As I was pondering the recurring devastating dynamic between a couple I work with, a memory from my own life bubbled up. For those of us who have the minimal and spotty memory of early life, typical of neglect, these little forays into memory are rather like wandering through a curio shop. Much of what is there is uninteresting “junk.” But occasionally there is something surprising, or worthy of a closer look. Out of nowhere I found myself reflecting on a joke my father used to tell.
Our dad had a very quirky way of telling jokes. He thought he was pretty funny, but I remember also seeing a book by Henny Youngman a Jewish comic of that generation, and sometimes other joke books lying around, so he must have studied a little bit to make himself a more entertaining singing-waiter back in the day, and later in his profession as a cantor. When he told a joke, the “body” of the joke was unremarkable. But as he approached the punchline, he would burst into peels of laughter, to the point that he could hardly get the words of the punchline out. It would take a few tries. By the time he actually told us the punchline, we were all doubled over with contagion laughter and barely heard it. Then he would repeat the punchline maybe six times, and we would all be in stitches. In “ordinary consciousness,” it may not have been funny at all, but these moments of family hilarity now seem somehow sweet.
I remember one joke however, well I don’t remember the joke, I just remember the punchline, which was an emphatic “Ernest, Answer me!” And for some reason I just did not think it was funny. Ernest Ansermet (pronounced like “answer me”) was a world-class Swiss conductor of our dad’s era, a contemporary of Debussy and Stravinksy, so it was a play on words. But to me, a wife being desperate for her husband to just speak, was anything but amusing. I found myself remembering with a chill, the urgency, even terror I felt when the loved other would clam up, withdraw, or appear in a word, to abandon me.
Even before we got the PTSD diagnosis, neuroscience and psychology, and ultimately all the rest of us, were familiar with the “fight-flight” response to fear and trauma, even when we had little understanding of what trauma was. Later we learned that there was an additional adaptation or reaction to danger or fear: the “freeze” response. (We have since learned of a number of others, but those will be for another day). The freeze is the response to the “inescapable shock” situation, when fight and flight are simply impossible, like in the case of chronic torture, or abuse in the home where the nightmare does not stop, and the child cannot leave; or a prey animal being cornered and trapped by a larger, stronger, or faster predator. It also may be a kind of “death feigning” where the prey animal pretends to be dead so the predator will lose interest and just go away. Most predators don’t want to eat dead prey.
In the case of early neglect, the child learns early, that there is no point in crying or protesting, because there is no response, certainly not a favorable response. So withdrawal into the self is an understandable adaptation, and most likely becomes a default. If I know I have no impact, why bother? I might make myself more of an irritant or a blight than I already experience myself to be, or just simply call attention to myself which may not be such a good idea. Of course these are not “cognitions” or thoughts per se, as the cognitive apparatus is not nearly developed for a long time. But they are “procedural” or bodily, emotional or sensory modes that are installed rather like software, through experience. And they are stimulated in sensory ways at points later in life, so not experienced as “memory”.
One of the most devastating experiences that a young child can have, is what I refer to as the tragic poverty of “mirroring”. Mirroring is where the child experiences being seen, heard, and known, and in effect, “felt.” “Feeling felt” or an empathic reflection back to me, of what is accurately and receptively “me” is how I come to know who I am, and also how I learn to recognize and express feelings. The child of neglect has little or no experience of being mirrored. And without that, there are gaping holes and blank spots. As a cheese maker I object to these holes being likened to the holes in cheese. In the cheese-making world, those highly desirable, elegant markers of a good “Alpine” cheese, are referred to as “eyes”. In neglect, they are more like ravenous caverns of emptiness and hunger. They might be experienced as dull flatness, physical hunger, or some other misguided attempt at getting “filled up”.
As a result of the failure of mirroring, the child misses out on an emotional “education”. The capacities to perceive, identify and express one’s own emotions, and the emotions of others is minimal at best, as is a comprehension of why that would matter anyway. If the child is male, US and western culture will re-enforce a cognitive or “logical” default, and possibly devaluation of emotion. Although neuroscience has taught us that emotion is an important aspect of cognition and even coherent thought, that can be a very hard sell. Meanwhile if my partner is unexpressive of their own emotion, or rather oblivious to mine, if they are a child of neglect, it may be, not because they don’t care, but literally that they can’t – or not yet.
Powerful change is possible in psychotherapy. In a well facilitated couple’s therapy, a child of neglect can experience strong emotion safely and learn to comprehend and process it. Through experience some of the important brain areas are helped to develop later in life. Neurofeedback is another royal road to emotional intelligence, as it might bring relevant brain areas into connection with each other. None are a quick fix, and like working out, take consistency and practice to sustain change.
Of course, it can be very confusing when there is both early shock trauma, or incident trauma and neglect, which is most often the case. A child most likely cannot be assaulted, beaten, or somehow ravaged, with an attentive, caring protector present. Or if they are, there is a caring and comforting response process that can make a world of difference in impact of the injury. Often the failure of having a place to turn with the traumatic event is even more traumatic than the injury itself. When there is a history of both: incident trauma and attachment trauma/neglect, often the default for that child is fight-flight.
In the couple we opened with (a heterosexual couple although that need not be the case;) she had a tragic history of both. When he seemed to go silent and withdraw, she would vociferously protest. Her loud cries would awaken in him a helpless overwhelm, that left him speechless. When he did not speak, she would panic, and get louder and more shrill. He would withdraw farther. She would by now be semi-hysterical, running from a tiger, unaware of how both extreme and critical her screaming was. He felt so ill equipped to do anything to make it stop, that sometimes he would leave the room, the house, even leave her somewhere. I have seen couples mired in this dynamic where one partner was left on a dark street in an unfamiliar town, and the other drove off. They persisted a long time in their agonizing pattern. When this unbearable dynamic would constellate in my office, as it could on any topic, I could feel the sense of life-threatening emergency of both in my own body. It could begin with either partner. (And that was a hard sell indeed!). Both felt terribly victimized by the other. It might take weeks to recover. Both were desperate to learn what to do. These two were not unique by any means.
So, what is to be done? Well, there is little hope of convincing anyone that no one is to blame! At least not while activated. I always tell people, “The reason why you have me, is so there is one person in the room who is in present time! Everyone else is deep in their traumatic history. But there is no way to say that when we have two brains deep in trauma. So, what to do?
First of all, quiet the nervous system enough so the thinking brain comes back online. I might as well be “passing gas” in the wind, so to speak as to try and teach anything to anyone in that state. It is even hard to do this much, but I try to teach them: “stop action!”.
Take a break and breathe. Your breath is your best friend. Your inhale is ‘sympathetic’ or stimulating. Your exhale is ‘parasympathetic,’ or calming. So looooong exhale. I recommend closing the eyes, breathe in on six counts, out on nine, and do that, ten times. No one leaves the room.
It is hard to teach this, but as we learn to revisit the tragic stories of those two little kids, it eventually becomes easier. If from the quieter state, either one is able to say, “please talk to me…” or the other is able to say simply “I don’t know what to say,” or “I was afraid if I said anything I would make it worse…” a gentle truce may become possible. That is our goal.
I always wondered why I loved that old song by Peter Gabriel, “Please Talk to Me!”.
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.
Driving to work one day last month, I heard a snippet of news about a young man named Spencer Elden, now 30 years old, suing Nirvana and Kurt Cobain’s estate for a 1991 photograph of him, taken and used without his consent. He was a four-month-old infant then, he was naked, and the photo was displayed on the cover of a Nirvana record album. “What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody? I didn’t really have a choice.” Elden’s father received $200.00 at the time for the photo. No papers of any kind were ever signed. The album ironically called Nevermind, sold thirty million copies. It is still in circulation, with the photo. When I went to Amazon to have a look at it, admittedly, I was nauseated.
I remember when I was pretty young, probably not much more than 8. My dad got certified to be a “Mohel” in Yiddish pronounced “Moyel.” The moyel is the religious officiant at a “Bris” or circumcision. I remember being shocked at the time that an 8-day old infant was subjected to “that”. And my memory from that the time, is that no anesthesia was administered, with the rationale that an infant would not remember. We now know that although the brain’s anatomical capacity for autobiographical memory is not developed yet in an infant, and certainly not an infant of 8 days old, the emotional and physical imprinting may very well be. We certainly see experienced in therapy “procedural” and emotional memory from many ages where the cognition is missing.
With survivors of childhood neglect who often remember so little from their often very empty childhoods, that is much of what we have to go on, to re-construct a narrative of their lives. At the time that I first learned of this, I was horrified. I did not understand what difference it makes whether the child does or does not remember the pain. Would that mean it does not matter? The agony is real NOW! My 8-year-old mind was confused and shocked, and I didn’t get it. Apparently now, according to Wikipedia, anesthesia is recommended. I also could not understand why my dad would want to do that. Never mind the dignity, safety, or comfort of that little being.
As the research progresses about trauma and developmental trauma, we are coming to understand that the injury of being ignored, unconsidered, forgotten, not known, neglected, may be the most profound injury there is. Although I am not one for “comparing” trauma, i.e., who has the “worst worst?” because of our evolutionary design where attachment is so fundamentally wound in with survival for our species, it makes sense. Of all mammals, humans remain dependent on the primary caregivers perhaps the longest. We are hard wired to be connected, and when we are not, or not in a way that we can feel, the suffering and the deficits are profound.
I remember perhaps forty-five years ago I read a book called Hope Under Siege: Terror and Family Support in Chile. It is interesting to me how certain things stick in memory when so many of the countless good books I have read over my long book-worm years, are long forgotten. I read it before I came to psychology as an area of study, long before I knew anything about attachment or trauma. It was during my impassioned anti-imperialist years, a book about political prisoners held in the horrific prison camps during the months and years immediately following the fascist Pinochet coup in Chile on September 11th, 1973. The prisoners were brutally tortured, often with electric shock. I won’t go into specifics here, but I remember being haunted by the accounts and often literally kept awake by the images that lingered from reading about them. The prisoners of course were desperately isolated and alone. For all their families knew, they had “disappeared” and many of them in fact were never seen again.
What the book described, which made so much sense to me even then, was that the prisoners who had strong family ties, who could feel the connection and support inside of themselves, even when they were far away, even when perhaps the family had no idea where they were, those were the prisoners who did not “break” under torture. Those were the ones who did not give away any information that betrayed or compromised a comrade. Certainly not all of them, but the premise of the book, was that strong family connection, that is deeply internalized, can be sustaining under even the most dire of conditions. Although PTSD was not yet understood, let alone named or defined then, I am guessing that those who survived, of the securely attached, fared better in PTSD terms. That is just a guess.
We do know however, that certainly childhood trauma in the family, and often even outside of the home, cannot happen when someone is paying attention, watching, noticing, protecting, and taking care of that child. And the response of the parent when the child does tell, if that were to occur, is critical to the outcome. If the parent is minimizing, dismissive, unconcerned, or denies the child’s experience, that compounds the trauma, or may even be worse than the original traumatic event. And that happens way too often. “Oh, never mind” is an attitude. We want to forget or deny the unbearable.
Mr. Elden disappeared from the news. Who? Forgotten almost immediately after he made “interesting” news for a minute. The cycles of news are fickle and quick. We are distressed or moved by something for a minute, until another sensation comes along to take its place. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Spencer Elden, out of sight, out of mind. It is the essence of neglect.
Hope Under Siege is long out of print. I finally found a copy on eBay for $72.00. I will be interested to read it again.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” is now published. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
In 1968 I almost died of anorexia. I was 13. We now know that the whole spectrum of eating disorders are desperate attempts at self-regulation, and rife among survivors of all manner of trauma. We have a bazillion dollar eating disorder treatment industry and literature, although from my jaundiced view, none are very effective. Back then, I had a huge stash of books stolen from the library, (stolen because I was too ashamed to check them out,) about food, weight loss and nutrition. Only one was “psychological” in any way, and not much help in understanding what I was doing. That was Eating Disorders by MD Hilde Bruch, a rather psychoanalytic spin on all eating “pathologies,”. It had one page about anorexia nervosa, with strange pictures of a skeletal young girl, naked, with a blacking out of her eyes to make her unrecognizable. I would sit and stare at that frightening, frightened child. That is all I remember. (I did stealthily return the books through the library return slot, about 20 years later.) At 5 feet 4 and 79 pounds, I took my anorexia pretty close to the edge too, but somehow I did not die.
I was massively relieved and grateful for not dying, not because I was glad to keep living, but because I felt so guilty for nearly squandering life, and for distressing my parents. They seemed mostly, pretty mad about it, and the “treatment” was primarily what I would call “duress eating.” It was a nightmare, as eating or not eating continued to be, for about the next 30 years. Through desperation, unrelenting tenacious determination, and the blessing of renewed chances, I am pleased to say, that after years and decades of effort, the advances in understanding trauma, the brain and nervous system regulation; and my dad’s now famous words, I have a delightful and joyful relationship to food, I eat whatever and how much I want, and passionately bake, and make artisan cheese. I even have a pretty darn good relationship with my body, although I don’t like aging too much. My dad’s words, for any who have not heard them yet are: “You should always go to sold out concerts. You will get in!”
So one great lesson that I learned was that miraculously the body heals and returns to or discovers a healthful homeostasis, with some intention and knowledgeable assistance. I learned this again, when I had a serious and nearly fatal systemic and nearly septic infection that landed me very suddenly in the hospital for a week, truly believing I was dying; and again when my beloved sister came back from a bout of stage four cancer with a full head of new hair and a rich story to tell. I was terrified we would lose her, and well aware that not everyone, of course is so fortunate.
In 1980 iconic couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono came out with a favorite album of mine, Double Fantasy. Like many struggling couples (like so many of the traumatized,) they were known for the sentiment “Can’t live with her/him, but, can’t live without her/him.” The album was a collection of songs about emerging from that terrible morass into connection. My favorite song is the one called “Starting Over,” with its whimsical refrain “…when I see you Darling, it’s like we both are falling in love again, it’ll be just like starting over, wa wa wa wa…”
It is another kind of reminder of the miracle of second, third or however many chances we might have, after truly believing all is lost: relationship repair. The story of my re-incarnated relationship with my father will be another book in itself, that is on my list. Again, not everyone is as fortunate as I, and I also was one of the ones who tended to believe, “things like that just don’t’ happen to me…”
I have referenced before, that my first book was a sorry child of neglect. When it was published, I was too mired in my own dysregulation and shame, like many a parent, to do what was necessary for it to thrive. When I first hatched the book, I had been quietly developing the ideas for many years. Finally I had the gumption to attempt to put them out there. I approached a small publisher that was suggested to me by a sex therapist colleague and submitted my proposal.
At the time, on a frequent walk in the neighborhood of my office, there was a jewelry store. I loved to look in the window when I passed by. On one of those routine walks, I happened to spot a pair of earrings. I had never bought jewelry for myself before, but these lovely earrings were peridot, my birthstone, and somehow for the first time, I went inside. I spoke to a kindly young woman named Sonya, and I told her, that I had just submitted the proposal for a book I hoped to write and publish. I wanted to put a deposit on the peridot earrings, and if my proposal was accepted, buy the earrings. Sonya set that up with me, and when the proposal was accepted, I was rewarded and delighted times two. I set to work on the manuscript.
Somehow, I don’t know how it happened, I lost one of the earrings. Losing earrings is a hazard of moving too fast and not being mindful enough, or of a disconnected “vestibular system” and losing awareness of where one is in space, another common trauma symptom. I was sad, but in some sort of superstitious way I was spooked. I thought “Oh no! Perhaps that means the book will fail!” Not usually superstitious, I was rather haunted and fearful, and not without shame, I talked with my wise consultant about it. She said, “Well, how about talking with Sonya about getting another one made?” What a concept! All was not lost, and Sonya arranged with the artist to make a perfect new mate for my earring.
But the story did not end. In a way the book did “fail.” Or I failed like the parent of a neglected child. In my own private paralysis, I failed to support it in growing and going out into the world, so it languished and floundered and really did not venture out very far. Those who read it seemed to get a lot from it, but that hardly helped my shame. Some of my closest friends and supporters said, maybe as we launch the new book, re can resuscitate the first book. It really does merit a better chance. For the new book, learning from experience, I followed my own best advice and got the best help money can buy to help me, to be the midwife for the new book. And she has worked to help the first book, Coming Home to Passion, to find its place in a larger world. Like the child of neglect, with help, it is finding a voice and a spine. And the earrings have a new meaning to me.
In 2018 the volcano Kīlauea erupted on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was this volcano’s largest eruption in many hundreds of years and a fierce and fiery trauma to the surrounding area. Many were forced to relocate and a huge rescue effort was successfully waged to rescue animals, and of course humans in the vicinity. As trauma will be, it was a huge disruption. When we went back in 2020, the beloved Volcano Art Center was thankfully up and running again and the grateful artists were there to tell the story.
One of the artists told me, when I was admiring some peridot jewelry pieces in the store, that when the volcano erupted, it “rained peridot”. Apparently, some chemical reaction on the lava, produces the lovely pale green gemstone. Out of the ravages and roaring rage of violence and destruction, these dainty but tough sparklers scatter wildly. They are nature’s design. One earring disappeared, a new one came to take its place. I got expert help and the first book is finding its voice in the world at last. John and Yoko, as far as I know, spent their final years in connection and love until John met his tragic end. Many a traumatized client after a long and trying road finds regulation and joy; equilibrium and ease. I like to think it is nature’s design, if not without effort. And sometimes a big bang is what gets things moving.
In AA they say “Pray to God and keep rowing to shore.” And one needn’t believe in God, to understand that some of this mysterious process is organic and spontaneous, some is the sweat and grit of tenacious and relentless, persevering work. Hope and faith are required, at least some of the time, and we do have to get ourselves to the concert! Wa wa wa wa…
Have a listen!
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” is out on Tuesday September 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When the lockdown began to lift in our area, and I could begin to see clients live and in person I was ecstatic. As a somatic therapist, a self-identified “emotion hound,” and one who receives tremendous amounts of information about people through the energetic unspoken, remote work has been a strange and challenging journey for me. Apart from the inevitable headaches of technology, I later read, that the energy required to focus extra hard, and try to excavate that missing information in the inanimate screen, explained my splitting headaches at the end of the workday during those first months. I have since almost gotten used to it, or at least found a way to co-exist with it. Zoom has become a surprising component of my own “new normal.” I was also amazed to discover the difference when I began to see people live again. Some clients I had never met in person, having started our work during the Pandemic years. It was not surprising to me, but still somehow stunning to feel the difference both in our relationships, and in our progress.
I was also somewhat surprised when some people preferred to continue to work on Zoom. I can see the convenience factor of staying free of the travails and uncertainty of Bay Area traffic and parking which has ever been a “first world” frustration for me; as well as the blessing of saved time. The Pandemic factor as well, made sense to me, with none of us quite knowing the most prudent ways to proceed, especially those with delicate immune systems or other medical complexities on board. Still, in that still familiar neglect default, of thinking everyone would think as I do, I rather expected everyone to be as delighted as I was. When one client finally agreed to come in person, there was a way that he “opened my eyes.” He has a visual impairment, macular degeneration, which I knew about. I was empathically attuned. At the end of our first in person session, he groused, “So what is the big deal about live sessions?” Blinded by my own enthusiasm about being able to see him, it had not occurred to me, when he said “I can’t see your facial expressions. I can see your outlines, it is not very different for me.” This is a man who had been an avid bookworm all his life, he loved art and had toured the world’s great museums, and spent hours sometimes before one painting. Now that was gone from his life. I thought I had understood the grief of that. Forgetting about the lost world of facial expression, and how much that is part of relationship and true connection, I was stunned. This man had a devastating neglect history already. How could I have failed to see yet again?
As a long time restaurant worker, I have been pointedly aware of the deathly hit the restaurant world has taken during this last almost two years. Here in San Francisco where food commands an almost religious devotion, restaurants have been fighting for their lives, in a market that was fierce to begin with. Many have sadly shut their doors forever. As a baker, home cheesemaker and lover of food, I have followed the march of local food history, at least what is available of it, often while I stir the vat or feed my sourdough starter. I have wondered how my teachers and gurus who are not in the news, have fared. I must often just content myself with their tattered and increasingly worn cookbooks.
For me, one of the great blessings of this time, has been the plethora of emerging webinars and podcasts, not to mention the riches of Youtube with which I had never made more than a casual acquaintance before. I have been infinitely grateful for them, and routinely look for opportunities to see and acknowledge the unsung, the neglected heroes of administration and technological genius that bring them instantaneously into my kitchen with a few clicks. Trying to keep the neglected in view, I make a point of reaching out to customer service people, tech support people and Zoom presenters, even sending them cheese when I can! (It is the best way I know to say “thank you!”) Some parts of that I do not want to lose, and it is not clear how the culture, including my own little “culture” will change.
One of the advantages of my challenges around sleep, is that I am often up at odd hours or all hours. I hear NPR stories I might never have heard. Often the “stories” annoy me, as all day long I hear stories that are plenty interesting and enlightening. However I recently heard one that seemed to connect many brain regions that have never connected before, to form a wild and bright new network of thinking. I don’t even remember how it began.
I love music and I always have a song in my head. By now my clients are amusedly (or annoyedly?) accustomed to my lapsing into song during their session. “Let it Be,” “There’s a Hole in that Bucket,” “You Are My Kind,” oy vey! I rarely go to concerts anymore, even before the lockdown, but there is always a concert inside. I am not up to date on any music later than about 1985 or so, and admittedly I would barely be able pick Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga out of a lineup, although I follow the news. Madonna is perhaps my cutoff, and she is close to my age, at least parts of her are! So an interview with a young musician whose name I don’t even remember, was enlightening. In the course of talking about returning to live shows, he began talking about disability access to concerts. Again, I was rattled by my neglectful blindness to even thinking about these issues. When he referred too “Ability Rights Activists,” I realized I had never given a much thought to those people. Our office has an elevator. I thought I had that one covered. What about those who can’t hear or see? -In the literal sense. What about my own failure to hear or see them?
Feeling unseen and especially unheard has been an area of preoccupation for me, long before I began to study it in the attachment/clinical sense. In the stage of relationship havoc between my husband and myself, his failure to hear me was a redundant relationship refrain and frstration. As he began to lose his hearing literally in the expectable middled aged way, it became more so. Then began my echoing grumble about his getting hearing aids, thinking they would be the magic cure. When he finally got them and even began to use them, I started to recognize my own lousy hearing. When I finally got tested, I was diagnosed with severe hearing loss and got my own hearing aids prescription. Fortunately I have the resources to get them. Ironically, although hearing loss is a predictable predicament of aging, Medicare does not cover them! What a difference! I can hear! If only such a device were available to make the unheard heard!
It was suggested to me, that we prepare an audio version of my new book. When I asked my publisher, she said we must wait and see if there is a market for it. Of course I understand the necessity of the economic. We are all trying to make a living during these odd times. My esteemed colleague and friend Dierdre Fay, and her devoted husband and partner, read her new bestseller themselves, and made their audible version that way. When I asked my publisher if I could do that, she suggested we start with feeling out if there is a market. I am not sure what the tipping point is that constitutes a market. I have asked that interested or concerned readers, include their request in their Amazon Reviews should they submit one. I now sheepishly see the oxymoron in that as well. Those who are vision impaired may not be able to use the majority means to be heard.
For some of us it is a convenience or pleasure issue, like for me, it is an enhancement. For others it is a neglect issue, about being forgotten and left out yet again. Again, I ask those who are able, make yourself heard on this issue, to me or to Amazon! I have even received a similar request about the blogs. Let us know!
Neurotypical, Cisgender, Antiracist, Latinesque, Color, Differently Able, Aged, Neglected… Trying to keep it all in view., even as the Pandemic and Afghanistan overwhelm the senses. I guess I have been holed up in my own tunnel vision about those who are not seen and heard, while missing entirely, or almost entirely, the literality of both sides of the equasion: seen and heard. Until now. I think I need to go back to my publisher and say that this is a social justice issue, at least letting me do it myself, to make equal access available. Yes it is just one book, but isn’t that how all the social movements swell and progress? One little book or lunch counter at a time?
Thank you yet again NPR! I will have to see if I can find the young man who made that podcast, so I can thank him! And ask him my perennial question, “Do you like cheese?”
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” is now available online. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Early in my career, when I was in a post-graduate training program and just beginning to see clients, I remember when one of my first clients gushed hyperbolically about how wonderful I was. I was dazzled and delighted. “Maybe, just maybe I will be good at this!” I thought. When I proudly told my supervision group what she had said, a woman in my group, a year ahead of me in the program sarcastically retorted, “Isn’t transference grand?!” I went silent, feeling deflated and ashamed. And although at the time I thought she was snotty and mean, I never forgot her words.
Transference is the projection onto the therapist of feelings for a real or longed for important other, commonly but not exclusively a parent. What my colleague was reminding me, or telling me, was “It’s not about you, Dummy!” Also, we invariably come crashing down from the proverbial pedestal, to become worse than scum. I have since come to understand, how these projections can be some of the richest sources of information about a client’s often unremembered past. Neglect leaves such gaping holes in interpersonal memory, that other media of communication than the spoken word become the requisite vehicle for the telling and reconstructing of personal narrative.
I remember one client telling me, “I really don’t remember anything about other people. When I try to remember my childhood, I just see bushes, and maybe our various dogs.” We slowly began to learn her story by studying her present relationships, and dynamics she did remember.
It is curious to me, that as I find with many of my neglect clients, although I have blank or spotty memory about my childhood, I have vivid memory of books. I remember from second grade Sunday school a picture from a Bible Story picture book of Abraham smashing the idols. We were learning the Ten Commandments and the concept of “One God.” In Jewish synagogues there were to be “no graven images” meaning no images or statues of human subjects who might be attempting to upstage the One God. Abraham, in the picture, a young boy, not that much older than me, in his little toga with a stick thrashing the white marble statues to the sanctuary floor. I remember thinking this was very strange. The lesson was, we were not supposed to worship idols. Somehow I did not quite get it.
I was always a hero worshipper. I could not seem to find real people to connect to, I just did not know how. But I would create them out of some raw material that I found in the environment, and invent the relationships I did not know how to have. When I was about 12, my “first love” was Thomas Wolfe. He was an author who wrote mammoth 500-600 page novels, known to be autobiographical, where the protagonist was depressed, intense, insatiable, creative and desperately alone. Wolfe the writer died at 39. So even though he was dead, I believed I had found my match, he was like me, I was not the only one. Wolfe was from Asheville, North Carolina. It was on my bucket list to go to Asheville, see his home and the birthplace of all these stories that filled my world.
In 2012 I had the opportunity to go to Asheville for a Neurofeedback training. I was delighted! By now it was 45 years later. I had a different brain and a completely different relationship landscape, thankfully. I booked a hotel across the street from the Thomas Wolfe House, the boarding house Wolfe’s mother ran, that featured in all the books; and where the real people had lived. I spent a day taking pictures of everything there.
In the gift shop I bought a little miniature of the marble angel made famous in the title of his book Look Homeward Angel; and a 560-page biography. After the training I eagerly devoured the biography in the same devouring way that Thomas Wolfe the man had related to most people and things. I learned from the biography, that he was a misogynist, he was an alcoholic, he was antisemitic, he was racist. What was I thinking? Who was that young girl?
I recently heard Bessel van der Kolk say, “idealization is a defense against terror.” I was terrified that I was a different species, that there was never and never would be anyone like me. In my quest for a partner or twin, I had to make someone up. Wolfe was the clay. The void left by neglect is so gaping, it terrifies. We have to fill it with something besides bushes or book illustrations.
In my twenties I became politicized. By then I had given up on being seen or known by my parents. My father’s suffering and his hero story or overcoming his suffering and making a successful life, became the model. But I also was angry and rebellious. I wanted to get his attention and approval, but I also disavowed that wish. So, I chose something that would perhaps outrage or anger him. At that time democratic governments were tumbling all over Latin America, smashed by military dictators not unlike Hitler. I adopted an identity as freedom fighter, out to overthrow fascist rulers, and perhaps even die doing it. The ideal was Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Originally from Argentina, Che grew up with privilege and became a doctor. But he sacrificed everything to be an internationalist fighter, who led the Cuban people to freedom and died doing it. Perfect! That was who I wanted to be. The new female version of Che. Ever trying to fill the empty void left by neglect, find an identity, a way to be like my father, but not too much. To be seen and known, respected and loved. And with luck to die doing it, a noble way to end the pain. I tried to do this and had a terrible psychological crash doing it, which ultimately led me to psychotherapy.
The child of neglect, lacking a mirroring other, has no self to be. I have shown Ruth Lanius’s shocking brain scans of the child of neglect, whose brain is firing faintly if at all. The default mode network which is the home of the sense of self, is virtually missing entirely. “Without a self” as Lanius reminds us, there is no other. So we continue to create some version of relationship, but being distorted and alienating, they don’t last. Like many survivors of neglect, I left a trail of relationship wreckage behind me, until I finally attached to a therapist, and stayed for many, many years. I am happy to say I now have very fulfilling and mutual relationships, a partner of 35 years, and dear friends. But I did not grow the circuits in the way we were designed to. That is the task that neglect leaves us with. And that is why we must learn to become the therapists that can heal this.
In Cuba I saw a billboard that said “Seremos Como Che,” This means we shall be like Che. The emphasis is mine. We will aspire to emulate, but not to be him. The void of self is devastating. The tragic impact of neglect. Getting a spine, getting a voice, big tasks. And big tasks for the therapist to learn all the possible access routes to assist. We must also resist the temptation to buy into the inevitable projections, positive and negative, or even to recognize them when they occur. Another reminder of why the therapist who works with neglect, perhaps even more than any other therapist, must do their own personal work. We don’t want to miss that boat like our clients’ parents did!
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on the 31st August. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
On August 25, as I tuned in for my carefully regulated quotient of National Public Radio morning news, and caught the tail end of the headlines, I heard something about remembering Charlie Watts. I thought “What? What happened to Charlie?” I barely heard all the horrors about Afghanistan and COVID, as I waited for the story. When I reached my office and still had not heard it, so I went to the newspaper to find that Charlie Watts had died at age 80. I was heartbroken.
I am fond of saying, perhaps only really half in jest, that Mick Jagger is the only man I have loved for over 55 years except my Dad. The angry intensity of the Rolling Stones was definitely a tool of regulation through my childhood, long before I had a clue what that means. I just knew that something about the rhythmic crashing, irreverent, often outrageous lyrics; violent blaring tones spoke to a split off part of me, and made me happy. It was perhaps a single access route to my disavowed but plentiful rage. I would play it loudly when I had the chance.
Mick Jagger was flamboyant and the clear centerpiece. Frozen and stiff in my own body, his fluid and high speed dancing, sometimes measured, jerky pointing, and boundless energy thrilled me. I read somewhere that he lost 10 pounds in every show. His lithe body and flowy androgenous, colorful, sometimes diabolical outfits spoke to the young seamstress in me. I loved the whole package, and still do, even now that he is 78.
Keith Richard has always been a wild man, and still makes me smile in a knowing way as well. His overt self-destructive hedonism, spoke to a part of me that was passionate, suicidal and futureless. It was as if each member of the band represented one of my dissociated parts. The whole package made me feel alive. When Keith’s mammoth autobiography came out a few years ago, his grandiosity, although unsurprising, was stunning. It did not make me love him less, or admire his musical genius less. It was rather almost comical. Learning of his quite impoverished and trauma ridden childhood was not surprising either. Rather affirming of my intuition about him, although I probably had never really thought it through.
And Charlie was always a steady quiet presence sitting back there, like a heartbeat. What an irony! The backbeat of loud, intense rock music, the rhythmic foundation that held it all together, having an air of quiet? How odd. Yet that was Charlie to me. Mick and Keith were well known for their dramatic love-hate drama. Marianne Faithfull, one of Mick’s most famous exes, was quoted as saying that Keith was Mick’s one and only real love. I don’t know if that is still true. There were plenty of headlines, going back to Brian Jones’ mysterious death; band members coming and going, Mick and Eric Clapton vying over women. Charlie stayed out of it all.
Well, there was one colorful exception, at least that I have come across, where Charlie lost his cool, and punched Mick in the face. The classic Stones’ song, The Spider and the Fly runs:
“Don’t want to be alone, but I love my girl at home,
I remember what she said,
‘My, my my, don’t tell lies,
Keep fidelity in your head…’
When you done your show go to bed.’ ”
That was Charlie’s style. He was not interested in the relentless solicitations of hot young groupies, (which may account, at least partly, for how he stayed married to his wife Shirley for over 50 years.) When late one touring night, Charlie was peacefully sleeping in his hotel room, a wildly intoxicated Mick called him on the phone, rousting him out of a peaceful sleep yelling “Where’s my drummer?!”
Charlie jumped out of bed, put on his signature three-piece designer suit and tie, marched to Mick’s room and punched him in the face, loudly admonishing “Don’t you ever call me your drummer again!” and stormed out
I don’t know anything about Charlie’s childhood. Born in the early 40’s meant bombing was a constant backdrop, well detailed in Keith’s book. Charlie came from humble means, there was certainly not enough money for a drum set. When he was given a banjo at age 14, it really did not interest him, so he cut off the neck, and made the banjo head into a snare, so he could emulate the brushing of the snare that he so admired. In his sparse and modest interviews, he talks little of himself, as if there is nothing to tell. He describes being a key member of perhaps the greatest rock and roll band in the world, as almost incidental, as if that somehow “happened to him.” It was easy for me all those devoted years of fandom, to not pay much notice to Charlie. He was a steady rhythm, like a backbeat of my life. And not terribly visible.
When I was in 9th grade English, and a top student in my class, we had a scheduled field trip to go to the theater. We were all wildly excited about the outing, and our teacher, Mr. Tanner, was the designated chauffeur who would pick us all up to take us to the show. Somehow, Mr. Taner forgot to pick me up. I was the one person who was left behind. I missed the show. I was devastated, not only about missing the play. I was mystified, “Am I that worthless as to be completely forgettable?”
I have since learned something about the experience of neglect: the doubt about one’s own very existence, or the right to exist, can envelop a person in a shrunken hiding place or cloud of shame and invisibility. I felt I must earn the right to occupy my space to stand on this earth. Inherently, I just didn’t deserve it. Might that be why a momentarily undefended Charlie was so incensed by being called by Mick, “My drummer?” It was too much like denying his existence as more than a possession of Mick’s?
As a therapist working with survivors of neglect, I learned I had to take special care to write myself reminders, jotting things down so as not to be blinded and re-injure clients who made themselves somehow so easy to not see. As my consultant reminded me, “there is a way that they unwittingly elicit it.” Not to blame the neglect survivor, but to help me understand my uncharacteristic oversights or slips of the mind. It is one of the many non-verbal ways that the child of neglect describes the inner experience that they may not even be aware of themselves.
I have no idea what Charlie’s story was. Just that he was a constant, reliable, pulsing presence; the soundtrack of my harder years. And I never gave him much thought. I am sure, as music often does, The Stones provided some measure of noisy regulation. “Everybody’s gonna need some kind of ventilator…” says one of their songs.” I am sure the music was something like that to me. Thanks, Charlie, for 50 years of keeping the beat. Bye, bye…
I worked at the San Francisco VA for one year to the day. It was March, 1989-1990. I remember it well because it was the year of the historic San Francisco earthquake. I was definitely not cut out for that work, but I definitely recommend that any trauma therapist do a stint at a VA as there is so much to be learned there. In 1989 there were still plenty of Vietnam vets cycling in and out. And yes I do mean cycling. It was a wacky system, I don’t know if this has changed since then, but at that time, if a veteran recovered, or if PTSD symptoms even partially abated or remitted, their benefits were systematically cut. “service-related disability” was measured in percentages, and dollar amounts were proportionally calculated. So there was built in incentive to not get better. Of course we really did not have good treatments back then either.
One of the great lessons I in my time at the VA was about “triggering.” Admittedly I try to avoid that term, preferring to use activating or stimulating old trauma. By definition, trauma re-sets the brain to ferociously defend the organism against letting the trauma happen again. So any stimulus even vaguely reminiscent of the trauma, can activate a cascade of sensory, emotional, body sensation or whatever that individual retained of the original experience. I don’t like the word “triggering,” because in my mind it conjures gun violence, which in many cases is accurate, but also in many cases not. In my work with traumatized couples, who activate one another quite readily, unfortunately, such language can sound accusatory in suggestive ways that can exacerbate conflict. However, it is hugely important to learn about this, and the veterans taught me well.
My most potent teacher was a man whose entire platoon was wiped out before his eyes by a helicopter bombing in Vietnam. All of his buddies were dead, and he was the sole survivor. The SF VA is in a beautiful location perched on the ocean. The view is serene. I remember one scenic afternoon a helicopter passing overhead in the blue cloudless sky. This man was instantly sent into a tailspin of abject terror. He was screaming as he rolled under the nearest bench shaking. It was as if it were happening right now. That particular helicopter chopping innocently by was benign, like an unthinking partner often can be. It was a dramatic depiction I will never forget.
The word “triggering” has also found its way into common parlance, where it is used to mean all kinds of things, even just generic unsavory emotion. I am very picky in its use as it has an important and precise meaning, whether or not we choose to use that term. I insist on precision as it is vitally important for healing, to learn when we are activated, or activating the other.
In couple’s therapy, when one partner is activated and truly believing it was the other partner that upset them this much, I will routinely say something like, “…this feeling you are having right now, what does it take you back to from your childhood? Tell your partner a story about a little girl/boy who felt just like this.” The point is to get to the original trauma material, that the partner is simply stimulating. The stimulus is not without merit, but it is a small proportion most of the time. This is an important lesson in both psychotherapy and couple’s work.
In a session the other day, I was sitting with a lesbian couple. It was a calm moment, and one of the partners, a child of tragic neglect, bravely said to me “…There is something I need to say to you.” I prepared myself. She said, “You know how you say, ‘tell MaryAnn (not her real name of course,) a story of a little girl who felt just like this…’ that really upsets me…”
I expected I knew why. Children of neglect are often frustrated by a gaping poverty of interpersonal memory. That is often the diagnostic marker that tips me off when I first meet a new person. They also generally have a hard time knowing what they feel. I expected this client’s frustration with me, to be one of those, or both. I was humbled and surprised by what I heard instead. She said, “My mother always treated me like a little girl, dressed me up in girly clothes, made me get the girls’ sneakers that wear out in three days, instead of the boys’ Keds with the rubber caps. But I never felt like a girl. I did not exactly feel like a boy, but I definitely did not feel like a girl! I tried and tried to tell my mother this. She just ignored me, as she did about most things. I felt unheard and unseen, completely not known.” (All classic traumatic markers of neglect.) And most decidedly “I felt like I did not exist!” And “when you say that to me, I feel again, like I do not exist!”
Needless to say, I was horrified! I could not believe I had made that terrible, ignorant mistake! Here I am supposed to be so knowledgeable about neglect, and more, I am a sex therapist! I had thought of myself as scrupulously mindful about sexist language, and issues of sexual orientation; I had thought I was sensitive and self aware about all things sexual. I felt terrible about my unthinking binary assumption. Much more than a “micro-aggression,” it seemed like a “macro-aggression” if there is such a word. I fell all over myself apologizing. And I thanked her for educating me.
Although I am well familiar with the current discussion about pronouns, apparently not so much as I thought. I can see I really did not get it! Until now. I am immeasurably grateful! I am grateful that my client had the “spine” and the “voice” to tell me. By spine, I mean agency, or the ability to operationalize purposeful action on their own behalf. Voice, being the ability to express out loud and in relationship, what is genuine and authentic. These are the greatest tasks of healing from neglect.
I recently heard an interview with rock musician, Tory Amos. Certainly not any kind of fan of hers, I was driving and almost always tune in to Public Radio in the car. She apparently had just written a book, so that was nominally the focus of the interview. The interviewer asked her, “So how was it for you writing a book?”
Amos answered, “it was hard!”
The interviewer queried,
“—so, what was hard about it?”
Amos replied:
“My first language is music. Spoken word is my second language. It was like writing a book in my second language.”
I thought, “how profound!” Something as seemingly elemental as language, is so easy to not think about. Easy because of cultural, ethnic, cisgender, able-bodied chauvinism, narcissism or sheer blindness. It is so easy to take for granted that the language in my head or tongue is the predominant or majority language. Particularly in a world of neglect, that is so solitary, it is so effortless, and actually one’s default mode, to create one’s own whole world, without even realizing it. My husband used to say with a laugh, “You mean you are not in my head?” He really was only half joking. It is so easy to just assume.
With gender as with race, culture, gender and sexuality, bodiedness, age, so many categories, it is so important to watch our language. Oy vey! So many languages to learn. Alas it leads us back to the foundational missing experience, taking the time, having the care and the bandwidth to actually learn who a person is. With mindful attention, thoughtful presence… it seems so simple. And simple it is, but not easy. If only that simple ingredient were part of everyone’s daily lexicon, and everyone’s early experience, how much trauma and early life trauma would be eliminated? And without trauma, as Bessel van der Kolk so sagely proclaims, “The DSM would be a pamphlet!” Not to mention much of the menu of physical illnesses, whatever that manual is called. I was immensely grateful to this client for having the guts and the gumption as well as the articulateness to correct my sloppy delivery, and to teach me. I think it was a healing moment for us both.
One of the great gifts of the 1990’s the “Decade of the Brain,” was to learn that the brain is plastic. Ironically, that fateful year at the VA, rattled by the earthquake, also engendered that! We had previously thought we were born with a lifetime set of neurons, rather like our life’s quota of ova should we happen to have female anatomy. That is what you get, we thought. We now know we can regenerate, and birth new neurons, and we can learn. Our dogs and other mammals can too, if we have the patience and generosity of spirit to teach them. What a blessing! We have more than one chance!
The brain can change, and even the mind! Neurofeedback is based on this principle in its very obvious beeping way: “operant conditioning.” Psychotherapy as well, and none of us would engage in it unless we had some remote belief, at least some of the time, that change is possible. Of course in many cases we must do our part to make it happen. And in many cases we can. As the saying goes “Pray to God (if that is one’s paradigm of course!) and keep rowing to shore.”
Now it is my task to integrate what I have learned, to remember and make use of it, with this client, and in the world. My world is enlarged when I do, and how healing to others to be accurately seen and heard, not to mention my own pleasure in seeing the appreciation in the eyes and body of the other. Because we are designed for interdependence, the brain also kicks in a bonus reward of its own with a dopamine surge, for re-enforcement! More joy and love are in circulation. In this COVID-weighted world, so sorely needed. Can you beat that?
Some years ago, I was asked to be a main presenter at a weekend Institute of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) to teach about trauma and sexuality. I was thrilled. It was my first time ever being invited in that public of a way. I was the main attraction and I could hardly believe it. The director of the program was a lovely woman named Susan whom I had never met before.
I was self-conscious about everything. I never missed a conference, but I had never attended one of the weekend “institutes” I did not really know my way around PowerPoint then, and I had endless nervous questions, while also being embarrassed about having so many questions. Oy vey! What I was soon glad to learn, was that Susan always answered my emails immediately, with patience, care, warmth, and never implying any kind of judgment or sense that my questions were excessive or reflected ignorance (-or idiocy which is how I felt.) I discovered that Susan was much like me: thorough, somewhat perfectionistic and painstaking to do her best. As ever, there is always a song in my head. I asked her “Susan, do you know the old song by Santana, “You Are My Kind?” I love that song, and I felt that very kindred, connected feeling with her. She said she did not know the song, so I sent her a youtube link so she could hear it.
Susan gently guided me through the preparation process for the Institute, and through the Institute itself. All went quite well. As the weekend drew to a close, I was more than a little relieved. Susan did one last amazing thing, that cemented the feeling that she is my kind, (and also brought me to tears.) As the weekend drew to a close and people filed out, she piped our song through the large conference room loudspeaker.
One of the tragic sequelae of trauma and neglect is the shame and grief ridden feeling of not belonging anywhere. The child roams the world orphan-like, like the mythical little bird in the famous children’s book Are You My Mother? In that story, the poor little thing approaches every creature (and even some machines) in its path, asking the same urgent question: “Are you my mother?” It is a profound and primitive primal need to be attached to a caregiver and a pack, certainly when we are young and not nearly able to care for ourselves, but not only then. It is wired in to the limbic brain, that the first line of defense when a child or young mammal is scared or distressed is the “attachment cry.” We reach for connection. Only after that fails, do we then resort to the fight/flight or freeze defense. The need for affiliation, to be connected and secure by being part of a larger group, persists through the lifespan. When that connection is deficient or missing in early life, it can become, as for the little bird, a relentless and gnawing quest. For the child of trauma and/or neglect, the search for a group or family can go all sorts of ways.
I got very confusing messages growing up. My parents both being survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and refugees in the United States, felt on one hand, like strangers in a country that was not ours, while also being immensely relieved and grateful to be there. They felt both welcomed, and a profound fear and mistrust. We were supposed to fit in but not “assimilate” too much and lose our identity. And never quite let our guard down, because you never know when people will turn on you. It was a confusing message for a child. I surely did not know what that identity was. My father often told us “You just don’t know what it is like to go to bed hungry, or live on bread and worms!” So, I knew I was not really like him, and did not know how to be enough like him to please him. My mother’s first major heartbreak was when as a little girl, her best friend turned on her from one day to the next, to join the Hitler Youth, I longed, like all little girls, for a best friend. But not like that!
When I was in college, I became an impassioned political activist. Latin America was exploding with military coups and fascist dictatorships that were enough like my parents’ experience as to make me feel perhaps kindred, but different enough, that I could rebel against my parents. I remember a book I read during that time, the story of a Chilean diplomat, Orlando Letelier, exiled by the dictatorship and living in Washington DC. He was murdered by a car bomb on Embassy Row in broad daylight. It was a chilling account.
Letelier’s killer was identified, as Michael Townley, an American employed by the secret police of the Chilean Dictatorship. The book was largely a character study of Townley, or that is what I remember about it these 40 years later. Townley was a lost soul. He lacked a sense of direction, a sense of home and identity, roots or purpose. Somehow, he wound up in Chile. I don’t believe the book told much of his background. But my experience has been, that whenever a young person travels thousands of miles from family and home, there is always a story. In Chile, he was prime bait for the Chilean DINA, the notoriously vicious and cruel secret police, best known for the torture of thousands after the 1973 coup. Being disenfranchised and searching, Townley was a ready and receptive candidate and rapidly excelled at the job. He was technically skilled, and efficiently orchestrated and executed the bold murder or Letelier and his young assistant Ronni Moffitt. Townley was a vivid example of the disconnected, rootless, most likely child of neglect, being easily seduced and transformed into a tool for some other and that other’s personal agenda. So, in need of someone to please, and a grouping to be a part of, they can seamlessly become even a proficient professional killer.
Around that same time period in my life, one night my apartment mate in Berkeley, brought home a young woman she had encountered on the street. The child-like woman was sobbing uncontrollably, and blubbering unintelligibly, clearly under the influence of some unidentified drug. She was terrified and grief stricken, and probably no more than 18 at the most. My friend found her curled up and shaking on the sidewalk, in the vicinity of a “spiritual” cult there dancing and chanting on Telegraph Ave. All we could discern was that she had been lured her to join them, and drugged into this barely conscious state. We kept her safe overnight, and in the morning when the drug had worn off and she could talk, we learned that she also, was a disenfranchised, survivor of some sort of trauma, again, a ready target for a “group” or a place to belong. I don’t remember the rest, but just remember making the connection with Michael Townley. How deep and sometimes blinding the loneliness, longing, the driving attachment need can be! It can over-ride coherent judgement and land the child of trauma and neglect (at any age) in some community or role, they might never have chosen.
Although I always understood climate change as a concern, it was never at the top of my hierarchy of concerns. I was always most compeled by causes with a more directly human cost and exhibiting palpable human suffering- until I read Thomas Friedman’s book, Thank you for Being Late. The book is one of those good books that are about 200 pages longer than necessary, but I did soldier all the way through it. In the chapter about climate change, it described how in countries of East Africa and the Middle East, climate change resulted in such drought and water shortage as to kill whole crops. Farmers were desperate both to make a living and to feed their families; and food was in short supply. Due to climate change, people were starving. And hungry people did not feel taken care of by their governments, like neglected children, they were left to fend for themselves. Many men began to migrate to other places where they might at least earn enough to feed their families. Many of course died. And many enraged by the neglect and by hunger, were readily receptive to terrorist ideologies and larger group identifications, spawned at that time. I can only imagine and guess, that those receptive to become terrorist killers and members of cultlike organizations, had an antecedent of neglect, an old rage ready to be ignited and erupt, and an urgent need for affiliation, activated by hideously neglectful governments. Again, what role might neglect play in dangerous or deadly dynamics we see in the world? These are questions that roll around in my mind.
The need to attach and belong is ubiquitous and primal. We share it with all mammals and some birds and invertebrates too. It is not to be underestimated in ourselves. Susan made me feel connected, cared for and like I mattered. That profoundly affected what I felt able to do, as well as my mood of joy and love through the process of preparing and delivering my presentation. All the more reasons why we must heal neglect, both positive and negative. Humans function better and feel better when they/we are part of something. And when we are not, our desperation can make us even perilously vulnerable. We can easily find ourselves in the “wrong” relationships, one way or another. We must be passionately present for our own children, and we must learn how to facilitate healing in the adult survivors of neglect and interrupt both the suffering and any intergenerational transmission.
To end on a positive note, have a listen!
I have a special affection for leopards. As I love to say, “you know the old adage ‘A leopard can’t change its spots?’ Well, I can. And I change my spots every chance I get.” Healing is all about that. The “Decade of the Brain” and neuroimaging technology taught us that “Neurogenesis” is possible, that we can grow new neurons. Before that we believed we were born with our life’s quota of neurons, and that was that. We now know that with neurofeedback, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, somatic therapies, mindfulness practice, and yes even the old fashioned “talking cure,” we can generate not only connections, ie networks, but molecules. This is wonderful news for all of us, both with respect to our own brains and our clients’ brains if we are practitioners of some kind. So why do spots have such a bad rap?
I remember when I used to drink alcohol, I had to either stop wearing white, or switch from red to white wine. All my pretty white blouses were speckled with unsightly red spots. Oy vey, I always was a sloppy drinker. As an adolescent, ugly facial spots, we called them “zits,” were referred to in commercials for acne products as “blemishes.” Spots were blights on the skin, and on faces that in so many cases already housed shame and self-doubt, or self hatred. Spots were like nature’s “mistakes.” But nature, for the most part, does not make mistakes. If left to itself, it has a brilliant unshakeable plan. Occasionally there is an aberration or mutation, as with the Corona Virus for example, but perhaps we will ultimately come to discover what the ecological (or existencial) intention of that was to be. Most likely it is human intervention that produces disasters of nature, or so is my jaundiced and not-research-based speculation.
Once I had the privilege to visit Milan, Italy. I admit, in my love for pretty things of many kinds, I love clothes. Milan is a wonderland as the fashion hub of the world. Of course, we had to visit the Armani showrooms, a veritable museum of haute couture, clothes I could and really never would buy, but love to look at like I love looking at art. I was struck by a theme, that in every window in a long seeming small city of windows, each of the numerous masterpiece garments, whether on a mannequin or a hanger, had a conspicuos wrinkle in the way it was hung or draped. It was striking. I wondered, “what is he trying to say?” My husband did not notice until I pointed it out. Was he trying to teach us something about “mistakes?”
Once in a training with the somatic therapy genius Peter Levine, we were instructed to make four “mistakes” in every practice session. It was an intentional part of the assignment. The idea was to integrate the idea that mistakes are inevitable in this work. And to develop the humility to tolerate and learn from them. And then to learn to repair them. So many of us who grow up with trauma and neglect, come to learn that mistakes can be life threatening, or have the “hubris” to strive to be “perfect,” blameless or safe from retribution; or worthy of love. A futile aspiration.
In relationship, “mistakes” are an inevitable ingredient in development. The attachment researchers teach us, that even in the ideal secure attachment, where the attunement of primary caregiver and infant is “good enough,” the optimal percentage of accurate attunement, the best we could hope for is 30%. 30%!! That means that the other 70 percent of the time is the delicate dance of rupture and repair, rupture and repair. That is how we learn about relationship, and really about being. How sad that in the world of trauma and neglect, these skills are rarely learned, so the inevitable ruptures are terrifying, even life threatening. And relationship comes to in effect be an icon for suffering, however much it is longed for.
Much like Peter, the attachment research people teach us that the “mistakes” of rupture are invaluable, and much better training than smooth sailing without rupture. As my husband exclaimed many years ago when we emerged from the nightmare of chronic cycles of triggering and reactivity, “Wow, knowing how to recover when we disconnect is such a relief! I don’t have to worry so much about screwing up, because I know we can get back together if I do. I don’t feel so chronically unsafe and fearful around you anymore!” What a blessing!
As long-time serious bicyclist, my nemesis became potholes. I have only had two serious crashes in my in my 50 plus year cycling life, and in both cases I lost consciousness, so I don’t really know all of what happened. I admit, that I am grateful to have had those two traumatic events so I could experience different trauma modalities on those sorts of “one-time” incident traumas. What I did know was that I came out of the accidents with anxiety about bad road surface, and a veritable phobia of potholes.
Riding in Cuba, was like a dream come true. Just going there was a bucket list item of many years. I could not believe it when we were riding through the beautiful scenic countryside, carefully dodging chickens and navigating around horse drawn buggies carrying crates of fresh eggs. Coming around a bend to the base of a hill on our first long riding day, I happened upon the most colossal potholes in the known world. Of course, after six decades of being suffocated and strangled by the world political economy, the Cubans certainly had not had resources for infrastructure, especially as they used the meager resources they had, to first take care of people. The roads were tragically un-maintained. I gasped. It was only our first day of riding!
Embarking on that pothole scarred road, out of nowhere I was visited by a flashbulb image. Back before the pandemic when I drove to the office every day, I was routinely stopped by a traffic light, just as I was getting off the freeway. At that street corner was a little skateboarding venue, a little “park” of concrete, fitted out with sharp hills and walls, obstacles and vaults to jump, slalom type circles. Groups of adolescent boys (I never once saw a girl!) in baggy hoodies wildly flying round and round, jumping, crashing, rolling up the steep sidewalls, clearly having a blast. From the large graffiti on the walls, it appeared they referred to themselves as “punks.” As I waited for the long red light to change, I loved to watch them, always thinking “You wouldn’t catch me doing that!” Never!
Well suddenly that day in Cuba, the “light changed.” Was it a neurofeedback “moment?” I don’t know…Suddenly the Cuban potholes reminded me of those kids, who intentionally sought out the bumpiness, the vertical crashing and landing on their wheels upright, the slalom curving and dodging and missing each other, they do this for fun! Suddenly I imagined myself one of the ”punks,” having fun with the Cuban potholes. For the rest of that trip, I made a game of pothole dodging and jumping. Missing infrastructure, and prior trauma became my game: joy, fun and triumph!
Another symbol of transformation that I love, are butterflies. However, I‘ve never been fond of caterpillars. I even have a terrifying childhood memory from when I was three or four, of a park in New York where there were so many squiggling caterpillars that I literally could not put my little feet anywhere without stepping on them. All I remember is just wailing “Daddy, Daddy carry me!” I don’t remember if he did, just the terror. Anyway, those unsavory little creatures somehow become butterflies. Which are beautiful and I love them!
Interestingly, we call nervous excitement “butterflies” in our stomachs. I remember Peter Levine’s reminder that in the body, excitement and fear feel very similar. The Cuban word for potholes is “paches.” Que Vivan los Paches!