When I was in kindergarten and first grade in New York City, teachers had not yet made the rule that we had to give Valentine’s cards to everyone in the class. We all had our little art project mailboxes made out of decorated brown paper bags perched expectantly on the sides of our desks. The “popular” kids’ bags brimmed over with the bright red missives of “love.” Invariably mine was, as Tony Soprano would say, “a little light.” I felt like a “reject” or a “queer,” back when that word was not associated with sexual orientation but rather with being weird and outcast. By the time they made the rule, it was way too late for my battered ego. And I knew that the kids only stuffed my mailbox because they “had to.” But I would have felt like a reject anyway because that is how a child internalizes neglect. I am ignored because I’m worthless, or worse.
As I got older, I was so used to being a misfit, an introvert, and later a rebel, that I did not get caught in the romance around Valentine’s Day. But I certainly saw the big build-up and letdown among so many of the kids around me. Valentine’s Day can be a dreaded nightmare for many who are unpartnered and often even worse for those that are.
As a couples’ therapist, working with many clients who have histories of childhood trauma and neglect, I am faced daily with major disconnects and misunderstandings between them about “what makes me feel loved” and giving and receiving. Valentine’s Day can be a veritable hornet’s nest for both, resulting in major ruptures and hurt feelings that endure like the ghosts of Valentine’s Day past. Oy vey.
This year I had an idea to help my struggling couples. In anticipation of the potentially spikey day, I thought, how about if we head it off with a conversation or two about “what makes me feel loved.” I still feel shame about my ungracious response to a beautiful gift my husband had picked out and bought for me over 25 years ago. I was convinced he bought that instead of the printer I wanted for my computer out of stinginess. It was only much later that I learned that the gift he had bought me, a set of Italian ceramic canisters for my baking ingredients, cost at least five times as much as the lowly printer I had requested. I still have the canisters, and besides being a lovely home for my various flours, they are a ready reminder that I do have the power to inflict great hurt.
The child of neglect can readily believe that only someone who “matters” has the power to inflict harm, to be mean. Someone inconsequential is not important enough to injure another. Not! It is a myth essential to be corrected and healed for the sake of all involved!
For many, it is a hard question to answer, even about oneself. What makes me feel loved? And if I don’t know, I certainly can’t communicate it intelligibly to my partner, who may be “trying,” failing, and lapsing into hopelessness, impatience, frustration, and even ultimately anger. If pleasing me is enough of a moving target, of course, they will give up in fatigue and despair. Then I can insist I was “right!” I am simply not worth the trouble. I have the insidious power to fulfill my own bitter prophecy.
For many, it is a hard question to answer, even about oneself. What makes me feel loved?
At the core of childhood neglect is the often unremembered and nonetheless indelible experience or perception of rejection. It is a ready and “logical” interpretation for a seemingly chronic lack of attention or priority: I am unwanted, unworthy, undesirable, unlovable. And it is a “handy” default that can readily slide, often before they even know it, into withdrawal, sulkiness, or even unwitting rejection of others.
I remember years ago, my therapist saying to me, with that sledgehammer voice she sometimes used to get through my thick cloud of triggered mud, “YOU’RE the rejector!” I did not get it – when I shut down as impenetrably as Fort Knox after a perceived a slight, a whiff of dislike, complaint, or judgment towards me, I am. I did not recognize that what I thought of as my “self-protection” or quiet scream of “leave me alone!” could even be experienced as harshness or even hostility. Frankly, it simply did not occur to me that I could have an impact. Again, that is the mark of neglect. Whatever the child might do to attract or garner the loving attention they crave does not work. I never imagined that I could be mean or rejecting. Not me!
Valentine’s Day can indeed pose special challenges for the child of neglect of any age. The core dilemma surrounding neglect is the gnawing ambivalence about interpersonal connection. There is, to a varying degree, the quaking ache of longing for closeness in a fierce tug of war with the terror and even rage around abandonment and loss. It can be a persisting plague that might feel or seem unresolvable. I used to berate myself with, “I simply can’t get along with humans.” And many survivors of neglect tend to “people” their relationship world with animals instead. I have (long) since joyfully and gratefully proven myself wrong. It is not an easy journey, but imminently possible and definitely worth it. I have also learned that when neglect survivor clients seem viciously rejecting of me, they may really be wishing I might “find them in their hiding place.” Or perhaps unwittingly showing me how it was.
Another of Valentine’s challenges has to do with gifts, as in the case of my canister set. It may be a day when we hope or wish for a particular gift from that special person: flowers, chocolates, or something personal. Again, gifts can embody the dilemma. If I permit you to get it “right,” do I run the risk of puncturing my wall of solitude and self-reliance? Without realizing it, one may become the rejector. I always say, “It takes humility to receive a gift, to let the other know what would indeed hit the mark, and make me feel loved.”
There is no one “right,” “normal” or “best” expression of love. I encourage us all to examine our own “not me,” let others know what makes us feel loved, and give love a chance!
There is no one “right,” “normal” or “best” expression of love.
In 1988, the renowned author and playwright Eve Ensler had the idea of rebranding February 14 as V Day. In conjunction with her historic theater piece that rocked the world, the Vagina Monologues, it was to be a day devoted to ending violence against women, girls, and the planet, V being for vulva or vagina. Ensler subsequently changed her name to “V.”
Transforming or expanding the focus and intent of Valentine’s Day is a fine idea! To teach our loved ones how they can effectively communicate love to us and thereby break the chain of rejection is a greater or lesser form of eradicating at least some measure of “violence.” Betty Dodson, champion of the female orgasm, was known for saying, “Viva la Vulva!”
Thanks, Betty! Thanks, V! And Happy V Day to all!
Today’s song articulates the complexity of love, and is in honor of David Crosby, who left us on January 18, 2023.
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.
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.
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.
I remember when I was quite young, our mom’s stern voice and annoyed expression, saying, “You are always walking around this house with a long face. You need to have more fun!” As far as she was concerned, I had no reason to be anything but cheery and bushy-tailed. Although I subsequently had plenty of overt trauma, the “nonexistent” wound of neglect was what the wilderness outerwear people would call my “base layer.” So, I figured she was probably right. I had no right or reason to feel bad. Thinking on it now, I am struck that there was no curiosity, interest, or concern about a sad child. Rather I was left to conclude I was entitled, ungrateful, or simply “bad.”
She, of course, was no icon of levity. And she had good reason to have perennially sad eyes and a stern, critical, and generally anxious demeanor. She had a dark and scary history that I knew only so much about and a cold, Northern German intellectual mother who left her mostly in the care of nannies until Hitler blew the whole thing apart.
I also remember both of my parents having a rather contemptuous attitude toward American-style “fun.” I don’t remember details, but things like amusement parks, cartoons, comic books, and spectator sports, although it was perhaps not explicitly stated, were petty, commercial and “below us.” I could feel that attitude, and what was most evident was that our family never partook in them. So, to be honest, I had no idea what “fun” meant, and I believe the whole repetitive litany made me pretty angry if I had known how to recognize that emotion. What I was most aware of was feeling guilty, ungrateful, and clueless.
However, I had another algorithm working also, certainly outside my awareness. Because I explained my “unimportance and invisibility” as being because I was a blight on the planet, I developed a calculous of a handful of worthy endeavors, purposeful activities, that were worthy of time and energy, to “justify my existence.” Oddly I remember that little term as going way back, fairly big words for a young girl to come up with. I needed to earn my keep, to somehow rightfully claim the patch of earth I occupied. Oy vey, a seemingly Sisyphean undertaking.
The acceptable activities in my protocol menu were:
Later, when I was ruled by anorexia, exercise featured on this list too.
Clearly, there was no category and certainly no available time for pleasure. And I was busy, certainly lacking awareness and discipline of my facial expression. So, fun? Play? Who the hell knew what that was? Well, the American kids seemed to know.
I had no idea what “fun” meant, and I believe the whole repetitive litany made me pretty angry if I had known how to recognize that emotion. What I was most aware of was feeling guilty, ungrateful, and clueless.
Ours, however, was a musical household. Our dad, once he had secured a college and post-graduate education without having gone to high school, became a cantor, and he had always loved music. When we were kids, he sang in cocktail lounges and actually knew the show tunes and Louis Armstrong classics. Later he found his place with our mother in the more erudite world of classical music, and I remember having to attend his performances at the Stanford opera workshop, where he sang while prancing around on stage in tights. Not my idea of fun.
I started piano lessons when I was pretty young. Once back in California, I took lessons with Mrs. Rothschild (not her real name), who was unmistakably American. It was her husband who had the European-sounding name. She was tall and elegant, had long slender fingers with painted nails; she smoked Virginia Slims and always had an odor I somehow found intoxicating, of cigarettes and Jergen’s lotion. I loved her. She confided in me about her ongoing torrid affair with a famous jazz musician, which made me feel special and important. God only knows why she was telling these secrets to a nine-year-old student.
Although I learned the usual piano classics, she also let me play boogie woogie, which I really loved, and I discovered my love of rhythm. As I learn more and more now about regulation, resonance, and attunement, I realize how profound and desolate the neglect experience is, of lacking a rhythmic exchange with a beloved other. I didn’t have it, nor did my parents before them — the bereft loneliness of the proverbial one hand clapping.
But rhythmic music spoke to me. I did not dance, but I did rock out, blasting the Rolling Stones while scrubbing the floors, and as quiet and meek as I appeared on the outside, I had this wild response to rough, boisterous music. Keith Richard, with all his foibles, remains on my shortlist to this day.
Although I don’t play music myself anymore, there is always a song in my head. And I think of music, and Mrs. Rothschild, as life rafts in a roiling ocean of trauma and neglect. I am sure Mrs. Rothschild has long passed, but I still occasionally listen to YouTube videos of her illicit lover’s biggest hits.
Rhythms, resonance, frequency, arousal, attachment: all fundamentals of what we are learning about trauma and neglect, healing, and about life really. The missing experiences of pulsing in time with another go back to our earliest time in utero, with the soundtrack of our mother’s heartbeat and breath. For so many, it is a rude awakening to emerge into echoing silence, stillness, desolation, or violence.
When I first learned EMDR in 1998, admittedly, I loved being able to move in my otherwise sedentary work as a psychotherapist. I never got one of those fancy electric lightbars that some clinicians used. And I am sure the rhythmic bilateral stimulation had a vicarious positive effect on me.
Rhythms, resonance, frequency, arousal, attachment: all fundamentals of what we are learning about trauma and neglect, healing, and about life really.
Play, by definition, has no other purpose but pleasure and fun. Often it involves movement, but not necessarily. Its function is recreational, period, the end. What a concept, and astronomically distant from the lexicon and language of my little world, my “one-person-psychology,” as I like to call it. It is no wonder that I responded so magnetically and copiously to alcohol when I discovered it at 13. It worked, at least momentarily, to release me from the mandate of purposefulness. It freed me from the self-imprisonment of my own little culture of compulsivity and “productivity.” That and endurance cycling were my best escapes into or out of my body, and into at least aspired regulation. But both were, in their own ways, costly.
What if I had learned, as a young child, to relax into play? Perhaps first a simple peekaboo type interaction with a present and loving other, then more games that might involve someone having time to spend with me? I hope this does not sound self-pitying! I am infinitely grateful that I discovered the rhythmic round and round of the bicycle, even though it sometimes became a feat of endurance, accomplishment, or pain.
I envied the girls who had ballet or modern dance classes. I wonder what that would have been like. So be it. That is part of how I have come to really comprehend the immeasurable value of rhythm and play, not only for healing but for development and joy. I am delighted that this is becoming increasingly understood and incorporated into healing paradigms for trauma and neglect, and even better, working with kids when they are young enough to enjoy more years of regulation and fun!
I am delighted to know about the Trauma Research Foundation’s program around play and its immeasurable and life-changing value for children and adults navigating trauma and neglect, past and present. In October, they will be presenting the Play Based Healing Summit. Information is available through their website.
Meanwhile, I must add that my life has changed dramatically in this regard. My face is rarely “long” anymore, Mom. And even if it is deliciously purposeful, I must admit that cheesemaking is a ton of fun!
Today’s song is a tribute to Mrs. Rothschild! May she rest in joyful peace.
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.