Last week I lost my watch. I hate losing things, and I rarely do, having ferocious OCD rituals of rigidly keeping things “always” in the same designated places. Usually, it is my husband’s difficulty, and more than once, we have frantically searched for his wallet in foreign countries. He is a little older, so it is rather endearing to go through the checklist before we go out: “Wallet, keys, glasses, glasses case, phone,” but admittedly, it is something of an insult, certainly a bitter frustration when it is me. And I really liked it. I got it in Santa Fe, New Mexico, some years ago. Oh well.
But this first-world problem brought to mind literally and figuratively the recurring theme of lost time. We used to refer to sufferers from severe dissociative disorders as “losing time,” blocks of a day or more that simply could not be accounted for, blanked out. Lately, I have heard about it much more in terms of mortality. So many survivors of trauma and neglect find themselves in their fifties and sixties and only newly coming out into the light of pleasure and joy in life. And even younger people grieve over what were supposed to be our “best years,” the mythical imagery of youth, theirs having passed with storms of traumatic activation, paralysis, loneliness, and endless therapy. So much time is seemingly lost. I do say I find that all my pain and loss serve me in some way, but that can be a very hard sell.
Loss is at the very root of neglect trauma. Absence is the perpetuity of loss, the ever-present ache of what is not there and likely never will be. Sometimes, it is, in fact abandonment by death, busyness, illness, too many siblings, simply leaving, or perhaps worst of all, parental withdrawal. Loss, as an experience or expectation, is one of the most potent and persistent features of neglect trauma. Admittedly, I have discovered that I harbored (and still somewhat do) embarrassing denial and avoidance around death, perhaps numbing or cutting off from my feelings when someone important has passed. I am aware that I desperately dreaded the loss of the most important people in my life and was frantic for a good two years when my sister was very sick. I guess I finally began to make some progress as I felt terrible sadness about the deaths of Charlie Watts, Pablo Milanes, and even our little dog Button, But only in the last couple of years. And those are certainly “practice” losses. Not like the most important, closest people in my life. I am aware I still have a ways to go, and I am hoping the timing will be kind.
Neuroscientist and clinician Frank Corrigan has aptly renamed the larger category of attachment trauma as “attachment shock.” That really captures it. It is profoundly, shockingly traumatic to an infant’s system to experience the loss of the primary other, in whatever form it takes. And Ruth Lanius, the world’s foremost trauma neuroscience expert, reminds us how severe the shock of withdrawal of the primary love “object” is, especially in the most vulnerable developmental times in life. For a graphic illustration, I again recommend the famous “still face” research, which most of us have seen at least once (see here) as a reminder of how quickly and profoundly a small child is affected even by momentary and seemingly “neutral” shifts of caregiver attention. With as many times as I have viewed it, I never cease to find it heartbreaking.
Of course, rejection is a highly charged “hot button” of trauma activation for survivors of neglect trauma. Those of us in a relationship with survivors may be offended or exasperated by the way what to us might be “innocuous” behavior, might be interpreted as rejecting or abandoning. And it can certainly be humbling and sometimes surprising how persistent those reactions can be. Admittedly, only the other day I was reminded of this when I got an email from my beloved work team about changes in their growing business. My heart began cracking before even getting through the email’s text. The header alone announcing “changes” had me immediately preparing to be passed off to some other helper, displaced by much bigger and more valuable fish. I was unsure if my rough couple of days anticipating our meeting to discuss it was only because of this excessive grief/dread or other factors. But I arrived at the meeting already with tears in my throat.
Of course, the team, in explaining the changes, was quick to reassure me that the changes were all good and well-founded and certainly would not be leaving me on the curb as I had imagined. The newer member of the team was profusely apologetic as if she had done something “wrong” in how she expressed herself. I had to quickly change my hat and explain to her, “You did nothing ‘wrong!’ What you are seeing is neglect trauma!” I even told her, “This is what neglect ‘triggering’ looks like!”
Those who are familiar with my work (and my quirks!) know that I dislike and avoid using the word “triggering.” I don’t like the association with gun violence, and to me it can sound blaming as well. But I wanted to make my point quickly. But additionally, this is an opportunity to clarify that neglect “triggering” or activations are like gunshots with silencers. Rather than a big, dramatic bang, they have a muted, muffled pop. And as with so much else about neglect, they can go unheard and/or misunderstood. Reactions being unobtrusive, the neglect survivor can yet again slip under the radar with their experience and their pain, unseen and unrecognized. This of course did not happen with these wonderful people, but it was also a good teaching moment. And a shot of humility for me!
For those of us in any kind of relationship with survivors of neglect trauma, be they partner, client, loved one, and of course oneself, we must be ever reminded that the child of neglect can sniff rejection and abandonment readily under almost any rock, however “innocent” it might be in real-time, prefrontal, rational terms. We may be confronted with “disproportional” and seemingly “irrational” even “crazy” responses/reactions to what is to us misunderstood unintended slights.
I attempt to teach neglect survivors as we do the protracted work of extinguishing the old trauma reactivity; our larger goal is to get a voice! As attachment and somatic pioneer Stephen Johnson so concisely wrote, get a spine and get a voice. Find the courage and words to claim and occupy space and clarify: “What do you mean?” Most often, it is not the slur that we imagine. Admittedly, such unwitting imaginings can make it so. I wonder how many times I have been inspired by the painful rejections of me that I so feared!
The work of repair is another whole topic. Like everything else in a relationship, as adults, the more we make it a two-way street, the more quickly and “economically” it can wreak its magic. But most certainly, working one’s own side of the street, both in terms of how we interpret others (or fail to inquire about our interpretations;) or how we ourselves might “slip” into thoughtless or seemingly absent or even hurtful behavior or utterances. I know I can always do better, and to correct when I can is often better even than had I never made the mistake in the first place.
Meanwhile, I did find another watch that I like. We can never get back “lost time,” But who knows? Maybe my old vanished watch will turn up!
Today’s song:
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 stowed in their basements. It was probably fourth grade when I first started learning about plate tectonics, the science of the shifting slabs of rock that divide the earth’s crust. Not far under a seemingly solid, perhaps placid earth’s surface resides this rocking and rolling, drifting landscape, moving constantly and reshaping the exterior of the land, occasionally in a dramatic, even violent way. I found myself thinking of this craggy lithosphere as I pondered the fragmentation of selves, which in some ways seems quite similar.
When I first started learning about the fragmentation aspect of trauma, dissociation, it was confusing and still can be. Dissociation is a term used to describe two distinct but related phenomena: to crassly abbreviate them, “splitting” and “numbing.” Splitting refers to the “divided self,” torn between two or more fierce emotions or states. They might be the disparate parts of the self that witnessed and lived the traumatic experience in various ways and the part that kept traumatic events hidden from awareness. One part might look “functional” or “good” on the outside and “dysfunctional” collapsed into some other less desirable adaptation behind the scenes. The numbing refers to a dulling of awareness, lack of presence, and “spaced out” response, which can readily be one of the split-off parts. Both of these definitions are correct, often used interchangeably, and I still find they can muddy communication.
Back when I first started learning about dissociation, one of the parts was referred to as the “Apparently Normal Personality” (ANP). I never cared for that term. Mostly because I balk, in general, at the notion that there is any such definitive designation as “normal,” so it winds up being subjectivity or prejudice and often pathologizing. I like Janina Fisher’s wording: the part that “takes over the ordinary responsibilities of daily life.”
In the world of neglect, the bedrock fissure, the “crack at the core” is what I call the “Dilemma Without Solution.” This is the great divide between the two warring emotional forces of desperate longing and bottomless distress, be it terror, grief, or some combination of both. Particularly for an infant whose needs are limitless, if the source of comfort and rejection, pain, or simple but devastating absence are the same person, it is indeed unresolvable. The cracking mitosis is not a discrete event but a redundant process of approach/withdraw, reaching and recoiling, reaching and recoiling. For an infant, it is unresolvable; the only viable adaptation to this inescapable shock, the only way “out” is to freeze or collapse. And that icy answer can readily evolve into the numbed-out state of dissociation and can often congeal into lasting patterns that make for relationship hell.
For years I wondered why I couldn’t have anyone in my life for long. Some people still had friends going back to grammar school and even earlier. I felt more like a motor boat, looking behind me at a choppy wake, a trail of relationship wrecks. What was it with me? I simply could not get along with humans.
Magma is the molten, liquefied rock flowing deep in the earth’s core. Shifts in pressure and temperature may build and boil, ultimately culminating in the ruptures and upheavals of earthquakes. It is humbling and frightening to imagine that something as devastating as the recent earthquake in Turkey, which left thousands dead and thousands more orphaned and homeless, started with the quiet rolling around of warm liquid. I think of the dilemma without a solution as the magma of neglect trauma. It may at first seem subtle or barely noticeable, a “simple” absence. But to the infant, there is nothing simple about it. It is as if the sun is disappearing from the sky, and the very life force is extinguished. To the infant, the withdrawal of this all-central other makes for the rising pressure and the climbing temperatures that culminate in the devastating quakes.
Some struggling survivors of childhood neglect may berate themselves, complaining of what they might call “fear of intimacy.” Or they might not experience it as “fear” or call it anything, even. They might not even notice that they simply act on reflex, fleeing from something resembling closeness. They may not recognize it themselves but hear the disgruntled refrain from partners or others attempting to be “loved ones” that they are avoidant in some way. They might be tortured or mystified by loneliness or mystifying relationship “sabotaging” behavior such as being “needlessly” antagonistic (although antagonism is probably rarely, if ever, “needed!) They may recoil from the connection in any number of conscious or unconscious ways. They may, like the old me, look behind them with shame and bafflement at the trail of litter, the detritus of wreckage of relationship tried and failed. The surgeon general in 2023 identified a national “epidemic” of loneliness in the US. I wonder how much of it is rooted in this dilemma.
I have had clients who survived their childhood dilemma by “performing.” The poverty of presence and attention meant there was a failure of mirroring, with no one present to reflect back to them who they were. Rather than growing and exploring organically to what it means to “be me,” from the inside, they rather looked “out there.” Searching for cues and clues about how to garner approval at the least. Growing up and later showing up in our offices, they are frustrated and ashamed by how authenticity eludes them. “I have no idea what I feel and what I like. My husband tells me he grew up being a “fur coat.” He learned well how to be an elegant, even luxurious adornment until, with bitterness, he was old enough to get out.
Neglect is rife with complications of self. I must be ever mindful when I see a client feeling better one day or able to do things in a new way or in a way they have been aspiring to. I must not overshoot or excessively acknowledge or compliment them. They might wind up feeling unseen, or as if I don’t get it, that the terrified parts are still there, and may rear up again at any moment. The parts move and change; dominance and prominence may shift and drift. Disowned parts may not go away.
I have found that sometimes the hardest changes to integrate relate to seeing myself in new ways that are wonderful. Something I used to struggle with no longer eludes me. I feel easier, or people like me. I may strain to believe it or to not screw it up. We must go gently with that, too. The earth is ancient, core and surface, and everything in between, ever-changing. We strive for harmony and equilibrium.
Today’s song:
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 for amphetamine drugs. Never fond of diagnostic labels in general, (and particularly when assigned by one’s spouse or partner!) I listen with curiosity and perhaps some wariness. ADD and ADHD have seemed to be ready and convenient or “diagnoses du jour” in the last decade or two. They seem to me vague and ill defined, and frankly I shudder to think of all the kids growing up, often struggling on those speedy meds. It was only when I started studying neurofeedback that I began to understand a little more about what is going on in the brain of the attention afflicted. I wondered about the possible correlation between attentional difficulties and early neglect. Certain patterns began increasingly to make sense to me, as I connected dots I have often seen.
One of the first signature neglect “markers” I observed, back in the early days when my anecdotal research on neglect spontaneously began, was what I came to call the “Three P’s” of Neglect: Passivity, Procrastination and Paralysis. Particularly in the interpersonal world, these people appeared slow to initiate, follow through, complete things, and they were prone to collapse, feeling powerless or defeated. I began to see how these difficulties seemed to coincide with challenges around focus and concentration.
Studying neurofeedback, I began to understand what was to me a whole new world of brain frequencies. Previously I had been, aware of brain chemistry, and with the advent of what were then touted as the miraculous new SSRI antidepressants, many psychological complaints were explained in “chemical imbalance” language. But I was completely ignorant about the brain’s electrical pulses and impulses. Learning about trauma, I of course knew of the swinging trauma poles of hyperarousal and numbing. Through neurofeedback I began to “get” what that means in brain terms.
My neurofeedback focus from the start was on trauma, and primarily with calming down a hyper-aroused, terrified nervous system, I was perhaps surprised to learn what seemed counterintuitive to me: that attentional issues are treated by “training up” the brain. The pre-frontal (executive and thought centers) are firing too “low,” meaning at slow, maybe “too” low of frequencies. This seemed counterintuitive to me, as I had previously associated ADD type complaints with rapid shifts of attention, and hyperactivity, so I had previously simply assumed a speedy brain. However, continuing to see the co-occurrence of attentional issues and neglect histories piqued my curiosity. What might this mean?
I was always baffled (and sometimes admittedly dismayed,) by the way that my husband, the quintessential child of neglect, coped with the annoyances of all-too-common Bay Area bumper-to-bumper traffic. If we found ourselves mired in a jam, he would swiftly grab the nearest exit, jump off the freeway, and then follow a circuitous seemingly endless zigging and zagging route of surface streets, getting us to our destination probably no sooner, than had we continued to crawl with the glacial freeway traffic. But he always said, it was a phenomenal relief to simply be moving. Similarly, standing in lines was pretty out of the question for us. Go to a restaurant without a reservation? No way! Waiting and boredom are an agony for the child of neglect, and I began increasingly to observe this unbearable intolerance, the excruciating impatience and aversion to dead or empty time. Even if the alternative was pretty darn unpleasant.
I imagine an infant alone in the dark, the cold and vacuous crib, no one around; and the child not knowing if and when there ever would be again. Infants are not designed to be alone, certainly the tiny ones. The little brain with nothing to resonate to is lost in space, floating untethered without gravity, like a stray astronaut in a dark, limitless stratosphere. Terrifying, and desperately lonely. Attachment being a survival need, the loss, absence or withdrawal of attachment will feel life threatening to the vulnerable little one. Traumatic. I imagine that yawning, empty time is enough reminiscent of that trauma, as to activate it. Preventing or avoiding the stimulus, the reminder, becomes a desperately needed defense, a lifesaver. Thinking about our maze of urban circling in that way, made more sense, and certainly inspired more compassionate patience on my part. Many a child of neglect will default to all sorts of seemingly “crazy” strategies to avoid waiting. On some level it is for many, a matter of survival, or it feels that way.
Similarly, for the child of neglect, boredom is a killer. Sometimes even when the alternative is another horror that I have come to call “hand grenades.” I remember one couple I saw. If our session seemed to loll off into what might seem dull, unmoving low energy, the excruciatingly bored partner would shatter the placid space with a comment so outrageously provocative, or specifically objectionable to the other partner’s sensibilities, that she would fly into an instantaneous, paroxysmic rage, It was certainly not pleasant, but did liven things up, and relieve the deathly emptiness. Or him, it beat the alternative.
I also discovered that if I encountered a new client with whom I felt in myself a leaden weight of uncharacteristic boredom or sleepiness, it was again, a clue or marker; perhaps a window into the dark desolation of that probably unremembered but traumatically relived, infant’s world. For me, boredom is so “ego dystonic,” such an unfamiliar state, that it stands out as immediately noteworthy, and generally points to a sense of contactlessness: simply not connecting with the other. I then have to wonder what I am being invited to experience and to know about this person’s inner world. How much of their early life was plagued by enduring the lonely freeze: the absence and/or loss of the beloved other? The withdrawal of that attachment figure, is similarly hugely traumatic, and perhaps the “shock” of that, or some other experienced abuse, are the rare impetus or catalyst to wake up the bleary little brain, and bring a little “life.” How sad to feel alive via experiencing threat and pain.
The brain as we know, develops in resonance, the right hemisphere of the primary caregiver’s brain in a gentle reciprocal dance with the developing right hemisphere of the infant; the stimulation of the deep recess of the brainstem. We are learning more about how the incipient being and sense of self comes into existence. It makes sense that the under-stimulated brain would be perhaps sluggish or slow, that existence would be in question, that movement might be a godsend, or at least a breath of fresh air.
Because my “study” has been anecdotal and hypothetical, I have asked Ruth Lanius, the renowned expert on the neuroscience of trauma and attachment, if there is merit to such connecting of the dots, or such an interpretation of what I observe. Although there is no formal research we are aware of as of yet, she has consistently agreed. Meanwhile I strive for patience and understanding, and to avoid rush hour when we can!
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 make sure we do get to before it is too late. Some windows may close if we fail to get there in time. I have noticed in recent years many adult child of neglect, crossing into their fifties- particularly men, who seemingly suddenly awaken to the poverty or even absence of sex that they have coexisted with over often many years. What may have been tolerable, or perhaps they have been too busy to notice for a time, begins to gnaw at them, and become unbearable. Many clients who are partnered, (or not,) may have gone years with little or no sexual interaction- with their spouse or anyone at all. As time marches inevitably on, it becomes imperative to many, to change that.
Sex is something we rarely talk about, for some incomprehensible reason. given that most of us if we are honest, probably do think about it a fair amount. Perhaps we have learned that it is “wrong,” dirty or inappropriate to talk about sex; perhaps we believe that we are supposed to “know” things about which we have no clue, and don’t want to be caught in ignorance; shame, guilt, some sort of moral tabu from one’s culture or religion, simple embarrassment about even saying the words? So many reasons to not talk about sex. Well, I for one admit I have always been inordinately fascinated with the topic, (which is often cited as the main reason why people become sex therapists!) And I am particularly interested in breaking silence about all matters sexual, because I am passionate about eradicating sexual trauma. And I believe that in addition to the undeniable, vast gender power inequalities, lurk problems of both dysregulation and ignorance.
I have seen many and varied iterations of sexual impacts in children of neglect. Because any sort of interpersonal dependency, which would likely include authentic intimacy, is experienced as threatening and even lethal, some sort of “solution” to the problem of sexual need is in order. I have seen a wide range of adaptations, where a person can be sexual and not risk intimate entanglements. They may rely on inanimate or virtual sexual “partners,” essentially relating to images on a screen. They may enlist the services of sex workers, so they can have safely circumscribed erotic encounters with no risk of intimacy. Anonymous sex in parks and bath houses, less common now since the AIDS epidemic scared us all too much; serial infidelities or monogamies that do not last long enough to result in attachment; some becoming sex workers themselves, simple abstinence, or partnering with someone sexually unavailable and enduring even years without gratification. I have seen all and combinations of these variations over the years. And many come to a “head” or critical mass at mid-life, often in a swirl of bitterness, shame, blame and/or grief, and fear that it is already too late.
Of course, we know that the nervous system of neglect is embedded in an early matrix of dysregulation. The safety and calm that accompany reliable comings and goings of needed care and supplies; the safety and calm of being comforted in the inevitable moments of pain, fear or other distress, make for a resilient, flexible, reasonably stable and voluntary sense of arousal and even to some extent mood. The withdrawal, loss or simple absence of that kind of regularity, make for bodily (in addition to interpersonal) chaos.
Sexual ease and satisfaction rely on a gentle interplay between sympathetic and parasympathetic, relaxation and stimulation. The vulnerability that allows us to connect and make love, requires a measure of safe calm; and to be turned on, become engorged, orgasmic, we need the charge of arousal. A relatively balanced organism is foundational to sexual health. The dysregulations of neglect, are bound to wreak havoc on the sexual self. Not inevitably, but I have certainly seen many and diverse iterations of problematic sexuality in my years of studying neglect. Including compulsivities, being (even dangerously) “out of control.” Probably most common in my practice, have been those who have “done without-” well, up to a point. And when that point, or that age is reached, it becomes a crisis-like, even identity “emergency.” Partners may feel blind-sided by the perhaps previously unexpressed resentment, and what they experience as blame-racked urgency. They might be hurt, angry, bewildered and uncertain about what to do. Compassionate and non-pathologizing couples’ and sex therapy are often indicated.
Besides the internal chaos of dysregulation, the outer world, certainly in the US is sexually equally out of balance. Barraged by titillation and inuendo, we are simultaneously met with a poverty of information. Failure to talk about sex, seems to be unanimous. I often complain about how medical providers fail to educate patients about sexual sequelae or side effects of conditions, procedures or medications. It is as if “sex does not matter?” or does not matter to them? Oncologists, psychiatrists, even couple’s therapists often fail not only to inform or inquire, but even mention sexuality.
Many of our clients will tell us that their parents never talked to them about sex. We have all heard the stories of girls thinking they were bleeding to death, when shocked by a menstruation they had known nothing about. All genders might be caught unawares, buffeted by unexpected pubescent urges and impulses, not knowing what to do with them. The child of neglect has no one to ask. Other kids do their “research” online, via porn or all manner of “chats,” or in locker rooms. What on earth will they “learn?” Where might they be taught about consent? About non-exploitation? Values? Mutuality? Pleasure? Prevention of STI’s, let alone unwanted pregnancy. And love? In school sex education programs, if there are any at all, they might learn about reproduction.
In a world rife with rampant dysregulations wrought by trauma and neglect, chasms of power differential between gender, sexual orientation and race, even age; and barren of practical, accurate and unjaundiced information, is there any wonder that the intergenerational transmission of sexual trauma is of the unmitigated “me too” proportions, that overwhelm not only our psychotherapy offices, and the larger world, but even ourselves? So many reasons for breaking chains of intergenerational transmission. The perpetration and perpetuation of the colossal impacts extend their all-destructive tentacles into every aspect, public and private, of our lives.
One of our paramount goals in neglect recovery is learning to speak on one’s own behalf in relationship: “getting a spine and getting a voice,” in the interpersonal to use the words of attachment research pioneer, Stephen Johnson. The mid-life child of neglect who reaches their limit with sexless partnership are to be supported and helped in their endeavor to speak, and regain, or acquire for the first time another lost human “birthright.” Similarly, I encourage all of us in whatever capacity: medical or mental healthcare provider, teacher, parent, partner, friend: every walk of our lives, to become a willing and fluent mouthpiece, at speaking, (and speaking explicitly and not euphemistically or metaphorically, or in “baby talk!”) about sex. And even being willing to ask, and answer about it. Bringing sex out of the shadows, and out from under its cloak of tabu and shame, will contribute, even a little to making a safer world. My friend and colleague, clinician and author Doug Braun-Harvey has identified and written about what he calls the Six Principles of Sexual Health. I highly recommend his work. The Six Principles are: Consent, Non-exploitation, Honesty, Shared Values, Protection from STI’s and Unwanted Pregnancy, and Mutual Pleasure. Within those parameters it is all good!
Today’s song:
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 my grandmother walked these streets, and her long, silent voice echoes in these halls. I have always been proud to say she was one of the first women to graduate from this iconic, esteemed university.
I brought with me some “sensible shoes:” black lace-up high-ish tops with chunky heels, “old lady shoes,” as we used to say (when she was probably the age I am now!) that remind me of the shoes she used to wear. I have been clacking across uneven stone floors, imagining, wondering how she felt, an 18-19-20 year old coed, conspicuous among the mostly males, as she moved through her young passages. I wonder what her dreams were, what she imagined lay ahead, both in her own life and in the world.
I was scheduled to present about neglect at the conference on the serendipitously assigned date of September 2nd, 2023. Uncannily so my mother was born on September 2nd, 1923. So magically, we were there in Oxford celebrating the centennial of her birth! My talk was one of several in my particular time slot, and entering the room for my final set-up, I was perhaps startled to see there were people there! I had not really thought about it. The child of neglect typically expects, when there is more than one available option, not to be chosen. It was a shock to discover that, wow, some people had chosen mine over other available options. Like the airlines say, “We know you have other choices, thank you…” I had not realized that I had expected to speak to an expansive desert of mostly empty chairs, rather like the old Gestalt therapy… the unwitting default mode of neglect. No one.
I remember growing up, the old adage “Two is company, three is a crowd.” If there were three of us, someone always wound up as the odd one out, “ditched” we used to say. And usually, it would be me, or I would imagine or expect it to be me. As the middle child of three sisters, I was invisible. I have never been particularly taken with the birth order theories, but for whatever reason, I floated around ghostlike for years of my life, expecting to evaporate like smoke, if I ever existed at all. I certainly never expected to exist in anyone’s mind when not in their direct line of sight. It seemed, more than likely that any childhood friend lost interest in me very quickly when ”a better offer” came along. I came to assume that was simply my birthright, which, of course, works quite effectively to make it so.
I was always amazed by the world of threesomes and love relationships of more than two. My few and feeble attempts were awkward and stressful, no fun at all. I remained amazed at how people could make that work. Well, this room full of people defied my age-old circuitry or began to spark something new and pretty wonderful. And it also awakened an uncharacteristic thread of thinking, I began thinking about the many faces of “three.” Associations, myths, triangular shapes, and tercets… dimensions of three.
In the world of trauma and neglect, we are well acquainted with the autonomic trio of fight, flight, and freeze, the primary responses to either actual events or traumatic stimuli. I have also come to identify two other trios in the world of neglect, thus comprising another trinity. The first is what you may have heard me refer to as the “Bermuda Triangle” of emotions, a tri-directional, usually an internal tug of war, a pushing and pulling of contradictory emotions, all of which are undeniably real and all of which make a ton of sense; These are Resentment, Guilt, and Grief. The child of neglect has every reason to be resentful, even enraged, about perhaps a lifetime of “FOMO” and a universe of actual missing out, the huge outlay of time, energy, money, and effort in their quest to reclaim or claim a life. Once they begin to learn about and understand their neglect, they will most likely be boiling mad.
Many of our trauma and neglect survivors come from a long intergenerational line of trauma and neglect. Surely my own parents had tragic, traumatic histories without the benefit of healing. Besides being traumatized by their childhood experiences, my parents then freshly dove into a traumatic immigrant life, with minimal money, post-Holocaust. How do I dare to feel aggression, anger, and even rage when they were simply trying to survive and drag their dysregulated nervous system into a new life? We might say, “They did the best they could,” and many believe saying that is “enough. So, anger about all the “nothing:” all the things that did not happen, feels “wrong,” unsympathetic, not only heartless but clueless. What audacity and meanness are being mad at them? Except that being mad at them makes all the sense in the world. The anger finds itself dragging behind it a mantle of weighty guilt.
And finally, at the far depths of the icy Atlantic region, is the cavernous well of grief for all that was suffered and lost; all the life that was missed: all the nothing, the missing experiences from childhood, all the lost or misspent years of wasted youth and tortured adulthood. The tragedy of waste. Not only is all this loss bitterly unjust, but it is devastatingly sad. Profoundly understandable, incompatible, whipped around by crosswinds, these emotions vie against one another as the sense of self endures the shipwreck.
The third member of our trinity is another triad of emotions, quieter ones but no less painful. These are Rejection, Loneliness, and Shame, another triumvirate that plagues the survivor of neglect and other attachment trauma. The hypersensitivity to rejection, like my unconscious expectation to be abandoned with my waiting PowerPoint in an empty, unchosen hall: “all dressed up like a circus horse with nowhere to go.” Neglect can first be experienced as a devastating rejection, an irreparable unworthiness, and a profound sense of “I don’t matter.” And the expectation that others will catch wind of it quickly and head for the hills.
What follows from the real or perceived rejection can be a bitter and cavernous loneliness if one has the guts and humility to admit it, even to oneself. And finally, the avalanche of shame that shrouds it all into well-hidden secrecy or perhaps self-hatred. A weighty trio. So there you have it: perched on this rigid tripod are some of the toughest challenges for neglect-informed psychotherapy. Three strikes? Oh dear… How do we prevent these three strikes from adding up to “out?”
Well, it is also said that “three is the charm.” So, where is the charm? There is obviously no quick or ready resolution to the contradictions, tensions, and pain. Gentleness, compassion, and understanding for all the struggling and varied triplets, as they all move us toward more peace. And perhaps being on the lookout for other calmer or more joyful trios: the national dance of Chile, the Cueca, like the waltz, moves and sways with 1-2-3 time; the Triptych: a three-paneled art representation, the Tercet, a three-line poetry form that can readily translate to haiku. And apparently, Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher, believes three is “the perfect number embodying harmony, wisdom, and understanding.
Today’s Song:
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 painful emotions: the triumvirate of resentment, guilt, and grief. Resentment, even rage at how trauma of all kinds, the greedy and gluttonous pirate commandeers and robs us of life and life force; guilt about the aggressive and bitter ferocity of the resentment; and the tragic boatload of grief for all that is stolen, lost and missed. And time, once gone, at least as far as we know, is gone forever.
The time it takes to heal seems interminable, unjustly so. And whose “fault” is that? The inept or self-interested therapist, the hapless or “lazy” client? Adamantly and insistently adhering to a “no-blame” paradigm, I refuse to get caught in that question. But I am interested in the question of “laziness” because I am similarly opposed to the harshly self-judgmental question of that.
I remember in junior high school, the rhetorical question bandied around, “Would you rather be lazy, mean, or stupid?” Mean vs. stupid seemed a no-brainer to me, but lazy? Where does that fit in, and how also in relation to meanness? Being good, not only kind but good in every moral sense, seemed wound in with exerting “enough” well-intended effort, which would certainly cancel the question of “sloth.” And patience? I’ve always found it ironic and weird that all manner of sick people are called “patients” because, as I have always said, “I have none!”
Rather than get caught in morality or rhetoric, I shall attempt to defer to science because if aids in understanding even a bit of what underlies the drag and drain of time and effort that trauma work does and does not extract, it helps even a smidge, to defer the guilt and shame about purposeful action, I’ll take it.
Speaking of time, I am endlessly amazed by how, very briefly, in historical times, we have understood and incorporated the workings and the wisdom of the brain in our knowledge of mind and behavior. However, perhaps being unable to study the living human brain was the reason. It is perhaps no surprise that in the last 30 years, since we have had neuroimaging technology so we could actually observe and study the workings of the living human brain, we have learned more than our total previous knowledge of neuroscience. Yet too many of us swept up in the storms of the Bermuda Triangle lose sight of that. Insistent on one’s own shortcomings, sloth, or blanket failure, becomes a personal character issue.
In the early 1990’s pioneering attachment researchers Allan Schore and Daniel Siegel began to teach the psychotherapy field about the fundamentals of neuroscience. Schore was admittedly a grueling challenge for non-neuroscientists to read, but Siegel’s gentler 1994 The Developing Mind was a game changer. The two of them, not without plenty of effort and some ineptitude, turned my head around. Long story short, they made it abundantly clear that the human infant brain develops in resonance with the brain of the mother, or most typically or naturally the mother, right hemisphere to right hemisphere, through the gaze. That exchange, a rhythmic dance, seemingly magically, stimulates a growing and evolving sense of self in the deep, primitive brainstem area. The sense of self begins there.
Fluctuations of state and in the environment are, of course, natural and certainly to be expected. An infant, being a bundle of endless needs, will, of course, at times be hungry, cold, over-tired, wet, bored, in pain, needing a hug, or simply, well, being an infant, cranky. Similarly, a parent will be sleep deprived, stretched thin by other kids and not enough help, struggling with the demands of partnership and family, making ends meet, or managing their own past or present trauma. The possibilities for interrupted or imperfect attunement are infinite. The attachment researchers insistently and gently remind us that the best of the best are accurately attuned, matched, and in sequence with the infant 30% of the time. The rest of the time, they are working to regain the rhythm, restore the resonant connection, and regulate themselves, meaning return their own nervous systems to the best calm they can muster and similarly restore the child to calm. This is the ideal of the essential dance of attachment. Which is, of course, tragically rare in this dramatically unsafe, unpredictable, and often lonely world. Again, this dance is the regulating ideal. With luck, this experience of regulating others promptly restoring a baseline regulation ultimately stimulates circuitry and the healthy growth of a brain equipped to self-regulate. This is nature’s design. And, of course, it presupposes, it assumes that there is that beloved other.
What happens when the mother/caregiver is not able to provide either a consistent presence, or due to circumstance past or present, trauma past or present, is unable to calm and settle themselves, restore their own balance, let alone that of the dependent other? Or is not loving? The child then gazes into (or attempts to) a terrified, terrifying, angry, depressed, blank face. And god forbid, what if there is no face there at all? This is the beginning of the story of developmental trauma: the experience of being overwhelmed begins the agony of lonely dysregulation.
Attachment is a survival need like food, water, and oxygen. I might add that when the attachment is withdrawn, the child, and most of all the very young child experiences that withdrawal as a lethal threat to their very existence. Loss or withdrawal of attachment, whether it be through an ordinary life in a family, poverty, violence, intoxication, illness, death, or countless other possibilities, endangers survival and, ultimately, existence. It constitutes a traumatic shock, what Dr. Frank Corrigan has aptly named attachment shock.
This is an essential takeaway: this attachment shock, whatever its cause, is no joke! It is not “small t” trauma, not a lesser trauma or “step-child.” Developmental attachment and neglect may be the most destructive trauma it is possible to experience. (Although I try never to compare “worst worsts.”) Suffice it to say, we are decidedly pack animals, and the human child is dependent on caregivers longer than most, if not all, other mammals. The structural development of the brain is not “complete” until we reach our middle twenties, and even then, for many, the dependency and continuing maturation process may persist a good deal longer. Those of my readers with kids even in their twenties know this far better than I do!
In the “inescapable shock situation,” such as a prisoner under torture or, most certainly, a dependent young mammal, the child or prey animal cannot fight or flee. A predator much greater in strength and size than oneself, unless one is like David the “Goliath-slayer,” is rarely an opponent that the prey can harm or incapacitate. And certainly, an infant and most children cannot successfully escape on their own steam. What options do they have? What we see in the natural world is the prey animal will adaptively “freeze” or collapse. Either, like the notorious possum, will feign death, as most predators, not tempted by dead prey, will lose interest in the meal and wander off in search of “greener pastures. Or the prey animal will ratchet down its sensory receptors and basic functions, numbing away the pain of being eaten. The brain in this freeze response may, in spite of the flood of overwhelming stimulation, appear to be firing very slowly, and the impetus for survival, particularly interpersonal action, may be grossly muted or stunted. Thus, the slow-firing brain, the passivity we often encounter with attachment/neglect trauma survivors. It is the thwarted rhythm of the, in effect, under-stimulated brain. Although it is counter-intuitive, due to under-stimulation or inconsistent presence, this infant searches for rhythm and resonance, like the proverbial “one hand clapping.”
Finally, back to our original topic of time and blame: it makes sense to be heartbroken in grief about lost time and the seemingly bottomless “bucket” of aspired-to or longed-for accomplishments and experiences. It may appear, to oneself anyway, as sloth, as the dreaded “laziness,” or simply being “stupid” or not good enough. Let’s do our best to avoid that sort of thinking. A tall order, I know. It is easier for many of us, certainly for me, to reserve compassion and understanding for the other, for parents, whose trauma was decidedly “traumatic,” trivializing one’s own. That kind of thinking is simply not accurate and certainly won’t help us to accomplish more. It is true that the time that was stolen cannot be retrieved or seized back can never be re-earned no matter how “good” we are. We, therefore must find a way to create our own peace, our own “currency” to somehow restore ourselves. I remember when we were growing up. Lots of the American kids around us were rewarded for the achievement of a good report card and got paid cash for their A’s and even B’s. I thought that was a fine idea. Being generally the hardest-working student in most of my classes, my grades would have been worth a nice little jackpot. Dad thought that mercenary little American transaction was insane, routinely, laughingly saying to us, “I want you to be good for nothing!” I never thought it was terribly funny.
Today’s song:
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 too much empathy. I remember gobbling up that book. Clearly, this compassion fatigue was an occupational hazard that we had to have the humility and the restraint to consider in our idealism and our zeal. I remember hearing a presentation around that time given by a gifted, young child therapist who had worked in the children’s trauma unit of the local general hospital for roughly a decade. She had recently, out of necessity, converted her entire practice to teaching and consulting, having reached a critical mass. She simply could not bear to hear even one more story about brutalized or abandoned little ones. Routinely awakened by nightmares and then racked by anxiety at the very thought of going to work, she felt she had no choice but to make the radical, if disappointing, career change.
Although I was convinced that it “could never happen to me,” queen of endurance that I considered myself to be, when Figley offered his first compassion fatigue training workshop, my hubris did not stop me from hopping on the plane to Tallahassee, Florida in a hot minute. Admittedly, the prospect, even the slim possibility, perhaps scared me, as I heard and read about young, idealistic, inspired, and intelligent clinicians having careers, not to mention joie de vivre aborted or cut short, traumatized by their work. I don’t remember much about the workshop. I admired Figley (And was most struck by how the little town of Tallahassee was swept up in the furor of high school football that weekend. I’d never seen anything like that!) Even all these years and decades later, I have never lost my caution and respect for the subject of compassion fatigue.
Avid bookworm that I am, as is typical for us, I have my favorite authors. High on my short list is the brilliant and prolific Isabel Allende, who, even at her advancing age of 81, still seems to produce a new blockbuster each year. I buy them all sight unseen and am rarely disappointed. Her most recent book, The Wind Knows My Name, surprised me, being an exquisitely detailed historical novel about the Nazi Holocaust. Having grown up on a steady diet of Holocaust stories, I rarely seek out books on the subject. This one has me glued. Allende’s depiction of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass,” reminded me of how my parents both described that nightmarish event well before I could understand what they were talking about, brought back flashback memories of the literal nightmares I remember having when I was two. I did not really know what I was dreaming about, but I do remember being spooked already at that early age, which I can confidently place because of where we were living at the time.
Decades later, in 2015 and 2016, some of what was being bandied around in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election had my father sitting transfixed, semi-catatonic on the couch, eyes like saucers, in unmoving flashback-like reminiscence of some of those early days in Nazi Germany. It had seemed astonishingly unreal, and was again, that intelligent people were listening, let alone believing what was being said. He may or may not have been aware of how frightened he now was, but it was frightening to me to see him that way. When George Floyd was murdered in 2020, it was I who was frozen. It seemed I could not think of anything else for some time. I remember having to at least try to counsel my clients, let alone myself, to regulate our news consumption. It was all so chillingly compelling. Trauma micro and macro seemed to be, actually was, everywhere.
In Allende’s book, Samuel, an eight-year-old boy, was sent out of the country alone when his parents were still able to get him safely out of Austria before they themselves were carted off to concentration camps or exile. Many children were transported by boat or train to sympathetic countries where families took them in and kept them safe. I grew up hearing the stories about my mother; she must have been about ten by then, sent alone to England on a train, where she was welcomed and housed by the Clark family, famous for their Wallabee shoes. The Clarks were heroes in our family. Allende’s book awakened imagined images of the little girl, my mother, alone, stoic, most certainly terrified, desperately lonely, and confused, with no choice but to be patient and still, without even the comfort of a familiar language. After reading about young Samuel, my sleep was invaded by an intense barrage of powerfully lifelike dreams about Mom that stayed lodged in my waking mind through much of the following days and left me feeling grief and guilt about my many complaints about her. And although I was perhaps haunted by not only memory but broad and painful reflections, I could not wait to get back to my book the next evening. Books, movies, news, work, and even conversations with friends and loved ones: trauma can readily take over the airwaves if I let it. If I am not mindful, that is easy to do. But it is not sustainable, or rather, it is the royal road to burnout, as well as being not much fun.
I have the good fortune of having an enlightened partner who insists on packing me off to Hawaii at least three times a year. Granted, the Hawaiian Islands are a locus of tragedy at the moment, but hopefully will not be for long. It is, for me, a happy place of such beauty: glorious flowers and plants, birds, fruit and fish, sky and sea, and great peace. I am grateful to have such a refuge to go back to again and again. Miraculously, it is the one place where I can sleep. But it is also essential to strive to find my balance at home, to make sure and create enough time and space for beauty: art, music, time with loved ones, spiritual renewal, bread and cheese. To not let time for love and pleasure slip away. Allow me to remind you as I remind myself. Don’t sweat the small stuff; give peace a chance. Make time for rest, community, beauty, and joy!
Today’s song:
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 was the case when recently I was visited by a fleeting whiff, almost like a less than a momentary blast of fragmentary memory. It was so lightning-quick and then vanished, almost like a trick of perception. Except it was so searing and real as to be unmistakable. It carried the label, however deficient, of my timeless, signature, and chronic childhood loneliness. Although it has hardly been a secret or a mystery that I was a desperately and hopelessly isolated little flailing misfit, what was jarring now, was the unbearably wrenching sadness that I did not remember having felt quite this way before. Might that be the most weighty and devastating bequest of trauma and neglect? Perhaps. I found myself pondering that question.
As a trauma therapist, I have invariably found that the unbearable morass, challenge, or chronic failure in the world of relationships was what most brought survivors to therapy. It seemed as if almost anything else was more bearable, but not being able to make a go of friendship, intimacy, parenthood, or other family ties drove a kind of urgency that “forced the issue.” It was simply too hard or too hard to keep on trying in vain to figure it out. Not that I was any kind of expert myself, but I knew plenty about what did not work; I could certainly read and learn, and intuitively empathy made sense to me. Although people seemed to think treating others as one would like to be treated oneself was a good thing, which is certainly true, treating people as they would like to be treated is even better. Why wouldn’t that be obvious? Most likely because of the preoccupation with oneself.
I pondered these questions from early in my solitary little life. I was a heady, bookish, introverted little girl who spent inordinate amounts of time quietly alone. Sadness was a default mode, like ambient air. It was not even noticeable but the omnipresent norm. When I conjure an emblematic self-image, I see myself in grades three through six, making the 30-minute trudge to school and back, reading a book. Walking and reading, how did I do that? Now when I see people walking and texting, I wonder how they keep from tripping. Back then, it was my daily routine. Is loneliness the worst of the symptoms of neglect? Sometimes it seems it might be. How can I forget that?
Becoming a therapist was a natural progression after a decade or so of crashing and burning and finding that psychotherapy was the only thing that kept me from dying. Just as going to therapy had seemed not like a choice but a “do or die” proposition, so becoming a therapist, as for many of us, seemed like a “shoe-in,” so to speak. And what else was there to do? It was a job description that my childhood prepared me for, both in the care-taking-of-parents sense and also in the knowing or thinking I knew what was needed sense. I also knew I had a lot to learn, and so set about the seemingly endless and solitary task of trying to learn it; and trying to be good enough in a world in which, as ever, I never was.
And for the “loner,” lonely social isolate that I was, it was an opportunity to be in a way very “close” to people, or “important” to them in some way, that was not really “real,” like real relationships, but what I could handle and could provide. And there was also plenty of quiet alone time in my office, except when I was working, reading and thinking, and planning where I could go to study and learn next. As I got increasingly immersed in the then young sub-field of trauma, I did a lot of running/jetting around to conferences and training. For some reason. Although the US West Coast is such a trailblazer in so many ways, in the area of trauma, it simply wasn’t. So I was going everywhere I could learn.
And everywhere I went, I was that same little girl walking and reading by herself. I floated around conferences like a wordless ghost, always staking out my seat in the front row of every conference room, large and small, never speaking to a soul, eating my room service dinners holed up with a book, haunting hotel gyms at the wee-est hours. I never spoke to a living soul, lived out my historic invisibility while I accumulated a growing store of knowledge. They were productive years and desolate. It is strange and somehow dissonant to remember them. It is no wonder that the sudden lockdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic did not feel strange or alien. Like for many of us who come from neglect, it was a throwback to a whole life of a similar, if less “intentional,” social distancing. What was striking was to have a partner and two sweet and scruffy dogs and to be sharing the experience so widely.
Thinking about it now, I am astonished. How I am not alone, not alone in my small world, and not alone in the larger world. I have a team that supports and works with me. I don’t have to do it all myself! There are many people near and far, some of whom I have never met or touched in person but whom I can authentically say that I love and even who love me. There is you, reading these words. Maybe I will never see or know you. But maybe I will. And I even, at least sometimes, dare to believe you or people like you are there. Neglect did not prepare me for that, and neglect-informed psychotherapy has that among its tasks. To discover that loneliness, being alone is not a birthright or a death sentence. It is an aberration, and it can turn into something else. Even a wonderful life like what I have now.
Sometimes looking back, my life looks like a honeycomb: a structure of geometric encapsulated, hermetically sealed cells, each with its own signature content. Honey is sweet, and some of the cells are not without sweetness or bittersweetness. It all constellates to make this attempt at a story. The healing of neglect is about elaborating the story out of all the nothing, all the fragmented missing fabric of experience and/or loss. It sometimes amazes me when another piece floats forth when I have long been focused on other things.
I have recently had the experience where a very dear client has felt shocked and incensed, abandoned and unseen by my gross oversight, negligence, and failure to see, comprehend and address her loneliness. It seemed mindless, senseless, colossally neglectful, and unconscionable for someone who is endlessly pontificating about the perils of neglect. She is right! How did this happen? How could I do that? Perhaps it is so “natural,” so familiar, and as we say, “ego-syntonic,” that it could disappear into the familiar field. My deepest apologies. A mistake I must strive to be mindful of and never make.
Today’s song:
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 can blur it all into oblivion or doubtful existence. Much of my life seems to have had that quality, and even now, in my advancing age, I am surprised by memory, usually leading with emotion or body feeling that may not have occurred to me in 50 or 60 years of counting or wrestling with time.
I recently had the privilege of participating in a 24-hour continuous, unbroken “Circlesong,” with the legendary Bobby McFerrin. I have written a bit about Bobby before. He is, in spite of his slight (and perhaps shrinking) frame, a larger-than-life musical wonder, part man, part musical instrument. The multiplicity of sound he creates with both voice and body is awe-inspiring. The Circlesong is usually a capela call and response, mostly improvised and usually wordless, not unlike the sacred chants of many cultures. And it seems to similarly evoke altered states of consciousness. I found a few recordings on Youtube that I listened to again and again at home, and I went once to his one-hour weekly Circlesong presentation at a small venue in Berkeley. He generally shares the stage with a group of seasoned compatriots and invites brave members of the audience to come up and lead as well.
I was excited to find the announcement of his weeklong Circlesong School here in San Francisco, although a week was more than I could take on. However, the week culminated in the 24-hour “Unbroken” finale, which I thought would be a brain-changing and amazing new experience. Although I could not tempt my husband or friends to join me, I decided to go for it. It was indeed brain-changing, but not in the ways I had imagined.
The organizers recommended bringing blankets and pillows, and food, I did not imagine I would need those, being something of an aesthete by nature and definitely a struggling insomniac. But I did as I was told. And as the time approached, I found myself exploding with odd butterflies of, was it fear or excitement? Seemed like both. I was beside myself to the point that when my husband was driving me to drop me off, I wildly opened the door of our moving car to lean and call out to a friend I spotted walking down the street (who wasn’t even who I thought he was!) Scared (and baffled) the wits out of my husband, who was driving!)
The venue was the elegant and iconic Grace Cathedral, a Catholic church dating back to the 1849 California Gold Rush days, and now known for being a progressive host for many humanitarian and cultural causes. I had been there before, but not in many years, the last time being 2013 for a reading of Michael Pollan’s then-new, now-classic Cooked. He has become a trailblazer in other ways since then. It is a beautiful old building with high echoey ceilings, lots of marble and dark wood, and elaborate stained glass. Arriving early, I staked out my spot close to the front, as I always do everywhere, so that I could see and hear everything.
It was a lively, eclectic crowd of all ages, races, and types. Perhaps most of them were wearing the arm wristbands that identified them as attendees of the weeklong school event; many of them appeared to be “real” musicians and singers, unlike me. Although I grew up in a musical home and have always swum in a sea of music, and I can say there is always a song in my head, and often on my lips, I claim no formal identification. The singing began, and for a long time, my eyes closed, and my body moving, I was swept.
Around three hours in, there was a kind of “shift change.” People with children scooped up their (mostly sleeping) little ones, and many adults slipped out, including Bobby, who is not young and not well. And the others of his team gathered the remaining 150 or so of us forward so we were in a closer, tighter circle.
As we edged into the fourth hour, I began to notice a change in myself. Unaccustomed to singing non-stop for hours on end, my voice was fading, I had a harder time finding the note I could hit. Sitting under the speaker began to wear on my ears. The hard wooden chair was beginning to grind into my back and butt, and I huddled my two woolen blankets around me. I had to admit, gulp, I was getting tired.
That was when I began to notice I was starting to mark the crawl of time. And memories started to appear, like puffs of smoke, scenes I had not remembered in years. I remember the glacial creep of time when I was anorexic and in a vortex of emptiness. I would watch the clock strain second by second, registering the time that “would have been lunchtime” or the time that “would have been dinner time,” clocking them like the mileage markers on a long agonizing hill. So interminably slowly, it was impossible to think of anything else.
Another flashbulb memory, again I had not thought of in perhaps 5 decades, of being in a Catholic church, perhaps one of the only times I had been before. We were staying with some family friends for a weekend at their cabin in Bodega Bay, the coastal town famous as the location for Alfred Hitchcock’s memorable and terrifying classic, The Birds. We had a few family friends that were Catholic, and these were. I opted to go to mass for my first time and do “what the Romans do,” take communion. The hard wooden benches here at Grace reminded me of kneeling on the hard oak benches back then, in the throes of anorexia, my head beginning to spin. I was weak and wobbly, and again, waiting for the time to interminably end. It didn’t before I fainted dead away. That is all I remember.
I remembered years of depression, knowing that a “watched pot never boils,” but unable to do anything but watch the clock crawl. Running marathon distances in the dark, the 200 mile-in-a-day bicycle rides, things that were supposed to be fun, that were feats of endurance. Neglect is an endurance sport. I knew I could out-endure anyone at anything, and that was perhaps my one dubious talent. As I felt the chill of the high-ceilinged church seep into my depths, I noticed the music was not warming me anymore. I was freezing. And I was having all of these long-forgotten, unbidden memories because I was slipping back into marking time.
When I realized it wasn’t fun anymore. I remembered what I always say, “I am so grateful and glad we live indoors!” I have the privilege of choice about being this cold. I wanted to go home. But what would I tell everyone? I would be “letting everyone down,” and my limitless endurance was failing me. Had it passed its shelf life? By now, I had completed 12 hours, half of the promised 24. It was 7:00 AM. I called my husband to come and pick me up, so grateful that now I have a choice.
Imagining an infant, alone in the crib, in the dark. There is no one there; the cries float like smoke up toward the ceiling, and no one comes. They have no impact; no one sees or hears or registers their loneliness, their despair, their deathly terror. Attachment is a survival need, the human infant remaining dependent longer than perhaps any other mammal. Time is an endless, Sisyphean effort. The brain freezes, and under-firing becomes its default mode, as does a voiceless, impactless collapse. Attention blurs, quicksand. This is how the life of neglect begins.
What a blessing to have a choice. The Circlesong was a wonderful catalyst, but not the way I imagined it would be. Thanks for the music, Bobby! And thanks to all this healing, for having not only a home to go to but a choice.
Today’s song:
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