Anyone who has known me more than a minute has heard me, probably ad nauseum, reference the renowned relationship researcher John Gottman. Gottman, originally an MIT-trained mathematician, changed direction to a study of psychology, mostly to try and figure out why he couldn’t get a date. The result – 40 years of longitudinal data about what makes relationships work and the predictive factors of separation and divorce. He also wound up with his long-term partner and collaborator, Julie Gottman, although I don’t know the story there.
I have great respect, admiration, and gratitude for good researchers. I certainly would not be able to do it, and probably wouldn’t care to, but research changes history, makes our work credible on a larger scale, and also can serve as an often much-needed guide, especially in something like psychotherapy which hovers somewhere between science, art, and some think alchemy.
One of my favorite tenets of Gottman’s research, which is central to my work, is the simple and undeniably well-proven principle, that in a relationship, to break even – not make progress and not backslide, but simply maintain equilibrium – the ratio of positive to negative is (drum roll) 5:1. Just to break even. That means appreciation, compliments, smiles, and gestures of affection. It can be most anything positive to the other, measured against complaints, criticism, grumbles, etc.
Certainly, in the neglect experience, these random shots of positivity are glaringly absent. Our best hope may be to exist, which may not be such a positive thing… So I am always looking to inject positivity whenever I can, which is not always easy in the bleak landscape of trauma and neglect. As we know from operant conditioning, the principle on which neurofeedback is based, the brain responds most favorably and learns from “reward,” so positive feedback is, by nature, re-enforcing. An additional win! 5:1 or better is a quick and sure way to change the “weather” in a relationship. A positive spin on “climate change!”
Gottman also reminds us, perhaps reassuringly, that evolutionarily speaking, relationships are significantly different now. It was not much more than a hundred years ago that our species did not live long past our reproductive years. Once the mandate to preserve the species was accomplished, monogamous partnership was not, at least biologically, essential anymore. Now we live decades beyond child-bearing and are challenged to maintain harmony, let alone eroticism, until death do us part. We are in a slow and trying process of changing nature’s design.
In the neglect household, as in much of the world, really, sex is not talked about. Certainly not in any kind of constructive or instructive way. In the world of trauma, and in general, we mostly hear or speak about sex in its worst light: abuse, exploitation, trafficking, harassment, commodification, and aggression, both micro and macro.
I thought, how about ringing in this new year with something positive about sex? Next week is Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit. A lover of animals, I appreciate the tradition of each year correlating to one or another species. Besides their reputation for liberally proliferating, I also like the idea of jumping, rabbit-like, into this year.
“Sex-positive” has become something of a buzzy designation, kind of like “trauma-informed:” a sub-credential attempting to offer a space safe where people are free to speak or be open about sexual matters and be accepted and understood.
“Sex-positive” has become something of a buzzy designation, kind of like “trauma-informed:” a sub-credential attempting to offer a space safe where people are free to speak or be open about sexual matters and be accepted and understood. When I first started training for sex therapy, I quickly discovered the work of Peggy Kleinplatz, whom I think of as the best sex therapist in the world. Additionally, Kleinplatz is a researcher and a professor – truly a pro. When I first saw her at a conference, I was amazed at how such a giant could be so diminutive, with beautiful hair almost as long as she is tall. I hope it is not sexist that I describe her appearance, as I certainly do not mean to diminish any of her other attributes!
At one of those first conferences was an opportunity for “Breakfast with the Presenters.” I managed to be early enough to score a seat at the smallish round table with Peggy Kleinplatz! I was so starstruck I really could not speak or ask my questions, let alone eat! We have since become friends, and I have since been the presenter at one of those tables. It is a distant and sweet memory.
One of Peggy’s great achievements and contributions is that for several decades she has been seriously studying the positive: the elements of long-term, satisfying, monogamous sex. She has interviewed thousands of self-identified sexually happy long-term couples of every stripe to answer the question, how do they do it? How do they keep sex from devolving into “drudgery and begrudgery?” (Confession: I stole that catchy turn of phrase from Bono’s recent memoir. The book isn’t great, but that line is brilliant! I wish I could claim it!) Peggy came up with thousands of couples who could do it. (She studied non-monogamous couples as well, not to discriminate!) I was delighted when in 2020 she came out with a popular book, Magnificent Sex: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers. Circumstances change, bodies change, and health intrudes, and yet these couples continue passionately going strong. How do they do it?
Not only sexual trauma but trauma in general, including neglect, can wreak all sorts of havoc in the sexual body of an individual.
I won’t spoil it. Everyone should read this book. I will simply recount a few highlights. Peggy describes her incipient interest in the project, which proceeded to span decades. As I have said before, therapists, or people in general really, enter the sex therapy field out of some particular fascination (preoccupation?) with sex. Admittedly true for me. However, I was also faced with couples with one or another iteration of a sexual impasse daily. Not only sexual trauma but trauma in general, including neglect, can wreak all sorts of havoc in the sexual body of an individual. Requiring a delicate balance between sympathetic (excitement) and parasympathetic (calm), the dysregulated traumatized organism is challenged. (Much more to be said about this expansive subject in future writings!) In the case of neglect trauma, abundant anecdotal observation has revealed complex sexual difficulties based on the profound ambivalence, if not crisis, about interpersonal need. The child of neglect is compelled by both interpersonal longings and terror, which creates an additional dilemma around sex. Again, much more to be said about this, but I promised to keep it positive today!
Peggy began her exploration by asking new sex therapy clients who came in complaining of (or being complained about!) “diminished sexual desire” to describe their time of greatest sexual longing, realized or not. Remarkably, they all had some. Says Peggy, if we want to inspire sexual desire, we must have a vision or experience of “sex worth wanting!” Seems so obvious, no?
I will jump ahead to the “lessons,” partly because I encourage you to get it straight from Peggy (and her co-author, whom I do not know, but do not wish to neglect, A. Dana Menard,) and because I want to leave you with something positive. And admittedly because I risk going on all day about this!
The top three ingredients of magnificent sex, according to Kleinplatz and Menard’s research, are (drum roll): presence, superb communication, and exquisite empathy. So it is not about novelty or rose petals, fancy positions or role plays, but the most longed-for and most tragically missing ingredients in the neglect experience, and in the world, really. What a magnificent world it would be if we all cultivated and practiced those three! So, there you have it. As Rabbi Hillel would say, “Now go and study!”
The welcome earworm in my head jumping into 2023 and the Year of the Rabbit is John and Yoko’s timeless 1969 classic Give Peace a Chance. “All we are saying is give peace a chance…” I would take it even further and add “Give Magnificence a Chance” (And my own additional verse, “Give Sleep a Chance!”)
Kung Hei Fat Choi!
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.
I hate it when I don’t follow my own advice, and even more, I hate admitting it. Way back when we got the Trump government in 2016, it seemed as if everyone went out of their minds daily, experiencing some variety of trauma activation from some latest news item. The restimulations were neverending. I urgently admonished everyone, including myself, to regulate their news consumption! But one thing I never stopped doing was tuning in to the BBC first thing after waking up. I managed my quantity pretty well, but the timing, well, not so much. First thing in the morning is a delicate moment. On November 22nd, shortly after awakening, I flipped on the news to a passing clip of literally seconds, announcing, “…Pablo Milanés has died. He was 79.” It hit me like bricks and then an immediate avalanche of memory.
Pablo, along with his colleague and often collaborator Silvio Rodriguez, was the founding voice of the Nueva Trova Cubana, the New Cuban Song Movement emerging in the late 1960s. A mix of traditional and folk rhythms and instruments with political, social, lyrical, and popular themes, the “trova” was the soundtrack of some of my loneliest, most painful, and at the time, inexplicably difficult post-traumatic years. Pablo’s honey-like baritone was the ever-available company and comforting accompaniment to the darkest of times. His song Tengo (I Have) is the epitome of gratitude: a musical accounting of all the precious things one has. It became my favorite song of all time.
Pablo also introduced me to the exquisite poetry of Jose Marti, which he even more exquisitely transformed into glorious song. I keep only two CDs in my car for those times when I am completely addled by the Bay Bridge traffic: Pablo’s Versos de Jose Marti and Silvio’s Mujeres. They unfailingly get me over the bridge and home. It was on my bucket list to see Pablo in person. I did manage to see Silvio in Oakland once. But Pablo – it never came to be. Now it never will. I was heartbroken.
Attachment trauma makes relationships such a minefield, a Rubik’s cube of challenges.
Attachment trauma makes relationships such a minefield, a Rubik’s cube of challenges. Loving and often idealizing iconic figures I had never met was a way to populate a lonely world—an illusion of a relationship, certainly company in the bittersweet solitude. I say bittersweet because being alone was a refuge: a cozy, comfortable, safe place, like my carnation pink weighted blanket, where, when swaddled in its soft and caressing velvet folds, I find restful peace. But at the same time, it was the gnawing echo of being left alone too much, the punishing, unchosen, agonizing solitude that defies nature’s design and evokes something else. We cannot “remember“ our infancy. But the aching heart and disproportional, unrelenting pain of loss that feels like dying is usually an undeniable clue that the core injury was interpersonal and usually unimaginably early. Even if all the family lore might tell us that there were people there who loved us, hidden in the deep recesses of brain and body is a story of parents who, for whatever reason, simply couldn’t.
“Hero worship” became a middle ground for me. There were important people in my life who I did not have to worry about whether they liked me; they taught and influenced me, became my beloved role models. Sometimes I made an effort to learn about their real lives, which was much harder before we had Google, Wikipedia, and other technological avenues of inquiry. Other times I did not, and often, in fact, ignorance is bliss – finding out who the real person is can be a disappointment or even a blow. I did not want to know if there was animosity or competition between Pablo and Silvio in real life. I wanted to get lost in the harmony. Reading the recent memoir by Bono is a case in point. Although he is not on my shortlist, I have always admired and appreciated him, and still do. But I don’t “like” him very much. Just as many solve the conundrum of intimacy by creating a fantasy cyber sexual world, a “relationship” that is quiet, interior and inherently safe fills a certain void – sort of. Thankfully, now on my own Tengo accounting, I have both. But the loss of Pablo is still a blow.
Trauma has no time sense, no time stamp, as it were.
For the child of neglect, loss and disappointment seem on the order of life-threatening. In their own minds, the intensity is completely normal, even “reasonable,” like ambient air. Often a partner or loved one simply cannot understand why experimentation, or even moderate risk, is not an option. What is the big deal? Hope and disappointment are to be avoided like the plague, because the primal loss was in the domain of survival. An infant alone will die, and the early, unremembered experience of being left, even the later remembered experiences of inexplicable invisibility or abandonment, strike way too close to feeling fatal.
Things never did change in that family, or not in a good way. The very notion that someone would change who or how they are out of love for me? Out of the question. It is what makes relationship therapy such a hard sell for so many adult children of neglect. What’s the point? Things don’t change, not for the better, and certainly not in relationships. The risk of disappointment is simply too great, not worth it. Where, on one hand, disappointment is a fact of life, as familiar as an old shoe, that it is almost like a companion on the trail for many the child of neglect, it is to be avoided at all costs – which can also be a sticking point in couples. Often, I struggle with those close to me being “hope averse,” or I am impatient with their hopelessness. I have to work hard to stay empathic and compassionate; perhaps it strikes too close to my own mostly healed trauma.
Certain catchphrases from years of training in whatever discipline have always stuck in my mind. One that is indelibly etched is “the amygdala knows no time.” Trauma has no time sense, no time stamp, as it were. I used to wonder why in my art therapy drawings and paintings I so often produced a clock stopped at 4:10. I don’t know why. But I do know that trauma feels interminable, like it will never end, while also being at dizzying, breakneck speeds. In a split second, the world has crashed irreversibly into something else. I remember being told that the “nature of the beast,” in this case, the beast being depression, was that while in it feels like it will never end. However, in the rearview, it is hard to imagine or even remember how or why it felt that bad. “Pandemic time” is kind of like that…
All the trauma treatment modalities I studied seemed to have a protocol or practice for awakening a sense of time, a sense of movement. In EMDR, it was “what happens next?” In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, it would be following the sensation as it morphs into one and the next iteration of itself and moves through the body. In some relaxation approaches, there would be counting. The intention is to activate a sense of movement, of time passing, of a possibility, a seed of change, of something different being possible. That is perhaps one reason why we measure anniversaries and orbits around the sun. We need to know that there is some forward movement and a reason to keep going. That is what I like best about the changing of the year. Something old is closed; something new will open in its place. Grief, if not ending altogether, will diminish and change over time. Something else will take its place. Cheesemaking, gardening, pregnancy: these are endeavors that we can only undertake if we believe there will be a future. Why else would we spend hours and sometimes backbreaking effort for something that takes months or longer to come to fruition?
I wish for all that the closing of the year will bring a promise of something different and better. One thing I love about Tengo, is the recounting of life treasures connotes that these are perhaps things I did not have before, or that many do not have. The line that invariably still brings me to tears is when Pablo sings ”Aprendi a leer, a contar, y aprendi a escribir!” I learned to read, to count, and I learned to write!” What blessings!
I close the year with these words translated from Jose Marti’s Versos Sencillos, “Simple Verses:”
Everything is beautiful and constant
Everything is music and reason,
And everything, like the diamond,
Before light, is coal.
Gracias, Pablo. Happy New Year
Today’s song is the beautiful Tengo by Pablo Milanés. I hope you love it as much as I do.
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.
Many people don’t know that Chanukah is a holiday about miracles. Ironically, at least in the US, the winter holiday season tends to be an extra hard or outright miserable time for so many people, especially those who have complicated or nonexistent relationships with family, leaving them feeling more lonely and ashamed than usual. With all the emphasis on celebrating and gifts, not having enough money or not receiving invitations or presents might add to feeling like a misfit, or a worthless being. That was certainly true for me, although I made a production of creating and giving gifts. I suppose that helped. Add to that the dark and cold season, and it all becomes a recipe for bleakness. Last week as December was just starting, I thought I would write about something inspirational or upbeat, like the recent serendipitous experience I had in Hawaii that I like to call Fire on the Mountain. I sat down to write.
But as I sat staring at the blank screen, I found myself typing “World of Neglect,” and, for whatever reason, fixating on the story of Brittney Griner. I complained about the biting chill of 41 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) here these days, which to us in San Francisco is a “cold snap.” I wondered what the temperature would be in the Gulag-like conditions of Griner’s Mordovia prison camp. Again, I am no sports fan, but for some reason, I am compelled and fascinated by the stories of brilliant athletes. Griner’s story grabbed me from the day it broke back in February, now ten months ago.
I am often disgusted and angered by the fickle and sensational news business, where a story hits and captures widespread concern, even outrage, only to sink into the quicksand of world neglect, upstaged by the next big story. I felt like Griner was all too rapidly forgotten, disappearing into the gaping void of world neglect. At least as far as I knew. I had to wonder, would she have been so easy to forget if she was white and straight? If it were, say, the cherubic blond quarterback of our local football team, the man I call “Lover-Boy,” would he have been forgotten and left to languish in the bowels of a Russian nightmare? My more hard-headed and politically-unbiased husband probably said so. But I am not convinced.
Unable to refocus on my “positive” agenda, I began researching Griner, curious to find out more about her story. I find her beautiful and her 6 foot nine (205.74 cm) frame so elegant and striking that it rather shocked me to learn that, always taller than her peers growing up in Houston, she suffered miserably and was mercilessly bullied in school. The other kids called her a “freak,” and she believed them. She was already suicidal by junior high school. And as she got older, wrestling with her sexuality, she finally summoned the courage to come out to her parents. Upon hearing it, her (most likely traumatized) Vietnam veteran father lost no time in kicking her out. That was all I could find about her sad childhood. But that colored my already bleak thoughts about her, locked away, forgotten in Siberia-like hard labor conditions. All day I could not shake the image of Brittney Griner, forgotten. I had not had a day like that before, fixated on her, a political football (basketball?) punted into outer space.
The next morning in the wee hours, I turned on the radio as I always do. The first thing I heard was that Brittney Griner was free! She was on the plane and on her way home. Admittedly I was instantly in tears. How did this happen?!
I am often disgusted and angered by the fickle and sensational news business, where a story hits and captures widespread concern, even outrage, only to sink into the quicksand of world neglect, upstaged by the next big story.
We had the good fortune to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday on our beloved “home away from home,” the Big Island of Hawaii. We spent our first couple of days on the northeastern side of the island in Volcano, the little town where the famed Mauna Loa volcano majestically stands. After a lovely visit there, we took our leave, heading south to Kona on my favorite, the sunny side of the island. No sooner had we arrived in Kona, we heard the news that Mauna Loa had explosively erupted the day after we left, like it had not done since 1984. Although our friends who lived there assured us that they were safe and all was well, we kept hearing news reports of lava creeping and spilling further and ever wider across the roads. We felt as if we had dodged a bullet.
We had arranged for a day excursion during our time in Kona, up the 8,500-foot (2,590 meters) peak of Hualalai Mountain there. We had never been up there before, a bucket list item of my husband’s. It was to be a guided tour led by a lovely native guide named Kimo in his trusty but clearly well-worn Jeep off-road vehicle. We set out early, just the three of us, starting the long and rickety climb up the incredibly steep, rocky dirt road, and all the while, Kimo entertained us with stories about growing up with his 52 cousins, their parents, and grandparents on this sacred land. He pointed out elaborate ecosystems, describing how a beautiful creeping vine grew around the precious and sensitive Koa trees to protect them from the sun’s heat, so they could thrive. He also told us the sad story, common to so many native peoples, about how the government had quadrupled property taxes so quickly that his family were forced off their beloved ancestral land, and it was sold off to wealthy real estate developers. Kimo and many like him had to go to work building the very resort homes that took over their ancestral land, torn by compromise but dependent on the work to feed their kids. It reminded me of concentration camp victims and political prisoners forced to dig their own graves.
Kimo was especially proud of Hualalai, which was most dear to his beloved grandmother. He was glad to have the opportunity to take us up there, and he had not been up there in over a week. After about 40 minutes lumbering and rumbling up the mountain, we reached the spot where the much-needed (by me) restroom was located. Kimo pulled over and I dashed inside. Emerging relieved, I saw Kimo madly running into the bushes toward rising smoke. The mountain was on fire.
We threw all the bottled water he had packed into the jeep onto the smoldering embers to little avail, and apologetically, Kimo hurriedly told us we had to cancel the tour. Of course! But he felt terrible about it.
Like a racecar driver, Kimo got us down the ragged mountain in no time and called his community to help him come and fight the fire. He was so grateful to us! If we had not booked the tour, and if I had not had to go to the bathroom, he would not have been there to see the smoking embers spread into incipient flames. The whole mountain would have burned down. How do these things happen?
How does it happen that we serendipitously meet that certain person? How do stars seem miraculously to line up just so? What is the power of positive thinking, of good works?
What does Brittney Griner have to do with Mauna Loa and Hualalai, trauma and neglect, you and me? I strive to be scientific about cause and effect, although there are things that we cannot explain, sometimes very wonderful. How does it happen that we serendipitously meet that certain person? How do stars seem miraculously to line up just so? What is the power of positive thinking, of good works? Sometimes out of the depth of dark despair, we are surprised by something inexplicably wonderful. A Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I am told, teaches that on certain days of the year, one’s good karmic works are multiplied a hundred million-fold. I make my donations to suicide prevention on those days. I like to think I can save a hundred million lives. Who knows? I guess we must just hang in and do our best!
Best wishes of the season! And to all a good night!
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 started therapy in 1978, long before many of my readers were born, our mom muttered bitterly, not quite under her breath, “…the ‘blame your mother’ generation!” I have no idea why I even told her. From then forward, my therapist ever retained her reign as “public enemy number one.” Blame is not my paradigm – that I want to underline – and my purpose is anything but that! Rather connecting perhaps counterintuitive dots, that might lead to better self-understanding is my wish. And admittedly, sharing insights that might be interesting to me.
Similarly, “Refrigerators, Helicopters and Tigers” (oh my!) may seem to evoke Dorothy exclaiming the perils of a terrifying world or a bad joke (what do the three have in common…) So, bear with me please as I seek to elucidate more less than obvious expressions of neglect.
Again, the deepest and most injurious sequela of neglect is the rupture or failure of the primary, most important attachment(s,) most notably with the mother whose body houses the child at first, and ideally would continue as a home and source of comfort, regulation, and protection from the perils of that dangerous world.
Perhaps the most integral and the first vehicle of comfort and regulation is the “simple” experience of being seen. Gazing into the face of a present and loving (ideally calm and regulated) other is foundational. Brain development begins with the resonant dance of the gaze and evolves into being accurately heard and responded to. Not perfectly of course. It seems so simple, no? A no brainer in more ways than one. Sadly, it is so very often lacking. Missteps and mistakes, of course, are part of the deal, but with repair, we are actually better for them. Confidence or knowledge that repair is possible makes the inevitability of imperfection bearable and survivable.
The most devastating impact of neglect is the deathlike loneliness of not feeling seen, but even worse, not being or feeling known. When I am known as me, as distinctly, uniquely ME, this means I exist. This feeling or sense that I exist may, with luck, evolve to a sense of self, and with even more luck, a sense of self-worth: I exist, and I matter. Without it, we may drift unmoored in a foreign world, wondering what is wrong.
Gazing into the face of a present and loving (ideally calm and regulated) other is foundational.
I recently encountered the term, previously unknown to me, “Refrigerator Mom.” (If not for the chill factor, I would associate such a label with an abundance of food!) I came to find out that, in 1943, Austrian psychiatrist Leo Kanner theorized that cold, unresponsive, and emotionally inattentive parenting resulted in children who failed to develop and retreated from social contact. Kanner identified the child’s aloneness from early in life as the explanation for autism. In the later 1940s through the 1960s, Bruno Bettelheim, renowned psychologist, researcher, and educator at the University of Chicago, advanced further acceptance of the theory with the medical establishment and with the wider public.
Although understanding of autism has evolved since then, I find it interesting that some time ago, the connections were already being drawn between maternal emotional distance/absence, the young, developing brain, and subsequent social withdrawal. I also think that my serious, intellectual, decidedly cool-tempered, proudly Oxford-educated grandmother might have qualified as a refrigerator mother to our mom. She was stiff and unaffectionate, undemonstrative and matter of fact. She certainly was not a fairytale baking and gift-bestowing type of grandmother, either, and when our mother was a child, pre-Holocaust, being of substantial means, I am sure nannies contributed to the distance. No wonder our mom, from my point of view, was disconnected and lacking in emotion, presence, and warmth.
Confidence or knowledge that repair is possible makes the inevitability of imperfection bearable and survivable.
In our part of the world, hovering in the shadow of Silicon Valley, where many over-achievers are made, horizons are crowded with the so-called Helicopter Moms. These are the micro-managing moms that are on top of the child’s every move, pushing and pulling, prescribing and buzzing, or roaring as it were around the suffocated and overstimulated child. The hovercraft is everywhere, researching and making decisions for the breathless little one, who has no opportunity to even see what the choices might be. Play dates, after-school activities, sports teams… These are the parents overzealous in the stands, cheering the child on as if their lives depended on winning the championships.
In his 2017 book, The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life, professional baseball manager Mike Matheny describes in detail the behavior of these roaring sports “chopper” parents, many of them trying to compensate for their own mediocrity, or failure, living vicariously through their young jock child. Mothers are far from immune. The incidence of Tommy John shoulder surgery, once unique to elite professional pitchers, has proliferated among younger and younger kids, being allowed and perhaps overly encouraged to practice and play too much.
Helicopter mothers are of course not limited to athletics, but it is a good example of the child being micromanaged, controlled, pressured to perform in some way that does not originate with their own will and preference, and too much. The same can be true for playing a musical instrument, some other form of art, academics… anything really. In effect, the child is a foil or surrogate, an alter-ego, and not a unique and treasured individual. Treasured most specifically for their exquisite uniqueness.
The term Tiger Mothers was originally associated with Chinese mothers who mercilessly pushed their children academically to the point of illness and injury. In effect, it is a variety of abuse. Although that is where we got the term, I am more inclusive in how I would use it, having seen examples of these poor, exhausted kids across national and ethnic borders. I have been amazed hearing what kids had to do to be accepted to a local high school, in the way of not only academics and sports, but additional extracurricular activities (not to mention the application process itself and the tuition costs of such schools!) I would be breathless and wiped out from merely hearing about it! Perhaps the mothers did not roar or bite, but ferocity of the wild feline often sadly did seem to fit. I would find myself uncertain as to whether it was good news or not when the final acceptance or rejection from the school arrived.
It may seem counterintuitive to recognize profound neglect in such seemingly attentive, “involved,” seemingly child-centered parents. It is similarly painstakingly challenging to help such a child of any age recognize their experience as neglect. Some may be blindly “successful” in their honed abilities and live dissociated and detached socially and/or emotionally: Kanner’s autism. Some may crash in their struggle around partnering, finding the fulfillment of the marriage and family part of the script beyond their super capabilities. Some may be like the superstar Miss USA, Cheslie Kryst, who seemed to have it all, and shocked the world when she committed suicide by jumping from a high building. As Amy Tan powerfully stated, “loneliness is not about being alone, it is about not feeling understood.”
In spite of being seemingly swaddled with devoted attention, when what is being seen is not really me, it can be some of the most devastating, life-destroying iterations of neglect. Especially as the child, whatever their age, feels so guilty and unentitled to feel bad.
I recently heard an interview with Michelle Obama, talking about her new book, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. She said that we can create authentically independent, strong, and self-actualized kids by being present as long as they need it, then showing them that we trust them enough to let them do it their own way. Parents evolve, she said, from “managers to advisors,” thus enabling kids to grow into, and feel free/able to manifest, their own unique authenticity; kids that have the delicious opportunity to say with pleasure and pride, “That’s me!”
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.
I really only remember seeing our dad cry once. Our family all piled into the old Chevy wagon, driving in a torrential New York City downpour. I don’t remember what he was upset about; it was rather a flashbulb image of his face, framed in the rearview mirror, with a backdrop of the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Finding it unbearable to see him that way, I focused on the rhythmic back and forth of the wipers, slap, slap, slap.
That sudden flash of recall unleashed a chain of other snippets of time in the car, which were rarely much fun. Our mom was perennially anxious, and what I recall most about being in an enclosed energy field of her pulsing hyperarousal was a gripping in my stomach, which I can feel just thinking about it. Our dad loved looking at airplanes, and he sometimes seemed even to be teasing her by enthusiastically following their flight with his eyes clearly not on the road. I remember her saying, “Achh.. do me a favor…” with her fingers spread wide like rakes, nails dug into the sides of her seat. She was similarly rattled by some random driver recklessly “weaving” back and forth across multiple lanes, grabbing an extra car length this way and that to gain speed and time. She was jumpy and also convinced we would all meet up at the next signal anyway.
I rather disliked the harsh association between reckless driving and “weaving.” I loved sewing from an early age and so loved fabrics and textiles. As I got into my early teens, I was fascinated with weaving, particularly Andean weaving. I had a small wooden frame loom and tried my hand at simple designs, never getting very good at it. My childhood boyfriend had a Greek friend named Thalia. She was a ”real” weaver and had an enormous floor loom that took up much of a room. I remember being enthralled watching the shuttle fly back and forth, back and forth, creating beautiful patterns. I still have a deliciously warm blanket she wove over fifty years ago. That steady toss back and forth of the shuttle made for a durable and strong mesh that still warms me almost daily.
The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it.
It has been heartbreaking hearing the urgent reports about the floods in Pakistan. I can barely imagine one-third of a country being underwater. One story particularly jarred me. There was a first storm that seemed to be clearing. Streets were beginning to drain; the sky freshly scrubbed, bright and blue, puffy white clouds ringed by breakthrough sunlight. People began to cautiously venture out and gradually celebrate that the storm had passed.
But the lull was short-lived. It was not long before the sky closed and darkened again, and the brief respite was chased off-stage by yet another ferocious onslaught of storm waters. Somehow that feeling touched a chord in me, felt familiar, of being elated that something unbearable might have passed and dismayed or devastated to find that it had not, or not for long. Again, like being batted back and forth.
I was proud to be a strong and undaunted hill climber on the bike. I can’t say it didn’t sometimes really hurt, and it cost me dearly to keep going. Neglect being an exercise in dogged endurance, I was well trained. I remember that same feeling, or something I imagine to be similar to the whiplash of the Pakistanis, perhaps, as it is rather obnoxious to compare something like life-threatening flooding with recreational cycling. The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it. I can barely imagine how those Pakistani people felt, thinking that perhaps their homes had survived one assault and then being knocked back into terror and uncertainty. Back and forth. Back and forth. Not unlike the traumatic life of a child abused in the inescapable family home.
All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history.
When I started college, like many of us who grew up unmoored and dysregulated, I groped and reached for stability in philosophical anchors and ways of understanding the world. The ones I grew up with were way too ill-fitting, dissonant, or outright objectionable. I remember when I first read Karl Marx’s “Alienation of Labor” – it seemed one of the most profound pieces of writing I had ever come across. Thinking on it now, his description of alienation resonated like an identical twin to the experience of neglect: disconnection, dehumanization, confusion of purpose, emptiness, and lack of choice. I was gripped. Then I encountered the Marxian concept of Dialectical Materialism.
Certainly not one for heady concepts, I was rather more like Winnie the Pooh, who said, “I am a bear of small brain and big words annoy me…” But this idea spoke to me. In an extremely simplified form, it is the notion of a play of opposites. All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history. One social order crashing into another, which prevailed for its time until swung aside by its opposite and on and on and on through time.
It has been something of a comfort to me, when I am horrified or disheartened by world events, to trust that inevitably there will be the opposing swing that will deliver us in the other direction. Similarly, while sobering, it also helps me guard against complacency when things seem to be going my way for a time. Somehow, at least in some ways, we appear to make inching evolutionary “progress,” depending on how we measure (or who measures!) progress, of course.
People often ask me, especially at the start of therapy, but frequently along the way, “How long is this going to take?!” Or they lament feeling (a word I abhor!) “stuck.” I have to remind them, and sometimes myself, that this journey is not linear. It is simply not a straight shot. I remember my first neurofeedback teacher telling us, “You must remind people that this process is not linear.” As we deepen and go further back and further into material we may not have understood or even consciously known about before, we may find ourselves back or newly in truly miserable states.
Peter Levine has a practice in his work that he calls “Pendulation” where one learns to intentionally move back and forth between states, from trauma activation to present time, in an effort to make the back and forth conscious and intentional; and achieve some mastery or control over them. The idea is to become more flexible, resilient, and stable. And additionally, we do not always achieve the result we had in mind. Healing work is rarely a straight shot and may lead to something different, possibly even better than what we could have imagined.
The healing journey is inarguably non-linear. Rocking babies, the swinging pendulums in hypnosis, bilateral stimulation in EMDR, rhythmic movement pole to pole, side to side. Many a steeply graded trail or road is built in the form of switchbacks. They zig and zag right and left: one cannot see what is just ahead. Winding to and fro, around a mountain might be the way up an incline that is simply too steep to tackle straight on. It is also a reminder that, dialectics aside, few things in life are non-stop flights from here to there. There is little that is explicitly linear (except perhaps aging, darn it!). Much of life seems to be, in fact, switchbacks.
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.
Some time ago, I wrote a blog about the man who cleaned my car windows, knowing I had no cash to give him. After it happened, I tucked a neatly folded twenty in a pocket of my purse and zipped it in, hoping I might see him again someday. For weeks, even months, I craned to look for him as I passed the gas station, but never saw him. Slowly he dimmed from my crowded mind, and the twenty languished and perhaps crumpled a bit as it got buried deeper by time. This morning, rushing, stealing a minute on my way to the office to get gas, a man with a squeegee approached.
Lo and behold, it was him! The other time he was wrapped in a blanket and was a rather shapeless, assumably human form. Today he was in black jeans and a loose, ragged hoodie, so I could see his skinny shape. His short, sparse hair was graying, his brown skin wrinkly in that ageless way of the streets. He came into focus; I mean, I could see him. I set about pumping gas, he set about cleaning windows, and when I finished, I dug up the twenty I had squirreled away for him all those months ago.
Approaching the man, I said to him, “I want to tell you something…” His eyes widened, startled, as if he weren’t used to being spoken to, or not softly. I said, “a long time ago, I was here. I did not have any money, and I told you I had no money. But you cleaned my windows anyway.” I said it again. “I had no money, but you cleaned my windows anyway! I was so moved!” My throat wavered with emotion, and my eyes filled just a bit. “Thank you.” And for a long moment, I looked deep into the ageless brown eyes, which could’ve been anywhere from 50 to 80 years old. They teared up a bit too. We were just two humans together on this earth. “Thank you,” I said, “you are a good man.” I gave him twenty. With a modest, toothless smile, he muttered, “God bless…” I don’t believe he had seen a twenty in a very long time. He finished making his way around the car, doing an extra good job on the windows, and I drove off into the early morning dark to start my day.
For that one long moment, we were simply two humans connecting in the complex and simple endeavor of being human on this earth. That nameless-to-me man could check how many of the most salient neglect boxes? He was homeless, of color, aged, who knows what else? At the end of the hard workday, warming up the car to go home, the gas gauge lit up “full,” and my heart lit up “full,” too.
Thirty years into a blessedly happy marriage, the early days seem like a dim nightmare. Cycles of mutual trauma activation were endless, and we could not stop fighting. I truly believed we were the couple from hell. After firing five couples’ therapists and burning through an exorbitant amount of money, we lucked onto one who practiced then new to me, Imago Relationship therapy. We learned the structured Intentional Dialog, and that is where things began to “pivot” (to use the latest “word du jour”) and improve, to the point where I quickly went out and trained in Imago, which was my portal into becoming a couples’ therapist. Before our own life-changing experience, I would not have dared to venture a toe into that swirling vortex, certainly if trauma and neglect were involved.
The first step in Intentional Dialog is mirroring, where the listener or “receiver” repeats back the precise words of the speaker or “sender” line by line. Needless to say, it was tedious and time-consuming at first, but I will never forget my first experience of mirroring. Having my very words come back to me, unadulterated, uncensored, unedited or “corrected,” simply, authentically mine, was dazzling. That was when I first came to understand the priceless value of being truly seen, heard, and known.
From the very beginning, the nascent sense of self emerges from the intentional and consistent (“enough”) presence and mirroring of the mother or primary caregiver. Seeing one’s own reflection in the loving eyes of the other, resonating from right hemisphere to right hemisphere, the child’s brain slowly develops, a rhythm emerges between the two, self-regulation and a growing default which evolves into “me,” begins to form. Mirroring is the seed from which the human organism sprouts, grows, blooms, and fruits. Being seen and known is a core, essential developmental hub, and it is what is glaringly and tragically absent, or largely so, in neglect. Neglect is tantamount to being born, or cast into the world without a spine. How is one to stand up? No wonder neglect, barely visible to the untrained eye, is the most devastating of all trauma.
Having my very words come back to me, unadulterated, uncensored, unedited or “corrected,” simply, authentically mine, was dazzling. That was when I first came to understand the priceless value of being truly seen, heard, and known.
Like a caterpillar into a butterfly, cheesemaking is another seemingly magical metamorphosis. My little measuring spoons begin at 1/64 of a teaspoon: a minuscule amount of some microbial culture added to the vat of simple milk inspires a bubbling cauldron of coagulation into something solid, wonderfully nutritious, and delicious.
So it is with mirroring – being truly seen, heard, understood, and known: these immeasurably primal and fundamental developmental experiences are the essence of being, and being in a relationship. A measure of that elixir is the birthright of the fortunate. It is the traumatically missing experience of neglect, most necessary for healing. And every time we experience a moment of it, in therapy, in all manner of relationships, in the world, one’s sense of self is fertilized, reinforced, and encouraged.
Although I occasionally had clients who had been homeless sometime before I met them, my experience with the window-washing man woke me up to realizing, that perhaps I had never really looked at and seen a homeless person as an actual person; more than simply an avatar of the “homeless problem” which is notorious and ubiquitous here in San Francisco. First, recognizing and then looking into the eyes of this man, reminded me of the essential and transformative magic of real “sight.”
Mirroring is a prime ingredient in the psychotherapy of trauma and neglect, not sufficient, but unquestionably necessary, as is the presence which makes it all possible. And indeed, my clean windshield makes it possible for me to see! I hope our window cleaning protagonist is having a good breakfast somewhere!
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 we were kids, every year about this time, a little old man would show up early in the morning at our door, all dressed up in a well-worn dark suit and tie, with a yarmulke on his head and a tattered old prayer book under his arm. He would look up sheepishly from under his bushy brows and mutter with a smile, “Is this the Big One?” Our dad called him “Old Man Horowitz,” or sometimes “Horrible Horowitz.” He was coming to catch a ride to temple for the Yom Kippur service if he had the right day, which he often did not.
Yom Kippur is one of the “high holidays,” the most important days of the Jewish year: a day of fasting where the service is all day long. Once he got his formal career, our dad was a cantor, and he rather disdained what he called the “once-a-year crowd,” which were the congregants who only showed up on the high holidays and were not seen or heard from the rest of the year. He preferred to sing and have the refrains to his calls be from a full sanctuary. (I grew up to be even “worse” than the once-a-year crowd, and I really don’t go at all.)
However, some things about Yom Kippur do appeal to me. It is a day of reflection, a day of taking stock or accounting of who I have been through the year, and what I may have done or not done. I generally do a lot of that anyway throughout the year, a conscious review of all aspects of myself. But I respect and appreciate assigning specific days of the year for that essential practice.
Moral injury is a relatively recently identified category of trauma that involves the experience of committing acts or failing to act in ways that run counter to one’s own value or belief system, usually outside of one’s control.
Admittedly, to me, Yom Kippur can have a moralistic tone. Also known as Day of Atonement, there is even a prayer with rhythmic breast-beating as misdeeds are recounted (which always oddly secretly evoked an image of Tarzan. But no disrespect intended!) I am deeply committed to evaluating, owning, and repairing the damage I propagate, and a systematic and “fearless” assessment, as we say in AA, is all good. It truly is the opposite of neglect: being intentional, self-aware, responsible, and open-eyed about my impact, especially in relation to other people. How much trauma, not only neglect trauma but all kinds of trauma, interpersonal or not, could be preempted, forestalled, or intervened upon in time, were this the practice of our species?
From a moral injury standpoint, such mindfulness offers a space for continued processing. Moral injury is a relatively recently identified category of trauma that involves the experience of committing acts or failing to act in ways that run counter to one’s own value or belief system, usually outside of one’s control. It is the scenario of having no choice or being obligated by authority or circumstance and then left with regret, guilt, rage, grief – all of the above about one’s behavior. Residual feelings may be agonizing to try and resolve.
I once had a client who, when she was 16 and newly driving, had had a fatal car accident in which her best friend was the passenger and was killed. My client, now in her forties, had had to live with the memory and the tragedy all those years. I know I have memories, perhaps that do not involve a literal death, that haunt and linger. To designate special time for continuing the process of acknowledgment and remorse, even ultimately self-forgiveness is a comfort. I do agree that stock-taking is always good.
An apology is a profoundly powerful interaction and deeply important to me. Most of us have rarely heard a truly heartfelt and healing apology from anyone who has hurt us, or hurt us the most. There are also many misconceptions surrounding it as if an apology is some sort of admission that “it is all my ‘fault’” or that it connotes some sort of defeat. Such beliefs often make for stinginess or with-holding of apologies, as if my owning my part will mean you don’t own yours – a sadly transactional way of viewing repair!
Perhaps apologizing reveals the unbearable admission that I have made a “mistake” or done something “wrong,” which may seem on the order of life-threatening. For many survivors of trauma and neglect, perfectionism may be on the order of survival, so making a mistake and just saying “I’m sorry” may feel almost like dying. Or it may be a quick resort to lip service to get it over with, meaning little if anything. On local public radio, the comedic/sardonic news program Le Show has as a regular feature “Public Apologies of the Week,” showcasing how truly ridiculous and often (perhaps unintentionally) quite hilarious they often are. However, in real-time, with authentic personal hurts, they are no joke at all.
These topics are massive, and I definitely have a book in me on them. I will make two key points about apology here. Many have heard me say them before. And although there are indeed preferred “apology languages” as per Gary Chapman’s little book The 5 Apology Languages: The Secret to Healthy Relationships, these are the “Esperanto” of apology:
First, if I say I am sorry, followed by an explanation of why I did what I did, the potential benefit of the apology evaporates. Poof! If I say, “I am sorry I was late. The traffic was so god-awful on the Bridge…” it may be true, but it sounds to the other who has just waited an hour for me and missed an important appointment like excuses, however “true” and unintended that might be. And the “injured” party is eclipsed by the story, which is again, all about me.
If instead I say, “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting! And you missed your appointment on top of that. I know how disappointing and annoying that would be, especially with how busy you are and how you rushed to be on time yourself.” This will have an empathic tone and probably land with the desired healing result. Even saying first, “The traffic was hellish, “ and then “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting!” keeps the hurt person in the primary emotional spotlight and out of further neglect. How many neglect survivors have waited, forgotten for interminably long times, because “something delayed or distracted” the other?
Secondly, if I say, “I am sorry you got upset!” however well-intentioned, it fails in the essential healing balm of ownership. By not naming what I actually did, you can be left wondering or feeling blamed as emotional or pathological, as if there is something wrong with you. Authentic, humble, (and prompt if possible!) ownership is key. My 2 cents!
For many survivors of trauma and neglect, perfectionism may be on the order of survival, so making a mistake and just saying “I’m sorry” may feel almost like dying.
Forgiveness is a big and complex topic. And although I am utterly committed to reparative growth on both the micro and macro level, where trauma and neglect are concerned, many questions can arise. It is true that often perpetrators of the worst harm are, in some ways re-enacting their own unresolved trauma. That certainly does not let them off the hook, but does it somehow open the heart for forgiveness? Well, sometimes, but certainly not always. If a young person who shoots up an innocent bunch of school kids is a child of tragic neglect, that is so sad all the way around. But what does that mean in the way of forgiveness? What do I owe him?
On the one hand, perhaps the most profoundly transformative experience of my life was arriving ultimately at hard-won authentic forgiveness for the person who may have hurt me more than anyone ever. But perhaps the impulse to forgive does not generalize to all sentient beings. Well, not for me. Unfortunately, I cannot whip up the compassion to forgive Derek Chauvin, whose merciless knee vanquished George Floyd in 2020. I am not that “good.” Again, much more to say on all of this.
Attachment researchers have taught us that even among the best of “good enough” caregivers, whose attunement and resonance are at the percentile highest, the percentage of time these attachment stars are in such optimal attunement is 30%! That is right! 30% is as good as it gets. All the rest of life is a dance of rupture and repair, rupture and repair, rupture and repair. I like to think of “repair” as my middle name, so impassioned as I am about it. And yet I know it is not for everyone. A commitment to forgiving when I can is the best I can do, and the humility to also know that the person who benefits the most when I do, is me!
The high holidays also mark the turn of the Jewish year. Another of the traditions that I do like is the apples and honey: dipping apples in honey for a sweet year to come. Shana tova, happy new year! And may this next cycle bring sweetness and ever more healing.
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.
It is hard to believe it has been a year since the horrifying Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Admittedly, I was barely aware of the US’ 20-year “involvement” there until the messy and controversial evacuation. My limited knowledge of the place was only from the novels of Khaled Hosseini, some of which were so sad as to be almost unbearable to get through. I would ask myself: how did it happen that I was born here and those women were born there, and how do they endure such lives?
With interest, I heard a young American war veteran talking about his experience in Afghanistan, which sounded much like how I remember young soldiers in my youth describing their experience of the Vietnam war. They had no idea what they were doing there or why. I was also surprised and gratified to hear the Public Radio commentator explaining the recently identified category of trauma referred to as “moral injury.” This is the trauma of being forced to witness or commit acts that painfully conflict with one’s own values, morals and beliefs. Often moral injury occurs in the line of duty: military, medical, where the survivor is faced with impossible choices or no choice at all. Of course, we know it also occurs plenty in families. This young veteran, only 20 years old, was talking about that. What a terrible burden to live out one’s days under such a yoke of grief, regret, remorse, guilt, anger and helplessness.
I remember when I was barely old enough to talk, my mother shaking her head and exclaiming, “I hate war!” in the same fierce tone as she sometimes said, “I hate alcohol!” She described herself as a pacifist, so I learned that word early. She loved Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and I remember her having a bumper sticker or a sign (I am not sure) that said “No War Toys.” Even though we were a family of all girls so it was not an issue for us, she was among a group of women opposed to little boys playing with guns, which it seemed like they all did. From an early age, I remember finding war horrifying, incomprehensible and frightening. I rarely watched a movie or read a book about it. In the Vietnam era, I was staunchly antiwar and active, but never quite knew or understood what was going on. Just that I hated it.
From an early age, I remember finding war horrifying, incomprehensible and frightening. I rarely watched a movie or read a book about it.
I have always been amazed that Madonna and Jane Fonda looked so good, close to my age or older. Until I realized, well, parts of them are close to my age or older. They, and others like them, had had a lot of “work” done. Of course. I never knew the history of the science and art of plastic surgery until I recently read The Facemaker, a biography of the surgeon Harold Gillies. Gillies, born in New Zealand, was just completing his medical training when World War 1 broke out. Again, I was quite ignorant about this chunk of world history, and how that war was of a magnitude and scope of agony that seemed new even to the larger world. It also brought a new generation of weaponry that wrought new iterations of destruction: tanks, chemical warfare, bombs, rapid-fire guns.
Besides the sheer numbers of dead and seriously injured, what compelled young Gillies was a massive increase in the appearance of young men whose faces had been blown apart. The damage was often so extreme that existing medical procedures and technology were completely unequipped to address it, let alone keep up with it. And where veterans who lost limbs and returned home in wheelchairs were often viewed as heroes, those with destroyed and disfigured faces looked so grotesque and frightening as to be repulsive to people, even their own children, fiancées and spouses. Even some medical personnel found them unbearable to look at while facing the new challenge, without protocols or textbooks, to develop techniques to try and put them even minimally back together. And, of course, the challenge was not only to “form” but also “function.” Not only was there a mandate to enable them to look such as to continue some semblance of “normal” daily life, but their faces, and the structures below, needed to be able to breathe, eat, and speak.
Gillies made that his life’s work and became one of the founders of the art and science of plastic surgery in the process. In the beginning, plastic simply meant capable of being molded or receiving form, rather than a universe of ocean-strangling junk that we use to make virtually everything. Gillies and his comrades were truly creating an art form. In fact, alongside his unimaginable medical schedule, he added art classes so he could begin to draw and thus teach some of the techniques and procedures he was inventing. A massively energetic and generous human being who transformed many lives.
It was startling to me, as it often is when I discover a whole new category of knowledge or history that confronts me with a whole world of trauma and pain I had perhaps not thought about before. And unsung heroes that most of us never hear about. My own “petty” complaints about the appearance changes that come with natural aging; and narcissistic even identity related losses, paled into shame as I read these tragic accounts of young people in their twenties, trying to serve, or at the very least do what they were told, and being met with catastrophic losses of their sense of self. Often, they were greeted by a revolted and rejecting world, even their families. The horror was simply too much. This extreme of trauma shattered the interface of mind, brain, body, psyche, relationship, and most decidedly, sense of self.
The sense of self, as we know, begins at the very beginning, long before the face has developed much in the way of its unique characteristics. It develops in the most primitive part of the infant brain, as it resonates in a rhythmic dance with the attentive caregiver’s brain. That is sadly where the injury of neglect begins. The attentive caregiver is not there, or not nearly enough, or is out of rhythm due to their own trauma, depression, narcissism, addiction- whatever the harbinger of neglect. So the child is adrift, alone without a rudder or a boundary, long before there is a face.
I have known and read about many a child of neglect who grew up and early on joined the military. It provided some sense of identity and affiliation, an orientation to how the world works, or simply instruction to the young adult who had never had anyone to help them know what to do or how to navigate the big world. The military tells one everything about what to do and when, even what to believe. It breaks my heart to think of the young men, 20 years old or even younger, who never had a sense of self to begin with, and then no longer had a familiar face in the mirror. Gillies cautiously permitted no mirrors in his hospital wards, to protect the patients from the anguish of their mangled reflections. Many of them had numerous surgeries and hospitalizations of many months and even years.
Our mom was herself motherless and a survivor of war. Of course, her brain was sadly out of rhythm, and thus mine. It has taken years to slowly find the beat.
When I see younger people with beautiful skin, I tell them, “if I had known what I do now, when I was your age, I would not have this ragged old face. Take care of your skin!” I never thought about how lucky I am, however, to have an intact face! Perhaps my rhythm was long out of whack, and still sometimes is; with all the challenges of repairing a sense of self, I did not have that! It is a happy memory to think of my mother’s antiwar passion. I identify with that, even in relation to the parallel power struggles between intimate partners. I guess I inherited the passion for peace.
Our mom sang this when we were kids – well, not with the rhythm you will hear in today’s song, but nonetheless. Thanks Mom!
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.
The first Monday in September is Labor Day here in the US. It was always the last blush of summer before school started when I was growing up. Now the kids go back to school in August, which is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned. Labor Day originated as a national holiday in 1894, designed to honor and appreciate the efforts and the contribution of the working class who, in the words of the founder of the American Federation of Labor, “from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
Although our family was not exactly working class, our dad had many sweaty jobs up until our adolescence, and I always felt an affinity and identification with work. When I started college in 1973, Cesar Chaves had just begun organizing the United Farm Workers. Picketing the local Safeway Store, marching and chanting the iceberg lettuce and grape boycotts was the weekly Saturday morning social event throughout my first year. I loved it.
I started washing the neighbors’ cars for $2.00 or babysitting for 50 cents an hour before I reached my teens, and by the time I was fourteen, I had my own little housecleaning business, where I amassed the small fortune that would eventually put me through school. In those days, the University of California tuition was $234.00 a quarter, so $1,000.00 would cover at least the tuition part of a year.
Like many a child of neglect, although the relationship was in most ways beyond me, I was a star in the sphere of work. I could out-effort pretty much anyone, and was just OCD enough to maintain an impeccable standard. Of course, those rich people whose mansions I cleaned loved me, and whatever the job, I took great pride in being the best I could be. Years later, I came across an antique-style framed sign in a little collectible shop that said in bold letters, Work Hard and Be Nice. I bought it, and some 25 years later, it is still prominently displayed in my bathroom. Words to live by.
Like many a child of neglect, although the relationship was in most ways beyond me, I was a star in the sphere of work. I could out-effort pretty much anyone, and was just OCD enough to maintain an impeccable standard.
When we were quite young, we had a little book, a German folk tale called Die Heinzelmännchen. I don’t remember the story. The heinzelmännchen were little elf-life creatures who crept in stealthily and silently in the night, and the inhabitants of the house woke up to perfect and immaculate order. The männchen left no trace of themselves, only their exquisite handiwork. Like invisible angels, they created pleasure, joy, and calm. They became my role models.
I was already invisible. I barely existed in anyone’s eyes or minds. But to make spotless order my silent signature and find a way to please and help my mom gave me some sort of convoluted mission or identity. And our mom being calm was better for all of us. She seemed to get agitated and irritable when things were messy or in disarray. Modeling myself after die heinzelmännchen gave me some semblance of self, even if it could be humiliating and devaluing at times as well.
Of course, as I got older, clearly it was not enough. Especially as I got with the times and gained some sort of a feminist sensibility. Time wears on, and the child of neglect may wonder or not even realize they are wondering or experimenting with the idea of being more. Or, at the very least, getting tired or angry. Invisibility is like an old shoe: comfortable, practical, lacking in any kind of aesthetic, but who cares anyway? That is ever the question. And when the ceaseless “efforting” becomes increasingly tinged with resentment, the old shoe may turn to tatters, and worn-out lost or discarded relationships become a growing trash pile of lonely failure.
But how else to be in a relationship without earning a spot with ceaseless and often unsolicited service? It is probably too dangerous to attempt to find out. I remember bitterly believing that anger is the luxury of the popular girls. They did not have to worry about not being liked if they showed a snarky or even unintended unsavory tone. The rest of us had to be on our toes all the time unless we bowed out of the relationship world and disappeared into work altogether, which I sometimes did – at least after I could no longer rely on alcohol to blur the morass of complex feelings.
Long story short, the neglect experience teaches there is no attachment without it being earned, bought, coerced, or somehow bartered. Often the “deals” are unspoken; that is, the unwitting “other” does not know that they are assumed to be in a transaction by accepting the gift, whatever it may be. If the “deal” is in my head, but you never signed on for it, when the bill comes due – well, oy vey!
Work is a place to hide, perhaps to excel, and feel a modicum of value, even if I am never “good enough.”
At a certain point in recovery, being the tireless workhorse is no longer enough. The question may begin to arise: is there another way to be loved? There may even be a point where we become literally too tired or unable to keep up with it all. Then is it back full circle to the original desolate, helpless neglect we began with? The choices may seem bleak.
I always say there is but one non-negotiable in mate selection, at whatever age, and even in our choice of friends: find people who are willing and committed to work on a relationship through the lifespan, and we will be OK. We will most likely need to! (Humiliating at times when we reach some of the riper ages like mine!) Perhaps, however, we can ultimately even relax the storm of productivity and over-productivity and enjoy the fruits of our labor and the blessings of regulated connection, which should be everyone’s birthright.
I love the old union songs. One of my faves is Pete Seeger singing “Who’s Side Are You On…” I would have chosen that as today’s song were it not for its dated exclusive language. The words are “whose side are you on boys?” I didn’t want that.
Anyway, for those who live in a Labor Day observing country, I hope you can rest with a picnic, or a good book, whatever is your respite, and ultimately find love without working so hard, which may be the work of a lifetime. It seems to be for me, but that is OK. And Viva La Huelga!
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.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!