As the world reels from the recent death of a young Iranian woman at the hands of the “morality police,” I heard a recent interview with another young woman who was stopped, but thankfully not detained, for the “incorrect” wearing of the hijab, the controversial mandatory head covering required for women in Iran. Her breathy recounting of the story, her experience of the event, and its aftermath was like reading the checklist of PTSD symptoms from the DSM. She could check every box: flashbacks, nightmares, terror of even leaving the house, and fearful aversion to even the thought of the street corner where the trauma occurred. Listening to her sent a chill from my belly and up through my whole body.
It was a familiar chill, taking me back to my Aleph class, the first grade of Hebrew School, which corresponded to third-grade regular school, making me about seven or eight years old. I remember watching the grainy black and white newsreels of the Nazi concentration camps, seeing the naked skeleton-like bodies, some of them very small, being kids like me, or too emaciated to tell if they were young or if they were shrunken by starvation and suffering. Clearly, they were almost or soon to be dead.
The chill, the same sensation I was feeling once again, even then, resonated with something as yet unremembered in my own life; that kept me awake or awakened by nightmares and horror. Why they were showing those films to such young kids and without helping to make sense out of them, if there was any sense to be made, continues to be beyond me. The rallying cry of the then-radical Jewish Defense League was “Never Again!” But still, seven- and eight-year-olds?
That same chill, like an intractable ghost, revisited my belly and nightmare-ridden nights in my first year of college. It was another September 11th milestone that became a haunting anniversary in my annual date book: September 11th, 1973, when the bloody Pinochet dictatorship overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Thousands were rounded up, brutally tortured, raped, murdered, and/or disappeared during a reign of terror which spread over much of the Latin American continent. Having grown up on a diet of such stories, I was both riveted and haunted. Many of the torture stories were hideous and graphic, often involving genitals, that lingered in particular in my horror-ridden mind and body.
I have often been curious about the vast menu of symptoms the dysregulated psyche and body land on to both calm the hyper-aroused system down or metaphorically enact the trauma story.
As a therapist, I have often been curious about the vast menu of symptoms the dysregulated psyche and body land on to both calm the hyper-aroused system down or metaphorically enact the trauma story. In our home, we grew up with a steady diet of the, to my mind, nonsensical admonition to “clean your plate, because children are starving in Europe!” (I never understood how my eating unwanted food would help them!) Our dad never let us forget his years of hunger and deprivation, and I felt a similar chill in my body hearing his tirade about “bread and worms,” with which he not infrequently seemed almost to threaten me. I was a decidedly “bad eater.”
Frequently gripped by the hideous and scary image of squirming creatures burrowing in and out of dry old bread heels, I guess it was no surprise when my “symptom of choice” was a near-lethal run with the then virtually unknown, certainly unstudied anorexia, which nearly took me down. But since it was starvation at my own hand, rather than at the hands of some vicious social or political power that be, it was my own “fault,” and certainly did not earn me the badge of courage that our dad wore. I was a “bad girl” and not a martyr.
The play of social forces, of history, left its indelible mark on both of our parents – indelible because neither of them had the impulse or the privilege of healing that I have had. The intergenerational transmission took many forms, both in actions taken and not taken on us kids and also in these less obvious psychological, somatic, and other forms of dysregulation, but also in the more complex and more difficult-to-discern re-enactment and unspoken messages. Somehow, I came to believe that martyrdom was redeeming, suffering noble, and being killed for it the highest possible merit of honor. I suppose on some level, I came to believe that to go up in smoke, to die a tragic or at least some sort of hero’s death, was the way to win our dad’s approval and love. That became my life script, although, of course, I did not realize it. I ultimately set about making my life path to, like Che Guevara, be a selfless internationalist fighter, and go down in fiery glory for the cause. That would also, of course, solve the problem of ending my miserable and unworthy life. Oy vey! That is another story for another day…
My point is that social and political violence in all its forms – racism, homelessness, wild economic, educational, and power disparities – are all the ultimate perpetrators of dysregulation and trauma in their myriad manifestations. How can we dream of addressing one without the other? It is the endless chicken and egg, cycling ever faster like a bicycle wheel careening down a steep, bumpy hill.
My point is that social and political violence in all its forms – racism, homelessness, wild economic, educational, and power disparities – are all the ultimate perpetrators of dysregulation and trauma in their myriad manifestations.
Our parents did get involved in Post-Holocaust healing efforts. Our mom was a high school teacher, and together they participated in taking “friendship” delegations of Jewish kids to Germany to have educational and healing conversations about the wreckage wrought by and upon their parents. It was perhaps healing for our parents. Our dad’s bitterness softened some. However, when it came to Arabs and Israelis, not so much. His rage at Arabs never seemed to abate, and he even was prone to ranting, at least for a time (until Donald Trump sent him into flashbacks about Hitler?) about “Obama being a Muslim.” Thank god he got over that one. I remember shortly after I met my now husband, loud, red-faced arguments they had about Zionism. I was so embarrassed in front of my new boyfriend. Those feelings went with him to the grave. How can Arabs and Israelis, essentially cousins, dig their heels in so endlessly, with an unending, tragic waste of life, decade after decade? It is beyond me.
So, it warmed my heart to hear a story the other morning on the BBC, an interview with a man just slightly older than me. He also was a child of Holocaust survivors, but his father died when he was a child. His family migrated to Israel, and he grew up there. Like all young Israeli men and women, he had to serve his time in the Army, and ended up participating in the now-historical Six-Day War.
In this story, he was about 19 years old, somewhere on a noisy battlefield, when he heard the voice of a little boy crying in Arabic, “Doctor, Doctor!” It was a loud wail. Turning to see what the child was calling about, he saw the little guy gesturing toward a woman who was bloody – but not by injury. She was having a baby and needed help. The youth had no clue how to deliver a baby, but he figured clean water was needed and sent the boy in search of it, which he quickly found and brought back. By some sort of natural emergency intuition, he figured out how to assist the baby’s arrival into this crazy world. Arab? Israeli? Who cared? The baby emerged loudly crying. That’s good – it means she’s alive. A baby girl. The mother, the daughter, and the young soldier never saw each other again. Paths crossing in humanity.
How can we treat one without the other? Trauma and social justice? Two wings of the same bird.
Kudos to TRF for weaving the two skillfully together into a powerful learning event: The Social Justice Summit. See Trauma Research Foundation’s website for details.
Today’s song:
In this song, Sueno con Serpientes, Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodrriguez sings “I dream of serpents, serpents of the sea. I kill one, and another appears. Ohh… oh.., With much greater hell in digestion…”
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When we went to hear football legend Jerry Rice speak about Black History Month a few years ago, what struck me perhaps the most was the immense size of his hands. Getting my picture taken with Number 80 was a thrill, and having his arm around me momentarily for my photo op reminded me of the old song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands!”
I love that picture. I am no fan of football, and that is for sure. I have never watched even a fraction of a game in my life. But somehow, Jerry remains on my shortlist of iconic heroes, mostly for the fact that he got everywhere that he got, which was quite far, through perseverance and essentially out-efforting everyone else. That I identify with.
Jerry grew up in the deep American south in a small town of 500 people. He was the sixth of eight children in a poor family, so I can imagine how much attention he got. I found out he had learning disabilities when he spoke about literacy to a crowd of Oakland middle school kids. As a very young child in a family where there was rarely enough food, Jerry helped his dad, a bricklayer. At age 5, he learned to catch bricks tossed by his brother and handed them to his dad one by one as the walls went up. That will give you some hands!
I had a client who thought recovery was supposed to be like building a brick wall. Once you lay the foundation, you place brick upon brick and build a whole new structure. She was frustrated, believing she had spent years trying to lay a foundation, and felt terrible failure, disappointment, loss, anger and shame that she had not put any building on it. She certainly felt let down by me! I was startled and rather jarred by her metaphor, which was so far from my own vision of recovery.
My Oakland office is in a lovely quaint Victorian building. It was not built on the site where it now stands – rather, the old house with whatever its story was transported from some other part of town, deposited in this upwardly mobile neighborhood, and remodeled into a rather classy office building. I once saw a picture of a house being moved across a town. What a strange and disorienting sight, a large vehicle with a family-sized dwelling occupying the whole width of a city street.
My vision of healing is far from a brick-and-mortar construction or a “fix,” but something much more organic. Just as neurofeedback is not something we do “to” someone or “on” someone, but a shared endeavor I do with someone, in a swaddle of caring, attentive psychotherapy. Similarly, I think of healing as something that arises, that emerges gradually from the inside out. It seems to me to be something that grows. How did Jerry’s hands get so big? There was some raw material, and then there was some long-term repeated action, and they emerged big and strong.
I think of healing as something that arises, that emerges gradually from the inside out. It seems to me to be something that grows.
We lived in South Bend, Indiana, for two short and immensely long years, second and third grade. I have a few flashbulb memories of South Bend – I remember when the new sensation the Beatles burst on the scene with I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and we were all doing the “twist” to it. I remember the endless procession on TV when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and seeing little Jon-Jon saluting. And I remember the crocuses. Winters in South Bend seemed to be at least half the year (with the summers being blazing hot and always putting our mom in a bad mood.) The winter brought huge piles of snow. We could build a fort in the yard, which would freeze and last for months. But I have never liked snow or cold.
The first little sign that the winter might end was the crocuses. The little, bright green sprouts began gingerly to poke up through the snow. There was still plenty of snow, but those fiercely determined little fighters not only pierced the chill, but bloomed, splashing the bright white with kisses of color and hope. They seem to say ahhh… relief is coming. Maybe not right away, but it will. Little sprigs of hope.
I think of healing that way. Not as something we can figure out, manipulate or construct externally, but nourish and care for, providing the necessary inputs for nature to work its magic, often outside our view. And we must be mindful and attentive to the often subtle seedlings of evidence that something is, in fact, happening, always more slowly than we would wish.
Perhaps that is one reason why I like cheese making and sourdough baking so much. With pure ingredients, thoughtful and consistent attention, the requisite inputs on their optimal schedule, and patience with the glacial passage of time, and voila – a transformation into something new, delicious, healthful, and joyous. It seems I can make so many people happy with it!
The hardest cheesemaking lesson for me to learn was the patience part. I could not believe I had to wait two, three, and four months, often managing mold and sometimes stink. After some years of experience, I rather love the stinkers, and I age some of my cheeses two years and more. How did this happen? I guess my whole life, I have been learning about organicity. And that loving attention is the essential ingredient for everything. Of course, the other unbearably essential ingredient is time…
Brick structures are not my model of recovery. It is rather an organic unfolding. Like sourdough bread and the vast myriad of cheeses, often it looks like nothing is happening at all.
In this crazy world, monarch butterflies are an endangered species. What a tragedy. I am proud to say that our sister and brother-in-law have a little monarch butterfly rescue operation going on in their backyard. They nurture the caterpillars, protect the chrysalises, and tend to the babies until they are ready to fly. I have never seen a baby butterfly.
Taking care of caterpillars has never occurred to me. I admit to being a rather squeamish non-fan of insects of any ilk. In particular, I associate caterpillars with a horrible memory, barely more than a flashbulb. I was probably about three at the most. We were at a little park in New York. All I remember was that the ground was covered, carpeted in a squirming mass of solid green caterpillars. Yecchhh. It was terrifying. Wearing little pink buckle Mary-Janes, there was nowhere to put a little foot without crushing and killing them. There was no way to make a step. They were everywhere. I was panicked and terrified. I remember screaming and screaming, “Daddy, carry me!” That is all I remember. But ever since, I have had a particular aversion to caterpillars in spite of their unmistakable association with butterflies, which I love.
Fast forward. About a week ago, our brother-in-law proudly whipped out his phone to show off pictures of the little pet monarch caterpillars they are tending. I was amazed at how lovely they were, especially since my only real association, at least visually, was so horrible. Striped with color, they did actually betray a bit of the wonder ahead, the monarch, the royal pinnacle of butterflies. Wow! Who would have thunk it?
Bricks are great, square and solid. I love my house, and it keeps me safe. It held steady through two big San Francisco shakers: ’06 and ’89, and it is still going strong. I admit that hunkering down during the pandemic in this safe haven was quite pleasant.
However, brick structures are not my model of recovery. It is rather an organic unfolding. Like sourdough bread and the vast myriad of cheeses, often it looks like nothing is happening at all. But last week, when I cracked a 16-month-old cheddar, it was that same feeling of wow! How did this happen? I am so glad I waited. The delicious depth and complexity were worth it and made me forget about the slow slog of time.
To me, recovery is a lot like that. If we stay the course, eventually, it does come up roses. Looking back, we are seeing with different eyes. What was so hideous and deplorable and seemed to expand endlessly to eternity looks different, and might even faintly betray a whiff of the beauty which lay ahead. It may be slow, but certainly not as I, for one, imagined it would ultimately turn out. Save the monarchs!
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
In the many years that I have been studying childhood neglect, I have often been struck by how many clients, particularly men, come in toting a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. To them, and also their frequently impatient or frustrated loved ones, it seems accurate, with their loose or sluggish focus, perhaps forgetfulness, failure of agency, and disorganized brains. Never fond of diagnostic labels nor a fan of amphetamine drugs, I have remained skeptical and curious. What is really going on here?
I know early on in my anecdotal scavenging, I coined a trilogy of neglect symptoms I came to call “the Three P’s” of neglect, primarily showing up in the interpersonal domain, but not exclusively. The P’s are passivity, procrastination, and paralysis. For many, it seemed to fit and stick. I have held on to the paradigm as I sought more information as well as developmental and neuroscience underpinnings for my “theory.”
I hypothesized that, given that the infant brain develops in resonation with the brain of the primary caretaker (usually, at least at first, the mother), if that little brain is reaching to resonate with a brain that is depressed, terrified, angry or most of all absent, it fails to develop and learn to regulate in a consistent, calm and essentially safe and healthful way. What does happen when there is no one there to resonate to, or not nearly enough resonation? Well, we certainly have the extreme example of the Romanian orphans, who appear nearly catatonic. But what about the more “garden variety” that we are more likely to encounter in our offices? That has been my question for many years.
I have heard many trauma stories about little kids panicked and terrified as they went to school each day, in dread of reading circles where each child had to read a passage. Some would count and calculate when or which segment would be theirs in the rotation so they could practice, or slide out to the bathroom to avoid it (and sometimes to vomit,) feeling such shame, confusion, and self-hatred about why it was so hard for them.
Meanwhile, some got in trouble with their parents for poor grades; some were held back a grade or two, and many simply disappeared under the radar, invisible and unhelped, concluding that they were stupid in addition to feeling invisible and alone. Many, amazingly bright, found their own workaround strategies for reading. Others discovered a sport like rock climbing which takes incredible concentration, focus, and patience to train their brains. Still, others sank into a haze of drugs to get away from the whole thing. I have seen many iterations, all originally coming from neglect.
In the 1980’s it seemed that ADD and ADHD became the diagnosis du jour. Suddenly kids were being slapped with that label right and left. And they were met with a parade of amphetamine drugs. Oy vey!
The first drug of choice I remember was Ritalin, which always somehow reminded me of the sinister and scary villain the Riddler on the Batman show. Suddenly it seemed we had a whole generation of children on speed, which gave me a Riddler-like chill, thinking of what this does to our gene pool, let alone providing a possible “gateway” to other, less manageable kinds of drug use. But it also seems there was little curiosity about what causes this problem, and if there was a way to move upstream in addressing it. Meanwhile, in many cases, the drugs were something of a nightmare for the kids, with sleep problems and other kinds of dysregulation causing plenty of conflict between parents and kids about taking their pills or not.
Empty space is suffocating and deathly, and it is truly like dying to many of these adult survivors. Boredom is a slow and mortal agony.
One thing I began to notice in some couples where at least one partner was a child of neglect was a little dynamic I came to call “hand grenades.” This was where one partner would lob a truly provocative, antagonistic, or triggering remark at the unsuspecting other. It was baffling because the rise they were likely to get was completely predictable and sure to incite a rageful or rejecting blast in reaction. I would hear about similar interactions where someone would similarly incite loud conflict at Thanksgiving dinner, for example. It was baffling until I began to study it more.
For the child of neglect, boredom and waiting feel lethal. Imagine an infant left alone too much, in a cavernous vacuum of empty space, waiting with uncertainty for someone arbitrarily to come – or not, learning quickly that hoping or crying was pointless. They had no impact. Empty space is suffocating and deathly, and it is truly like dying to many of these adult survivors. Boredom is a slow and mortal agony. Some of them discovered as young children that negative attention might be better than none at all, so by being somehow naughty or “bad” would garner some kind of reaction from the otherwise perhaps oblivious other, and interrupt the emptiness. As I continued to observe these little hand grenade scenarios, the variables seemed to coalesce: neglect, ADD, and hand grenades. Hmmm…
I later learned from neuroscientist Ruth Lanius that often, in the under-stimulated, dysregulated brain of a traumatized person, only when under threat does the brain start firing and come alight. Only then does the person perhaps momentarily feel alive. I began to learn from some of these flamethrowers that they were simply bored. They were not trying to be mean; rather, they were trying to keep from dying. Certainly, a hard sell to the insulted partner, but it does, in fact, make sense.
So, who is tagged with a “disorder?” Where does the deficient attention reside?
So, where does the real attention deficit reside? Perhaps in what that infant and child did and did not receive, the oceanic poverty of mirroring and care, the failure of resonance that makes the brain grow and develop and makes a child feel alive. As the child of neglect gets a little older, and slowly grows into a person, they continue to be unseen, unheard, not known, not understood, perhaps disappearing into quiet invisibility. Maybe as their learning disabilities or boredom go unnoticed as well, and their dysregulated brains continue to languish quietly alone, attention may become spotty, dulled, unreliable.
So, who is tagged with a “disorder?” Where does the deficient attention reside? Perhaps first with the neglectful parent, and later in the unassuming child’s brain. Another expression of the intergenerational transmission of trauma perhaps? And how many generations will wind up on amphetamines?
If in fact attention deficit is really a euphemistic or medicalizing label for neglect, what might be a better remedy? Some of the most robust, copious, and well-replicated neurofeedback research we have has been with ADD and ADHD. But perhaps the best medicine is upstream: effective trauma healing that will enable resonant presence, reliable, loving, consistent attention – a new intergenerational transmission. We are not talking about perfect attunement! The attachment researchers remind us that the best of the “good enough” parents achieve the optimal rhythms of attachment and presence about 30% of the time, with the rest being the dance of rupture and repair. Perhaps we can strive for that 30%, and wean ourselves, detox ourselves from inattention and even speed!
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
I really only remember seeing our dad cry once. Our family all piled into the old Chevy wagon, driving in a torrential New York City downpour. I don’t remember what he was upset about; it was rather a flashbulb image of his face, framed in the rearview mirror, with a backdrop of the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Finding it unbearable to see him that way, I focused on the rhythmic back and forth of the wipers, slap, slap, slap.
That sudden flash of recall unleashed a chain of other snippets of time in the car, which were rarely much fun. Our mom was perennially anxious, and what I recall most about being in an enclosed energy field of her pulsing hyperarousal was a gripping in my stomach, which I can feel just thinking about it. Our dad loved looking at airplanes, and he sometimes seemed even to be teasing her by enthusiastically following their flight with his eyes clearly not on the road. I remember her saying, “Achh.. do me a favor…” with her fingers spread wide like rakes, nails dug into the sides of her seat. She was similarly rattled by some random driver recklessly “weaving” back and forth across multiple lanes, grabbing an extra car length this way and that to gain speed and time. She was jumpy and also convinced we would all meet up at the next signal anyway.
I rather disliked the harsh association between reckless driving and “weaving.” I loved sewing from an early age and so loved fabrics and textiles. As I got into my early teens, I was fascinated with weaving, particularly Andean weaving. I had a small wooden frame loom and tried my hand at simple designs, never getting very good at it. My childhood boyfriend had a Greek friend named Thalia. She was a ”real” weaver and had an enormous floor loom that took up much of a room. I remember being enthralled watching the shuttle fly back and forth, back and forth, creating beautiful patterns. I still have a deliciously warm blanket she wove over fifty years ago. That steady toss back and forth of the shuttle made for a durable and strong mesh that still warms me almost daily.
The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it.
It has been heartbreaking hearing the urgent reports about the floods in Pakistan. I can barely imagine one-third of a country being underwater. One story particularly jarred me. There was a first storm that seemed to be clearing. Streets were beginning to drain; the sky freshly scrubbed, bright and blue, puffy white clouds ringed by breakthrough sunlight. People began to cautiously venture out and gradually celebrate that the storm had passed.
But the lull was short-lived. It was not long before the sky closed and darkened again, and the brief respite was chased off-stage by yet another ferocious onslaught of storm waters. Somehow that feeling touched a chord in me, felt familiar, of being elated that something unbearable might have passed and dismayed or devastated to find that it had not, or not for long. Again, like being batted back and forth.
I was proud to be a strong and undaunted hill climber on the bike. I can’t say it didn’t sometimes really hurt, and it cost me dearly to keep going. Neglect being an exercise in dogged endurance, I was well trained. I remember that same feeling, or something I imagine to be similar to the whiplash of the Pakistanis, perhaps, as it is rather obnoxious to compare something like life-threatening flooding with recreational cycling. The feeling of grinding doggedly up a steep mountain, thinking I have reached the top, to wend around a bend to find that what I thought was the summit was, in fact, not at all. There is something crushing about it. I can barely imagine how those Pakistani people felt, thinking that perhaps their homes had survived one assault and then being knocked back into terror and uncertainty. Back and forth. Back and forth. Not unlike the traumatic life of a child abused in the inescapable family home.
All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history.
When I started college, like many of us who grew up unmoored and dysregulated, I groped and reached for stability in philosophical anchors and ways of understanding the world. The ones I grew up with were way too ill-fitting, dissonant, or outright objectionable. I remember when I first read Karl Marx’s “Alienation of Labor” – it seemed one of the most profound pieces of writing I had ever come across. Thinking on it now, his description of alienation resonated like an identical twin to the experience of neglect: disconnection, dehumanization, confusion of purpose, emptiness, and lack of choice. I was gripped. Then I encountered the Marxian concept of Dialectical Materialism.
Certainly not one for heady concepts, I was rather more like Winnie the Pooh, who said, “I am a bear of small brain and big words annoy me…” But this idea spoke to me. In an extremely simplified form, it is the notion of a play of opposites. All of history consists of a constant clash of contradictions, an endless struggle between social and material forces that makes for an endless swing from pole to pole throughout history. One social order crashing into another, which prevailed for its time until swung aside by its opposite and on and on and on through time.
It has been something of a comfort to me, when I am horrified or disheartened by world events, to trust that inevitably there will be the opposing swing that will deliver us in the other direction. Similarly, while sobering, it also helps me guard against complacency when things seem to be going my way for a time. Somehow, at least in some ways, we appear to make inching evolutionary “progress,” depending on how we measure (or who measures!) progress, of course.
People often ask me, especially at the start of therapy, but frequently along the way, “How long is this going to take?!” Or they lament feeling (a word I abhor!) “stuck.” I have to remind them, and sometimes myself, that this journey is not linear. It is simply not a straight shot. I remember my first neurofeedback teacher telling us, “You must remind people that this process is not linear.” As we deepen and go further back and further into material we may not have understood or even consciously known about before, we may find ourselves back or newly in truly miserable states.
Peter Levine has a practice in his work that he calls “Pendulation” where one learns to intentionally move back and forth between states, from trauma activation to present time, in an effort to make the back and forth conscious and intentional; and achieve some mastery or control over them. The idea is to become more flexible, resilient, and stable. And additionally, we do not always achieve the result we had in mind. Healing work is rarely a straight shot and may lead to something different, possibly even better than what we could have imagined.
The healing journey is inarguably non-linear. Rocking babies, the swinging pendulums in hypnosis, bilateral stimulation in EMDR, rhythmic movement pole to pole, side to side. Many a steeply graded trail or road is built in the form of switchbacks. They zig and zag right and left: one cannot see what is just ahead. Winding to and fro, around a mountain might be the way up an incline that is simply too steep to tackle straight on. It is also a reminder that, dialectics aside, few things in life are non-stop flights from here to there. There is little that is explicitly linear (except perhaps aging, darn it!). Much of life seems to be, in fact, switchbacks.
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
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.
Recently I read a brief story about California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a recent target of loud complaints about “cognitive decline” due to her advanced age of 88. Feinstein equally loudly and vehemently disputes the claims, arguing that she is doing just fine. Alongside the article I pondered the decidedly unflattering photo, her incensed expression seemed to say “says who?!” Granted it is certainly hard to measure mental competence from the inside. (In AA they say “You can’t fix your broken tool with your broken tool,” and I suppose the same can be said, at least to some extent, of self-assessment.)
Admittedly, I am not neutral about DiFi, as she is affectionately called by many. It was she in 1978 who, after blithely walking into his office, shockingly found the brutally murdered body of her friend and California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk. Her courage, grace and heart in handling that trauma earned her my eternal positive regard. I suppose I forgive her (and even her billionaire husband,) rather a lot. But the article reminded me of the ever-present reality of age.
I remember my grandmother lamenting for years that “the golden age is not so golden.” She was born in 1887 and I was born in 1955. So, when I was born, she was 68, barely a year older than I am now. My entire life, she had white hair, she always seemed ancient to me. Her husband, my grandfather, had died before I was born, meaning she lived alone as a partnerless widow for virtually all of her middle to later years. Also, for me unimaginable. But I never thought much about age.
I remember my grandmother lamenting for years that “the golden age is not so golden.” She was born in 1887 and I was born in 1955.
An endurance athlete, and known in high school as “the fastest girl uphill,” probably also pretty deficient in proprioception (body awareness), I had denial, even hubris, about the indomitability of the body. I could drink my quart of bourbon, get up in the morning and run 20 miles. I could ride the bike a hundred mountainous miles, only eating one banana all day. I never took care of my skin, preferring a “golden,” unprotected tan. My neglect was such that no one ever really knew where I was anyway, and it was only a matter of time before the feeling “I don’t matter” morphed into a rather wild freedom. My abandonment turned to abandon.
In UCSF geriatrician Louise Aronson’s 2019 book, Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, she makes the interesting point that we have traditionally made the distinction between two different life stages: childhood and adulthood. She proposes the additional stage of “Elderhood.” What is that? Well, let’s just say “I know it when I see it.” It is when the grandiosity of youth is challenged.
Elderhood is when it is suddenly no longer true that I am “never tired;” I may find myself straining to hear, and irritating other’s by saying, “what? what’s that?” so often that I am driven to get the hearing test that informs me I have “severe hearing loss,” and must insult my vanity with hearing aids; when the glare as I drive home is blinding; when my former “steel trap” is embarrassed by memory blips; when I opt to miss the Bruce Hornsby concert that I have been waiting for, because “I just don’t feel like going out.” Once impatient with others’ “organ recital,” I silently admit to my own aches and pains.
On the first post-COVID plane trip we took, I was struck by how helpful people were. Were they offering to carry my bag, because they were kind, or because I looked so weak and infirm that I needed a hand? Who is this person? No one warned me. My grandmother was “ancient” when she complained about the “golden age,”, and then, I was barely a kid. And tragically, many who spend years and decades working hard to emerge from a traumatic childhood, meet with grief when they find themselves already in elderhood, by the time they arrive in the present time.
Another important point that Aronson makes, is about the prejudice, the dishonor, and ostracization – certainly in western cultures – directed at the aged. Another epoch of neglect; invisible, sidelined, forgotten. Seniority with its wisdom and experience is devalued at best, if not warehoused and trashed. How much money and time are spent each year in attempts to erase or hide it? Admittedly I too look in the mirror, gag and try to figure out how to make it go away. Hair, teeth, skin, muscle tone, I’m not 19 anymore. Although I do enjoy the freedom from unwanted sexual attention; and menopause is indeed a blessing, the advantages of age are rarely acknowledged. I recall but one exception: a book I read many years ago: Elkhonon Goldberg’s The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older, published in 2005. In it, he describes that the aging brain acquires a “new” and heightened capacity for pattern recognition. It actually is quite noticeable to me in my work with couples, where recurring interactive cycles now more quickly come into focus.
Aronson describes her own experience as an accomplished M.D. in a relatively progressive medical setting, as one of discrimination, devaluation, and agism which appear to be ubiquitous in the professional medical world, and the tech world too. Part of her intent in proposing the new designation is to create not only a category but a valued and respected category for a growing minority that is rapidly approaching majority.
My neglect was such that no one ever really knew where I was anyway, and it was only a matter of time before the feeling “I don’t matter” morphed into a rather wild freedom. My abandonment, turned to abandon.
I remember a frequent commercial when I was a teenager, where the glamorous young model with gorgeous hair blowing on a slow-motion gentle breeze, is saying “as long as there is Lady Clairol I will never be gray!” I was definitely down with that. The advertising slogan was “does she or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.” Both of our parents were salt and peppery by their early 50’s, and Mom was anything but vain. Sure enough as I crossed into my 50th year I started to spot a sprinkle or two. Oy vey. I did not spring for the Lady Clairol right away, but I certainly thought about it.
Here is my mysterious “wow” story. I am not telling you this to drum up business, and before I am accused of false advertising, I will emphasize that I am not promising it will happen to you. In fact I really have not read or heard of anyone else having the experience I had/have, and I also know it is unquestionably true. As they say, “it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
In 2009 I was first introduced to Neurofeedback at a conference. I was immediately gripped by it, and I could not wait to get trained and become a practitioner. In those days, the training was much harder to come by. The soonest I could get the first level training was nearly six months away, and in Connecticut. I came home to the Bay Area, to find an incredible poverty of practitioners, even worse than now, and it is still pretty sparse around here for some reason that I don’t understand. I found someone, an experienced if somewhat unconventional “older lady” an hour’s drive from me, in Palo Alto. I diligently attended sessions with her until my long-awaited trip to Hartford. My favorite protocol, which my therapist called “dessert” was the calming, eyes closed, alpha-theta protocol. She always saved it for the end of my session, and I begged for as much as I could get.
When I got trained and had my own equipment, I could practice on myself (as well as anyone else that would entrust me with their brain), and of course, I treated myself with ample helpings of dessert. By now, by the way, I was 55, and plucking gray hairs out of my head more regularly than I would care to admit, trying to tune out the siren call of Lady Clairol.
Distracted by my new passion, it was a while before I noticed. Since I had begun neurofeedback training, my gray hair mysteriously vanished. No I wasn’t losing hair (or marbles?) rather the gray stopped appearing, stopped growing until by attrition, it was all gone, never to return. Now at almost 68, all traces of gray hair have long since vanished, and I forgot completely about Lady Clairol, even as friends and family around my age were evolving their own relationships to their respective hoary heads. Go figure. Yes, I love neurofeedback. And I swear it is true! (“Only her Neurofeedback practitioner knows for sure…”)
Anyone who ever reads the acknowledgments of most any book, is familiar with the author’s often effusive gratitude to the various people who put up with their absence, preoccupation, cranky fatigue or moodiness, and often seeming inability to show consideration. Although I am not a mother, in my mind, writing a book is akin to a protracted gestation and labor, in my case decidedly more than nine months. In spite of myself, my husband, with his own prior and severe neglect history, was victimized again. I promise to do better with this next book!
The Pandemic hit when I had barely begun my most recent book, so I was pretty ungracefully adjusting/transitioning to working from home, and remotely: two things I never dreamed I would do, and had been outspokenly opposed to my whole career until then. An additional casualty of that time, admittedly was my progeny, the cheese. For about five years now, I have been a rather obsessive home cheesemaker, which can be a consuming “hobby.” In my case, it has been (usually) affectionately referred to as a diagnosis, although I insist it is also awesomely regulating and rewarding. So it is with horror and shame that I confess the degree of neglect that my little brood of cheeses suffered. Beside the initial making: mixing ingredients; allowing them to “ripen” and “set,” cooking and pressing, which take most of a day, there is perhaps the even more important process of affinage, meaning daily and weekly care: attending to the cleaning, washing with salt or other cultures, turning, and simple “checking in.” It is not enough to give birth, and turn a creature out into the world, as many the neglect survivor can attest, one has to care for and “raise” the child. Well, I perpetrated an extreme of neglect.
Please don’t misunderstand me! I do not, by any means intend to liken something as immeasurably valuable and vulnerable as a child, to a wheel of cheddar, but rather, the cheese was a teacher to me. When I had hit the send button on the manuscript and was truly able to survey the damage, the crumbliness, the proliferation and contagion of unwanted mold, some delicious, some pretty stinky, I was dismayed to see how my own self-concern and priority had left a little world of living growing beings to fend for themselves. And although age is desirable, for cheese, when not attended to, it might be unwieldy, fail to thrive and even die. I was overwhelmed by the wreckage.
Only a day at a time, could I begin the massive cleanup effort. Each day, I spent 15 minutes on one small corner of the task essentially of healing and trying to make for as gentle an advanced age as possible. The same is true for my own tattered and neglected self. The ways that I failed at self-care along the way: sleep and rest, skincare, teeth, eyes, forgiveness, balance, it is not too late to salvage the remaining years. Perhaps I cannot completely make up for my failures, but I can learn, and hopefully teach, so as to minimize the intergenerational transmission.
By the way, did you know that for $20.00 US per couple, where at least one partner is over 60, the US National Park Service offers a senior pass? Free admission to all the National Parks’ in the country for one year, rather than $10 per person (even pedestrians) per single visit. That checks a few boxes, as far as I am concerned, honoring age, self-care and regulation, and loving the natural world.
Today’s song (I love the Old Lady at the beginning, and the Little Girl at the end!)
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 once hearing someone say at a sex therapy conference, “Everyone, absolutely everyone you see walking down the street, has a sex life.” At first, a trite, mundane, rather obvious remark suddenly seemed profound. That submerged within everyone is a teeming subterranean universe that is mostly never shared. It may or may not include live human others, and what goes on there spans a range as wide as the world.
Of course, plenty of violence and harm originates there, as well we know much of my career has and continues to be centered on that. Thinking, however, about this week’s blog, I thought, well, we have talked about poop and masturbation. What’s next? What other tabus can we bust? What else can we talk about that is not likely to be uttered aloud or explained in the vacuous neglect family, if anything is spoken about at all.
It has been said, only somewhat tongue in cheek, that people become sex therapists because they think about sex twenty-four hours a day. I doubt it has been researched, so I can’t say if it is universally true, but I will leave that one to your capable imagination. In our conferences, we learn about all sorts of provocative themes, some of which I have and some admittedly I had never heard of or even imagined. Our presenters are physicians, serious researchers and academics, not only therapists like me. So although my tone may be light, I don’t by any means wish to make it sound like this is fluff or, even worse, titillation. I thought I would scratch the surface, if cursorily, of the broad topic of sexual fantasy.
I remember once hearing someone say at a sex therapy conference, “Everyone, absolutely everyone you see walking down the street, has a sex life.
A number of brave clients have divulged to me, usually after knowing them for a fairly long time, their persistent, even distressing sexual fantasies. They may be alarmed, ashamed and mystified, even horrified by the content, but unable to uncouple it from their erotic arousal, leaving them feeling somewhat alienated from or mistrustful of their own bodies. It becomes even more complex when these fantasies are the most direct, even the only way to get to orgasm. “What does that mean about me?”
After several conference presentations, I read a whole book on sexual fantasy, (Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies January 2009 by Brett Kahr) a hefty scholarly tome. Well researched, It recounts the sexual fantasies of his 23,000 subjects. By the end, I was more than satisfied, and the point was made: the sky is the limit.
And like dreams and other sorts of fantasies, they surely relate to something. Sometimes if we dig deeply on our own, with or without the help of a good therapist, we discover something interesting. That has certainly been true for me.
Sometimes if we dig deeply on our own, with or without the help of a good therapist, we discover something interesting. That has certainly been true for me.
I do have some important take-away points about this. Especially because the child of neglect perennially has no one to ask and so is trained by a lifetime to not ask – not even need to ask. And these are topics tabu to ask about in most circles anyway.
First of all, there is no shame in what appears unbidden in your head. Just as your hideous nightmares are not your “fault” or your monstrous alter-ego, neither are your sexual fantasies statements on your character, with the caveat, of course, that we know the difference between fantasy and reality.
An unorthodox or worse fantasy may be a turn-on only insofar as it stays in one’s imagination. If it is enacted in real life, on another being, especially non-consensually, that, of course, is something else entirely. I hope that is unmistakably clear. This is not license to have a field day with one’s sexual fantasies!
Secondly, research to date has shown that sexual fantasies appear to be deeply wired and very difficult, if not impossible to change. I don’t know if this has been studied with neurofeedback or any other brain training modality. Who knows what might be possible if someone made a project of that? At one conference, I heard a heartbreaking case presentation about a woman Holocaust survivor, sexually brutalized at a young age while in Auschwitz. As a therapy client in her 50s, she, for the first time, disclosed to the presenter – who was her therapist – that her entire life, her orgasm had been inextricably wound in with her Nazi torture. She could not get off without the fantasy of her sexual torture, which caused her unending conflict and shame and a sense of betrayal by her own body. And which made her want to avoid sex which she otherwise quite enjoyed. The best the highly competent therapist could do for her was to help her ultimately make her peace with it. Perhaps we could do better now.
My long time friend and colleague, Pat Love (yes, her real name!), whom I still think of as the best couples therapist in the world, cited formal research showing that danger, fear and risk had proven aphrodisiac properties. Something about being under threat heightens erotic interest and sensation. Perhaps that is part of what makes illicit sexual liaisons all the more exciting. It may also shed light on some of the sexual practices that I have found harder to understand because they are not to my taste or even involve pain and fear.
More recently, I began to learn about some neuroscience research about the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN). It is a primitive brain region, deep in the brain stem, where a sense of self emerges. It is where the brain “idles” or retreats when not “under task”, meaning not “doing” anything else. And it is a hotbed for self-reflection of whatever kind. We are all familiar with the tendency, when not busy with a task, to think about number one, that’s me!
Neuroimaging research has shown that the brains of survivors of developmental trauma and/or neglect show negligible activity in the DMN. It is largely cavernously dark. Only under threat does the DMN start to fire in these brains, and then it lights up almost brightly. Whatever their trauma story, terrifying experience is what brought the subjects’ DMN to life. So the tendency persists, that terror and even pain makes them feel alive. I am curious about this as it relates to sexuality. At this point, it is merely speculative. My own mind wandering. Perhaps in time, we will know more. Meanwhile, in the words of Mary Oliver:
…Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,
over and over, announcing your place
In the family of things …
Wild Geese
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Uncharacteristically, today’s song is instrumental to allow more leeway to your imagination. It’s a fave of mine.
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.
A ten-year love relationship spanned roughly the decade of my 20s. Out of ten years, I spent about four of them trying to leave this man, a dizzying switch back and forth between moving out and moving back in. I thought he was the love of my life. I finally succeeded in wrenching myself out on the morning of October 17th, 1989. In the afternoon of that already unforgettable day, the Bay Area was upended by the Loma Prieta Earthquake. My upheaval was complete. So ironic and so fitting; my whole world cracked and crumbled. But my little one-bedroom and my beloved cat were all intact and, although shaken, safely unharmed.
I remember attempting to shop for groceries the next day, feeling an odd sense of comfort and kinship with everyone as we all stumbled around the familiar store in a singular, even unifying, wordless, shell-shocked daze. It was what I heard New Yorkers felt in the aftershocks of 9/11. A part of me felt the eerie but somehow reassuring connection, yet another part felt desperately and unspeakably alone.
Yes, it had been a wildly ill-suited partnership, and yes, I gave it my all. A signature of the well functioning brain is learning from experience. I wanted to make sure and do so. Given that it took two hours every morning to cover what was previously a forty-minute commute to my job at San Francisco VA since the Bay Bridge had all but collapsed fully into the Bay, I had ample time to think. I squeezed onto the train (standing room only at 5:00am), and then the 37 bus loaded with people and often their produce and chickens, rolling into work, with luck, by 7:30am.
So ironic and so fitting; my whole world cracked and crumbled. But my little one-bedroom and my beloved cat were all intact and, although shaken, safely unharmed.
The rescue and relief efforts moved quickly in the Bay Area. Rebuilding, cleaning, tallying losses, counting blessings, and assessing the new PTSD trauma casualties of those suffering more dramatic impacts. The earthquake had hit during the hyperbolic “Battle of the Bay” World Series between Oakland and SF, which added color to the new chapter in local history.
However, my own little seismic event progressed glacially into anything vaguely like a new equilibrium. It was as if I dwelled in an avalanche of rubble, and while the world seemed to be emerging, learning new words like retrofit or “the big one,” developing new practices like the earthquake kit in the basement, and upping their earthquake insurance, I seemed only able to aimlessly root around in my “basement.”
We all have our own personal first heartbreak tragedy. Nothing special about me. So why indulge myself by recounting mine? There is certainly no pleasure in recalling it. Because as a relationship therapist and sex therapist, I often hear a question that I also had. For the first two years after the quake, I cried, initially unconsolably, every single day. For the three subsequent years, never a day passed, without thinking, even fantasizing about my long-gone ex. That is five solid years, after a ten-year coupling!
Because as a relationship therapist and sex therapist, I often hear a question that I also had. For the first two years after the quake, I cried, initially unconsolably, every single day.
I remember the day, sometime after I had met my now husband, I suddenly flashed, “Wow! I have not thought of him! A whole day!” It is always harder to discern and notice what is not happening; that is what is so confusing and insidious about neglect and its colorless story of deficits. This, I had to acknowledge, was like the like shedding the weight of a long dragging ball and chain. So here is the question, why?
I heard a talk by the renowned Helen Fisher, a celebrated anthropologist specializing in sexuality. (If you have not heard her speak, she is marvelous and riveting, and a wealth of Ted Talks and YouTubes graciously abound).
Both a sophisticated scientist/researcher and popular writer, she is accessible and even entertaining. She said a brain going through heartbreak looks identical to a brain crashing from a massive cocaine binge. No joke! No wonder it feels so bad! And although I have never crashed from cocaine, my hyper-aroused brain always preferring drugs that sedate; it is a vivid portrayal nonetheless!
A delightful artist couple we met who live deep in the outback in Volcano, Hawaii, host a variety of species of ferile animals on their beautiful rainforest land. They have rescued and made pets of many of those brave enough or hungry enough to approach their home. They tell the story of a pair of probably sibling feral dogs (probably part wolf) whom they began to see lurking around the house. One of them had the remarkable distinction of habitually looking both ways before crossing the un-trivial road where cars routinely drive well over speed limits! Where did he learn that?
The two were large and intimidating (at least to me), and our friends were later to discover, truly terrified. And they were hungry, especially as that year had been unseasonably dry and available prey was meager. Our friends, as was their custom, cautiously put out food for them. The two skittishly sidled only close enough to snatch their meal, quickly disappearing back into the tangle of green. This went on for months, during which time our friends quietly named and befriended them from the cautious distance. “It was many months before we could touch them.”
Perchance, someone gave our friends a very young puppy. That adorable little girl behaved more like a usual pet, and they happily held and played with her. A turning point came when the two big guys saw the puppy. They slowly edged up to her and sometimes even played with her. They hovered closer and closer to the house and ultimately became veritable pets! Never quite as relaxed as the puppy, who undoubtedly had had a safer start in the world, the three dogs harmoniously joined the household, living together as a family for many years. What sort of bell might the little one have rung inside her older “cousins?”
So, what does any of this have to do with my broken heart? It came to me organically out of the depths: I don’t remember how. I might say in a dream, but to be honest, I don’t dream much, so have to forego that poetic turn of phrase. Perhaps from a deep therapy experience or a deep sleep. The seemingly endless grief I had endured, now thankfully a distant memory, was not about the man whose name I quietly keep to myself. It was about my mom, my real first true heartbreak. No wonder I couldn’t get over it.
The abandonment and loss of infant neglect, unremembered in the ordinary autobiographical memory of which an infant is incapable, continued reverberating and quaking in its desperate quest to tell the trauma story. Certainly, like for many of us, the first real heartbreak. How do we shorten the seemingly endless river of grief over that first devastating heartbreak? By going to the source if we can and processing that. That is finding a way to access and work through that prehistoric attachment injury. Perhaps that will help to shorten the seemingly infinite and often humiliating journey, or at least make sense of it. And you’ll save a whole lot of Kleenex. Neurofeedback definitely helps to move things along.
Attachment trauma, and neglect, as we as a field and as a world are slowly beginning to grasp, is perhaps the most devastating trauma of all. Something about the puppy being a vehicle of healing seemed, at least to me, to illustrate that. And why breaking the intergenerational chain insofar as we can, is a personal and cultural imperative.
Some fifty years ago I made a blouse for my mother, probably for Mother’s Day. It is sky blue, and I elaborately embroidered it with a large daffodil surrounded by a vibrant rainbow. The colors have stood the test of time valiantly, and it is one of the few things I took, besides the sewing machines, when our dad released us into her closet to help ourselves after she died. Inside the little garment, on the back facing where a store-bought label might be, I had embroidered the words “I love my mom.”
I know at times I disparage our mom (and speaking ill of the dead is admittedly poor form), especially in the privacy of my darling aesthetician niece’s treatment room, where she works on my ragged old face. She tracks my progress diligently, like a good neurofeedback provider, taking pictures and showing them to me along the way. In horror, I exclaim, “Oy vey! I look like my mom!” However, somewhere deep inside, hidden like a relic, in the interior of a sacred vestment, persists the faint echo of the howling primordial longing.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Love Me Still by Bruce Hornsby.
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.
Sometimes a story or a movie is truly worth well over a thousand words to express and convey an often wordless experience concisely. This week I decided to do something a little different and dip into popular culture – commenting on a film and a book, both of which speak to our themes, portraying them sharply and differently; perhaps tipping a sensory nerve and providing food for thought, at least for me.
Neither of these two are great works of art I might add, at least not in my opinion. And in neither case did I feel a deep connection with the character, but both are good envoys, and there is no substitute for a good story.
Jeremiah Tower was a local treasure and cultural icon to a food-loving Bay Arean like me. I say “was” because in the movie, it is hard to know if he died or simply evaporated back into the vacuous wasteland of his neglect ridden childhood. I certainly noticed this when the film Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent was brought to my attention. (I won’t say it was recommended, and frankly, I am not really recommending it either.) Nonetheless, for the curious, it is available on Amazon Prime for $2.99, and I will avoid the “spoilers.” And if you love cooking and eating, the visuals of spectacularly beautiful and interesting food is well worth the price!
The film was produced by Tower’s dear friend and self-proclaimed “fan” culinary rockstar, Anthony Bourdain, who certainly must have his own story. As you may remember, Bourdain committed suicide in 2018. Clearly, the restaurant world, even at its peaks, is cruel.
Known for being one of the early luminaries in the now exalted almost “religion” of California Cuisine, Tower was a key figure in the historic, and still after 51 years, wildly acclaimed Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Tower’s own tabernacle, Stars Restaurant, opened in 1984. I think we only ate there once, and all I really remember about it was walking down the carpeted stairs to our table. It was like entering a palatial theater and going to the most expensive seats in the orchestra section: grand. The cinematic scenes of the interior of Stars brought up that pleasurable and even exciting image. Stars Cafe, a later, more casual and reasonably priced Tower offspring where you could actually get a reservation, became a frequent go-to for us. I admit that back in the 90s, the big draw was the caramel sundae, which I am sure is what called me back almost every Friday for a good long time. I don’t remember anything else I ate there besides that sundae, although my husband could probably tell you!
I admit that for me back in the 90s, the big draw was the caramel sundae, which I am sure is what called me back almost every Friday for a good long time.
Hearing about the movie, I was startled to realize (rather like the neglectful parent who, fifty miles down the road, suddenly registers that their child is not in the car but was somehow left at the gas station) that I had not thought about the restaurants in years and had forgotten all about Tower himself. I’m certainly not intending to equate a restaurant with one’s own child, but rather that the forgettable invisibility of neglect and the clueless oblivion of his parents were the staple and persistent ingredient of Tower’s entire childhood. His seeming “disappearance” is perhaps a re-enactment of that.
Tower was the quintessential “poor little rich boy.” My flashbulb memory of Stars’ majestic, theatrical opulence perfectly portrayed his childhood “home,” although it was anything but a home. His alcoholic mother, who manifested the pinnacle of glamour and style, entertained her similarly privileged white comrades constantly and elegantly. The adorable little boy was either parked somewhere to keep him out from underfoot or forgotten completely. His only solace became the spectacular food that he came to love and took great pleasure in eating.
By age eight or so, little Jeremiah learned that when his mother became prohibitively drunk, she was unable to “perform,” so the food would not make it to the glamorous table. So, like many the child of neglect, he transitioned from complete invisibility to (still) invisible rescuer. He learned to cook to “keep the show on the road” (and shield his mother from shame as it were) and was remarkably successful. Cooking and covering for his mom gave the boy a sense of purpose, and although he continued to go unrecognized, he found that he loved it.
A similarly poignant feature of the film, barely a blip on the story’s screen, is the exquisite depiction of how vanishing in the elegant Dom Perignon sipping crowds, night after night, would make young Jeremiah an easy target for trauma. I won’t give it away; the brevity of the event is almost imperceptible. If you run to the bathroom without pausing, you might miss it, and because the hideous event never comes up again, you won’t know it happened. Again, smacking of traumatic re-enactment.
Predictably Jeremiah went to Harvard to study design and then graduate school in architecture. The spectacular visuals of the food he created reflect his imaginative aesthetic and structural brilliance. He started cooking for his peers in college, and for sure, lots of wine and other intoxicants were on the menus. Although the film does not explicitly say that this child of at least one alcoholic parent had a substance abuse problem, it is easy to wonder, and somehow, I vaguely remember his falling deeply into a serious hell of cocaine use. I could not find any corroboration of that, so perhaps I made it up, but it is easy to imagine.
The adorable little boy was either parked somewhere to keep him out from underfoot or forgotten completely. His only solace became the spectacular food that he came to love and took great pleasure in eating.
His rise as master chef is well documented, beginning with his starring role at Chez Panisse, where he bitterly claimed himself to be of equal valence to the famed Alice Waters. After a dazzlingly successful partnership, there was not enough oxygen in the place for the two of them, and Tower struck out on his own. Clearly, the world of relationships was a predictable minefield for him, as one would expect after his disordered attachment childhood. The film never clearly identifies his sexual orientation. Although it alluded to his being gay, it was hard to tell if that was “all” and he never seems to have a lasting partnership.
As a waiter in some relatively high-end restaurants back in the day, I am not a stranger to chefs blowing up and even throwing things at waiters and line cooks. Similarly, our dad had been a chef, and like a good child of neglect, I often worked in his shadow, however invisibly, to keep order while he created his “masterpieces” in our kitchen. I prided myself on being the only one able to be in the kitchen with him when he cooked. He too, was prone to outbursts and fits of rage, using the heat and delicate time pressure as his excuse. Tower, of course, was no exception to the raging chef rule, and his relationship world, like many a survivor of trauma and neglect, left a trail of wreckage in its wake.
It is lonely at the top. The film does not give us much about that, but I could clearly imagine it. The remainder of the film carefully and “protectively” portrays the collapse of the Stars house of cards. The Stars empire (like the Twin Towers), once a world avatar of wealth and power, was reduced to rubble. It is startling how to “dust he returned.” Again invisible and forgotten, I had to google to find out that he is still alive and living somewhere in Mexico.
Out of curiosity I looked up the story of the prophet Jeremiah. Here is what Wikipedia says:
As a prophet, Jeremiah pronounced God’s judgment upon the people of his time for their wickedness. He was concerned especially with false and insincere worship and failure to trust Yahweh in national affairs. He denounced social injustices but not so much as some previous prophets…
I wonder why they named him that.
Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent (2016) available on Amazon Prime. 2 hours.
When I heard an interview with author Silvia Vasquez-Lavado, I was intrigued. First of all, because she is Peruvian, and somehow anything Latin American seems to pique my interest. But more, because she led an international group of women survivors of sex trafficking on a trek up Mount Everest, which struck me as heroic in every way. I ordered my copy of her new book, soon noticing that reviews of it seemed to be popping up everywhere. Eager to read it, I was mildly disappointed to find that it lacked the depth of character development and quality of “good writing” that compels me. But remember, I am an insatiable and somewhat critical reader with my own quirky tastes.
The story switches back and forth between the stories of Vasquez-Lavado’s traumatic childhood and younger adulthood and the story of the trek. For me, the more autobiographical part is most interesting. By way of warning to the vulnerable, she describes her own sexual trauma somewhat explicitly but powerfully. And her story, much like Jeremiah Tower’s, clearly illustrates how tightly coupled trauma and neglect must be. Terrible things can happen to a child who is unseen and not taken care of.
What Vasquez-Lavado does particularly well, and uniquely so, is clearly present the trauma of gaslighting. I have been amazed lately that the word has become a household term somehow. Referring back to a favorite classic movie, not Hitchcock but similar, the term, the name, and the movie that matter in my memory anyway were ancient history. Suddenly the word is everywhere. All the young people use it too. However, its portrayal as traumatic to a child trying to make sense out of the world, especially a child of neglect who has no one to ask, it is crazy-making and contributes to the confused belief endemic of neglect survivors that “nothing happened to me!” Vasquez-Lavado, perhaps better than I have seen anywhere, explicitly and effectively conveys the gaslighting experience from the inside. That in itself is worth the price.
Again, we do not get deep view into the life of the young girls, the survivors of sex trafficking. Some are Nepali, some from the US, so there are language challenges. We also see tragically portrayed how often sexual trafficking is an artifact of a galling degree of poverty and perhaps the gaslighting of well-meaning and destitute parents who believe the criminals enticing them with the promise of employment and a better life for their starving daughters. The cursory depictions of both the grimness of their traumatic experiences and their often stunningly courageous escapes are again some of the more captivating parts of the book; as is the one session when Vasquez-Lavado and all the girls gather in a group, in the chill of the mountain, and with the assistance of interpreters, share all of their trauma stories. There, the power of the group in trauma healing is vivid and moving. Many had never spoken aloud of their experiences, even with those with whom they went through them.
There, the power of the group in trauma healing is vivid and moving. Many had never spoken aloud of their experiences, even with those with whom they went through them.
Vasquez-Lavado, as planned, takes the group of girls as far as the base camp, but she herself has planned and trained to go to the 29,032 foot (8,849 metres) summit. The book continues to pivot between her “checkered past” and the climb. And although her personal history is often less than endearing, sensational and reminiscent of a dramatic AA “drunkalog”, she powerfully conveys the desperate compulsion to self-regulate. Ripping and running with alcohol, drugs and out of control sex are well known to many of us with trauma and neglect histories. She tells that story tragically and effectively, even if a bit tediously at times.
Never attracted to cold in any iteration, the prospect of being up in that kind of cold (let alone for six weeks) is truly unnerving! And myself a veteran of endurance sports, I have never cared enough about any sport to literally and knowingly risk my life for it. Many who attempt the summit do not come back. Vasquez-Lavado was the only woman in her group (as well as being the only lesbian and vegetarian, she is sure to tell us). A number of the men (including the man whose athletic resume touted completing two Ironman Triathlons in one day) turned back before arriving at the summit. Vasquez-Lavado does make it, which is an accomplishment that not many women can claim, and that is impressive. But more than that is the role of empowerment in trauma healing and experiencing the body as an undeniable ally. We cannot really reproduce this in any therapy.
All the women in the stories were transformed by both the physical integrity and empowerment proffered by the climb and the power of interpersonal connection for both staying alive and finding some peace with a previously unspeakable and shame-ridden past.
In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado February, 2022
Once again, although you may be sick of hearing me say it: it is all about regulation. Oy vey, there I go again. The addled organism, out of whack from over and under-stimulation, lack of or distortions of attachment and connection, is on a voracious quest: drinking, drugging, sexing, work… all to that same end. That is what Jeremiah and Sylvia most have to tell us if we are listening.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is There Is A Mountain by Donovan.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!