was connected to my thinking that nobody who has not suffered infant and/or child abuse can EVER really have a clue what ‘it’ is.  Most people in our culture have some sort of understanding about what ‘child abuse’ is, and yet if anyone had ever asked my mother or my father if there was ‘child abuse’ going on in their home they would have said “NO!”  If anyone had asked my mother’s mother if ‘child abuse’ ever happened to my mother, she would have also said “NO!”

My thinking about how ‘everyone’ assumes that they know what child abuse is at the same time that those who are committing child abuse are mostly NOT EVER going to accept the reality of the abuse they commit led me to the word ‘patient’.

The ONLY way the truth about what child abuse IS will be really KNOWN is if the public LISTENS to what infant-child abuse survivors have to say.  Yet there’s even a very big problem with THIS approach.  Just as child abuse perpetrators are not likely to NAME or OWN the abuse they commit against children, MANY, MANY infant abuse and child abuse survivors are not going to NAME what happened to them, either.

My mother certainly NEVER used ‘child abuse’ in her description of what happened to her in her infancy and childhood.  Do we think if we don’t NAME infant and ‘child abuse’ that IT NEVER REALLY HAPPENED?

This line of thinking led me again to the word ‘patient’ in terms of how ‘patient’ the public needs to be in supportive and affirming ways so that those who have OBVIOUSLY suffered greatly from ‘child abuse’ can be encouraged to KNOW the reality of what happened to them in their childhood, and to speak about it!

Now I wonder about someone who is sick, injured, wounded and is a ‘patient’.  What does this word actually mean?

PATIENT

Adjective

Etymology: Middle English pacient, from Anglo-French, from Latin patient-, patiens, from present participle of pati to suffer; perhaps akin to Greek pēma suffering

Date: 14th century

1 : bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint
2 : manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain
3 : not hasty or impetuous
4 : steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity
5 a : able or willing to bear —used with of b : susceptible, admitting <patient of one interpretation

Noun

Date: 14th century

1 a : an individual awaiting or under medical care and treatment b : the recipient of any of various personal services
2 : one that is acted upon

++

WOW!  How many ‘child abuse’ survivors had any choice BUT to bear the pains and trials of their lives ‘calmly’ and ‘without complaint’?  Did we have any choice other than to ‘manifest forbearance under provocation and strain’?  We could not act hastily or impetuously in any way that would have altered the course of our abusive childhoods.  We could not speed our childhood up like fast-forwarding a movie so that we could escape our abuse any sooner.

We had no choice but to be ‘steadfast despite opposition, difficulty and adversity’.  We HAD TO BE ABLE AND WILLING TO BEAR our suffering from what was done to us.  The alterative would have been death.  And, yes, we were turned into ‘patients awaiting care’.  We were wounded, hurt and suffering from the ways that those who had power over us ‘acted upon us’ – in the opposite of a healing way.  And we sure were not ‘recipients of any personal services’ that would have helped us.

++

This topic is obviously ABOUT suffering:

SUFFER

Etymology: Middle English suffren, from Anglo-French suffrir, from Vulgar Latin *sufferire, from Latin sufferre, from sub- up + ferre to bear — more at sub-, bear

Date: 13th century

Which goes directly to what we had to ‘bear’:

BEAR

Etymology: Middle English beren to carry, bring forth, from Old English beran; akin to Old High German beran to carry, Latin ferre, Greek pherein

Date: before 12th century

++

There’s the old word – ‘bear’ – literally in its roots connected to carrying.  And that IS what we did.  As I have mentioned over time the afflictions caused to us by infant and child abuse actually built themselves into our body as we grew and developed and changed us.

But what I am thinking about today is  the difference between silently carrying what happened to us – often while we don’t even KNOW the truth ourselves about the infant and child abuse we suffered – versus KNOWING the truth, having words for the truth so that we can, as survivors think thoughts in words and communicate our truth about our abuse to others and to our perpetrators if appropriate.

If I think about my mother and her life in terms of ‘patient’, she was patient until her dying breath.  She bore and carried what had happened to her as an infant-child and to my knowledge NEVER was able to KNOW the truth.  This kind of continued patience, a pattern set up early, early in life, does not help a person to heal.  It helps them to become an increasingly ‘sick’ and suffering patient who cannot ask for or receive the healing help they most need to ‘get better’.

As hard as it might sometimes be for me to understand that what my mother did to me was caused by what was done to her, I want to understand that all my mother truly knew in her lifetime was suffering.  Her suffering increased with every breath she ever took, and led to her terrible suffering at death.  As for me, I would rather ‘suffer while I bear the burden of compassion for my mother’ than not.

My personal mission is to KNOW what happened to both her and me – to give this knowledge words – and to encourage every single person who suffers from infant abuse and child abuse and the burden this abuse creates to speak their truth while the rest of us patiently listen.

This process, to me, is where ‘child abuse’ prevention begins.

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

REGRET

Etymology: Middle English regretten, from Anglo-French regreter, from re- + -greter (perhaps of Germanic origin; akin to Old Norse grāta to weep) — more at greet

Date: 14th century

transitive verb 1 a : to mourn the loss or death of b : to miss very much
2 : to be very sorry for <regrets his mistakes>intransitive verb : to experience regret

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

+ASSESS OR DIAGNOSE?

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

Why do the ‘experts’ diagnose an individual while they ‘assess’ a family?  Is the distinguishing factor a cultural assumption-belief that a family is made up of autonomous individuals?  Wrong.  Everyone one of us is formed from our start within an environment that influenced our development, and in severely infant-child abusing families it is obvious to me that the abusing parent is ‘spilling over’ into their child’s ‘personal space’ as the autonomy of the child is left out of the developmental story.  If all children were treated like autonomous people all their universal rights would be respected and met, which is obviously so NOT the case when infant-child abuse happens.

I do not believe healthy autonomy exists within unsafe, insecurely attached abusive human relationships and environments that condone abuse.  If abuse is allowed to happen at all, as far as I am concerned it is being condoned:  Allowed = condone.

I do not believe that when considering and/or dealing with MOST so-called ‘mental illnesses’ that we can have it both ways.  We cannot ‘diagnose’ individuals without ‘diagnosing’ the family that formed that individual.  If we are not willing to accept THIS as reality, then we better ‘assess’ individuals while we ‘assess’ the family that formed them.

In my view, assessment is the direction that offers the most factual and realistic opportunity to affect true HEALING.  All other approaches to most ‘mental illness’ problems — which includes abuse because I believe abuse only happens as an expression of ‘mental illness’  — address ‘symptoms’ without assessing or addressing actual cause.

We can continue to believe the old myth and fallacy that ‘mental illness’ is genetic.  Genes manifest themselves through epigenetic processes that happen when our genetic-expression ‘machinery’ detects a need for a body to adapt to a particular kind of environment.  Our genetic well-being (and therefore our overall well-being) is thus directly tied to the conditions of ill-being or well-being of the environment that forms us – during every instant of our lifetime.

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

If we were to listen to the best orchestra in the world play the most complex and beautiful song we can imagine (assuming the piece appeals to our cultural tastes), what we would be listening to in any ongoing instant of time is simply a reflection of what has ‘happened in the past’ as it transfers into ‘what is happening in the present’.  Because we would have no reason to be listening along as a part of this musical experience while at the same time anticipating any abrupt STOP in the music in the middle of the song doesn’t mean that all possibilities for what COULD or MIGHT happen in the future don’t exist.

If we included in our symphony experience a conscious awareness of the nearly unbelievable history that has led up to this moment in time, we would be overwhelmed.  All of the billions of decisions that led to our specific birth as listeners, the decisions that were made back in time that led to the existence of every musician, of everyone who made every instrument we are listening to, who wrote the songs, how this ‘event’ was able to exist because ‘it got put together’ is not something we often include in our conscious awareness.  Our excluding of these thoughts and the information they might relate to does not mean that ALL that information is not a part of what we experience.

If we are going to simply say that so-called ‘mental illness’ is a result of ‘bad genes’ we are excluding vast amounts of information related to what we think we are talking about in a very similar way.

If we think about information in a familiar framework today, we can think about binary code.  Because life as we know it, including our own, actually happens on an atomic and molecular basis where information is transmitted through electrical signals and pulses of information, all we come down to is the equivalent of binary code.

If we think about our entire history as a species, our entire specie’s story of our life here on earth as being contained within our DNA, we only have one part of the story.  Somehow this story is continuing on and we each have our part in it.

While DNA contains the story of our past, it is the DNA’s ‘middle people’ that transform the story of the past into the story of the present.  I don’t know exactly HOW this happens, of course.  In fact, there are probably only a very few researchers alive today who are beginning to detect the truth about how our epigenetic processes work.

Right now it is assumed that epigenetic mechanisms are able to detect conditions within the environment so that these mechanisms can tell our DNA genetic codes how to combine with one another, how to operate, and how to express the DNA information.

Right now it is assumed that even though the epigenetic changes that happen in one generation can be passed down through successive generations (and often are), it is believed that these changes are NOT changing our DNA – or our human story.

BUT it is also becoming known that it is probably true that if the conditions that created patterns of change in DNA expression — as contained in the epigentic changes of DNA communication about the environment and hence in our DNA’s expression — remain in existence long enough, our DNA might very well EVENTUALLY change in adaptation.

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

This means to me that unlike my symphony image, being human means that the ongoing song-story that we are a part of CAN and DOES change as it goes along, and these changes can be passed down the generations through epigenetic processes that very well MIGHT and CAN change the very essence of our specie’s story within our DNA.

I am coming to understand that this ENTIRE PROCESS is about attachment.  In a great, safe and secure world full of plenty and without toxicity, our epigenetic ‘middle people’ do not have to instruct our DNA to make extreme changes to adapt to trauma.  This version of the picture happens when attachment can happen within a benevolent world.

On the other hand, when attachment is unsafe and insecure within a malevolent environment, our epigentic ‘middle people’ have a much bigger job to do.  They have to tell our DNA about these hostile and malevolent conditions in our environment so our DNA can change its expression to best ensure ongoing life IN SPITE of the traumas and difficulties present.

Playing in an orchestra with well constructed instruments that do not break to pieces in the middle of a song is one thing.  But if, all of a sudden, every instrument develops some kind of critical ailment, the song is going to CHANGE drastically as a result.

If all the instruments remain intact and fine, but suddenly some mysterious sneezing gas is released into the musical arena, the song that was playing is going to change itself, also.

We cannot afford to pretend that the exact conditions of our earliest developmental environment does not profoundly influence the way our DNA manifests itself.  Just because the potential exists of a beautiful song does not mean that within conditions of some environments that beautiful song will NOT be played.

Serious attachment difficulties in early human relationships are obviously far worse than sneezing gas sneezes.  But we have to realize that the nature and quality of our earliest attachment experiences directly communicate to the growing and developing human body-brain what the condition of the world ACTUALLY is – and what it is going to be like in the future.

Our entire physiological systems are designed to tell us – just as clearly as if they were receiving instructions in binary code – what is to be approached and included as life-sustaining in our lifetime along with what is to be avoided and excluded because it is NOT life-sustaining in our lifetime.

This is ATTACHMENT information:  Attach to the good and healthy, do not attach to the bad and unhealthy.

This all begins to be orchestrated (actually from before our conception) through our earliest HUMAN attachment interactions.  In environments of unsafe and insecure early attachment relationships the growing body-brain is fed the information that the world AS A WHOLE is not a good, healthy place to attach within or to!  Epigenetic changes then happen and development is correspondingly altered.  Our DNA code is told about these difficult conditions by our genetic ‘middle people’ – and VOILA!  Changes happen that are as difficult to live with as was the original environment that caused them to happen in the first place.

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

Discovering what the range of these changes is can be done either through what we call ‘diagnosis’ or through what we call ‘assessment’.  In the end, we are talking about the same process of identifying what was WRONG in the earliest attach-to-the-world environment that led to these changes happening in the first place.

But we cannot POSSIBLY talk about either ‘diagnosing’ or ‘assessing’ any individual person while we separate their difficulties from the environment that influenced the entire development of all aspects of their body from the start.

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

+SILLY EGG IMAGES AND PARENTING – CONTINUED

alchemynow2 Comments

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

Well, at least I slept last night, though I woke numerous times with odd thoughts in my head!  One of them is related to parenting and eggs.  How?  Think:  Pickled Eggs.

If I picture the early caregiving environment an infant-child is born into as being ‘trauma-toxic’, and then think about pickling eggs, I can better picture how the effects of early trauma changes a little tiny developing body-brain in parallel ways to how soaking an egg in vinegar (with or without spices) will completely change an egg!

Not the same kind of eggs!

When I woke up from whatever odd dream about parents and eggs that I was having last night, I also ‘saw’ one of those nifty hardboiled egg slicers.  If I were to peel a pickled egg and an unpickled egg, and then submit their nice oval shape to the effects of an egg slicer, I would find that what the environment did to the egg completely permeates its constitution.  While the eggs would still equally be eggs, they would be very much changed from one another through and through.

How early maltreatment, trauma, neglect, abuse can stimulate trauma-altered early development is very much like this process.  In cases like my mother’s was, the changes that her body went through in her earliest development (certainly from birth through the age of six) completely changed her through and through.  By the end, nothing was left of her original egg-self.  Influences from her early environment, which also affected the way her genetic code manifested itself, resulted in an entirely different egg-self – through and through.

When I refer to MY mother as ‘My Borderline Mother’ I am referring to this fact.  I had a trauma-changed mother.  If I look at what I know about her very, very closely, I can see the true-egg part of my mother present in her love of the natural world.  That part of who she was born as was not lost.  That part of who she was, I believe, existed so close to the core of who she was that nothing (no one) could change that, in the same way that all the maltreatment my mother did to me never took away from me my love of nature, of plants, of beauty, or of artistic expression through creative use of my hands.

Trauma in infant-childhood CAN and DOES create body-brain changes in development that last a lifetime!

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

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

alchemynow4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

(4)  BPD most often involves an insecure attachment disorder

(5) BPD affects memory

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

– their brain’s self-referencing resting default mode

– their ability to regulate emotion

–  their ability to experience empathy for others

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

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

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

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

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

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

(10)  BPD can involve delusional disorders and dissociation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment posted by reader to:  MY BORDERLINE MOM

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post or not I am okay either way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

++++

Prevalence:

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

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

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

+SILENT TRUTH – MISSING FROM MY PARENTS’ 29,000 WORDS IN THEIR JUNE 1957 LETTERS

alchemynowLeave a comment

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

Having just completed the transcription of the nearly 29,000 words contained in the *JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER I now face the most difficult task of all.  Do I do what I suggest in the title I have found for the collection of my essays if I ever publish them, “Breaking the Silence that Binds,” or do I let the silence of the words NOT written in my parents’ letters remain intact?

First of all, I know about the silence because I was there, and because 53 years later I can feel that silence now.  I know I feel it, because it upsets me.  “How dare I speak about what I know?”  “DARE” is a word my mother frequently used against her children, especially me.  “How DARE you look at me that way?”  “How DARE you – blah – blah – blah…..?”

How DARE I, 53 years later, speak my own truth about what I know about what went on in my family?  Well, do I dare?  Can I dare?  Will I dare?  It’s as if I stand at a silent, invisible boundary line at which I need to summon my courage, my willingness, my commitment to my own self (and to those who suffered abuse within a family similar to mine), and all of my ability to differentiate myself from both of my parents so that I CAN break this binding silence contained within these letters.

“Dive in, Linda.  What is most troubling you?”  I find it hard to think at this moment.  It’s like I am at the center of a powerful vacuum that sucks all my thoughts along with my whole version of my own reality away from me.  How do I begin?  I will simply locate the passages within my mother’s writing that I need to use my voice about.

++++

I can feel my fear.  I can feel the inner experience of DARING to challenge my mother, even now, all these 53 years later.  Where are my thoughts?  Where are my words?

First, there are seeds of my truth within these words from mother’s June 12, 1957 Wednesday letter to my father:

“Darling I can’t stand being away from you.  I must be with you.  I’ll never let anyone separate us again.  Never, never, not even the Army – oh darling, I love you.

We loved your letter and cards.  Linda didn’t get one – I hope you didn’t forget, I know you wouldn’t.  I gave her mine.  They were so proud and happy.  Come to think of it mornings and afternoons aren’t so bad, but far from good.  But from 4:00 on I am SICK!!  All this I’ve heard of mind over matter, I must put it into practice.  Can I??“

++

Second, there are seeds of my truth within these words from my mother’s June 27, 1957 letter:

“Oh darling, my heart never ceases aching for you.  I had ‘the feeling’ this afternoon I should check again to see if there was mail again.  I usually only go in the morning but I had to go again and there was!

It was the letter written before the one I got this morning.  It was written Friday.  It’s funny to read them backwards.  I drove over to the little park in Glendora and let the kids play awhile, took a few impromptu pictures, which I’ll send to you, and read your letter there!  I took one close-up of Linda as she lost her 2nd front tooth today.  Isn’t nature wonderful, right on time?  Tonight the angel will visit her – usually you do that – I know.”

++

Finally, the contrast I am going to speak about relates to this in her ‘fun filled’ descriptions in her June 27, 1957 Thursday night letter:

“I wish you could have seen John when he caught his trout!  He was so excited, he swung his line around and caught it in a tree.  Naturally, he had had several bites and near catches before he actually caught one.  It really was priceless!  He jumped up and down and exclaimed.

Cindy was such a ‘patient fisherwoman’ and soon caught a big one.  I took a picture of her holding the line with the fish on it, with the others standing close, admiring it.  J  I surely hope IT comes out!

Linda caught the biggest and is so proud!  We got home at 8:00 P.M. and so will cook them tomorrow!  Grandma will be here then, as I have errands in Pasadena (what a let-down) to do tomorrow.  I know she loves trout and I’m afraid the children might not eat it.

The only one that minded ‘hurting the fish’ was John.  He couldn’t stand to see it bled and naturally I had to get someone else to pull the hook out.  J  I was glad cleaning them was part of the price and I even had her cut the heads off.“

++

OK.  Step one is completed.  I have used my net woven of my bravery and determination to snatch this collection of my mother’s words out of her letters, out of the context that she wrote them within, and I have moved them into MY universe – 53 years later.

How telling it is to me that the power of my mother’s severe abuse of me, coupled with my father’s unwillingness to EVER stop her or to even recognize that the abuse was happening, makes it this difficult even today for me to DARE to speak about what I know about my parents’ version of reality.

Now, as I try to locate MY OWN SELF, my own feelings, thoughts, words, perceptions in relationship to my mother’s words, I need to distill this down if I can into my own crystallized words about these letter passages.

++++

(1)  My mother’s Borderline reality began to take shape from the time she was very, very young.  The neglect, abuse, trauma and malevolent conditions that she was born into influenced the body-brain changes that led to her condition.

(2)  My mother’s Borderline reality was already well in place before she ever met and married my father on June 11, 1949.  They knew one another six months before the marriage took place.

(3)  My the time my oldest brother, John, was born on June 15, 1950 my mother’s Borderline reality had expanded to not only include the existence of her ‘perfect husband’, Bill, but also had grown to include the appearance of this firstborn ‘perfect son’.

(4)  A healthy, balanced relationship between my mother and her mother had been trashed beginning with my mother’s birth.  While I became the victim-pawn within the complex interplay of the disturbances between my mother and her mother, I was not the cause of them.

(5)  Patterns of chronic and severe abuse in a family happen because these patterns both grow into the family dynamics and shape them.  These patterns are especially well-disguised within a Borderline-based brain-nervous system-mind-self focused home.

(6)  These patterns are at the same time NOT detected because their disguise is perfect and because they have shaped every single interaction and transaction that occurs over time between the people that are part of the close family.

When my mother writes to my father in one of her June 27, 1957 letters, “We’re not ordinary people – we’re a close knit family and should never be separated!”  I believe she is recognizing within herself that her entire reality depends upon the ongoing patterns that were not only established within her own Borderline mind when she was a little girl, but also is recognizing that her ongoing reality is completely intertwined with my father’s presence in her life.

(7)  The patterns that formed the fabric of the ongoing interactions within our family worked because they were silent.  The silence of the truth about what was really going on was as completely necessary to maintain ‘reality’s existence’ as was the presence of my father.

(8)  The key point I know about the passages I selected above is that it wasn’t just the presence of my father in my mother’s life that was required for her reality to remain intact.  It was absolutely essential that my father completely understand my mother’s version of reality as it regarded me as the kingpin of her mad illusions.

My mother very effectively, efficiently and expertly manipulated how my father saw me throughout my entire childhood.  My mother had to convince my father of her mother’s love for me so that she could then justify and defend her abuse of me.

The pattern of the dynamics of my mother’s abuse of me with my father’s acceptance if not approval happened over time because:

(a)  My mother could ensure that my father knew she had undying love for him.

(b)  My mother could ensure that my father’s entire life involved his love for her at its center.

(c) My mother could ensure that my father could not understand what she did to me in any way than I ‘abused my mother’ by being such a terrible child.  My mother was ‘put upon’ by a ‘curse child’ – she bore her burdens with glorious magnanimity.  My mother created a pattern of reality that meant my father never questioned her version of the truth.

++++

In the two first passages I include here from my mother’s writings to my father, I know the truth is invisibly included in her words.  Both of my parents, whether they made the choices consciously or not, DID exactly choose what words they included within their letters.

Although my mother does mention their other three children in her letters, it is exactly and specifically Linda that she draws attention to in terms of her magnanimous ‘good mother’ actions toward me.  In both of these incidents she includes about me in her letter, she directly hooks my father – and his role as my father — into ‘the story’.

(a)  Father evidently ‘forgot’ to send Linda a card.  Magnanimous ‘good mother’ gives me hers.

(b)  Mother makes sure to mention that she took a picture ‘close up’ of just Linda as she hooks in my father by also drawing his attention to his usual role as the lost tooth routine.  Magnanimous ‘good mother’ takes his place and performs his job for him.

++

In the third passage I included above a different dynamic is operating (from my point of view).  As mother describes the fishing adventures of her group of children, she does include Linda as one of the group.  This mention, to me, is not one that involves the kind of husband-father-conning-manipulation that she used in the first two passages.  In the fishing scene, she actually ‘forgot’ to separate me from the rest of ‘the pack’.

The problem with this thirdly-mentioned experience is that any time I was ‘accidentally’ left out of my mother’s psychosis regarding me at the same time I was ‘accidentally’ included as a member of the sibling group, I never, never, never knew when to expect my mother’s psychosis to reappear in some random violent extreme outburst against me.

I mention this fact here because these ‘happy Linda as part of the group’ experiences did as much to create major dissociational patterns in my ongoing experience of my life in the world as did the violence.  I never could anticipate ‘which was going to be which’.  I could not predict, I could not prevent, I could not understand any of it.

So when something good actually did happen, when I actually was allowed to be a child, it always happened not because I WAS a child, but happened because mother was in one of her “giddy-happy let’s-do-something-fun isn’t-this-fun” moods that NONE of us could understand.

NOTE:  My mother seems to have some peripheral comprehension of the difficulties her shifts of mental state, mood and attitude had on her children when she described this in the same letter where she talks about the fishing trip:

“Next door to us there’s a beautiful trailer court (I don’t think they allow children).  Mostly, the people seem to be retired.  It really is nice.  They have a lovely swimming pool, shuffle-board etc.  Some of them have their patios fixed so nicely with ferns, tropical plants etc.  We all enjoyed seeing it.  You can’t imagine how much I enjoy the children – they’re truly fun to be with – if no other adults are along.  When we’re alone I treat them more as adults.  We talk and laugh and have fun.  When other adults are there or in the car they’re treated as children and resent it.  I can’t blame them.  It must be hard (Pals and friends one minute and a mere child, the next).“

But it is obvious to me that even as she wrote these words, even as she noticed the process she described here, it doesn’t MEAN ANYTHING TO HER.  My mother remained consistently at the center of her own universe and everything that happened always happened to us with her at this center.

++++

With the exception of the simple report that I caught the biggest fish and I was proud (she doesn’t’ describe to my father what her reaction to my pride might have been), the other two examples regarding me have nothing to do with Linda.

In both of the other two events mother is the star player.  Father becomes the blind, manipulated hooked-into-my-mother’s-version-of-reality player.  All I am is the actress-prop being used to continue the solidification of the pattern-dynamics that HAD to be protected and maintained in the family even though my father was not physically present in the home.  There could be no lapse of pattern.

My mother had to SHINE.  My father had to see her SHINE.  My father had to stay entranced.  He had to see my mother SHINE as his wife.  He had to see her SHINE as a mother.  And, for the overall, overriding, overarching dynamic of my mother’s psychosis – with me at its center – to continue to operate as my mother’s Borderline madness HAD to have it happen, my father ESPECIALLY had to see my mother SHINE as MY magnanimously good mother.

My mother had to so comprehensively control the pattern-dynamics in her home that when she acted viciously toward me, even her insane, mad violence would be seen by my father as just another aspect of her SHINING ability to be this terribly BAD child’s magnanimous good mother.

To say that ‘my mother as martyr’ was an aspect of the pattern-dynamics of our home is such an understatement it’s almost ridiculous.  At the same time, my grandmother did the ‘martyr thing’ to near perfection.  Adding another bizarre twist, it was a part of my mother’s abuse litany against my father that HE played such an excellent martyr role!

All the while these dynamics were slithering around among the only grown-ups in my child life, it was ME that was being sacrificed.  I was not ‘a martyr’, I was martyred.

++++

I need to take my word-search detour here for a moment:

MARTYR

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin, from Greek martyr-, martys witness

Date: before 12th century

1 : a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion
2 : a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
3 : victim; especially : a great or constant sufferer

MARTYRED

Date: before 12th century

1 : to put to death for adhering to a belief, faith, or profession
2 : to inflict agonizing pain on : torture

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

As an infant-child I certainly had no ability to volunteer as a martyr.  At the same time, I was accused from birth of being sent as an agent of the devil to kill my mother, I was not given any means of defending myself.  I could not ‘renounce’ the devil!  I had no principle or religion to denounce.  I had been assigned a religion as being ‘the devil’s child’.

Yes, I witnessed.  Yes I sacrificed.  Yes, I greatly and nearly constantly suffered.  But this truth only appears in my parents’ letters by its silence.

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

Letters: 

*JUNE 1957 LETTERS BETWEEN MOTHER AND FATHER

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