Like most of us in the U.S., this latest spate of mass shootings and particularly school shootings, has flooded me with every imaginable emotion: grief, rage, despair, fear, impotence and more. When I finally become able to think, my mind is like a jammed Los Angeles freeway cloverleaf at rush hour, with countless vehicles crammed with lives and destinations, competing, stacking up, and sometimes colliding. Invariably I get stalled. And I definitely have to carefully regulate how much news, how many personal accounts of devastated mothers, despairing teachers, and defensive officials I listen to. And I am not even a mother. Of course, no one knows what to “do”.
“One trick pony” that I am, I default back to a few fundamental perspectives. No surprise, of course, to anyone who knows me and/or my work. I remember some years ago, I read a novel – Jody Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes – about a young high school shooter. Tracking his whole life, like a well-crafted work of fiction would, it was a trail of isolation and failed relationships. His distress signals garnered no response, except perhaps discipline and ultimately dislike and ostracization, which made for more isolation, frustration and build-up of aggression. His eventual massacre was a culmination of that long build-up.
It reminds me of the process of ricotta-making: watching a large pot of whey slowly brought to a very high temperature. The heat drives the milk solids to the surface of the liquid, and they slowly thicken, thicken, thicken to a heavy white cap. After what might seem like a long time, it starts roiling and rolling until a powerful bubbling breakthrough boil punctures the cap. It bursts like a volcano or an orgasm. And then, quickly before it boils over, I turn off the heat and cover it. However, in this case, we end up with something delicious and nutritious, not a bloody mess of chaos.
I remember some years ago, I read a novel – Jody Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes – about a young high school shooter. Tracking his whole life, like a well-crafted work of fiction would, it was a trail of isolation and failed relationships.
Red Flags
As with many other varieties of terror and violence, the warning signs of a troubled child abound if one is mindful. Of course, in the world of neglect, no one is mindful. There might be awareness that there is a “behavioral problem” that is likely met with a punitive rather than a curious or sympathetic response or reaction. Or the child may continue to be invisible or blend in with ambient or worse chaos until perhaps it is too late.
For centuries, mental illness has been confounded with moral, social or legal non-conformity. I remember when I first started college and was captivated by early 19th Century Europe, and most notably Karl Marx, I read a book about the origins of the “asylum”, which corresponded to the Industrial Revolution and Marx’s “alienation of labor”. Life was bleak, and the family was giving way to mechanization and a kind of “efficiency” and economy that was increasingly disconnected from kinship and relatedness. What I remember as being most striking was the conflation of “mental health” with criminality, often with a measure of religion thrown in. Their institutions seemed almost indistinguishable—Oy vey. Looking at today’s world, that has not really changed much in many places. Even the designation of “behavioral health” seems to somehow cast mental illness as a “behavioral problem” or “bad behavior” rather than perhaps a medical condition or a social problem.
The most logical observer of “red flags”, of course, would be family, at least a family that is awake and minimally non-defensive, empathic and related. Understanding distress or dysregulation as cries for help might obviate the quest for comfort and affiliation in other directions, such as social withdrawal, substance use or gangs.
I have not worked in an “institution” in decades. I did a brief stint at the VA and a couple of drug programs before I was licensed, and I have not “had to” since. Patients who wind up in those places are hard to work with. The VA system was set up such that when people got “better”, it whittled down their benefits, so there was a clear disincentive to recovery. And the most severely afflicted will maybe not ever get significantly better. I was relieved to be free to work in settings where people improve or even get well. It is clearly a privilege that I (mostly) don’t take for granted.
And too, there is something very flawed about a “healthcare” system designed to intervene only when the “patient” is a danger to themselves or others. By then, it is too late.
What I remember as being most striking was the conflation of “mental health” with criminality, often with a measure of religion thrown in
In the Beginning
In one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, again, I read it long ago, and I don’t even remember which one, he cites controversial data stating that when abortion was legalized in 1973, the violent crime rate dropped dramatically. Gladwell linked the idea that the removal of unwanted pregnancy, and thereby unwanted children, resulted in less disenfranchisement, loneliness, and of course, dysregulation and criminal activity. It makes sense to me. Attachment trauma, loneliness, rejection, self-worth, and all the incumbent dysregulation accompanying these are at the root of the brain and body distortions that can eventually give rise to so much of the “craziness” and criminality we see.
It is hard to tease out substance use, genetics, poverty, race and huge disparities of justice, among many factors, and I do not, by any means, intend to engage in a debate about abortion or this ancient data. For me, however, it is food for thought, and being the one trick pony that I am, the primary attachment is where I always default to. I continue to believe that attention to the earliest attachment injury is likely as a place to “begin”, as we must choose how to approach and clean up this complex and tragic mess.
My heart goes out to the families of all the murdered children and adults, all the new trauma and attachment trauma that these devastating and senseless murders have wrought. Uvalde especially, where the children were so unbelievably young, is incomprehensible.
My heart breaks for the entire generation of school kids whose last two years of education were fractured by the pandemic, and now that they finally can, they may be scared to go to school. My heart is breaking. I fervently hope we can learn from experience.
For centuries, mental illness has been confounded with moral, social or legal non-conformity.
Today’s Song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
