As the world reels from the recent death of a young Iranian woman at the hands of the “morality police,” I heard a recent interview with another young woman who was stopped, but thankfully not detained, for the “incorrect” wearing of the hijab, the controversial mandatory head covering required for women in Iran. Her breathy recounting of the story, her experience of the event, and its aftermath was like reading the checklist of PTSD symptoms from the DSM. She could check every box: flashbacks, nightmares, terror of even leaving the house, and fearful aversion to even the thought of the street corner where the trauma occurred. Listening to her sent a chill from my belly and up through my whole body.
It was a familiar chill, taking me back to my Aleph class, the first grade of Hebrew School, which corresponded to third-grade regular school, making me about seven or eight years old. I remember watching the grainy black and white newsreels of the Nazi concentration camps, seeing the naked skeleton-like bodies, some of them very small, being kids like me, or too emaciated to tell if they were young or if they were shrunken by starvation and suffering. Clearly, they were almost or soon to be dead.
The chill, the same sensation I was feeling once again, even then, resonated with something as yet unremembered in my own life; that kept me awake or awakened by nightmares and horror. Why they were showing those films to such young kids and without helping to make sense out of them, if there was any sense to be made, continues to be beyond me. The rallying cry of the then-radical Jewish Defense League was “Never Again!” But still, seven- and eight-year-olds?
That same chill, like an intractable ghost, revisited my belly and nightmare-ridden nights in my first year of college. It was another September 11th milestone that became a haunting anniversary in my annual date book: September 11th, 1973, when the bloody Pinochet dictatorship overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Thousands were rounded up, brutally tortured, raped, murdered, and/or disappeared during a reign of terror which spread over much of the Latin American continent. Having grown up on a diet of such stories, I was both riveted and haunted. Many of the torture stories were hideous and graphic, often involving genitals, that lingered in particular in my horror-ridden mind and body.
I have often been curious about the vast menu of symptoms the dysregulated psyche and body land on to both calm the hyper-aroused system down or metaphorically enact the trauma story.
As a therapist, I have often been curious about the vast menu of symptoms the dysregulated psyche and body land on to both calm the hyper-aroused system down or metaphorically enact the trauma story. In our home, we grew up with a steady diet of the, to my mind, nonsensical admonition to “clean your plate, because children are starving in Europe!” (I never understood how my eating unwanted food would help them!) Our dad never let us forget his years of hunger and deprivation, and I felt a similar chill in my body hearing his tirade about “bread and worms,” with which he not infrequently seemed almost to threaten me. I was a decidedly “bad eater.”
Frequently gripped by the hideous and scary image of squirming creatures burrowing in and out of dry old bread heels, I guess it was no surprise when my “symptom of choice” was a near-lethal run with the then virtually unknown, certainly unstudied anorexia, which nearly took me down. But since it was starvation at my own hand, rather than at the hands of some vicious social or political power that be, it was my own “fault,” and certainly did not earn me the badge of courage that our dad wore. I was a “bad girl” and not a martyr.
The play of social forces, of history, left its indelible mark on both of our parents – indelible because neither of them had the impulse or the privilege of healing that I have had. The intergenerational transmission took many forms, both in actions taken and not taken on us kids and also in these less obvious psychological, somatic, and other forms of dysregulation, but also in the more complex and more difficult-to-discern re-enactment and unspoken messages. Somehow, I came to believe that martyrdom was redeeming, suffering noble, and being killed for it the highest possible merit of honor. I suppose on some level, I came to believe that to go up in smoke, to die a tragic or at least some sort of hero’s death, was the way to win our dad’s approval and love. That became my life script, although, of course, I did not realize it. I ultimately set about making my life path to, like Che Guevara, be a selfless internationalist fighter, and go down in fiery glory for the cause. That would also, of course, solve the problem of ending my miserable and unworthy life. Oy vey! That is another story for another day…
My point is that social and political violence in all its forms – racism, homelessness, wild economic, educational, and power disparities – are all the ultimate perpetrators of dysregulation and trauma in their myriad manifestations. How can we dream of addressing one without the other? It is the endless chicken and egg, cycling ever faster like a bicycle wheel careening down a steep, bumpy hill.
My point is that social and political violence in all its forms – racism, homelessness, wild economic, educational, and power disparities – are all the ultimate perpetrators of dysregulation and trauma in their myriad manifestations.
Our parents did get involved in Post-Holocaust healing efforts. Our mom was a high school teacher, and together they participated in taking “friendship” delegations of Jewish kids to Germany to have educational and healing conversations about the wreckage wrought by and upon their parents. It was perhaps healing for our parents. Our dad’s bitterness softened some. However, when it came to Arabs and Israelis, not so much. His rage at Arabs never seemed to abate, and he even was prone to ranting, at least for a time (until Donald Trump sent him into flashbacks about Hitler?) about “Obama being a Muslim.” Thank god he got over that one. I remember shortly after I met my now husband, loud, red-faced arguments they had about Zionism. I was so embarrassed in front of my new boyfriend. Those feelings went with him to the grave. How can Arabs and Israelis, essentially cousins, dig their heels in so endlessly, with an unending, tragic waste of life, decade after decade? It is beyond me.
So, it warmed my heart to hear a story the other morning on the BBC, an interview with a man just slightly older than me. He also was a child of Holocaust survivors, but his father died when he was a child. His family migrated to Israel, and he grew up there. Like all young Israeli men and women, he had to serve his time in the Army, and ended up participating in the now-historical Six-Day War.
In this story, he was about 19 years old, somewhere on a noisy battlefield, when he heard the voice of a little boy crying in Arabic, “Doctor, Doctor!” It was a loud wail. Turning to see what the child was calling about, he saw the little guy gesturing toward a woman who was bloody – but not by injury. She was having a baby and needed help. The youth had no clue how to deliver a baby, but he figured clean water was needed and sent the boy in search of it, which he quickly found and brought back. By some sort of natural emergency intuition, he figured out how to assist the baby’s arrival into this crazy world. Arab? Israeli? Who cared? The baby emerged loudly crying. That’s good – it means she’s alive. A baby girl. The mother, the daughter, and the young soldier never saw each other again. Paths crossing in humanity.
How can we treat one without the other? Trauma and social justice? Two wings of the same bird.
Kudos to TRF for weaving the two skillfully together into a powerful learning event: The Social Justice Summit. See Trauma Research Foundation’s website for details.
Today’s song:
In this song, Sueno con Serpientes, Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodrriguez sings “I dream of serpents, serpents of the sea. I kill one, and another appears. Ohh… oh.., With much greater hell in digestion…”
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When we went to hear football legend Jerry Rice speak about Black History Month a few years ago, what struck me perhaps the most was the immense size of his hands. Getting my picture taken with Number 80 was a thrill, and having his arm around me momentarily for my photo op reminded me of the old song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands!”
I love that picture. I am no fan of football, and that is for sure. I have never watched even a fraction of a game in my life. But somehow, Jerry remains on my shortlist of iconic heroes, mostly for the fact that he got everywhere that he got, which was quite far, through perseverance and essentially out-efforting everyone else. That I identify with.
Jerry grew up in the deep American south in a small town of 500 people. He was the sixth of eight children in a poor family, so I can imagine how much attention he got. I found out he had learning disabilities when he spoke about literacy to a crowd of Oakland middle school kids. As a very young child in a family where there was rarely enough food, Jerry helped his dad, a bricklayer. At age 5, he learned to catch bricks tossed by his brother and handed them to his dad one by one as the walls went up. That will give you some hands!
I had a client who thought recovery was supposed to be like building a brick wall. Once you lay the foundation, you place brick upon brick and build a whole new structure. She was frustrated, believing she had spent years trying to lay a foundation, and felt terrible failure, disappointment, loss, anger and shame that she had not put any building on it. She certainly felt let down by me! I was startled and rather jarred by her metaphor, which was so far from my own vision of recovery.
My Oakland office is in a lovely quaint Victorian building. It was not built on the site where it now stands – rather, the old house with whatever its story was transported from some other part of town, deposited in this upwardly mobile neighborhood, and remodeled into a rather classy office building. I once saw a picture of a house being moved across a town. What a strange and disorienting sight, a large vehicle with a family-sized dwelling occupying the whole width of a city street.
My vision of healing is far from a brick-and-mortar construction or a “fix,” but something much more organic. Just as neurofeedback is not something we do “to” someone or “on” someone, but a shared endeavor I do with someone, in a swaddle of caring, attentive psychotherapy. Similarly, I think of healing as something that arises, that emerges gradually from the inside out. It seems to me to be something that grows. How did Jerry’s hands get so big? There was some raw material, and then there was some long-term repeated action, and they emerged big and strong.
I think of healing as something that arises, that emerges gradually from the inside out. It seems to me to be something that grows.
We lived in South Bend, Indiana, for two short and immensely long years, second and third grade. I have a few flashbulb memories of South Bend – I remember when the new sensation the Beatles burst on the scene with I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and we were all doing the “twist” to it. I remember the endless procession on TV when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and seeing little Jon-Jon saluting. And I remember the crocuses. Winters in South Bend seemed to be at least half the year (with the summers being blazing hot and always putting our mom in a bad mood.) The winter brought huge piles of snow. We could build a fort in the yard, which would freeze and last for months. But I have never liked snow or cold.
The first little sign that the winter might end was the crocuses. The little, bright green sprouts began gingerly to poke up through the snow. There was still plenty of snow, but those fiercely determined little fighters not only pierced the chill, but bloomed, splashing the bright white with kisses of color and hope. They seem to say ahhh… relief is coming. Maybe not right away, but it will. Little sprigs of hope.
I think of healing that way. Not as something we can figure out, manipulate or construct externally, but nourish and care for, providing the necessary inputs for nature to work its magic, often outside our view. And we must be mindful and attentive to the often subtle seedlings of evidence that something is, in fact, happening, always more slowly than we would wish.
Perhaps that is one reason why I like cheese making and sourdough baking so much. With pure ingredients, thoughtful and consistent attention, the requisite inputs on their optimal schedule, and patience with the glacial passage of time, and voila – a transformation into something new, delicious, healthful, and joyous. It seems I can make so many people happy with it!
The hardest cheesemaking lesson for me to learn was the patience part. I could not believe I had to wait two, three, and four months, often managing mold and sometimes stink. After some years of experience, I rather love the stinkers, and I age some of my cheeses two years and more. How did this happen? I guess my whole life, I have been learning about organicity. And that loving attention is the essential ingredient for everything. Of course, the other unbearably essential ingredient is time…
Brick structures are not my model of recovery. It is rather an organic unfolding. Like sourdough bread and the vast myriad of cheeses, often it looks like nothing is happening at all.
In this crazy world, monarch butterflies are an endangered species. What a tragedy. I am proud to say that our sister and brother-in-law have a little monarch butterfly rescue operation going on in their backyard. They nurture the caterpillars, protect the chrysalises, and tend to the babies until they are ready to fly. I have never seen a baby butterfly.
Taking care of caterpillars has never occurred to me. I admit to being a rather squeamish non-fan of insects of any ilk. In particular, I associate caterpillars with a horrible memory, barely more than a flashbulb. I was probably about three at the most. We were at a little park in New York. All I remember was that the ground was covered, carpeted in a squirming mass of solid green caterpillars. Yecchhh. It was terrifying. Wearing little pink buckle Mary-Janes, there was nowhere to put a little foot without crushing and killing them. There was no way to make a step. They were everywhere. I was panicked and terrified. I remember screaming and screaming, “Daddy, carry me!” That is all I remember. But ever since, I have had a particular aversion to caterpillars in spite of their unmistakable association with butterflies, which I love.
Fast forward. About a week ago, our brother-in-law proudly whipped out his phone to show off pictures of the little pet monarch caterpillars they are tending. I was amazed at how lovely they were, especially since my only real association, at least visually, was so horrible. Striped with color, they did actually betray a bit of the wonder ahead, the monarch, the royal pinnacle of butterflies. Wow! Who would have thunk it?
Bricks are great, square and solid. I love my house, and it keeps me safe. It held steady through two big San Francisco shakers: ’06 and ’89, and it is still going strong. I admit that hunkering down during the pandemic in this safe haven was quite pleasant.
However, brick structures are not my model of recovery. It is rather an organic unfolding. Like sourdough bread and the vast myriad of cheeses, often it looks like nothing is happening at all. But last week, when I cracked a 16-month-old cheddar, it was that same feeling of wow! How did this happen? I am so glad I waited. The delicious depth and complexity were worth it and made me forget about the slow slog of time.
To me, recovery is a lot like that. If we stay the course, eventually, it does come up roses. Looking back, we are seeing with different eyes. What was so hideous and deplorable and seemed to expand endlessly to eternity looks different, and might even faintly betray a whiff of the beauty which lay ahead. It may be slow, but certainly not as I, for one, imagined it would ultimately turn out. Save the monarchs!
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
In the many years that I have been studying childhood neglect, I have often been struck by how many clients, particularly men, come in toting a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. To them, and also their frequently impatient or frustrated loved ones, it seems accurate, with their loose or sluggish focus, perhaps forgetfulness, failure of agency, and disorganized brains. Never fond of diagnostic labels nor a fan of amphetamine drugs, I have remained skeptical and curious. What is really going on here?
I know early on in my anecdotal scavenging, I coined a trilogy of neglect symptoms I came to call “the Three P’s” of neglect, primarily showing up in the interpersonal domain, but not exclusively. The P’s are passivity, procrastination, and paralysis. For many, it seemed to fit and stick. I have held on to the paradigm as I sought more information as well as developmental and neuroscience underpinnings for my “theory.”
I hypothesized that, given that the infant brain develops in resonation with the brain of the primary caretaker (usually, at least at first, the mother), if that little brain is reaching to resonate with a brain that is depressed, terrified, angry or most of all absent, it fails to develop and learn to regulate in a consistent, calm and essentially safe and healthful way. What does happen when there is no one there to resonate to, or not nearly enough resonation? Well, we certainly have the extreme example of the Romanian orphans, who appear nearly catatonic. But what about the more “garden variety” that we are more likely to encounter in our offices? That has been my question for many years.
I have heard many trauma stories about little kids panicked and terrified as they went to school each day, in dread of reading circles where each child had to read a passage. Some would count and calculate when or which segment would be theirs in the rotation so they could practice, or slide out to the bathroom to avoid it (and sometimes to vomit,) feeling such shame, confusion, and self-hatred about why it was so hard for them.
Meanwhile, some got in trouble with their parents for poor grades; some were held back a grade or two, and many simply disappeared under the radar, invisible and unhelped, concluding that they were stupid in addition to feeling invisible and alone. Many, amazingly bright, found their own workaround strategies for reading. Others discovered a sport like rock climbing which takes incredible concentration, focus, and patience to train their brains. Still, others sank into a haze of drugs to get away from the whole thing. I have seen many iterations, all originally coming from neglect.
In the 1980’s it seemed that ADD and ADHD became the diagnosis du jour. Suddenly kids were being slapped with that label right and left. And they were met with a parade of amphetamine drugs. Oy vey!
The first drug of choice I remember was Ritalin, which always somehow reminded me of the sinister and scary villain the Riddler on the Batman show. Suddenly it seemed we had a whole generation of children on speed, which gave me a Riddler-like chill, thinking of what this does to our gene pool, let alone providing a possible “gateway” to other, less manageable kinds of drug use. But it also seems there was little curiosity about what causes this problem, and if there was a way to move upstream in addressing it. Meanwhile, in many cases, the drugs were something of a nightmare for the kids, with sleep problems and other kinds of dysregulation causing plenty of conflict between parents and kids about taking their pills or not.
Empty space is suffocating and deathly, and it is truly like dying to many of these adult survivors. Boredom is a slow and mortal agony.
One thing I began to notice in some couples where at least one partner was a child of neglect was a little dynamic I came to call “hand grenades.” This was where one partner would lob a truly provocative, antagonistic, or triggering remark at the unsuspecting other. It was baffling because the rise they were likely to get was completely predictable and sure to incite a rageful or rejecting blast in reaction. I would hear about similar interactions where someone would similarly incite loud conflict at Thanksgiving dinner, for example. It was baffling until I began to study it more.
For the child of neglect, boredom and waiting feel lethal. Imagine an infant left alone too much, in a cavernous vacuum of empty space, waiting with uncertainty for someone arbitrarily to come – or not, learning quickly that hoping or crying was pointless. They had no impact. Empty space is suffocating and deathly, and it is truly like dying to many of these adult survivors. Boredom is a slow and mortal agony. Some of them discovered as young children that negative attention might be better than none at all, so by being somehow naughty or “bad” would garner some kind of reaction from the otherwise perhaps oblivious other, and interrupt the emptiness. As I continued to observe these little hand grenade scenarios, the variables seemed to coalesce: neglect, ADD, and hand grenades. Hmmm…
I later learned from neuroscientist Ruth Lanius that often, in the under-stimulated, dysregulated brain of a traumatized person, only when under threat does the brain start firing and come alight. Only then does the person perhaps momentarily feel alive. I began to learn from some of these flamethrowers that they were simply bored. They were not trying to be mean; rather, they were trying to keep from dying. Certainly, a hard sell to the insulted partner, but it does, in fact, make sense.
So, who is tagged with a “disorder?” Where does the deficient attention reside?
So, where does the real attention deficit reside? Perhaps in what that infant and child did and did not receive, the oceanic poverty of mirroring and care, the failure of resonance that makes the brain grow and develop and makes a child feel alive. As the child of neglect gets a little older, and slowly grows into a person, they continue to be unseen, unheard, not known, not understood, perhaps disappearing into quiet invisibility. Maybe as their learning disabilities or boredom go unnoticed as well, and their dysregulated brains continue to languish quietly alone, attention may become spotty, dulled, unreliable.
So, who is tagged with a “disorder?” Where does the deficient attention reside? Perhaps first with the neglectful parent, and later in the unassuming child’s brain. Another expression of the intergenerational transmission of trauma perhaps? And how many generations will wind up on amphetamines?
If in fact attention deficit is really a euphemistic or medicalizing label for neglect, what might be a better remedy? Some of the most robust, copious, and well-replicated neurofeedback research we have has been with ADD and ADHD. But perhaps the best medicine is upstream: effective trauma healing that will enable resonant presence, reliable, loving, consistent attention – a new intergenerational transmission. We are not talking about perfect attunement! The attachment researchers remind us that the best of the “good enough” parents achieve the optimal rhythms of attachment and presence about 30% of the time, with the rest being the dance of rupture and repair. Perhaps we can strive for that 30%, and wean ourselves, detox ourselves from inattention and even speed!
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
I really only remember seeing our dad cry once. Our family all piled into the old Chevy wagon, driving in a torrential New York City downpour. I don’t remember what he was upset about; it was rather a flashbulb image of his face, framed in the rearview mirror, with a backdrop of the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Finding it unbearable to see him that way, I focused on the rhythmic back and forth of the wipers, slap, slap, slap.
That sudden flash of recall unleashed a chain of other snippets of time in the car, which were rarely much fun. Our mom was perennially anxious, and what I recall most about being in an enclosed energy field of her pulsing hyperarousal was a gripping in my stomach, which I can feel just thinking about it. Our dad loved looking at airplanes, and he sometimes seemed even to be teasing her by enthusiastically following their flight with his eyes clearly not on the road. I remember her saying, “Achh.. do me a favor…” with her fingers spread wide like rakes, nails dug into the sides of her seat. She was similarly rattled by some random driver recklessly “weaving” back and forth across multiple lanes, grabbing an extra car length this way and that to gain speed and time. She was jumpy and also convinced we would all meet up at the next signal anyway.
I rather disliked the harsh association between reckless driving and “weaving.” I loved sewing from an early age and so loved fabrics and textiles. As I got into my early teens, I was fascinated with weaving, particularly Andean weaving. I had a small wooden frame loom and tried my hand at simple designs, never getting very good at it. My childhood boyfriend had a Greek friend named Thalia. She was a ”real” weaver and had an enormous floor loom that took up much of a room. I remember being enthralled watching the shuttle fly back and forth, back and forth, creating beautiful patterns. I still have a deliciously warm blanket she wove over fifty years ago. That steady toss back and forth of the shuttle made for a durable and strong mesh that still warms me almost daily.
The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it.
It has been heartbreaking hearing the urgent reports about the floods in Pakistan. I can barely imagine one-third of a country being underwater. One story particularly jarred me. There was a first storm that seemed to be clearing. Streets were beginning to drain; the sky freshly scrubbed, bright and blue, puffy white clouds ringed by breakthrough sunlight. People began to cautiously venture out and gradually celebrate that the storm had passed.
But the lull was short-lived. It was not long before the sky closed and darkened again, and the brief respite was chased off-stage by yet another ferocious onslaught of storm waters. Somehow that feeling touched a chord in me, felt familiar, of being elated that something unbearable might have passed and dismayed or devastated to find that it had not, or not for long. Again, like being batted back and forth.
I was proud to be a strong and undaunted hill climber on the bike. I can’t say it didn’t sometimes really hurt, and it cost me dearly to keep going. Neglect being an exercise in dogged endurance, I was well trained. I remember that same feeling, or something I imagine to be similar to the whiplash of the Pakistanis, perhaps, as it is rather obnoxious to compare something like life-threatening flooding with recreational cycling. The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it. I can barely imagine how those Pakistani people felt, thinking that perhaps their homes had survived one assault and then being knocked back into terror and uncertainty. Back and forth. Back and forth. Not unlike the traumatic life of a child abused in the inescapable family home.
All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history.
When I started college, like many of us who grew up unmoored and dysregulated, I groped and reached for stability in philosophical anchors and ways of understanding the world. The ones I grew up with were way too ill-fitting, dissonant, or outright objectionable. I remember when I first read Karl Marx’s “Alienation of Labor” – it seemed one of the most profound pieces of writing I had ever come across. Thinking on it now, his description of alienation resonated like an identical twin to the experience of neglect: disconnection, dehumanization, confusion of purpose, emptiness, and lack of choice. I was gripped. Then I encountered the Marxian concept of Dialectical Materialism.
Certainly not one for heady concepts, I was rather more like Winnie the Pooh, who said, “I am a bear of small brain and big words annoy me…” But this idea spoke to me. In an extremely simplified form, it is the notion of a play of opposites. All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history. One social order crashing into another, which prevailed for its time until swung aside by its opposite and on and on and on through time.
It has been something of a comfort to me, when I am horrified or disheartened by world events, to trust that inevitably there will be the opposing swing that will deliver us in the other direction. Similarly, while sobering, it also helps me guard against complacency when things seem to be going my way for a time. Somehow, at least in some ways, we appear to make inching evolutionary “progress,” depending on how we measure (or who measures!) progress, of course.
People often ask me, especially at the start of therapy, but frequently along the way, “How long is this going to take?!” Or they lament feeling (a word I abhor!) “stuck.” I have to remind them, and sometimes myself, that this journey is not linear. It is simply not a straight shot. I remember my first neurofeedback teacher telling us, “You must remind people that this process is not linear.” As we deepen and go further back and further into material we may not have understood or even consciously known about before, we may find ourselves back or newly in truly miserable states.
Peter Levine has a practice in his work that he calls “Pendulation” where one learns to intentionally move back and forth between states, from trauma activation to present time, in an effort to make the back and forth conscious and intentional; and achieve some mastery or control over them. The idea is to become more flexible, resilient, and stable. And additionally, we do not always achieve the result we had in mind. Healing work is rarely a straight shot and may lead to something different, possibly even better than what we could have imagined.
The healing journey is inarguably non-linear. Rocking babies, the swinging pendulums in hypnosis, bilateral stimulation in EMDR, rhythmic movement pole to pole, side to side. Many a steeply graded trail or road is built in the form of switchbacks. They zig and zag right and left: one cannot see what is just ahead. Winding to and fro, around a mountain might be the way up an incline that is simply too steep to tackle straight on. It is also a reminder that, dialectics aside, few things in life are non-stop flights from here to there. There is little that is explicitly linear (except perhaps aging, darn it!). Much of life seems to be, in fact, switchbacks.
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
I remember when I was quite young, our mom’s stern voice and annoyed expression, saying, “You are always walking around this house with a long face. You need to have more fun!” As far as she was concerned, I had no reason to be anything but cheery and bushy-tailed. Although I subsequently had plenty of overt trauma, the “nonexistent” wound of neglect was what the wilderness outerwear people would call my “base layer.” So, I figured she was probably right. I had no right or reason to feel bad. Thinking on it now, I am struck that there was no curiosity, interest, or concern about a sad child. Rather I was left to conclude I was entitled, ungrateful, or simply “bad.”
She, of course, was no icon of levity. And she had good reason to have perennially sad eyes and a stern, critical, and generally anxious demeanor. She had a dark and scary history that I knew only so much about and a cold, Northern German intellectual mother who left her mostly in the care of nannies until Hitler blew the whole thing apart.
I also remember both of my parents having a rather contemptuous attitude toward American-style “fun.” I don’t remember details, but things like amusement parks, cartoons, comic books, and spectator sports, although it was perhaps not explicitly stated, were petty, commercial and “below us.” I could feel that attitude, and what was most evident was that our family never partook in them. So, to be honest, I had no idea what “fun” meant, and I believe the whole repetitive litany made me pretty angry if I had known how to recognize that emotion. What I was most aware of was feeling guilty, ungrateful, and clueless.
However, I had another algorithm working also, certainly outside my awareness. Because I explained my “unimportance and invisibility” as being because I was a blight on the planet, I developed a calculous of a handful of worthy endeavors, purposeful activities, that were worthy of time and energy, to “justify my existence.” Oddly I remember that little term as going way back, fairly big words for a young girl to come up with. I needed to earn my keep, to somehow rightfully claim the patch of earth I occupied. Oy vey, a seemingly Sisyphean undertaking.
The acceptable activities in my protocol menu were:
Later, when I was ruled by anorexia, exercise featured on this list too.
Clearly, there was no category and certainly no available time for pleasure. And I was busy, certainly lacking awareness and discipline of my facial expression. So, fun? Play? Who the hell knew what that was? Well, the American kids seemed to know.
I had no idea what “fun” meant, and I believe the whole repetitive litany made me pretty angry if I had known how to recognize that emotion. What I was most aware of was feeling guilty, ungrateful, and clueless.
Ours, however, was a musical household. Our dad, once he had secured a college and post-graduate education without having gone to high school, became a cantor, and he had always loved music. When we were kids, he sang in cocktail lounges and actually knew the show tunes and Louis Armstrong classics. Later he found his place with our mother in the more erudite world of classical music, and I remember having to attend his performances at the Stanford opera workshop, where he sang while prancing around on stage in tights. Not my idea of fun.
I started piano lessons when I was pretty young. Once back in California, I took lessons with Mrs. Rothschild (not her real name), who was unmistakably American. It was her husband who had the European-sounding name. She was tall and elegant, had long slender fingers with painted nails; she smoked Virginia Slims and always had an odor I somehow found intoxicating, of cigarettes and Jergen’s lotion. I loved her. She confided in me about her ongoing torrid affair with a famous jazz musician, which made me feel special and important. God only knows why she was telling these secrets to a nine-year-old student.
Although I learned the usual piano classics, she also let me play boogie woogie, which I really loved, and I discovered my love of rhythm. As I learn more and more now about regulation, resonance, and attunement, I realize how profound and desolate the neglect experience is, of lacking a rhythmic exchange with a beloved other. I didn’t have it, nor did my parents before them — the bereft loneliness of the proverbial one hand clapping.
But rhythmic music spoke to me. I did not dance, but I did rock out, blasting the Rolling Stones while scrubbing the floors, and as quiet and meek as I appeared on the outside, I had this wild response to rough, boisterous music. Keith Richard, with all his foibles, remains on my shortlist to this day.
Although I don’t play music myself anymore, there is always a song in my head. And I think of music, and Mrs. Rothschild, as life rafts in a roiling ocean of trauma and neglect. I am sure Mrs. Rothschild has long passed, but I still occasionally listen to YouTube videos of her illicit lover’s biggest hits.
Rhythms, resonance, frequency, arousal, attachment: all fundamentals of what we are learning about trauma and neglect, healing, and about life really. The missing experiences of pulsing in time with another go back to our earliest time in utero, with the soundtrack of our mother’s heartbeat and breath. For so many, it is a rude awakening to emerge into echoing silence, stillness, desolation, or violence.
When I first learned EMDR in 1998, admittedly, I loved being able to move in my otherwise sedentary work as a psychotherapist. I never got one of those fancy electric lightbars that some clinicians used. And I am sure the rhythmic bilateral stimulation had a vicarious positive effect on me.
Rhythms, resonance, frequency, arousal, attachment: all fundamentals of what we are learning about trauma and neglect, healing, and about life really.
Play, by definition, has no other purpose but pleasure and fun. Often it involves movement, but not necessarily. Its function is recreational, period, the end. What a concept, and astronomically distant from the lexicon and language of my little world, my “one-person-psychology,” as I like to call it. It is no wonder that I responded so magnetically and copiously to alcohol when I discovered it at 13. It worked, at least momentarily, to release me from the mandate of purposefulness. It freed me from the self-imprisonment of my own little culture of compulsivity and “productivity.” That and endurance cycling were my best escapes into or out of my body, and into at least aspired regulation. But both were, in their own ways, costly.
What if I had learned, as a young child, to relax into play? Perhaps first a simple peekaboo type interaction with a present and loving other, then more games that might involve someone having time to spend with me? I hope this does not sound self-pitying! I am infinitely grateful that I discovered the rhythmic round and round of the bicycle, even though it sometimes became a feat of endurance, accomplishment, or pain.
I envied the girls who had ballet or modern dance classes. I wonder what that would have been like. So be it. That is part of how I have come to really comprehend the immeasurable value of rhythm and play, not only for healing but for development and joy. I am delighted that this is becoming increasingly understood and incorporated into healing paradigms for trauma and neglect, and even better, working with kids when they are young enough to enjoy more years of regulation and fun!
I am delighted to know about the Trauma Research Foundation’s program around play and its immeasurable and life-changing value for children and adults navigating trauma and neglect, past and present. In October, they will be presenting the Play Based Healing Summit. Information is available through their website.
Meanwhile, I must add that my life has changed dramatically in this regard. My face is rarely “long” anymore, Mom. And even if it is deliciously purposeful, I must admit that cheesemaking is a ton of fun!
Today’s song is a tribute to Mrs. Rothschild! May she rest in joyful peace.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Some time ago, I wrote a blog about the man who cleaned my car windows, knowing I had no cash to give him. After it happened, I tucked a neatly folded twenty in a pocket of my purse and zipped it in, hoping I might see him again someday. For weeks, even months, I craned to look for him as I passed the gas station, but never saw him. Slowly he dimmed from my crowded mind, and the twenty languished and perhaps crumpled a bit as it got buried deeper by time. This morning, rushing, stealing a minute on my way to the office to get gas, a man with a squeegee approached.
Lo and behold, it was him! The other time he was wrapped in a blanket and was a rather shapeless, assumably human form. Today he was in black jeans and a loose, ragged hoodie, so I could see his skinny shape. His short, sparse hair was graying, his brown skin wrinkly in that ageless way of the streets. He came into focus; I mean, I could see him. I set about pumping gas, he set about cleaning windows, and when I finished, I dug up the twenty I had squirreled away for him all those months ago.
Approaching the man, I said to him, “I want to tell you something…” His eyes widened, startled, as if he weren’t used to being spoken to, or not softly. I said, “a long time ago, I was here. I did not have any money, and I told you I had no money. But you cleaned my windows anyway.” I said it again. “I had no money, but you cleaned my windows anyway! I was so moved!” My throat wavered with emotion, and my eyes filled just a bit. “Thank you.” And for a long moment, I looked deep into the ageless brown eyes, which could’ve been anywhere from 50 to 80 years old. They teared up a bit too. We were just two humans together on this earth. “Thank you,” I said, “you are a good man.” I gave him twenty. With a modest, toothless smile, he muttered, “God bless…” I don’t believe he had seen a twenty in a very long time. He finished making his way around the car, doing an extra good job on the windows, and I drove off into the early morning dark to start my day.
For that one long moment, we were simply two humans connecting in the complex and simple endeavor of being human on this earth. That nameless-to-me man could check how many of the most salient neglect boxes? He was homeless, of color, aged, who knows what else? At the end of the hard workday, warming up the car to go home, the gas gauge lit up “full,” and my heart lit up “full,” too.
Thirty years into a blessedly happy marriage, the early days seem like a dim nightmare. Cycles of mutual trauma activation were endless, and we could not stop fighting. I truly believed we were the couple from hell. After firing five couples’ therapists and burning through an exorbitant amount of money, we lucked onto one who practiced then new to me, Imago Relationship therapy. We learned the structured Intentional Dialog, and that is where things began to “pivot” (to use the latest “word du jour”) and improve, to the point where I quickly went out and trained in Imago, which was my portal into becoming a couples’ therapist. Before our own life-changing experience, I would not have dared to venture a toe into that swirling vortex, certainly if trauma and neglect were involved.
The first step in Intentional Dialog is mirroring, where the listener or “receiver” repeats back the precise words of the speaker or “sender” line by line. Needless to say, it was tedious and time-consuming at first, but I will never forget my first experience of mirroring. Having my very words come back to me, unadulterated, uncensored, unedited or “corrected,” simply, authentically mine, was dazzling. That was when I first came to understand the priceless value of being truly seen, heard, and known.
From the very beginning, the nascent sense of self emerges from the intentional and consistent (“enough”) presence and mirroring of the mother or primary caregiver. Seeing one’s own reflection in the loving eyes of the other, resonating from right hemisphere to right hemisphere, the child’s brain slowly develops, a rhythm emerges between the two, self-regulation and a growing default which evolves into “me,” begins to form. Mirroring is the seed from which the human organism sprouts, grows, blooms, and fruits. Being seen and known is a core, essential developmental hub, and it is what is glaringly and tragically absent, or largely so, in neglect. Neglect is tantamount to being born, or cast into the world without a spine. How is one to stand up? No wonder neglect, barely visible to the untrained eye, is the most devastating of all trauma.
Having my very words come back to me, unadulterated, uncensored, unedited or “corrected,” simply, authentically mine, was dazzling. That was when I first came to understand the priceless value of being truly seen, heard, and known.
Like a caterpillar into a butterfly, cheesemaking is another seemingly magical metamorphosis. My little measuring spoons begin at 1/64 of a teaspoon: a minuscule amount of some microbial culture added to the vat of simple milk inspires a bubbling cauldron of coagulation into something solid, wonderfully nutritious, and delicious.
So it is with mirroring – being truly seen, heard, understood, and known: these immeasurably primal and fundamental developmental experiences are the essence of being, and being in a relationship. A measure of that elixir is the birthright of the fortunate. It is the traumatically missing experience of neglect, most necessary for healing. And every time we experience a moment of it, in therapy, in all manner of relationships, in the world, one’s sense of self is fertilized, reinforced, and encouraged.
Although I occasionally had clients who had been homeless sometime before I met them, my experience with the window-washing man woke me up to realizing, that perhaps I had never really looked at and seen a homeless person as an actual person; more than simply an avatar of the “homeless problem” which is notorious and ubiquitous here in San Francisco. First, recognizing and then looking into the eyes of this man, reminded me of the essential and transformative magic of real “sight.”
Mirroring is a prime ingredient in the psychotherapy of trauma and neglect, not sufficient, but unquestionably necessary, as is the presence which makes it all possible. And indeed, my clean windshield makes it possible for me to see! I hope our window cleaning protagonist is having a good breakfast somewhere!
Today’s Song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When we were kids, every year about this time, a little old man would show up early in the morning at our door, all dressed up in a well-worn dark suit and tie, with a yarmulke on his head and a tattered old prayer book under his arm. He would look up sheepishly from under his bushy brows and mutter with a smile, “Is this the Big One?” Our dad called him “Old Man Horowitz,” or sometimes “Horrible Horowitz.” He was coming to catch a ride to temple for the Yom Kippur service if he had the right day, which he often did not.
Yom Kippur is one of the “high holidays,” the most important days of the Jewish year: a day of fasting where the service is all day long. Once he got his formal career, our dad was a cantor, and he rather disdained what he called the “once-a-year crowd,” which were the congregants who only showed up on the high holidays and were not seen or heard from the rest of the year. He preferred to sing and have the refrains to his calls be from a full sanctuary. (I grew up to be even “worse” than the once-a-year crowd, and I really don’t go at all.)
However, some things about Yom Kippur do appeal to me. It is a day of reflection, a day of taking stock or accounting of who I have been through the year, and what I may have done or not done. I generally do a lot of that anyway throughout the year, a conscious review of all aspects of myself. But I respect and appreciate assigning specific days of the year for that essential practice.
Moral injury is a relatively recently identified category of trauma that involves the experience of committing acts or failing to act in ways that run counter to one’s own value or belief system, usually outside of one’s control.
Admittedly, to me, Yom Kippur can have a moralistic tone. Also known as Day of Atonement, there is even a prayer with rhythmic breast-beating as misdeeds are recounted (which always oddly secretly evoked an image of Tarzan. But no disrespect intended!) I am deeply committed to evaluating, owning, and repairing the damage I propagate, and a systematic and “fearless” assessment, as we say in AA, is all good. It truly is the opposite of neglect: being intentional, self-aware, responsible, and open-eyed about my impact, especially in relation to other people. How much trauma, not only neglect trauma but all kinds of trauma, interpersonal or not, could be preempted, forestalled, or intervened upon in time, were this the practice of our species?
From a moral injury standpoint, such mindfulness offers a space for continued processing. Moral injury is a relatively recently identified category of trauma that involves the experience of committing acts or failing to act in ways that run counter to one’s own value or belief system, usually outside of one’s control. It is the scenario of having no choice or being obligated by authority or circumstance and then left with regret, guilt, rage, grief – all of the above about one’s behavior. Residual feelings may be agonizing to try and resolve.
I once had a client who, when she was 16 and newly driving, had had a fatal car accident in which her best friend was the passenger and was killed. My client, now in her forties, had had to live with the memory and the tragedy all those years. I know I have memories, perhaps that do not involve a literal death, that haunt and linger. To designate special time for continuing the process of acknowledgment and remorse, even ultimately self-forgiveness is a comfort. I do agree that stock-taking is always good.
An apology is a profoundly powerful interaction and deeply important to me. Most of us have rarely heard a truly heartfelt and healing apology from anyone who has hurt us, or hurt us the most. There are also many misconceptions surrounding it as if an apology is some sort of admission that “it is all my ‘fault’” or that it connotes some sort of defeat. Such beliefs often make for stinginess or with-holding of apologies, as if my owning my part will mean you don’t own yours – a sadly transactional way of viewing repair!
Perhaps apologizing reveals the unbearable admission that I have made a “mistake” or done something “wrong,” which may seem on the order of life-threatening. For many survivors of trauma and neglect, perfectionism may be on the order of survival, so making a mistake and just saying “I’m sorry” may feel almost like dying. Or it may be a quick resort to lip service to get it over with, meaning little if anything. On local public radio, the comedic/sardonic news program Le Show has as a regular feature “Public Apologies of the Week,” showcasing how truly ridiculous and often (perhaps unintentionally) quite hilarious they often are. However, in real-time, with authentic personal hurts, they are no joke at all.
These topics are massive, and I definitely have a book in me on them. I will make two key points about apology here. Many have heard me say them before. And although there are indeed preferred “apology languages” as per Gary Chapman’s little book The 5 Apology Languages: The Secret to Healthy Relationships, these are the “Esperanto” of apology:
First, if I say I am sorry, followed by an explanation of why I did what I did, the potential benefit of the apology evaporates. Poof! If I say, “I am sorry I was late. The traffic was so god-awful on the Bridge…” it may be true, but it sounds to the other who has just waited an hour for me and missed an important appointment like excuses, however “true” and unintended that might be. And the “injured” party is eclipsed by the story, which is again, all about me.
If instead I say, “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting! And you missed your appointment on top of that. I know how disappointing and annoying that would be, especially with how busy you are and how you rushed to be on time yourself.” This will have an empathic tone and probably land with the desired healing result. Even saying first, “The traffic was hellish, “ and then “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting!” keeps the hurt person in the primary emotional spotlight and out of further neglect. How many neglect survivors have waited, forgotten for interminably long times, because “something delayed or distracted” the other?
Secondly, if I say, “I am sorry you got upset!” however well-intentioned, it fails in the essential healing balm of ownership. By not naming what I actually did, you can be left wondering or feeling blamed as emotional or pathological, as if there is something wrong with you. Authentic, humble, (and prompt if possible!) ownership is key. My 2 cents!
For many survivors of trauma and neglect, perfectionism may be on the order of survival, so making a mistake and just saying “I’m sorry” may feel almost like dying.
Forgiveness is a big and complex topic. And although I am utterly committed to reparative growth on both the micro and macro level, where trauma and neglect are concerned, many questions can arise. It is true that often perpetrators of the worst harm are, in some ways re-enacting their own unresolved trauma. That certainly does not let them off the hook, but does it somehow open the heart for forgiveness? Well, sometimes, but certainly not always. If a young person who shoots up an innocent bunch of school kids is a child of tragic neglect, that is so sad all the way around. But what does that mean in the way of forgiveness? What do I owe him?
On the one hand, perhaps the most profoundly transformative experience of my life was arriving ultimately at hard-won authentic forgiveness for the person who may have hurt me more than anyone ever. But perhaps the impulse to forgive does not generalize to all sentient beings. Well, not for me. Unfortunately, I cannot whip up the compassion to forgive Derek Chauvin, whose merciless knee vanquished George Floyd in 2020. I am not that “good.” Again, much more to say on all of this.
Attachment researchers have taught us that even among the best of “good enough” caregivers, whose attunement and resonance are at the percentile highest, the percentage of time these attachment stars are in such optimal attunement is 30%! That is right! 30% is as good as it gets. All the rest of life is a dance of rupture and repair, rupture and repair, rupture and repair. I like to think of “repair” as my middle name, so impassioned as I am about it. And yet I know it is not for everyone. A commitment to forgiving when I can is the best I can do, and the humility to also know that the person who benefits the most when I do, is me!
The high holidays also mark the turn of the Jewish year. Another of the traditions that I do like is the apples and honey: dipping apples in honey for a sweet year to come. Shana tova, happy new year! And may this next cycle bring sweetness and ever more healing.
Today’s Song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
It is hard to believe it has been a year since the horrifying Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Admittedly, I was barely aware of the US’ 20-year “involvement” there until the messy and controversial evacuation. My limited knowledge of the place was only from the novels of Khaled Hosseini, some of which were so sad as to be almost unbearable to get through. I would ask myself: how did it happen that I was born here and those women were born there, and how do they endure such lives?
With interest, I heard a young American war veteran talking about his experience in Afghanistan, which sounded much like how I remember young soldiers in my youth describing their experience of the Vietnam war. They had no idea what they were doing there or why. I was also surprised and gratified to hear the Public Radio commentator explaining the recently identified category of trauma referred to as “moral injury.” This is the trauma of being forced to witness or commit acts that painfully conflict with one’s own values, morals and beliefs. Often moral injury occurs in the line of duty: military, medical, where the survivor is faced with impossible choices or no choice at all. Of course, we know it also occurs plenty in families. This young veteran, only 20 years old, was talking about that. What a terrible burden to live out one’s days under such a yoke of grief, regret, remorse, guilt, anger and helplessness.
I remember when I was barely old enough to talk, my mother shaking her head and exclaiming, “I hate war!” in the same fierce tone as she sometimes said, “I hate alcohol!” She described herself as a pacifist, so I learned that word early. She loved Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and I remember her having a bumper sticker or a sign (I am not sure) that said “No War Toys.” Even though we were a family of all girls so it was not an issue for us, she was among a group of women opposed to little boys playing with guns, which it seemed like they all did. From an early age, I remember finding war horrifying, incomprehensible and frightening. I rarely watched a movie or read a book about it. In the Vietnam era, I was staunchly antiwar and active, but never quite knew or understood what was going on. Just that I hated it.
From an early age, I remember finding war horrifying, incomprehensible and frightening. I rarely watched a movie or read a book about it.
I have always been amazed that Madonna and Jane Fonda looked so good, close to my age or older. Until I realized, well, parts of them are close to my age or older. They, and others like them, had had a lot of “work” done. Of course. I never knew the history of the science and art of plastic surgery until I recently read The Facemaker, a biography of the surgeon Harold Gillies. Gillies, born in New Zealand, was just completing his medical training when World War 1 broke out. Again, I was quite ignorant about this chunk of world history, and how that war was of a magnitude and scope of agony that seemed new even to the larger world. It also brought a new generation of weaponry that wrought new iterations of destruction: tanks, chemical warfare, bombs, rapid-fire guns.
Besides the sheer numbers of dead and seriously injured, what compelled young Gillies was a massive increase in the appearance of young men whose faces had been blown apart. The damage was often so extreme that existing medical procedures and technology were completely unequipped to address it, let alone keep up with it. And where veterans who lost limbs and returned home in wheelchairs were often viewed as heroes, those with destroyed and disfigured faces looked so grotesque and frightening as to be repulsive to people, even their own children, fiancées and spouses. Even some medical personnel found them unbearable to look at while facing the new challenge, without protocols or textbooks, to develop techniques to try and put them even minimally back together. And, of course, the challenge was not only to “form” but also “function.” Not only was there a mandate to enable them to look such as to continue some semblance of “normal” daily life, but their faces, and the structures below, needed to be able to breathe, eat, and speak.
Gillies made that his life’s work and became one of the founders of the art and science of plastic surgery in the process. In the beginning, plastic simply meant capable of being molded or receiving form, rather than a universe of ocean-strangling junk that we use to make virtually everything. Gillies and his comrades were truly creating an art form. In fact, alongside his unimaginable medical schedule, he added art classes so he could begin to draw and thus teach some of the techniques and procedures he was inventing. A massively energetic and generous human being who transformed many lives.
It was startling to me, as it often is when I discover a whole new category of knowledge or history that confronts me with a whole world of trauma and pain I had perhaps not thought about before. And unsung heroes that most of us never hear about. My own “petty” complaints about the appearance changes that come with natural aging; and narcissistic even identity related losses, paled into shame as I read these tragic accounts of young people in their twenties, trying to serve, or at the very least do what they were told, and being met with catastrophic losses of their sense of self. Often, they were greeted by a revolted and rejecting world, even their families. The horror was simply too much. This extreme of trauma shattered the interface of mind, brain, body, psyche, relationship, and most decidedly, sense of self.
The sense of self, as we know, begins at the very beginning, long before the face has developed much in the way of its unique characteristics. It develops in the most primitive part of the infant brain, as it resonates in a rhythmic dance with the attentive caregiver’s brain. That is sadly where the injury of neglect begins. The attentive caregiver is not there, or not nearly enough, or is out of rhythm due to their own trauma, depression, narcissism, addiction- whatever the harbinger of neglect. So the child is adrift, alone without a rudder or a boundary, long before there is a face.
I have known and read about many a child of neglect who grew up and early on joined the military. It provided some sense of identity and affiliation, an orientation to how the world works, or simply instruction to the young adult who had never had anyone to help them know what to do or how to navigate the big world. The military tells one everything about what to do and when, even what to believe. It breaks my heart to think of the young men, 20 years old or even younger, who never had a sense of self to begin with, and then no longer had a familiar face in the mirror. Gillies cautiously permitted no mirrors in his hospital wards, to protect the patients from the anguish of their mangled reflections. Many of them had numerous surgeries and hospitalizations of many months and even years.
Our mom was herself motherless and a survivor of war. Of course, her brain was sadly out of rhythm, and thus mine. It has taken years to slowly find the beat.
When I see younger people with beautiful skin, I tell them, “if I had known what I do now, when I was your age, I would not have this ragged old face. Take care of your skin!” I never thought about how lucky I am, however, to have an intact face! Perhaps my rhythm was long out of whack, and still sometimes is; with all the challenges of repairing a sense of self, I did not have that! It is a happy memory to think of my mother’s antiwar passion. I identify with that, even in relation to the parallel power struggles between intimate partners. I guess I inherited the passion for peace.
Our mom sang this when we were kids – well, not with the rhythm you will hear in today’s song, but nonetheless. Thanks Mom!
Today’s Song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
The first Monday in September is Labor Day here in the US. It was always the last blush of summer before school started when I was growing up. Now the kids go back to school in August, which is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned. Labor Day originated as a national holiday in 1894, designed to honor and appreciate the efforts and the contribution of the working class who, in the words of the founder of the American Federation of Labor, “from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
Although our family was not exactly working class, our dad had many sweaty jobs up until our adolescence, and I always felt an affinity and identification with work. When I started college in 1973, Cesar Chaves had just begun organizing the United Farm Workers. Picketing the local Safeway Store, marching and chanting the iceberg lettuce and grape boycotts was the weekly Saturday morning social event throughout my first year. I loved it.
I started washing the neighbors’ cars for $2.00 or babysitting for 50 cents an hour before I reached my teens, and by the time I was fourteen, I had my own little housecleaning business, where I amassed the small fortune that would eventually put me through school. In those days, the University of California tuition was $234.00 a quarter, so $1,000.00 would cover at least the tuition part of a year.
Like many a child of neglect, although the relationship was in most ways beyond me, I was a star in the sphere of work. I could out-effort pretty much anyone, and was just OCD enough to maintain an impeccable standard. Of course, those rich people whose mansions I cleaned loved me, and whatever the job, I took great pride in being the best I could be. Years later, I came across an antique-style framed sign in a little collectible shop that said in bold letters, Work Hard and Be Nice. I bought it, and some 25 years later, it is still prominently displayed in my bathroom. Words to live by.
Like many a child of neglect, although the relationship was in most ways beyond me, I was a star in the sphere of work. I could out-effort pretty much anyone, and was just OCD enough to maintain an impeccable standard.
When we were quite young, we had a little book, a German folk tale called Die Heinzelmännchen. I don’t remember the story. The heinzelmännchen were little elf-life creatures who crept in stealthily and silently in the night, and the inhabitants of the house woke up to perfect and immaculate order. The männchen left no trace of themselves, only their exquisite handiwork. Like invisible angels, they created pleasure, joy, and calm. They became my role models.
I was already invisible. I barely existed in anyone’s eyes or minds. But to make spotless order my silent signature and find a way to please and help my mom gave me some sort of convoluted mission or identity. And our mom being calm was better for all of us. She seemed to get agitated and irritable when things were messy or in disarray. Modeling myself after die heinzelmännchen gave me some semblance of self, even if it could be humiliating and devaluing at times as well.
Of course, as I got older, clearly it was not enough. Especially as I got with the times and gained some sort of a feminist sensibility. Time wears on, and the child of neglect may wonder or not even realize they are wondering or experimenting with the idea of being more. Or, at the very least, getting tired or angry. Invisibility is like an old shoe: comfortable, practical, lacking in any kind of aesthetic, but who cares anyway? That is ever the question. And when the ceaseless “efforting” becomes increasingly tinged with resentment, the old shoe may turn to tatters, and worn-out lost or discarded relationships become a growing trash pile of lonely failure.
But how else to be in a relationship without earning a spot with ceaseless and often unsolicited service? It is probably too dangerous to attempt to find out. I remember bitterly believing that anger is the luxury of the popular girls. They did not have to worry about not being liked if they showed a snarky or even unintended unsavory tone. The rest of us had to be on our toes all the time unless we bowed out of the relationship world and disappeared into work altogether, which I sometimes did – at least after I could no longer rely on alcohol to blur the morass of complex feelings.
Long story short, the neglect experience teaches there is no attachment without it being earned, bought, coerced, or somehow bartered. Often the “deals” are unspoken; that is, the unwitting “other” does not know that they are assumed to be in a transaction by accepting the gift, whatever it may be. If the “deal” is in my head, but you never signed on for it, when the bill comes due – well, oy vey!
Work is a place to hide, perhaps to excel, and feel a modicum of value, even if I am never “good enough.”
At a certain point in recovery, being the tireless workhorse is no longer enough. The question may begin to arise: is there another way to be loved? There may even be a point where we become literally too tired or unable to keep up with it all. Then is it back full circle to the original desolate, helpless neglect we began with? The choices may seem bleak.
I always say there is but one non-negotiable in mate selection, at whatever age, and even in our choice of friends: find people who are willing and committed to work on a relationship through the lifespan, and we will be OK. We will most likely need to! (Humiliating at times when we reach some of the riper ages like mine!) Perhaps, however, we can ultimately even relax the storm of productivity and over-productivity and enjoy the fruits of our labor and the blessings of regulated connection, which should be everyone’s birthright.
I love the old union songs. One of my faves is Pete Seeger singing “Who’s Side Are You On…” I would have chosen that as today’s song were it not for its dated exclusive language. The words are “whose side are you on boys?” I didn’t want that.
Anyway, for those who live in a Labor Day observing country, I hope you can rest with a picnic, or a good book, whatever is your respite, and ultimately find love without working so hard, which may be the work of a lifetime. It seems to be for me, but that is OK. And Viva La Huelga!
Today’s Song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!