I am unquestionably a scrooge about pretty much all holidays. Most of them are riddled with nightmarish childhood memories, partly because many of the Jewish holidays had traditional foods and food rituals, and often involved a lot of eating, which was of course my nemesis. And later because as a young adult and then a therapist, I was painfully reminded with each returning holiday season, whatever it was, mine or other cultures and traditions, of the expectations and seeming pressure to have happy harmonious family relationships and shared celebrations. The Norman Rockwell image, for any culture. And in this melting pot country, it seemed and seems there is always yet another feast day rolling around. Admittedly, Passover, although it was no exception in terms of dread and distaste, had one unquestionable redeeming aspect. The Passover seder, the ritual dinner/service prescribes four glasses of wine. Traditionally it was Manischewitz “concord grape” as I recall, and sweet like syrup. And even though it was supposed to be a “thimble-full” for kids, I did end up not quite under the table, and I did love that part. Since I stopped drinking in 1983, there has been no remaining selling point (although everyone loves my macaroons, a traditional Passover treat). And I do like the holiday’s symbolic meanings: spring, renewal, and freedom. There are many other ways however, I would now prefer to celebrate them. Like the Boston Trauma Conference, which became if not exactly a holiday, an annually recurring event and milestone to look forward to and anticipate. This year it comes right after Passover ends. Yay! And Lechaim!
This year marks the 35th year of the annual International Boston Trauma Conference. I am proud to say, I have been to most of them. It has been for me a beacon of direction, lighting the way for my trauma education and the next steps in my thinking, theory, practice, and certainly in my own development and healing. So many of my most cherished mentors and teachers, most of whom of course I never knew personally, I was first introduced or exposed to in these rooms. And ideas that might have been unfathomable, like EMDR, more elaborated somatic approaches, neurofeedback and then psychedelics were presented with enough seriousness, evidence basis and science, as to become part of many of our daily vernacular, vocabulary and lives. I am so grateful. I am so thrilled and excited that this year, like an eager descendant, I will get to be on the roster.
I am not sure if I first made my acquaintance with the work of Peter Levine, in Boston. I would not be surprised, but I admit I can’t remember. In any case, with great admiration, I have followed him for many years. Although I am not certified in his Somatic Experiencing, having pursued certification in cousin-methodology Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, I have taken many trainings with Peter over the years and decades.
One of my greatest and most dramatic life-changing therapy experiences was a “one session wonder” I had with Peter in California’s Esalen Institute at a workshop he and Bessel gave together in 2000. I always say, “If you want to work with the best therapists in the world, volunteer to be a ‘demo client’ which is exactly what I did that January day in the early Millennium. In front of a group of about 40 people, Peter in some 40 minutes worked his magic on my brain. I had not been able to focus my lifelong bookworm mind, and read a page, let alone a book in about 5 years, blankly reading and re-reading the same meaningless sentence over and over again. I was in grief about my lost world and respite. After that one session, I went home and read Allan Schore from cover to cover and have not stopped reading since. (If you have ever read Schore’s brilliant work, you will know that it is anything but light reading!). I have no idea what Peter did, although I do have the VHS recording of the session, but from there he found his place on my eternal short list of great heroes. And admittedly I have always said, with great respect for his many students and trained SE therapists, that Peter’s work cannot be taught. It is simply him. Thanks, Peter!
As I prepared my talk about Neglect Informed Psychotherapy, one of the concepts I included is the complex and, to me, fascinating projective identification, which is important to understand in working with the developmental trauma of neglect. As I am sure I have mentioned, my original psychotherapy training, as well as my long personal therapy, were an updated and evolving psychodynamic. Projective Identification is a mysterious interaction that I learned of from there. Essentially, what it means is a child (or therapy client) in effect “puts” a feeling or experience that they have no words for or even no memory of “inside of the other” mother, therapist, or even intimate partners. The story, desperate to be known and told, inaccessible to the experiences, is given to the other to be “interpreted, translated, felt, comprehended and articulated.” With many a child of trauma and/or neglect, who may flounder largely without a coherent or known autobiographical narrative, it is a highly adaptive and often enlightening default. And when successfully navigated can be exquisitely productive and even connecting, valuable, and challenging. As therapists, we must be scrupulously aware of our own story and our reactivities, so we can discern between our own and the other’s feelings. So many of us trauma and neglect-informed therapists have our own histories, and so we must be all the more committed to doing our own work, so we can be the effective and helpful “mother bird”.
As I was preparing my talk, and attempting to explain projective identification, I provided the story of a client who was struggling without words in one of our sessions. Spontaneously, in my own mind’s eye, I had a pop-up visual flash memory, unbidden, of an early memory of my own, waking up alone in the pitch dark, cold, terrified, in pain untethered, lost. It was so vivid, that I wondered if it was some sort of “transmission”, or communication from the client’s unconscious to mine; a projective identification from this client’s wordless story. I asked him, “What do you know about what was going on in your mother’s life when you were an infant? What might you have heard from older siblings or relatives, that would shed light on your early experience?” Sure enough, the infant image took us to some important details about his mother’s depression during his infancy, her family’s poverty and the discord in her troubled marriage with this client’s dad. Careful and not leading curiosity took us to a wealth of context for unremembered neglect, which seemed to lead us fairly quickly to more actual memory than he had had before. Listening and attending to communication through the “field” is an invaluable skill for the neglect-informed psychotherapist.
As I reviewed this section of my talk, I was gripped by a blast of worry. I already feel like something of an impostor to be speaking at the Boston Trauma Conference. Was this anecdote, this idea too “woo woo?” for Boston? Would it make me sound like an old hippie from Berkeley, California? I hesitated. I tabled the question for the moment…
Warning, the following, Spoiler Alert!
As a devoted follower of Peter Levine and a great fan of memoirs and autobiography, it was with great enthusiasm that I learned, now almost a year ago, that Peter Levine had written a memoir! Of course, I pre-ordered it in a hot minute as I’m wont to do, and about a week or so ago, it came! I am delighted. When I say “Spoiler Alert!” I mean, I am sharing with you a brief section, but I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing! Peter is a self-described introvert and extremely private person, so I have never heard him talk much about himself, certainly not about his own significant trauma story. I won’t spoil too much, only this one snippet that helped me settle down about expounding on energy fields at the Boston conference.
Peter is a serious scientist and scholar, in addition to all of his other geniuses. I knew that he had earned his doctorate in medical and biological physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and even worked a stint for NASA (the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration), so certainly no academic “slouch” or “woo woo” type, Berkeley or not. So I was fascinated to read this anecdote about him.
While a student in Berkeley, he had a favorite restaurant, Beggar’s Banquet, in town, that he frequented on a regular basis. A self-proclaimed and bookish loner, he generally went by himself, well… not entirely. Peter had an imaginary friend who kept him company, that friend was an apparition of the famed genius Albert Einstein. Peter had gotten to know the waitress there, and a regular fan of their homemade soups routinely ordered a second bowl for his “friend.” Although the waitress offered to keep the second bowl warm for him until he finished the first, Peter would decline the offer, and enjoy his conversations with Einstein. They made perfect sense to him.
No one really knew about these outings, until one day on a visit with his parents in New York, Peter chose to tell them about his regular and recurring apparition and time with Einstein. His mother was completely unsurprised and without missing a beat, said “Peter, I know why this happened to you…” She proceeded to tell him a story she had never told him before.
When eight months pregnant with Peter she and Peter’s father were on a picnic and an idyllic afternoon canoeing jaunt when they were overtaken by storm winds and their capsized vessel pitched them into sea. Struggling to find their way to safety a small sailboat appeared, in it an old man and a young girl rescued them, pulling them to shore. Once all were stable on terra firma, the two introduced themselves. As it happened, they were, you guessed it – Albert Einstein and his stepdaughter! It made perfect sense to her that all these years later, Einstein would be visiting Peter, the young college student, through the field. As I read, I felt as if Peter was coming to me through the field and telling me, “It is OK to talk about projective identification and communications through the field, in Boston.” Generations of geniuses have been communicating in these ways, why not us?
Oddly, I had another one of those flash memories from when I first moved to Berkeley in 1976. There was a local dairy in town called Berkeley Farms whose redundant catch phrase was “Farms. In Berkeley?” Followed by a refrain of loudly lowing cows: “Moooooooo.” I found myself thinking “Fields in Boston?” Well, why not?! Hope to see you there!
Today’s song:
I have often told this story, as a perhaps amusing illustration of attachment terror: I met my now long beloved husband in 1990, and after about 10 months of courting, and much at the urging of my wise old cat, Marti, we decided to move in with him, however, with all the ambivalence of a severely attachment disordered child of trauma and neglect. But we did it; emptied my Berkeley apartment of 18 years, packed all of my worldly possessions and trundled them over the Bridge to our new San Francisco home.
The house was/is plenty big, but in my semi-frozen state I was still very torn about whether I would “stay.” I was on a looping auto-replay of the old Clash song, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” So, I emptied the vehicles loaded all my unopened boxes into one upstairs room and shut the door. For five months. One winter’s day, I don’t remember much about it, I ventured in there and unpacked. Thirty-four years later, here I am…
Once again, that same upstairs room is filled with boxes, and much of the time, with the door again tightly closed. But this time, there is no ambivalence involved. Having made the slow and thoughtful decision, and planned for it for almost a year, I have closed my Oakland office and am consolidating my work life, to my home office. And this time, I am intentionally taking my time to unpack. Partly because I don’t have huge swaths of time. And partly because this is an integrative and meaningful move, and I want to be present and thoughtful about how I inhabit this new life phase, and even enjoy it! The irony is being in and out of that same room, squeezing and stepping around piles of stuff, crushing cardboard, and reviewing my past. The view out the window is largely unchanged, although perhaps the San Francisco skyline has grown taller and more jagged over these years and decades. It is lovely and refreshing to be un-ambivalent, only grateful about this change. Outside, my home office window, seeing my car parked outside unmoving, is another great relief. Ahhh…
However, I am not without chaos! Where, most weeks, I would wake up from a deep sleep with a mostly coagulated, nearly fully formed blog in my head, and simply must bang it out on the computer, this week my mind was also crowded with “boxes,” and disarray. Competing ideas, or should I combine them, find common themes or narrow the field?? George Floyd, Angela Davis, a total eclipse, a sense of self? Dizzying…
I was excited to learn that the interview with Angela Davis that I had been wanting to hear, was being re-broadcast. I could listen to it while I was unpacking. Davis, is a long-admired, enigmatic cultural icon to me. She is now 80, and I had heard somewhere that she had re-directed onto a path of non-violence, and I was very curious to hear the story about that. I have always been intrigued by knowing that she had a brief love relationship with Mick Jagger (!) which admittedly I was quite curious about. But all in all, I am a great fan, even a glutton for memoir, autobiography and biography, endlessly curious about who people authentically are, perhaps in that elusive quest to answer that question for myself. I was excited to hear Angela’s story.
As I tuned in, I was distracted by the reading of a dramatic passage from Annie Dillard’s dramatic essay, Total Eclipse. It was the day before the by many greatly awaited 2024 total solar eclipse this past week. Although I am not unduly moved by astronomical and astrological events, except perhaps in the aesthetic sense, I was more aware and interested than at other times, because my best friend traveled all the way from Berkeley to Mazatlan, Mexico to see it, so I could not easily dismiss it. I was jarred alert by the reading I heard:
…From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lit from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams,
At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky… (Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters Harper Perrenial, 2013)
I could not help but listen. The darkness and the screams shook my memory. The vivid image of the sudden total darkness, and the screams, swept me back to a long-ago story that I had not thought about in some time but recently told in an interview. I was not much older than two years old. Plagued by repeated, deafening and agonizing ear infections (I remember feeling like there were men shooting guns in my head.) It was decided that treatment would be a tonsillectomy, an overnight stay in the hospital for a very small person!
I guess in those days, it was not understood yet that little, little kids needed a parent, or someone, to stay nearby, with them through such an ordeal. I remember waking up in the night in that hospital room, to a scene resonant with the eclipse landscape. The world had gone dark, and a natural impulse welled up to wildly scream. I remember the thick blackness in that little room, the cold emptiness it seemed to generate, the terror. Much like the eclipse scene, it seemed apocalyptic, existential, and deathly. I imagine the withdrawal of the mother/the attachment to “other” is as terrifying to the small child as the disappearance of the sun, even for brief moments. Similarly, there is something organic, primordial, in the spontaneous unison of screaming that erupted amidst the crowded eclipse-witnessing throngs.
I emerged from my reverie when the interview with Davis began. Admittedly it was somewhat disappointing.
Angela Davis, not surprisingly I suppose, questions, why anyone would want to know her personal story. In fact, the interviewer jokingly remarked that she rarely utters the word, “I.” Once in the interview, she made sure to point out when she did. And although she spoke some about being in prison at age 28, it was more in the context of the larger social problem of massive incarceration of people, especially of color, and especially of men and boys. All of that is vitally true and important. However, in my quiet disappointment, I thought of the question of why I was so curious and fascinated to learn personal stories, why I have this insatiable quest to read about the lives of people I love and admire. (I pre-ordered Peter Levine’s memoir when I first heard he was writing it, almost one year ago! It arrived this week, and I can hardly wait to finish what I am reading so I can get to it! An Autobiography of Trauma, A Healing Journey. Simon and Schuster 2024).
What is that? I think for me, as for many a child of neglect, the absence of a sufficient mirror, that widely vacant sky, leaves a vast, blackened void, a cavernous empty space where an authentic self would be: darkness. First screams, then confusion, then rooting for some light, some direction, who shall I be? It seems to take years and years of dogged work to answer.
After the eclipse, I asked my friend, “was everyone screaming when the sky went black?” She said yes, they were, and that she cried a little. But it was beautiful. I am glad she is on her way home. And I know I am glad I am home!
Today’s Song:
“I didn’t marry you for your cooking!” our dad would routinely say to Mom, only partly in jest. But there was no question about his admiration and regard for her in perhaps all the other ways, and he truly went to pieces when she died in 2000. I remember his often quoting the verse from proverbs, especially if we were particularly ungrateful or somehow disrespectful of her, at least from his point of view: “A woman of valor, who can find? Her price is more precious than rubies.” Strange how these things lodge in one’s memory, even when so little else does, and float back spontaneously unbidden.
March is Women’s History Month here in the States, with March 8th being International Women’s Day. I meant to write a blog on that theme, and as I pondered whom to spotlight, I heard a profile of Angela Davis and thought she would be a fitting subject. (I’ll get back to her!) Then as March stealthily washed away in a wave of busyness, I received an email announcement, enthusiastically congratulating the Psychotherapy Networker’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Janina Fisher, a woman of tremendous valor well-known to all of us in the trauma and dissociation fields. I was thrilled by this news.
I can’t remember the first time I encountered Janina, probably in the early 1990s at a conference of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation (now the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation). Janina is exquisitely smart and one of those gifted speakers who can present complex clinical or physiological concepts in a language and style that is accessible, not “dumbed down” and even interesting. Dissociation was a “new” and readily confusing aspect of the already young and growing trauma field. She made sense of it. And warm and approachable, she was immediately likeable.
When I enrolled in Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy certification training in Boston in the early 2000s, I was delighted to discover that Janina was one of my two instructor assistants, so I had the privilege of studying in close proximity with her for almost five years. She was an invaluable resource and I loved her. Again, not only at articulating elaborate ideas but also talented in somatic applications and explaining them as well.
After completing the training in 2005, I rarely saw Janina for a long time, even though she by now she was almost a neighbor to my Oakland, California office, at least part-time. I remember one time after a traumatic bicycle accident which had left me with unrelenting depression due to a long reverberating concussion, Janina came to my office for a one-time sensorimotor session. I don’t remember anything about that session really, except being in her healing presence and the gentle music of her voice. I know it helped. In subsequent years, I saw Janina mostly at a distance at conferences and the like and certainly followed her books. Until last fall in Oxford, we reconnected and found we both live in San Francisco now, I have had the pleasure of hanging out with her a few times since. It was exciting to hear that Janina had been acknowledged and honored by the Networker in this way. She seemed like a fitting subject for my belated Women’s Day trauma blog.
Of course, I was delighted when Janina agreed to a Sunday afternoon interview with me. I realized that although I had known Janina for years, and heard her speak probably hundreds of times, I knew little of her personal story. So, I shyly asked her, how she grew into the amazing trauma therapist we all now know. Like me, Janina came into the nascent trauma field right at the beginning, also out of a psychodynamic training background. For Janina, a decisive moment was in 1989, hearing the pioneering trauma expert Judith Herman speak in Boston. Ahead of her time, Dr. Herman eloquently declared that people suffer because of terrible things that happened to them, not because of infantile sexual fantasies. This made phenomenal sense to Janina and re-set her professional direction.
And concurrently, as is true for many of us, the most severely traumatized, dissociative and often self-destructive of all clients seemed to be “drawn to me like a magnet.” I asked Janina, “How do you understand that?” She responded, “I was born into it.” Ahhh. Intergenerational transmission. But she did not know this until some 10 years after being “woke” by Judith Herman.
At the age of 85, approaching the end of his life, and seemingly out of the blue, Janina’s father approached her for a different kind of conversation than they had ever had before. He proceeded to tell her his personal story, the most unbearably heart-breaking saga of traumatic attachment imaginable. While she knew that her father had had a “terrible relationship with his mother since his birth”, she did not know specifics. When Janina’s father was but one year old, his mother placed him in a foster home in Chicago, some 800 miles (approximately 1,300 KM) from her New York home. He was wrenched out of that home at age 2 and a half and “forced to return to living with them.” At age four (!) he was sent to boarding school and was yanked out of there by age 5 and sent to a foster home in France, alone and without knowing a word of the French language. The French foster mother, however, fell in love with the little guy and kept him until he went to boarding school at age 16.
In this long conversation, Janina’s father mentioned in passing what he assumed she had known. Janina’s mother had a severe childhood trauma history as well. And although Janina had always experienced her mother as cool and aloof, and clearly her parents’ marriage was a miserable one. Janina was never close with her mom, who died in a car accident in her sixties. Although her father travelled three weeks out of the month for work through much of her growing up, she felt close to him. Somehow, he came out of all that attachment hell a kind, warm and charismatic person, and Janina believes she learned or inherited her loving warmth from him.
Janina did not realize until she was in her teens, that he surreptitiously drank alcoholically throughout her childhood. He ultimately stopped drinking in AA, and when he died, he was 56 years sober, and his funeral was crowded with AA comrades and generations of sponsors and sponsees. Says Janina with a laugh, “I guess, I learned to co-regulate complicated people from the ground up!” I say, “What an inspiration!”
Janina had her first child by the age of 25. “That was what women did…” just a little ahead of the Women’s Movement of the 1970s. As a young undergraduate at Harvard, “I had no idea how to take care of a baby,” she exclaims. By the age of 27, she had two little boys. Overwhelmed she wondered, “How many thousands of women are in this same boat?” She decided to become a therapist and work with young mothers. All the rest is history.
I asked Janina, how she became interested in somatic therapy. She responded without hesitation: “Because of Bessel.” Much like myself, Bessel has been her north star in her study and practice of trauma and dissociation theory and practice over the past 40 years. And also, much like myself, she does not practice Sensorimotor Psychotherapy per se, but it is in our bones and informs how we think, feel and work every day.
The program that Janina has developed Trauma-Informed Stabilization Therapy (TIST) is quite remarkable. She also speaks to my deep social justice sensibility with a profound antiracist, sex-positive and gender equality commitment. She has an empathic and cutting-edge expertise about addictions and is copiously generous with what she knows. Can you beat that?!
Janina of course is everywhere and I don’t have to tell you where to find her. I am infinitely grateful for all I have learned and continue to learn from her, and for the glowing example and role model of human being, and Woman that she is. Far more precious than rubies! Congratulations, Janina, and thanks!
Today’s song:
The first time I heard Bessel speak must have been in 1988 or 89. It was at the grand rounds of a small, local hospital in Berkeley, open to the public. As ever, I went to everything I could find about trauma. There was so little information in those days. Nobody in my community knew anything about it or cared. Granted, I was in a largely psychodynamic world, so I was already kind of a dark horse being interested in somatics. Well, this was a panel of doctors, and this one young guy looked wet behind the ears, and as if his necktie was too tight, but when I heard his heavily Dutch-accented comments (and admittedly I was still somewhat reactive to Germanic accents back then), I listened. He was definitely onto something.
In those days, what I knew of, was primarily the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) conference, which I began going to every year as soon as I learned of it. It was stuffy and academic, as far as I was concerned, mostly white men with complicated research. Not my idea of a friendly gathering, and I always felt like something of an invisible impostor there. Later we got the International Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD), which later became ISSTD (adding Trauma into the title) which was decidedly more female, and more comfortable for me.
It was probably in 1990 that my friend Marie told me about the Boston Trauma Conference. I guess it was the second year after it began. She asked me if I wanted to go with her. I had never gone to a conference with another human, so that in itself was extraordinary, and I even shared a room with her which was even more radical for this self-reliant, hermetic child of neglect. Admittedly it has never happened since, (except on the rare occasion when my husband accompanies me to a conference.)
The Boston conference as it turned out, was that guy Bessel’s production, and I loved it. There was plenty of research but there were also references to literature, history, art and music, and speakers spanned a wide swath. It rapidly became a staple of my year, to the point where every January, almost immediately after the turn of the year, I would start eagerly scanning for the announcement of that year’s conference, almost always in the first week of May. And I was probably the first to sign up every year because I could not wait.
I loved flying to Boston, I loved the town. And I loved the conference. I was however so timid and shy, and shame-ridden, that I never spoke to a living soul but drifted silently, rather like a ghost, or even a billow of smoke, that could dissipate and vanish. I floated saturated off to my room with my full notebook at the end of the session days, settled down with my room service and a book, and read quietly. Got up at the crack when the hotel gym opened, this was before the days of the 24-hour gym, which I occupied alone, and made sure to hit the conference room early so I could score my front-row center.
I was introduced to brilliant minds, people I would never have heard of like James Gilligan, Seamus Sinclair, Jaak Panksepp, and Jessica Stein. And heard luminaries like Judith Herman, author of the first important trauma book I remember, Trauma and Recovery, which has stood the test of time. And I could always say, “You heard it here first…” when EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Somatic Experiencing, Pesso-Boyden Psychomotor Therapy, Model Mugging, IFS, Neurofeedback and then Psychedelic Assisted emerged in the trauma recovery world. That conference was always cutting-edge and always pointed me in the direction of my next important treatment tool. It became a mainstay of my professional development, and of my year.
When I trained in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, I had the privilege of being in a group taught by Pat Ogden herself, and with the assistant instructors, of no less than the illustrious Janina Fisher and Deirdre Fay. Can you beat that? And it was in Boston, which really delighted me. I had an excuse to fly to Boston, each month for the four-day training, which lasted almost five years through certification. I loved that Every time I landed in Boston, my heart would leap, feeling myself to be in this hotbed of trauma healing ferment. Once back in the San Francisco Bay Area, typically ahead of the curve in so many ways, I continued to be a lone voice. But I kept at it, writing and talking about trauma as much as I could in the local community, and gradually felt a little less alone.
It is hard to believe this year will be the Boston International Trauma Conference’s 35th year! I think have been to most of them, and with immense gratitude, (and some pride I might add.) Many wonderful healing modalities, not to mention much of my treasured trauma and neglect library would not have been known to me, or not known to me until much later. I am so grateful. And so much better for it. Over time, I have gained much recovery, often through the methodologies I learned of there, not to mention studied and practiced with generations of clients who moved through my hands. Who would have imagined that I might materialize from the lurking, slinking ghost who first landed dizzily in Boston, to an outspoken, interactive and contributing, even social trauma and then neglect-informed therapist?
In our healing journeys, it is so hard to imagine or believe that things will change. In the world of neglect, it seems like time rather freezes. Emptiness is so static and unmoving, especially for the very young. I remember cold, lonely winters sitting by the window, nose pressed against the chilly glass, fogging it up a bit, counting cars, and waiting for Daddy to come home. I don’t know why I looked forward to his walking in the door, with his jovial “ho ho!” I don’t know why he said that! I guess it meant “I’m home!” That was always what he said when he came in. And it was not as if he had any time or attention for us, of course. Simply some semblance of a grand entrance. But I waited for it. Hours yawned cavernously, emptily, bleak, glacially slowly. Like most neglect survivors I had a terrible time with those long days of depression. I remember the endless agony of getting through the day. Depression was like quick sand, movement seeming impossible, except for being heavily sucked downward. Anorexia made the days even longer. I would hungrily track the hours when meals “should have” been, like mile markers on a long steep bicycle grind uphill, surmounting them one by one, putting each small increment behind me. I hate to remember it.
So besides the tremendous despair and loneliness that are the inevitable consequences of failed, absent and withdrawn attachment, for many if not most, is the accompanying barren hopelessness. No one has ever cared enough to change out of love for me. Anything that changes, will only be because I make it happen. And I can’t move…
I go into such detail about the darkness of the past, because I can be incredulous that it has in fact changed so much. I remember sitting in groups and hearing someone who was out of the tangled woods of her eating disorder and was talking about the simple joy of eating one small slice of cake, and that being it, no drama, no more, no agonizing about it for the rest of the day or the next few. I thought, “Wow that will never happen to me…” And now, I eat whatever I want, and can barely imagine those decades where that was all I thought about. Now I have much bigger fish to fry! I guess I tell these tiring stories, to show that with our dogged work, these things change, and life can be pretty darn wonderful!
Here we are coming up on 35 years of Boston. Marie had said to me since the beginning, “You should speak here,” especially as I was hatching my work about neglect. I laughed longingly, “yeah, right…” Well lo and behold, it has come to pass. On May 1 (which happens to be International Workers’ Day and an old lefty like me can’t help but notice that!) I will be presenting my model of Neglect-Informed Psychotherapy. Perhaps you will join us!
Sadly, I lost track of Marie. I tried to find her so I could tell her, but for whatever reason failed to locate her. My sister is so good at tracking people down using social media, finding people from all walks of her life. I should ask her to help me. I want to say, “Thanks, Marie!” Meanwhile, I hope to see you in Boston!
Today’s song:
It was the end of 2019, I was awash in all the mixed emotions of my father’s death. And boom, enter the Pandemic of COVID-19. Abruptly, the entire world was invaded, shrouded by this strange new and seemingly unreal force. Suddenly we were all learning a new language of “shelter in place,” “social distancing”, “don’t touch your face!”, “don’t touch anyone!” Obsessive hand washing… When the mayor of San Francisco announced the first stay-at-home order and predicted two weeks., I thought she must be kidding! I wasn’t going to do that, stay home for two weeks?! I was a “health care provider,” an “essential worker.” Little did I know… The next morning when I was one of almost zero cars on the bridge heading for the office, I paranoically flashed my attention back and forth to the rearview, scanning for KGB-like cops who would pull me over for being “out.” All the things we all had to do, like stay home, stay away from other people; and people dying by the thousands and then millions each day, all inspired my conspiracy suspicions at least at first.
Struggling at that time, to finish the book I was working on… I was seriously dysregulated. My therapist of many decades had recently retired, and I was not about to search for someone else. Besides, the very idea of virtual therapy sessions, our only option now, was seriously out of the question. I remember calling neuroscience-of-trauma researcher and expert, Ruth Lanius, to consult about something or other, and I don’t remember how it came up; she told me perchance about a new-to-me treatment modality she was researching: Deep Brain Re-orienting (DBR), developed by Scottish psychiatrist Frank Corrigan. I had not heard of him before. Ruth directed me to a couple of YouTube videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wijwwMuONFg) which I promptly watched. My interest was definitely piqued.
I had not encountered a new trauma treatment, with the exception of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (which of course I could not practice) since I trained in neurofeedback in 2009. As it turned out while navigating a transition to a full virtual psychotherapy practice during lockdown; (not to mention the transition to lockdown itself!) and writing a book, I was realistically not in a position to study a new-to-me treatment modality (although admittedly it took a little while to achieve the frazzled humility to accept that.) But it was a relief to have my curiosity and interest awakened about something new.
I might add that the complicated grief, some version of writer’s block, and my complex challenges around sleep seemed to all have coagulated in my neck and shoulders, and upper back. It seemed I was cringing inward from all directions, with my neck perennially kinked and aching. And for the first time probably ever, I actually admitted I was bone, dead tired.
On the suggestion of Ruth L., I contacted Frank. Not yet accustomed to zooming, certainly not internationally, his Scotland and my San Francisco, USA time zones, were no small feat to coordinate then. But we managed to cobble together a schedule where I could meet with him for online DBR sessions roughly every other week, a schedule which we succeeded in keeping for some months. I feel very privileged that I had the opportunity to work with Frank, to learn about and experience this fascinating work, and no less with the Master himself! Although I made it my intention to study and practice DBR, especially because unlike neurofeedback it could in fact be practiced remotely, sadly I am unable to do that effectively until I clear the decks of my schedule, at least a bit! Sigh…
Working with Frank was like working with a gentle giant. The tall, soft-spoken man on my screen, was so kind and patient, that already was reassuring and regulating. His strong accent, even if different, reminded me of my beloved Australian YouTube cheesemaking teacher, a soothing association. And knowing my interests, he made a yeoman’s effort to be both didactic as well as therapeutic. I appreciated that even if my addled brain was hard-pressed to metabolize brain science at that time, which even in the best of times is not my strongest suit! That is why I am gratified that he has a new book, about to hit the stands, provisionally entitled Deep Brain Reorienting: Understanding the Neuroscience of Trauma, Attachment Wounding, and DBR Psychotherapy., co-authored by Hannah Young and Jessica Christie-Sands.
As I experienced the work, at least initially, it was reminiscent of the “sensorimotor sequencing” I learned in my Sensorimotor Psychotherapy training back in 2000, which was essentially a fine-tuned tracking of sensation in the body when in an activated trauma state. I always found that exquisitely helpful, and it was perhaps the most important to me of the many treatment tools I took away from SP. Especially in the closely monitored tracking, the movement in the body from moment to moment conveyed the visceral experience of time passing, and change happening constantly within time, both invaluable in the face of the strange both unmoving and lightening-speed hyperarousal of time in the traumatized body.
As in SP, Frank’s voice was a steady accompaniment, naming brain areas, that I was hard-pressed to grasp mentally then, but I think I would be more able to now. However, one of the essential innovations of DBR, is that although most of us who consider ourselves to be trauma and neglect informed, and attachment theory savvy, are familiar with the activations of the limbic brain, most specifically the right amygdala, in the traumatic fear response, few of us are well versed in the deeper more primitive brainstem regions, often somewhat pejoratively referred to as the “reptilian brain.” (I suppose some are fonder of reptiles than I!) DBR teaches us that the very earliest responses to shock and terror occur in these deep brain regions: the locus coeruleus, superior colliculi, and the periaqueductal grey (oy vey! A mouthful!). The experiences of irregularity, absence and loss of attachment, register in the infant’s brain as “shock” and strike those primitive structures first. He describes this as attachment shock, such an apt and vivid description of some of the profound attachment trauma of certainly many if not most of my neglect survivor clients, not to mention myself. Of course, the neck and shoulders, and the upper back, body areas that house or are in close proximity to those brain areas- precisely the areas that were aching in my stressed-out body, are more than likely to be activated.
Frank’s voice and steady naming of what he observed, both grounded and accompanied me as I followed the sensation moving in my body, often eliciting unexpected memory fragments from early ages. It was quite fascinating and most certainly valuable. We only discontinued the sessions because scheduling became impossible. I am sure I will go back to it when I can. Meanwhile, the research produced by Ruth L.’s lab is promising indeed, and as a neglect-informed, attachment-oriented practitioner it behooves me to learn it as soon as I can. Admittedly I suffer from FOMO, as DBR has gone viral in my neurofeedback community and is appearing to be a powerful companion treatment. Thankfully I can tide myself over with Frank’s upcoming book.
I find it validating that the framing of the terror and horror wrought by early dysregulations: of attachment: disconnections, withdrawal, absence and loss, add up to shock, especially occurring during the tender vulnerability of early life. The severity of neglect trauma, so often under-rated, ignored and minimized, is increasingly growing its neuroscience “legs,” and may come increasingly to garner the attention it requires and merits, at least gradually in the trauma field. Perhaps neglect will emerge a bit more from its “step-child” status. That is my hope. Meanwhile, I am hoping to meet the “Gentle Giant” in person next fall, when I return to Oxford. I figure Scotland will be a much smaller pond away!
Today’s Song:
Sometimes memory seems so mysterious and baffling. The other day, suddenly and seemingly quite randomly, I felt washed over by a “Maverick” wave of shame. Maverick waves I learned, in the surfing vernacular, are monster or super waves: unpredictable, suddenly appearing and potentially “extremely dangerous.” Yes, admittedly that sounds dramatic, but it felt like that. I felt the accompanying tightness in my slightly and suddenly nauseous stomach, and a sour taste in my mouth, even a little tension in my throat of either tears or screams. And then floated up the thought… “My whole life is a lie…”
I had never had that brutally honest thought before. I vividly remembered sitting diligently in my Marxist Leninist study groups, echoing the party line, “No alternative to armed struggle! Strategy and tactics, Hasta la Victoria Siempre (forever until victory!) It was a dark secret that I was in therapy. Such an individualistic and “weak,” petit-bourgeois endeavor would have been a sure cause for ouster, ex-communication. In search of meaning, purpose, and probably a way to die, I had constructed a persona to be and tried desperately to shove a square peg into a round hole. No wonder it was simply a matter of a few short years before I cracked up completely. Being a child of neglect, lacking the developmental brain and life experiences that enable an authentic self to emerge, I flailed and found what was in effect a mask, a costume and a role. That is what a child of neglect will do, although perhaps with less theatrical effects. I guess it took that much, although still failed, to quite get my dad’s attention.
But where did that memory come from? And even with new highlights or narrative. It seemed to come out of nowhere. Except that I was struggling with a perhaps lesser, but similar identity, shame episode. Perhaps it was just similar enough to be a traumatic stimulus. Hmmm. I never read Marcel Proust’s famous book about how a flood of (much more idyllic I believe) memory was unleashed by a simple bite of a certain kind of cookie. A “Madeleine”, I’ve never had one of those either. Powerful stuff. Well, I was reminded of that. And then I happened to hear an interview with a memory researcher, Charan Ranganath, about his new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold On to What Matters, in which he explains and describes in some detail the different types of memory.
I remember my long commutes to my job at the San Francisco V.A. (Veterans’ Administration) hospital, back in the days of cassette tapes, the late 1980s, listening to Bessel’s talks over and over again, as he talked about what happens in the brain when an organism experiences traumatic events. Overwhelmed by a stimulus greater than what the system is designed to process in its customary way, the logical, cognitive, and verbal part of the brain, the meaning-making prefrontal cortex is blown offline and effectively shuts off. The brain and body flood with stress hormones and blood flow is redirected to the extremities in the service of survival. Fight or flight. I was brand new to any information and language of science and anatomy, which is why I needed so much repetition not only to get it but to remember.
But I did readily remember the glaring visceral visuals of speechless terror. And I remembered the images of Bessel’s Rorschach ink blots, and his voice saying of the veterans, “Either they saw their worst horrors, or nothing at all.” I can still hear it. Now that is good teaching! And it also sums up the nature of traumatic memory. Some survivors are swamped by haunting ceaseless and graphic recall and can’t seem to escape it.
And as we also now know, the amygdala or alarm bell of the brain, is hell-bent against the traumatic event happening again, and even the slightest stimulus that may in some way or other resemble the original trauma, can set off survival strategies. Suddenly and often unwittingly the unrecovered survivor is in full-on fight or flight. To the dismay of partners or bystanders, and sadly often vulnerable children, it is as if the trauma is repeating itself right now. “Triggering”, or what I prefer to call activation. Nerve racking and tiring for all.
For other survivors, the prefrontal cortex having shut down, there may be only a blank empty space, and no memory at all, at least for a time. And if and when it does break through it can elicit a maverick of confusion and self-doubt about what is true. I for one, had no recall for years of my worst traumatic experiences, and when they did burst on the scene and took over my life for a time, I was hard-pressed to know what to believe.
One of my first neglect survivor clients, or I should say, one of the first whom I came to identify as being a survivor of neglect said “I have no memory of my childhood, just bushes. Bushes and a little bit of the family dog. That was probably 40 years ago. But somehow, I still remember her words, her name and the moment she said them. Why did I log that so clearly? My life is much like hers, a large and blank empty space. Says Ranganath, when we log the original filing richly, with sensory and emotional detail, that memory is likely to endure and age well. I guess I intuitively knew this, which is why I like to adorn my teaching with colorful imagery and emotional stories. (And I like to add a song to these blogs!) The brain is more likely to retain what is more multi-sensory or emotion-laden.
Similarly, as is often the case with neglect, when life is a vast desert of nothing, that is what we remember: nothing. Or perhaps what is most picturesque or memorable is the bushes or the dog. Mine are snapshots of me reading Little Women, or doing the “twist” to the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” when it first came out in 1963.
An environment of chronic or ongoing stress, like growing up essentially trapped or confined in a world of overt abuse, and/or painfully ignored or rejected in the mind-blowingly vacuous environment of neglect, is “neuro-toxic.” Similarly, life in a war zone, where terror, threat and uncertainty are ever-present, keeps the brain bathed in stress hormones, which over time disrupts healthy memory and pre-frontal function. More good reasons to end abuse, neglect and of course war.
Ranganath also speaks of what he calls “small f” forgetting, which in effect boils down to ordinary slips or word finding. He says, and sadly I must echo his words, “My ability to remember song lyrics from the 80s far exceeds my memory for why I walked into the kitchen.” This he terms as a function of normal aging. My Achilles heels are around scheduling and bookkeeping. Oy vey! And I do hate wasting my time looking for things! Admittedly, I have grown increasingly “OCD” about where I put things, out of existential fear that I may never see them again!
Recently I had an experience where I went to use my old laptop, the one I use for traveling, and for the life of me, I could not remember the password. I banged on that poor thing probably close to a million times, trying all the various passwords I have used and could remember, so frustrated because I had recently used it on my last trip just two months ago. I also knew, because it has happened enough times, that very often, in a day or two some misbegotten, lost or forgotten item floats quietly forth from the swamp, and voila is back! Sure enough, that is what happened in about 24 hours. What is that?
Says Ranganath, information “competes” for real estate in the brain. All that banging and repeatedly trying every generation of passwords had my brain space sticky and cluttered with passwords. When I let it all settle down, the “one” emerged. A new start with fresh eyes, words to live by, no?
Finally, in these times we have come to virtually take for granted the chronic hum or backbeat of distractions: pinging texts, all manner of device alarms and interferences. Distraction of course interrupts attention and clear and accurate recall. Texting while in a meeting or class, certainly erodes explicit, accurate recall of either the meeting or the text chat. Yet all these are in the normal range.
Biden confusing the names of the Egyptian and Mexican presidents was an embarrassing but not pathological “gaff.” If he had forgotten that he had met with the president of Egypt at all, says Ranganath, if that memory was simply “not there,” that would be a cause for concern, or suggest a “memory problem.” “Word finding” and forgetting names or passwords are expectable, annoying but not pathological “small f” features of healthy aging.
But Good news! Ranganath is quick to add, there are ways that the prefrontal cortex improves with age! Compassion, optimism and emotional regulation all are strengthened as we move through the years. So there! Don’t worry, be happy! Turn off your devices, be present, and as my mom wisely said, “We have to live well. You never know what will happen!”
Today’s song (A Happier Memory):
In the early years of the Millennium, it seemed as if the world was suddenly haunted by a dreaded and insidious enemy. It kind of reminded me of the opening lines of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, which I read with great ardor in my first months of college in 1973: “A spectre is haunting Europe…” It resounded rather like the trailer of a terrifying horror movie. This spreading “evil” was so-called “Sex Addiction”, which was rapidly becoming the diagnosis du jour. My phone was ringing off the hook with panicked spouses breathlessly complaining about their partners’ rabid behavior; or the accused partner lamenting that they had been kicked out of their homes. It was a newly named “diagnosis” which had no nosology, no research, no scientific basis at all. And yet as is so often the case with a new sensation, the world was suddenly full of “experts.” Suddenly a new, high-priced treatment industry began mushrooming around it, and the nightmarish stories abounded.
Because my practice was primarily adults with sexual trauma histories, and I worked a lot with couples, I guess people thought I was a logical person to call. I didn’t think so… I tried urgently to inform myself and searched in the sex therapy conferences, information, diagnostic, scientific and clinical. I kept coming up pretty dry. For a long time, I could only find one article, which I quickly clung to like a lifeline “Compulsive sexual behavior: what to call it, how to treat it?” by Eli Coleman (2003). I knew and admired Eli from hearing him at conferences, and I remember calling him more than once. Flying by the seat of my pants, I really disliked that work, and did my best to send those couples elsewhere. The question was where? There was the panoply of pricy “specialists” and treatment programs. that I was soon hearing distressed and distressing stories about. We were barely emerging from the AIDS crisis so those were some challenging times in the sex therapy world, and in the world really.
Thankfully we have come a long way since then, and after a few years of flailing, I subsequently met my colleague and friend Doug Braun-Harvey who wrote the truly ground-breaking book, Treating Out of Control Sexual Behavior: Rethinking Sex Addiction, which was helpful and continues to be a resource about sexual health.
So, what does all this have to do with neglect? Now that I am long out of the weeds, or those anyway, I can think more objectively about that question. The sex addiction model, although I would hardly say there was one distinct “model,” generally tended to moralize and pathologize, as one of my sex therapist colleagues said only semi-tongue in cheek, “A sex addict is anyone who has more sex than me…” The fact is that my experience has shown that sex that is random, impersonal, and somewhat disconnected, may indeed be relevant to our topic.
Last week I wrote about the heart of neglect trauma, the “dilemma without solution.” After the blog went out I realized to my sheepish dismay and embarrassment, that I never articulated the precise words Dr. Main used to define it. Mea Culpa!! Thankfully, as ever the opportunity for apology and repair is available! The only thing that thankfully makes it survivable and even safe to make a dumb mistake! So, I can tell you here, because as ever it is infinitely relevant. The dilemma is defined as follows: “The source of longing and the source of terror are the same person.” The child is therefore faced with this terrible non-choice of reaching toward and pulling away, reaching toward and pulling away, and on and on until they collapse in despair. Ultimately in many cases, the adaptive default is self -reliance which is an effective if lonely strategy in many cases. We went over this last week.
In sexuality, however, self-reliance presents additional challenges. Clearly, we can do it all ourselves, but most of us would agree that it is not the same. So, we must elaborate some other creative way, to be sexual and be safe. This is what I tend to find among the vast world of neglect survivors. For me, when I was young and un-recovered, sexual compulsivity was a ready solution. Numbers, frequency, superficial distance, and a lot of alcohol, kept it impersonal and disconnected enough to be less “dangerous,” at least in the emotional sense. I could even feel proud or powerful about how many guys I could “get”. Oy vey.
As I got older and became a bit more civilized and more discriminating, alcohol became the main “safeguard” against getting too close, although I still managed to have plenty of dramatic heartbreak stories. I kept voluminous journals about it all, and I still have the shelf of them, although I can honestly say that for some reason, I don’t throw them out, I have never cracked the covers and they all remain unread! Needless to say, everything changed and became much more difficult when I got sober. By then I was 28 and in therapy. I had to begin to face the “dilemma,” which I slowly did. But admittedly it took me some time!
Among my neglect survivor clients, I have observed many creative “solutions” to the sexualdilemma. Now the internet has provided a vast world of cyber partners, where one can have erotic experiences without risking the vulnerability of authentic flesh and blood relationships. This becomes quite an issue among many couples, and even within guilt-ridden individuals, however as evidenced by a more than thriving mega-industry, it continues to be an option.
Less now, post-AIDS (well almost) than before, anonymous sex has been an option. At the corner of our block in San Francisco is a park once a famous destination for anonymous sex liaisons. I can remember when I first moved in in 1991, seeing rather guilty-looking individuals slinking out of the park, after assumably having their trysts in the bushes. That seems to have stopped, at least to my observation. There used to be bathhouses and hot tub places that were similar, and I sometimes heard about them from shame-ridden clients trying to stop frequenting them. I have not heard those stories in quite a while.
More typically, and a “solution” that I still encounter in my work, and is truly painful for both parties to work with, is what turns out to be serial infidelities, which most effectively drive a wedge between partners, which is often painfully difficult if not impossible to repair. I don’t want to say impossible, but it requires two truly committed partners willing to stay the course, to get there. And all too often another generation of neglected kids is the tragic result.
Similar and perhaps in many cases slightly less difficult to repair, is employing sex workers. And I have had a few clients who were sex workers, a rewarding way to have plenty of sex, in many cases stay “in control,” and not get attached. And many more, and this is what I see most often, neglect survivors may partner “unwittingly” with someone who is unable or unwilling to have sex, or have sex with them. They may have a miserable and cycling conflict/fight about it. Or may sink into a long and sexless partnership. It is surprising how many couples have ended up like this.
“Spectatoring” is a term used in sex therapy. It maps remarkably neatly onto the “one-person psychology.” The person is focused on their own performance and observing themselves in action almost as if watching a show, while also imagining and being perhaps fixated on their impact on the partner. Again, unrelated, detached, and ultimately solitary. All this is to say, the dilemma without a solution leaves a cavernous void or scar, that the survivor is hard-pressed to heal if truly satisfying sex is to be possible.
Sex therapy with neglect is largely relationship work. It is some of the hardest work we do. One reason why I am so crazed about talking about sex, (even to the point of sometimes shocking people with my candor, I’m afraid. Hope I have not offended you!) is because so few will talk about it, or so it seems to me. Doctors don’t warn their patients about the sexual side effects of medications, procedures and illnesses; psychiatrists don’t warn patients about the sexual side effects of some of the most popular psych meds; many therapists, sadly are tongue-tied on the subject, even many couple’s therapists don’t inquire.
Many of you have heard my rant before. My apologies. If we can’t get good quality sex education in the schools, we might start by becoming able to talk to our kids at home; and learning ourselves what is “normal”. We can do our part in raising regulated and sexually healthy children. And Doug Braun-Harvey’s book provides what I think is a wonderful model (Not necessarily for children!) for his “Six Principles of Sexual Health”, which you can also find by Googling. So much more to say on this, to be continued!
Today’s Song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL-VT-WnEFor some time I’ve been meaning to write a blog about the “Dilemma Without Solution” which is a centerpiece of my work. I consider it the heart and soul of neglect trauma. The woman who first identified and named the dilemma, Mary Main, is one of my greatest heroes. I hesitate to call her a heroin, because of the identification, at least in my mind, with the lethal drug. Admittedly, for whatever reason (most likely of course having to do with my bigger-than-life dad,) she is one of the few on my shortlist who is female. Well, I went to look her up to find out how old she is now, only to find to my dismay and then great sadness, that she passed away on January 6 (a historic anniversary in the US!), 2023. I will have much more to say about the loss, and the life of Dr. Main, but for now, I want only to remember and honor her as I yet again immeasurably appreciate her massive contribution to attachment theory, trauma theory and my thinking and my work. Thank you so much Dr. Main!
In 1986, Mary Main, in conjunction with her UC Berkeley collaborator Marion Solomon identified and named a fourth Attachment Style: The Disorganized Disoriented. Because it led directly to a new understanding of dissociation, it of course profoundly affected and came to inform trauma theory and practice, as dissociation is so often a telling trauma symptom. And Dr. Main identified its roots in what she came to understand and named “The Dilemma Without Solution.”
Attachment as we now clearly know, is a survival need. The human infant is dependent on parents longer than most if not all other mammals. And the infant instinctively “knows” that without the mother they will die. I am mindful in my use of the term mother, but because the infant grows in the mother’s body and makes their first and lengthy attachment there, I use mother as shorthand. Primary caregiver is perhaps more politically and even technically correct, but it may be tedious. And even the infant themselves intuitively “knows” that anyone else is, at least in some ways, the “wrong one.”
In the hierarchy of defenses from danger, for all mammals is the attachment cry. Our first and most primal response to threat, after orienting to it, is to cry out for the mother, just as George Floyd in his final breathless gasps uttered the plaintive cry, “Mama, Mama…” which continues to haunt me. When the attachment cry fails, the sequence is to attempt fight or flight, of course, impossible for an infant. And ultimately, collapse or freeze.
In the wild, the freeze response of a cornered prey animal is ratchet down all “non-essential” bodily functions to negligible, almost nothing, feigning death or “playing possum.” Perhaps with luck, the predator will think they are dead and lose interest in eating them, as most predators do not care to eat dead prey. Or the prey animal will numb out, and freeze so completely as to not feel the pain of being eaten, what we now understand as the dissociative response. The numbing of dissociation is well known to us, many from the inside, if not from our study. So back to our neglected infant.
A baby, confined or “trapped” in a crib may look up into an angry face, a scared face, a blank face, or worst of all no face at all, and will despair, and go through the survival sequence. Of course, unable to flee, with no hope of fighting, they reach, cry and then collapse or freeze. They even cease to cry. As Ruth Lanius, neuroscience of trauma research luminary reminds us, “the withdrawal of the mother is experienced by the infant as life-threatening.” Life and death are at stake. And there begins the voiceless hopeless helplessness, and terror of dependency we have come to associate with neglect.
Very early on the child adapts with a ready stand-in, not conscious of course, but a default to “I’ll do it all myself.” It is not a solution but a life raft, a perhaps lonely means of survival. In the US and some other Western cultures, self-reliance is highly esteemed and respected. The “self-made” tough and autonomous “rugged individualist is a cultural icon to be emulated here. I was certainly a poster girl.
In ninth grade, as I slowly returned from the almost-dead of my anorexia, I had a game-changing experience. I entered a national essay contest. I competed with nationwide high school seniors. And amazingly, I won! What was game-changing about it was not the “obvious.” I wouldn’t say it helped me to feel better about myself really, or even get much attention from my parents, although there was an article and even a picture of me in the paper. I must have that old clipping somewhere. No, what really made the difference in my life was that I used the $100 prize to buy my first ten-speed, and rapidly became a distance bicyclist, I had my own wheels at 14, and could put distance between myself and my childhood home; I could become independently mobile. It was not only freedom, and my gateway to meeting older boys/men, but it gave a boost to my self-reliance. I was able to start my little housecleaning business ride to the mansions in the hills where I worked, and save money for college. Most ironic, however, was that the nationally ascribed theme for the contest, and the title of my essay was, get this: “No Man is An Island.” I have no idea what I wrote. I think that essay was somewhere in the bulging closets full of stuff to be gone through in our dad’s house when he died. I haven’t seen it. But I’d love to know what I wrote back then. All this is to say, the Self-Reliant Character is almost a caricature, the dead giveaway of neglect if we can learn to see it. The natural outgrowth of the “Dilemma” is how we can begin to discover ourselves or our clients who are children of neglect. And it is the heart of course, of why relationships are such a minefield. Attachment from the start is fraught with lethal danger.
I learned this concept from one of my few other women heroes, Pat Love (yes, her real name!) whom I consider to be the greatest couples therapist in the known world. I discovered Pat in the early 1990s through her book Hot Monogamy, when I was first trying to formally learn more about sex. She became over time a trusted colleague, consultant and friend. I wonder how Pat is doing. The duality or contradictions of the one-person psychology are also often a marker of neglect. On one hand, the person is almost obsessively “other-directed,” and focused on the other. I constantly studied my mother’s state, if she appeared anxious, scrambling to make exquisite orders in the house, to have dinner made and the kitchen all cleaned up before she could stress about it, and also to guard against her anger or impatience with me. I was much more aware of her feelings and states than my own, constantly reading her, or trying to. It was a way to be safe, to try and please, and if not get love, ward off the opposite.
The flip side of one-person psychology is that living in a universe of one, one can forget to consider or even see that there is another. When I was first with my husband and we might go for a walk, he would be nine feet ahead of me without noticing, as if he had forgotten I was there, which in fact he had. I thought “What is wrong with this person? He doesn’t know how to walk with someone!” And it was true. The “one person” is so used to doing it all and being only alone, that they can readily lose awareness of the other. I often hear this from couples where at least one is a child of neglect. A wildly confusing construct.
Neglect is a koan of confusion about self. One can be completely “self-centered” and self-focused, while simultaneously feeling “there is no me.” I was always utterly confused about existence. I forever wondered not only if I had a right to exist, but if I even did. The Dilemma is where it all begins. Sadly, the hornet’s nest of relationship begins in the cradle. It is indeed the heart of the neglect matter. We must treat it, and what may appear to be our “selfishness,” with the kind of kindness, gentleness and patience worthy of an infant.
Please receive my sincerest apology and regret for being late with the blog! It is an essential neglect issue and certainly a value and intention of mine to be reliable and consistent. I am so sorry I failed at that this week!
It is Black History Month here in the US, and I have been pondering about how to address it in at least one blog before the month is out. Now as the weeks tick away I still have yet to come up with a topic that might be interesting, relevant and fresh. All my life I have been haunted, plagued and compelled by the seamless interplay between micro and macro where trauma and neglect are concerned. Having two terribly traumatized parents, who were deeply injured by both, it is in my bones, as is some sort of mandate to act. I have always and continue to struggle about where to direct my energy and time which is never enough. And admittedly getting older does not much help. Oy vey, but I don’t stop trying even as the world seems to be getting more complicated and in some ways worse. As the Chileans say, “El mundo es al reves…” The world is spinning backwards.
Admittedly I am humbled and somewhat bewildered by my impoverished knowledge of Black history, and how badly neglected such a huge and blighted narrative could be, by my public school education. I have to hope things have improved, but sometimes I am not so sure. Much of my growing up took place where Silicon Valley has sprawled, although it certainly was very different then, with peach and persimmon orchards on hills that are now crowded with corporate skyscrapers. It was a great bicycling country. The gap between haves and have-nots was not as wildly extreme and glaring as it is today. Meanwhile, I attempt to scramble and catch up with my missing education, at this advanced age (I might recommend a spectacular new book by a local author, George McAlman: Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen). And I have been reading the biography of basketball legend Magic Johnson, who is only a few years younger than I am, so his is painfully recent history. He was a brave ambassador of integration in his teens; and a remarkable human being endowed with brilliance and charisma of many kinds.
And I do remember a little from my own life experience. My mother who was always a champion of the “underdog” loved Harry Belafonte, and taught us little bits and pieces of history that she knew, feeling her identification with a rejected race. And I remember from when I was three and our dad had his first student cantor position at a little congregation in Manhattan, he “went to bat” for Muncie the Black custodian, who was grossly underpaid. I remember our mom being proud that he “stuck his neck out” for Muncie that way. I did not really understand what those expressions meant, but somehow, I knew it was a good thing. And I knew that Muncie was a good guy.
Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, it seemed as if the imperative of institutional change was actually materializing at least in some ways. We saw the emergence of a new field of “DEI,” diversity, equity and inclusion, teams in many business workplaces. It seemed to even be a new specialization emerging in business schools. Having been in private practice for almost 40 years (a certified child of neglect!) It has been that long since I have had bosses and co-workers. And I have never had employees. So of course, I am clueless about workplace dynamics, at least first hand. But I heard plenty from clients both about race and DEI in the workplace. Yesterday’s paper reported that DEI programs are being cut back and even phased out in many places, or scaled way down. And there has been plenty of noise wobbling in recent years, about affirmative action in both workplaces and school admissions. How are we to correct our course? To break the chains of intergenerational trauma and neglect, and shackles of all kinds? Microaggressions are perhaps not so micro!
I learned from Ta-Nehisi Coates that race itself is a racist construct. Why should differentness be such an issue that we must create such, categories, such distinctions, and hierarchies? Why would it not be like flavors and colors, a palette of richness? I think of the worlds of art, or cheese! Among cheeses, some are hard, some mushy, some stink others odorless, some are ready immediately, and others require months or years of ageing. We may have, our personal favorites, or even no interest at all. But attributions of superiority, of power or intrinsic value, or morality? What is that? I constantly wondered as much beginning at an early age, what made me so worthless? How could I compensate or measure up, or do or be enough? Why did others seems of much “better?” As a couple’s therapist, I hear it daily., So much of the mire of daily life layered over attachment trauma and all the other kinds too, are questions and contests of differentness.
I heard an interview the other day (NPR Hidden Brain), with a psychologist named Peter Coleman who runs a program in New York, the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, and also teaches at Columbia University. He was talking about seemingly intractable differences, both his own and also research experiences; and around finding the way. What he discovered was not really surprising, but certainly interesting and worthy of exploration and practice. He found that understanding why whatever the point of view, is so hugely important to the other, truly understanding that, can be the game changer. Certainly not necessarily quickly, but completing that process.
Admittedly I have historically been perhaps stubborn and sometimes averse to the question “Why?” I remember my therapist saying to me “Why is a 19th Century question?” And I probably associated it with orthodoxy or defensiveness. My husband being a scientist would readily ask why and I would hear it as somehow critical, or a demand to “justify” my feeling or point of view which of course infuriated me. I have certainly loosened in my views and understand that explanations, certainly scientific or developmental ones, have their place and can actually be illuminating and even calming. But this idea, that true comprehension, empathic curiosity, patience and attention, and time, can make a great deal of difference in what may seem irreconcilable. It seems at the very least a worthy experiment.
I have found hope and inspiration in the notion of turning over a new leaf. Perhaps the Year of the Dragon brings that to mind. In Chinese culture, the dragon is a symbol of supernatural power, wisdom, strength, and hidden knowledge. Perhaps ushering in this year may bring more of that. I hope so. As I slowly learn to grow my orchid plants, a new passion of mine, I am readily heartened and surprised when I see new leaves and even buds appear on plants I have almost lost hope for. A good reminder.
A hero in Black history, and certainly in my book, was Shirley Chisholm. She was the first Black woman to be elected to the US Congress in 1968 and served for seven terms until 1983. She even had the guts to be the first woman, let alone a Black woman, to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. What a role model! Chisholm was known for saying “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. We must reject not only the stereotypes that others have of us but also those that we have of ourselves.” Words to live by.
Today’s Song:
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