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.
Sometimes a story or a movie is truly worth well over a thousand words to express and convey an often wordless experience concisely. This week I decided to do something a little different and dip into popular culture – commenting on a film and a book, both of which speak to our themes, portraying them sharply and differently; perhaps tipping a sensory nerve and providing food for thought, at least for me.
Neither of these two are great works of art I might add, at least not in my opinion. And in neither case did I feel a deep connection with the character, but both are good envoys, and there is no substitute for a good story.
Jeremiah Tower was a local treasure and cultural icon to a food-loving Bay Arean like me. I say “was” because in the movie, it is hard to know if he died or simply evaporated back into the vacuous wasteland of his neglect ridden childhood. I certainly noticed this when the film Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent was brought to my attention. (I won’t say it was recommended, and frankly, I am not really recommending it either.) Nonetheless, for the curious, it is available on Amazon Prime for $2.99, and I will avoid the “spoilers.” And if you love cooking and eating, the visuals of spectacularly beautiful and interesting food is well worth the price!
The film was produced by Tower’s dear friend and self-proclaimed “fan” culinary rockstar, Anthony Bourdain, who certainly must have his own story. As you may remember, Bourdain committed suicide in 2018. Clearly, the restaurant world, even at its peaks, is cruel.
Known for being one of the early luminaries in the now exalted almost “religion” of California Cuisine, Tower was a key figure in the historic, and still after 51 years, wildly acclaimed Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Tower’s own tabernacle, Stars Restaurant, opened in 1984. I think we only ate there once, and all I really remember about it was walking down the carpeted stairs to our table. It was like entering a palatial theater and going to the most expensive seats in the orchestra section: grand. The cinematic scenes of the interior of Stars brought up that pleasurable and even exciting image. Stars Cafe, a later, more casual and reasonably priced Tower offspring where you could actually get a reservation, became a frequent go-to for us. I admit that back in the 90s, the big draw was the caramel sundae, which I am sure is what called me back almost every Friday for a good long time. I don’t remember anything else I ate there besides that sundae, although my husband could probably tell you!
I admit that for me back in the 90s, the big draw was the caramel sundae, which I am sure is what called me back almost every Friday for a good long time.
Hearing about the movie, I was startled to realize (rather like the neglectful parent who, fifty miles down the road, suddenly registers that their child is not in the car but was somehow left at the gas station) that I had not thought about the restaurants in years and had forgotten all about Tower himself. I’m certainly not intending to equate a restaurant with one’s own child, but rather that the forgettable invisibility of neglect and the clueless oblivion of his parents were the staple and persistent ingredient of Tower’s entire childhood. His seeming “disappearance” is perhaps a re-enactment of that.
Tower was the quintessential “poor little rich boy.” My flashbulb memory of Stars’ majestic, theatrical opulence perfectly portrayed his childhood “home,” although it was anything but a home. His alcoholic mother, who manifested the pinnacle of glamour and style, entertained her similarly privileged white comrades constantly and elegantly. The adorable little boy was either parked somewhere to keep him out from underfoot or forgotten completely. His only solace became the spectacular food that he came to love and took great pleasure in eating.
By age eight or so, little Jeremiah learned that when his mother became prohibitively drunk, she was unable to “perform,” so the food would not make it to the glamorous table. So, like many the child of neglect, he transitioned from complete invisibility to (still) invisible rescuer. He learned to cook to “keep the show on the road” (and shield his mother from shame as it were) and was remarkably successful. Cooking and covering for his mom gave the boy a sense of purpose, and although he continued to go unrecognized, he found that he loved it.
A similarly poignant feature of the film, barely a blip on the story’s screen, is the exquisite depiction of how vanishing in the elegant Dom Perignon sipping crowds, night after night, would make young Jeremiah an easy target for trauma. I won’t give it away; the brevity of the event is almost imperceptible. If you run to the bathroom without pausing, you might miss it, and because the hideous event never comes up again, you won’t know it happened. Again, smacking of traumatic re-enactment.
Predictably Jeremiah went to Harvard to study design and then graduate school in architecture. The spectacular visuals of the food he created reflect his imaginative aesthetic and structural brilliance. He started cooking for his peers in college, and for sure, lots of wine and other intoxicants were on the menus. Although the film does not explicitly say that this child of at least one alcoholic parent had a substance abuse problem, it is easy to wonder, and somehow, I vaguely remember his falling deeply into a serious hell of cocaine use. I could not find any corroboration of that, so perhaps I made it up, but it is easy to imagine.
The adorable little boy was either parked somewhere to keep him out from underfoot or forgotten completely. His only solace became the spectacular food that he came to love and took great pleasure in eating.
His rise as master chef is well documented, beginning with his starring role at Chez Panisse, where he bitterly claimed himself to be of equal valence to the famed Alice Waters. After a dazzlingly successful partnership, there was not enough oxygen in the place for the two of them, and Tower struck out on his own. Clearly, the world of relationships was a predictable minefield for him, as one would expect after his disordered attachment childhood. The film never clearly identifies his sexual orientation. Although it alluded to his being gay, it was hard to tell if that was “all” and he never seems to have a lasting partnership.
As a waiter in some relatively high-end restaurants back in the day, I am not a stranger to chefs blowing up and even throwing things at waiters and line cooks. Similarly, our dad had been a chef, and like a good child of neglect, I often worked in his shadow, however invisibly, to keep order while he created his “masterpieces” in our kitchen. I prided myself on being the only one able to be in the kitchen with him when he cooked. He too, was prone to outbursts and fits of rage, using the heat and delicate time pressure as his excuse. Tower, of course, was no exception to the raging chef rule, and his relationship world, like many a survivor of trauma and neglect, left a trail of wreckage in its wake.
It is lonely at the top. The film does not give us much about that, but I could clearly imagine it. The remainder of the film carefully and “protectively” portrays the collapse of the Stars house of cards. The Stars empire (like the Twin Towers), once a world avatar of wealth and power, was reduced to rubble. It is startling how to “dust he returned.” Again invisible and forgotten, I had to google to find out that he is still alive and living somewhere in Mexico.
Out of curiosity I looked up the story of the prophet Jeremiah. Here is what Wikipedia says:
As a prophet, Jeremiah pronounced God’s judgment upon the people of his time for their wickedness. He was concerned especially with false and insincere worship and failure to trust Yahweh in national affairs. He denounced social injustices but not so much as some previous prophets…
I wonder why they named him that.
Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent (2016) available on Amazon Prime. 2 hours.
When I heard an interview with author Silvia Vasquez-Lavado, I was intrigued. First of all, because she is Peruvian, and somehow anything Latin American seems to pique my interest. But more, because she led an international group of women survivors of sex trafficking on a trek up Mount Everest, which struck me as heroic in every way. I ordered my copy of her new book, soon noticing that reviews of it seemed to be popping up everywhere. Eager to read it, I was mildly disappointed to find that it lacked the depth of character development and quality of “good writing” that compels me. But remember, I am an insatiable and somewhat critical reader with my own quirky tastes.
The story switches back and forth between the stories of Vasquez-Lavado’s traumatic childhood and younger adulthood and the story of the trek. For me, the more autobiographical part is most interesting. By way of warning to the vulnerable, she describes her own sexual trauma somewhat explicitly but powerfully. And her story, much like Jeremiah Tower’s, clearly illustrates how tightly coupled trauma and neglect must be. Terrible things can happen to a child who is unseen and not taken care of.
What Vasquez-Lavado does particularly well, and uniquely so, is clearly present the trauma of gaslighting. I have been amazed lately that the word has become a household term somehow. Referring back to a favorite classic movie, not Hitchcock but similar, the term, the name, and the movie that matter in my memory anyway were ancient history. Suddenly the word is everywhere. All the young people use it too. However, its portrayal as traumatic to a child trying to make sense out of the world, especially a child of neglect who has no one to ask, it is crazy-making and contributes to the confused belief endemic of neglect survivors that “nothing happened to me!” Vasquez-Lavado, perhaps better than I have seen anywhere, explicitly and effectively conveys the gaslighting experience from the inside. That in itself is worth the price.
Again, we do not get deep view into the life of the young girls, the survivors of sex trafficking. Some are Nepali, some from the US, so there are language challenges. We also see tragically portrayed how often sexual trafficking is an artifact of a galling degree of poverty and perhaps the gaslighting of well-meaning and destitute parents who believe the criminals enticing them with the promise of employment and a better life for their starving daughters. The cursory depictions of both the grimness of their traumatic experiences and their often stunningly courageous escapes are again some of the more captivating parts of the book; as is the one session when Vasquez-Lavado and all the girls gather in a group, in the chill of the mountain, and with the assistance of interpreters, share all of their trauma stories. There, the power of the group in trauma healing is vivid and moving. Many had never spoken aloud of their experiences, even with those with whom they went through them.
There, the power of the group in trauma healing is vivid and moving. Many had never spoken aloud of their experiences, even with those with whom they went through them.
Vasquez-Lavado, as planned, takes the group of girls as far as the base camp, but she herself has planned and trained to go to the 29,032 foot (8,849 metres) summit. The book continues to pivot between her “checkered past” and the climb. And although her personal history is often less than endearing, sensational and reminiscent of a dramatic AA “drunkalog”, she powerfully conveys the desperate compulsion to self-regulate. Ripping and running with alcohol, drugs and out of control sex are well known to many of us with trauma and neglect histories. She tells that story tragically and effectively, even if a bit tediously at times.
Never attracted to cold in any iteration, the prospect of being up in that kind of cold (let alone for six weeks) is truly unnerving! And myself a veteran of endurance sports, I have never cared enough about any sport to literally and knowingly risk my life for it. Many who attempt the summit do not come back. Vasquez-Lavado was the only woman in her group (as well as being the only lesbian and vegetarian, she is sure to tell us). A number of the men (including the man whose athletic resume touted completing two Ironman Triathlons in one day) turned back before arriving at the summit. Vasquez-Lavado does make it, which is an accomplishment that not many women can claim, and that is impressive. But more than that is the role of empowerment in trauma healing and experiencing the body as an undeniable ally. We cannot really reproduce this in any therapy.
All the women in the stories were transformed by both the physical integrity and empowerment proffered by the climb and the power of interpersonal connection for both staying alive and finding some peace with a previously unspeakable and shame-ridden past.
In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado February, 2022
Once again, although you may be sick of hearing me say it: it is all about regulation. Oy vey, there I go again. The addled organism, out of whack from over and under-stimulation, lack of or distortions of attachment and connection, is on a voracious quest: drinking, drugging, sexing, work… all to that same end. That is what Jeremiah and Sylvia most have to tell us if we are listening.
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 There Is A Mountain by Donovan.
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.
As an inveterate bookworm and student, I am reading all the time, and there is never enough of it—Oy vey. But what a wonderful problem to have when compared with the years of slogging to get through the day. However, with all that I read, it is not that often that I learn something that really changes my way of thinking. Not only new information, that is easy, but actually making use of it differently or relinquishing old, often long-held views. Over now close to forty years of sobriety from alcoholism, I have been entrenched in an admittedly “orthodox” 12-step rigidity. Not the “God” part, which trips up many people. I resolved that right at the start. But rather a hardcore abstinence-only program.
Of course, a severe black and white perspective readily suited me. I was always an “all or nothing” kind of girl and defaulted to a hungry “more is better.” I remember from an early age my mother trying to teach me the word “moderation.”
That’s a pretty big word for a little girl. I never quite got it and probably still don’t, or not enough. However, now I understand it more in terms of regulation versus voracious greed or wild overzealousness. Total abstinence from alcohol was infinitely easier than trying to figure out how much was enough or too much, i.e., to self-regulate, so I grabbed on to that one for dear life.
I was always an “all or nothing” kind of girl and defaulted to a hungry “more is better.” I remember from an early age my mother trying to teach me the word “moderation.”
Some people resort to entering a convent, the military, a cult or an authoritarian party or regime because all the decisions are made for them. There, they don’t have to assess or conclude what’s “just right,” like Goldilocks. I admit that some of that was in play during my political activist days when ideology was strictly prescribed, and political correctness was fundamental to having any sort of value at all. To this day, I am most comfortable in tight-fitting clothes: they seem to contain me and keep me from blowing apart from the inside. Similarly, I recently discovered that a weighted blanket has a similar “holding” effect. I continue to have a tendency to “color outside the lines.”
From the beginning, we all need a mom, not least because a good mom is regulating and teaches regulation. Comfortable in one’s own skin, one can live, love, “pursue happiness” with all that means, create, learn and take pleasure in life. A history of childhood trauma and/or neglect puts one on a relentless quest to find it. I think of the 23-year-old that I was, 98 pounds, on the couch with my cat Marti, drinking a quart of Old Crow bourbon straight each night single-handedly; it was $6.95 a quart then. Marti, named for the Cuban National Poet, Jose Marti, lived to 22. I always said she was like a mother to me. Really it was all an endless quest to find that elusive calm in the war-torn world of my body. Marti certainly helped, and so much of addiction boils down to that.
The dictum to “just” stop, or “just say no!” (a day at a time of course) was not easy but simple, and much easier than finding my way with food, which could never be relinquished entirely, or not safely.
From the beginning, we all need a mom, not least because a good mom is regulating and teaches regulation. Comfortable in one’s own skin, one can live, love, “pursue happiness” with all that means, create, learn and take pleasure in life.
I have since learned several sobering “new” to me facts about alcohol. According to World Health Organization data, alcohol is one of the world’s leading causes of death, behind tobacco which amazingly is still a great killer. Alcohol kills not only in its insidious damage to the body and brain, but DUI car accidents, behavior and crimes committed under the influence, not to mention the suicides of not only the drinker, but collateral loved ones whose lives with that person have become unmanageable.
Alcohol also causes more brain damage than any other drug, and neuroimaging shows the blackened tissue, which is the poisoning and deterioration caused by inflammation and dying cells. No other drug, neither medical nor recreational, shows that kind of wreckage.
And finally, a measure I had not actually pondered before: damage is measured not only by a substances’ impact on the individual user but on others and the world. How many children and spouses are neglected and abandoned every day due to addicted or substance-abusing parents? How many were molested, raped, beaten or in some other way violated by someone who might have much better judgment or control if not intoxicated? It goes on and on. And in this tally, alcohol wins by a landslide in terms of how widely one person’s substance use reaches. More reasons to be grateful, I was able to stop at 28 before doing more damage! Unfortunately, a hugely profitable industry holds it in place. Prohibition failed. Culture, tradition and culinary aesthetic make it essential to find a way at mass level, to regulate and self-regulate. Of course, this would have to include, at least where possible, addressing the myriad realities that would inspire an individual to “escape,” even if momentarily.
Michael Pollan’s latest book, This Is Your Mind on Plants, has a long section on caffeine. What I found most interesting was the history of how coffee affected industry, the industrial revolution, and the world political economy. Well worth reading! And we, or at least I, had not thought so much about caffeine as a “drug.” But meanwhile, in the private laboratory of my own brain, I have had to look at it as such.
One of the ways I have grappled with my complicated sleep issue (and the “challenges” of sleep will be a topic of its own blog on another day!) is with my afternoon coffee. I also began to notice that if I woke up and had my morning cup too early, by early afternoon, I would have one of those scull-cracking headaches right in the middle of my forehead, the undeniable battle cry of caffeine withdrawal. So the afternoon cup became medicinal in more ways than one—Oy vey. I am back to being that rat on the wheel, trying to stay ahead of the breathless chase. And although I don’t believe in the rhetoric of the “addictive personality”, I know all too well about the deep-seated dysregulation of early attachment trauma.
I knew that to begin to ratchet down the caffeine headache loop and ultimately eliminate it, I would have to find a much better way to manage the sleep issue (which I am constantly working on anyway) and also endure the discomfort (agony?) of weaning myself off. That is no fun at all. Although my own alcohol withdrawal is a blurry memory, not only because it was so long ago, but due to the addled brain I would remember it with, I do remember one of my very first mental health jobs in a methadone clinic. It was there, with a clearer head of my own, that I was to learn most vividly about “dope-sickness.” So, facing the prospect of enduring headaches without relief, or perhaps relieved in some other undiscovered way, was daunting. That is precisely what keeps all addicts on the wheel. And it is reminiscent of the age-old attachment theory dilemma without solution when the source of comfort/relief and the source of devastation and/or terror reside in the same package, human or otherwise. All the more reason why we need a more regulated world, in all the ways, regulated relationships, self-regulating individuals.
Here is where I began a subtle process of “changing my mind.” I heard expert drug researcher David Nutt (what a great name for a psychiatrist!) talking about “Harm Reduction”. When I first started hearing people talk about this “new” approach alternative to total abstinence, I balked, trying to conceal my skeptical contempt. My “todo o nada” all or nothing sensibility was roused. However, Nutt is not only extremely knowledgeable but personable and experienced at talking to people about delicate, often highly personal and controversial topics.
According to Nutt’s data (culled from his talk at the recent Addiction and Imagination Conference):
“…reductions in consumption gain much greater value in terms of health than you might imagine if the curves were linear. If you go from someone drinking 100 grams of alcohol a day, say a bottle of wine, to just 50 grams a day, you would lower their consumption by 50%, but you reduce their risk of death by eight times. And even if you reduce consumption at the top end by 10%, you actually reduce the risk of death almost by twice. So this is why any reduction in drug consumption is hugely important and that’s why harm reduction approaches are likely to be the most powerful ones in terms of mitigating the harms of drugs.”
As many of us know when learning regulation, harm reduction paradigms are not “pie in the sky.” But perhaps, I must also consider they are also not another money-making gimmick like the latest in an endless stream of commercial diet schemes, but rather a viable interim option. I have actually “updated my files” to incorporate them. Even this old dog can learn a new trick now and then!
In an Imago Therapy conference, I attended probably thirty years ago, I learned a quote that I have never forgotten, although I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the speaker or of the First Nation tribe that originated it. However, the words have stayed with me, and I even made a colorful wall hanging with them, which is hanging in my office: If you think you know me, you have stopped my growth in your presence. My interpretation: If you hold me to what I said or believed thirty years ago, or last week, or even yesterday, you are closing off the possibility that I may be growing all the time in our relationship. So, harm reduction is an important consideration. So there you have it: Addiction 101!
But as for me, well, I will stick with total abstinence and neurofeedback!
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 I’m So Glad by Fresh Cream. I love this song, although sadly Eric Clapton has his own story about addiction.
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.
As a very young child, as far back as I can remember, I felt, and I believed, that somehow I had no right to exist. I don’t know if it was because six million had perished in gas chambers or children were starving in Europe, but I was convinced that I must earn the piece of ground my feet occupied on the planet and ceaselessly justify and compensate for my probably mistaken existence.
Quite early on, I had my own particular calculus of worthy utilization of time: service to others like housework and cooking to relieve my mother’s burden, or being “good”, service to the world like collecting record-breaking amounts of money for UNICEF instead of collecting candy on Halloween, study, and later earning money for college, and exercising more and more and more as my eating disorder evolved its own unique ledger. It was as if I entered the world in debt, and life was a ceaseless attempt to pay it off.
How does a child come to have a sense of self-worth or self-esteem? As a stalwart student of Attachment Theory, I believe it is by (as an infant) looking up into my mother’s or primary caregiver’s face and seeing a loving reflection of me! It is through the early resonance, largely through the gaze, where my right hemisphere and theirs lock into a rhythmic dance, which registers deep in my primitive brain, and my default mode network, which will grow to house my sense of Self is stimulated to develop, grow and ultimately thrive – or so we hope.
How does a child come to have a sense of self-worth or self-esteem? As a stalwart student of Attachment Theory, I believe it is by (as an infant) looking up into my mother’s or primary caregiver’s face and seeing a loving reflection of me!
And what happens when I look up into a face that is terrified, or angry, or grief-stricken, or ravaged by depression, hunger, violence or just plain fatigue? What if there is a blank face? Or no face is there at all? The image I am left to have of myself will be some sort of reflection or self-reflection of that. I can only imagine what I looked up and saw as a tiny being. I knew that my mother was too young. She had a lively two-year-old already, a hard-working, largely absent and traumatized husband, and a terrible story of her own. I must have known early on that she really needed a mom. Of course, I don’t remember. But I do clearly remember the relentless drive to justify my existence. And sometimes, when I am in the presence of a client who talks from a familiar sounding place, I am visited by such an image and have to wonder what they looked up and saw.
Today I saw a man wearing a t-shirt that said, “Children Are to be Seen and Heard!” I thought, “Wow!” As I watched him pass hand in hand with his lively young son in tow.
Money was another mystery. There was never much, and it was a taboo subject. One never asks how much things cost or how much someone makes. I have never to this day had any idea of what either of my parents earned at any time. We were never to touch our mother’s purse. Our dad always had multiple jobs, and work of all kinds was highly regarded. Our dad was a chef, a waiter, sang in cocktail lounges and later taught and became a cantor. There was no shame in manual or service work, and my parents were always very respectful of working folk. Our mom’s family was well to do and intellectual before losing everything to the Nazis, but they, and certainly my grandmother, who was one of the first women ever to graduate from Oxford, never lost the sense of superiority that came from their class. I think they quietly or not so quietly believed that the US culture was superficial, materialistic and petty. Emotionally they all were quite impoverished, and life, certainly in our family, seemed like zero-sum.
One never asks how much things cost or how much someone makes. I have never to this day had any idea of what either of my parents earned at any time.
Our mom was a practical and careful shopper. She clipped coupons, journeyed across town to get a bargain, and scrupulously collected Blue Chip and S&H Green stamps which I ceremoniously helped her paste in the little books. I don’t remember what we would redeem them for, but I know it was a serious and committed endeavor. I remember when she shopped, she would matter of factly ask the checker, “So what do I owe you?” Thinking on it now, the expression sounds odd to me; it connotes a power differential? An imbalance to be corrected rather than a reciprocal exchange, or give and take, a debt. As I got older, I felt shame and contempt for this low price proclivity and took a wicked pleasure in paying “retail” even though it might mean playing roulette with the bank to stay ahead of often (temporarily) rubber checks. In those days, checks might take one or two unpredictable weeks to clear, so I often won.
Feeling worthless is readily a conscious or unconscious bi-product and even marker of neglect. Feeling invisible, unheard and categorically not understood is a short hop from the sorry conclusion that “it is something intrinsic about me.”
In the vacuous world of neglect, where there is no one to ask how the world works, the child must figure it out. I started earning money young because having my own money felt empowering. Babysitting brought fifty cents an hour in those days, a far cry from what I hear young parents groaning under now! I washed cars and mowed lawns in the neighborhood once we had moved to the suburbs, and in my early teen years, I had my own little housecleaning business. Earning money made me feel like I was worth something. To this day, I am jarred by the language used to describe wealthy individuals as being what they are worth.
I liked being able to buy things, and even more, I liked being able to give things. Perhaps I might have something to offer. I took great pleasure in giving, especially things that I had made. I still do, but then it was different. It was once again the quest to compensate, to purchase, to somehow equilibrate, merit or even the score.
Certainly to be loved. And like a rat on a wheel, I could never give enough to secure my position for long and relax. Of course, that kind of giving is a trap. Invariably I would overextend myself, feel depleted, pathetic and resentful. I believed that anger is the luxury and the privilege of popular girls. In my case, it would make me even less likable. It was hard to learn to regulate the giving because for so long, I believed if I were not always giving and gratifying, I would vanish.
Many are the children of neglect who are hard-pressed to receive. Interpersonal need is so dangerous that the ferocity of complete self-reliance is the safest if unconscious way to go. There may not only be a sense of superiority but safety in always being the one who dives for the restaurant check.
Giving and receiving is another of the delicate rhythmic dances of regulation. For many of us, it takes years to learn it. And as I attempt to teach others every day, including myself, both require great humility. Ultimately the balance can elicit equality, safety, connection and pleasure. As an old married lady facing into the unknowns of aging, I am grateful that our couple has worked hard to grow reciprocity and know what we can count on in one another.
My husband, a quintessential child of neglect, used to say to me when I had no idea what he was talking (or not talking) about, “you mean you are not in my head?” The child’s world of neglect is so solitary that much of it is never seen or known by another human. As adults or their partners, it may be jarring or, at best surprising to learn how oblivious they might be. I’ve heard many a partner lament, …”when I try and walk with you, you are always a good six steps ahead without even noticing that I am not with you!”
The insidious calculous of giving and receiving can also drop into this black hole of oblivion and slide into a transactional world missing consent. More than a few times, I have seen in couples, where one partner provides everything in one medium, which then, according to their own private calculator, entitles them to some sort of remuneration in their own preferred medium. But there is no handshake, no agreement, no awareness. We have a deal, but you don’t even know you are in it. In my mind it is “fair”, so I proceed as if we had an agreement and then get mad if you don’t deliver. Oy vey! This sounds much more intentional and duplicitous than I mean it to. It is a function of being too much alone, of a story of a child who grew up a stranger to the relationship world and has to learn about a world that is populated with real others. For a partner, it can feel frustrating at best and more often enraging.
All too often, the currency is sex, and because sex has so many meanings and so many individuals have charged histories around it, it can come to take on a life of its own or become a focus that may then eclipse these often deeper layers. Sex is a very big topic that we shall have to return to another day, especially because in its countess iterations, it shows up so often as the presented problem in my office.
Returning to where we began, the under-stimulated infant brain fails to develop certain connections that may result in some kinds of deficits around awareness and emotion. It is never too late to cultivate and grow these connections and regulations, so we can cultivate and grow relationships where we make our deals out loud!
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 Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones.
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!