People sometimes ask me, “How do you come up with something to write about every week?” I used to wonder the same thing about local treasure Willie Brown, whose weekly column was my reason for reading the Sunday paper. When Willie quit, we turned off that paper. Well, for me, it has become something I can’t quite turn off. I might be listening to Public Radio, or half listening, or even one-eighth listening, and I will hear something that rousts me out of my kitchen task reverie. And then my mind starts whirring with words and thoughts and, of course, songs.
That is what happened yesterday, when I absently tuned in to an interview with author Henry Hoke, of whom I had never heard, about his new book, Open Throat. Intriguing as it is, narrated by a cougar, the book did not quite sound to my taste in spite of the interviewer’s raves. However, hearing that one of the towns in the book was called “Scare-City,” which, of course, is a brilliant play on scarcity. I thought, “Wow! I wish I could claim that brilliant turn of phrase!” And it got me to thinking about the terror of not enough, which is a scar on the soul, body and brain of the neglected child. I, for one, was born and raised in Scare-City.
I began to think about the nameless quaking terror of not enough. It is no wonder that I chose anorexia. Better to eat nothing than feel the rumbling panic of insufficiency. And, of course. I was insufficient, inadequate, not enough, always driven to do more, do more, do more, vestiges of which still somewhat dog me. And no wonder it never felt safe to share or lend. Sharing, I was convinced there would not be enough for me. Lending, my things would come back diminished, wrecked or not at all. It was safer to kiss it off and only lend what I might be ready to part with or never see again, hide behind a pretext of generosity and give it instead, or buy the prospective borrower their own of whatever it was. Other people could not be trusted where “enough” for me was concerned. I remember my therapist’s enduring patience with trying to convince me that perhaps, in fact, there is enough to go around. Our family was ruled by “zero-sum.” Wherever possible, I opted out of the competition.
Neglect is, in fact, an impoverished city. No wonder so many neglect survivors I know are scrupulously thrifty, sometimes even appearing needlessly stingy, at least with themselves. Or family finances, division of labor and other resources are a challenge for relationships. Of course! Poverty is no fun at all. Is self-reliance a kind of hoarding? Or an insurance policy to huddle around myself against the danger of famine?
Lately, I have had occasion to dialog with grief expert Edy Nathan. I had never thought explicitly about the apparent sisterhood between neglect and grief. The two are united by loss. Neglect is about the loss of what most likely never was, what should have been, or maybe what was for a while, and then no longer. I realized long after the fact that my protracted grief about the loss of my first love was in fact, the boundless and nameless grief of “motherless-ness.” Other than that, or until then, loss simply evoked numbing. I felt nothing. Even though I was not literally motherless, I felt such a void of loneliness, an inexplicable quaking broken heartedness, that only found expression, if for a long time misdirected, reeling from another lost love. Grief is a hard sell! Recovering from romantic heartbreak is so dramatic, especially the first time, it is next to impossible to think of it as something else.
In therapy and in parenting, the task is regulation. That is the royal road to sufficiency, to equilibrium, to balance, to “enough,” whether it be, doing or getting enough. Although I have thought of myself, perhaps flattered myself? Thinking I am pretty darn emotionally intelligent. Perhaps about some emotions or some people’s emotions, I am. But about grief, which lies at the heart of neglect, not so much! I have a lot to learn. And unprocessed grief, where does it go? As we know all too well, it will show itself somewhere.
I have never heard anything even vaguely endearing or attractive about US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Sexual harassment, greed and opportunism were what I knew of him until this morning when I heard an interview with documentary filmmaker Michael Kirk who has recently unveiled a movie about him the man. Hearing his story broke my heart. Born in a small rural town, so poor that there was not only a lack of food but no running water -even toilets. He was fatherless, unwanted by his mother and then grandparents, his cohorts in his attempt at the seminary, and his high-powered colleagues at Yale Law. Even ostracized by his black peers for being “too” dark-skinned, he was rejected everywhere. Thomas never was enough, never achieved enough, and never got nearly enough. The culmination of the haunting unending deprivation, the continued gnawing of ravenous hunger of every iteration must be what spawned the impulse to stockpile and squirrel away to somehow ensure safety and survival. Hardening against heartbreak or need, the attempt to somehow feel a modicum of power, all added up to what is almost a caricature of the neglect adaptation, the despicable character I have read and heard about in the news for years.
The word “regulation” has become very “buzzy” in the last couple of years. I am almost hesitant to use it as it has become almost as hackneyed and tired as “pivot,” “double down” and “deep dive.” Oy vey! How do these expressions become so viral? And I fear regulation could lose its crucial meaning if it has not already.
By regulation, we mean the ability to return to a calm equilibrium after having become activated in one direction or the other. It is the capacity or fluency for calming down after becoming agitated, anxious, aroused, or thawing and returning to presence after a freeze.
Regulation, or “self-regulation”, is the ability to fluidly and naturally move between states. An infant learns to return to a baseline calm, initially by being calmed by a regulating other. That is how we develop the circuitry, how the brain and body learn the pathways, which we ultimately become able to replicate it on our own, -eventually. Certainly not overnight! And as parents of adolescents know, it is phased work and goes on for years to greater and lesser degrees.
The failure of regulation by a present, attentive, and hopefully caring and consistent other sets the stage for all sorts of aberrations that may show themselves and persist in the body, emotion and behavior. And may indeed add up to being one way or another out of control. Thomas shows every indication of that. Which certainly does not excuse his terrible behavior, (even only what we know about.) And clearly, this contradiction between outrage and sympathy again is among the many complications and tangles of healing at both the micro and macro level. Long story short, regulation is the answer.
For those interested, the Clarence Thomas documentary is free and available for streaming on Youtube. I have not watched it yet, but I plan to.
That is enough for today. I wonder what “Da Mayor,” Willie Brown is up to!
Today’s song:
As a devout listener to BBC, I got an earful of the recent coronation event. Monarchy is something I so rarely think about, apart from the recent death of Queen Elizabeth, which similarly took over a day of BBC coverage. From the endless memorial feed, my mind somehow floated back to junior high school European history. Admittedly I don’t remember much. Junior high school was a truly terrible time in my life. A half-starved anorexic, I foggily remember that I stared absently out the window a lot and did not hear much. So perhaps, thankfully, I have little memory at all. Curiously, however, what floated to mind that day, was the term “benevolent despot.” I don’t remember which royal figure it referenced, but I remember thinking, “What?!!” I did not understand how absolute power and the quality of well-meaning kindness could go together. I guess it made about as much sense as “Let them eat cake!”
The world of neglect is fraught with many ironies and contradictions. That is part of what makes recognizing, understanding and working with it so complicated and fraught. Recently, in a conversation about my work with a highly esteemed colleague, she made a comment about “benign neglect.” Somehow that struck the confused and admittedly sensitive nerve about “benevolent despot.” There is something to me oxymoronic about the idea that neglect is “benign” I think of benign as meaning harmless. A tumor, for example, that is malignant is cause for alarm. It may be serious or even fatal. One that is benign may be aberrant or even unsightly. But not to worry. No neglect, if it is, in fact, what I refer to, what Frank Corrigan has so exquisitely named “attachment shock:” rupture, loss of connection, abandonment, withdrawal of the other, is benign. Certainly not for an infant. It is not only devastating but potentially lethal as well. I think my colleague meant not intentionally malicious, which is often the case, but harmless. Not! If intentionality is the question, that is a different conversation.
A lover of words and also admittedly quite fussy about them, I started thinking about the word “neglect.” If I am on a mission to make “neglect informed” a concern for the psychotherapy field, and the world for that matter, I had better come up with precise definitions. Perhaps the noun “neglect” works, but as a verb is floppy and ambiguous. In my mind, neglect, by its very nature, is a failure of awareness, a blip of intentionality, an absence of agency. Whether it be a preoccupation with the urgency of some sort, a limitation of circumstance, emergency or trauma, disability, loss of means, or long or short-term loss of capacity: whatever the cause, the agency goes offline. Something does not get done. In general, my paradigm is one of “no blame.” This means ascribing fault and villainizing the negligent does not serve the sufferer/ victim, or anyone really.
However, the child, or anyone who is abandoned or neglected, is grossly mistreated and pays dearly for it. The losses in terms of opportunity, relationship, choice, capacities, freedom, time, joy, quality of life… I could go on and on… they are too numerous and too costly to begin to try and name. So the grief, rage, agony, bitterness, contempt and judgment are understandable. This is another of the great challenges of neglect, another of the dilemmas the survivor must struggle to navigate. The old saw, “they did the best they could,” with the backwash of every kind of emotion.
Long before I was aware of it, I knew that my mother was overwhelmed and taking care of us was simply too much. I remember being haunted by the newsreels of concentration camps I saw at Hebrew school when I was barely six years old. If I was haunted by movies, what would the impact of lived experience be? My mother was anxious, brittle and sad. I remember hustling to clean up and eradicate clutter before it would make her more jumpy and irritable, being as helpful, inconspicuous and as little of a “bother” as possible. Partly to try and make her “happy,” or happier? And partly for my own benefit, in the hope that she might have more presence and more to offer us if she was calmer. Was she intentionally neglectful? No, of course not! Was it benign, absolutely not! Only after the onslaught of symptoms and problems that plagued me for decades and the years and thousands of dollars of therapy could I figure it out. It was not only what I was previously aware of as my various forms of overt trauma, but the attachment trauma, the missing experiences, and the neglect had scarred me deeply. It was not benign, and I went through at least a decade of terrible conflict and emotion. Of course, she/they “could not help it.” And I was enraged about the price that I was left with. Another Rubik’s cube of neglect. How to hold both?
The child of neglect is caught in the headlights of the “dilemma without solution,” which I talk about endlessly. The object of longing and the source of agony are in the same person. How to manage that. And similarly, the tangle about responsibility. They could not help it? Well, maybe not. And the damage? It is not like the simple calculous of car insurance. The responsible party pays, and the victim is somehow compensated.
For those of us challenged by the work with neglect, whether our own, loved ones’ or clients, we are faced with the flopping dissonance of ambiguities that may blur and alternate, expand, contract, compel, embarrass, frustrate and flummox us for years. They can be paralyzing, or we can think we are crazy or “stuck.” Many of us look so good, accomplished, or are so good at numbing that no one would even know there was someone inside who desperately needed help. I remember how surprised I was when I read Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography and learned that the “Boss” had sometimes spent up to two years in bed with depression, unable, in his words, to “turn off the faucet.” And this was well after he had been long busting charts and filling stadiums. The healing of attachment shock is a complex journey of cycling and often frozen opposites, where both are painfully true and real and yet seem crazily incompatible. That is why great compassion, patience, and the ability to tolerate and hold wild ambiguities and stay the course are all essential.
There is also no substitute for information, about the brain, attachment and healing. And the recovery stories of those ahead of us on the path who can attest to coming out the other side, that a joyful life is, in fact, possible. It is a very hard sell! And certainly, no substitute for the emotional and somatic work that really affects trauma. In those moments when the pre-frontal cortex is firing, they may serve to bolster hope.
I often say, sometimes my main task is to be the harbinger of hope. The one person in the room who is not activated, so I can keep the perspective that it is not happening now, something different is possible, and progress, however glacial is in fact happening. You may not believe me. But I won’t stop holding that. And someday, all of a sudden, maybe for only a minute, you will.
Making our peace and coming to peace takes however long it takes. If it seems to take “forever,” it is not that you are doing something wrong. It is like correcting a terrible environmental insult: nature has been rudely interrupted and the organic processes of restoring it are underway, and not to be rushed. I remember as a child, pulling open the petals of a flower that was not quite ready to bloom. It really only spoiled it. My intentions were not bad. But the result was a small disaster. And we must continue to look upstream to address the social, political, and economic forces that perpetuate these many contradictions, so ultimately peace has some kind of a chance.
Today’s song:
In my morning workout, I was swept out of my usual reverie by a vocal. Most of the time my Pandora musical feed keeps me happy and in rhythm with instrumental music. My station is a mix of contemporary/jazz/Spanish guitar which for me is just right. At first, I was annoyed, it was a slowish cut and Santana does not exactly belong on my Pandora station. When I began to tune in a bit, I realized it was Santana’s “I Ain’t Got Nobody, That I Can Depend On.” Then I realized that Pandora was suggesting that I write about the core dilemma of neglect, and the terrible dilemma that results from that early experience.
I always loved Santana. The band’s leader, Carlos Santana, was the first to effectively and successfully, broker the intermarriage between two of my favorite musical styles: rock and Latin. It was a pretty gutsy of him, and an innovative undertaking for a young kid from Jalisco, Mexico. But in San Francisco in the late 1960’s, much was possible. Certainly in the music world. In my typical way, I read a biography of Carlos almost a decade ago. I don’t remember much. He grew up in a musical family; he was sexually abused between the ages of 10 and 12, by an American man who brought him across the border. He subsequently lived and went to school in the San Francisco Mission District which was then a Spanish speaking ghetto, of immigrants from many Central and South American countries. (Now it is a wildly gentrified neighborhood and foodie hot spot, where finding a parking space is like winning a Las Vegas jackpot.) I remember walking through the streets of the Mission when I had my first alcohol treatment job, teaching drunk driving school in Spanish. I loved passing the many Latin music record stores, and often stopped on my way home to buy vinyl “discos.”
I remember that many of Carlos’s relationships were stormy, with the band changing members and managers multiple times. But I suppose that is not so unusual in the complex and often drug laced musical world, certainly in those days. He divorced after more than three decades, in 2007 and not long thereafter married his drummer with whom he is still married. I do remember that I reflected when I read about him: his appeared to be a challenging, like many an immigrant, life of neglect. That song came from somewhere!
I always loved Santana. The band’s leader, Carlos Santana, was the first to effectively and successfully, broker the intermarriage between two of my favorite musical styles: rock and Latin. It was a pretty gutsy of him, and an innovative undertaking for a young kid from Jalisco, Mexico.
The core dilemma of neglect, and in my experience, the most common and most insidious, is very early in life, precisely that: no one to depend on. Often it starts in the crib. A safe infancy, involves a primary caretaker, most often the mother, who learns to recognize and respond to the infant’s signals. Not being a mother myself, I have always been in awe of how a mammal mother, (not only our species,) learns to distinguish the various infant cries, for food, a clean diaper, the fussiness of being too tired, cold, fear, and simple company or loving arms. How does she do that? And not perfectly of course! The attachment researchers tell us that the best case scenario, the best of the best, succeed 30% of the time! The remaining two thirds of the time, is the ceaseless dance of rupture and repair. But both the prompt response to the particular cry, with the sought supplies; and the reliable quest for repair and reconnection, make for a securely attached, regulated infant.
The child of neglect for whatever reason, misses out on that. It may be because a mother is depressed, ill, drug addicted, traumatized, desperate to make a living, fighting with the other parent, too young, or simply selfish or careless.
There are innumerable root causes for the neglect, but that notwithstanding, the child who misses out on the well timed, accurately registered response, winds up with a dysregulated nervous system, as what quiets hyperarousal, and the fear that comes with need, is gratification. The accurately gratified child can settle, calm down, and rest in the knowledge that someone is there who gets it, who gets me, who will take care of me. My feelings matter and will be attended to. What an ideal scenario. And of course this happens, or does not, way before we have the brain development to remember it in a narrative, story-like way. This start inhabits the infant’s little body with a calm that adds up to safety, value and trust that someone is there. I matter and I am OK. It lodges in body, emotional and sensory experience that someone is there. This is why I never had the guts to have children. By age five, I was sure I couldn’t do it, and I never wanted anyone to feel like I did.
Missing those experiences, or enough of them, results in a child with many varieties of dysregulation. I sometimes wonder if my disordered eating started that long ago, if signals of hunger and satiety were mis-read, ignored or over-ridden. Who knows? I do know that neglect is the vast and vacuous desert of missing experiences, where the child ultimately has nowhere to turn but inward. These are the roots of the primary default to self-reliance. What else is a little person supposed to do? Pacify or insulate against the “careless” caregiver, and soldier on. You might ask, “how would I know that? It happened so long ago.” Or “my hapless parents did the best they could.” Or “I had a perfectly happy childhood.” Or the most often resounding disclaimer: “Nothing happened to me!” Precisely, too much nothing!
It takes time and hard work to unearth an unremembered story. Often we can only piece it together from body, emotional and sensory cues, and reflecting on what was going on around the mother or parents, when the child was tiny. And an often seemingly ferocious self-reliance. Self- reliance is a lifeline, the survival mainstay, hard to ever want or dare to relinquish. It is also a dead give-away.
Local treasure, Berkeley attachment researcher extraordinaire, Mary Main coined the term “Dilemma without solution” which is the core conflict surrounding neglect. The concept gave rise to what was initially a new attachment style: the disorganized, disoriented. The dilemma is that the source of terror and the source of comfort are the same person. So the infant is an endless ambivalent and confused frenzy seeking both safety and comfort, and succeeding at neither. The dissociation world seized on the concept in a hot minute, because a freeze or numbing response might be the infant’s only recourse, until self-reliance kicks in. Yes, it is a long road to healing. And this is why the wide world of relationship can be a bleak battlefield, littered with the mangled corpses of a parade of misguided or failed relationships of all kinds. At least mine was. That is what brings most survivors of neglect to therapy. Loneliness and confusion about “nothing.”
Local treasure, Berkeley attachment researcher extraordinaire, Mary Main coined the term “Dilemma without solution” which is the core conflict surrounding neglect. The concept gave rise to what was initially a new attachment style: the disorganized, disoriented. The dilemma is that the source of terror and the source of comfort are the same person.
Anyone who reads the acknowledgement of most any book, and I always do, knows that it takes a village to write a book. Of course, I didn’t really get that while writing my first two books. The result was what my husband refers to as the two (respectively) worst years of his life. As I approached my next book, to be a “lay-person’s” book about neglect, which promises to be my most important book yet, my husband adamantly refused to go through anything like the experience of the previous two. He proclaims that each time in effect, “he didn’t see me for a year,” except exhausted, stressed out and with little to offer him. In my advancing years, I finally had enough recovery to get a clue: duh! I hired a helper, who turned out to be an angel.
What an experience! I did not have to know what to do. Amazing! And what did the brilliant angel do? She brought in two more! Imagine that! A team of angels, who know what to do, and know how to do the things that I have no idea how to do, and never would have thought of. And who care about me! Always a solo endurance athlete, suddenly I was playing on a team. Three beautiful, smart, knowledgeable, kind and hardworking helpmates, all there for me! And all working to mid-wife the slowly gestating book. Unbelievable!
So this week, I had a truly astonishing experience. My primary angel got very sick. And like the infant who is torn between taking care of the mother, and worrying about its own urgent needs, I was in a quandary. I love my person so much, I only want healing for her. And I was also starting to stress about the things I don’t know how to do, that I am under deadline about. I did not want to interfere with her healing, and knew she was upset enough about work, while also in pain and fear about pretty much everything. And what happened was the unimaginable. The other two, who love her also, simply stepped in, took up the helm, and basically said, like the old Stevie Wonder song says “don’t you worry ‘bout a thing.” Amazing. Even at this advanced age and after 100 years of “solitude,” more and wonderful healing discovery is possible. I feel a new wave transformation, and awe about what it is like to emerge from self-reliance. I’d like to say, “Try it!” But that would be ridiculous. So I will simply say, stay the course! It is worth it!
Todays 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.
Way back in the middle 1970s, I cooked in a restaurant. I was a pretty good cook, having had the dubious distinction of being the only one who could be in the kitchen when Dad was doing his cyclone-like chef act. Dad had learned to cook by “stealing with his eyes”, as he said, watching the experts and doing what they did, as he worked in restaurants around the world in his diasporic flight from Hitler.
When I was born, he and Mom had a little restaurant in Carmel, and my sister and I spent our early years in the sink. This job, however, was a “movement job” at La Pena de Berkeley, a wonderful restaurant and community center supporting the Latin American solidarity movement. It is still there. It was there I really learned to cook. I was in my early 20’s and had a friend named Erica, who was tall and blond and looked like a model. I never imagined having a friend who looked like that. Erica was an amazing cook and taught me to make soup. Every day I made a 10-gallon pot of the soup du jour. I got pretty good at the soup thing, in fact, once one of my great idols at the time, Puerto Rican singer Roy Brown, praised our food from the stage.
My mom always loved my mushroom soup. Erica taught me how to make cream soups, and I loved the smell of the “roux,” the heady blend of butter and flour slowly roasting in the pot. Mom always started talking about Mother’s Day about three or four weeks ahead of time so we would not forget, so she could tell us what she wanted, and we had plenty of time to make or get whatever that was. She often asked for mushroom soup for her Mother’s Day dinner. It took about half the day to make, and I was so glad there was something worthwhile that I had to offer.
I am not a mother, and my mother and grandmother are long gone. So Mother’s Day is a non-event for my husband and me. Except for the fact that roses are double in price for a week or two. So it is unfettered and free for reflection.
Every day I made a 10-gallon pot of the soup du jour. I got pretty good at the soup thing, in fact, once one of my great idols at the time, Puerto Rican singer Roy Brown, praised our food from the stage.
When my mother died, I simply felt empty. When people expressed heartfelt condolences, I felt embarrassed and guilty. I was not sad at all, only relieved. I had felt so hated for so long, it was like having a vice removed from my throat. My loss came so very long ago. I suffered a protracted grief over the loss of my first real love relationship with a man. Only much later did I realize that the seemingly bottomless intractable grief was really about Mom. By the time my mother actually died, I had mourned for over a decade and had no tears left.
My mother had a trauma-ridden life. First, an upbringing of upper-class northern German coldness and nannies, then the Nazi Holocaust, then finding her way in a new and alien culture, and a long and challenging marriage to a difficult man. By the time my mom was the age I was when I was slinging hash and drinking at La Pena, my mom had three little kids and lived in a bleak apartment in New York while my dad went to school and worked and was barely around. That Manhattan building was like a refugee camp, almost everyone who lived there had numbers on their arms.
It is always hard to navigate the balance between sympathy and compassion for the pretty disabled other, with the bitterness and grief about one’s own deprivation, trauma and neglect. For many of us, the struggle is unbearable, even impossible, for a long time. It points to the great challenge of relationship in general. How in the world do we make space for the pain and subjectivity of two people who are both in agonizing needs, and they are different, and maybe gratifying one costs the other? I don’t use the word “incompatible.” Our work is to find our empathic way.
My mom had three little kids and lived in a bleak apartment in New York while my dad went to school and worked and was barely around. That Manhattan building was like a refugee camp, almost everyone who lived there had numbers on their arms.
I just learned moments ago that our beloved Harry Belafonte passed last night at 96. So sad. Mom loved Harry, and he is one of the great bequests that I cherish from her. Our bleak little apartment was brightened by him, as one of her three record albums was his. I remember waltzing Matilda with my sisters around the linoleum floors, laughing. Those memories are sweet. And when a few years ago, on a trip to Cuba I learned how bananas grow, I could not help remembering Harry singing “Dayo!” the banana boat song. Thanks Mom! My grief about Harry is unadulterated, perhaps it contains some compassion for you.
I am not one for regrets. In fact, I only have one. I failed to make my peace with my mother before she passed. Meaning I failed to reach a point where I no longer felt bitterness and recrimination and a simmer about her negligence or seeming self-centeredness. I never achieved equanimity before it was too late. She died precipitously. We did not see it coming. She seemed so healthy. At 75, she was going to aerobics, riding her bicycle around town, and seemed a picture of health. It was only when she kept dropping things that she got a check-up, and through a routine chest x-ray, it was discovered she was over-run by metastasized cancer: breast cancer, brain cancer, lung cancer. It was seemingly everywhere, and she had seemed just fine. It had always been our Dad who had all the serious medical issues. Five weeks later, she was gone. My sister wisely hypothesized that maybe she simply got too tired of taking care of Dad.
I am certainly not one for advice. I hate getting it unless I ask for it. And I strive not to give it unless I am asked. But there are a couple of things I do freely offer unbidden that you can take or leave. When faced with questions about how to proceed with a parent or any significant other who has hurt us, the question to ask is this: How will I feel about myself after they are gone if I do “X”? How will I feel about myself when they are gone if I do “Y?” And there is the answer. The one I have to live with is me. Who do I want to live with? Who do I want to be? I am sorry I was still angry when she died, that I could not or would not see her off with an open heart. My Mother’s Day is perhaps my day of atonement. Forgiveness is so important to me. I was a decade or two late in learning how.
Thanks Mom, for the soundtrack of Harry and Pete Seeger, for teaching me to sew. For the tiny sewing machine you gave me for my 16th birthday, the little Elna Lotus. I still have it. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to please you at least once a year with that soup.
I sometimes envy the Buddhists or others who have a way of thinking about where people go after they leave their corporeal existence on this earth. I think about my Dad sometimes and wonder where he is, much less often about my mom. Except maybe on Mother’s Day. This year, however, it comforts me to think that maybe she and Harry are in the same realm somewhere. That she can sing with him about Matilda taking his money and running off to Venezuela and laughing together.
Happy Mother’s Day one and all, mothers, grandmothers, sons and daughters, orphans, and everything in between. Have a gentle day. I think I am going to go and look for some mushrooms.
Todays 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.
May is American Cheese Month. No, I don’t mean American Cheese (Kraft Singlets, that hideous impostor masquerading as or feigning to be cheese.) Granted, those singlets were the” perfect melt,” producing an immediate bright orange gooey ooze that dripped dramatically off the burger, providing a mouth-watering visual. It melted as quickly as its single-serving polyethylene wrapper probably would have and didn’t taste much better. The singlets additionally produced an ample supply of landfill, also sadly “American.” But we didn’t think much about those things then. No, this month honors American cheese, or to be precise, and certainly more politically correct, cheeses originating and produced in the US.
So why a month? Probably a commercial initiative to remind and encourage people that the step-child of domestic cheeses actually has an honorable and noteworthy tradition, history and even some products. The fans of a Wisconsin football team call themselves “cheeseheads,” as Wisconsin is one of the most venerated US origins of cheese. But I also remember from years ago, long before I cared much, billboards with beautiful scenes of California landscapes, touting “Come for the Views, Stay for the Cheese!” I often feel that way at our home.
Europe: France, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, Greece are all the icons of great cheese. Like neglect, “American” cheeses dim and fade from view and allegedly at least can’t compete. I will differ with that (much as I do about neglect!) as some of the creations coming out of Marin, in the Bay Area, are pretty darn good, and even some of mine are getting there, although I would not dream of selling it. So, a month suggesting that we buy some, try it, well, how could that be bad? And for the home cheesemakers like me, a reminder to – as Gavin, my beloved Australian cheesemaking teacher, always counsels, “Keep calm and make cheese!” I hardly need reminding.
And cheese, besides being a passion of mine and an inspiration in countless ways, provides an infinite supply of ready and exquisite metaphors. Like peeling the plastic singlet wrap and setting the stuff to melt, I miraculously get a quick spill of words and ideas. The ups and downs of cheese making, replete with dramatic disasters of failure and the occasional wildly delicious success, replicate the non-linear trauma/neglect healing process. It also reminds us that some things are, in fact, intended to stink, and if we learn or develop the taste, we may even come to like that.
Many know that during my first year or so of cheesemaking, my failure rate was a dismal 60%. Many feel that way about their first year, or even maybe ten, of trauma therapy. What would make one hang in there? People ask the same question when I tell them that my husband and I fired five couple’s therapists back in the early days (blessedly three decades ago now!) before we found one who could help us. We thought we were the couple from hell and probably were. Ultimately after about two years and thousands of dollars wasted, we found someone who could, in fact, help us and who even inspired me to become a couple’s therapist. So, what would make one stay the course, or as Gavin would say, “soldier on?” After all, my husband is the one who, after 30 pages, if the story hasn’t “begun,” gives up on a book. I still can’t do that, always having to keep going and finish the thing, endlessly hoping that “it might get better…” (He did, ultimately, teach me that it is OK to walk out of a movie, although admittedly, it took a while.) Trauma/neglect therapy is not linear, and that is for sure. However, I do believe it will get better. For those who stay with it, in my experience, it invariably does.
We thought we were the couple from hell and probably were. Ultimately after about two years and thousands of dollars wasted, we found someone who could, in fact, help us and who even inspired me to become a couple’s therapist.
I have also learned, and admittedly a form of American cheese has been a great teacher, that like the couple from hell that we were, even the most godforsaken disaster can be salvaged and even transformed into something quite wonderful. A life or a relationship that looks like an abandoned corpse-strewn battlefield can be transformed into a paradisiacal tropical resort destination like Viet Nam has become. Younger people, I have discovered, are surprisingly free of haunting prejudices, ghosts and guilt about the war there, even unfamiliar with the history. It may be something rather like a clean slate, or one might hope.
Gavin and a buddy of his, Larry from Deep South Texas, in a global-partnering attitude-changing effort, collaborated to teach the world “curd nerd” community to “make lemonade,” if you will. It was Larry’s initiative, wanting to improve the world’s view of both American Cheese and American cheese. And for me, it was a lesson or a reminder about new beginnings. Admittedly my husband, in all his politeness and undying patience, was getting tired of joining me in eating my mistakes. Thankfully, looking back, I (fortunately) did not have the 8-gallon pot then and was working more in four-gallon batches. But it was still a lot to ask, a lot of what I have come to call “Cottage Chevre.” Fancy recipes with European titles that somehow come out looking more like cottage cheese or edamame maybe.
Larry created a recipe for making American cheese, minus the polyvinyl packaging, of course, really a quite respectable recovery for cheeses with pure raw ingredients that somehow went awry in their developmental process. But here is the point: not beyond repair! Larry created a method for processing rocky, mushy, stinky or some other variation on “arrested development” into something wholesome and aesthetically pleasing. And additionally, that replicated the perhaps one and only “redeeming quality” of American cheese, that being the perfect melt! Even the original intended cheese may never have achieved that! A skeptical (and big-hearted!) purist, Gavin had the grace and the humility to not only undertake the experiment but to take it live on his channel with its 307K subscribers.
Younger people, I have discovered, are surprisingly free of haunting prejudices, ghosts and guilt about the war there, even unfamiliar with the history. It may be something rather like a clean slate, or one might hope.
I learned and repeatedly re-learn the lesson that there is no failure if we stay the course. The bodybuilders say, “Failure is success!” If you keep pumping until you can’t anymore, that is when you get stronger. (And a lot of them nourish themselves with whey protein!) Neglect, trauma, I’m pouring it all into one pot today. Some of the cheese recipes call for a 60, 70, or 80-minute stir. That means I am standing on my little, short-person’s stepping stool, stirring the 8-gallon vat, usually watching some webinar or maybe a Bobby McFerrin Circlesong all that time. I like to think of it as “kayaking in Kona,” but I am not always able to think so positively, much as I would like to. Sometimes it is a drag, a slog, an eternity.
For any neglect survivor waiting is on the order of fatal, and admittedly at times, I clock-watch, think about cheating, and want it to be over already. Here is the point, the seemingly hopeless case rarely is. I would like to say “never,” but I know never to say that!
May is the start of spring in many places. So for those who don’t care about cheese, it could be that. My husband just informed me while reading the news that May is Older Americans Month as well, so if you are domestic, you might prefer that. They say, “age doesn’t matter unless you’re a cheese,” so that way, we combine the two.
My one major takeaway is for those who are fed up, bone tired of stirring, slogging, pumping, going to therapy, I do understand that. I have felt that way too a lot on this long road, and admittedly occasionally still do. Finding a way to make it bearable, to be able to stay the course, is a tall order. I know that too! But I’m glad I did. And I never would have dreamed I could make something pretty wonderful out of those accumulated bowls of slop that I would have liked to toss if I weren’t so averse to wasting food. I am grateful to Larry for having the gumption to push Gavin and to Gavin for using his platform to get the word out to all of us. I do hope in some small way to pass on a message not only of endurance, but of hope! My friend Bruce, who I met on our first trip to Cuba, gave me the nickname “Cheese Wiz.” I like that!
Todays 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.
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.
Our dad passed shortly before the pandemic of Covid-19 struck. What a blessing that was, as it would have been hell for him and for all of us to go through. The final couple of years, and worsening over the last months, he was increasingly vacant and absent, barely “there.” It was hard to tell if he was bored and disinterested, if he was hovering on the bridge to the next world, or if his tired old brain cells (those that were left) were not firing anymore. He was almost 93 when he died. When I arrived to visit, his second wife would bellow loudly in his ear “(whatever strange nickname she called him), Ruth is here!” His hearing aids were powered on, intact, and in place, but he usually did not even look up. It was as if I was not there. Sadly, to be perfectly honest, it was not that different from much of my life with him.
I had the good fortune to make my peace with him, so I enjoyed a stretch of a surprisingly happy father-daughter relationship before he began his protracted fade-out departure. Granted, I did all the healing work on my own without his participation, but that is a story for another day. He did participate in a truly loving relationship with me for a time, and I am infinitely grateful for that.
Our dad’s final years, however, were a quiet agony. Thankfully, my sisters and I were a good team. But having my presence or absence not register, questioning whether those long, vapid visits had any meaning at all, was not only interminably empty and boring for me, but a potent reminder of the years of feeling as if I did not matter or even exist in his eyes. They were a living reminder/stimulus of long years of painful and confusing neglect. Admittedly, I lived much of those last two years in various degrees of trauma activation. Being excessively busy and perennially sleep-deprived, the routine visits took a chunk out of every weekend. But for whatever reason I kept them going diligently until the end – not without confusion and unbearable fatigue.
Why? Was I afraid I might miss something if I did not take advantage of every possible moment with him? What might I possibly miss? I could rarely ask him questions about his life anymore. I found I would collect stories and topics and come with a “playlist” of things in mind to talk about, to entertain either him or myself. I honestly don’t know which. Due to his various cancers, he had been on a feeding tube for years, so my stories about cheesemaking challenges, my baking masterpieces, or food-related conversations, which are ordinarily pleasurable and easy for me, were off the table, so to speak. Our best bet on a good day was to sing. Interestingly, although he did not remember much of anything else, he did seemingly remember all the songs and their lyrics. Sometimes we filled the time that way, especially when I had the good fortune to visit at the same time as a sister, who brought his old guitar. She played it, but it did seem to awaken and cheer him.
Secretly, however, I remembered an old Cuban song I used to listen to and love: “La vida no vale nada…” life is not worth anything. And even though the song is about how life is not worth anything if others are suffering, I had to wonder, what keeps him going? What would make it worth continuing to live and breathe that vacuous existence? And when I dared to be really honest with myself, why doesn’t he just go?
When there is a long history of trauma, neglect, hard-earned healing, and profound ambivalence about its perpetrators and purveyors, their final years can be complicated at best. Some of us are too enraged and hurt still to be dutiful; some of us too dutiful to allow ourselves to feel enraged or hurt. If we are glaringly aware of both the parents’ own tragic and unconscionable trauma and misfortune and their own tragic and unconscionable lack of healing, it is even more complicated. Add to that whatever feelings we might have about what others (those mythical others) might think about how we navigate the loss of a parent. Some of us care. And many of the feelings are outside our awareness.
I remember when our mom died in 2000. I was so embarrassed when people expressed sympathetic condolences as I felt nothing but grateful relief – or so I thought. I was driving the day after she passed, however, and my car broke down on the freeway. Much to my own surprise, I fell apart on the phone with the Triple A operator who took my call for emergency road service, crying rather hysterically to her about how my mother had just died. It was as if I and not the car had broken down.
When there has been attachment trauma, especially neglect, when little is “concrete enough” to point to, the final years and days of the parent’s life can be racked with troubling ambivalence.
In his newly released memoir, Bono, who lost his mother as a small boy, recounts a legacy of rock stars who lost their mothers at a young age. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, John Lydon, and Bob Geldof are the ones he names, but there are many more, according to him. He refers to something parallel about father loss in the hip-hop world but does not name names. Interesting. He muses about some possible relationship between attachment trauma (not his language, of course!) and creativity.
After the death of his mother Iris, Bono grew up in a world of men – a much older brother and a stern, emotionless father. He had few memories of Iris at all, probably largely because the three of them never spoke of her, the space she had occupied simply closing up. At least, that is how Bono explains it. Neglect and abundant loss, however, are very often, if not usually, accompanied by a copious blankness of autobiography. In fact, one of the gifts of recovery is reclaiming or even constructing, for the first time, a personal narrative.
Interestingly, Bono did have one perfectly intact memory of Iris. His father was in an upstairs room, doing one of his many typical construction projects, working with a chainsaw or some sort of power saw, which apparently had slipped out of his hand. Loud screams echoed from upstairs, and when Bono and Iris ran up to see what had happened, his blood-spattered father was yelling in terror that he had castrated himself. Iris’ puzzling response was to burst into uncontrollable peals of laughter. She was no Lorena Bobbitt, and his father was not abusive. Bono was simply baffled. Iris must have been an odd bird. Indeed a curious bit of memory in a desert of idealization. (We never do learn what his dad’s injury turned out to be.)
To be visited by confusing, even contradictory impulses, and lots of trauma activation during the dying and death of a traumatic parent, be it incident trauma or neglect, is a natural and expectable response.
When there has been attachment trauma, especially neglect, when little is “concrete enough” to point to, the final years and days of the parent’s life can be racked with troubling ambivalence. One might, as I was, be horrified in shame for feeling such apparent and undeniable numbness around my mother’s passing. Over subsequent years of neurofeedback and other healing work, fragments of feeling come to me that surprise me. For whatever reason, I have her old sewing scissors on my desk. I don’t use them for sewing, but I keep them near. They remind me of her hands… I recall her terrible cooking almost fondly. Little things that she said will come to mind, and I will quote her, often reprimanding someone with a smile and shouting, “Put on a sweater, I’m cold!” or remembering the German swear words I learned from her momentary fits of temper. So, I don’t feel completely void of feeling anymore, and I do regret that I was not able to make my peace before she went. She went so quickly. It is really the only regret I have.
To be visited by confusing, even contradictory impulses, and lots of trauma activation during the dying and death of a traumatic parent, be it incident trauma or neglect, is a natural and expectable response – even the silent, perhaps shameful wish that they take their leave already. I urge all to be gentle and forgiving of oneself, for one’s own swirling inconsistencies or perhaps even incomprehensible thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. If I am to offer one, my best recommendation is to do what will make you feel best about yourself in the long run, so the survivor of trauma and/or neglect can live, and in effect, “rest” in peace.
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.
The child of neglect, often virtually from the point of conception, floats in a sea of solitude. Like a fish, the water may not even register, as it can seem “natural” or the norm, the absence of attachment being all that is known. Attachment, however, is not only a birthright – it is nature’s design. To be connected is a survival need, and in effect, nurture is nature. To be left alone and adrift is a crime against nature as far as I am concerned.
As the child grows older, solitude may become the default, seemingly “preferred” state, most likely not consciously. The less familiar state of being in company or connected with anyone may feel like a strain at the very least, if not foreign, impossible, even terrifying. More than a few neglect survivors I have known found the isolation of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic barely noticeable or even a welcome “permission” to simply lay low. Often, I have heard their partners complain bitterly of feeling perennially rejected.
When I first started my anecdotal study and data collection about neglect and began to formulate the outlines of what I came to think of as the “Neglect Profile,” I noticed what I perceived as a seismic shrug, often accompanied by the words “I don’t know what to do!” or “There is nothing I can do!” Going back probably to the beginning of time in their relationship world, they felt that they had no impact at all, so the experience of powerlessness seems to rumble and quake from deep in their core. Often, these people are extraordinarily accomplished and proactive in other ways, be they professional, creative, athletic, or some other significant pursuit.
The domain of relationships confronts the child of neglect with their core paradox: the central conundrum that plagues them, whether or not they are aware of it. It is what local treasure, Berkeley attachment researcher Mary Main, calls the dilemma without solution. If they allow themselves to feel their natural longing for connection, they are faced with a story and the ongoing threat of agony and, at the very least, vulnerability. What is to be done? Most likely, the only viable adaptation is to freeze or avoid. Often this also is the complaint of their partners: numbing, avoidance, even paralysis.
The domain of relationships confronts the child of neglect with their core paradox: the central conundrum that plagues them, whether or not they are aware of it. It is what local treasure, Berkeley attachment researcher Mary Main, calls the dilemma without solution.
Most who have sought answers in the complex world of relationships have heard of the marriage researcher John Gottman. I have been an avid student of his for my entire couples’ therapist life of thirty years now. Although his therapy methods are different from mine, he provides a goldmine of scientific data, perhaps 40 years now of longitudinal research on what makes a relationship successful and the predictive factors of separation and divorce. He amassed all this information utilizing what he called his “Love Lab,” where couples would spend an uninterrupted weekend in his specially designed and equipped apartment/lab, with a video camera on them the entire time. It is amazing to imagine volunteering to be studied in that way – a heroic contribution to science and all of us, really.
Gottman is famous for identifying what he calls The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the four top predictors of relationship demise: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and withdrawal. I won’t detail each of them here, but Gottman’s books are imminently readable and well worth it. (Interested readers might start with his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.)
Often the adult child of neglect, when faced with relationship conflict, might lapse into defensiveness, which is a denial of responsibility or a pushing back when faced with a complaint, criticism, or rupture. And, of course, if I truly believe I am powerless, it is easy to claim, “I didn’t do anything!” or “It’s not my fault!” Ironic that the complaint might, in fact, be about what they did not do, when the child of neglect themselves have been largely victimized by missing behaviors that also were not done and experiences that did not happen. Oy vey.
Unwittingly, an expression of defensiveness can be “explaining” (“I only did what I did because…”), which sounds to the injured party like nothing but excuses, and is not helpful as a repair tool, unfortunately. But how would a survivor of neglect learn anything about relationship repair, having grown up in a relationship desert? None of us with attachment trauma of any ilk learned about relationship repair, which is what makes relationships so dicey. Without repair, any rupture in the connection is “fatal.” And, of course, no relationship is without missteps and misunderstandings at the very least. Of course, they seem like a collision course at best, and fatally dangerous at worst.
Unfortunately, for many a child of neglect whose futile effort at being perfect, or some other adaptation to the disconnection, resignedly resort to “leaving.” That was certainly my strategy, in its various forms: I tried to be away on my bike and then backpacking as much as I could; I lied and I drank, all from early ages. There was “nothing I could do…”
Though thankfully I was able to stop drinking and lying, I still hit the fourth of the horsemen pretty squarely if I am severely activated. If I am not mindful, I am still capable of withdrawing into a private and impenetrable cave if I am upset enough. And admittedly, withdrawal indeed has the potential to be the most deadly of all.
And what if I am not so fortunate as to have a partner who will go to therapy with me? Are we doomed to relationship misery or destruction? It is a good question.
Like many of us, I am a “double winner” with both attachment trauma in the form of neglect, and plenty of “shock” or incident trauma, so I am a veteran of some of the worst relationship-busting behaviors. Fortunately, although I defaulted to self-reliance like most of us children of neglect, that did not stop me from always seeking help. So, the one piece of relationship advice I ever give traumatized people of any stripe (or anyone really!) is to seek out a partner who is also willing to work on the relationship, because we will need to!
And what if I am not so fortunate as to have a partner who will go to therapy with me? Are we doomed to relationship misery or destruction? It is a good question. Partnering with a neglect survivor who is convinced of their powerlessness (blamelessness?) may make one feel saddled with all the blame and all the work of transforming both oneself and the relationship. Often there is a collusion about that, with both partners believing there is one problem child. Well, not on my watch.
I remember when my partner would say with the signature neglect shrug, “I will just sit here and wait until the sun comes out…” I would ignite with rage at the implication that the problem was all me, and its resolution was all my job. That in itself would make for a colossal escalation. I now know, and it is my intention to teach, that all relationship dynamics are in self-re-enforcing feedback loops – self-re-enforcing if they are allowed to continue with their own momentum. The best way forward is to work together to change dynamics. The good news, however, is that we each have the power to interrupt the cycle by simply not lapsing into the behavior that incites the other when they have activated us. I say simply, which is not to be confused with easily! Healing trauma is required, as well as building new brain circuitry. And yes, couples therapy is the more efficient way to create a new dynamic. Even that is a very tough road and takes longer than we’d like.
What if my partner, for whatever reason, can’t or won’t go to therapy with me? Does that mean we’re through? Well, not necessarily. It will mean that if one partner is willing to work hard, and carry the burden of stopping their side of the dynamic, knowing that it takes both of them to keep it going, or as I am fond of saying, “It takes two to escalate.” That means if I don’t react to the trauma reaction with my own trauma reaction, the old explosion will sizzle and extinguish; the drama will fade.
It is a hard sell that that might be the only way to change the tide of the relationship. It may be too much of a repetition of one’s lonely and burdened relationship past. It may also be a source of bitterness, that once again, “If I don’t do it all, there is no relationship…” However, there is a chance that it might begin a positive feedback cycle which makes the previously unable or unwilling partner believe, that it might be worth pitching in and doing more. At the very least, it might be a source of pride, joy, pleasure, and even gratitude. “I did it for us, because I could, and I win by ending up with you.”
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.
From seemingly out of nowhere, into my mind popped the theme music from Captain Kangaroo. I have no idea why; I had not thought of it in years – certainly not as long as I can remember. I always have a song in my head, but usually I am aware of the stimulus. I never even really liked the Captain. With the remembered whistling tune came a rather painful memory I don’t recall having before, when my sister was a baby, being parked in front of the Captain while my mother was with my sister. I felt lonely and left out, but also the spectrum of typical neglect feelings: rejected, unimportant, less loved/lovable, hurt, mad, and jealous– and most certainly unaware of all those feelings. To be sure, I had no language for any of it, but it all swirled in my little body and wafted faintly back with the snippet of musical recall.
I was two and a half when our little sister was born. I have always, and continue to, adore her. And admittedly, I was jealous. She was the pretty one, with great big beautiful eyes. People stopped on the street and remarked about those gorgeous eyes. Our mom was plain and non-descript-looking, but the new baby looked like our dad, who was proud and rather vain about being decidedly handsome. We recently found an ancient, dog-eared black and white of him flexing his muscles on the beach when he was in his twenties. Dad called our new sister his ”Little Monk” or “Little Monkey Baby.” Of all of us, she did not have a biblical name, so it seemed the wheels were greased from the start for her to be more “mainstream” or “American,” which I always rather envied. But long story short, her arrival meant greater scarcity of the already meager emotional resources in that house. So whatever neglect I was feeling was heightened and multiplied. Thankfully it never turned into resentment of her.
Our oldest sister was always more popular than I, or so I thought. I remember kids often saying to me in junior high, “Oh! You’re Becki’s sister!” And I bitterly thought but did not say, “NO! I’M RUTH!” But by then, I already doubted if, in fact, there was a distinct me, if I did exist, let alone had a right to. Existence is often a question that accompanies neglect. If I existed, would I not exist in the mind of the other? Oy vey, a child cannot think such complex thoughts. I just knew unquestionably that I did not matter and needed to find a way to compensate for it. (I have often wondered, how does Venus Williams do it? How does one continue to live and perform with such grace and dignity, even with immense talent in her own right, in the shadow of such a legendary sister? Kudos to Venus!)
Often neglect is a function of simply too many kids. How on earth could parents, especially single, traumatized, impoverished, enslaved by impossibly long and depleting work hours, or otherwise disabled parents possibly attend to more than a couple of children, especially in light of a western atomistic, individualistic, lacking a “village” culture of parenting? Neglect is yet another expression of all of these. And, of course, this makes it more difficult for the child of neglect to name their experience as traumatic, viewing the parent as the afflicted one, and trying to compensate for that.
Many a neglect client of mine has been the younger or youngest of “too many” children when often there was not enough to go around to begin with, and jealousy is often the shameful and/or painful byproduct. In fact, whenever I encounter, particularly in couples, an extreme of jealousy, the first place I will want to look is at the history related to siblings. We often find the answer there. It may even be a case of a sibling with disabilities or illness that requires a disproportional amount of parental emotional energy or attention, making it even more challenging to feel worthy or to own the embarrassment of resentment.
Whenever a client laments a jealous partner or their own jealousy in general in the world, the place to look first is at the sibling story. Some profound neglect arises from the fact of simply too many kids. There was never enough to go around and with each additional birth, even less.
I envied not only my sisters but others too. I was always perhaps too aware of who got what and how much. I perennially seemed to come up short, hungry, explaining it as proof that I was not enough, and of course, the infantile lament, “It is NOT FAIR!”. I worried and envied about money for years, and when I finally became solvent enough to pay taxes without worrying about floating checks and holding my breath that they would clear before they bounced, I probably became one of the few people I know who actually took pleasure in paying my taxes – which I still do!
I was always perhaps too aware of who got what and how much. I perennially seemed to come up short, hungry, explaining it as proof that I was not enough, and of course, the infantile lament, “It is NOT FAIR!”.
I heard an interview on late-night radio – well, I should not say I actually heard it, as I was busily doing too many things, and my attention was spotty, like the I imagine the failing attention of a too-busy mother to be. What I did hear was a novelist, whose name I did not catch, being asked why he locates his fantasy stories on an island. He replied without hesitation, “Because that way, one can study a people or a culture without the influence of the outside world: the world outside the confines of the isolated island world.” I thought about what I think of as the “one-person psychology” that comes with neglect. There is such an ocean surrounding the child and the child’s solitary world, that the presence or influence of an “outside” world may be miles away, or simply non-existent. I always felt I had my own little culture, and in some ways, embarrassedly, still do. Until we recover enough to build a boat, an ark, or a bridge to connection.
Interestingly a life-changing event for me was in junior high, when I entered a national essay contest. High school kids from all over the US entered, and although I was one of the youngest entrants, I won. The theme we were all writing on was John Donne’s “No Man is an Island.” How ironic that, little island that I was, I wrote a winning essay on that. I will have to dig up that essay – I am sure it is somewhere in the archives of our family. The prize was $100, which I used to buy my first ten speed bike, which indeed became a bridge to life in the world for that disconnected young girl.
Similarly ironic, some of my favorite places in the world are tropical islands: Hawaii and Cuba. And the British Isles and Greek Islands are definitely high on my bucket list of destinations.
I have always found it easier to give than to share. I am decidedly generous when it comes to giving. However, I never lend anything without being fully prepared to say goodbye to it, and sharing evokes even still the shadow of a gnawing fear that there will not be enough, so deeply grooved was the circuitry of scarcity and, to be sure, injustice.
I have always found it easier to give than to share. I am decidedly generous when it comes to giving. However, I never lend anything without being fully prepared to say goodbye to it, and sharing evokes even still the shadow of a gnawing fear that there will not be enough, so deeply grooved was the circuitry of scarcity and, to be sure, injustice. Sharing people? For me, that was always out of the question! And when others talk of polyamory, I honestly can’t imagine how they do it.
All this to say, jealousy, envy, hunger, and thirst may be lingering sequelae of neglect. Ironically, I hear the echoes of the old revolutionary rallying cry, Basta Ya! Enough now! Enough injustice, trauma, and neglect! And in our healing, may we strive to create the trust and safety emerging from that gnawing, when in real-time, in fact there will be enough. Basta!
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.