As the world reels from the recent death of a young Iranian woman at the hands of the “morality police,” I heard a recent interview with another young woman who was stopped, but thankfully not detained, for the “incorrect” wearing of the hijab, the controversial mandatory head covering required for women in Iran. Her breathy recounting of the story, her experience of the event, and its aftermath was like reading the checklist of PTSD symptoms from the DSM. She could check every box: flashbacks, nightmares, terror of even leaving the house, and fearful aversion to even the thought of the street corner where the trauma occurred. Listening to her sent a chill from my belly and up through my whole body.
It was a familiar chill, taking me back to my Aleph class, the first grade of Hebrew School, which corresponded to third-grade regular school, making me about seven or eight years old. I remember watching the grainy black and white newsreels of the Nazi concentration camps, seeing the naked skeleton-like bodies, some of them very small, being kids like me, or too emaciated to tell if they were young or if they were shrunken by starvation and suffering. Clearly, they were almost or soon to be dead.
The chill, the same sensation I was feeling once again, even then, resonated with something as yet unremembered in my own life; that kept me awake or awakened by nightmares and horror. Why they were showing those films to such young kids and without helping to make sense out of them, if there was any sense to be made, continues to be beyond me. The rallying cry of the then-radical Jewish Defense League was “Never Again!” But still, seven- and eight-year-olds?
That same chill, like an intractable ghost, revisited my belly and nightmare-ridden nights in my first year of college. It was another September 11th milestone that became a haunting anniversary in my annual date book: September 11th, 1973, when the bloody Pinochet dictatorship overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Thousands were rounded up, brutally tortured, raped, murdered, and/or disappeared during a reign of terror which spread over much of the Latin American continent. Having grown up on a diet of such stories, I was both riveted and haunted. Many of the torture stories were hideous and graphic, often involving genitals, that lingered in particular in my horror-ridden mind and body.
I have often been curious about the vast menu of symptoms the dysregulated psyche and body land on to both calm the hyper-aroused system down or metaphorically enact the trauma story.
As a therapist, I have often been curious about the vast menu of symptoms the dysregulated psyche and body land on to both calm the hyper-aroused system down or metaphorically enact the trauma story. In our home, we grew up with a steady diet of the, to my mind, nonsensical admonition to “clean your plate, because children are starving in Europe!” (I never understood how my eating unwanted food would help them!) Our dad never let us forget his years of hunger and deprivation, and I felt a similar chill in my body hearing his tirade about “bread and worms,” with which he not infrequently seemed almost to threaten me. I was a decidedly “bad eater.”
Frequently gripped by the hideous and scary image of squirming creatures burrowing in and out of dry old bread heels, I guess it was no surprise when my “symptom of choice” was a near-lethal run with the then virtually unknown, certainly unstudied anorexia, which nearly took me down. But since it was starvation at my own hand, rather than at the hands of some vicious social or political power that be, it was my own “fault,” and certainly did not earn me the badge of courage that our dad wore. I was a “bad girl” and not a martyr.
The play of social forces, of history, left its indelible mark on both of our parents – indelible because neither of them had the impulse or the privilege of healing that I have had. The intergenerational transmission took many forms, both in actions taken and not taken on us kids and also in these less obvious psychological, somatic, and other forms of dysregulation, but also in the more complex and more difficult-to-discern re-enactment and unspoken messages. Somehow, I came to believe that martyrdom was redeeming, suffering noble, and being killed for it the highest possible merit of honor. I suppose on some level, I came to believe that to go up in smoke, to die a tragic or at least some sort of hero’s death, was the way to win our dad’s approval and love. That became my life script, although, of course, I did not realize it. I ultimately set about making my life path to, like Che Guevara, be a selfless internationalist fighter, and go down in fiery glory for the cause. That would also, of course, solve the problem of ending my miserable and unworthy life. Oy vey! That is another story for another day…
My point is that social and political violence in all its forms – racism, homelessness, wild economic, educational, and power disparities – are all the ultimate perpetrators of dysregulation and trauma in their myriad manifestations. How can we dream of addressing one without the other? It is the endless chicken and egg, cycling ever faster like a bicycle wheel careening down a steep, bumpy hill.
My point is that social and political violence in all its forms – racism, homelessness, wild economic, educational, and power disparities – are all the ultimate perpetrators of dysregulation and trauma in their myriad manifestations.
Our parents did get involved in Post-Holocaust healing efforts. Our mom was a high school teacher, and together they participated in taking “friendship” delegations of Jewish kids to Germany to have educational and healing conversations about the wreckage wrought by and upon their parents. It was perhaps healing for our parents. Our dad’s bitterness softened some. However, when it came to Arabs and Israelis, not so much. His rage at Arabs never seemed to abate, and he even was prone to ranting, at least for a time (until Donald Trump sent him into flashbacks about Hitler?) about “Obama being a Muslim.” Thank god he got over that one. I remember shortly after I met my now husband, loud, red-faced arguments they had about Zionism. I was so embarrassed in front of my new boyfriend. Those feelings went with him to the grave. How can Arabs and Israelis, essentially cousins, dig their heels in so endlessly, with an unending, tragic waste of life, decade after decade? It is beyond me.
So, it warmed my heart to hear a story the other morning on the BBC, an interview with a man just slightly older than me. He also was a child of Holocaust survivors, but his father died when he was a child. His family migrated to Israel, and he grew up there. Like all young Israeli men and women, he had to serve his time in the Army, and ended up participating in the now-historical Six-Day War.
In this story, he was about 19 years old, somewhere on a noisy battlefield, when he heard the voice of a little boy crying in Arabic, “Doctor, Doctor!” It was a loud wail. Turning to see what the child was calling about, he saw the little guy gesturing toward a woman who was bloody – but not by injury. She was having a baby and needed help. The youth had no clue how to deliver a baby, but he figured clean water was needed and sent the boy in search of it, which he quickly found and brought back. By some sort of natural emergency intuition, he figured out how to assist the baby’s arrival into this crazy world. Arab? Israeli? Who cared? The baby emerged loudly crying. That’s good – it means she’s alive. A baby girl. The mother, the daughter, and the young soldier never saw each other again. Paths crossing in humanity.
How can we treat one without the other? Trauma and social justice? Two wings of the same bird.
Kudos to TRF for weaving the two skillfully together into a powerful learning event: The Social Justice Summit. See Trauma Research Foundation’s website for details.
Today’s song:
In this song, Sueno con Serpientes, Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodrriguez sings “I dream of serpents, serpents of the sea. I kill one, and another appears. Ohh… oh.., With much greater hell in digestion…”
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When we went to hear football legend Jerry Rice speak about Black History Month a few years ago, what struck me perhaps the most was the immense size of his hands. Getting my picture taken with Number 80 was a thrill, and having his arm around me momentarily for my photo op reminded me of the old song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands!”
I love that picture. I am no fan of football, and that is for sure. I have never watched even a fraction of a game in my life. But somehow, Jerry remains on my shortlist of iconic heroes, mostly for the fact that he got everywhere that he got, which was quite far, through perseverance and essentially out-efforting everyone else. That I identify with.
Jerry grew up in the deep American south in a small town of 500 people. He was the sixth of eight children in a poor family, so I can imagine how much attention he got. I found out he had learning disabilities when he spoke about literacy to a crowd of Oakland middle school kids. As a very young child in a family where there was rarely enough food, Jerry helped his dad, a bricklayer. At age 5, he learned to catch bricks tossed by his brother and handed them to his dad one by one as the walls went up. That will give you some hands!
I had a client who thought recovery was supposed to be like building a brick wall. Once you lay the foundation, you place brick upon brick and build a whole new structure. She was frustrated, believing she had spent years trying to lay a foundation, and felt terrible failure, disappointment, loss, anger and shame that she had not put any building on it. She certainly felt let down by me! I was startled and rather jarred by her metaphor, which was so far from my own vision of recovery.
My Oakland office is in a lovely quaint Victorian building. It was not built on the site where it now stands – rather, the old house with whatever its story was transported from some other part of town, deposited in this upwardly mobile neighborhood, and remodeled into a rather classy office building. I once saw a picture of a house being moved across a town. What a strange and disorienting sight, a large vehicle with a family-sized dwelling occupying the whole width of a city street.
My vision of healing is far from a brick-and-mortar construction or a “fix,” but something much more organic. Just as neurofeedback is not something we do “to” someone or “on” someone, but a shared endeavor I do with someone, in a swaddle of caring, attentive psychotherapy. Similarly, I think of healing as something that arises, that emerges gradually from the inside out. It seems to me to be something that grows. How did Jerry’s hands get so big? There was some raw material, and then there was some long-term repeated action, and they emerged big and strong.
I think of healing as something that arises, that emerges gradually from the inside out. It seems to me to be something that grows.
We lived in South Bend, Indiana, for two short and immensely long years, second and third grade. I have a few flashbulb memories of South Bend – I remember when the new sensation the Beatles burst on the scene with I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and we were all doing the “twist” to it. I remember the endless procession on TV when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and seeing little Jon-Jon saluting. And I remember the crocuses. Winters in South Bend seemed to be at least half the year (with the summers being blazing hot and always putting our mom in a bad mood.) The winter brought huge piles of snow. We could build a fort in the yard, which would freeze and last for months. But I have never liked snow or cold.
The first little sign that the winter might end was the crocuses. The little, bright green sprouts began gingerly to poke up through the snow. There was still plenty of snow, but those fiercely determined little fighters not only pierced the chill, but bloomed, splashing the bright white with kisses of color and hope. They seem to say ahhh… relief is coming. Maybe not right away, but it will. Little sprigs of hope.
I think of healing that way. Not as something we can figure out, manipulate or construct externally, but nourish and care for, providing the necessary inputs for nature to work its magic, often outside our view. And we must be mindful and attentive to the often subtle seedlings of evidence that something is, in fact, happening, always more slowly than we would wish.
Perhaps that is one reason why I like cheese making and sourdough baking so much. With pure ingredients, thoughtful and consistent attention, the requisite inputs on their optimal schedule, and patience with the glacial passage of time, and voila – a transformation into something new, delicious, healthful, and joyous. It seems I can make so many people happy with it!
The hardest cheesemaking lesson for me to learn was the patience part. I could not believe I had to wait two, three, and four months, often managing mold and sometimes stink. After some years of experience, I rather love the stinkers, and I age some of my cheeses two years and more. How did this happen? I guess my whole life, I have been learning about organicity. And that loving attention is the essential ingredient for everything. Of course, the other unbearably essential ingredient is time…
Brick structures are not my model of recovery. It is rather an organic unfolding. Like sourdough bread and the vast myriad of cheeses, often it looks like nothing is happening at all.
In this crazy world, monarch butterflies are an endangered species. What a tragedy. I am proud to say that our sister and brother-in-law have a little monarch butterfly rescue operation going on in their backyard. They nurture the caterpillars, protect the chrysalises, and tend to the babies until they are ready to fly. I have never seen a baby butterfly.
Taking care of caterpillars has never occurred to me. I admit to being a rather squeamish non-fan of insects of any ilk. In particular, I associate caterpillars with a horrible memory, barely more than a flashbulb. I was probably about three at the most. We were at a little park in New York. All I remember was that the ground was covered, carpeted in a squirming mass of solid green caterpillars. Yecchhh. It was terrifying. Wearing little pink buckle Mary-Janes, there was nowhere to put a little foot without crushing and killing them. There was no way to make a step. They were everywhere. I was panicked and terrified. I remember screaming and screaming, “Daddy, carry me!” That is all I remember. But ever since, I have had a particular aversion to caterpillars in spite of their unmistakable association with butterflies, which I love.
Fast forward. About a week ago, our brother-in-law proudly whipped out his phone to show off pictures of the little pet monarch caterpillars they are tending. I was amazed at how lovely they were, especially since my only real association, at least visually, was so horrible. Striped with color, they did actually betray a bit of the wonder ahead, the monarch, the royal pinnacle of butterflies. Wow! Who would have thunk it?
Bricks are great, square and solid. I love my house, and it keeps me safe. It held steady through two big San Francisco shakers: ’06 and ’89, and it is still going strong. I admit that hunkering down during the pandemic in this safe haven was quite pleasant.
However, brick structures are not my model of recovery. It is rather an organic unfolding. Like sourdough bread and the vast myriad of cheeses, often it looks like nothing is happening at all. But last week, when I cracked a 16-month-old cheddar, it was that same feeling of wow! How did this happen? I am so glad I waited. The delicious depth and complexity were worth it and made me forget about the slow slog of time.
To me, recovery is a lot like that. If we stay the course, eventually, it does come up roses. Looking back, we are seeing with different eyes. What was so hideous and deplorable and seemed to expand endlessly to eternity looks different, and might even faintly betray a whiff of the beauty which lay ahead. It may be slow, but certainly not as I, for one, imagined it would ultimately turn out. Save the monarchs!
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
In the many years that I have been studying childhood neglect, I have often been struck by how many clients, particularly men, come in toting a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. To them, and also their frequently impatient or frustrated loved ones, it seems accurate, with their loose or sluggish focus, perhaps forgetfulness, failure of agency, and disorganized brains. Never fond of diagnostic labels nor a fan of amphetamine drugs, I have remained skeptical and curious. What is really going on here?
I know early on in my anecdotal scavenging, I coined a trilogy of neglect symptoms I came to call “the Three P’s” of neglect, primarily showing up in the interpersonal domain, but not exclusively. The P’s are passivity, procrastination, and paralysis. For many, it seemed to fit and stick. I have held on to the paradigm as I sought more information as well as developmental and neuroscience underpinnings for my “theory.”
I hypothesized that, given that the infant brain develops in resonation with the brain of the primary caretaker (usually, at least at first, the mother), if that little brain is reaching to resonate with a brain that is depressed, terrified, angry or most of all absent, it fails to develop and learn to regulate in a consistent, calm and essentially safe and healthful way. What does happen when there is no one there to resonate to, or not nearly enough resonation? Well, we certainly have the extreme example of the Romanian orphans, who appear nearly catatonic. But what about the more “garden variety” that we are more likely to encounter in our offices? That has been my question for many years.
I have heard many trauma stories about little kids panicked and terrified as they went to school each day, in dread of reading circles where each child had to read a passage. Some would count and calculate when or which segment would be theirs in the rotation so they could practice, or slide out to the bathroom to avoid it (and sometimes to vomit,) feeling such shame, confusion, and self-hatred about why it was so hard for them.
Meanwhile, some got in trouble with their parents for poor grades; some were held back a grade or two, and many simply disappeared under the radar, invisible and unhelped, concluding that they were stupid in addition to feeling invisible and alone. Many, amazingly bright, found their own workaround strategies for reading. Others discovered a sport like rock climbing which takes incredible concentration, focus, and patience to train their brains. Still, others sank into a haze of drugs to get away from the whole thing. I have seen many iterations, all originally coming from neglect.
In the 1980’s it seemed that ADD and ADHD became the diagnosis du jour. Suddenly kids were being slapped with that label right and left. And they were met with a parade of amphetamine drugs. Oy vey!
The first drug of choice I remember was Ritalin, which always somehow reminded me of the sinister and scary villain the Riddler on the Batman show. Suddenly it seemed we had a whole generation of children on speed, which gave me a Riddler-like chill, thinking of what this does to our gene pool, let alone providing a possible “gateway” to other, less manageable kinds of drug use. But it also seems there was little curiosity about what causes this problem, and if there was a way to move upstream in addressing it. Meanwhile, in many cases, the drugs were something of a nightmare for the kids, with sleep problems and other kinds of dysregulation causing plenty of conflict between parents and kids about taking their pills or not.
Empty space is suffocating and deathly, and it is truly like dying to many of these adult survivors. Boredom is a slow and mortal agony.
One thing I began to notice in some couples where at least one partner was a child of neglect was a little dynamic I came to call “hand grenades.” This was where one partner would lob a truly provocative, antagonistic, or triggering remark at the unsuspecting other. It was baffling because the rise they were likely to get was completely predictable and sure to incite a rageful or rejecting blast in reaction. I would hear about similar interactions where someone would similarly incite loud conflict at Thanksgiving dinner, for example. It was baffling until I began to study it more.
For the child of neglect, boredom and waiting feel lethal. Imagine an infant left alone too much, in a cavernous vacuum of empty space, waiting with uncertainty for someone arbitrarily to come – or not, learning quickly that hoping or crying was pointless. They had no impact. Empty space is suffocating and deathly, and it is truly like dying to many of these adult survivors. Boredom is a slow and mortal agony. Some of them discovered as young children that negative attention might be better than none at all, so by being somehow naughty or “bad” would garner some kind of reaction from the otherwise perhaps oblivious other, and interrupt the emptiness. As I continued to observe these little hand grenade scenarios, the variables seemed to coalesce: neglect, ADD, and hand grenades. Hmmm…
I later learned from neuroscientist Ruth Lanius that often, in the under-stimulated, dysregulated brain of a traumatized person, only when under threat does the brain start firing and come alight. Only then does the person perhaps momentarily feel alive. I began to learn from some of these flamethrowers that they were simply bored. They were not trying to be mean; rather, they were trying to keep from dying. Certainly, a hard sell to the insulted partner, but it does, in fact, make sense.
So, who is tagged with a “disorder?” Where does the deficient attention reside?
So, where does the real attention deficit reside? Perhaps in what that infant and child did and did not receive, the oceanic poverty of mirroring and care, the failure of resonance that makes the brain grow and develop and makes a child feel alive. As the child of neglect gets a little older, and slowly grows into a person, they continue to be unseen, unheard, not known, not understood, perhaps disappearing into quiet invisibility. Maybe as their learning disabilities or boredom go unnoticed as well, and their dysregulated brains continue to languish quietly alone, attention may become spotty, dulled, unreliable.
So, who is tagged with a “disorder?” Where does the deficient attention reside? Perhaps first with the neglectful parent, and later in the unassuming child’s brain. Another expression of the intergenerational transmission of trauma perhaps? And how many generations will wind up on amphetamines?
If in fact attention deficit is really a euphemistic or medicalizing label for neglect, what might be a better remedy? Some of the most robust, copious, and well-replicated neurofeedback research we have has been with ADD and ADHD. But perhaps the best medicine is upstream: effective trauma healing that will enable resonant presence, reliable, loving, consistent attention – a new intergenerational transmission. We are not talking about perfect attunement! The attachment researchers remind us that the best of the “good enough” parents achieve the optimal rhythms of attachment and presence about 30% of the time, with the rest being the dance of rupture and repair. Perhaps we can strive for that 30%, and wean ourselves, detox ourselves from inattention and even speed!
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
I really only remember seeing our dad cry once. Our family all piled into the old Chevy wagon, driving in a torrential New York City downpour. I don’t remember what he was upset about; it was rather a flashbulb image of his face, framed in the rearview mirror, with a backdrop of the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Finding it unbearable to see him that way, I focused on the rhythmic back and forth of the wipers, slap, slap, slap.
That sudden flash of recall unleashed a chain of other snippets of time in the car, which were rarely much fun. Our mom was perennially anxious, and what I recall most about being in an enclosed energy field of her pulsing hyperarousal was a gripping in my stomach, which I can feel just thinking about it. Our dad loved looking at airplanes, and he sometimes seemed even to be teasing her by enthusiastically following their flight with his eyes clearly not on the road. I remember her saying, “Achh.. do me a favor…” with her fingers spread wide like rakes, nails dug into the sides of her seat. She was similarly rattled by some random driver recklessly “weaving” back and forth across multiple lanes, grabbing an extra car length this way and that to gain speed and time. She was jumpy and also convinced we would all meet up at the next signal anyway.
I rather disliked the harsh association between reckless driving and “weaving.” I loved sewing from an early age and so loved fabrics and textiles. As I got into my early teens, I was fascinated with weaving, particularly Andean weaving. I had a small wooden frame loom and tried my hand at simple designs, never getting very good at it. My childhood boyfriend had a Greek friend named Thalia. She was a ”real” weaver and had an enormous floor loom that took up much of a room. I remember being enthralled watching the shuttle fly back and forth, back and forth, creating beautiful patterns. I still have a deliciously warm blanket she wove over fifty years ago. That steady toss back and forth of the shuttle made for a durable and strong mesh that still warms me almost daily.
The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it.
It has been heartbreaking hearing the urgent reports about the floods in Pakistan. I can barely imagine one-third of a country being underwater. One story particularly jarred me. There was a first storm that seemed to be clearing. Streets were beginning to drain; the sky freshly scrubbed, bright and blue, puffy white clouds ringed by breakthrough sunlight. People began to cautiously venture out and gradually celebrate that the storm had passed.
But the lull was short-lived. It was not long before the sky closed and darkened again, and the brief respite was chased off-stage by yet another ferocious onslaught of storm waters. Somehow that feeling touched a chord in me, felt familiar, of being elated that something unbearable might have passed and dismayed or devastated to find that it had not, or not for long. Again, like being batted back and forth.
I was proud to be a strong and undaunted hill climber on the bike. I can’t say it didn’t sometimes really hurt, and it cost me dearly to keep going. Neglect being an exercise in dogged endurance, I was well trained. I remember that same feeling, or something I imagine to be similar to the whiplash of the Pakistanis, perhaps, as it is rather obnoxious to compare something like life-threatening flooding with recreational cycling. The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it. I can barely imagine how those Pakistani people felt, thinking that perhaps their homes had survived one assault and then being knocked back into terror and uncertainty. Back and forth. Back and forth. Not unlike the traumatic life of a child abused in the inescapable family home.
All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history.
When I started college, like many of us who grew up unmoored and dysregulated, I groped and reached for stability in philosophical anchors and ways of understanding the world. The ones I grew up with were way too ill-fitting, dissonant, or outright objectionable. I remember when I first read Karl Marx’s “Alienation of Labor” – it seemed one of the most profound pieces of writing I had ever come across. Thinking on it now, his description of alienation resonated like an identical twin to the experience of neglect: disconnection, dehumanization, confusion of purpose, emptiness, and lack of choice. I was gripped. Then I encountered the Marxian concept of Dialectical Materialism.
Certainly not one for heady concepts, I was rather more like Winnie the Pooh, who said, “I am a bear of small brain and big words annoy me…” But this idea spoke to me. In an extremely simplified form, it is the notion of a play of opposites. All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history. One social order crashing into another, which prevailed for its time until swung aside by its opposite and on and on and on through time.
It has been something of a comfort to me, when I am horrified or disheartened by world events, to trust that inevitably there will be the opposing swing that will deliver us in the other direction. Similarly, while sobering, it also helps me guard against complacency when things seem to be going my way for a time. Somehow, at least in some ways, we appear to make inching evolutionary “progress,” depending on how we measure (or who measures!) progress, of course.
People often ask me, especially at the start of therapy, but frequently along the way, “How long is this going to take?!” Or they lament feeling (a word I abhor!) “stuck.” I have to remind them, and sometimes myself, that this journey is not linear. It is simply not a straight shot. I remember my first neurofeedback teacher telling us, “You must remind people that this process is not linear.” As we deepen and go further back and further into material we may not have understood or even consciously known about before, we may find ourselves back or newly in truly miserable states.
Peter Levine has a practice in his work that he calls “Pendulation” where one learns to intentionally move back and forth between states, from trauma activation to present time, in an effort to make the back and forth conscious and intentional; and achieve some mastery or control over them. The idea is to become more flexible, resilient, and stable. And additionally, we do not always achieve the result we had in mind. Healing work is rarely a straight shot and may lead to something different, possibly even better than what we could have imagined.
The healing journey is inarguably non-linear. Rocking babies, the swinging pendulums in hypnosis, bilateral stimulation in EMDR, rhythmic movement pole to pole, side to side. Many a steeply graded trail or road is built in the form of switchbacks. They zig and zag right and left: one cannot see what is just ahead. Winding to and fro, around a mountain might be the way up an incline that is simply too steep to tackle straight on. It is also a reminder that, dialectics aside, few things in life are non-stop flights from here to there. There is little that is explicitly linear (except perhaps aging, darn it!). Much of life seems to be, in fact, switchbacks.
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
On February 5th, 2022, Trayvon Martin would have been 27 years old. February 26th marks the 10th anniversary of his tragic and senseless murder in Sanford, Florida. It is hard to believe a whole decade has passed.
It is Black History Month in the U.S., and in a way, my awakening of an aspect of Black history certainly began with Trayvon: the massive systematic and traumatic setup for injustice, failure and all too often death faced by any dark-skinned male in this country.
I don’t mean to ignore women and girls by any means, but as any parent of children of color knows, boys and men are at particular risk. Young Trayvon was pursued and shot dead by “concerned” neighborhood watch representative George Zimmerman for the crime of “looking suspicious,” wearing a dark-colored hoodie, and looking around at the houses in the neighborhood as he walked by. He was 17.
Increasingly, I am compelled and sometimes gobsmacked by the inextricable entanglement between trauma and social justice. I have always been deeply driven and motivated by the urgency of both. Somehow, it hits me even deeper that, of course, parents who are traumatized by war, poverty, genocide, racism, drugs and sophisticated political and economic systems will fail to attend and may even re-enact their own trauma on subsequent generations. How could it be otherwise? It can sometimes seem too complex to know where to begin to devote one’s energies, like the hydra of San Francisco’s homeless problem. Too many monstrous heads! Which one to target, or target first?
Increasingly, I am compelled and sometimes gobsmacked by the inextricable entanglement between trauma and social justice. I have always been deeply driven and motivated by the urgency of both.
Since the nature of trauma, as many of us confusedly know, is remembering and forgetting, remembering and forgetting, I want to be sure to remember Trayvon, who fell in a long line of young Black men whose deaths punctuated the last decade of my life.
Next, I remember Michael Brown, gunned down in Ferguson, MO. It was 2014, just before my first visit to Saint Louis for a sex therapy teaching gig. Ferguson was just minutes away. Brown was 18.
Then, Eric Garner, whose infamous words “I can’t breathe” were on all the T-shirts some six years before George Floyd devastatingly gasped them again. Because feeling forgotten, unimportant and ignored is such a silent and insidious hallmark of neglect, I want to remember them all. And there are countless others whose names I don’t even know.
In Latin American revolutionary movements, I remember how fallen heroes were memorialized by the rallying call and response of their names followed by a chorus of “Presente!”
Trayvon Martin, Presente! Michael Brown, Presente! Eric Garner Presente! George Floyd… There are so many more.
Perhaps many of my readers are too young to remember much about Shirley Chisholm. The tiny dynamo of a woman with a huge bubble top hair-do to rival only my then Barbie doll was the first African American woman member of the United States Congress, where she represented New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1968-1973.
She was the first African American woman to seek the nomination and fight discrimination to run for the presidency in 1972. She set a dramatic precedent. She was renowned for exhibiting phenomenal “guts”, which was ever her aspiration. Setting an example for bold and defiant action, one of her many famous quotes was:
“I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people…”
A role model for women and girls of any race, she was unstoppable. In the presidential race, she fought all manner of inequalities. Blocked from televised presidential debates, she was somehow allowed only one speech. But working within the bounds that she could muster, she left epoch-making tracks. When George Wallace survived a disabling assassination attempt, Chisholm surprised many, including Wallace himself, by visiting him in the hospital. She said to him, “What happened to you should not happen to anyone,” bringing him to tears.
Chisholm left us with a writer’s treasure trove of wonderful quotes, perhaps culminating with “I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.”
That she did! Shirley Chisholm, Presente!
One of the racist demons of my generation was Alabama governor George Wallace, an icon of segregation. He was famous and infamous for saying, “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
That was his mission.
Wallace ran for president in 1972, and during his campaign, an assassination attempt left him paralyzed from the waist down, as referenced above. Now 75, being riddled with pain and sentenced to living out his days in a wheelchair must have wrought some sort of unimaginable reckoning and remorseful change of heart. Wallace made several surprising appearances at churches and civil rights gatherings. Most notably, he approached Black community leader John Lewis.
Lewis was a devoted and dogged civil rights activist and leader, chair of the pioneering Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, and later serving in the US House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020. We might all remember the massive outpouring of grief and esteem from far and wide when he died not that long ago.
Part of his remarkable legacy was his being sought after by iconic racists like former Ku Klux Klan member Elwin Wilson and the Alabama segregationist George Wallace who approached Lewis with apologies.
Apologising for heinous and destructive acts is a complex, challenging and relevant topic and is very important to me. Without repair, how do we change relationships and change the world? And in turn, how do we make whole victims and family members of the myriad of Trayvons, Michaels, Erics, Georges, and all the nameless ones, including my ancestors and probably yours – even many of ourselves? How do we begin to assess and achieve reparation, restitution and healing? These are big questions for the traumatized.
John Lewis left us with these words:
“When you can truly understand and feel, even as a person is cursing you to your face, even as he is spitting on you, or pushing a lit cigarette into your neck, or beating you with a truncheon – if you can understand and feel that your attacker is as much a victim as you are, that he is a victim of the forces that have shaped and fed his anger and fury, then you are well on your way to the nonviolent life.”
John Lewis. Presente!
Several years ago, in observance of Black History Month, local treasure Jerry Rice appeared at an event at Macy’s in Downtown San Francisco. Jerry was the renowned, by then retired #80, Wide Receiver of the SF 49er’s football team. Although I am no fan of football and have literally never watched even part of a game in my entire life, I always loved Jerry. I always identified with his fierce commitment to work harder than anyone else and make his headway by sheer force of will. I can relate to that.
He always said, albeit with excessive humility, that it was not natural talent but rather grit that got him everywhere he got. I feel that way too. But Jerry is a brilliant athlete, and I wanted to see him. So I rounded up my most loved 49er fans: my husband, brother-in-law and nephew, and we all trooped down to Macy’s as early as possible to score a good seat.
Jerry grew up poor in the deep south, the son of a bricklayer. He started helping his father and catching bricks when he was five years old – no wonder he had the biggest hands I have ever seen!
The most memorable moment in his talk was when an 8-year-old boy stood up in the Q&A shyly asked a question. He said, “I don’t play football; I play soccer, but here is my question. I am the only non-white player on my team. I feel very self-conscious and left out. I often just feel like quitting because I feel so bad. Do you have any advice for me?” Jerry did not miss a beat. Obviously, this feeling was well known to him. He said, “Just play your very best game. Work hard, and show them what an asset you are to the team. Just do that, hold up your head and give it time.”
That is exactly what Willie Mays did when he first broke into virtually lily-white MLB. His book recounts how lonely and ashamed he felt in his early games where the whole team would be staying together in a nice hotel, and he would be quartered in a poor boarding house across town that accepted “coloreds.” But he persisted at playing his best game over and over, ultimately becoming a standout player and a well-loved team member and friend to many.
Viva Jerry Jerry Rice! And Willie Mays Presente!
Let’s celebrate Black History: Remember if we can, forgive if we can and play our best game. And as Shirley Chisholm said, “If they don’t give you a place at the table, bring a folding chair!”
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is You Can Get It If You Really Want by Jimmy Cliff.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When I was a waiter in a fairly high-end place, it was the only time I ever found any use for Valentine’s Day. Usually, there was an overpriced special menu, lots of champagne, and I made a ton of money. The restaurant was mobbed. Best of all, I had a good excuse to avoid the whole thing myself. Valentine’s Day always seemed to me to be a recipe for the single and lonely to feel more than the usual shame, grief, and despair about being alone and about the morass of relationship and couple-hood.
It still seems to me to be one of those commercial nightmares perfectly designed to benefit and bring joy to few, while leaving most to feel aberrant and horrible about themselves. I remember long ago – perhaps my last attempt to “celebrate” it with a boyfriend – having a huge fight at the table after he had sat alone for an hour in a crowded restaurant while I sat alone on a crowded freeway trying to get there. Oy vey. Relationships are hard enough, especially for those with complicated attachment histories like trauma and neglect, without a day that makes us all imagine it is supposed to be all easy, breezy hearts and roses.
Valentine’s Day always seemed to me to be a recipe for the single and lonely to feel more than the usual shame, grief, and despair about being alone and about the morass of relationship and couple-hood.
Some years ago, I heard anthropologist Helen Singer speak at a conference. A specialist in sexuality, she talked about how in the human brain the grief and pain of heartbreak looks identical to a brain crashing from a large hit of cocaine. The devastation is an undeniable physiological reality, alongside the obvious emotional shattering.
We all remember the first time our hearts were broken. I believe for me it was when I was 10, the first time I had ever had a best friend. She dumped me for another girl who had a canopy bed and a princess phone. I always felt that fourth grade was my best year ever, and it was all downhill ever since. Seriously, however, for mammals designed for attachment, rejection by a beloved other constitutes a massive injury.
We saw the same with our precious dog Angel. We adopted her from a shelter in 2010, along with her sister and littermate Button. After being together in the womb, they continued to be inseparable throughout their lives. When Button got sick and precipitously died in 2020, Angel was inconsolable. She simply did not know a world without her sister, friend and companion. Months later, we still have a very hard time leaving little Angel alone, as her agonizing wailing follows us out the door and into the street.
So, imagine the little vulnerable brain of a human infant, left alone too much, rejected, abandoned, neglected. It is the same crashing brain, but perhaps worse, as this child lacks any nascent resilience that might accumulate from experience. And, of course, has no other resources. Interestingly it similarly looks like the brain of a prisoner enduring the punishing agony of solitary confinement.
Science journalist Florence Williams recently published a book called “Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey.” She examines the literal reaction of the human heart to relationship loss, citing serious cases of heart attack and other heart diseases. Similar data appeared in “The Beat of Life: A Surgeon Reveals the Secrets of the Heart.” Heartbreak and relationship loss truly are no joke.
The first love, the first attachment, is of course, the mother. We experience a kind of oneness we will never have again. It is nature’s design to have warm, nourishing, enduring containment inside the mother’s body for a good long time, and we continue to need something like that for many years after birth. It is no wonder that the attachment aspect of psychotherapy is so critical and essential. It is not sufficient, but definitely necessary, and even with the most effective therapeutic modalities, a safe attachment and the possibility to process ruptured or missing vital attachments are requirements of regulation and healing.
That first attachment also becomes the template that defines the subsequent ones, particularly the important ones. My most unrelenting heartbreak ever was from an intense and dramatic young adult relationship that spanned ten years from my early 20’s to my early 30’s. It took me four years of breaking up and getting back together to finally leave. For two years afterwards, a day did not pass without wrenching tears of loss. It was five years before I stopped thinking about that man every single day.
Some years later, after learning much more about trauma and neglect, I realized that the depth of grief about that relationship loss was much deeper than I had realized. I was really processing something profound about my mother and my own earliest attachment.
I have since learned that when a client comes to me with unremitting grief about relationship loss, the mother relationship is an important place to look, for at least part of the work, and that work is the work of years I am afraid.
Even years later, with all that dogged processing about my mother seemingly well behind me, I still found that hearing George Floyd’s calls for his mother with his final breaths, for many reasons, brought uncontrollable tears.
In 1996 Eve Ensler rocked and awakened the world with her ground-breaking Vagina Monologues, a one-woman theatrical show exploring female sexuality in its myriad aspects: consensual and non-consensual sexual experience, body image, menstruation, sex work, and much more, internationally, across the lifespan, and through historical time.
It took the world by storm and has become an invaluable tool for sex education. Ensler herself became a vital historical icon in the worlds of feminism and sexual justice.
In 1998, Ensler proposed an alternative observance of February 14th: V-Day.
In her words: “V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against all women, girls and the planet.” It continues to this day. What a brilliant idea to transform or repurpose an all too often retraumatizing holiday into a vehicle of justice, equality and health!
In conjunction with the publication of her most recent and perhaps my favorite of her books, The Apology, Ensler changed her name to V. Now I can wholeheartedly say “Happy V-Day” to all. Enjoy your February 14th however you spend it, and Thanks V!
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Instantly a tight pit seized up deep in my stomach, hearing the heavily accented 92-year-old voice on the radio. I did not realize it was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. The voice belonged to Eva Schloss, the step-sister of Anne Frank, whose famous diary has captivated the world for decades since it was discovered.
Like most everyone, I have read the book several times over the years. But for the most part, I have kept my distance from Holocaust stories, figuring I “know enough.” I remember nightmares of “army men” stomping through the house, grabbing everything, their heavy black boots booming in my ears when I was two.
In third grade at Hebrew school, they showed us grainy black and white newsreels, of piles of bones and lines of emaciated skeleton-like people pushed stumbling into smoking showers; my father bellowing, “Bread and worms are what we had to eat! You just don’t know what it’s like to go to bed hungry!”
Our mother was mostly quiet. The story I most remember about her was of her best friend Gikka from one day to the next, turning on her, rejecting her upon joining the Hitler Youth. Our mom’s heart was broken. Although the stories were not my own, they lived in my body and inhabited my dreams as if they were. Only many decades later did I learn there is a term for this: “intergenerational transmission of trauma.”
Although I always retained a profound sense of justice and injustice, and compelled by human suffering, felt a keen desire to “do something” to help Jewish history and causes, Israel and Zionism, I stayed away from all of it. When I was older, I was compelled by Fascist dictatorships terrorizing, torturing and overtaking Latin American countries and the resistance movements that sprang up to fight them. I fixated on the hideous torture stories that were different, but not really. Of course, our dad did not like that or what he knew of it. But that was the way his trauma inhabited me.
Intergenerational transmission of trauma or “vicarious” trauma is a powerful force. It can live in the body in much the same way as one’s own lived experience. Parents’ trauma can also be a wellspring of neglect because, as we all know all too well, the nature of trauma is to “fixate” on the trauma; trauma is not “remembered, it is re-lived.” All these hackneyed truisms of trauma therapy that everyone is so tired of hearing.
But of course, a parent who is thus preoccupied will not be attentive to me and may even appear to forget all about me. It certainly made it easy for me to feel forgettable and like I did not matter. And also that my relatively placid life left me no reason to “feel sorry for myself.” The refrain of neglect: But nothing happened to me! I have no business feeling so bad! is probably also its greatest challenge.
I also believe, certainly in my case, that I suffered from “survivor guilt.” I had not earned the noble badge endowed by terrible persecution and victimization. I, therefore, lacked the virtue, entitlement, and value of one who had. What an irony that if one hasn’t been the butt of sufficient devaluation and worthlessness, one is unworthy. But I definitely swallowed that and spent decades trying to “make up for it.” In later years, I wondered if my father felt somehow similarly guilty or unworthy for not dying in those showers too.
Intergenerational transmission of trauma or “vicarious” trauma is a powerful force. It can live in the body in much the same way as one’s own lived experience.
It is only recently, in the last two years that I learned about a category of trauma that was new to me: “moral injury.” This is when a person is plagued by guilt, shame, remorse and agony about horrible acts that they themselves have committed, perhaps against their own will, or having had no choice. Like emergency health workers during the COVID 19 Pandemic, who had to make fatal decisions about who got the ventilator, or soldiers who were forced to commit atrocities in the line of military duty and are haunted by the memory.
Their trauma healing work is as deep and difficult as one who has suffered overt trauma to their own body, or maybe even more so. Because like the survivor of neglect, they can imagine, “Nothing happened to me!” We are now having to find protocols and methodologies for healing for them too.
The challenges of social justice and healing the world stand seamlessly alongside or within the larger umbrella category of trauma. We cannot keep up with the already seemingly endless task of assisting survivors of trauma and neglect if we simultaneously continue producing and reproducing the conditions and the environments that spawn endless cycles of “new” trauma or continue to bequeath our own to subsequent generations.
Healing our own trauma and neglect injuries is actually a way we contribute to the world, as is participating in the work of social justice, a way that we advance the work of trauma healing. And yes, what a lot of work we have to do.
Yet as Eva Schloss reflected on her long life, she still remembers daily with grief, her lost loved ones from now nearly eight decades ago. she rejoices in her own three grown children and many grandchildren and still enjoys dancing and singing with them. Let’s work hard to liberate all the literal and figurative, individual and collective Auschwitz’s of the world.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Imagine by John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers).
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
“Are more famous people dying these days, or am I just more aware of it?” I asked my husband the other day. I had just heard the news of the passing of Vietnamese Buddhist luminary Thich Nat Hanh. Although I am not a student of his, several very close friends are, and I have always admired the way he brought social justice and activism into spirituality, which means a lot to me.
Granted, he was 95, and his international spiritual community had been preparing for it for some time, but still, it was a tremendous loss. The day before, it was rock musician Meat Loaf, again, not a favorite of mine, but he was only 74. Well, rock n roll is a rough life. “No,” my husband replied. Although COVID has taken many lives, “these deaths are part of the natural order.” Perhaps I am indeed more attuned to people’s passing.
For those with a history of neglect, loss can be complex, even abstract, or mysterious. A profound sense of sadness or emptiness that seems to make no sense. There may be no obvious cause to point to for the profound sadness, which can then readily turn to shame, or the self -recrimination of “self-pity” or “self-indulgence.” Grief for what never was, however confusing, is very real. There may be profound sorrow and loss upon the death of a profoundly disappointing, neglectful or even cruel parent. The door is closing. There is no more hope.
Several of the deaths I learned of this week were of people who overcame great trauma and loss of their own before making significant contributions in the world. They became very visible before they took their leave.
For those with a history of neglect, loss can be complex, even abstract, or mysterious. A profound sense of sadness or emptiness that seems to make no sense.
I have always loved clothes. Admittedly it is not exactly politically correct. When I had the privilege of visiting Milan, one of the world’s great fashion centers, visiting the showrooms of the fanciest designers was like a fantastic museum show. I loved it. Although I pride myself in only buying clothes when they are marked down to “almost free” and wearing them for three and four decades, I am still somewhat embarrassed. Two years ago, I heard an interview on the radio with an icon of the fashion world I had never heard of, who had just published his memoir, The Chiffon Trenches: Andre Leon Talley.
He got my attention because he was the first African American man to break into the decidedly rich white world of fashion. Of course, I had to read the book. Like Arthur Ashe and Tiger Woods, he had the talent, the courage, the determination and the guts, not to mention the ability to endure discrimination, at least at first, to make a name and become visible, not only in a high-class white male but also female-dominated industry.
Talley was born in rural North Carolina and was skinny, black, poor and gay. He always loved beauty and has been prolifically quoted for lamenting a “beauty famine”, which he always did his utmost to remedy. Born in the Southern US in 1948, being gay was not easy or safe, and although the memoir does not detail much about his childhood, he was sexually abused as an adolescent, which scarred him for life. He later self-medicated liberally with food, and although he associated closely with Yves Saint Laurent, played tennis with Louis Vuitton and was the darling of Karl Lagerfeld, he never had a lover his entire life, or at least as of the 2020 memoir. He seemed to charm everyone. Close with Diana Vreeland, editor in chief of Vogue, he loved women, he loved elegant and ornate grandeur, and never ceased to love beauty.
When he was close to 40, Talley suffered the indignity and greatest horror imaginable when one is central on the fashion stage, he gained over 100 pounds, which, even on his large frame, made him enormous, and all the more larger than life. His close associates twice sent him to high end “fat farms” to lose weight which he was unable to maintain, invariably gaining it back and more. Clearly, it was related to his unprocessed trauma. Ultimately, he settled into largesse and created for himself a signature style of brightly colored caftans in the most exquisite and exclusive of luxurious fabrics and made grand sweeping entrances wherever he went. This continued until his recent death. And although he has been criticized for not doing enough to blaze a trail for a rising generation of African American aspirants to the editorial and design cliques of a highly lucrative industry, nonetheless by his willingness to be visible, brave and stand tall, and visibly endure the mantle of his trauma, he broke a barrier. He is a hero in my book. Au Revoir Andre and thank you.
The same day I heard about Andre, I heard another story from another corner of the world. The “Madonna” of Asia, Anita Mui, had died at 40. Born in Hong Kong very poor, by the age of four, living with her single mother and little sister, Anita found herself singing in the public plaza to earn money for food. Already at that age, people loved her. Again, through hard work and gritty tenacity, she rose to become the pop sensation of the East. Although I had never heard of her, I was struck by the outpouring of public respect and grief that seemed on a par with International spiritual and political leaders.
Many of my readers may have attended the recent Trauma Research Foundation Social Justice Summit, a powerful and timely meeting of many great minds, where the hugely relevant interface between trauma and social justice, essentially world trauma, was skillfully and colorfully presented.
One speaker named Alta Starr, a social justice and somatics practitioner, told a story about an experience she had with one of her students many years ago. He was a dark-skinned African American young man, about six feet five inches tall. Starr’s class was doing a somatic practice which involved stretching all the many muscles of the back and reaching one’s full height. While doing the practice, this healthy young man collapsed and fell to the floor in a dead faint. Of course, Starr was terribly worried as well as dismayed and puzzled as to what she herself may have done. The young man came to and, although confused as well, quickly recovered.
Returning to class the following day, he had been busily processing. His whole life experience had taught him that to be visible as tall and dark, and to appear threatening, would endanger him. In order to be safe, he had to shrink and hide, be small and invisible. Stretching into his full stature had been too terrifying, which is why in the practice, he had disappeared from consciousness.
Andre and Anita had the courage and the stamina to stay present, work hard, become visible, captivate the world and make more than one tremendous contribution before taking their leave.
Well, I do prefer to end, even these short blogs, on a positive note. Because I have an affection for all things Chilean, the story caught my attention about Brownie. Brownie is a Border Collie mutt puppy who languished in a Chilean animal shelter in 2016, longing for a home. According to shelter staff, he was difficult to place because he had some sort of congenital problem with his back legs that made him disabled and therefore less attractive. A young couple found him adorable and happily took Brownie home.
Six years later, Brownie became a centerpiece of the political campaign of his owner 35-year-old Gabriel Boric, the newly elected president of the Republic of Chile. Brownie has become a social media sensation and a national hero. Standing tall, risking going from invisible to visible, from disability, poverty, trauma and neglect, to presence, adding beauty, depth and joy to a hungry world – well, these are all good reminders. Thank you to Thich Nat Hanh, to Andre, and Anita. Thank you and goodbye for now.
And you Brownie, well hopefully we’ll be seeing you for a while.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Certain words I have torn out of my personal lexicon and just tossed. One of those is “stuck.” It is not allowed in my office either. True, sometimes progress is so slow as to be frustratingly imperceptible, but I don’t believe it has stopped and is certainly not cause for giving up.
I was once riding my bike up a hill so steep that I just went splat and fell right on my side. It was not that I had stopped moving completely; I was just not quite a match for that grade yet. I picked myself up, dusted myself off sheepishly, and with embarrassment walked that final stretch. I needed to get a little (maybe a lot?) stronger to tackle that hill again.
Sometimes clients will lament feeling or being stuck, and I know there is nothing I can say in those moments. If I try to disagree and point out the progress that is still slowly being made, they just feel frustrated and not understood or not heard. I have no choice but to just be quiet and empathic and hold the faith. I do remember how miserable and hopeless those moments can feel. And yes, they are moments.
“True, sometimes progress is so slow as to be frustratingly imperceptible, but I don’t believe it has stopped and is certainly not cause for giving up.”
The road to healing can be long and steep, and often interrupted by surprises. I recently heard a radio story about a prison “lifer” who was released on parole after completing twenty-three years of his life sentence. He’d had a tragically traumatic childhood as a ghetto boy: his parents having divorced, he lived with his father, who committed suicide when he was 8. He returned to live with his mother then, who was “more or less homeless.” At age 16, he and some friends had robbed a store, and one of his friends had shot and killed the store clerk. Tried as an adult, our young man had landed a life prison sentence. All of this detail is to illustrate how completely and utterly alone – uncared-for – he had almost always been. And his sentence was in effect, forever… His story of course is sadly not an unusual one when poverty is involved.
Trauma healing often does feel like a life sentence, and like one we will never be free. For some reason, our young man chose to spend the time behind bars working hard to transform himself.
He studied, educated himself, earned a degree, stayed out of trouble, and somehow succeeded, to his own disbelief, in winning a release date.
At 42, he had never worked an honest job. Coming out of prison, he was completely “dazed” and alien, rather like Rip van Winkle. At any moment he expected to be yanked back and locked up again. And as he described it, one is immediately about $25,000 “in the red.” You need a place to live, a car, clothes, basically everything. Most of all, you need a job, which is no small feat, because application forms can legally inquire if one has been convicted of a crime, and no one really wants to hire an “ex-con.”
Our man pounded the pavement, applied “everywhere” including all the current gig type jobs, but kept meeting with the same slamming doors until he happened to wander into a small Kosher bakery in the outer avenues of San Francisco, owned and operated by a young Israeli man named Isaac Frena. Frena, whose Eastern European family also had a story before getting to America, decided to try him out.
Our young man turned out to be the hardest working, most competent baker ever. He loved learning all the Kosher laws, even learning Hebrew. Why did Frena decide to do this? “Kosher is not just about food;” he said. Kosher is a way of life. The first fundamental rule of Judaism is that everyone deserves a second chance.” I for one, had never quite thought about “Kashrut” that way. Our young man gave his all to that chance. “It is the hardest work you could hope to find – high pressure, timing, accuracy. Bread is like… it’s a living organism. I compare it to a baby. It’s growing. if you don’t intervene into that child’s life at the right time, it’s going to grow up to be a monster.”
He began to tell others, and Frena gave others that chance. And before too long there were over twenty-five former “lifers” of all ages and races, working harmoniously together in the Kosher bakery. Of course, it was not smooth always, but here is the most important part: “Frena genuinely cares about people… They gave me love and a sense of security and they were giving love and a sense of security to all the dudes that were around me. That kind of kept snowballing.” Love and security, feeling seen and cared about are the most important ingredients for life: for growth, and for healing. That is why neglect is so devastating.
I once worked with a couple, who seemed to be having the same dialog every week. “I feel hopeless,” said one. “It makes sense that you feel so hopeless.” Then the other would reply “and I feel hopeless too.” The other responded “it makes sense that you feel hopeless too…” And it went on like that, round and round for months. But they kept showing up. And I for one, was still hopeful. Because the main ingredient was in the room. I genuinely cared for them and they still genuinely cared for each other.
After some months, week after week like that, they broke through. They were amazed. How do we keep going? I don’t know. They proceeded to be a happy long-married couple, and I have seen them again over the years from time to time.
Sometimes, when it seems as if there is no progress, like nothing is moving at all, what is happening is that “something” is slowly growing, like yeast rising in the space where that secure attachment never was. One is growing the capacity to metabolize the steady care of a consistent other. In itself, it is regulating. It is really the most important thing in the world.
Baking is a great metaphor and I do love to bake. I started growing my sourdough starter in 2014. That is where you mix a ratio of flour to water, and find just the right conditions, where it eventually begins to bubble and in effect ferment. It becomes natural or “wild” yeast. It took me six tries before my starter “took” so to speak. I had to try different locations with different temperatures, light, draft, etc. Finally, I found a cabinet, of just the right size and temperature, free of light and breeze, where my little jarful could thrive, and it has been ever since. Of course, I have to feed it and clean it every day. I have never thought of it as being like a baby, but certainly a pet. And I continue to find baking with it regulating and calming, not only because dough is tactile and it feels good; but because something that grows does provide that additional missing experience, that even if slow, there may be subtle, even imperceptible movement. It is hard to hold hope sometimes. That is where we may most need the presence of another.
Competent therapy, a variety of regulating modalities and consistency are requisites for good trauma healing. And the solid base of authentic care does keep things moving. That is why I am rather insistent about the combination of neurofeedback with deep psychotherapy. Both are necessary but not sufficient, but the combination is the charm. Sometimes the greatest challenge is to keep showing up, keep pedaling. Meanwhile, everyone seems to love the bread!
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Don’t Give Up (ft. Kate Bush) by Peter Gabriel.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!