Living in an earthquake country, the imagery of seismic rumblings is a familiar part of daily life. I went through the “big one” in the Bay Area in 1989, and we all live with the knowledge that there will be another good-sized shaker sooner or later. The wiser among us have their preparedness kits safely …
Earthquake Country: Tectonics, Magma, Shape Shifting Read More »
Not infrequently a (perhaps unwitting) survivor of neglect shows up in my office toting a hefty diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder, (ADD.) They may have been so labeled by a know-it-all partner, possibly the very one who dragged them into this therapy. Maybe they were tagged with it in childhood, along with the accompanying prescription …
Your Attention, Please: ADD? Waiting, Desolation Read More »
As we head into mid-life, it is natural and typical to think about the passing of time, what is behind us and what lies ahead; what we have and have not achieved or accomplished; what we have treasured, and what we may have missed out on. Looking ahead, we may contemplate what we want to …
I write this as I wrap up my stay in the historic town of Oxford, UK, and my first European trauma conference. Oxford is spectacularly beautiful and quaint with elaborately carved steeples and towers, tall, sculptured ancient walls, and lavish, picturesque, manicured English gardens. For me, it is an especially powerful wash of history as …
Painfully often, I hear laments from clients and occasionally from myself, about squandered time. It may be the understandable and often enough blaming impatience about how unbearably, interminably slow it is, if possible at all, to feel better after childhood trauma and neglect. I have come to identify what I call the “Bermuda Triangle” of …
I remember in 1995 when trauma expert and himself a Viet Nam veteran, Charles Figley, published his then-new book, Compassion Fatigue. It was a novel concept to us then. Some trauma therapists were calling the same phenomenon “vicarious traumatization:” essentially infecting one’s own heart and nervous system with perhaps “too much” horror and pain and …
“The World Is Too Much With Us”: Work, Ancestry, Joy Read More »
I am a great lover of words. It is hard to say whether I love words, color, or music more, of all the varied and vivid means of expression. I love them all. However, sometimes, I am struck by the poverty of verbal language and how deficient it can seem in conveying its message. Such …
Trauma and neglect make for a strange sense of time for adults and, most certainly, for young children. Not only because the brain areas most affected and highjacked by overwhelming experience don’t register time. But also because something about pain and emptiness seems both endless and ephemeral. Also, when events are redundant or unchanging, memory …
Fresh from a glorious vacation in one of my happiest of places, I was inspired to write a “feel good” blog this week. How about a story of attachment gone right? And with the luxury of having my mind free, I could float back in time to some happy memories. Way back in 2014, now …
Not Bread Alone: Starting, Rising, Working Together Read More »
