With some dismay I read a recent article that the US game giant Hasbro is unveiling its new and updated version of the familiar board game Monopoly. Although we only lived in parts of the country with snowy winters until I was seven, I can remember sitting in the cozy basement with my sister for long hours playing monopoly. The game was surely long enough to fill a long housebound afternoon. Of the tokens or markers used to advance around the board, I always chose the old shoe, for some reason. And I liked the pink $5.00 bills even though they were not worth as much, because I always loved pink. All that buying and selling made arithmetic, never my strong suit, and certainly not usually my favorite intellectual skill, pretty fun. My parents were probably upstairs. If they ever played a board game it was Scrabble, and it never included us. Monopoly 2.0, about to hit the market, has offloaded the banking function to an app the players download to their smart phones. No more pink fives or pale gold hundreds. No more practice adding and subtracting. The most valuable properties, Boardwalk and Park Place are a rocket launch pad, and the moon. The old shoe is replaced by a VR roller coaster. You get the idea. The twenty first Century edition is designed to go much more quickly. No more snow-bound lazy afternoons floating like snowflakes. I guess I am feeling my age.
Several weeks ago, the Sunday New York Times still lay loosely stacked on the kitchen table with one of its numerous feature sections on top. I try to stay away from reading the Times because I could easily get lost in it, spending time that I really cannot spare. With great self-discipline I limit myself to the irresistible Book Review and occasionally indulge myself and flip through the rather amazing, glossy fashion section. But this headline caught my eye: “Weapons of Mass Distraction.” I never did read the article, but grabbed the title. What a great line! I wish I could claim it. Instead, I am “borrowing it”, hopeful that the Intellectual Property police won’t come after me. And I trust that my well-informed team will keep me safe. (What a concept to hear myself saying that! This old child of neglect now able to say both “I trust” and “keep me safe” let alone in one casual sentence, would have been unimaginable most of my life!)
Presence
The essence of what is missing in early neglect trauma, and early is of course the key word, is the invaluable steady and reliable presence of the caregiver, ideally at least at first, the mother. The gaze, the resonance, right hemisphere to right hemisphere infant and mother is what activates the infant’s brain development and begins the foundational capacity to regulate the ups and downs of the nervous system and affective or emotional states. I learned about this from the greatest of the greats, attachment neuroscience researcher Allan Schore. The parent’s attentive gaze is as nourishing as food and oxygen. Especially right at the start: from birth to 6 months. Schore teaches there is no line, no clear demarcation between nature and nurture. Experience shapes gene activation, epigenetics is all about the interplay between biology and experience. It is all pretty seamless, so temperament and “human nature” are according to Schore, not particularly useful or credible designations (or excuses!) for the ways we might be. And Schore reminds us too that the mother’s stress hormones while pregnant are the sea that the developing fetus bathes in, in utero, and have their various impacts on gene expression. Calm, regulated, attentive parents, and later presence, are the ground zero of mental health, and physical health too.
Interestingly, to me anyway, in her seminal work Magnificent Sex, sex therapist/researcher Peggy Kleinplatz, in my estimation the greatest sex therapist in the world, learned from decades of scientific research on what are the key elements of satisfying, long term monogamous sexual relationships, that the top of the list invariably turned out to be presence. The focused, resonant and attuned attention of both partners to both their own and the partner’s emotional, sensory and relational experience were the essential elixir, apart from anything they might “do.” Is it any wonder that we now have a booming mindfulness industry, featuring all sorts of apps and gadgetry to learn and practice being mindful. Oy vey, I’m really feeling my age! However, I digress. Presence is the key to learning regulation in the first place, and regulation is the base that later not only enables resilience and relative tolerance for the ups and downs of this crazy and distressing world, but also some insulation against the lasting impacts of traumatic experience. I am not sure if the likelihood of traumatic experience is greater than in other historical times, or if it only seems that way right now. But in any case, some degree of trauma is unfortunately not unlikely in this sorry world!
Breaking Chains
When I first left home to go to college, I remember feeling my usual chronic invisibility. My parents were all wrapped up in their own lives, and I as ever, felt there was no attention for me. Of course, the impact of that is to feel worthless, the old “I don’t matter,” which is the soundtrack, the ambient air, of neglect. Many have heard me say it before, the only thing that changed in my parent’s world, was that my mom had to hire a cleaning person. So, I guess it registered in some way what I had quietly been doing for years. Admittedly I had my own motives as well as simply the effort to be a “good girl.” Keeping my mother calm by maintaining a modicum of order and cleanliness in our environment would most likely serve me. She would be less likely to be harsh, anxious or simply irritable. Unwittingly in an ironic reversal of roles, it was my effort to regulate her. For all of our benefit.
The first time I came home from college on a holiday break, it was the beginning of my “launching” and I was filled with all the newness of living on my own for the first time ever. My mom had not seen me in three months. I remember when I first came, rather excitedly into the house. She was sitting at the kitchen table reading her mail. There was quite a stack of it, and it looked like primarily junk mail and perhaps some bills, at least to me. For whatever reason, it was compelling enough that she continued reading, making her way through her mail, until she got to the bottom of it. I sat and waited quietly until she was done and looked up. It was about half an hour. I can’t say I was surprised. As I often say to clients, “there are no surprises with them…” And I was heartbroken, again, nonetheless. Clearly, I have never forgotten it.
I remember when I was five, looking up into her sad, vacant eyes, and feeling a fierce conviction already then. I never want anyone to feel the kind of loneliness I felt. I knew then “I will never be a mother…” I simply knew I could not do better. It was the only way I knew to break the chain of intergenerational transmission of trauma and neglect. So, I have profound admiration and respect for those that have chosen to heal themselves and do better. I want to do whatever I can to support that.
When parents ask me for one piece of advice about breaking the chain, I say sternly “TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE!” Clearly there was no phone involved in my mother’s riveted attention to her mail. But it is also undeniable that we are plagued by these “weapons of mass distraction.” I frequently see kids tugging on their mother’s sleeve, while she is glued to a screen. It seems I hear much more concern about kids’ screen time than parent’s own. So much trauma is raining on us daily in this ailing world. Practicing presence is a place to begin. As Amy Tan eloquently wrote in one of her invaluable memoirs, “Loneliness is not about being alone. Loneliness is about not feeling understood.” The simple act of being seen, of a truly present other, is a most powerful place to begin.
Today’s song:
(The Crazy Hurry of Life) This song by an old favorite group of mine, Puerto Rican Roy Brown and Aires Bucaneros, recounts some of the many things we miss when we are madly rushing around. This song dates back to 1979, and my childhood memories much further back than that. Clearly electronics are not required to be madly and mindlessly distracted.
