In June in San Francisco, the city is more colorful than ever, with rainbow flags billowing gaily in the wind. We live blocks from the famed Castro District, which is community and home to a large number of LGBTQ inhabitants.
June is Pride Month, and for the last two years of the pandemic, festivities of all kinds have been toned down or cancelled, like everything else. As with all other re-openings, restoring some sort of “normal”, even if it is a “new normal”, brings a wash of feelings and memories. For some reason, I found myself drifting back to thoughts of my childhood friend, Jimmy (not his real name).
I was in 6th grade, and Jimmy was in 7th. He was a gangly, goofy smiling blond, and I was a too-sensitive, introverted bookworm. We were a pair: two invisible misfits who found each other and somehow became best friends. I would join Jimmy on his paper route, and we would spend hours pedaling our clunky three-speed bikes around the neighborhood long after the deliveries were done. We could joke, and Jimmy also had the depth that we could talk about serious things. And that we also endlessly did.
As ever, my memory is spotty, and I don’t remember how we lost touch with each other for many years. I was in my middle 30s when I heard from Jimmy again. He had become a top fashion model in Milan. He was gorgeous; well, the glossy magazine photos of him were. But now it was the 1980s, the height of the AIDS epidemic, when it was a most terrifying and a pretty inevitable death sentence for those infected. When he contacted me, Jimmy was very sick. Once back in touch, I spent as much of the short time he had left with him as I could.
Jimmy wanted to talk about dying, and he said no one wanted to talk about that. We talked and talked, just like we always had. I don’t remember much at all, except how soon he died and how tragic it was. A tragedy sadly shared by many, if not all of us in my generation here in SF.
Most tragic of all, perhaps, Jimmy’s very religious parents, who had always seemed like such “nice” people and who had not known he was gay until after he got sick, distanced themselves and disowned him. They just could not accept it. He had always been invisible and disconnected from them, and now in his final days, more than ever. And then he died. Terribly neglected as a child, he was completely abandoned in his darkest and final hours. I am so sad about this and also deeply sad that my memory is so raggedly incomplete. I wish I could honor Jimmy with fuller recollection, and I wish I had it for myself.
Jimmy wanted to talk about dying, and he said no one wanted to talk about that. We talked and talked, just like we always had. I don’t remember much at all, except how soon he died and how tragic it was. A tragedy sadly shared by many, if not all of us in my generation here in SF.
What kind of weird “otherism” would make a parent hate and reject their own flesh and blood? Self-hatred? More likely a legacy of feeling unseen and hated themselves. And yet it seems to be a horrible multi-cultural mutation.
This morning I heard a program about spirituality and religion in the LGBTQ world. There were speakers from Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, First Nation, and Christian backgrounds, some still searching for a way to remain in faith, describing being shunned, outcast and worse by family, community and seemingly God. It seemed their only best consolation was in sharing experiences and understanding with their diverse compatriots around the world.
Nonetheless, the primordial attachment bond (we share it with all mammals) is the source of our deepest and most persistent longings and reactions. Clients often wonder why their vulnerability and stubborn endurance of mistreatment seems so intransigent; why their futile strivings for approval from the elusive parent endure, even often long after they have died. The “quiet” and invisible, seemingly subtle injuries of being ignored, not known, abandoned, forgotten, or as with Jimmy and many like him, disowned, are perhaps the most insidious, devastating, and under-rated trauma stories of all. And sadly, they are all too often the stories that, in effect, “have no story.” Often lacking concrete form, the experience of, in effect, “missing experience” having vanished from view disappears into non-existence, and the sufferer feels guilty or baffled about “feeling so bad.”
Another wave of attachment trauma is in the offing, with historical changes now unfolding in China. For decades, in an effort to manage burgeoning population expansion, the government issued a one-child mandate. Rapidly, baby girls became beyond worthless, a liability, and boys were inherently more valuable. Now it has caught up with them, and as the population shrinks and ages, there is a “shortage” of girls and women. With a shrinking population, how will the economy keep up? Parents worry about who will their sons marry. How can they afford the competition for suitable mothers for their heirs? And we have to wonder about the impact on attachment bonds of all this “conditionality.”
When couples talk about “unconditional love”, I must disclose my bias. I believe the one time in our lives we can reasonably hope to be loved “unconditionally” – meaning regardless of what we do or don’t do – is in infancy. It is an honorable goal but not always possible or even adaptive. I certainly would not expect Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, for example, to love each other unconditionally and similarly in less dramatic cases. But in infancy, that is the one time we can rightfully and realistically hope to be loved and valued with no expectation to perform or somehow merit, earn or win that love. When that is lacking, it is an unspeakably terrible lack.
And sadly, they are all too often the stories that, in effect, “have no story.” Often lacking concrete form, the experience of, in effect, “missing experience” having vanished from view disappears into non-existence, and the sufferer feels guilty or baffled about “feeling so bad.”
Passionately involved in the Latin American solidarity movement for many years and being a music lover, the then “‘New’ Latin American Song” was an ever-present back beat or accompaniment. It was a beautiful hybrid of traditional folkloric and indigenous music and instruments, more modern folk music, and revolutionary lyrics. I was a tireless listener. Its “founder” or mother, was Chilean singer-songwriter Violeta Parra, most famous for her song, “Gracias a la Vida,” – thanks be to life – and acclaimed as the song that kicked off the new song movement. We all loved her.
I was surprised and dismayed to learn that Parra’s 1967 death was from suicide. She was 50. As it happened, Parra was invited to Europe to accept a high-level international music award. She agonized over the decision to travel and be away from her beloved nine-month-old daughter. Ultimately, she decided to go and accept the award, concluding that the harm of being away from her baby for two weeks was outweighed by the good she might contribute to the world and to Chile by receiving the great honor. Shortly into her trip, Parra learned her daughter had contracted pneumonia and was terribly sick. Seized by fear of her daughter’s fate and racked with guilt for leaving her, Parra rushed to return to Chile. She found when she arrived that it was too late. Her little daughter had died. Parra was inconsolable, and ultimately this mythical lover of life killed herself by gunshot.
It is nature’s design for a mother to be as deeply attached as the child and to be as profoundly affected by attachment rupture. The same was true of mothers still in deep grief about the deaths of their murdered children in the massacre at Sandy Hook, now a decade ago. The interviewed mothers have never gotten over it, and we must anticipate something similar among the growing numbers of parents experiencing such losses.
The inhale to George Floyd’s gasped exhalation “Mama, Mama…” with his last breaths. This is why we suffer so from the absence, loss, or never having had secure and loving attachments. Indeed, secure attachment is our inalienable birthright and the most natural and enduring of longings.
To end on a more positive note, we do now have same-sex marriage. A relatively new historical development and change. It is evidence that, even at a glacial pace, there is movement on the historical map, which reminds us to not give up: that all our efforts at change are not in vain.
Happy Pride.
The inhale to George Floyd’s gasped exhalation “Mama, Mama…” with his last breaths. This is why we suffer so from the absence, loss, or never having had secure and loving attachments.
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.
Last week I had a (for me) truly strange experience. While sitting quietly and alone in my psychotherapy office, out of nowhere, I had a wild dizzy spell. I say “wild” because the room was whirling at such a speed as to be but a blur of splattered color. I had never experienced anything like that before. I quickly tried pressing my feet hard into the floor, a grounding practice I had learned in my first somatic trainings decades ago. I could feel my feet, but the spinning did not slow. I heard a bellowing voice in my head saying, “this is real.” It kept repeating those words.
I held onto my chair, and eventually, the gyration quieted and ultimately stopped. Stunned and somewhat rattled, I called my husband to tell him. He asked me if I wanted him to come and pick me up. I said I thought I was OK and would let him know if I changed my mind, and then I proceeded to work my day. By the end of the workday, when it was time to drive home, I felt OK, and although I called him to let him know I was getting ready to drive, I felt pretty much back to my usual self. I was careful, and the drive home was unremarkable.
Reflecting with some bafflement, what perhaps struck me the most about this little event, were the words “this is real.” They got me to thinking about my childhood experiences of feeling unwell in any way. Whatever untoward bodily state I might be experiencing was either my “fault”, or it was “nothing.” If I caught a cold or the flu, it was from doing something or being with someone I shouldn’t have, staying out too late, or not wearing enough clothes. If I felt queasy, it would be from eating something I shouldn’t have, eating too much, it being unwashed, etc. If we did not feel well in the morning, our dad would say, “Get all ready for school and see how you feel after breakfast.” By that time, unless I was actively vomiting, which was rare to virtually never, I did not even know how I felt anymore.
One of the few times I do remember vomiting was in first grade. I didn’t feel well, but I did as I was told and went to school, PS 152, my large New York City public school. At recess, I threw up on the blacktop, and someone drew a chalk circle around it and wrote “Ruth Did This” in large juvenile caps. I was mortified, and the trauma I remembered was that.
When I was almost lethally anorexic, and it was finally impossible to ignore because I collapsed in a public place, it was not viewed as an “illness” but rather “bad behavior”. The response was, or felt to me to be just punitive, with an accusation of stressing my parents out.
Interoception is the brain’s ability to sense and feel the body. It is a survival function that dictates action. If something is “wrong”, there might be some sort of correction or antidote required for equilibrium or healing to be restored. With a lack of mirroring and care, it is inadequately, outright inaccurately, or simply not learned. Perhaps I got so completely disconnected from my body’s sensations that anorexia might later be more “tolerable.” Perhaps I myself could not quite feel the difference between a “normal state” and a state of starvation. I honestly don’t remember. I do remember that alcohol felt good when I discovered it at around age 14, but mostly because it made everything else “go away.”
I used to boast that in 35 years of private practice, I only missed two days of work due to illness. It was kind of a joke until, in 2015, I was stricken with a nearly septic systemic infection which landed me in the hospital for a week, followed by a week at home lying around watching bread baking YouTube videos. The first time I humiliatingly took a “DNF” (Did Not Finish) from a 200-miles-in-a-day (“Double Century”) bike ride, at mile 163, I was bitterly ashamed. I was utterly freezing. Too cold to keep riding. Sheepishly, I called my husband to tell him and was annoyed that he was relieved and “proud of me” for, perhaps the first time, not forcing it and harming myself in the process. I was ever after sickened by the memory of that ride: a 163-mile embarrassing failure.
There are so many ways that the child’s body experience, whether it be illness, weight, injury, substance use, sexual abuse, or innumerable other iterations, are another insidious form of neglect, and the consequence to the child and later adult’s sensory life, and self-care can be dramatically altered in ways that are long and trying to correct and/or heal. It is not unusual for the body to express the unknown trauma/neglect story in somaticizations that do not fit in any diagnostic box. All too often, survivors of any age are neglected or mistreated by a medical system, ignorant to these symptom constellations or syndromes, and patients are again blamed or told it is “all in their heads.” I have wondered why the way the Pandemic forced the entire world to be focused on the body, health and medical care was somehow a comfort to me. Perhaps this is why.
Reflecting with some bafflement, what perhaps struck me the most about this little event, were the words “this is real.” They got me to thinking about my childhood experiences of feeling unwell in any way. Whatever untoward bodily state I might be experiencing was either my “fault”, or it was “nothing.”
Some children grow up with a sick or disabled primary parent, even starting from their very birth. Obviously, by no “fault” of their own, the parent’s attention and capability are compromised. Short of more help than most mothers or parents can muster, the child will pay. Pain, by its very nature is consuming, and illness self-focused. A sick or disabled parent will categorically be inwardly focused, and the infant, baby, small or growing child confused about how to get care or even who the caregiver is. For many a child of neglect, the caregiving role begins very early: taking care of the self, the parent, and even younger siblings. Self-reliance may seem like a “genetic” or inborn trait, and caretaking of others an inherent, default, perennial role. It may be the one source of attention they get. I remember how acknowledging my mother was when at the age of three, “Ruthie was organizing the’ little ones’ in play.” It seemed to be a help to the mothers and created some sort of value or modicum of visibility or existence for me.
Parental compromised physical or mental health, or disability or both, beyond consuming attention and energy, creates a confusion of roles. Who is the caregiver? Who really even needs care? If the parental disability is “subtle” or “invisible,” or something the child perceives but cannot quite name or identify, such as depression or chronic fatigue, even more so. The child might become accustomed to ensuring the parent’s wellbeing, to safeguard the parent’s survival in the hope of “getting” any attention or care at all, or simply out of love, compassion, sympathy or fear of loss. If there is anger or longing, it may be shrouded in shame or guilt or simply be imperceptible. And, of course, it disconnects the child from their own bodily experience, like me.
Pain, by its very nature is consuming, and illness self-focused. A sick or disabled parent will categorically be inwardly focused, and the infant, baby, small or growing child confused about how to get care or even who the caregiver is.
I know numerous adults with long histories of neglect and great loss because of it who find themselves in the position of caring for aging parents. At a certain point of the trajectory toward death, a parent might seem to exist in some sort of neurological limbo. I remember when our dad was in that state, I had to wonder if anything was firing in his brain anymore: if he focused inward, or if, like the neuroimaging scans I have seen of the brain in a freeze state, nothing was online. Toward the end, the only thing that made him appear minimally alive was when he proudly walked his laps up and down the hall, displaying with his fingers how many. He seemed not to know me anymore; I don’t recall him speaking my name ever in his final year. Often, he barely seemed to look up or register when I came in or even when I touched him, although he did seem to like the kisses on the forehead and would smilingly say “thank you, thank you.” He lost his mother way too young and suffered great deprivation throughout his childhood, adolescent, and teen years.
I did not live with him in those final years. He had a second wife with whom he lived, and a truly angelic hired caregiver, whom I believe he loved more than anyone. She blessedly performed all the unsavory hygiene tasks that he was no longer able to do for himself with exquisite gentleness and love. We were all lucky to have her.
Children of neglect who find themselves in the position of live-in primary caregiver to the elderly parent who by now is as absent as the unlit brain scans may find themselves trapped in a tussle between duty, resentment and guilt, perhaps even love, and sympathy and compassion, all having it out inside of them. Meanwhile, quantities of resources, financial, time and social opportunity are expended, compounding the lifetime of loss due to neglect. Sorting the morass of feeling may be a Sisyphean and ever-changing task. The absentness of the vacuous aged brain may be a living reminder of the absent, vapid childhood parent. They are back in the “belly of the monster” with all the incumbent grief. Oy vey. All the objectives of healing from neglect collide as they find their way to a sustainable ending to the parent’s life that will allow the survivor to live with themselves most comfortably after the parent’s passing.
There is no simple “fix” for all of this. We all find our own way. The best I can offer are the timeless words of the Dalai Lama, who is known for saying, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible!” I add, “to yourself, that is!”
Children of neglect who find themselves in the position of live-in primary caregiver to the elderly parent who by now is as absent as the unlit brain scans may find themselves trapped in a tussle between duty, resentment and guilt, perhaps even love, and sympathy and compassion, all having it out inside of them.
Todays 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.
On May 25, it was two years since the tragic murder of George Floyd. It seems like just a flash moment since I wrote my blog marking the one-year anniversary. “Pandemic time”, like “trauma time”, has a quality of hazy unreality to it, And much as we are better coming to understand the mechanisms of traumatic memory, it nonetheless continues to feel summarily weird. The sensational reporting about the trial of Floyd’s killer cluttered the news for much of this year, so the reverberations of that historical moment have never been far from consciousness for me. I frequently hear myself say, whether in response to another or myself, rattled by some traumatic activation, that “trauma is not remembered, it is relived.”
I do find myself afraid that Floyd will be forgotten, will evaporate into irrelevance or simple non-existence. That is perhaps my own feeling being relived. Floyd being so neglected, with a constellation of experiences: poverty, color, addiction and so many additional insults and atrocities of these last two years, it is not an unreasonable concern, even in real-time. I don’t want the cataclysm of Floyd’s death washed away in the undertow of these dramatic years.
The nature of trauma is also a strange pendulation of remembering and forgetting, another mysterious alteration of traumatic memory. I have always found it perplexing that I have so little memory of my life. I have observed the same in many survivors of trauma and neglect.
I do find myself afraid that Floyd will be forgotten, will evaporate into irrelevance or simple non-existence.
I remember years ago in a trauma conference, hearing a lecture about this strange phenomenon of remembering and forgetting, even with “grand” historical scale trauma. It is as if we would prefer to erase events from awareness, whitewash or re-touch our story to make it more palatable or bearable. Imagine denying the holocaust, and yet there are those that do! More often, we don’t know we do this. Many survivors of severe trauma are surprised and shocked by memory that arises unbidden later in life, in a process that is so confusing and feels so out of control, that it is hard to know what to believe.
Neglect is so riddled with the feeling of being forgotten, and the predominance of emptiness, of there being nothing to remember or forget, that it becomes a kind of Gordian knot or koan. I have many, many years of journals, ragged and faded. I have toted them with me through the seemingly discrete phases and decades of my long life, from place to place. Yet, I have never opened a single one, no would I consider throwing them away. Perhaps they are a kind of evidence that I did exist or have a past, perhaps they symbolize the ambivalence of remembering and forgetting, knowing and not knowing. I do know that with each passing anniversary of a major event, such as the death of George Floyd, I fear anew that it, that he will be forgotten, that any lesson will be lost, or his life and death in vain.
In a fascinating book I read some years ago, Denial by Jessica Stein, she describes her own elusive trauma story. As a young teen, she and her sister were violently sexually assaulted by a stranger. They were together, so she had the atypical experience of having her trauma witnessed and shared, from beginning to end. The assault was reported to the police, so their story was formally documented and filed with authorities. However, in spite of the precise record of the event, both with the police and her sister’s memory, the entire experience vanished from the author’s conscious memory. It simply evaporated.
Interestingly, Stein grew up to become a scholar and an expert on the subject of terrorism. She graduated from a prestigious university with advanced degrees and travelled the world researching and interviewing, writing and teaching about terrorists. She had no idea why she had this abiding interest in these horrifying and despicable individuals- until, in her 40s, she “remembered” her trauma. The rest of the book is about that. I highly recommend it.
I do harbor the fear that the way memory can be of use, like to prevent a recurrence, or to honor the sacrifice of the sufferer, will be lost. I did hurriedly buy the recent biography of George Floyd, timed exquisitely for release right around the anniversary date. I have not finished it, but so far, I find it to have an unsavory opportunistic flavor, as if the authors stand to advance themselves by memorializing him. Uggghh.
Neglect is so riddled with the feeling of being forgotten, and the predominance of emptiness, of there being nothing to remember or forget, that it becomes a kind of Gordian knot or koan.
This complex tangle of remembering and forgetting can raise for me the evocative question of forgiveness. Where does that fit? I so admire John Lewis in his ability to forgive George Wallace, who’s resounding historic words, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” stained and shaped the racist US national climate for some years. When Wallace sought his forgiveness, Lewis granted it, later saying, “When I met George Wallace, I had to forgive him because to do otherwise — to hate him — would only perpetuate the evil system we sought to destroy.” How do you do that? And yet adamantly, Lewis adds, we forgive but never forget.
I don’t suppose I am ready to forgive the sadistic and brutal murder of George Floyd. But I do fervently want to keep the memory alive and breathing, and redouble the effort to eradicate trauma and neglect on every scale.
This complex tangle of remembering and forgetting can raise for me the evocative question of forgiveness. Where does that fit?
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.
Doggedly committed as I am to therapy modalities that diverge from the “talking cure” I must admit that I love words. In the last few years, maybe since the internet became such a rapid-fire vehicle of fad and fashion, I have noticed with curiosity how certain words and phrases seem to be echoing everywhere, suddenly out of the blue. About a year or so ago, I noticed first with one client, almost every utterance ended with…”do you know what I mean?” At first, I thought she must feel uncertain about whether or not I am hearing or understanding her, a typical neglect issue. Then I began noticing those words everywhere, and still do. I have heard something similar with the term “gaslight,” which has become a household word. I don’t recall hearing it bandied around until somewhat recently.
I remember the old classic movie, Gaslight, from which it emerged. Always a Hitchcock fan, I loved it, although it was not Hitchcock, but similar in vintage and style. For those who have not seen it, it is well worth watching, the story of a beautiful, wealthy young woman being swindled into believing lies that cast her perception/sanity into question, enabling her handsome and conniving beau to viciously rip her off. I won’t spoil it here, but rather say that “gaslight” has evolved into a verb meaning deception such as to confound one’s own perception of reality, even sanity, into confusion, doubt, or outright disbelief. It is truly “crazy-making.”
An undeniable factor in what the lasting impact of trauma and neglect will be, is the response, or not of important caregivers or important others, to a child’s distress. Parental, or authority denying, ignoring, minimizing or outright blaming for the child’s experience may be even more injurious than the original injury. Sadly, we know how much this happens.
In the case of neglect, where there is often “nothing” to point to, it can be all the more confusing. The child may wonder, “why do I feel so bad?” or so hated, worthless, forgotten, excluded… all the ways that a child of neglect will feel. It is insidious. And the more we learn as a field about developmental trauma including neglect, because it defies perhaps our deepest human and mammalian need: the need to be attached and connected, is perhaps the most devastating trauma of all.
I had one client who struggled to make sense out of her history, and when she finally did, and tried to talk to her mother about it, her mother’s retort was “Unless you say that did not happen, we simply can’t have a relationship.” The young woman felt ripped apart, rather like “Sophie’s Choice.” She felt in a position to choose between herself and her own integrity; and her essential longing and need for her mother’s love. She could not resolve it, her mother ultimately died, and she was left haunted with the pain, remorse, guilt and confusion. This is a big part of why I am on a mission to “correct” or re-cast the story of “nothing happened to me.” Not in a gaslighting sense, but rather in a “fact-finding” sense.
An undeniable factor in what the lasting impact of trauma and neglect will be, is the response, or not of important caregivers or important others, to a child’s distress. Parental, or authority denying, ignoring, minimizing or outright blaming for the child’s experience may be even more injurious than the original injury. Sadly, we know how much this happens.
I recently heard a story where, in light of the horrors of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, interest returned to research about a Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1932 to New York Times’ chief correspondent to the then Soviet Union, Walter Duranty. Perhaps Duranty was the “father” of “fake news” now 90 years ago. Then, without the internet and the instantaneous wildfire of world events, the reporting in the Times carried even more weight than now, and a Pulitzer is a weighty honor. In the 1930’s it was Stalin whose decrees led to mass deaths of Ukrainian citizens. Scholars studying the history and looking to rescind the prestigious award found in Duranty’s reports that Stalin was the “strong leader” that the Ukrainian people needed.
One example of Duranty’s “airbrushing history” was his use of the word “malnutrition” to euphemistically describe the widespread famine that plagued Ukraine, leading to hungry Soviet soldiers systematically going door to door, confiscating food from Ukrainian citizens. They seized grain, vegetables, livestock – whatever people had – resulting in mass starvation and death. Duranty’s prize-garnering reporting shrouded such facts in confusion. Both the Times and the Pulitzer Prize Board, even if they “distance themselves” from Duranty’s reporting, have resisted rescinding the prize. They believe they are “making up for the paper’s past shortcomings” in their sharp reporting of current Russian war crimes. Perhaps it is no accident that “gaslight” has penetrated our common lexicon.
One example of Duranty’s “airbrushing history” was his use of the word “malnutrition” to euphemistically describe the widespread famine that plagued Ukraine, leading to hungry Soviet soldiers systematically going door to door, confiscating food from Ukrainian citizens.
Another source of internal chaos for the neglected child might be parental narcissism.
The parent might be so wildly intrusive, overbearing or doting that the child might not even recognize how completely unseen and unheard they are. They might instead feel guilty, ungrateful and ashamed for not feeling cared for; or simply perplexed about what is “really going on.” Even more so when the parent has their own tragic trauma history. The child is left to wander in a lonely daze. In Amy Tan’s beautiful Where the Past Begins, a Writer’s Memoir, she poignantly declares, “loneliness is not about being alone. Loneliness is about not feeling understood,” – a hallmark of neglect. When there is parental narcissism, I often say, “There is no you!” Is there any wonder that the child would feel so empty?
It is absolutely true that words do not take us nearly far enough to heal from trauma and neglect. We need a full tool shed of modalities addressing body, emotion, brain and spirit. And yet words do matter also. John Gottman, the marriage researcher in developing his model of emotionally coached parenting, reminds us that when we accurately name the emotion that the child is feeling in the moment, that in itself serves to calm their nervous system down. Of course, in a full-on trauma state, it is not quite so simple, but accurate naming is the soundtrack for the essential mirroring function. I learn who I am by being seen and known by another person and putting words to my experience. If the words are accurate, I learn how to accurately name my experience and ultimately express it. Then I am able to connect with another. These are but a few of the missing experiences that come with neglect.
For many a child of neglect, the language of emotion is a torn-out page from their personal “dictionary” and from their internal world. It may be a gibberish of sensation or physical pain, a cavernous void, or a “simple” non-category having no reference. Or it may be bursts of activation, seeming out of control, “metabolically expensive,” or nonsensical. Often a child of neglect will unwittingly choose a partner who, much the opposite, seems floridly or “disproportionally” emotional. Much as they “seek” to learn, it may be a bitter struggle to find equilibrium and harmony between them as they each wrangle with the missing part of the Self that they see in the other. Oy vey! No wonder relationship is so hard!
For the decidedly self-reliant child of neglect, for whom disavowal of interpersonal need is on the order of survival, the value of a “trusted witness” may be a hard sell. That does make sense. Especially if that witness is a paid professional. Even the adjective “trusted” may seem oxymoronic. However, the injury of neglect and of gaslighting being so very endemically interpersonal, the power and impact of being accurately and authentically seen and heard and understood by another person is ultimately a gamechanger. At least as far as I am concerned. Much as I love and believe in Neurofeedback, for example, without the accompanying psychotherapy, it is, as our dad used to say about reading poetry in translation: “like kissing a bride through a veil.”
John Gottman, the marriage researcher in developing his model of emotionally coached parenting, reminds us that when we accurately name the emotion that the child is feeling in the moment, that in itself serves to calm their nervous system down.
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.
Since the Pandemic hit in March of 2020, I have filled my Prius with gas a total of six times so far – the first time after about 15 months. I had been driving so little; it was much more frequent that I frantically rousted my husband out of bed to come out and give me a jump. So, it is easy to remember each visit to the Arco station.
The last time I went for a fill-up was early in the morning on my way to the office, and it was still dark. As was not unusual, there was a homeless man offering to clean windshields to garner a little cash. This particular man looked ancient, although it is hard to discern the age of someone toughened and weathered by life on the streets. He had a ragged gray blanket thrown over his shoulders like a poncho, a good quality squeegee, and a bottle of window cleaner.
I declined his offer. I knew I did not have any cash, and admittedly I was a little scared of him and didn’t want him too close to me. He persisted, and I realized it was not to pressure me for the money. He seemed to believe that I did not have any cash. Rather my windows were so pathetically filthy and unkempt, it would have seemed to him unprofessional or unconscionable to turn his back and walk away, leaving them in that state. It seemed a point of pride. The man insisted and set upon my windows with his energetic squeegee. He didn’t just do the windshield; he went all the way around the car, leaving every window gleaming. By the time the car had finished filling up, he had finished. Satisfied, he and his blanket slipped back into the blanket of darkness, vanishing into invisibility again.
I saw my reflection in the sparkling glass in the light of the gas station streetlamp, and I was gripped and moved by the strange irony. How many times a day do people like me turn and walk away from someone like him, perhaps dirty, even “pathetic”, not doing what they could easily and quickly do well, simply out of caring and pride. The feeling and the image of this man reverberated inside of me. That day I went home and put two twenties in my purse, committed to looking for him and giving it to him “next time.” I continued to go back looking for him for about three weeks.
Somewhere in the 4th week, I had a dramatic blowout on the Bay Bridge. Fortunately, it was daylight, and the traffic was light. I was able to pull over, no small feat on that bridge. I called Emergency Road Service, rattled but blessedly less so, thanks to my “new” neurofeedback protocol. The amazingly comforting and kind man on the phone told me that since I was on the bridge, CalTrans, the public transit traffic control person, would come and help me. The CalTrans angel appeared in minutes, put on the skinny little Prius spare, and told me I should get off the bridge and turn around. Driving slowly, the little spare would safely get me home. For some reason, I remembered the little man and his blanket and gave this CalTrans angel “his” two wrinkled bills that I’d been carrying around. He too seemed to take pride in his heroic work. He hugged me and, driving behind me in his big bulky public works truck, shepherded me safely to the other side of the Bay. Admittedly it still rather astonishes me to feel so taken care of. And it is not lost on me that I am both white and privileged.
I saw my reflection in the sparkling glass in the light of the gas station streetlamp, and I was gripped and moved by the strange irony. How many times a day do people like me turn and walk away from someone like him, perhaps dirty, even “pathetic”, not doing what they could easily and quickly do well, simply out of caring and pride.
I am not a mother, and neither my husband nor I have living mothers. Although it has been over 20 years since both of our mothers passed, we still somehow feel like we dodge a bullet every Mother’s Day. I remember all those years of waitressing Mother’s Day brunches, sticky with Hollandaise, witnessing families in their own little Mother’s Day theaters, glad to be an audience and not a player.
Now it is an ordinary Sunday, marked only by the jacked-up prices when I go to buy the weekly flowers for the house.
With relief that it is past tense, I remember my endless quest to please our mom. Mother’s Day was monument to that. I was on a mission: the perfect gift; breakfast in bed. And yet I was never good enough to make her proud. I have always quipped that the only way she registered when I left home was that she hired a “cleaning lady, ” Donna. She used to laugh and call the day Donna came “Donnerstag”, a play on the German word for Thursday. I was jealous. Not only was Donna seen and paid, but she had a day named after her, even if only in fun. I don’t think I ever succeeded in making Mom proud of me. At least I never felt like I did.
It was no surprise when I learned from attachment research that the way a child develops a sense of Self and self-worth is by looking up into the face of the parent and seeing a glowing and joyful reflection of “me!” I always believed that the people who said you can’t love another person until you love yourself had it backwards and still do. I also learned that “your self-image is the last thing to change.” I’ve known many people who were chubby or fat as children, and even after many decades of being svelte, still see themselves as that rotund little kid. The same is true of feeling invisible or hated – hard and slow beliefs to change.
When my first book was published in 2010, I was 55. I heard the words I had waited all my life to hear. Our Dad said, “I’m so proud of you.” My book stayed on his coffee table; I think until he died in 2020, although I’m sure he never cracked the covers.
Although it has been over 20 years since both of our mothers passed, we still somehow feel like we dodge a bullet every Mother’s Day.
I’ve never darkened the doorway of a sports bar; I don’t drink. And although I have read most of the memoirs and biographies of professional athletes in the known world, I never watch sports, preferring to be the one to play myself. Nevertheless, it was with great interest that I heard this story on public radio last week about a new sports bar in Portland, Oregon, called the Sports Bra. What distinguishes it is that all the sports events shown on their screens are women’s sports. It never dawned on me that women athletes are never featured in bars.
Of course, another important way we are validated in both a sense of self and pride is in the larger community and culture. For these reasons, monuments, songs, art, celebrations, many rituals, and a bar like the Sports Bra help supplement missing experiences. San Francisco and many world LGBTQI events are referred to as Pride. In the late 1960s, a prevailing rallying cry of a movement to stand tall and be visible was “I’m Black and I’m proud!”. Huge populations have been invisible or worse, as a group; that, for many, layered over their original invisibility and neglect.
Le Chaim! Salud! Cheers! A toast to women athletes emerging from the bullpen.
And Happy Belated Mothers’ Day whatever it might mean to you!
Of course, another important way we are validated in both a sense of self and pride is in the larger community and culture. For these reasons, monuments, songs, art, celebrations, many rituals, and a bar like the Sports Bra help supplement missing experiences.
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 was possibly 25 years ago now, at one of the few and far-between trauma conferences. I always had to travel far to get to them in those days and usually felt small and decidedly not smart enough. I always sat in the front row so I would not miss anything, devouring all the information.
Trauma was new to the mainstream psychotherapy world then. Even more embryonically new was the appearance of the brain anywhere on the psychotherapy map, and trauma led the charge. Fighting the age-old belief that I was a girl/dummy at math and science, I struggled with what was, to me, a fascinating new dialect.
The speaker was a young woman, fresh out of medical school who looked about 25. She presented the case of a couple trapped in their car in a catastrophic accident. The husband, flooded with herculean fight-flight strength, smashed his way out of the crumpled vehicle, beat the passenger side window in and pulled his wide-eyed wife out. Seized with incapacitating terror, the wife had plunged into a catatonic freeze state.
Later, when safely in the emergency room, their brains were scanned. As we would expect, the husband’s brain showed the limbic fight-flight response lit up like a supernova. However, when the speaker showed the slide of the wife’s brain, the entire conference room uttered a shocked gasp in unison. It was completely dark. Nothing was firing at all.
Trauma was new to the mainstream psychotherapy world then. Even more embryonically new was the appearance of the brain anywhere on the psychotherapy map, and trauma led the charge.
The presenter was Ruth Lanius, who has since become the world’s leading expert on the neuroscience of trauma. That chilling image and the accompanying gasp have stayed vividly with me over these many years. I remember that moment with not only photographic detail but big emotions: admiration, gratitude, awe and amazement about how far Dr. Lanius has come and has brought us all as a field. I am proud to share the name!
While one adaptation to usually incident or “shock” trauma is the flaming glare of limbic fight-flight activation, this pitch darkness is the dissociative freeze. It is the numbing of an animal, cornered and overtaken by a predator, to the pain of being eaten; or pretending to be dead in the hope the predator will lose interest and go away. It is the galactic distance of disconnection. And it is the same blank and deathlike emptiness that showed up again in the scans of the Romanian orphans; prisoners in solitary confinement, the desolate, neglected infant. I am reminded of Bruce Springsteen eliciting feedback from his audience with the call “Is there anyone alive out there?” Later reading his surprisingly deep and compelling autobiography, I learned that Bruce suffered considerable childhood neglect and poverty too. Several bouts of paralyzing depression had Bruce unable to get out of bed for stretches of up to two years, unable to “turn off the faucet of tears.” And this was long after the wild success of Born to Run.
I was repeatedly amazed in the early years of my marriage when my husband, who had a severe history of childhood neglect, would rather take a labyrinthine maze of random surface streets than sit in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic. The waiting and unending, unchanging monotony were unbearable to him. I was convinced the rat-wheel like surface route took just as long or longer, and he even agreed with me. Nevertheless, he insisted that it was better to be moving.
I have since learned that many survivors of childhood neglect find boredom unendurable. Probably reminiscent of the oceanic abandonment and waiting of the infant or small child, often scared, cold, hungry, wet, confused, lonely, desperate, with no end in sight and nothing to be done. A signature of neglect that I came to recognize early on in adults: interpersonal passivity, helplessness and the echoing refrain of “There is nothing I can do! I don’t know what to do!”
I have since learned that many survivors of childhood neglect find boredom unendurable. Probably reminiscent of the oceanic abandonment and waiting of the infant or small child, often scared, cold, hungry, wet, confused, lonely, desperate, with no end in sight and nothing to be done.
I’ve never been particularly interested or impressed with space travel. It has always seemed to me to be a colossal expenditure of resources better invested here on earth. Jeff Bezos’ vacation excursions for wealthy tourists, even more! I was struck, however, to hear a recent report about the US Mars expeditions. Given that the distance to Mars takes about eight months to traverse, the round-trip mission spans upwards of three years, including time in the capsule and work time once there. Oy vey! I can hardly tolerate a transatlantic airplane flight!
Interestingly to me, NASA identified the greatest peril and enemy of the mission is boredom. The extended sensory deprivation and unchanging monotonous sameness are lethal to the couped-up astronauts’ brains. To see only unchanging, infinite, never-ending sameness, which looks and feels like time has stopped – how familiar this sounds! And validating to the agony of neglect. NASA agrees with us about the urgency of addressing the empty under-stimulated isolation.
The brain and the endlessly resourceful child of neglect tirelessly search for ways to wake itself up, even if not always in the most pleasant or adaptive ways. I have seen often enough among couples where a bored partner suddenly lobs a provocative fireball of insult, outrage or known exposing, hot topic into the “too quiet” field simply to stimulate some kind of “action” or essential aliveness. It invariably evokes an unreceptive response at best or even a bout of conflict and disconnect, but this apparently beats the alternative. In couples therapy, we strive to cultivate more pleasant, adaptive and connected solutions to the problem of deadening.
Interestingly to me, NASA identified the greatest peril and enemy of the mission is boredom.
The moon mission is decidedly shorter than the trip to Mars, more like 3 ½ months round trip. With a lifelong dream of becoming a space traveler, Astronaut Karen Nyberg finally realized her great aspiration. She was prepared and scheduled for a moon mission right around the time her beloved little son was three. She suffered about the separation and was also apprehensive about the long monotonous days in space.
Nyberg’s hobby, her other passion and the only thing she loves almost as much as space travel, is quilt-making. She had the inspired idea of taking her little sewing setup to the moon. The challenges of quilting without gravity unleashed her creative imagination. Unable to travel with pins, she secured her pieces with Velcro. Cutting fabric was an additional creative experiment. The novelty (and the brain loves novelty – one of its favorite catalysts for neurogenesis new neuron generation), as well as the opportunity to engage in a much-loved pastime, awakened her brain, filled the void of redundant time, and softened the ache of missing her family. Her little son also loved the pictures she was able to send him, especially as her long hair, without gravity, stood straight up like a troll doll!
Alfredo Santos, a maximum-security prisoner in one of the United States’ most notoriously violent and nightmarish “correctional facilities” was also faced with how to keep his brain from lapsing into deadly catatonia and depression. He had the idea of painting the walls of the vast chow hall with elaborate murals. Somehow, he was able to secure permission to do so.
He occupied long hours of his previously seemingly interminable sentence with this immense creative project and contribution and also inspired more than a fantasy, but a goal of being a great professional artist upon his release.
Again, the creative expression, the positive view of the future, and the movement, awakened what otherwise would’ve been a slackened, deadened brain, likely to default to despair and deadness, and the more typical revolving door of relapse, poverty and recidivism. He did go on to open a studio in San Diego, California and realized his dream and his potential as a professional and self-supporting fine artist.
In the throes of my own worst days of anorexia, beset with fear, guilt and deathlike immobility, I was bedridden for over a month. Bombarded with blame for “doing this to myself and my parents,” hideously lonely and too weak to independently get myself to the bathroom down the hall, I literally felt as if I were dying. What could I do in that bed, unable to think or move? From somewhere, I discovered that propped up against a bank of pillows, I could crochet lace. I don’t know where that idea came from. It did not require physical strength or mental concentration. It was detailed enough to require a focus that I could sustain, and I produced beauty. The colorful, elaborate designs distracted me, empowered me and kept me going somehow.
I produced yards and yards of the stuff, imagining what I might make someday. I am sure by simply adding movement, color, and something even vaguely future-looking, I got just enough firing to slowly awaken life in my dark, deathly lunar landscape.
All the effective somatic trauma therapies incorporate some kind of movement, however subtle, and an introduction, even if unconscious, that time does move. The trauma brain knows no time, especially chronic and inescapable developmental trauma, attachment trauma and neglect, in an environment where there is no escape. Simply combatting that lethal belief becomes a life raft. Simple but not easy. But yes, simple
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.
Recently I read a brief story about California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a recent target of loud complaints about “cognitive decline” due to her advanced age of 88. Feinstein equally loudly and vehemently disputes the claims, arguing that she is doing just fine. Alongside the article I pondered the decidedly unflattering photo, her incensed expression seemed to say “says who?!” Granted it is certainly hard to measure mental competence from the inside. (In AA they say “You can’t fix your broken tool with your broken tool,” and I suppose the same can be said, at least to some extent, of self-assessment.)
Admittedly, I am not neutral about DiFi, as she is affectionately called by many. It was she in 1978 who, after blithely walking into his office, shockingly found the brutally murdered body of her friend and California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk. Her courage, grace and heart in handling that trauma earned her my eternal positive regard. I suppose I forgive her (and even her billionaire husband,) rather a lot. But the article reminded me of the ever-present reality of age.
I remember my grandmother lamenting for years that “the golden age is not so golden.” She was born in 1887 and I was born in 1955. So, when I was born, she was 68, barely a year older than I am now. My entire life, she had white hair, she always seemed ancient to me. Her husband, my grandfather, had died before I was born, meaning she lived alone as a partnerless widow for virtually all of her middle to later years. Also, for me unimaginable. But I never thought much about age.
I remember my grandmother lamenting for years that “the golden age is not so golden.” She was born in 1887 and I was born in 1955.
An endurance athlete, and known in high school as “the fastest girl uphill,” probably also pretty deficient in proprioception (body awareness), I had denial, even hubris, about the indomitability of the body. I could drink my quart of bourbon, get up in the morning and run 20 miles. I could ride the bike a hundred mountainous miles, only eating one banana all day. I never took care of my skin, preferring a “golden,” unprotected tan. My neglect was such that no one ever really knew where I was anyway, and it was only a matter of time before the feeling “I don’t matter” morphed into a rather wild freedom. My abandonment turned to abandon.
In UCSF geriatrician Louise Aronson’s 2019 book, Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, she makes the interesting point that we have traditionally made the distinction between two different life stages: childhood and adulthood. She proposes the additional stage of “Elderhood.” What is that? Well, let’s just say “I know it when I see it.” It is when the grandiosity of youth is challenged.
Elderhood is when it is suddenly no longer true that I am “never tired;” I may find myself straining to hear, and irritating other’s by saying, “what? what’s that?” so often that I am driven to get the hearing test that informs me I have “severe hearing loss,” and must insult my vanity with hearing aids; when the glare as I drive home is blinding; when my former “steel trap” is embarrassed by memory blips; when I opt to miss the Bruce Hornsby concert that I have been waiting for, because “I just don’t feel like going out.” Once impatient with others’ “organ recital,” I silently admit to my own aches and pains.
On the first post-COVID plane trip we took, I was struck by how helpful people were. Were they offering to carry my bag, because they were kind, or because I looked so weak and infirm that I needed a hand? Who is this person? No one warned me. My grandmother was “ancient” when she complained about the “golden age,”, and then, I was barely a kid. And tragically, many who spend years and decades working hard to emerge from a traumatic childhood, meet with grief when they find themselves already in elderhood, by the time they arrive in the present time.
Another important point that Aronson makes, is about the prejudice, the dishonor, and ostracization – certainly in western cultures – directed at the aged. Another epoch of neglect; invisible, sidelined, forgotten. Seniority with its wisdom and experience is devalued at best, if not warehoused and trashed. How much money and time are spent each year in attempts to erase or hide it? Admittedly I too look in the mirror, gag and try to figure out how to make it go away. Hair, teeth, skin, muscle tone, I’m not 19 anymore. Although I do enjoy the freedom from unwanted sexual attention; and menopause is indeed a blessing, the advantages of age are rarely acknowledged. I recall but one exception: a book I read many years ago: Elkhonon Goldberg’s The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older, published in 2005. In it, he describes that the aging brain acquires a “new” and heightened capacity for pattern recognition. It actually is quite noticeable to me in my work with couples, where recurring interactive cycles now more quickly come into focus.
Aronson describes her own experience as an accomplished M.D. in a relatively progressive medical setting, as one of discrimination, devaluation, and agism which appear to be ubiquitous in the professional medical world, and the tech world too. Part of her intent in proposing the new designation is to create not only a category but a valued and respected category for a growing minority that is rapidly approaching majority.
My neglect was such that no one ever really knew where I was anyway, and it was only a matter of time before the feeling “I don’t matter” morphed into a rather wild freedom. My abandonment, turned to abandon.
I remember a frequent commercial when I was a teenager, where the glamorous young model with gorgeous hair blowing on a slow-motion gentle breeze, is saying “as long as there is Lady Clairol I will never be gray!” I was definitely down with that. The advertising slogan was “does she or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.” Both of our parents were salt and peppery by their early 50’s, and Mom was anything but vain. Sure enough as I crossed into my 50th year I started to spot a sprinkle or two. Oy vey. I did not spring for the Lady Clairol right away, but I certainly thought about it.
Here is my mysterious “wow” story. I am not telling you this to drum up business, and before I am accused of false advertising, I will emphasize that I am not promising it will happen to you. In fact I really have not read or heard of anyone else having the experience I had/have, and I also know it is unquestionably true. As they say, “it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
In 2009 I was first introduced to Neurofeedback at a conference. I was immediately gripped by it, and I could not wait to get trained and become a practitioner. In those days, the training was much harder to come by. The soonest I could get the first level training was nearly six months away, and in Connecticut. I came home to the Bay Area, to find an incredible poverty of practitioners, even worse than now, and it is still pretty sparse around here for some reason that I don’t understand. I found someone, an experienced if somewhat unconventional “older lady” an hour’s drive from me, in Palo Alto. I diligently attended sessions with her until my long-awaited trip to Hartford. My favorite protocol, which my therapist called “dessert” was the calming, eyes closed, alpha-theta protocol. She always saved it for the end of my session, and I begged for as much as I could get.
When I got trained and had my own equipment, I could practice on myself (as well as anyone else that would entrust me with their brain), and of course, I treated myself with ample helpings of dessert. By now, by the way, I was 55, and plucking gray hairs out of my head more regularly than I would care to admit, trying to tune out the siren call of Lady Clairol.
Distracted by my new passion, it was a while before I noticed. Since I had begun neurofeedback training, my gray hair mysteriously vanished. No I wasn’t losing hair (or marbles?) rather the gray stopped appearing, stopped growing until by attrition, it was all gone, never to return. Now at almost 68, all traces of gray hair have long since vanished, and I forgot completely about Lady Clairol, even as friends and family around my age were evolving their own relationships to their respective hoary heads. Go figure. Yes, I love neurofeedback. And I swear it is true! (“Only her Neurofeedback practitioner knows for sure…”)
Anyone who ever reads the acknowledgments of most any book, is familiar with the author’s often effusive gratitude to the various people who put up with their absence, preoccupation, cranky fatigue or moodiness, and often seeming inability to show consideration. Although I am not a mother, in my mind, writing a book is akin to a protracted gestation and labor, in my case decidedly more than nine months. In spite of myself, my husband, with his own prior and severe neglect history, was victimized again. I promise to do better with this next book!
The Pandemic hit when I had barely begun my most recent book, so I was pretty ungracefully adjusting/transitioning to working from home, and remotely: two things I never dreamed I would do, and had been outspokenly opposed to my whole career until then. An additional casualty of that time, admittedly was my progeny, the cheese. For about five years now, I have been a rather obsessive home cheesemaker, which can be a consuming “hobby.” In my case, it has been (usually) affectionately referred to as a diagnosis, although I insist it is also awesomely regulating and rewarding. So it is with horror and shame that I confess the degree of neglect that my little brood of cheeses suffered. Beside the initial making: mixing ingredients; allowing them to “ripen” and “set,” cooking and pressing, which take most of a day, there is perhaps the even more important process of affinage, meaning daily and weekly care: attending to the cleaning, washing with salt or other cultures, turning, and simple “checking in.” It is not enough to give birth, and turn a creature out into the world, as many the neglect survivor can attest, one has to care for and “raise” the child. Well, I perpetrated an extreme of neglect.
Please don’t misunderstand me! I do not, by any means intend to liken something as immeasurably valuable and vulnerable as a child, to a wheel of cheddar, but rather, the cheese was a teacher to me. When I had hit the send button on the manuscript and was truly able to survey the damage, the crumbliness, the proliferation and contagion of unwanted mold, some delicious, some pretty stinky, I was dismayed to see how my own self-concern and priority had left a little world of living growing beings to fend for themselves. And although age is desirable, for cheese, when not attended to, it might be unwieldy, fail to thrive and even die. I was overwhelmed by the wreckage.
Only a day at a time, could I begin the massive cleanup effort. Each day, I spent 15 minutes on one small corner of the task essentially of healing and trying to make for as gentle an advanced age as possible. The same is true for my own tattered and neglected self. The ways that I failed at self-care along the way: sleep and rest, skincare, teeth, eyes, forgiveness, balance, it is not too late to salvage the remaining years. Perhaps I cannot completely make up for my failures, but I can learn, and hopefully teach, so as to minimize the intergenerational transmission.
By the way, did you know that for $20.00 US per couple, where at least one partner is over 60, the US National Park Service offers a senior pass? Free admission to all the National Parks’ in the country for one year, rather than $10 per person (even pedestrians) per single visit. That checks a few boxes, as far as I am concerned, honoring age, self-care and regulation, and loving the natural world.
Today’s song (I love the Old Lady at the beginning, and the Little Girl at the end!)
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 once hearing someone say at a sex therapy conference, “Everyone, absolutely everyone you see walking down the street, has a sex life.” At first, a trite, mundane, rather obvious remark suddenly seemed profound. That submerged within everyone is a teeming subterranean universe that is mostly never shared. It may or may not include live human others, and what goes on there spans a range as wide as the world.
Of course, plenty of violence and harm originates there, as well we know much of my career has and continues to be centered on that. Thinking, however, about this week’s blog, I thought, well, we have talked about poop and masturbation. What’s next? What other tabus can we bust? What else can we talk about that is not likely to be uttered aloud or explained in the vacuous neglect family, if anything is spoken about at all.
It has been said, only somewhat tongue in cheek, that people become sex therapists because they think about sex twenty-four hours a day. I doubt it has been researched, so I can’t say if it is universally true, but I will leave that one to your capable imagination. In our conferences, we learn about all sorts of provocative themes, some of which I have and some admittedly I had never heard of or even imagined. Our presenters are physicians, serious researchers and academics, not only therapists like me. So although my tone may be light, I don’t by any means wish to make it sound like this is fluff or, even worse, titillation. I thought I would scratch the surface, if cursorily, of the broad topic of sexual fantasy.
I remember once hearing someone say at a sex therapy conference, “Everyone, absolutely everyone you see walking down the street, has a sex life.
A number of brave clients have divulged to me, usually after knowing them for a fairly long time, their persistent, even distressing sexual fantasies. They may be alarmed, ashamed and mystified, even horrified by the content, but unable to uncouple it from their erotic arousal, leaving them feeling somewhat alienated from or mistrustful of their own bodies. It becomes even more complex when these fantasies are the most direct, even the only way to get to orgasm. “What does that mean about me?”
After several conference presentations, I read a whole book on sexual fantasy, (Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies January 2009 by Brett Kahr) a hefty scholarly tome. Well researched, It recounts the sexual fantasies of his 23,000 subjects. By the end, I was more than satisfied, and the point was made: the sky is the limit.
And like dreams and other sorts of fantasies, they surely relate to something. Sometimes if we dig deeply on our own, with or without the help of a good therapist, we discover something interesting. That has certainly been true for me.
Sometimes if we dig deeply on our own, with or without the help of a good therapist, we discover something interesting. That has certainly been true for me.
I do have some important take-away points about this. Especially because the child of neglect perennially has no one to ask and so is trained by a lifetime to not ask – not even need to ask. And these are topics tabu to ask about in most circles anyway.
First of all, there is no shame in what appears unbidden in your head. Just as your hideous nightmares are not your “fault” or your monstrous alter-ego, neither are your sexual fantasies statements on your character, with the caveat, of course, that we know the difference between fantasy and reality.
An unorthodox or worse fantasy may be a turn-on only insofar as it stays in one’s imagination. If it is enacted in real life, on another being, especially non-consensually, that, of course, is something else entirely. I hope that is unmistakably clear. This is not license to have a field day with one’s sexual fantasies!
Secondly, research to date has shown that sexual fantasies appear to be deeply wired and very difficult, if not impossible to change. I don’t know if this has been studied with neurofeedback or any other brain training modality. Who knows what might be possible if someone made a project of that? At one conference, I heard a heartbreaking case presentation about a woman Holocaust survivor, sexually brutalized at a young age while in Auschwitz. As a therapy client in her 50s, she, for the first time, disclosed to the presenter – who was her therapist – that her entire life, her orgasm had been inextricably wound in with her Nazi torture. She could not get off without the fantasy of her sexual torture, which caused her unending conflict and shame and a sense of betrayal by her own body. And which made her want to avoid sex which she otherwise quite enjoyed. The best the highly competent therapist could do for her was to help her ultimately make her peace with it. Perhaps we could do better now.
My long time friend and colleague, Pat Love (yes, her real name!), whom I still think of as the best couples therapist in the world, cited formal research showing that danger, fear and risk had proven aphrodisiac properties. Something about being under threat heightens erotic interest and sensation. Perhaps that is part of what makes illicit sexual liaisons all the more exciting. It may also shed light on some of the sexual practices that I have found harder to understand because they are not to my taste or even involve pain and fear.
More recently, I began to learn about some neuroscience research about the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN). It is a primitive brain region, deep in the brain stem, where a sense of self emerges. It is where the brain “idles” or retreats when not “under task”, meaning not “doing” anything else. And it is a hotbed for self-reflection of whatever kind. We are all familiar with the tendency, when not busy with a task, to think about number one, that’s me!
Neuroimaging research has shown that the brains of survivors of developmental trauma and/or neglect show negligible activity in the DMN. It is largely cavernously dark. Only under threat does the DMN start to fire in these brains, and then it lights up almost brightly. Whatever their trauma story, terrifying experience is what brought the subjects’ DMN to life. So the tendency persists, that terror and even pain makes them feel alive. I am curious about this as it relates to sexuality. At this point, it is merely speculative. My own mind wandering. Perhaps in time, we will know more. Meanwhile, in the words of Mary Oliver:
…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,
over and over, announcing your place
In the family of things …
Wild Geese
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Uncharacteristically, today’s song is instrumental to allow more leeway to your imagination. It’s a fave of mine.
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.
A ten-year love relationship spanned roughly the decade of my 20s. Out of ten years, I spent about four of them trying to leave this man, a dizzying switch back and forth between moving out and moving back in. I thought he was the love of my life. I finally succeeded in wrenching myself out on the morning of October 17th, 1989. In the afternoon of that already unforgettable day, the Bay Area was upended by the Loma Prieta Earthquake. My upheaval was complete. So ironic and so fitting; my whole world cracked and crumbled. But my little one-bedroom and my beloved cat were all intact and, although shaken, safely unharmed.
I remember attempting to shop for groceries the next day, feeling an odd sense of comfort and kinship with everyone as we all stumbled around the familiar store in a singular, even unifying, wordless, shell-shocked daze. It was what I heard New Yorkers felt in the aftershocks of 9/11. A part of me felt the eerie but somehow reassuring connection, yet another part felt desperately and unspeakably alone.
Yes, it had been a wildly ill-suited partnership, and yes, I gave it my all. A signature of the well functioning brain is learning from experience. I wanted to make sure and do so. Given that it took two hours every morning to cover what was previously a forty-minute commute to my job at San Francisco VA since the Bay Bridge had all but collapsed fully into the Bay, I had ample time to think. I squeezed onto the train (standing room only at 5:00am), and then the 37 bus loaded with people and often their produce and chickens, rolling into work, with luck, by 7:30am.
So ironic and so fitting; my whole world cracked and crumbled. But my little one-bedroom and my beloved cat were all intact and, although shaken, safely unharmed.
The rescue and relief efforts moved quickly in the Bay Area. Rebuilding, cleaning, tallying losses, counting blessings, and assessing the new PTSD trauma casualties of those suffering more dramatic impacts. The earthquake had hit during the hyperbolic “Battle of the Bay” World Series between Oakland and SF, which added color to the new chapter in local history.
However, my own little seismic event progressed glacially into anything vaguely like a new equilibrium. It was as if I dwelled in an avalanche of rubble, and while the world seemed to be emerging, learning new words like retrofit or “the big one,” developing new practices like the earthquake kit in the basement, and upping their earthquake insurance, I seemed only able to aimlessly root around in my “basement.”
We all have our own personal first heartbreak tragedy. Nothing special about me. So why indulge myself by recounting mine? There is certainly no pleasure in recalling it. Because as a relationship therapist and sex therapist, I often hear a question that I also had. For the first two years after the quake, I cried, initially unconsolably, every single day. For the three subsequent years, never a day passed, without thinking, even fantasizing about my long-gone ex. That is five solid years, after a ten-year coupling!
Because as a relationship therapist and sex therapist, I often hear a question that I also had. For the first two years after the quake, I cried, initially unconsolably, every single day.
I remember the day, sometime after I had met my now husband, I suddenly flashed, “Wow! I have not thought of him! A whole day!” It is always harder to discern and notice what is not happening; that is what is so confusing and insidious about neglect and its colorless story of deficits. This, I had to acknowledge, was like the like shedding the weight of a long dragging ball and chain. So here is the question, why?
I heard a talk by the renowned Helen Fisher, a celebrated anthropologist specializing in sexuality. (If you have not heard her speak, she is marvelous and riveting, and a wealth of Ted Talks and YouTubes graciously abound).
Both a sophisticated scientist/researcher and popular writer, she is accessible and even entertaining. She said a brain going through heartbreak looks identical to a brain crashing from a massive cocaine binge. No joke! No wonder it feels so bad! And although I have never crashed from cocaine, my hyper-aroused brain always preferring drugs that sedate; it is a vivid portrayal nonetheless!
A delightful artist couple we met who live deep in the outback in Volcano, Hawaii, host a variety of species of ferile animals on their beautiful rainforest land. They have rescued and made pets of many of those brave enough or hungry enough to approach their home. They tell the story of a pair of probably sibling feral dogs (probably part wolf) whom they began to see lurking around the house. One of them had the remarkable distinction of habitually looking both ways before crossing the un-trivial road where cars routinely drive well over speed limits! Where did he learn that?
The two were large and intimidating (at least to me), and our friends were later to discover, truly terrified. And they were hungry, especially as that year had been unseasonably dry and available prey was meager. Our friends, as was their custom, cautiously put out food for them. The two skittishly sidled only close enough to snatch their meal, quickly disappearing back into the tangle of green. This went on for months, during which time our friends quietly named and befriended them from the cautious distance. “It was many months before we could touch them.”
Perchance, someone gave our friends a very young puppy. That adorable little girl behaved more like a usual pet, and they happily held and played with her. A turning point came when the two big guys saw the puppy. They slowly edged up to her and sometimes even played with her. They hovered closer and closer to the house and ultimately became veritable pets! Never quite as relaxed as the puppy, who undoubtedly had had a safer start in the world, the three dogs harmoniously joined the household, living together as a family for many years. What sort of bell might the little one have rung inside her older “cousins?”
So, what does any of this have to do with my broken heart? It came to me organically out of the depths: I don’t remember how. I might say in a dream, but to be honest, I don’t dream much, so have to forego that poetic turn of phrase. Perhaps from a deep therapy experience or a deep sleep. The seemingly endless grief I had endured, now thankfully a distant memory, was not about the man whose name I quietly keep to myself. It was about my mom, my real first true heartbreak. No wonder I couldn’t get over it.
The abandonment and loss of infant neglect, unremembered in the ordinary autobiographical memory of which an infant is incapable, continued reverberating and quaking in its desperate quest to tell the trauma story. Certainly, like for many of us, the first real heartbreak. How do we shorten the seemingly endless river of grief over that first devastating heartbreak? By going to the source if we can and processing that. That is finding a way to access and work through that prehistoric attachment injury. Perhaps that will help to shorten the seemingly infinite and often humiliating journey, or at least make sense of it. And you’ll save a whole lot of Kleenex. Neurofeedback definitely helps to move things along.
Attachment trauma, and neglect, as we as a field and as a world are slowly beginning to grasp, is perhaps the most devastating trauma of all. Something about the puppy being a vehicle of healing seemed, at least to me, to illustrate that. And why breaking the intergenerational chain insofar as we can, is a personal and cultural imperative.
Some fifty years ago I made a blouse for my mother, probably for Mother’s Day. It is sky blue, and I elaborately embroidered it with a large daffodil surrounded by a vibrant rainbow. The colors have stood the test of time valiantly, and it is one of the few things I took, besides the sewing machines, when our dad released us into her closet to help ourselves after she died. Inside the little garment, on the back facing where a store-bought label might be, I had embroidered the words “I love my mom.”
I know at times I disparage our mom (and speaking ill of the dead is admittedly poor form), especially in the privacy of my darling aesthetician niece’s treatment room, where she works on my ragged old face. She tracks my progress diligently, like a good neurofeedback provider, taking pictures and showing them to me along the way. In horror, I exclaim, “Oy vey! I look like my mom!” However, somewhere deep inside, hidden like a relic, in the interior of a sacred vestment, persists the faint echo of the howling primordial longing.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Love Me Still by Bruce Hornsby.
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!