Although I am committed to zero tolerance, no rushing, I am rarely successful. I am always trying to do too much in a day; the time gets away from me. I wind up feeling disappointed about all that I did not get done and wondering, where does the time go? I have no idea where it went, and there is never enough. It is hard to remember the long, lonely years when the time weighed so heavily on my hands as to be unbearable. Getting through the day was like pushing Sisyphus’ leaden boulder, invariably feeling it refuse to move. I thought there was something wrong with the clock. Now I know the amygdala has no time.
Neglect is a bleak, empty cavernous void. I imagine an infant lying alone in a darkened room, helpless, with no way of “knowing” if anyone will ever come, let alone when. I am often visited by that image when sitting with a client who describes their days as interminable, desolate, powerless, and hopeless. I have no doubt that is how it was. What is so insidious about trauma healing is that experience is not remembered but relived. The neglect story being one of absences, holes in time, empty space, and no story to remember, is a reliving of that. Often accompanied by a panoply of somatic mystery symptoms, it is puzzling. People often ask me, “Why do I feel so much worse than ever? When is this going to end?” The very musing of the young child, I imagine, who, of course, does not have the words.
I remember watching out the window, counting cars; I must have been six because that window was at the house in South Bend, and I knew how to count. Counting and waiting for Daddy’s Chevy to pull in and for him to bound in the door, calling out, “Ho ho!” Why did I look forward to that? I don’t know… I know it was invariably a long wait. I remember one time when I fasted for two weeks, with only a bit of water now and then. I called it “the Long March.” I would count the hours as “meal times” would come and pass. There was lunch, check. There was dinner, check. Day one, day two, up to fourteen. How did I do that? I don’t remember. I remember watching the clock not move, waiting to get to the magic hour of 4:45 when I could crack my bottle of Old Crow, $6.95 a quart rotgut bourbon. But it worked. Getting through the day. I remember that old song by John and Yoko, “Whatever gets you through the night, is alright, alright…”
It is true, the healing years can be slower, longer, and arguably even worse than the original trauma experience, especially because it makes no sense. “I am worse than before! Is this therapy making me worse?” I wondered, and people ask me. It is hard to provide an answer that makes any difference. The best I can do is hold the certainty that I know it will. And I do. That is why I always say everything I have ever been through serves me.
Trauma and neglect are like a childhood of wild scribbles, not the orderly coloring book of a safe childhood.
I have always loved art. I love pretty things, I love looking at art, I love making things, and I love beauty. I can say I love visual beauty more than music, maybe. Like many of my era, I idealized the iconic Frida Kahlo. She had terrible trauma and physical pain, but she managed it most successfully by painting prolifically, mostly graphic and dramatic self-portraits. Bright, primary colors, realism and symbolism, tragedy but also the beauty of nature, flowers, birds, animals, even hope. She found her way, and even with the ongoing trauma of her brilliant and cheating husband, she prevailed. Her life never ceased to be hard, but her powerful work is a legacy and an inspiration to many, especially women.
During the worst of those interminable years, probably after I finally surrendered alcohol to start trudging the rugged road of recovery, I don’t remember how it happened. I started to draw – I used colored pencils, never having the patience for unwieldy media and needing to feel a sense of control. I drew myself, largely rendering from old photos of many ages, but my family members too. I had my own symbology of icons and monsters that recurred. I sat, and I drew and drew and drew, and it gobbled up the time. There was no clock, there were no meals to track. I was in what that famous Hungarian guy with the unpronounceable name called “flow.” And I was amazed. My artistry was very good. It has never been that good since.
So much story was unearthed and even processed in those long hours at the kitchen table. Then I would roll up the large sheets and take them to therapy to review them with the “witness,” my therapist. I wonder how much quicker things would have moved if I had had neurofeedback then. Quite a few years later, when EMDR came on the scene, and I was studying and practicing that, I had an EMDR therapist who was also an art therapist. I can’t remember how she combined them, but it was a good idea. I am sure it was good, at least at the time. I don’t remember much. However, nothing was again like those hours at the kitchen table.
I still have the drawings, sheaves of them in large, now ragged brown cardboard portfolios. They trailed with me through all of my vagabond moves over decades. I don’t look at them often, but they are a record of where I was, that long slog. They certainly keep me grateful. My best friend was in film school at that time, and made a movie with my drawings, about the power of art for healing. She recently had the VHS converted to DVD. Now, if I could just find my DVD attachment, I’d like to have another look!
I agree with John and Yoko, whatever gets you through the night, is alright…. Well, as long as you don’t do any harm to yourself or another. Colored pencils are definitely better than bourbon or starvation.
This was actually intended to be a missive of hope. I am not sure if it came across that way! Trauma and neglect are like a childhood of wild scribbles, not the orderly coloring book of a safe childhood. Of course, healing will be largely outside the lines, sometimes wildly so. My artwork was not cheery, but the colors are strong and have stood the test of time, as has the rocky but persistent healing work. Sometimes I feel as if my main task is a hope monger, to keep the faith somehow. I still occasionally have days where I have to be that for myself. That’s OK. Now I know that the clock is not broken; time does not really stand still, or at least not for long. And I agree with John and Yoko, whatever gets you through the night, is alright…. Well, as long as you don’t do any harm to yourself or another. Colored pencils are definitely better than bourbon or starvation.
Cheese is an excellent teacher. The Monterey Jack I made last week required 70 minutes of stirring. That’s right! I stand on my little stool, stirring my 8-gallon pot for that long. I get to watch a whole lot of great webinars! The aging time is another story. I remember when I first started making cheese, and the idea of waiting four months before it was ready seemed like a cruel joke. Now four is a short time, and a good Parmesan or cheddar will take a year or more. Gardening is the same way. I used to grow roses when I lived in Berkeley. I read that when you grow asparagus, it takes eight years before you get a crop! The waiting is part of the protocol, part of the deal. Hard to metabolize that some of these invaluable processes are simply not to be hurried. Some of those cheeses really stink! But we find them delicious.
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.
We saw so few movies when we were growing up that the ones we did see stick in my mind, like the 1968 film, “Oliver!” a musical adapted to screen, based on the classic Dickens novel, Oliver Twist. The bits I remember about it were how the boys, victims of child slave labor, shared beds, where one slept during the other’s 12-hour work shift, and then they switched, and the song “Food, Glorious Food!” The boys were so hungry they dreamed of food and sang joyously about what they craved. I remember a bittersweet feeling about that song. Although food was certainly plentiful enough in our house, it was, to me, anything but glorious. It was more on the order of a protracted, hideous, recurring nightmare.
I was always “dickkopf” (fathead) and a “bad eater.” Right from the start I did not like meat, which made for an ongoing power struggle. Now I am not a “formal” vegetarian, meaning I have no ethical, political or spiritual rationale, simply my age-old distaste/preference to avoid meat.
Meal times were not much fun, anyway. Our dad, who had been a chef before becoming a cantor, repeatedly told Mom with a smile, “I did not marry you for your cooking,” but really, it was no joke. When he cooked, he required a fair measure of adulation for the uppity French dishes he made, which were never my taste, apart from the meat issue. There was also a truly unsavory period of at least several years that I think of as the “Kosher wars.” Our dad wanted to keep a kosher kitchen, and Mom wouldn’t do it. He lived on nightly Hebrew National hot dogs until she finally relented with “OK, I will cook what you buy.” I don’t remember how they resolved the part about two sets of dishes. Mostly I remember the long and bitter tension that hung heavily over our family table. No great surprise when my trauma expressed itself via, among the many other symptoms, a near-fatal anorexia that spanned my adolescence, but really much more. In 1967, anorexia and eating disorders in general were even less understood than they are now. There was no treatment to speak of, and I was simply viewed as a “bad girl”, creating headaches for my parents. I somehow got to a healthy-ish weight eventually, but the agony of obsession persisted for decades.
After many years and all sorts of somatic approaches alongside my depth psychotherapy, I can say food is one of the truly glorious and great pleasures of my life. I love it and am grateful to say I eat whatever I want. I love making food, too. I am a home cheesemaker, a sourdough baker, and I aspire to grow vegetables when I can make the time. On a particularly bad day at the office, I might rant to my ever-patient partner, “I’m done! I am going to retire, be a cheesemaker!” until I calm down. We do, however, love our food.
After many years and all sorts of somatic approaches alongside my depth psychotherapy, I can say food is one of the truly glorious and great pleasures of my life. I love it and am grateful to say I eat whatever I want.
When I was in the throes of my eating disorder, our dad would rail at me that the word “companion” emerged from the Latin com panis, sharing bread. Eating together was a natural and human way to connect. Ideally, that would be true. My not wanting to was somehow “inhuman.” For so many who grew up in a household of trauma and neglect, this was sadly far from true, and disordered eating is a not-so-uncommon expression of dysregulation.
I was interested to learn that, in a strange way, the whole category of “com panis” and food culture became a mechanism of social control and an attempt at cultural change in the Soviet Union. I heard an interesting story, “Dissident Kitchens”, on one of those wonderful late-night Public Radio programs. After the revolution in 1917, food was scarce. The new Stalinist government set about industrializing food, essentially dictating what was to be eaten by everyone. The new housing, small apartments where everyone lived, was built without kitchens. Rather, there were large communal kitchens, and people broke their bread in dining halls with 500 comrades. The Bolsheviks were not interested in the tradition or the aesthetic of food. First, food shortages devastated all that, but further, private kitchens were considered “bourgeois.” The foods to be eaten were determined by the government, and everyone ate the same. Apparently, and understandably, the people hated that and sorely missed cooking and the ritual of sharing intimate family mealtimes.
When Kruschev replaced the Stalinist regime in 1953, in addressing the housing shortage he had apartments built once again with small kitchens, which became a place for families and friends to gather. Now, cookbooks and programs reflect the slow and steady revival and reclamation of traditional Russian foods. And although Russia is currently alienating many of us, its food story is informative, and reminds us how very elemental the family table is. Eating together in harmony is on the order of a birthright. And the way it is corrupted in micro and macro forms of trauma is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned!
The dysregulations of trauma and neglect that manifest as disordered eating are some of the most persistent and challenging to heal.
One of my favorite books of all time is Michael Pollan’s epic Omnivore’s Dilemma, which approaches food from myriad directions: psychological, emotional, nutritional, environmental, political, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, historical… what else? Long before he became a harbinger and champion of psychedelics, Pollan wrote brilliantly and prolifically about food and its many meanings, which span quite a universe. There is even now an emerging sub-field of “culinary medicine,” which makes a lot of sense to me. Here in San Francisco, food is virtually on the order of religion, which can be both a pleasure and an embarrassment.
The dysregulations of trauma and neglect that manifest as disordered eating are some of the most persistent and challenging to heal. I have worked with survivors who suffered disordered eating of every stripe, not to mention my own. I do not pretend to know how to treat eating disorders effectively, and I have yet to see programs that do. Please prove me wrong! The best thing I know, which is the best thing I know for trauma in general, is the combination of depth, attachment-oriented psychotherapy, and neurofeedback. If I had had that 50 years ago, who knows if my own healing would have required less than the multiple decades it did?
Whatever we can do to get the shame out, even better. And whatever we can do to break the intergenerational transmission not only of trauma, but also the agony of interference with the natural development of food and eating tastes and habits, better still. It is my wish that “enlightened feeding,” becomes an aspect of “enlightened parenting.” Although I am not a mother, I am indeed a proverbial “Jewish mother” in that I love to make and give food, although certainly not to foist unwanted food on anyone ever! Far be that from me! But for me, it can be an exquisite show of love and care, as long as (like with any gift!) the recipient is truly seen, known, and considered.
Our mom used to say “Mahlzeit!” before we ate. I never knew what it meant, thinking it was “mouse-ite.” I picture a little family of mice enjoying their dinner (maybe cheese?) It is a form of greeting and celebratory marking of mealtime. We later evolved into singing a Hebrew grace before meals. Although I have long since given that up, I do like the ritual of feeling and acknowledging with gratitude before we eat. My husband graciously does all the grocery shopping, buying those things that I am not able to make for us myself. My little ritual has become a hug and a loud exclamation, “I love you! Thanks for the food!” What’s yours?
Enjoy your dinner!
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.
For me, a dark secret, fiercely off limits to anyone, even my therapist (until very recently,) has been the silent but fraught world of sleep. Although I remember sadly little about my childhood, I do remember the welcome, early discovery of masturbation as a way to get to sleep and thinking that was its purpose. I remember hating and dreading slumber parties because I woke up hours before anyone else and agitatedly waited for the other girls to finally get up and continue the party.
In my early teens, I remember my much older, “drug informed” boyfriend giving me some kind of little pills (valium perhaps? I don’t remember). I kept them stealthily locked away in my bedside pink jewelry box. When I was anorexic, I loved the power and control I felt from not eating for seeming eons but dreaded and feared the guaranteed anguish of gnawing hunger keeping me awake. The rumbling night seemed to go on forever.
In more recent decades, after the eating disorder was blessedly and fully resolved, I seemed to develop a different version of “anorexia,” if you will, or a parallel self-deprivation. It took me years to recognize and admit to myself what I was doing. Much as I had renounced and disavowed the need or desire for food in the past, now I was doing the same with sleep.
Virtually identical to what I had believed about food, it was as if I were a different species. I did not need, and/or I did not deserve what “regular people” had or got to do: to sleep. Was I monstrously inferior and not entitled to rest, too busy justifying my sorry existence? Or was I superhuman and could get away with it? It was some combination of both. The result was a kind of hubris, whereby I slept four hours a night for years and proudly, if quietly, had 20 hours a day to be “productive.” For a long time, it was a well-kept secret. Only my husband knew, familiar with my long absences from the bed, and the cohort of kindred insomniac gym rats or night workers, who also frequented 24 Hour Fitness at 1:30am. Later our dad and my therapist somehow knew; I must have told them. I don’t remember. But they all knew from whatever their unpleasantly failed attempts were that the topic was not up for discussion. I was highly defensive and definitive about that! I ultimately made light of it, concealing it less. It was simply another of those quirky anomalies about me.
We have a now elderly little gray Miata, we affectionately refer to as “the Mouse.” During the final years of my father’s life, the one-hour weekly drives to our otherwise difficult visits seemed to be the redeeming feature. Something about the Mouse had a quick-acting sedative-hypnotic effect. Its hum like a lullaby, its drive rocking me like a cradle; as soon as I climbed into the passenger seat, I was out. My husband was delighted to see me sleep! And I silently, slowly had to admit it to myself. I was so, so tired. It had all been a lie about not needing the sleep. I was bone tired.
For many a survivor of trauma and/or neglect, sleep is a minefield. It may be the desperate quest to get to sleep, or the problem may be staying asleep long enough to get rest. It may be the movie-like screening of haunting nightmares. It may be a memory relived, with or without awareness, of traumas that invaded or upended the childhood bed. It may be the fear of the insomnia itself. Young parents, medical professionals with 24, 48, even 72-hour shifts, emergency responders… how do they do it?
It took me a long time to remember some of my worst experiences in bed. But I always did remember waking up alone in the dark cold of my hospital room when I had my tonsils out at age 3. In those days, I guess mothers (or a parent) did not stay by the bedside of a tiny child. Waking up alone and terrified, with a painful raw throat, no one around, and it was so dark. Where was everyone? Anyone? And they had promised there would be ice cream. Where was the ice cream?
I remember another time, waking up alone from an afternoon nap in the little bungalow where we summered in Fleischmanns while my father waited tables in the luxury resort. I was again, about 3. And again, terrified. Where was everyone? And I remember always being so scared of the dark that when I went to the bathroom in the night, I ran like hell back to the bed, not knowing who or what might be chasing me.
The mythical “good night’s sleep” can become a torturous quest, certainly, for the hyper-aroused nervous system of survivors of whatever the trauma. And although our world is now glutted with remedies, pharmaceutical, over-the-counter, legal and illegal, “alternative,” not to mention the wide world of apps, devices, and mindfulness practices. Many have tried them all. Many continuing in exhausted despair.
For me, the first step, as is all too often the case, was having the humility to face that this is a problem; and a problem that could be dangerous to my health. What might be the impact of at least a decade of four-hour nights? Maybe I am simply a human organism after all, an ordinary mammal, not superhuman or subhuman, bionic or undeserving.
Maybe, as they say in AA, “I am just one more Bozo on the bus.” It was time to work on this before it became too late.
As ever with trauma, the problem is generally dysregulation. Sleep requires that the body achieve some modicum of calm to be able to enter the blissful state. Samantha Harvey’s 2020 book, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping, although it is a rather bleak description of her own insomnia, is spectacular writing and an avid portrayal of the anguish of the elusive shut-eye. And it is not uniform in its nature. For Harvey, it was related to a dark fear of death, haunted as she was by family members’ passing. For others of us, it is rooted in attachment trauma. After all, the earliest and most vulnerable time of human life we spend mostly asleep, so the developing human brain, designed to be in resonance with another, flounders to find its rhythm if left alone or if its sleep is fractured by dissonance, conflict or confusion.
The parasympathetic or calming function of the autonomic nervous system is certainly a factor in sleep, of course. When a particular pattern of insomnia appeared as my single symptom of menopause, I learned about that. My menopause iteration was a repetitive cycle of 90 minutes of sleep interrupted like clockwork by an abrupt rude awakening, persisting stubbornly for hours. I learned from a somatic therapist that the parasympathetic nervous system connects the brain with the body at two locations: the occiput or base of the skull, and the sacrum, or base of the spine. Stimulating those two spots by lying on slightly deflated rubber balls each time I awoke put me right back to sleep.
It was a miracle and resolved the insomnia of my menopause. I became a missionary with the little balls, keeping them by my own bedside and in my travel suitcases and ordering cases of them that I gave away to friends and clients. They took me through menopause. However, my sleep challenges returned, and I discovered them to be tied in with other trauma and psychological hurdles about doing “enough,” being enough.
Neurofeedback and psychotherapy in concert, for many of us: regulation and trauma healing, are the royal road. And I am making progress! I’m averaging about 6 hours! Happy dreams to you!
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.
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.