I remember when Mom used to get really angry at me. Well, her word was “annoyed.” She would come at me with that really stern face and exclaim, “Ach! Do me a favor!” Sometimes if it was really bad, she would say, “Vadammt!” That was German for “damn!” I never liked the sound of German. I only heard it when my parents did not want us to understand what they were talking about. Or when they were upset. I knew only a handful of words, mostly “bad words,” and a few foods like wienerschnitzel, until I studied German in college so I would be able to read Karl Marx and Hermann Hesse in the original, which I never did.
Usually, when Mom got annoyed, it was something about food. I was always a “terrible eater” right from the beginning. I never liked meat, and that was our most chronic fight; worst of all was liver. Ugghh. Even the memory turns my stomach nightmarishly, and I can even smell it as I write this. (Why do parents make kids eat what they don’t like or even detest?!) The deal was I had to eat a piece the size of a quarter. She would serve liver with “heaven and earth:” mashed potatoes and applesauce, but even deeply entombed under all that camouflage, it still made me gag. More than once, I was “swacked” with a serving spoon.
Worst of all was the deathly feeling of having her mad at me. The loss of the connection was like a death sentence, and even with all the times that it happened, I invariably felt that it was completely and utterly irreparable, the end of the world. And I would never recover. The right amygdala, where the fight/flight response resides, knows no time. It fires its shrieking alarm each time as if survival is truly at stake, and this is it.
I remember the aftershocks of those episodes that seemed to linger an eternity. I was beset by a consuming “ennui,” a lovely French-sounding word I learned only much later; a bottomless pit of despair, hopelessness and confusion. I felt that I had no right and no reason to exist, and I was frantic to figure out how to earn or rent the patch of ground I might occupy on the planet. Why did they have me? Well, I knew from Dad it was imperative to replace the six million. But for Mom, I had no clue. She seemed so sad and so anxious much of the time. I knew it was my fault. Later she said if people did not have children, it was because they were “too selfish.” And secretly, I knew I was because I knew I absolutely never would (although admittedly, to me, it seemed the other way around. Who’s “selfish?”)
For a child, the loss of connection is devastating and truly does feel fatal. Attachment is indeed a survival need for mammals. And the human child is dependent longer than most mammals, so the disconnect is survival terror. Each time it happened to me, the bottom would fall out what little bottom there might have been. And the blanket of “nihilism,” another elegant word I learned much later, the conviction that nothing matters, would descend like the arctic snow that kept us cooped up during those infinite winters that we lived in Indiana. It was like a chronic “passive suicidality,” wishing I would die but not wanting that too to be “my fault.”
The feeling that nothing matters, I don’t matter, no one likes me, and in those moments, I don’t really like anyone translates to what I would now think of as depression. It began to persist beyond those moments of aftershock to an episode with Mom, as disconnection became the “norm,” and she complained of me “walking around with a long face” all the time. Why didn’t I just have more fun?!
For a child, the loss of the connection, or better said, its absence because for many it is never known or experienced, produces this profound and pervasive existential angst, emptiness, depression and confusion. And most often, as children get older, it is compounded by shame and hiding, because there is “nothing to explain it.” A signature of neglect that I first came to recognize was the resounding “Nothing happened to me!” There is no reasonable explanation for feeling this bad. Only a “bad attitude,” a failure of gratitude. After all, “children were starving in Europe!”
Neglect is a universe of loss, of essential missing experiences. Most important of all, what is missing is presence. The attentive effort to see, hear and understand the child’s world and communications. I was moved recently, watching our young dinner guests with their 15-month-old. The little guy subtly rubbed his eyes with his pudgy fists, and they knew that was his language for telling them he was getting tired and it was time to go home. They knew his signals and distinctive vocalizations: which of the cries and utterances meant he was hungry, cold, wet, lonely, or restless to get out of his high chair and check out that little girl at the neighboring table. Their accurate and attentive presence and the ready response with the needed “supplies” gives a child a sense of value, “I matter, and my feelings matter.” What a different life that child will have. Little by little, he will learn to identify and name his feelings and needs himself. He will know that they matter, he matters and the reliable beloved other matters. Life is worth living.
The absence of all this and the poverty of “mirroring” endemic of neglect trauma profoundly matters and is a hotbed for every sort of dysregulation and every sort of problem, micro and macro. Mental health, medical health, sexual health, behavior, every kind of earthly woe. And what is most insidious about it, is that it hides in plain sight, masquerading as “invisible.” I am on a mission to convey that this nothing does matter! To inspire a “neglect-informed” culture and world where “nothing” matters enough to do something about it!
Because it is so well disguised and hidden, even or especially from sufferers themselves, bringing neglect to light is an undertaking. Like cheesemaking or endurance athletics, one must be prepared to stay the course and endure what can seem like a desert of nothingness on an unbearably long road to feeling alive. Too often, because of their often extraordinary drive, like my impulse to compensate for the blight of my sorry existence, by doing, achievement or outward success are deceptive masks. The survivor seems to be “doing” so well: academically, professionally, financially… they slip right past notice. “Passing” or getting over, they garner no care or help. Which on one hand, is a relief, and on the other, is a repetition of the desolation of invisibility.
Being seen, known, recognized, and valued for who one is are such fundamental developmental experiences. They are like yeast, or the rennet, that activate and incite ferment, growth and delicious appeal as we rise, ripen and age. Without them, life is flat, tasteless, or, God forbid, moldy. The most reliable indicator of neglect is an often ferocious self-reliance and profound interpersonal ambivalence. If someone is controlling and inconsistent or confusing about letting us near, that is a hint. There may be a “story-less story” lurking. Gentle, non-intrusive presence and patience, patience with what, sometimes for us as therapists, aspiring friends or loved ones may feel boring or lifeless, is key.
I have learned that my own boredom or listlessness in their company is a clue I must be mindful and attuned to. Because they are otherwise rare for me, these feelings point to contactlessness. I must look for safe and gentle ways to draw them into contact without shame or insult, or danger. I must be able to weather diatribes of devaluing hopelessness about therapy or even about me and intermittent rejection. They are “show don’t telling” me, as the fiction writers say, the story that they don’t remember. I may be inspired to find the opening to inquire, “what do you know about what was going on around you in your parents’ lives when you were in utero or an infant? They won’t remember, but perhaps richly know family lore. Then the plot thickens.
We must bear in mind and hold that they and all of it do matter, including our sitting there with them. To make the entendre even more dimensional and confounding, I will close with a quote from Einstein! He said:
“Energy is liberated matter. Matter is energy waiting to happen.”
Oy vey! Go figure…
Today’s song:
On the 24th of April, we lost another queen. Admittedly where I was amazed and perhaps baffled by the dramatic display of emotion and attention following the death of the British monarch last September, when Tina Turner, also known as the “Queen of Rock’n Roll” died last week, the outpouring of grief around the world, made perfect sense to me. The old rolling Stones’ song, “I Know It’s Only Rock’n Roll But I Like It…” well I guess that is me in a nutshell. Turner was an icon in so many ways. She was, among her many “firsts,” perhaps the first public figure to speak openly about domestic violence, which of course had a tremendous impact on women everywhere. She was the first African American to break into the white world of rock, without following a rhythm and blues, jazz or MoTown route, and like a phoenix, she rose out of destructive flames repeatedly in her life. She was a powerhouse and an inspiration.
Tina’s trauma began long before her well known battering by first husband and musical partner, Ike Turner. She knew from the start that she was not wanted and never felt loved by her parents. They already had two children and had no intention of having another when her mother was unexpectedly pregnant again.
Born Anna Mae Bullock in a small Tennessee town where her father was a sharecropper, she picked cotton as a small child, before her parents left to relocate to another town. She and her two sisters were separated, and all sent to live with different relatives, Anna Mae staying with her cold, strictly religious paternal grandparents. When the family reunited two years later, Anna Mae witnessed her father, now clearly alcoholic, violently abusing her mother, until her mother ultimately left, abandoning the three girls. Two years later, her father remarried, and Anna Mae and her sisters were sent to live with their other, the maternal grandmother.
When she was a young teenager, one of Anna Mae’s sisters died suddenly in a car crash. Attachment shock, as psychiatrist and trauma expert Frank Corrigan so elegantly renamed the developmental trauma of attachment and loss, like hers, were her earliest experience, and the “hits” just kept on coming.
Anna Mae sang in the church choir, and from early life loved music and dance. Later as a teen she frequented music clubs, which is where she first saw and heard the musical performance of Ike Turner. She was mesmerized and immediately wanted to sing with him. Ike however, had no interest, at least at first. Somehow when Turner’s drummer’s back was turned and he had stepped away from his mic, Anna Mae grabbed it and belted along. The listening crowd was transfixed by her voice and energy. So originally unwanted by Ike, she suddenly appeared to offer some kind of “ticket” or entrée for his aspirations. Although highly talented as a musician, he lacked the magnetism and verve that this young woman displayed. So Ike took her on.
Ike right away changed Anna Mae’s first name to Tina, and her last name to Turner after marrying her. He patented the new name so she could not leave him, or if she did, she would not be able to take it. Thus, Tina Turner was “born.”
Unwanted from the start, then unwanted again, nameless and used even before being beaten, the young woman, now Tina, never intended to become intimately involved with Ike. Their first intimacy was non-consensual, but she went along. They became the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, and in spite of his ongoing infidelities and violence, she lived and worked with him for 16 years. This is perhaps where the emblematic ferocious self-reliance and survivorship that accompany early neglect, can be a mixed blessing.
It took two years more (after their initial 14 years) of Ike’s drug use and violence, and her one thankfully failed suicide attempt for Tina to finally leave Ike. She even lost a son to suicide along the way. But like the “Grey Goose” of the old spiritual, who simply would not die, in spite of unending parade of assaults, somehow, Tina’s volcanic energy and undying persistence prevailed. After some years of recovering herself which included becoming a Buddhist, with a sustaining (and I would guess regulating,) serious practice of chanting, she did the unthinkable. She made her spectacular re-entry to the music scene, becoming a solo rockstar in her 40’s. Tina performed with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stuart, Bryan Adams and more, which, if you are anywhere near my age, you would recognize as the top of the top. And she was a fireball in her own right, loved all over the globe. She said, although she was not a “superstar” like Madonna in the US, in Europe she actually was, and she later made her home there.
Tina met and married her husband Erwin Bach when she was 47. He was 30 at the time. They were close and intimate for 26 years before they finally married. She continued her progression of “firsts” becoming the first woman and the first person of color featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Mick Jagger credits her with teaching him some of his most cherished dance steps. She scored 10 Grammy Awards; and was twice, (the first time being with Ike,) inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Tina’s final decade, however, was a tragic series of serious illnesses. A massive stroke made it impossible for her to speak or walk for a time, all of which through dogged determination and hard work, she regained, although singing by then became a challenge. Thankfully she could still chant.
Next came a serious run of colon cancer, which resulted in a surgery that cost her much of her large intestine. And finally, a bout of kidney failure that nearly took her down. Although she was unafraid of death, and was prepared to go whenever her time might come, she graciously assented when her husband underwent surgery to give her one of his kidneys, which kept her going for her final years. She died at 83.
Turner was proud and grateful for her life and her accomplishments. She continued to feel a debt of gratitude toward Ike, in spite of everything. I can understand that feeling as I like her feel profound and immense admiration and gratitude for the man who most hurt me in my life. Tina similarly experienced great joy and fulfillment in her also pain racked life. Like many of us who have histories of trauma and neglect, she felt that all that adversity gave her the depth and intensity, the energy and indomitable drive, the creativity and understanding, that marked her life and her work, and contributed perhaps more than anything to her gifts to the world. I can relate to that too, if on my much smaller scale.
Tina also garnered a prestigious star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which this past week has been blanketed with a deep drift of flowers, gifts and missives of appreciation, love and grief. Tina was, as a part of her great legacy, a tribute and a testament to the indomitable power, strength and healing possible, even for the most traumatized. She was indeed “Simply the Best.”
I am sure Tina would have wished to be remembered having this much fun! And like me, she always had a crush on Mick.
Rest well Tina, you so earned it, and you will be deeply missed!
Today’s Song:
When I was young and deeply involved in Latin American anti-imperialist political work, the freedom fighters who organized and fought clandestinely against authoritarian dictatorships were called La Resistencia, the resistance. They boldly left their insignia, a capital R in a circle, as their quiet battle cry to show that they were not vanquished, ferociously not gone. I have always rather liked that it was also my initial, and I could sign off, if not in battle, certainly as a champion of the oppressed and unfree. However, the ways the word “resistance” has been used in the world of psychotherapy and, to some extent, in common parlance has irked me. I even occasionally hear disgruntled spouses hurl it crudely in an unruly couple’s session before I get a chance to nip it. It suggests intentionality, a willful thwarting of something. I rarely see psychological pushback that way. It invariably represents something else, certainly where trauma is concerned.
The core dilemma at the heart of neglect trauma is a profound internal conflict about attachment. Starting from the initial heartbreak, the child interprets the neglect scenario the only way they can, as rejection: “I am not good enough. I don’t matter. I am worthless. I am invisible. I don’t exist.” At first, if the neglect is early, which it often is, there are no words, only a quaking emptiness, hunger, agitation, a shapeless, rudderless flailing disorientation and confusion. After a while, there is collapse into the futility of waiting, and perhaps a freeze. Later, what most often emerges is a default to rock-solid self-reliance. What other choice do they have but to become strong, fierce, enduring, and to do it all themselves? It is the signature of the child of neglect, perhaps their/our version of the defiant “R.” But it is far more than a statement; it is survival, a way of life.
I began to learn about the ferocity of self-reliance in my work as a therapist. Often the child of neglect is reluctant to seek psychotherapy in the first place because they are not used to thinking of another person as a resource, or as being of any use. Often, these children of neglect are some of the most competent, accomplished, and outwardly successful people one might ever hope to find. The fact that there is a gaping interpersonal vacuum or “disability” might slip by unnoticed, even by themselves. They might know that they feel bad, or maybe they don’t even “have time” to notice that because they are too “busy” or too practiced at whatever their chosen medium of numbing out.
The core dilemma at the heart of neglect trauma is a profound internal conflict about attachment. Starting from the initial heartbreak, the child interprets the neglect scenario the only way they can, as rejection.
I had a humbling lesson about my own, perhaps avoidant, self-reliance only a few short years ago. My beloved therapist was undeniably getting old. I had been with her forever and had come a long way in letting myself know how important she was to me. I had always said to her, “I am going to keep coming here until you shut the door!” I was committed to that. By now, she was 89. In all our years together, she had never forgotten things. That stunned me when I first met her. She actually listened to me and tracked what I said! My parents had never even known my friends’ names, if I ever had any. Here was someone who was holding my whole life. Unbelievable. Now at 89, she was occasionally slipping, understandably, of course. I could not deny it.
I am a rather compulsively punctual person. All my years of therapy, I paid riveted attention to the clock, always cautious not to “overstay my welcome.” I liked to pay first, so I had “earned my keep.” I never wanted to impose in any way. And I scrupulously arrived on time. Until now. “Suddenly,” I began arriving at my sessions late. I would walk the mile or so from my office to hers. I had always enjoyed the walk, and window shopping on College Ave. It was a lively, colorful street, and now post-pandemic, it is coming back. I enjoyed being out in the world. And I made a point of managing my work days so there would be time to walk – until this point in time, when things started “running late.” I was unwilling to give up the walk and drive to be on time for my sessions. I stubbornly insisted on walking. We observed me arriving later and later to therapy. My therapist, always attentive to everything, especially where our relationship was concerned, would ask me, “What is up with this lateness?” I shrugged it off. My work… but it seemed I was starting to be sometimes almost 20 minutes late for a 50-minute session.
It took a long time to recognize that I was starting to fear not only her retirement but her death. Anything remotely related to losing her completely unnerved me. Except I did not even let myself know that. She worked to nudge and delicately steer me into that material for a long time before I “got it.” If she or anyone had dared to call it “resistance,” I am sure I would have had a righteous hissy fit.
The fear of loss is so profound it evokes the first “loss,” which was not really having anything in the first place, so far beyond conscious awareness. It took many months of wasted, lost time I could have had with her. She did retire before she turned 90. Now she is 93? I’m not sure. We are still in touch, and I still struggle sometimes to let myself call and see how she is doing. I know she will not live forever, and somehow that is unbearable. Need and loss are two sides of the same lousy coin. Neglect makes one desperately vulnerable to both, so we toggle back and forth, keeping them, as much as possible, outside of awareness. We deny, disavow, OK, resist. It can be a tragic waste.
Yes, our core dilemma is that the source of longed-for comfort and the source of perceived terror, loss, and/or rejection are the same person. What is a child to do?
Yes, our core dilemma is that the source of longed-for comfort and the source of perceived terror, loss, and/or rejection are the same person. What is a child to do? They push and pull, reach toward, recoil from, rock and roll, and ultimately culminate in collapse, freeze, or both. The same conflict can unfold in psychotherapy. On the one hand is a desperate longing, not only to connect, but to have the therapy “work” and actually be helped. On the other hand, is the seemingly lethal danger of interpersonal need, of letting the lifeline of self-reliance be punctured, and the puffed up, imagined, even experienced safety of isolation, whistling airily away. It is perhaps like a balloon with a hole, hissing and shrinking, spinning away from the risk of being abandoned, rejected forgotten again.
Some clients “resolve” or avoid it by having something like “serial monogamy” with therapists: going from one to the next as if they are interchangeable parts, not relationships, as if we therapists have a “shelf life.” It makes logical sense, but it is not what the heart craves. It is not “really” safe. It can most definitely be a challenge for therapist and client. Some view the method as the vehicle of change: the neurofeedback, EMDR, IFS, SE DBT, whichever of the alphabet soup, rather than a person. Those are all essential, don’t get me wrong. But the deepest healing comes in the relatedness.
It is a long-term challenge that I have been at for many years. I try not to think of it as “resistance,” even my own stubborn lateness, my preference to look at all the beautiful clothes in the shop windows. That makes it sound purposeful. Rather it was an urgent gasp to maintain autonomy, to save my life, and to protect my long-ago broken heart. I have come to think of the vacillation, the reciprocal reaching for, pulling back, perhaps as a kind of rocking? Perhaps it is a simulation of the loving somatic experience of being cradled, having a large and containing other’s body gently embrace, enfold us in gentle, rhythmic movement. It is often a grievously missing, even dreamlike experience, and people can try in vain to give it to themselves. What a terribly lonely, if logical, formulation.
We must go kindly with this. It takes its time to heal. Many of my comrades, the Resistance fighters I knew and did not know, I fear have died. Some I know about, some I never heard about again. They quietly slipped undercover, and who knows what happened? A different kind of cover than the craved cradle blanket. I still cherish the mighty R and the songs that honor them. And it is essential not to confuse different avenues of survival: both are heroic, each in their way in the service of freedom and life.
It is turning to spring in my hemisphere. Best wishes for whichever of the season’s holidays you observe.
R
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 went to adopt our two little dogs, Button and Angel, in 2009. I had recently begun writing my first book, so I warned my husband that I would not be much of a co-parent for a while. But it had been long enough since the second of our two beloved shelties had passed. Never one for being dog-less for long, he was willing to sign on as alpha, primary trainer, and “chief bottle washer.” He began eagerly poring over the rescue sites like I imagine many of the lonely do with dating sites. He finally landed on a couple of terrier mutts at a shelter in Sacramento. I remember years ago, a speaker at a conference said, “All terriers have ADD.” Being high enough strung and high enough energy myself, the quieter, and seemingly “monogamous” type shelties were the match for me. But being the primary caregiver licensed my husband to choose. So one wintry Sunday, we piled into his old VW MR2 and set out for Sac.
It was a sweet little shelter, and I remember cruising the various well-kept cages until we found the selected litter. There were about seven of them. Button was a tiny, mostly mushroom-brown puppy with a curly piglet-like tail and expectant, pleading eyes that seemed to say, “Pick me! Pick me!” She reminded me of myself. And although she later grew up to be a mischievous little rascal who would, as the Grateful Dead song said, “steal your face right off your head,” we did not know that then. Angel looked more like a terrier with a squarish jaw. She had serious, almost sad-looking, wise eyes and scruffy whiskers that reminded me of Einstein. I don’t remember the other sibs; I was pretty taken with Button. And I was also amazed at how these littermate sisters could look so vastly different.
Button and Angel continued to be inseparable throughout their/our life together. Roommates in the womb, they never had any intention of doing anything different, and indeed they lived up to the ADD prediction. The pups had a good long run together until deep in the pandemic when I was now locked down and home all the time. Button began to have many serious health problems requiring much medical attention, and then twice-a-day fluid infusions. My husband would do the difficult medical part at the back of her ever-skinnier little body, and I would entertain the front end with little scraps of homemade cheese. We did all we could to keep her with us, but her little legs got more and more wobbly, to the point where they would collapse under her. Her heroic and devoted dad diligently carried her up and down the stairs and outside to do her business.
Button finally succumbed in 2020. Admittedly it was somewhat of a relief, as well as being so sad. It had become pretty unbearable to watch her suffer, and for Angel as well. When she died, Angel became inconsolable. They had always been together. She could not stop crying. She reminded me of the research I heard of years ago about the “blighted twin.” When twins were initially together in the womb, and one failed to develop and ultimately dissolved away, the other went through life with a deep sense of “something” being missing. If we ever had to leave her alone, which thankfully during the lockdown year was rare, Angel wailed, like in some of the mourning rituals I remember seeing in movies at school. Always shy anyway, grief-stricken Angel cleaved to her dad, making a nest at his feet during his long hours in front of the computer.
Finally, after perhaps a year and a half, Angel is finding a regulated, calm state. And when her dad goes out, she even has the courage to come upstairs to my home office and, with consent, of course, attend a client session. I recently learned that 2015 research showed that human twins in the womb begin reaching toward each other and touching 14 weeks after gestation. The longing for contact has already begun.
I recently learned that 2015 research showed that human twins in the womb begin reaching toward each other and touching 14 weeks after gestation. The longing for contact has already begun.
Attachment is indeed our most profound and foundational survival need, which is why neglect is the most pervasive and destructive injury of all, certainly to humans. Although massively unacknowledged (and I am doing my best to change that!), it quietly wreaks its devastating damage, especially in the realm of relationships, which of course, has unspeakable ramifications in both individual and collective life. Trauma therapists are well aware that loneliness and interpersonal pain are what drive people, often with deep ambivalence, to our office doors. Most certainly, with neglect, survivors really don’t want to need us or our help. But the sense of deadness and isolation, pandemic or not, becomes unlivable.
Recently at a conference, I met a charismatic super couple, a physician and an attorney. The doctor, Laurie was her name, had recently won a national award in her country, and in the past, might have been someone who intimidated me. But she was so approachable and delightful, as was her partner of 36 years. They sat across from me at breakfast, so making conversation, I asked if they had children. Like myself, they had long ago opted against it, but somehow ended up telling me the story of when they accompanied a close friend to China to support her in adopting a baby girl.
When the three roamed the orphanage, not unlike my own experience in Sac some 13 years prior, they met up with baby “Anna” (not her real name.) For some unknown reason, and to the surprised dismay of the prospective adoptive mother, the 18-month-old orphan magnetically reached for Laurie. It was as if she had found the missing part of herself. I remember, years ago, reading about adoption, that after nine months of inhabiting the mother’s body, living with her rhythms, her voice, her chemistry, the climate of her energetic and emotional vacillations, they profoundly know her. When they are passed, even at birth, to the adoptive parent, they seem to profoundly know, “This is the ‘wrong’ one!” Well, little Anna, drawn almost as if by a vacuum aspirator to Laurie, felt as if she had found the “right one.” Now in her twenties and recently married, that never changed.
Anna’s legal mom has had to live with the primary and primal love that the child, and now the young woman has had and continues to have for Laurie, and secondarily Laurie’s wife. Laurie proudly showed me pictures from Anna’s wedding not long ago, the two beaming together. And Laurie, her wife, and Anna’s legal mom have graciously navigated this challenging configuration over now decades; it remains mysterious. This indescribable, inexplicable, and super-glue-like attachment. What is that?
Attachment is indeed our most profound and foundational survival need.
Shortly after that deeply emotional breakfast conversation, I went for a walk through the chilly, idyllic grounds of the quaint New England conference site. The beautiful trees were bare, and it was blessedly quiet. I knew there was a labyrinth on the grounds but did not think much about it, swimming in my feelings about Laurie and Anna. When I stumbled on the labyrinth, I thought perhaps I might try walking it, something I had never even thought of doing. I have always said, “You know how they say a leopard can’t change its spots? Well, I can!” I change my spots every chance I get. So I entered the maze.
It was an interesting experience; I thought it was like trauma recovery. I feel like I am going around in circles, getting nowhere, hitting dead ends… But if I “stay the course,” the path takes me out into the open again. It was remarkable, just like Laurie and Anna have circled, hit dead ends, and kept going, ultimately finding their way out into the open world, again or for the first time. Attachment is the ground upon which it is all built: connection, love, and a measure of patience. Anna’s adoptive mom heroically gave her a chance and graciously shared the road with Laurie, moving aside to allow space for extended family. What an angel. And all of them, all of us find our way to the opening and out into the world.
Today’s Song: In honor of Grateful Ed, who I think is the one who diagnosed all terriers years ago.
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.
Occasionally, I read a book because it has been hanging out on the NY Times Bestseller List for so long that I feel I need to know what “everyone” is reading to keep up with the times. No, I am NOT talking about The Body Keeps the Score, which has been a fixture on the List for seemingly ever! (I was probably one of the first people to read that!) I did read 50 Shades of Gray (all three volumes!) only for that reason. Sometimes I do it also because the book was recommended by someone I am very fond of. Recently a very intelligent, young friend recommended a book that has been persistently hovering out there for quite a while, so I decided to go for it: the memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
Never much of a TV watcher, and also of the wrong generation to be familiar with her, McCurdy’s story was all new to me. Born in 1992 and becoming a child TV star by eight, I had never even heard of the many shows she appeared in. But I found the book interesting because it is an exquisite portrayal of an often unrecognized and devastating form of neglect.
Growing up in a Mormon household, she was the youngest of four, the only girl, the most adored child, and wildly idealized by her clearly troubled mother. McCurdy’s mother, Debra, had always dreamed of being a movie or TV star herself, and already in early childhood, Jenette was painstakingly molded and sculpted to become the child star of her mother’s own lost aspirational dreams. Right from the start, Debra dressed, coiffed, and shaped Jennette’s appearance and even play, to be Little Debra 2.0, but the deluxe version that had never materialized.
Until her earlyish adulthood, Jennette experiences her mother’s “attention” and focus as the epitome of love. They were “inseparable,” and Jennette lived to please her mother, while her mother busily doted on and prepped her to inhabit the illusion. They did everything together, including creating and sharing perversely disordered eating that would train little Jennette to aspire to anorexic weights and sizes, well before she even received that indoctrination from the larger world. It was their little shared ritual to go out to lunch and split a “chef’s salad,” with the dressing on the side, no cheese, no meat, and no egg. Debra was able to locate and ultimately enlist the connections and the professionals that would connect little Jennette with first extra, then “guest,” and then starring regular roles in ongoing TV shows. Debra was thrilled, triumphant and proud, as well as relieved by the ways that Jenette’s income took the financial pressure off the otherwise struggling family.
Meanwhile, having survived, at least into remission, a serious bout of cancer, Debra was able to utilize the “cancer card” to win sympathy and the occasional “pass,” both inside and outside the family. Debra was the super-nova. Jennette was but a satellite. This kind of neglect, where “there is no you,” is one of the most devastating and insidious. The child is told and imagines she is so “loved” that the annihilation and, in effect, “soul murder,” not to mention the extreme of intrusion, are indiscernible to the young person. It takes a while for the rage to register, the authentic, inaudible voice of “what about me?” Or who is “me” anyway?
It is only when Jennette is sidling into adulthood that she begins to feel tired and resentful of living out her mother’s dream, of being her mother’s alter-ego. By then, she is completely dysregulated, struggling with severely disordered eating, well on her way to alcoholism, and of course, has every kind of relationship and sexual confusion. It is a devastatingly brilliant portrayal of a profound, unrecognized form of neglect/attachment trauma.
It would have been unthinkable for Jennette to imagine herself being neglected, as the attention, preoccupation, and obsession with her was unrelenting. Like many who are nominally “loved” even with less extreme of intrusion, it is challenging to identify the loss of self and the profound destruction of not being known, understood or seen.
Like many who are nominally “loved” even with less extreme of intrusion, it is challenging to identify the loss of self and the profound destruction of not being known, understood or seen.
Although Jennette rarely had a moment free of Debra’s towering invasion into any space she found herself in, her mother was never present with her. That invaluably vital developmental ingredient of being truly there with her never happened. Many clients I have seen bear all the scars of neglect but are hard-pressed to recognize, let alone name, their experience of nonexistence, of not being seen or known. They can’t understand why they feel so bad, shamefully calling it a failure of gratitude or some other sort of personal failure. Sometimes, their only identifiable (to them) and barely “legitimate” complaint might be in bodily symptoms.
Jennette’s eating disorder is florid and undeniable, and she portrays the mysterious swings between anorexia and terrifying, uncontrollable binge eating as well as I have ever read. Although I never “graduated” to bulimia the way she did, I remember that runaway train, being out of control in both directions and not in control of which. It is a nightmare I hate to remember. How courageously and graphically she exposes it! And it helps her to recognize that something is truly wrong. Sometimes only the body can communicate this, or force it into awareness, as we are all finally starting to understand.
I was recently reminded of the unspeakable power of simple presence. I had a minor surgery that required anesthesia, and I was still pretty drugged on the car ride home and our return to the house. Apparently, it was early afternoon when my husband delivered us safely home. My memory is spotty to blank for most of it. I floated through the afternoon in a deep sleep and woke up somewhat disoriented about what day or time it was. But opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was my husband and our little dog, Angel. He had been reading, and she was keeping him company while I slept. I began to cry. Presence. Perhaps the most precious expression of love, and so tragically missing in the neglect experience. In awe of the experience, I was, of course, (gratefully) reminded of the tragedy of its lack.
Presence. Perhaps the most precious expression of love, and so tragically missing in the neglect experience.
Another brutal police murder of a young Black man, Tyre Nichols, shatters the headlines. Although it is hardly a shock anymore, it is still unbearably shocking, this time, the wild beating perpetrated by five cops of his own race. That part is another whole subject for another day. What struck me, yet again, was how in his final moments, with his final breaths, young Nichols cried out “Mama, Mama…” much as George Floyd had. Attachment is a survival need for us humans, as all mammals. It is what we immediately grasp for and cry for in those moments of agony or terror when survival is at stake. More fundamental than even food, or almost air, its absence is like a slow suffocation. Often we don’t even know, or don’t know for a long time, like Jennette, just how airless the space is and maybe always has been.
Moments like waking up from anesthesia to a loving presence can bring simple but unutterably profound healing. We can all give that in big and small ways. So many reasons why we must wake up to the quiet devastation of neglect.
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.
Back when I was in college, I remember the Maoists used to say, “Women hold up half the sky.” Although I was never a Maoist, I always loved this image of women, muscled arms upstretched, supporting at least half of this wide world of ours. As we approach International Women’s Day, it continues to shock me that girls and women can still be prohibited from going to school; imprisoned and even killed over what they wear, or their reproductive decisions in 2023. In some parts of the world, perhaps more than others, the sky is falling.
In honor of International Women’s Day, I want to memorialize a quiet and powerfully important woman who equally quietly slipped away on February 3, 2023. She was only 79, and I say only because the numbers seem smaller and smaller as I approach them myself. And I say quietly because after hearing through the grapevine, that she had passed, I systematically combed the web and all my accessible resources, turning up nothing: no obituary or substantial biographical material. Finally, an article written by her husband made the rounds and landed in my inbox. The woman is, or was, Sue Othmer, the valiant matriarch of neurofeedback.
I am moved to write about Sue, not only because neurofeedback is so powerful as a way of working with developmental trauma, neglect, and many other afflictions, but also because she epitomizes the polar opposite of the neglectful mother. Her life and career were inspired, shaped, and compelled by her fierce attention and commitment to the thriving, healthy, and safe development of her children.
Born in Boston, Sue, then Fitzgerald, grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and later Bethesda, Maryland. A superior achiever in school, she later studied physics and then neurobiology at Cornell and then at Oxford, where she met her husband and later professional partner, Siegfried Othmer. They were married for 52 years. In 1968, their first child, Brian, was born, followed in 1973 by their daughter Karen, and then in 1975, their youngest, Kurt.
Neurofeedback has continued to evolve and grow into an increasingly comprehensive, complex, and effective methodology beneficial to so many people (and some animals!) with a broad spectrum of somatic, emotional, and behavioral symptoms.
Grief was both the context and the catalyst of Sue’s life, certainly her professional life. Baby Karen died at 14 months of a brain tumor. By the time of his sister’s death, Brian had already been suffering from painful mental and behavioral problems for five years. As time went on, Brian’s complex problems evolved further into a difficult-to-treat seizure disorder.
The Othmers set out on a fervent quest in search of help and relief for Brian, in the course of which Sue happened upon a quirky, then new procedure developed by Barry Sterman at UCLA: neurofeedback. Sterman had been experimenting and succeeding at curing seizures in cats. The Othmers were heartened to find that neurofeedback proved helpful to Brian as well. And although it was not sufficient to save him, it gave him six good years, enabling him, almost, to graduate from college before his death in 1991. By the age of 47, the Othmers had lost two children. By then, however, Sue had studied and created an evolving mental health treatment option of neurofeedback. Transforming her own tragedy, she made a tremendous contribution to the world and certainly to my life and work.
I only had the occasion to meet the real woman once. It was probably in 2009. I was a new, starry-eyed neurofeedback practitioner, fresh out of my beginners’ training. For some strange reason, neurofeedback did not seem to have caught hold on the West Coast of the US: strange because I have always thought of my coast, particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, as being in the vanguard of the new and groundbreaking of whatever discipline. For whatever reason, that did not happen with neurofeedback here, and my impression is it still hasn’t, much to my dismay (despite my humble efforts to disseminate it.) So, in those days, I traveled wherever I had to and wherever I could to learn more. When the Othmers, Sue and her husband Siegfried, offered a weekend workshop in Los Angeles, I was on it in a hot minute.
Sadly, the neurofeedback field, mighty but small, has been fractured by factionalism and “in-fighting.” As my consultant once said, “The polar bears get on well when there is plenty of salmon. However, when there is not enough salmon, they fight among themselves.” So unfortunately, this quirky “new” discipline suffered from a senseless “otherism,” which, while needing numbers and unity to garner attention and research funding, could not settle on a unified purpose enough to work together. So be it; I did not know that then. When I enthusiastically found myself in the Othmers’ training, I did not know I had “crossed lines.” But it did not matter.
I don’t remember that weekend well, but I do remember that I loved it. Sue was a towering, if somewhat quiet, exquisitely smart, strong, precise, and no-nonsense presence. Although not warm or approachable to my taste, I liked and admired her, and she was a fine teacher. And she gracefully held up her half of the sky alongside her powerful and imposing husband and professional partner. Indeed they were the highly effective neurofeedback “power couple.”
Neurofeedback has continued to evolve and grow into an increasingly comprehensive, complex, and effective methodology beneficial to so many people (and some animals!) with a broad spectrum of somatic, emotional, and behavioral symptoms. It combines science, art, and perhaps some magic: brain and heart. All in a sea of hope, tireless conviction, and hard work, all of which epitomized Sue Othmer.
Again, not religious; I have little puffs of memory that float up from my childhood of “compulsory” religious school. I remember the song, the quote from Proverbs: “A woman of valor who can find? Her price is more precious than rubies…” That does sound like Sue.
In many ways, a simple procedure, simple enough to originally utilize with cats, it is also vastly complex, and learning it is endless. It works on the principle of “operant conditioning,” which seems utterly obvious, but can be so easily “forgotten.” Essentially, positive feedback is re-enforcing: reward, encouragement, acknowledgment, appreciating all the positives, strengthening and increasing whatever behavior or change is being rewarded. It seems like a “no-brainer.” I will resist the urge to rhapsodize about neurofeedback here, but I will surely return to it repeatedly. And there is much information to be found about neurofeedback!
From the ravaging flames of grief, from the depths of her broken heart, Sue Othmer summoned the mythical phoenix of neurofeedback.
From the ravaging flames of grief, from the depths of her broken heart, Sue Othmer summoned the mythical phoenix of neurofeedback. She and Siegfried continued to experiment, study, evolve, and teach it all the days of her life, until she could not, creating new and even more mysterious iterations, but never flagging in her curiosity, vision, and energy. I know how much neurofeedback has regulated, healed, and enhanced my own life, and my many clients over the past 14 years, countless suffering people around the world. It certainly guided the direction my own practice has taken, and I am so grateful.
So often, tragedy and grief, pain and suffering spawn and catalyze immense creativity and inspiration. This is not to minimize or somehow cancel out the impact of loss, violence, or destruction, but perhaps to give them meaning. I have always said, “everything I have ever been through serves me.” That certainly cannot be said of all trauma. But I am vastly grateful to all the many who have made a gift to us all of their own agonies. Thanks, Sue, and Happy International Women’s Day to all!
Today’s song: Mujeres by Silvio Rodriguez. Says Silvio: “Me han estremecido un monton de mujeres:” I have been ‘shaken’ by numerous women…
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.
What I remember best about John F. Kennedy’s assassination is the looping image of the president’s little son, “John-John,” saluting. In 1963, I was eight, and we lived in South Bend, Indiana, where the winters were fierce and long. I was hunkered down in the basement, with the heat blasting and unending coverage of the memorial and the national tragedy on TV non-stop. That image of John-John must have replayed a million times – or maybe it is the distortion of my young memory and my profound identification with the grief-stricken child. I don’t remember much else about John Kennedy Junior through the rest of my life, but I never forgot when he was, I guess, three. What happened to him?
The Kennedys were iconized, as tragedy and martyrdom often are, and it was years before I knew some of the unsavory politics and aspects of JFK. I was surprised a few days ago when I heard a story memorializing his sister Rosemary Kennedy on the 18th anniversary of her death. I did not know there was a Kennedy sibling who had been lobotomized for being “slow.” It got me thinking about the neglect, even seeming annihilation, that often comes with political or other kinds of “greatness,” large and small.
Our dad was not a major celebrity or famous, but in his way as a religious and community leader, he was a figurehead or centerpiece of sorts. I remember when we were growing up, sometimes when we met someone new, someone he knew, or someone noteworthy perhaps, he would say, “Do they know who you are?” The emphasis on “are” meant, “Do they know you are my daughter? The cantor’s daughter?” Evidently, that was all that I was. There was no me.
When our mom died, we each had a list of people to call and notify, and one of the people on my list was the teacher of Dad’s autobiography writing group. He had been in that group for perhaps five years, writing and sharing his memoir. Everyone loved him. Apparently, the group format was that participants would read aloud and comment on each other’s work, so they knew each other quite well after that long. When I identified myself to the teacher, she said, “Oh! I didn’t know he had a daughter.” Rather shocked, but not really, I said, “Yes. He has three.” As ever, my existence was an ongoing question. In this case, it was all three of us, I guess.
I remember early on feeling I had to justify my existence somehow, earn my right to occupy a patch of ground to stand on, on this earth. Much of the time, I felt like a puff of smoke or shadow that was perhaps punctuation in his screenplay. Or a prop or extra in his movie. Perhaps that is why I excised the word “deserve” from my personal lexicon, and to this day, I bristle when I hear it. There really is no such thing in this world as “deserving,” or perhaps more accurately, getting what one “deserves” – so I believed.
In the mind of the neglected child, existence is a mystery, or it was to me. Worthiness, merit, privilege, specialness, responsibility, “luck,” – how do they all fit together? How is it determined who gets what? And why me? Or why not me? And what on earth to do about it? I remember early in my exploration and study of neglect, I could spot a child of neglect quickly by the signature shrug, deep as the ocean, of “I don’t know what to do!” Or, “There is nothing I can do!”
In the mind of the neglected child, existence is a mystery, or it was to me. Worthiness, merit, privilege, specialness, responsibility, “luck,” – how do they all fit together?
Nelson Mandela was quoted as saying, “I have often wondered whether a person is justified in neglecting his own family for opportunities to fight for others.” Mandela’s daughter, Maki, much as she admires her father, recounts painful memories from long before her father was in hiding or imprisoned, of not knowing if he loved her or not. She is torn by grief and bitterness about her devastating neglect, tugging against profound feelings of admiration, respect and pride. “I had a father who was not there – which was how I saw it through the eyes of a child – who chose politics over me or even my brothers, my family.” I heard similar sentiments expressed by her brother in an interview some years ago, but I can’t seem to find it now.
Fidel Castro’s oldest son, also named Fidel, a prominent physicist and accomplished researcher, died by suicide at the age of 68. I don’t know the details. What are the unique costs and conflicts of being the child of “greatness?” Of being eclipsed by the world’s suffering? How does a child make sense of, or peace with that, through their lifespan?
Our dad did much good in his own particular sphere. On weekends, I wished he would come home, but he was often running to the hospital to visit congregants. It is a “mitzvah,” a good deed, to visit the sick. And indeed, a noble and generous act of charity, so to speak. I honored and respected, even learned from that. But I, guiltily, hated it. Like Mandela, he was “never around.” And, of course, I could not begin to compete with the sick, dying and grieving multitudes. But shame on me for feeling that!
I sometimes wonder, is the price of heroism, martyrdom, or “goodness” the sacrifice of one’s kids?
Neglect is fraught with searing, seemingly irreconcilable ambivalences. The mixed feelings of jealousy versus guilt, rage and resentment versus social and political responsibility, grief versus gratitude, love versus bitterness, self-care versus greater good, gratitude versus tail-chasing confusion. I am still flummoxed about the balance between my commitment to the larger world and looking out for my little and aging self. Oy vey. Admittedly that is part of what keeps me awake at night. My feelings about our dad are in a similarly vacillating both/and. He perhaps hurt me more than anyone, but he also bequeathed to me all of my most cherished traits, qualities and many skills. How do I resolve that? How do I make sense of it? What do I call it? That, of course, complicated my feelings further as his life drew to a close, now almost three years ago. But thankfully, I do not suffer about it anymore – it is more a contemplation.
I sometimes wonder, is the price of heroism, martyrdom, or “goodness” the sacrifice of one’s kids? As ever, kids have no say, no voice. Are they/we part of the deal? Sadly, it is on the unconsenting child to “figure it out,” to deal with the fallout of the neglect. Perhaps the conundrum that plagues a lifetime?
I was always puzzled by the Bible story where God instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son as a show of faith. Dylan eloquently expressed my sentiments in his timeless missive, Highway 61: “Abe said God, you must be puttin’ me on!” I didn’t get it. How is that a good thing? I don’t know. I have had a similar conflict with an occasional client who had a famous parent whom I had always iconized and admired, until being jarred by a back story, a casualty that I had not known about before; or a memoir by the child of a hero figure who may have caused devastating harm. Steve Jobs’ first daughter Lisa, asked, “Was I named after the computer or was the computer named after me?!” I don’t know if she ever resolved it. And I still struggle with the ongoing choice between my own interests and the “larger good.” Perhaps it will always be one of those chicken-and-egg scenarios…
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.
When I was in kindergarten and first grade in New York City, teachers had not yet made the rule that we had to give Valentine’s cards to everyone in the class. We all had our little art project mailboxes made out of decorated brown paper bags perched expectantly on the sides of our desks. The “popular” kids’ bags brimmed over with the bright red missives of “love.” Invariably mine was, as Tony Soprano would say, “a little light.” I felt like a “reject” or a “queer,” back when that word was not associated with sexual orientation but rather with being weird and outcast. By the time they made the rule, it was way too late for my battered ego. And I knew that the kids only stuffed my mailbox because they “had to.” But I would have felt like a reject anyway because that is how a child internalizes neglect. I am ignored because I’m worthless, or worse.
As I got older, I was so used to being a misfit, an introvert, and later a rebel, that I did not get caught in the romance around Valentine’s Day. But I certainly saw the big build-up and letdown among so many of the kids around me. Valentine’s Day can be a dreaded nightmare for many who are unpartnered and often even worse for those that are.
As a couples’ therapist, working with many clients who have histories of childhood trauma and neglect, I am faced daily with major disconnects and misunderstandings between them about “what makes me feel loved” and giving and receiving. Valentine’s Day can be a veritable hornet’s nest for both, resulting in major ruptures and hurt feelings that endure like the ghosts of Valentine’s Day past. Oy vey.
This year I had an idea to help my struggling couples. In anticipation of the potentially spikey day, I thought, how about if we head it off with a conversation or two about “what makes me feel loved.” I still feel shame about my ungracious response to a beautiful gift my husband had picked out and bought for me over 25 years ago. I was convinced he bought that instead of the printer I wanted for my computer out of stinginess. It was only much later that I learned that the gift he had bought me, a set of Italian ceramic canisters for my baking ingredients, cost at least five times as much as the lowly printer I had requested. I still have the canisters, and besides being a lovely home for my various flours, they are a ready reminder that I do have the power to inflict great hurt.
The child of neglect can readily believe that only someone who “matters” has the power to inflict harm, to be mean. Someone inconsequential is not important enough to injure another. Not! It is a myth essential to be corrected and healed for the sake of all involved!
For many, it is a hard question to answer, even about oneself. What makes me feel loved? And if I don’t know, I certainly can’t communicate it intelligibly to my partner, who may be “trying,” failing, and lapsing into hopelessness, impatience, frustration, and even ultimately anger. If pleasing me is enough of a moving target, of course, they will give up in fatigue and despair. Then I can insist I was “right!” I am simply not worth the trouble. I have the insidious power to fulfill my own bitter prophecy.
For many, it is a hard question to answer, even about oneself. What makes me feel loved?
At the core of childhood neglect is the often unremembered and nonetheless indelible experience or perception of rejection. It is a ready and “logical” interpretation for a seemingly chronic lack of attention or priority: I am unwanted, unworthy, undesirable, unlovable. And it is a “handy” default that can readily slide, often before they even know it, into withdrawal, sulkiness, or even unwitting rejection of others.
I remember years ago, my therapist saying to me, with that sledgehammer voice she sometimes used to get through my thick cloud of triggered mud, “YOU’RE the rejector!” I did not get it – when I shut down as impenetrably as Fort Knox after a perceived a slight, a whiff of dislike, complaint, or judgment towards me, I am. I did not recognize that what I thought of as my “self-protection” or quiet scream of “leave me alone!” could even be experienced as harshness or even hostility. Frankly, it simply did not occur to me that I could have an impact. Again, that is the mark of neglect. Whatever the child might do to attract or garner the loving attention they crave does not work. I never imagined that I could be mean or rejecting. Not me!
Valentine’s Day can indeed pose special challenges for the child of neglect of any age. The core dilemma surrounding neglect is the gnawing ambivalence about interpersonal connection. There is, to a varying degree, the quaking ache of longing for closeness in a fierce tug of war with the terror and even rage around abandonment and loss. It can be a persisting plague that might feel or seem unresolvable. I used to berate myself with, “I simply can’t get along with humans.” And many survivors of neglect tend to “people” their relationship world with animals instead. I have (long) since joyfully and gratefully proven myself wrong. It is not an easy journey, but imminently possible and definitely worth it. I have also learned that when neglect survivor clients seem viciously rejecting of me, they may really be wishing I might “find them in their hiding place.” Or perhaps unwittingly showing me how it was.
Another of Valentine’s challenges has to do with gifts, as in the case of my canister set. It may be a day when we hope or wish for a particular gift from that special person: flowers, chocolates, or something personal. Again, gifts can embody the dilemma. If I permit you to get it “right,” do I run the risk of puncturing my wall of solitude and self-reliance? Without realizing it, one may become the rejector. I always say, “It takes humility to receive a gift, to let the other know what would indeed hit the mark, and make me feel loved.”
There is no one “right,” “normal” or “best” expression of love. I encourage us all to examine our own “not me,” let others know what makes us feel loved, and give love a chance!
There is no one “right,” “normal” or “best” expression of love.
In 1988, the renowned author and playwright Eve Ensler had the idea of rebranding February 14 as V Day. In conjunction with her historic theater piece that rocked the world, the Vagina Monologues, it was to be a day devoted to ending violence against women, girls, and the planet, V being for vulva or vagina. Ensler subsequently changed her name to “V.”
Transforming or expanding the focus and intent of Valentine’s Day is a fine idea! To teach our loved ones how they can effectively communicate love to us and thereby break the chain of rejection is a greater or lesser form of eradicating at least some measure of “violence.” Betty Dodson, champion of the female orgasm, was known for saying, “Viva la Vulva!”
Thanks, Betty! Thanks, V! And Happy V Day to all!
Today’s song articulates the complexity of love, and is in honor of David Crosby, who left us on January 18, 2023.
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.
WARNING: This blog includes graphic content that may be disturbing to some readers.
I suppose by now it is naive to be shocked by yet another traffic-stop murder of a young Black man. The death of Tyre Nichols, however, flooded me with feelings. We have been virtually barraged by mass shootings here in California, with a tally of 19 dead in the space of 44 hours this month. But in this case, as in the case of George Floyd, the murder was flesh on flesh: knee to neck, flying fists, feet and batons against body – something about how visceral, how undisguisedly vulnerable, human and inhuman it was, is particularly chilling about Nichols’murder. I most intentionally do not watch the videos, but what others tell me is how fiercely, vividly out of control the five officers seemed, like the frenzied scenes in the classic novel Lord of the Flies that haunted me back when I first read it, probably almost 60 years ago. And in this case, it was Black flesh on Black flesh, which makes about as much sense as parents or spouses brutalizing their own flesh and blood or their intimate partners.
There is a legacy, heritage, of centuries of brutal beatings in this country, remembered in the Black body: centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, Rodney King in 1991, so many traumatic generations of transmission. The fact that this murder was perpetrated by African American officers does not make it any less a racist crime. This case shows us how the lack of trauma-informed healing, education and policy morphs into more crime. It is a horrifying reminder of the essential nature of our work. As we know, trauma is not remembered but relived, and tragically often re-enacted. Not always, of course, and thankfully, but often enough – way too much, really.
One of many reasons I have found couples’ therapy with survivors of trauma and neglect so compelling is because of how dramatically and even explicitly the trauma stories make themselves known.
One of many reasons I have found couples’ therapy with survivors of trauma and neglect so compelling is because of how dramatically and even explicitly the trauma stories make themselves known. I always say to my clients (and sometimes my husband!), “Nothing is activating like the intimate partnership!” Perhaps the couple is as “family-like” as any relationship, so we regroup the trauma family in this “new” configuration, and it becomes the stage for the story to unwittingly unfold. Oy vey! So, the couple’s therapist sees dynamics, and often well-hidden aspects of a person, that the individual therapist might never see or imagine. Clients do get angry or shut down with the individual therapist, and to greater or lesser extents, the transference projections appear. But however, regrettably, I do know that my husband has seen the worst of me like no one else has. And as a result, the fact that he is still there makes him a reassuring beacon of safety like I have never known. Those couples who stay the course get to enjoy that outcome too. This is not to say that I never lapse into, usually and hopefully, momentary states of unbidden memory. But I/we become much more able to find our way back to the prefrontal cortex fairly quickly. And yes, long and diligent work is required.
It continues to amaze me how diametrically, stunningly, my perceptions can become distorted, even now. If there is something I am particularly uncertain or insecure about, my lens perceiving judgment and rejection under every rock zooms into the forefront, like when I hit the “zoom in” option on my View menu and the whole screen leaps out at me. Suddenly I am that little godforsaken neglected girl again who can’t trust anyone, whom everyone is “out to get”, as our dad would say. And I am unshakably believing it. Reassuring words annoy me, rolling off like water off a duck’s back. Yeah, but… Perhaps after some gentle and nourishing sleep or a nice long stir of the cheese vat, the whole world looks different. I can see the exaggeration and distortion and find compassion for whomever I may have villainized or projected onto. Of course, usually, there is a kernel of something to pay attention to in real-time. But it is no longer catastrophic as it had seemed when I was activated. Often all that is required is settling the addled nervous system or simple rest. So simple, and yet how messed up the world becomes without… Oy vey!
Yes, even now, I am visited by episodes. But I can generally keep from embarrassing myself, recognize them reasonably quickly and locate the MIA prefrontal cortex, where my self-knowledge, good sense and generosity live. The more work we do, the quicker the turnaround, which is why I am such a stickler for doing the work, and staying the course, whatever that might mean in your lexicon.
Life is infinitely less “dangerous” now, at least in the interpersonal field, which was always the most volatile (and generally is for those with trauma and neglect – at least those of us privileged enough to live in the First World or where there is not a literal war going on…) And now I do, in fact, have the unthinkable: support, places to turn, and even internal resources.
It seems to me in the trauma field, we used to talk about it more: the fragmentation of the self. We described the fractured self: “hyperarousal” and “numbing,” limbic versus prefrontal: dissociation. Maybe it is my imagination, but we don’t seem to use that language much anymore.
Sometimes, it really seems like a mini Apartheid, a polarity between “Me” and “Not Me,” or a split self. One can think I am “crazy,” “schizophrenic”, or who is that? Like the old game show “Truth or Consequences,” where the contestants had to guess who was the “real” one of the three characters in the described story, hidden behind the screen. It seems to me in the trauma field, we used to talk about it more: the fragmentation of the self. We described the fractured self: “hyperarousal” and “numbing,” limbic versus prefrontal: dissociation. Maybe it is my imagination, but we don’t seem to use that language much anymore. In that “other” state, we “turn into someone else.” I wonder who those five Black cops were as children, as spouses, as targeted young Black men themselves, and what inhabited them and took them over to flip into such monsters? This is not to excuse them in any way, but to remind us that it is our duty to the world, as well as ourselves and known loved ones, to do our work, and to help others do theirs, so we don’t continue this hellish chain of trauma, neglect, injustice and insanity.
I date myself as I remember growing up hearing about the “Iron Curtain” and the “Berlin Wall,” dramatic bifurcations on a mass scale. My childhood image was of a larger-than-life chain mail shower curtain encircling the huge amoeba-like shape of Russia on the map. The massive brick wall dividing family from family in Berlin was easier to picture. The fracture of self was in the daily news. It made no sense, but it was familiar. How do we get anywhere if we cannot even knit back together what was once (hopefully) singular? Again, we must, of course, start with ourselves. Then our partners and families, and our communities. Then the world.
Evolutionary biologists remind us that inclusion is a survival need. As mammals, pack animals; without it, we die. When we fear we are, or actually are, “outside,“ we go into the extremes of self-preservation-terror, flee, or fight all too often. And we end up with a messed-up world. I was rattled by the flicker of a long unremembered childhood ditty, “London Bridge is falling down…” I looked up the lyrics and found that after the refrain, “My fair lady…” the verse continues: “Who has stole my watch and chain…”” then, “off to prison you must go…My fair lady…” and finally “- take the key and lock her up… my fair lady…” Do the kids still sing that?
“Not one more!” is the cry both about senseless murders, civil wars, and ravaged, traumatized, neglected selves.
Today’s song: “A Desalambrar! Tear Down the Fences!”
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.