The other morning, I learned a new word. I was elbow-deep in bagel dough in the wee hours. Admittedly I love those awesomely silent insomniac hours when everyone in their right mind is asleep. I do end up sleep-deprived, which I constantly struggle to regulate. But the night sky through our kitchen skylight and the gentle quiet is blessedly peaceful, and some of my most creative moments come out of the dark embrace of the night. And some of the best public radio programs aired at those times. This time, I caught an interview with Roxanne Gay.
Gay is a most exquisite writer. I have only read one of her books, but I aspire to get to the others. The one I did read is called Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper 2017) where she tells the story of being gang raped as an adolescent, and then proceeding into wildly disordered eating that gradually rocketed to a weight of over 500 pounds (36 stone.) She describes her life as a traumatized, sexually non-conforming, of color woman, navigating a fat-phobic world of that size. It is brilliant writing. The new word I learned from her on this particular morning, was “gerontocracy.” The Oxford definition is “a state, society, or group governed by old people.” Which of course got me thinking.
Only weeks ago, a California senator, Dianne Feinstein, died at age 90. She was the oldest ever sitting US senator. But there was controversy about her staying in office as long as she did, as many believed she was failing in various ways. I did not get involved in that argument, because I always had a special fondness for Dianne. She was the unlucky individual who discovered the freshly-murdered body of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician in San Francisco, as well as the then mayor, George Moscone. She handled that trauma with such grace and guts, as she also did, in taking over the helm of SF as mayor for a number of years. Dianne had a long wick with me.
Similarly, another much highly esteemed older woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, beloved US Supreme Court Justice, stayed seated too long. So, as I thought about gerontocracy, as well as the fact that most of the candidates in the upcoming US presidential and other important elections are getting up there. But hey, so is Mick Jagger. And I’m not 19 anymore either. What does it mean?
I often wonder, how does one know when it is time to step aside and make way for a new generation? Surely it is a moment of grief, a process of loss to face that one’s star is beginning to set. I always admire athletes who have the humility and the realism to recognize that their moment has passed. Local football legend Jerry Rice, one of my iconic heroes (although I am certainly no fan of his sport,) knew he did not want to end his brilliant career on the bench. Joan Baez could hear and feel when her voice and throat were getting scratchy, and when maybe it was time to express her creativity through paint and prose. Many rock groups have repeatedly announced their “farewell” tours, only to be followed by a comeback or perhaps sheepish re-incarnation of some kind. I know in my world, although I am not quite a veteran, I am now in the perhaps in-between category of not quite veteran, but perhaps seasoned practitioner, who has something to teach and pass on, but has a task to encourage and help launch the next wave of trauma study and practice. And admittedly I am happy and excited to see fresh young minds brimming with curiosity, stepping up to the fore.
Too there is something perhaps anachronistic, not to mention even stingy about clinging to one’s old stature even when it is clearly on the decline, perhaps denial or refusal to see, fear of change, inability to face the inevitability of loss, mortality? In her provocative book Elderhood, gerontologist Louise Aaronson describes the neglect of the whole category of ageing, certainly in the North American healthcare system, and in our culture. She comments that we acknowledge two stages of life: childhood and adulthood. However now, at least in many first-world countries, adulthood might span 60-80 years or more. We warehouse the elderly, try to forget about them and forget that it will happen to us. Another whole population of neglect whose existence is somehow ignored, overlooked, forgotten. These years are certainly not monochromatic, not uniform to be able to generalize about developmentally, they are perhaps as diverse as any variations of development and growing up.
It was a short hop from this to another tributary of thought: what does all this have to do with intergenerational transmission in general, and specifically the intergenerational transmission of trauma and neglect, which is probably almost always on my mind.
As we know the nature of unresolved trauma is to re-enact it. Unwittingly through behavior and symptoms we might continue and repeat abhorrent patterns, only to realize with horror, ”-oh my god! I am turning into my mother!” or talking to myself as she talked to me. And what does it mean to have a government by the aged? Will we be doomed to keep on recycling the same “nasty, brutish and short” stories? How can we do better?
I am all for reverence, honor and value for the sage wisdom of age and experience. Staying mindful to appreciate, remember and dignify history and historical figures across diverse spectrums, including those overlooked, mistreated or forgotten by history only makes sense to me. Staying cognizant and awake, resisting the urge to avoid or flee questions of mortality- our own and that of those we love, takes courage, awareness and humility, which are in fact the opposite of neglect.
Neglect is generally, blind oblivion, failure of consciousness. It is generally the exception that it be purposeful and intentional with-holding of attention, consideration or thought. Staying mindful, awake, conscious and committed to healing both the injuries and mistakes is probably our best insurance against the blind and static doom to repeat them. That is my best hope.
So on an always related theme, how do we know when the cheese is ready? When it has aged enough and is at its best? Good question! Sometimes the recipe gives us the ballpark, or a range of 4-8 months. Sometimes the aroma rising through the wax is too seductive to wait any longer, or there is nothing else even close. I used to think more was always better, about everything really. I strive to overcome that, in the probably lifelong quest for regulation! There is no simple formula. Perhaps the best recipe for living is to honor and respect ancestry, learn from experience, grow with the times, and stay mindful.
Today’s song:
I remember the first book about anorexia I ever found in my desperate search for help. It was called Addiction to Perfection. It was useless like everything else, but it was slim pickings in those days (no pun intended of course!) It did get me thinking, however, about my perfectionism, not only about my body but about everything really. What is that? Where does that kind of arrogance, grandiosity, and delusion come from? In AA, they used to call it “an insult to god.”
Like many a child of neglect, I had many questions about my existence. I was convinced that I was truly out of sight/out of mind. That if I were not in someone’s direct line of vision, poof, I instantly disappeared ghostlike from their world, imminently forgettable. Once, when our 9th grade AP English class was going to the theatre for a field trip, I thought we were going to see Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. It was an event, an evening outing we were all excited about. Our teacher, Mr. Tanner, was doing the transport and somehow forgot to pick me up! I missed the play! Of course, thinking about it now, I wonder why no one else tried to get me there once the pickup time had come and gone. What was it about me? Maybe if I were extraordinary, I would somehow edge into existence. Or at least break even somehow. It would probably help to not make any mistakes. I might cut my losses that way.
Children of unhealed traumatized parents can readily spark something that activates a parent into some sort of outburst or withdrawal, either of which may be frightening or most likely disconnecting for the child. “Walking on eggshells” to avoid land mines or trip wires makes for extreme caution, danger and anxiety… never knowing quite what will and will not be OK. The whole world seems wild, chaotic, random and unpredictable. Perfection would be the only safe bet, whatever that might be. It does seem to be a ready and unattainable aspiration, even a mandate, for many. It is also a great way to perpetuate self-hatred and shame and a chronic belief that “I am not good enough.” Never will be.
In the wee hours the other day, I happened on an interview with Amy Edmundson, professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, who formally studied specifically medical mistakes. Inspired by a woman whose nine-year-old daughter had ’‘needlessly” died of leukaemia due to avoidable medical errors by hospital personnel in the little girl’s care. Edmundson’s findings were chilling. She found that in the US, on average, 200,000 patients die each year as a result of medical errors. The study prompted her to probe further: how could this happen?
Edmundson discovered five major causes of medical error: the task was too hard; the practitioner was unprepared or insufficiently prepared; uncertainty; experimentation and sabotage. I began to reflect on the hapless child of neglect, thrust into too many situations where, due to abandonment or prematurely having to resort to self-reliance, is faced with tasks that are too hard or that they are insufficiently prepared or oriented for. Of course, they will be uncertain, faced with challenges they have no idea how to complete, inevitably falling down on the job, at least some of the time, with perhaps dire consequences, or perhaps reprimand or even punishment. Of course, the danger of a misstep becomes a kind of nightmare, something to be feared or avoided at all costs. Experimentation or sabotage might become a reaction to the response they get, or not.
I remember hearing bellowed at me: “Your mother was shaking like a leaf!” Or “You are driving your mother to an early grave!” for being late or some other potentially worrisome infraction. Of course, perfection seems like some kind of insurance- that or escape. The lessons of forgiveness for falling short, let alone teaching moments to be able to do better next time, neither of those is likely to happen in the lonely, self-reliant world of neglect. How will a child learn? How will a child learn that it is OK, even natural, to be fallible and that life goes on?
It also occurred to me that errors are, in fact, nature’s design. In biology, we find the frequent appearance of mutations. Mutations are a change in the ordinary DNA sequence of an organism, in effect, an unintended defect in the process of replicating itself. Sometimes mutations can be problematic, even lethal, like cancer. However, others are a source of developmental change, evolution, an improvement on the known and practiced sequence, or simply a surprise. Prior to 1954, “research” showed that running a mile in less than four minutes was an impossibility, beyond the capacity of human physiology, until Roger Bannister in Oxford, UK, shattered that prior scientific principle. And nature has evolved ever since as faster and faster times have been clocked in the decades between then and now. Mutation, in effect, another word for error, can, in fact, amount to progress. Not always, of course! Sometimes, it can be deadly, inconvenient, or destructive. But perhaps not something to be categorically dreaded! Maybe mistakes are a fact of life.
And similarly, “perfection” is not always insulation against sanction, misfortune or injustice. I recently learned the story of Jim Thorpe, an extraordinary athlete from the First Nation Sac and Fox Tribe of Oklahoma, USA. Thorpe went on to compete in the 1908 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, in track and field.
Thorpe was about to compete in the decathlon (10 events) and the pentathlon (5 events) when, at the last minute, it was discovered that his shoes had disappeared were perhaps stolen. His coach scrambled and found two mismatched shoes that were not his, one of which was not even his size. He had to put two socks on one foot; neither fit him right. But fearless, Thorpe went out to compete and took the gold in all the events. In effect, perfection in the 15 challenges, cleaning up the gold medals. Unheard of. And in those shoes!
When Thorpe mounted the podium to receive his medals in the award ceremony, the King of Sweden proclaimed, “Jim Thorpe, you are the greatest athlete in the world!” to which Thorpe shyly replied, “Thanks King!”
However, even such history-making perfection would not inoculate a poor native from racism, opportunism and tragic injustice. Thorpe’s medals were stripped when it was discovered that he was not purely amateur. A couple of summers, he had played minor league baseball for $35.00 a week to help cover his paltry expenses. He was only doing what almost all of his colleagues were doing, including peers Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton. However, most of them were playing under false names, and Thorpe did not bother to change his name. It was 75 years later, in 1983, that his medals were restored. By then, he had long since died, impoverished and alcoholic. Perhaps perfectionism is a lost cause. Life is replete with ironies and opposites. It is hard to keep sight of this when we feel inundated in the despair, loss and grief that are so often the lingering bequest of trauma and neglect. I take solace in the words of Cuban poet Jose Marti:
Todo es hermoso y constante,
Todo es música y razón,
Y todo, como el diamante,
Antes que luz es carbón.
Everything is constant and beautiful,
Everything is music and reason,
And everything like the diamond,
Before being light is coal.
Today’s song (In loving memory of Pablo Milanes, who died almost exactly one year ago):
I am a hardcore Mac person. I really wish Steve Jobs had not died so soon. Yes, I know he was not a nice person, certainly not to his employees or his daughter. In my customary way, I read a huge biography, watched the bio-pic and read his daughter’s memoir too. Admittedly, I guess I have a fascination with very brilliant, mean men, which is, in fact, on today’s topic, one of the many manifestations of intergenerational transmission of trauma. My father, probably the person I most admired, adored, emulated, feared and hated, was one of those.
My husband, a sensible tech guy, operates in the PC world. (Left to my own devices, no pun intended! I would avoid PCs completely if it weren’t for the fact that our neurofeedback programs do not run on Mac.) My husband objects to how pricey everything Apple appears to be, and is less taken by the aesthetic than I. And he keeps me somewhat informed of at least the basics of Microsoft. He taught me the invaluable go-to of “Control-Alt-Delete.” Whenever everything gets inexorably tangled or stopped in the system, it is a first attempt to get unstuck. How refreshing (oy vey no pun intended again, really!) that the stop action, defaults to that simple 3-button reboot, that we get an instant do-over, another chance. Were it that simple to get another chance, a quick access route out of other jam-ups, or shock situations? And that sequence got me thinking.
In the child’s world of trauma and neglect, part of what makes life so terrifying is the unending monsoon of unpredictability. An unhealed, traumatized parent, without warning, might fly into a trauma state where rage and violence erupt from seemingly nowhere. Our dad would explode into that other, scary version of himself, loud and monstrous, with sometimes shocking behaviors. I remember one night at the dinner table, when, with both hands, he furiously mushed up a plate of spaghetti, railing about how we ate like pigs. Other times, he vanished into an absent freeze, gonzo. And still others, he was the genius who taught me so much of what I know and am most proud of. Mom had her own, perhaps less dramatic spectrum. It was never clear, who will it be. There was certainly no way to be ready.
Many survivors of childhood trauma and neglect are tagged as “control freaks.” It is a natural impulse when feeling completely batted around, at the whim of wild swings of emotional weather, to want to nail down everything one can. Remember, when overcome with puzzlement, shame (or defensiveness!) about being controlling, that it is a natural and understandable response to terror. Certainly, anorexia, my first major symptom, is a fierce and deadly theatre of control, until the control itself becomes out of control, which is truly confusing, especially to an already glucose-starved brain.
The point here is to be kind! Control is the first of the three-button attempt to survive. Like many other exit routes, it may reach its point of diminishing or even negative returns. And when it does, it is important to find a more elaborate and nuanced fix.
Bicycling in Cuba, I learned from the stop signs that the word Alto means stop. We have learned from biology that a prey animal who is in an inescapable shock situation, cornered by a larger predator, might go into a major organismic shutdown, with all the non-essential functions ratcheting down to almost nothing, so the animal might be barely more than faintly breathing. They might be “playing possum”, death feigning since most predators lose interest in dead prey. They might be making themselves completely numb to not feel the pain of being eaten, a worthy skill, I might add. I know I have written this before, but it makes so much sense that I don’t mind repeating it.
The freeze response is an alternative to fight or flight, and certainly better suited to an infant who cannot fight or flee. The withdrawal or absence of the primary attachment figure, usually the mother, at least at first, is experienced as life-threatening. The child may feel as if they will die. The freeze is adaptive, gets, in effect, learned by the little nervous system and body, and develops as a regular defense, a way to survive the experience of a lethal threat.
I was unnerved early in my now-long partnership, by how when I would get frantic and vociferously emotional when upset or activated, my partner would shut down, go quiet and withdraw, seemingly absent. I would become more frantic, feeling abandoned on top of whatever had upset me before. And he could readily say, “I didn’t do anything!” And that was true but so not true. This pattern in relationships became one of my early beefs as I began to study neglect. In most couples’ therapy, it appeared that the loud and emotional partner got all the blame and all the help, and the quiet, seemingly helpless one was off the hook and went unseen and un-helped. We must not be deceived by the quiet of the freeze, lest the child of neglect remain invisible, unrecognized, left alone again.
One of the ways I found of coping or self-regulating, was by making myself scarce, disappearing. Feeling pretty invisible already, it was a short hop to making myself a complete mystery. Of course, no one was really interested, I didn’t even really notice. But my whole life was a colossal secret; no one knew where I was or what I was doing. By the time I was thirteen, I was out on all-day bike rides and meeting much older guys. Of course, I learned how to drink, and no one really noticed.
For the child of neglect to be an island unto themselves, private, even secretive, a well of unknown that no one really cares to know anyway, is not unusual. Many kids get into much more trouble than I did, although I nearly managed to do myself in with anorexia. Used to being unseen and unheard, the child might capitalize on that, unwittingly perhaps exaggerate it or, in my case, in a strange way, take advantage of it. It was a lonely but reliable escape route that had to be slowly and very intentionally unravelled as I processed my trauma and learned how to trust and actually be safe with others.
So what of the three-button reboot being a good thing? Well, as we learn to recognize our activations, which may, in fact, follow any of these well-worn pathways, we can choose to stop action. I remember when my genius husband first said, “give me a minute to calm down; it’s not about you!” what a great line! I wish I had thought of that!
Today’s song:
Sometimes, I feel like the mythical cat who lives nine lives as I think back on my various incarnations, which sometimes seem as if they were not me but someone else. Probably nine is not enough. I remember way back to my ardent activist days when I traveled a good bit in Latin America, I was also very taken with the textiles of Indigenous people all over the continent. I had tried my hand at weaving but never got too good at it. But I loved collecting beautiful colorful, exquisitely patterned and textured treasures from all over the place. I still have the various pouches, sashes, scarves, table coverings, and even an occasional poncho that I have been carting around with me through my various lives for almost 50 years! Wow! What brought this to mind was a flash memory. Who knows from where these things pop up?
I remembered how I was so taken by the people in the country town of Otavalo, Ecuador. Because they were legendary weavers, I made a special trip, bumping along dusty dirt roads in the rickety hour or two bus ride from the “big city” of Quito. This was many decades ago. I have no idea what these places are like now. The artisans of Otavalo were widely renowned, not only for their exquisitely beautiful craft but because, out of all the indigenous artisans on the continent, they alone had found a way to market and distribute their own work and safeguard the profits in their own hard-working hands. No small feat in a world where colonialism and exploitation were as old as the other ruins.
I especially remember the custom among the weavers was that their finest, most beautiful and most prized work were worn as undergarments. No one would see it but the weaver/wearer themselves. The most precious was closest to the body, closest to the core. Something about that always appealed to me. Prizing oneself that much, there is no need to showcase or grandstand, but rather a quiet appreciation of one’s own value. So different from how most children of neglect think of themselves, certainly a far cry from how I had always been where what was closest to the bone was fiercely hidden out of shame and fear, while my most beautiful creations were hastily given away, in an effort to score some value outside myself for a minute, somehow.
I have always suffered bitterly from the cold. I can never be too warm, but I am generally the one who asks for a blanket on the plane, and I relish on weekly bread-baking days my irrefutable excuse to crank up the heat to get the starter bubbling. I tell my husband, “I have no choice!” and he doesn’t argue because he loves the bread. I remember when early in my distance cycling days, I discovered the “sharkskin,” a very lightweight, tight-fitting, long-sleeved top made out of some stretchy nylon-like, magical material that was blessedly and unbelievably warm. Back in those days I think there was only one brand: Under Armor. I was in heaven with my new sharkskin. I remember the first time I went high on a mountain in Utah, where I always expected to be hot. But it was fall, the aspens were shimmering gold, and it was freezing cold. But that day, with that amazing new sharkskin hugging me under my jersey, I was amazed at how this seemingly flimsy, unassuming little garment was such a game-changer. Hidden from view, close to my core, it made all the difference between a cold, miserable day and a delicious, brisk autumn day in paradise. What can seem initially inconsequential, when close to the bone, can change night into day.
Infancy is the core on which all succeeding sedimentary layers are laid down. The attachment researchers tell us without doubt that the first two years of life are decisive, whether the base layer of attachment works its magic. What does and does not happen then is pivotal. It is when the right hemisphere to right hemisphere communication between primary parent and infant stimulates and nurtures brain development: a sense of self, an emotional vocabulary, the capacity to find one’s way between states, and return to calm. Sadly, so much neglect begins there. And there is no memory, with nothing to remember. We must reach deep into the nothingness, almost like reaching way into the hat to pull out the rabbit, to reconstruct the narrative. And the rabbit we find is most likely pretty ragged.
When infancy is safe, the base layer is like my shark skin. It insulates, embraces, and turns night into day.
Often, people come into therapy with a known trauma story, an overt abuse history, that perhaps they have been working on doggedly in all kinds of ways for years. It might be a truly nightmarish experience, and we are all familiar with the heinous memory of abuse and all manner of agony, clients,’ other people and our own. And they may have done a whole lot of really good work with good practitioners and maybe spent years and boatloads of money doing it. But they still suffer way too much, or can’t make a go of a relationship, or are running out of hope. It may be that the base layer, the unremembered early experience of neglect, has stayed buried, hidden, unexcavated, unprocessed. And the infant is as desolate and untethered as ever.
In that same lifetime that I traveled south of the US border, I also read a ton about the people and places I was so compelled by. This was long before I “knew” anything about development or trauma or attachment, or perhaps I should say I didn’t know I knew anything, but of course, in my cells and in my heart, I knew quite a lot. Always the bookworm, I read probably hundreds of books back then. One book that I am guessing I read almost 50 years ago stuck in my mind. I did not know why at the time. A couple of years ago, I searched all over for the book. I couldn’t find my original copy. I could not remember the title or author. But I remembered the most important part. That the political prisoners in Chile were tortured brutally was getting to be known around the world, as Amnesty International and others did what they could to get the word out. I would read the accounts with horror and fear, wondering, if that were me, would I “break?” Or would I “sing?” as Tony Soprano would say. What stayed in my mind through all those decades was that the prisoners who had solid connections with their families, who held those attachments securely inside and felt their families’ support while in their draconian agonies, were the ones who held up, who stayed strong through the violence. Hardly surprising to me now, but why did that lodge in my mind as significant? I must have known on some level that I was deficient in that way. Years later, I was able to figure out the title and author: Hope Under Siege: Terror and Family Support in Chile by Michelle Ritterman. I found a copy and even met Michelle.
The early attachment is the bedrock, the foundation of a solid sense of self. Sometimes, working with the overt trauma story is part of the drilling down, but the essence remains to be mined. Often, the way we uncover it is roundabout, working with what older siblings or relatives can tell us about what was going on around us when we were in unremembered infancy, what was going on in our mothers’ lives, when we lived inside her body, waiting to emerge. Was she in grief from her own life events, or deaths, or a troubled marriage, or hunger? Often, from such reconstruction, bits of memory arise, usually unbidden. Even now, I am surprised by flash bulb images and unwieldy emotions.
I might add that what is perhaps obvious is so much abuse might have been prevented If protective others were present, paying attention, and staying connected to the little one. We have all heard stories of kids being left behind in gas stations, forgotten in burning buildings, or left vulnerable to sometimes predictable sexual exploitation because no one was mindful. And the cultural neglect that allows the trauma to persist through generations is for another day. Meanwhile, I have found another brand of Sharkskin called Helly Hansen, and they come in every imaginable color. Not exactly as beautiful as the Otavalo weavings, but deliciously cozy.
Today’s song:
Sometimes I wonder if you get tired of my invoking the Stone Age of psychotherapy or the trauma field. I find my mind so often drifting back in time to when I first started connecting dots and ideas. Maybe it comes with being at this as long as I have, or it is a simple fact of aging. I recently found myself remembering the early days of family systems theory and the then new-to-me concept of patterns originating in the family, replicating themselves like colorful block prints across the fabric of our relationship lives. I have always loved color and pattern, so the image was appealing. I remember making colorful block prints with carved potatoes stamping multi-hued snowflake designs to make home-made wrapping paper. I loved the symmetrical repeating designs. However, it can be somewhat chilling how persistent and powerful the imprinting is of repetitive relationships and personality-dynamics and roles.
What inspired this little cascade of thoughts, were reflections on the experience of immigrants and refugees. I was remembering how as children, we got a resounding confusing message about our home country, the US. My parents were both survivors and refugees of the Nazi Holocaust. After circuitous and traumatic flights, my father endured the Shanghai ghetto until he stowed away on a ship and fled yet again to Sydney, Australia; my mother ensconced in the basement of the kindly and philanthropic shoe-manufacturing Clark family in the UK, until they both wound up here in the States. My father remembered sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge. My mother recalled the Statue of Liberty. Both of them, young adults by the time they arrived, were brimming with unprocessed traumatic horror and only slightly older when they met. By the time we were born, they were both perhaps tentatively settled in this, their new country.
I remember best the inconsistent and ambiguous message and a big word I learned early: assimilate. We got the dual mandate to both blend in and slip under the radar, but not too much. Don’t lose our noble, even superior identity, our martyr’s heritage, and don’t forget what happened to us! I remember the militant Jewish Defense League (JDL,) and their battle cry of “Never Again!” although that certainly was not quite my parents’ paradigm. “But don’t stand out either!” And god forbid you intermarry, which would be unforgivable.
The underlying paradox was that the rescuing host nation that received us was simultaneously suspect, dangerous, and threatening. It had both saved us, but the fear persisted, as had happened in their native country; its people could suddenly and dramatically turn on us at any moment. In effect, the source of refuge, of safety and welcome, and the source of fear, suspicion and potential betrayal, were in the same people, the same land. Reflecting on this core refugee contradiction, I thought “Wow! That sounds identical to the familiar Dilemma Without Solution, the heart of neglect trauma. In this dilemma, the infant is faced with a similar insoluble contradiction: the longed-for, beloved other is the very same as the force of danger: loss, abandonment, erratic presence, and/or complete absence. An infant of course has no cerebral equipment to make sense of this problem, let alone respond to it, so they freeze, collapse and ultimately, if they don’t crack up completely, default to self-reliance. This pattern is the deadliest plague of neglect trauma.
Recognizing the dilemma of refugee/immigrant status, as being cut from essentially the same mold, fitting the template of neglect trauma, I began to comb the landscape of my life, picking out more and more examples of the same, as the family systems people named it, replicating patterns. The cookie cutter of the dilemma without solution, seemed to be stamping out cookies across the cutting board of my life.
Perhaps you also get tired of my rhapsodizing about regulation. It is true, I can’t talk about it enough, because it is so essential, and perhaps its failure is the essence of the legacy of every kind of trauma: the inability to restore or even ever experience a state of calm, peace, ease, comfort, after an upset of some kind, be it fear, anger, pain, simple startle, or any other disruption. Upset, dysregulation is so unpleasant, we will go to great lengths to quell or extinguish it, to make it go away.
Certainly, in my case, yet another default to the familiar template, I early discovered anorexia. And something about the seeming mastery over hunger, overpowering the drive for nourishment made me feel powerful and strong: a kind of euphoria, triumph; and numbing of pain. And yet at the same time, it was a source of terror. I knew that the danger was there to take it too far. That the very state that made me feel strong and powerful, made me feel dizzy, weak and terrified. What was I doing to myself? I relied on it to manage my pain, and it was simultaneously a well of more pain. Sound familiar?
It was a short hop to discover alcohol when I was 13. Same deal. It anesthetized me so effectively, and enabled me to have some semblance of relationships, even have fun. But before long it presented the familiar pattern: the other side. I was able to ignore it for a while. But eventually, I had to take note, that I started regularly having complete blanks in recall of the night before, I preferred not to use the correct term: blackouts, but that was what they were, every night. It gave me a jolt when one morning I found myself climbing out the window of someone’s room, having no idea of who that person was. But the dilemma being so familiar, and addiction being an additional powerful agent, it certainly took a while, (even after that!) before it actually stopped me for long.
Years later when I became a couple’s therapist, I began to see systems theory in action yet again. We bring our familiar patterns, learned in our families, to our adult partnerships and proceed to reconstellate them, unwittingly with our partners, who are of course doing the same thing. Then we endlessly, haplessly repeat the usually agonizing, disconnecting dance until ultimately, we get some help or break up. The good news, I always tell my exhausted couples, is that once we identify the redundant sequence, and process its root, we can eradicate the template. Pretty much all of the apparent problems, or content areas seem to simply evaporate, because they were never really the issue. And in my practice, because I work so much with neglect trauma, the now infamous Dilemma Without Solution, turns out to be the root difficulty, and with luck and hard work, might finally, find its solution. Some years ago now, I came across an admittedly comforting book, well comforting to me as I navigate my late 60’s: The Wisdom Paradox, (Penguin Random House 2006) authored by world-renowned neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg. He acknowledges that as we age, we do lose acuity of some brain functions. I hate to face that my memory, once a steel trap and source of pride, is not what it used to be, especially where scheduling is concerned. Oy vey! Goldberg demonstrates that the senior brain, however, becomes more skilled at pattern recognition! That is good news! Rarely do we learn of ways that we might actually improve as we age, (unless you are a cheese!) I do find that I can spot and put a frame around client/couples’ repeating patterns much faster and sooner than I used to Some of it of course is from the years of experience, but I do like the idea that I share the tendency with some of my best cheeses. I hope, however, I smell better than they do!
Today’s song:
Although for years I could not make a go of relationships, I would not exactly say I was friendless. I had a cadre of not-exactly imaginary friends. Perhaps you would call them personal heroes, but they were/are real people and very much in my life. When I was a lonely twelve-year-old, I had a much bigger-than-life poster of Joan Baez on my bedroom wall. Racked with the dysregulated system of my then-unknown trauma and struggling to get through the days, I was soothed looking at her calmly, serene, peaceful face. Most of my heroes were men, but she was an iconic female role model, someone to emulate, a beautiful, creative activist who even hooked up with Bob Dylan, not to mention her exquisite voice. I remember when I used to painfully pedal up Page Mill Road, one of the steepest and most highly regarded (no pun intended!) cycling hills, being comforted and spurred onward, knowing she lived up in those beautiful woods somewhere. I think she still does.
In the early 2000s, I had occasion to see her in person. No, not at a concert, but at close range when I went to a workshop at the famed Esalen Institute, a picturesque retreat center deep in the redwoods on the craggy coast of Big Sur, California, USA. I saw her in the clothing-optional mineral bath area, so needless to say, I saw all of her. I remember thinking, “We should all look so good at 60!” which seemed very old to me then!
Recently, I heard on public radio that Joan Baez, now 82, had recently released a new documentary film called I Am Noise, and there would be an interview at 5:00 AM the following morning. I made myself a note so I would not miss it, and the following morning, coffee in hand I tuned in. The first thing I heard her say, in her now slightly scratchy voice, was, “The panic attack stuff started early, and then the anxieties just heightened and heightened.” Then she proceeded to gently blast all my idealized misconceptions of her, one by one. Yes, she had fallen hopelessly in love with Bob Dylan, who mercilessly broke her heart after a much-photographed, short time. She married political activist David Harris and had only recently gotten pregnant when her dream of a homey life as wife and mother was shattered by his imprisonment for civil disobedience. They amicably divorced not long after his 20-month prison sentence, and Baez has been (apparently) contentedly single ever since. As for me, relationships were a minefield. As she said, “I’m not really good with one-on-one relationships, I’m great with one on two thousand!” I certainly have never been good at the one on two thousand, but I had the good fortune to get to therapy in time to (mostly!) work out the one-on-one thing, which for the attachment traumatized is the work of a lifetime. I was yet again humbly reminded of what they say in AA: “Don’t compare your insides with other people’s outsides!” Words to live by!
Mimi Farina, Joan’s little sister, alongside her husband Richard, was also a folk singer, if far lesser of a star. She died of cancer at age 56 in 2001. But before she did, she approached Joan to break a long family silence about their shared history. Mimi remembered what Joan did not. Both of them had been sexually abused by their father. A highly respected physicist, philosopher, and educator, who would have thought it, let alone believed it? Joan had long “forgotten” or blocked it from memory, as do many of us with trauma too heinous to “know.” But as Bessel van der Kolk eloquently reminds us, the “Body Keeps the Score.” In Joan’s case, the flashing scoreboard was certainly familiar to us: panic, anxiety, and relationship hell. At last, Joan found her way to the personal work that would both unlock the lost memory and relieve the misery of dysregulation and what she later recognized as fragmentation.
Although her father died in 2007 and her mother died at age 100 in 2013, before Mimi died, both sisters attempted to talk with their parents about what had happened and how it had affected their whole lives. Both parents fiercely denied that it could have been even remotely possible, as happens to many of us and our hapless clients. Joan was able to make her peace in the belief that they also had blocked out the unbearable memory and simply did not remember. This is a controversial “solution.” But I have to admit it is one I also often espouse, especially if one’s perpetrator is themselves traumatized, which they all too often are. And it has allowed her, as it has many of us, to live peacefully thereafter. Joan has a somewhat idyllic life, with a beautiful garden and contented chickens, up there on Page Mill.
Trauma memory is so insidiously confusing, and many survivors are haunted with self-doubt and/or guilt about the coming and going, believing and not believing, the seemingly relentless rally of peek-a-boo with their horror. But panic and anxiety are undeniable messengers, as are countless other symptoms. And for Joan anyway, their disappearance has been confirmation. I never tire of celebrity disclosures, especially from such well-loved cultural icons as Joan Baez, (and even more especially when they do not come on the tails of a tragic suicide story.) If Joan is able to help even one me-too survivor to believe what they think they remember, I am gratified. Of course, neglect is much harder to remember and believe because the problem so often is that there is nothing to remember. But that huge topic will have to be for another day…
I fear this will seem like a second-string afterthought. SO not my intention. Here in California and 16 other US states, Monday is Indigenous People’s Day (The remaining 33 US states still call it Columbus Day). I want to acknowledge it, especially as I have recently been learning how shamefully ignorant I am about the First Nation people of my country. My not atypical public school education, even (mostly) in the highly reputed Palo Alto Unified School District, offered little to no history and culture about our national forbears. (That is, of course, no excuse for continuing the neglect in my own personal development, especially as one so impassioned about social justice.) Apart from the heinous mistreatment of native peoples, they have suffered the most unforgivable, godforsaken neglect of perhaps any of our minorities, although I am breaking my own rule by comparing worsts. Suffice it to say, unforgivable neglect on top of everything else. I am forced to take note of and begin to correct my ignorance.
In my customary, if inexplicable way, I love to read the biographies and memoirs of great athletes. In this case, I found myself diving into the hefty tome
Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss (Simon & Schuster 2022). Although the book does not really take us inside the emotional world of the protagonist as my favorite biographies do, it successfully begins to fill in the vast vacuum of knowledge for which I am duly humbled and grateful. In addition to all the other phenomenal mistreatment, abuse, and robbery of First Nation peoples, the book demonstrates another way that they were exploited for profit: the veritable sale of their extraordinary athletic ability. Huge sums were garnered by college athletic departments that drew huge spectator crowds to watch games, wowed by the very players they called savages. Thorpe was an amazing, extraordinary athlete, called by some in his time the best athlete in the world. Like many of his kind, his life sank into misfortune and ultimately wound to a lousy end.
I like the practice I have heard others doing, lately of learning and acknowledging on whose native land I now stand and/or live. I am writing this in what is now my dearly loved home and was once Yelamu Ohlone land. The Joan Baez documentary is still only in theaters. It is called I Am Noise. It may be at a theater near you. I am going to wait until I can stream it, as I like to watch movies when I am stirring my cheese vat. Meanwhile, enjoy a day off, if you have one, whatever you may call it.
Today’s song:
Last week I lost my watch. I hate losing things, and I rarely do, having ferocious OCD rituals of rigidly keeping things “always” in the same designated places. Usually, it is my husband’s difficulty, and more than once, we have frantically searched for his wallet in foreign countries. He is a little older, so it is rather endearing to go through the checklist before we go out: “Wallet, keys, glasses, glasses case, phone,” but admittedly, it is something of an insult, certainly a bitter frustration when it is me. And I really liked it. I got it in Santa Fe, New Mexico, some years ago. Oh well.
But this first-world problem brought to mind literally and figuratively the recurring theme of lost time. We used to refer to sufferers from severe dissociative disorders as “losing time,” blocks of a day or more that simply could not be accounted for, blanked out. Lately, I have heard about it much more in terms of mortality. So many survivors of trauma and neglect find themselves in their fifties and sixties and only newly coming out into the light of pleasure and joy in life. And even younger people grieve over what were supposed to be our “best years,” the mythical imagery of youth, theirs having passed with storms of traumatic activation, paralysis, loneliness, and endless therapy. So much time is seemingly lost. I do say I find that all my pain and loss serve me in some way, but that can be a very hard sell.
Loss is at the very root of neglect trauma. Absence is the perpetuity of loss, the ever-present ache of what is not there and likely never will be. Sometimes, it is, in fact abandonment by death, busyness, illness, too many siblings, simply leaving, or perhaps worst of all, parental withdrawal. Loss, as an experience or expectation, is one of the most potent and persistent features of neglect trauma. Admittedly, I have discovered that I harbored (and still somewhat do) embarrassing denial and avoidance around death, perhaps numbing or cutting off from my feelings when someone important has passed. I am aware that I desperately dreaded the loss of the most important people in my life and was frantic for a good two years when my sister was very sick. I guess I finally began to make some progress as I felt terrible sadness about the deaths of Charlie Watts, Pablo Milanes, and even our little dog Button, But only in the last couple of years. And those are certainly “practice” losses. Not like the most important, closest people in my life. I am aware I still have a ways to go, and I am hoping the timing will be kind.
Neuroscientist and clinician Frank Corrigan has aptly renamed the larger category of attachment trauma as “attachment shock.” That really captures it. It is profoundly, shockingly traumatic to an infant’s system to experience the loss of the primary other, in whatever form it takes. And Ruth Lanius, the world’s foremost trauma neuroscience expert, reminds us how severe the shock of withdrawal of the primary love “object” is, especially in the most vulnerable developmental times in life. For a graphic illustration, I again recommend the famous “still face” research, which most of us have seen at least once (see here) as a reminder of how quickly and profoundly a small child is affected even by momentary and seemingly “neutral” shifts of caregiver attention. With as many times as I have viewed it, I never cease to find it heartbreaking.
Of course, rejection is a highly charged “hot button” of trauma activation for survivors of neglect trauma. Those of us in a relationship with survivors may be offended or exasperated by the way what to us might be “innocuous” behavior, might be interpreted as rejecting or abandoning. And it can certainly be humbling and sometimes surprising how persistent those reactions can be. Admittedly, only the other day I was reminded of this when I got an email from my beloved work team about changes in their growing business. My heart began cracking before even getting through the email’s text. The header alone announcing “changes” had me immediately preparing to be passed off to some other helper, displaced by much bigger and more valuable fish. I was unsure if my rough couple of days anticipating our meeting to discuss it was only because of this excessive grief/dread or other factors. But I arrived at the meeting already with tears in my throat.
Of course, the team, in explaining the changes, was quick to reassure me that the changes were all good and well-founded and certainly would not be leaving me on the curb as I had imagined. The newer member of the team was profusely apologetic as if she had done something “wrong” in how she expressed herself. I had to quickly change my hat and explain to her, “You did nothing ‘wrong!’ What you are seeing is neglect trauma!” I even told her, “This is what neglect ‘triggering’ looks like!”
Those who are familiar with my work (and my quirks!) know that I dislike and avoid using the word “triggering.” I don’t like the association with gun violence, and to me it can sound blaming as well. But I wanted to make my point quickly. But additionally, this is an opportunity to clarify that neglect “triggering” or activations are like gunshots with silencers. Rather than a big, dramatic bang, they have a muted, muffled pop. And as with so much else about neglect, they can go unheard and/or misunderstood. Reactions being unobtrusive, the neglect survivor can yet again slip under the radar with their experience and their pain, unseen and unrecognized. This of course did not happen with these wonderful people, but it was also a good teaching moment. And a shot of humility for me!
For those of us in any kind of relationship with survivors of neglect trauma, be they partner, client, loved one, and of course oneself, we must be ever reminded that the child of neglect can sniff rejection and abandonment readily under almost any rock, however “innocent” it might be in real-time, prefrontal, rational terms. We may be confronted with “disproportional” and seemingly “irrational” even “crazy” responses/reactions to what is to us misunderstood unintended slights.
I attempt to teach neglect survivors as we do the protracted work of extinguishing the old trauma reactivity; our larger goal is to get a voice! As attachment and somatic pioneer Stephen Johnson so concisely wrote, get a spine and get a voice. Find the courage and words to claim and occupy space and clarify: “What do you mean?” Most often, it is not the slur that we imagine. Admittedly, such unwitting imaginings can make it so. I wonder how many times I have been inspired by the painful rejections of me that I so feared!
The work of repair is another whole topic. Like everything else in a relationship, as adults, the more we make it a two-way street, the more quickly and “economically” it can wreak its magic. But most certainly, working one’s own side of the street, both in terms of how we interpret others (or fail to inquire about our interpretations;) or how we ourselves might “slip” into thoughtless or seemingly absent or even hurtful behavior or utterances. I know I can always do better, and to correct when I can is often better even than had I never made the mistake in the first place.
Meanwhile, I did find another watch that I like. We can never get back “lost time,” But who knows? Maybe my old vanished watch will turn up!
Today’s song:
Living in an earthquake country, the imagery of seismic rumblings is a familiar part of daily life. I went through the “big one” in the Bay Area in 1989, and we all live with the knowledge that there will be another good-sized shaker sooner or later. The wiser among us have their preparedness kits safely stowed in their basements. It was probably fourth grade when I first started learning about plate tectonics, the science of the shifting slabs of rock that divide the earth’s crust. Not far under a seemingly solid, perhaps placid earth’s surface resides this rocking and rolling, drifting landscape, moving constantly and reshaping the exterior of the land, occasionally in a dramatic, even violent way. I found myself thinking of this craggy lithosphere as I pondered the fragmentation of selves, which in some ways seems quite similar.
When I first started learning about the fragmentation aspect of trauma, dissociation, it was confusing and still can be. Dissociation is a term used to describe two distinct but related phenomena: to crassly abbreviate them, “splitting” and “numbing.” Splitting refers to the “divided self,” torn between two or more fierce emotions or states. They might be the disparate parts of the self that witnessed and lived the traumatic experience in various ways and the part that kept traumatic events hidden from awareness. One part might look “functional” or “good” on the outside and “dysfunctional” collapsed into some other less desirable adaptation behind the scenes. The numbing refers to a dulling of awareness, lack of presence, and “spaced out” response, which can readily be one of the split-off parts. Both of these definitions are correct, often used interchangeably, and I still find they can muddy communication.
Back when I first started learning about dissociation, one of the parts was referred to as the “Apparently Normal Personality” (ANP). I never cared for that term. Mostly because I balk, in general, at the notion that there is any such definitive designation as “normal,” so it winds up being subjectivity or prejudice and often pathologizing. I like Janina Fisher’s wording: the part that “takes over the ordinary responsibilities of daily life.”
In the world of neglect, the bedrock fissure, the “crack at the core” is what I call the “Dilemma Without Solution.” This is the great divide between the two warring emotional forces of desperate longing and bottomless distress, be it terror, grief, or some combination of both. Particularly for an infant whose needs are limitless, if the source of comfort and rejection, pain, or simple but devastating absence are the same person, it is indeed unresolvable. The cracking mitosis is not a discrete event but a redundant process of approach/withdraw, reaching and recoiling, reaching and recoiling. For an infant, it is unresolvable; the only viable adaptation to this inescapable shock, the only way “out” is to freeze or collapse. And that icy answer can readily evolve into the numbed-out state of dissociation and can often congeal into lasting patterns that make for relationship hell.
For years I wondered why I couldn’t have anyone in my life for long. Some people still had friends going back to grammar school and even earlier. I felt more like a motor boat, looking behind me at a choppy wake, a trail of relationship wrecks. What was it with me? I simply could not get along with humans.
Magma is the molten, liquefied rock flowing deep in the earth’s core. Shifts in pressure and temperature may build and boil, ultimately culminating in the ruptures and upheavals of earthquakes. It is humbling and frightening to imagine that something as devastating as the recent earthquake in Turkey, which left thousands dead and thousands more orphaned and homeless, started with the quiet rolling around of warm liquid. I think of the dilemma without a solution as the magma of neglect trauma. It may at first seem subtle or barely noticeable, a “simple” absence. But to the infant, there is nothing simple about it. It is as if the sun is disappearing from the sky, and the very life force is extinguished. To the infant, the withdrawal of this all-central other makes for the rising pressure and the climbing temperatures that culminate in the devastating quakes.
Some struggling survivors of childhood neglect may berate themselves, complaining of what they might call “fear of intimacy.” Or they might not experience it as “fear” or call it anything, even. They might not even notice that they simply act on reflex, fleeing from something resembling closeness. They may not recognize it themselves but hear the disgruntled refrain from partners or others attempting to be “loved ones” that they are avoidant in some way. They might be tortured or mystified by loneliness or mystifying relationship “sabotaging” behavior such as being “needlessly” antagonistic (although antagonism is probably rarely, if ever, “needed!) They may recoil from the connection in any number of conscious or unconscious ways. They may, like the old me, look behind them with shame and bafflement at the trail of litter, the detritus of wreckage of relationship tried and failed. The surgeon general in 2023 identified a national “epidemic” of loneliness in the US. I wonder how much of it is rooted in this dilemma.
I have had clients who survived their childhood dilemma by “performing.” The poverty of presence and attention meant there was a failure of mirroring, with no one present to reflect back to them who they were. Rather than growing and exploring organically to what it means to “be me,” from the inside, they rather looked “out there.” Searching for cues and clues about how to garner approval at the least. Growing up and later showing up in our offices, they are frustrated and ashamed by how authenticity eludes them. “I have no idea what I feel and what I like. My husband tells me he grew up being a “fur coat.” He learned well how to be an elegant, even luxurious adornment until, with bitterness, he was old enough to get out.
Neglect is rife with complications of self. I must be ever mindful when I see a client feeling better one day or able to do things in a new way or in a way they have been aspiring to. I must not overshoot or excessively acknowledge or compliment them. They might wind up feeling unseen, or as if I don’t get it, that the terrified parts are still there, and may rear up again at any moment. The parts move and change; dominance and prominence may shift and drift. Disowned parts may not go away.
I have found that sometimes the hardest changes to integrate relate to seeing myself in new ways that are wonderful. Something I used to struggle with no longer eludes me. I feel easier, or people like me. I may strain to believe it or to not screw it up. We must go gently with that, too. The earth is ancient, core and surface, and everything in between, ever-changing. We strive for harmony and equilibrium.
Today’s song:
As we head into mid-life, it is natural and typical to think about the passing of time, what is behind us and what lies ahead; what we have and have not achieved or accomplished; what we have treasured, and what we may have missed out on. Looking ahead, we may contemplate what we want to make sure we do get to before it is too late. Some windows may close if we fail to get there in time. I have noticed in recent years many adult child of neglect, crossing into their fifties- particularly men, who seemingly suddenly awaken to the poverty or even absence of sex that they have coexisted with over often many years. What may have been tolerable, or perhaps they have been too busy to notice for a time, begins to gnaw at them, and become unbearable. Many clients who are partnered, (or not,) may have gone years with little or no sexual interaction- with their spouse or anyone at all. As time marches inevitably on, it becomes imperative to many, to change that.
Sex is something we rarely talk about, for some incomprehensible reason. given that most of us if we are honest, probably do think about it a fair amount. Perhaps we have learned that it is “wrong,” dirty or inappropriate to talk about sex; perhaps we believe that we are supposed to “know” things about which we have no clue, and don’t want to be caught in ignorance; shame, guilt, some sort of moral tabu from one’s culture or religion, simple embarrassment about even saying the words? So many reasons to not talk about sex. Well, I for one admit I have always been inordinately fascinated with the topic, (which is often cited as the main reason why people become sex therapists!) And I am particularly interested in breaking silence about all matters sexual, because I am passionate about eradicating sexual trauma. And I believe that in addition to the undeniable, vast gender power inequalities, lurk problems of both dysregulation and ignorance.
I have seen many and varied iterations of sexual impacts in children of neglect. Because any sort of interpersonal dependency, which would likely include authentic intimacy, is experienced as threatening and even lethal, some sort of “solution” to the problem of sexual need is in order. I have seen a wide range of adaptations, where a person can be sexual and not risk intimate entanglements. They may rely on inanimate or virtual sexual “partners,” essentially relating to images on a screen. They may enlist the services of sex workers, so they can have safely circumscribed erotic encounters with no risk of intimacy. Anonymous sex in parks and bath houses, less common now since the AIDS epidemic scared us all too much; serial infidelities or monogamies that do not last long enough to result in attachment; some becoming sex workers themselves, simple abstinence, or partnering with someone sexually unavailable and enduring even years without gratification. I have seen all and combinations of these variations over the years. And many come to a “head” or critical mass at mid-life, often in a swirl of bitterness, shame, blame and/or grief, and fear that it is already too late.
Of course, we know that the nervous system of neglect is embedded in an early matrix of dysregulation. The safety and calm that accompany reliable comings and goings of needed care and supplies; the safety and calm of being comforted in the inevitable moments of pain, fear or other distress, make for a resilient, flexible, reasonably stable and voluntary sense of arousal and even to some extent mood. The withdrawal, loss or simple absence of that kind of regularity, make for bodily (in addition to interpersonal) chaos.
Sexual ease and satisfaction rely on a gentle interplay between sympathetic and parasympathetic, relaxation and stimulation. The vulnerability that allows us to connect and make love, requires a measure of safe calm; and to be turned on, become engorged, orgasmic, we need the charge of arousal. A relatively balanced organism is foundational to sexual health. The dysregulations of neglect, are bound to wreak havoc on the sexual self. Not inevitably, but I have certainly seen many and diverse iterations of problematic sexuality in my years of studying neglect. Including compulsivities, being (even dangerously) “out of control.” Probably most common in my practice, have been those who have “done without-” well, up to a point. And when that point, or that age is reached, it becomes a crisis-like, even identity “emergency.” Partners may feel blind-sided by the perhaps previously unexpressed resentment, and what they experience as blame-racked urgency. They might be hurt, angry, bewildered and uncertain about what to do. Compassionate and non-pathologizing couples’ and sex therapy are often indicated.
Besides the internal chaos of dysregulation, the outer world, certainly in the US is sexually equally out of balance. Barraged by titillation and inuendo, we are simultaneously met with a poverty of information. Failure to talk about sex, seems to be unanimous. I often complain about how medical providers fail to educate patients about sexual sequelae or side effects of conditions, procedures or medications. It is as if “sex does not matter?” or does not matter to them? Oncologists, psychiatrists, even couple’s therapists often fail not only to inform or inquire, but even mention sexuality.
Many of our clients will tell us that their parents never talked to them about sex. We have all heard the stories of girls thinking they were bleeding to death, when shocked by a menstruation they had known nothing about. All genders might be caught unawares, buffeted by unexpected pubescent urges and impulses, not knowing what to do with them. The child of neglect has no one to ask. Other kids do their “research” online, via porn or all manner of “chats,” or in locker rooms. What on earth will they “learn?” Where might they be taught about consent? About non-exploitation? Values? Mutuality? Pleasure? Prevention of STI’s, let alone unwanted pregnancy. And love? In school sex education programs, if there are any at all, they might learn about reproduction.
In a world rife with rampant dysregulations wrought by trauma and neglect, chasms of power differential between gender, sexual orientation and race, even age; and barren of practical, accurate and unjaundiced information, is there any wonder that the intergenerational transmission of sexual trauma is of the unmitigated “me too” proportions, that overwhelm not only our psychotherapy offices, and the larger world, but even ourselves? So many reasons for breaking chains of intergenerational transmission. The perpetration and perpetuation of the colossal impacts extend their all-destructive tentacles into every aspect, public and private, of our lives.
One of our paramount goals in neglect recovery is learning to speak on one’s own behalf in relationship: “getting a spine and getting a voice,” in the interpersonal to use the words of attachment research pioneer, Stephen Johnson. The mid-life child of neglect who reaches their limit with sexless partnership are to be supported and helped in their endeavor to speak, and regain, or acquire for the first time another lost human “birthright.” Similarly, I encourage all of us in whatever capacity: medical or mental healthcare provider, teacher, parent, partner, friend: every walk of our lives, to become a willing and fluent mouthpiece, at speaking, (and speaking explicitly and not euphemistically or metaphorically, or in “baby talk!”) about sex. And even being willing to ask, and answer about it. Bringing sex out of the shadows, and out from under its cloak of tabu and shame, will contribute, even a little to making a safer world. My friend and colleague, clinician and author Doug Braun-Harvey has identified and written about what he calls the Six Principles of Sexual Health. I highly recommend his work. The Six Principles are: Consent, Non-exploitation, Honesty, Shared Values, Protection from STI’s and Unwanted Pregnancy, and Mutual Pleasure. Within those parameters it is all good!
Today’s song:
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