I hate it when I don’t follow my own advice, and even more, I hate admitting it. Way back when we got the Trump government in 2016, it seemed as if everyone went out of their minds daily, experiencing some variety of trauma activation from some latest news item. The restimulations were neverending. I urgently admonished everyone, including myself, to regulate their news consumption! But one thing I never stopped doing was tuning in to the BBC first thing after waking up. I managed my quantity pretty well, but the timing, well, not so much. First thing in the morning is a delicate moment. On November 22nd, shortly after awakening, I flipped on the news to a passing clip of literally seconds, announcing, “…Pablo Milanés has died. He was 79.” It hit me like bricks and then an immediate avalanche of memory.
Pablo, along with his colleague and often collaborator Silvio Rodriguez, was the founding voice of the Nueva Trova Cubana, the New Cuban Song Movement emerging in the late 1960s. A mix of traditional and folk rhythms and instruments with political, social, lyrical, and popular themes, the “trova” was the soundtrack of some of my loneliest, most painful, and at the time, inexplicably difficult post-traumatic years. Pablo’s honey-like baritone was the ever-available company and comforting accompaniment to the darkest of times. His song Tengo (I Have) is the epitome of gratitude: a musical accounting of all the precious things one has. It became my favorite song of all time.
Pablo also introduced me to the exquisite poetry of Jose Marti, which he even more exquisitely transformed into glorious song. I keep only two CDs in my car for those times when I am completely addled by the Bay Bridge traffic: Pablo’s Versos de Jose Marti and Silvio’s Mujeres. They unfailingly get me over the bridge and home. It was on my bucket list to see Pablo in person. I did manage to see Silvio in Oakland once. But Pablo – it never came to be. Now it never will. I was heartbroken.
Attachment trauma makes relationships such a minefield, a Rubik’s cube of challenges.
Attachment trauma makes relationships such a minefield, a Rubik’s cube of challenges. Loving and often idealizing iconic figures I had never met was a way to populate a lonely world—an illusion of a relationship, certainly company in the bittersweet solitude. I say bittersweet because being alone was a refuge: a cozy, comfortable, safe place, like my carnation pink weighted blanket, where, when swaddled in its soft and caressing velvet folds, I find restful peace. But at the same time, it was the gnawing echo of being left alone too much, the punishing, unchosen, agonizing solitude that defies nature’s design and evokes something else. We cannot “remember“ our infancy. But the aching heart and disproportional, unrelenting pain of loss that feels like dying is usually an undeniable clue that the core injury was interpersonal and usually unimaginably early. Even if all the family lore might tell us that there were people there who loved us, hidden in the deep recesses of brain and body is a story of parents who, for whatever reason, simply couldn’t.
“Hero worship” became a middle ground for me. There were important people in my life who I did not have to worry about whether they liked me; they taught and influenced me, became my beloved role models. Sometimes I made an effort to learn about their real lives, which was much harder before we had Google, Wikipedia, and other technological avenues of inquiry. Other times I did not, and often, in fact, ignorance is bliss – finding out who the real person is can be a disappointment or even a blow. I did not want to know if there was animosity or competition between Pablo and Silvio in real life. I wanted to get lost in the harmony. Reading the recent memoir by Bono is a case in point. Although he is not on my shortlist, I have always admired and appreciated him, and still do. But I don’t “like” him very much. Just as many solve the conundrum of intimacy by creating a fantasy cyber sexual world, a “relationship” that is quiet, interior and inherently safe fills a certain void – sort of. Thankfully, now on my own Tengo accounting, I have both. But the loss of Pablo is still a blow.
Trauma has no time sense, no time stamp, as it were.
For the child of neglect, loss and disappointment seem on the order of life-threatening. In their own minds, the intensity is completely normal, even “reasonable,” like ambient air. Often a partner or loved one simply cannot understand why experimentation, or even moderate risk, is not an option. What is the big deal? Hope and disappointment are to be avoided like the plague, because the primal loss was in the domain of survival. An infant alone will die, and the early, unremembered experience of being left, even the later remembered experiences of inexplicable invisibility or abandonment, strike way too close to feeling fatal.
Things never did change in that family, or not in a good way. The very notion that someone would change who or how they are out of love for me? Out of the question. It is what makes relationship therapy such a hard sell for so many adult children of neglect. What’s the point? Things don’t change, not for the better, and certainly not in relationships. The risk of disappointment is simply too great, not worth it. Where, on one hand, disappointment is a fact of life, as familiar as an old shoe, that it is almost like a companion on the trail for many the child of neglect, it is to be avoided at all costs – which can also be a sticking point in couples. Often, I struggle with those close to me being “hope averse,” or I am impatient with their hopelessness. I have to work hard to stay empathic and compassionate; perhaps it strikes too close to my own mostly healed trauma.
Certain catchphrases from years of training in whatever discipline have always stuck in my mind. One that is indelibly etched is “the amygdala knows no time.” Trauma has no time sense, no time stamp, as it were. I used to wonder why in my art therapy drawings and paintings I so often produced a clock stopped at 4:10. I don’t know why. But I do know that trauma feels interminable, like it will never end, while also being at dizzying, breakneck speeds. In a split second, the world has crashed irreversibly into something else. I remember being told that the “nature of the beast,” in this case, the beast being depression, was that while in it feels like it will never end. However, in the rearview, it is hard to imagine or even remember how or why it felt that bad. “Pandemic time” is kind of like that…
All the trauma treatment modalities I studied seemed to have a protocol or practice for awakening a sense of time, a sense of movement. In EMDR, it was “what happens next?” In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, it would be following the sensation as it morphs into one and the next iteration of itself and moves through the body. In some relaxation approaches, there would be counting. The intention is to activate a sense of movement, of time passing, of a possibility, a seed of change, of something different being possible. That is perhaps one reason why we measure anniversaries and orbits around the sun. We need to know that there is some forward movement and a reason to keep going. That is what I like best about the changing of the year. Something old is closed; something new will open in its place. Grief, if not ending altogether, will diminish and change over time. Something else will take its place. Cheesemaking, gardening, pregnancy: these are endeavors that we can only undertake if we believe there will be a future. Why else would we spend hours and sometimes backbreaking effort for something that takes months or longer to come to fruition?
I wish for all that the closing of the year will bring a promise of something different and better. One thing I love about Tengo, is the recounting of life treasures connotes that these are perhaps things I did not have before, or that many do not have. The line that invariably still brings me to tears is when Pablo sings ”Aprendi a leer, a contar, y aprendi a escribir!” I learned to read, to count, and I learned to write!” What blessings!
I close the year with these words translated from Jose Marti’s Versos Sencillos, “Simple Verses:”
Everything is beautiful and constant
Everything is music and reason,
And everything, like the diamond,
Before light, is coal.
Gracias, Pablo. Happy New Year
Today’s song is the beautiful Tengo by Pablo Milanés. I hope you love it as much as I do.
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.
Many people don’t know that Chanukah is a holiday about miracles. Ironically, at least in the US, the winter holiday season tends to be an extra hard or outright miserable time for so many people, especially those who have complicated or nonexistent relationships with family, leaving them feeling more lonely and ashamed than usual. With all the emphasis on celebrating and gifts, not having enough money or not receiving invitations or presents might add to feeling like a misfit, or a worthless being. That was certainly true for me, although I made a production of creating and giving gifts. I suppose that helped. Add to that the dark and cold season, and it all becomes a recipe for bleakness. Last week as December was just starting, I thought I would write about something inspirational or upbeat, like the recent serendipitous experience I had in Hawaii that I like to call Fire on the Mountain. I sat down to write.
But as I sat staring at the blank screen, I found myself typing “World of Neglect,” and, for whatever reason, fixating on the story of Brittney Griner. I complained about the biting chill of 41 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) here these days, which to us in San Francisco is a “cold snap.” I wondered what the temperature would be in the Gulag-like conditions of Griner’s Mordovia prison camp. Again, I am no sports fan, but for some reason, I am compelled and fascinated by the stories of brilliant athletes. Griner’s story grabbed me from the day it broke back in February, now ten months ago.
I am often disgusted and angered by the fickle and sensational news business, where a story hits and captures widespread concern, even outrage, only to sink into the quicksand of world neglect, upstaged by the next big story. I felt like Griner was all too rapidly forgotten, disappearing into the gaping void of world neglect. At least as far as I knew. I had to wonder, would she have been so easy to forget if she was white and straight? If it were, say, the cherubic blond quarterback of our local football team, the man I call “Lover-Boy,” would he have been forgotten and left to languish in the bowels of a Russian nightmare? My more hard-headed and politically-unbiased husband probably said so. But I am not convinced.
Unable to refocus on my “positive” agenda, I began researching Griner, curious to find out more about her story. I find her beautiful and her 6 foot nine (205.74 cm) frame so elegant and striking that it rather shocked me to learn that, always taller than her peers growing up in Houston, she suffered miserably and was mercilessly bullied in school. The other kids called her a “freak,” and she believed them. She was already suicidal by junior high school. And as she got older, wrestling with her sexuality, she finally summoned the courage to come out to her parents. Upon hearing it, her (most likely traumatized) Vietnam veteran father lost no time in kicking her out. That was all I could find about her sad childhood. But that colored my already bleak thoughts about her, locked away, forgotten in Siberia-like hard labor conditions. All day I could not shake the image of Brittney Griner, forgotten. I had not had a day like that before, fixated on her, a political football (basketball?) punted into outer space.
The next morning in the wee hours, I turned on the radio as I always do. The first thing I heard was that Brittney Griner was free! She was on the plane and on her way home. Admittedly I was instantly in tears. How did this happen?!
I am often disgusted and angered by the fickle and sensational news business, where a story hits and captures widespread concern, even outrage, only to sink into the quicksand of world neglect, upstaged by the next big story.
We had the good fortune to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday on our beloved “home away from home,” the Big Island of Hawaii. We spent our first couple of days on the northeastern side of the island in Volcano, the little town where the famed Mauna Loa volcano majestically stands. After a lovely visit there, we took our leave, heading south to Kona on my favorite, the sunny side of the island. No sooner had we arrived in Kona, we heard the news that Mauna Loa had explosively erupted the day after we left, like it had not done since 1984. Although our friends who lived there assured us that they were safe and all was well, we kept hearing news reports of lava creeping and spilling further and ever wider across the roads. We felt as if we had dodged a bullet.
We had arranged for a day excursion during our time in Kona, up the 8,500-foot (2,590 meters) peak of Hualalai Mountain there. We had never been up there before, a bucket list item of my husband’s. It was to be a guided tour led by a lovely native guide named Kimo in his trusty but clearly well-worn Jeep off-road vehicle. We set out early, just the three of us, starting the long and rickety climb up the incredibly steep, rocky dirt road, and all the while, Kimo entertained us with stories about growing up with his 52 cousins, their parents, and grandparents on this sacred land. He pointed out elaborate ecosystems, describing how a beautiful creeping vine grew around the precious and sensitive Koa trees to protect them from the sun’s heat, so they could thrive. He also told us the sad story, common to so many native peoples, about how the government had quadrupled property taxes so quickly that his family were forced off their beloved ancestral land, and it was sold off to wealthy real estate developers. Kimo and many like him had to go to work building the very resort homes that took over their ancestral land, torn by compromise but dependent on the work to feed their kids. It reminded me of concentration camp victims and political prisoners forced to dig their own graves.
Kimo was especially proud of Hualalai, which was most dear to his beloved grandmother. He was glad to have the opportunity to take us up there, and he had not been up there in over a week. After about 40 minutes lumbering and rumbling up the mountain, we reached the spot where the much-needed (by me) restroom was located. Kimo pulled over and I dashed inside. Emerging relieved, I saw Kimo madly running into the bushes toward rising smoke. The mountain was on fire.
We threw all the bottled water he had packed into the jeep onto the smoldering embers to little avail, and apologetically, Kimo hurriedly told us we had to cancel the tour. Of course! But he felt terrible about it.
Like a racecar driver, Kimo got us down the ragged mountain in no time and called his community to help him come and fight the fire. He was so grateful to us! If we had not booked the tour, and if I had not had to go to the bathroom, he would not have been there to see the smoking embers spread into incipient flames. The whole mountain would have burned down. How do these things happen?
How does it happen that we serendipitously meet that certain person? How do stars seem miraculously to line up just so? What is the power of positive thinking, of good works?
What does Brittney Griner have to do with Mauna Loa and Hualalai, trauma and neglect, you and me? I strive to be scientific about cause and effect, although there are things that we cannot explain, sometimes very wonderful. How does it happen that we serendipitously meet that certain person? How do stars seem miraculously to line up just so? What is the power of positive thinking, of good works? Sometimes out of the depth of dark despair, we are surprised by something inexplicably wonderful. A Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I am told, teaches that on certain days of the year, one’s good karmic works are multiplied a hundred million-fold. I make my donations to suicide prevention on those days. I like to think I can save a hundred million lives. Who knows? I guess we must just hang in and do our best!
Best wishes of the season! And to all a good night!
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.
This week’s blog is all about pain, inspired by The Master Series: Pain Edition, coming soon in February. Use my code RC20 to get 20% off your tickets.
When we were growing up, if we did not feel well, our dad would say, “Get all ready for school and see how you feel after breakfast.” By the time I had done all that, I had pretty much no idea how I felt, and as a result, I ended up with a lifelong near-perfect attendance record. Unless I was actively vomiting, I assumed I was fine, and that too was rare. One of the handful of occasions I did was the unforgettable time in first grade when I threw up on the blacktop at recess, and someone circled it in chalk and scrawled in large caps, “RUTH DID THIS!” Oy vey, I guess that cured me of that particular affliction.
In my first 30 years of private practice, I missed only two days of work for health reasons. Only in 2014, when I was struck by a systemic, near-septic infection that even I couldn’t ignore, I landed in the hospital for a week, and home watching baking YouTube videos for another week. There went that record. Until then, I was not only blessed with sterling health, but also cursed with florid hubris/denial and a completely failed sensibility of interoception.
Interoception is the awareness and ability to perceive and read sensations within one’s body. The well-oiled organism emits constant signals to remain regulated, in balanced equilibrium and good working condition: food, hydration, rest, sex, temperature control, comfort, medical attention, etc. A good enough primary caregiver works to accurately read the cues and respond to them – not perfectly, of course, but well enough. That is how a child learns to perceive and interpret them, and ultimately, with luck, learns about self-care. With luck, that is. Many are not so lucky. Many of the little organisms, as we know, are met with pain and/or confusing overstimulation instead.
I developed an early interest in the ways trauma, eating disorders, and substance abuse met in a seamless braid because of my own sorry experience. I sought and found a largely unscientific little world of body approaches to psychological problems. My always ahead-of-her-time psychotherapist referred me to a colleague of hers who practiced what was called Self Acceptance Training probably well before 1980, which was the first body approach I ever tried. I don’t remember much of anything about it, but I stayed with it for quite a while and then became interested in bioenergetics and the writings of Wilhelm Reich, one of the early founders of more systematic body psychotherapy approaches. Although his work is in some ways quirky, I still find his book The Function of the Orgasm to be one of the great tomes of all time, and his unique way of bringing together social justice, psychology, and sexuality to be truly fascinating and not without merit. (His biography, Fury on Earth by Myron Sharaf, is also well worth the read!)
Now, as a field, we are blessed with truly evidence-based and effective body-oriented methodologies as well as a sophisticated literature that takes somatic psychotherapies out of the fringy or “woo-woo” category and into the highly respected trauma and even broader public mainstream. No need to mention Bessel van der Kolk’s record-defying blockbuster The Body Keeps the Score. We have all read it by now.
It is now largely acknowledged that there are a host of (too many) confounding, somatic aberrations that may be the harbinger or the mouthpiece of a trauma story. Because neglect is often storyless, it communicates in painful code. It behooves us to learn its language, not only for the purposes of translating to a precise language narrative, but also because so many survivors are abandoned yet again by a medical system that tells them it is “all in their heads.” Unhelped or over/mis-medicated, they suffer, roaming from practitioner to practitioner or one bogus internet remedy to the next, depleting money they often do not have, and feeling more pathological, humiliated, often blamed, and alone.
Thankfully, the ACE Study of 1995-1997 has finally come to the awareness of the larger world, broadcasting the “surprisingly” astronomical numbers of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” endured by the employed largely middle-income research pool of 17,000 North American subjects. Researchers have begun to link childhood trauma to health and disease (see neuroscientist Ruth Lanius’ 2010 book on the subject.) Many survivors like myself wandered in a desert of numbness or a tortured world of often alternating or otherwise confounding expressions of “disease.” Many are not so fortunate as I to have had a helper who could connect the dots.
It is now largely acknowledged that there are a host of (too many) confounding, somatic aberrations that may be the harbinger or the mouthpiece of a trauma story.
On my otherwise idyllic recent holiday vacation, I had a little “mishap.” Admittedly, grace has never been one of my stronger suits, and as the years advance, my balance is not what it once was. In the middle of the night, in a very dark, unfamiliar bathroom, I slipped in my banana-peel-colored socks and crashed into the edge of the bathtub with my unsuspecting rib cage. Oy vey. My initial reaction was fear, knowing that at my age, many women have bones that crumble, and an injury could be serious. But well-schooled by Dad, I found I could pick myself up, finish my business and take myself back to bed. Sure it hurt, but…
In the morning, I did tell my husband, and we worked around it, whatever it was, for the rest of the trip. I think I probably did crack a rib because when I yawned or coughed, I felt that sharp catch in my side. I remembered when our parents once had a little fender bender in the little Datsun, and Mom cracked a rib. There was no treatment for it, but she kept telling us, “DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH!” because that made it hurt. Fortunately for me, laughing was not a problem, but a sneeze could do it. I also happily discovered the analgesic properties of coffee, although the in-room coffee was not nearly as effective as the lattes made by our little friend at Starbucks.
When we got home, however, I had one really bad night. It was the night after I discovered that the heating pad was a real “game-changer” and quieted the pain so I could get my few hours of sleep easily and undisturbed. This next night, however, the pain was off the charts. I couldn’t get comfortable, and I could not sleep at all. My poor husband was frantic. I could not stop crying and could barely speak as I tried different every imaginable position, first in the bed, standing, and then sitting.
Finally, as I sat up, wept uncontrollably and shook, my body was wracked by involuntary movement that reminded me of the training I had done in the early 2000s with Pat Ogden and Peter Levine, where the body is completing unexpressed movement patterns locked in traumatized tissue. The movement kept going for quite a while, but it seemed to be moving the pain. Thankfully, well-trained by Peter and Pat, I was able to let it sequence through, albeit without the sort of mindfulness I learned back then. And the pain lessened.
I was able to go back to bed and sleep. In the morning, I awoke to what I think was an unremembered fragment of early trauma memory, most likely loosened and freed by a body sensation that resembled/evoked it just enough. And I woke up pain-free. My husband later woke up more rattled and less easily convinced than I. But that is my story, and I’m sticking to it.
When the body is in pain, it compels all attention.
I remember in graduate school, which for me was back in the stone age, I read a book called The Body in Pain by a woman named Scarry. I remember being amused by the author’s name of a book on that subject. Again, how odd that of the thousands of books I have read in the intervening years, I remember that one and its author. I only remember one little factoid from the book: when the body is in pain, it compels all attention. One truly can’t think of anything else. The body is hell-bent on communicating that something is wrong.
Chronic pain is a short-circuiting of the communication system, where long after physical injury might compel attention and action, the alarm bell continues ringing, probably trying to summon emergency care for some other purpose. We must work to stay present and listen: to both the language, and the story itself. The good news is that once the story is received and can be told in words, with luck, the messenger is free to go!
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.
For better or worse, we are all too aware that nature’s design is to exist, survive and persist into the future by proliferating one’s likeness and perhaps broadcasting that. It is as if the world were a giant Petri dish of infinite rabid species in a wild race to replicate their own. Some organisms cross ethnic lines and collaborate to help one another in the endeavor of spreading: mushrooms helping trees, bees helping plants, many plants helping each other, and some of the heroic people who work to rescue the endangered from extinction. In Michael Pollan’s lovely book, The Botany of Desire, he poetically describes this.
Left to ourselves, however, across nature, we would all be blindly cloning ourselves into perpetuity. With great frustration, I saw this during months when I was too busy to keep up with regular daily cheesemaker “hygiene,” and the roqueforti, like greedy imperialist pirates, ferociously took over the world in my “caves.” It was everywhere. Blue cheese is delicious and all, but when you are trying to make Gouda or Gruyere, it should not voluntarily turn blue. Oy vey. After my book was written, like rebuilding after a war or flood, recovery took many months. Lesson learned.
Many parents indeed strive, perhaps unwittingly, to sculpt little echoing 2.0 iterations of themselves, maybe attempting to get a few bugs out, maybe actually failing to see those and passing them on. There is, of course, great pride in tradition, bloodlines, and culture, and there is something comforting and safe about more and more of the same. I remember, as kids, singing “rounds:” Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Frere Jacque, Hinay Ma Tov U Manayim, repeating the same little song over and over with a different little voice jumping in at intervals, continuing to make a lovely harmony. We could go on like that for ages – it was so simple and sweet. As one with some undeniably OCD-like tendencies (unlike my variety-loving husband,) I find repetition and routine to be regulating and reassuring as well as efficient – call me boring. (I do get a lot done!)
Often, we work to “manipulate” or control proliferation or the direction of transmission and development.
And of course, we find the inevitable mutations, some devastating like cancer, some less so. Some are for the better, which is how we get evolution. Before Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954, such speeds were deemed humanly impossible. Since then, the record has been broken many times over, and by 1999, a mere 45 years later, another 20 seconds had been shaved off by subsequent generations.
Often, we work to “manipulate” or control proliferation or the direction of transmission and development. This can be dicey and controversial: pesticides, genetically engineered food, test tube babies, some producing the stuff of horror movies. Some results are miraculous, like vaccines and disinfectants, or processes like pasteurization or retrofitting. So, it is complicated. I find it amazing that the addition of minuscule quantities of starter “cultures” (and I love the irony of that multi-definitional word) changes the nature of milk, making it receptive to transformation not only from liquid to solid, but changes in its sensory character, giving us literally thousands of delicious flavor varieties. Yes, interrupting nature is indeed a mixed bag.
By now, we are all painfully aware of the intergenerational transmission of trauma and neglect, the complex chain of repetitions that continue to enslave, infect, and blind ad infinitum. I am like a broken record on the gnawing subject. And yet it persists seamlessly in both the macro and micro. The nature of untreated trauma is to re-enact it, attempting to recount in behavior, a story too deeply hidden or too despicable for ordinary language. The language of re-enactment is insidious, and the ramifications can be like a tumor where the aberrant cells are so entangled with nerves and healthy tissue as to make extrication a deadly operation. Where to begin? Or where to continue, as we are certainly not the first to wonder.
In 1865 slavery was officially abolished in the U.S. That was President Lincoln’s most admirable intent. But the change only went so far – we did not get to the root level. We got “Jim Crow,” a way of formalizing and canonizing segregation and inequality, becoming a vigilante free-for-all. With “redlining” or refusing loans and insurance to targeted groups, the freedom-endowed blessings of home/land ownership, to hold and bequeath for generations, and suffrage were legally and culturally unobtainable to huge groups of the nominally “free” citizens. The wealth and intergenerational progress that might have been accessible in a truly just and equal nation were barricaded and jealously kept for the white and male. Obviously, we are still saddled with the self-perpetuating impact. Anger, poverty, disenfranchisement, alienation, and unaddressed trauma, large and small, is being visited on subsequent generations, who, if not helped, are doomed to repeat and pass it on. So, how do we break these intergenerational chains? A resounding question.
Acknowledgment is precisely naming and owning the wrongdoing, fully and to the satisfaction of the injured party, without minimizing, qualifying, or “explaining,” and verifying if the acknowledgment encompasses the extent of the hurt.
Admittedly my own checkered past catapulted me from trying to work on a grand macro level to finding my place of work in the micro. It is only new for me to begin to work and speak more widely about trauma and neglect. I suppose it took me a while to get a voice, but there is no one right way to engage. We must simply do something, and if we do heal and transform ourselves, even unwittingly, like the roaming roqueforti (or Covid-19!), there is an undeniable contagion or call and response of some kind.
On the macro level, again, it is “complicated.” In San Francisco, there is a loud debate about a local public high school long known to have super-achieving graduates with the highest test scores in the country. It has historically been predominantly, if not exclusively, white. There is vociferous disagreement about desegregating it and making it more inclusive versus maintaining the strict “merit” system of admission. “Merit” versus some iteration of affirmative action. What is “just?” How do we break the chains of repetition that cement the growing divide between rich and poor, which certainly in San Francisco is becoming cavernous, with legions of individual trauma and neglect survivors or victims exploding within it. Where do we locate the ”affordable” housing, if it is to be built at all? In “my backyard?” Hot discussions here.
I spoke with my longtime colleague and friend Dr. Forrest Hamer, an African American Jungian analyst who thinks deeply and teaches about reparation, asking him his thoughts about confronting this gnarly and enduring hydra. He described a three-step model of reparation, primarily based on the famed Truth and Reconciliation Process undertaken in South Africa in 1995. His model is undeniably and, of necessity, quite fluid, owing to the different needs and injuries of different victims or afflicted populations. It is not terribly different from the model of apology I teach couples, but it inspired me to rethink my own protocol, because this one sounds even better. It consists of three steps: acknowledgment, redress, and closure. I can hardly hope to do justice to it here, but I will lay out the broad strokes, and think on it much more for future writings.
Acknowledgment is precisely naming and owning the wrongdoing, fully and to the satisfaction of the injured party, without minimizing, qualifying, or “explaining,” and verifying if the acknowledgment encompasses the extent of the hurt. Just yesterday, perchance, I had a flashbulb memory of a client I had some 25 years ago, a man with a deep childhood neglect injury who, in adulthood, lost his life savings in the now mythical Madoff Ponzi debacle that spanned 17 years in the 1980s and 90’s. My client was wiped out, losing all that he and his little family counted on to supplement his meager earnings. He was never made whole and died way too young. What sort of acknowledgment is in order there, let alone remuneration? How much is enough?
The second step is “redress.” What sort of action would be a salve and a meaningful recompense or gesture of rectification in each case? Would it be restitution in the form of financial compensation? How do you put a price tag on George Floyd? The legions of “disappeared” in Latin America? The robbed and ravaged First Nations of the many colonized lands? I heard from a gentle Hawaiian man the story of how his ancestral land on the Big Island was slowly devoured by mainland real estate moguls as it became increasingly impossible for Natives to pay quadrupling taxes on their long-held family properties. He himself, as a construction worker, was forced to build the very homes and resorts that displaced him, torn apart by internal conflict about participating in his own devastation, because he needed the work to feed his kids. It reminded me of concentration camp victims forced to dig their own graves. What would repair the loss of his grandmother’s sacred property, now dotted with multimillion-dollar homes? It is a very personal, painstaking process. For some, the cash is the redress. But not all.
The final step is closure, where both parties in dialog agree that some measure of justice is, at the very least, in progress. For many, this would include symbolic, ideological, and policy changes that would allow healing to endure and the wrongs not to be forgotten. Policy change alone, without community dialog and ideological discussion, can make for a whole new set of problems. I had one profoundly neglected African client, who, when he survived a round of layoffs in his tech workplace, was certain that he was retained simply for the purpose of diversity “quotas.” It made him not only less certain of his performance but the target of bitterness from apprehensive or displaced colleagues. I have heard other stories about workplace dissonance between “diversity hires” and “merit hires,” creating a 3.0 of racism. True closure, says Forrest, involves some kind of commitment to change that will stick and have meaning, that it is more than simply changing the street or sports team’s name.
Today I have more questions than answers, food for thought. For trauma and neglect survivors, what sort of response from perpetrators, if any, might heal? Or is complete detachment the more self-affirming path? And on the macro level, examining one’s own attitudes deeply and searching for a way to engage. When I embarked on the overwhelming process of cleaning up the roqueforti rein of terror, I committed to disinfecting the cave walls and checking each aging wheel every single day. Now perhaps eight months later, it is pristine in there and free of the blue scourge. Ah, were it all so simple…
Today’s song (our dad used to sing this):
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
As all who have been in the world of trauma, whether as clinician, researcher, survivor, or some combination thereof know, the area of greatest injury to life and to function is the domain of relationship. That has certainly been the crippling pain, anxiety, shame, or simple cluelessness most likely to bring people to my therapy office door, and was certainly true for me. As mammals, attachment, connection, and interdependence are primordial, fundamental to survival. That would begin to explain the urgency and despair we experience in its absence.
As human beings, love and relatedness are at the heart of what makes life most worth living, as exemplified in our art, music, literature, and all other media of expression around the world. It is a great motivator. It is the pivotal and most often missing ingredient in childhood neglect, especially in the developmental or earliest incidence of neglect, which is so much of what I see. By early, I mean the very tender and, of course, “unremembered” infant months and years. I say unremembered cautiously, because the desolation and uncertainty of isolation are in fact on record in the nervous system and the body. We know that by now, yet it is so “easy” to forget.
For many adult children of neglect, their mechanisms of compensation and disguise may be more skilled than what is turned out by the world’s top makeup artists. The void behind the facade of high function and success may thus be elusive to the naked eye, even to the self, at least some of the time. Because solitude becomes a default and even a “cozy” hiding place, it would be easy to chalk it up as being an introvert or “highly sensitive person” until some undeniable symptom compels attention, appearing in the form of a dramatic emergency – for example, my anorexic downfall, now almost 55 years ago to the day. I literally fell crashing out of my hiding place, certainly not on “conscious” purpose. Alcohol became another good clue if anyone had had a road map, but as has been endemic with neglect, nobody did
I flailed for a long time in a punitive world that lacked the psychological, neurobiological, and clinical options that we are now increasingly beginning to have, although critically insufficient. And I had the privilege of being white, middle class, with access to good schools and libraries to hide out in, which I liberally did. Even now, I often exclaim spontaneously to my husband, “I am so glad we live indoors!” I truly am, and so grateful.
I remember thinking I only began to learn how to be a “regular person” when I got my first waitressing job and spent enough hours with “regular people” that I could learn how to talk about movies, sports, television, and mainstream activities that I felt so ambivalent and clueless about. Of course, alcohol became a great companion in the process, as not only did it make it easier to fake it, but it also made me not care as much. Later on in therapy, I (not infrequently) would ask my infinitely patient therapist “So what do people do when…?” When they are at home in the evenings with their families, or on vacations with others? I still had only the vaguest clue.
I routinely admonished myself, “I just can’t get along with humans!”Although I have bristled against the term “impostor syndrome” dismissing it as too “pop psychology-esque,” it is probably too close to home. I was undeniably aware that I felt for many decades as if I was indeed of some other, probably mostly extinct and certainly less evolved species.
Central to the experience of childhood neglect is a devastating conundrum, a Gordian knot that, for many, plagues and tortures them throughout their lives if it has not been vanquished by early and prophylactic numbing (which it all too often is). Attachment researcher Mary Main has aptly called it the dilemma without solution: when the source of infant comfort and the source of terror are the same – the essentially needed primary caregiver.
Abandonment, loss, and the absence of connection feel life-threatening which, certainly at the most vulnerable stages of life, it actually is. That is where the other side of the dilemma is congealed or constructed: the impenetrable Fort Knox of self-reliance. It is the safe house, the bomb shelter, the default survival mechanism until it breaks or fails, which it often does. The results are all too lethal both for the child of neglect themselves and for others in their wake, as we are all too often seeing these days as the disenfranchised “go off” and act out violently in the world. So many reasons that I am adamant about helping the world become “neglect informed.”
Neuroscience is forcing us to understand the profound and developmentally crucial impact of attachment on regulation.
Neuroscience is forcing us to understand the profound and developmentally crucial impact of attachment on regulation. Regulation is the management of energy in the organism, the balance between high and low-frequency electrical activation in the brain, sympathetic and parasympathetic, stress and calm, terror, rage or nameless anxiety, and a quiet return to a hopefully comfortable baseline. A flexible and adaptive flow and a reasonable level of control over life’s inevitable vicissitudes is the great blessing of secure attachment. It is the gift of the good enough caregiver, and increasingly we are coming to understand this. Even the larger, non-trauma specialized psychotherapy field is increasingly learning this (no disdain intended.) Regulation is profoundly necessary, and sadly, far too rare. The mainstream is all too slowly connecting the dots, often failing to recognize the devastating damage of the desperate attempt to find regulation somewhere to the self and others, especially when it has not been learned at the developmentally appropriate time. Discomfort, terror, rage, or sheer amorphous compulsivity fuels the search for a way to manage unbearable ups and downs.
Because the feelings and isolation are so often points of shame, people often ask, “What is wrong with me?” How many “friends” one has, certainly in the time of social media, is a measure of “value” or self-worth, so the isolated may be even more ambivalent than usual about their need.
Interpersonal need is so lethal that the child of neglect keeps it carefully locked away, often even from themselves. Because they might look good on the outside, helpers and the world at large readily miss the cues, or do not even imagine such an outwardly successful individual as being so distraught. So they slip through the cracks and remain invisible. They often defy recognition, even among therapists, if they even think to approach therapists. Suicide rates among medical students and physicians are disproportionally high. Where can people turn? And where can they turn if they do not even know what is wrong, or that something is “legitimately” wrong?
Regulation is profoundly necessary, and sadly, far too rare
In the affluent town of San Francisco, the number of deaths by fentanyl overdoses beat the number of Covid-19 deaths in 2021. I find that to be chilling and profoundly alarming. In another story, six San Francisco fentanyl overdose deaths were stopped, and several lives were saved in the space of days by passersby administering Narcan to users who most likely would have died if not for such good samaritan luck. What if those good citizens had not walked by?
I am an avid supporter of local Crisis Support and Suicide Prevention organizations. I am so grateful to them for doing the essential crisis/emergency work that I am decidedly not good at. It is so needed, and so neglected. Oy vey. Neglect upon neglect upon neglect. It is literally deadly.
It saddens me that some of the most powerful treatment modalities we now have for restoring regulation are not yet accessible on a larger scale. Neurofeedback is such a godsend, and yet too expensive (for most prohibitively so) to provide on a large enough scale. Where do we start? Well, you and I can start by helping the world become “neglect informed.” It took 30 years for the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study to hit the mainstream, but it finally has, and it does acknowledge neglect. Educate the world, support services, and policy insofar as we can, and we can save lives, not to mention ease unbearable suffering.
I was gratified to learn that our US Surgeon General, the young Vivek H. Murthy, has identified a major public health crisis in this country: loneliness! 22% of the US population self-identifies as profoundly lonely. We are coming to understand more and more of the consequence of that. This is the subject of his book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. I find that gratifying and hopeful, as it joins mental health on the incipient roster of important social and political matters. Yay!
Again, my deepest appreciation to the Trauma Research Foundation for tying political and social meaning to the epidemic of trauma. More than 40 years after the PTSD diagnosis was identified and named, the larger world is adopting the understanding and necessity of being “trauma-informed.” It is a term that people are coming to know, adhere to, and use. I would hope to do the same with neglect.
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.
When I started therapy in 1978, long before many of my readers were born, our mom muttered bitterly, not quite under her breath, “…the ‘blame your mother’ generation!” I have no idea why I even told her. From then forward, my therapist ever retained her reign as “public enemy number one.” Blame is not my paradigm – that I want to underline – and my purpose is anything but that! Rather connecting perhaps counterintuitive dots, that might lead to better self-understanding is my wish. And admittedly, sharing insights that might be interesting to me.
Similarly, “Refrigerators, Helicopters and Tigers” (oh my!) may seem to evoke Dorothy exclaiming the perils of a terrifying world or a bad joke (what do the three have in common…) So, bear with me please as I seek to elucidate more less than obvious expressions of neglect.
Again, the deepest and most injurious sequela of neglect is the rupture or failure of the primary, most important attachment(s,) most notably with the mother whose body houses the child at first, and ideally would continue as a home and source of comfort, regulation, and protection from the perils of that dangerous world.
Perhaps the most integral and the first vehicle of comfort and regulation is the “simple” experience of being seen. Gazing into the face of a present and loving (ideally calm and regulated) other is foundational. Brain development begins with the resonant dance of the gaze and evolves into being accurately heard and responded to. Not perfectly of course. It seems so simple, no? A no brainer in more ways than one. Sadly, it is so very often lacking. Missteps and mistakes, of course, are part of the deal, but with repair, we are actually better for them. Confidence or knowledge that repair is possible makes the inevitability of imperfection bearable and survivable.
The most devastating impact of neglect is the deathlike loneliness of not feeling seen, but even worse, not being or feeling known. When I am known as me, as distinctly, uniquely ME, this means I exist. This feeling or sense that I exist may, with luck, evolve to a sense of self, and with even more luck, a sense of self-worth: I exist, and I matter. Without it, we may drift unmoored in a foreign world, wondering what is wrong.
Gazing into the face of a present and loving (ideally calm and regulated) other is foundational.
I recently encountered the term, previously unknown to me, “Refrigerator Mom.” (If not for the chill factor, I would associate such a label with an abundance of food!) I came to find out that, in 1943, Austrian psychiatrist Leo Kanner theorized that cold, unresponsive, and emotionally inattentive parenting resulted in children who failed to develop and retreated from social contact. Kanner identified the child’s aloneness from early in life as the explanation for autism. In the later 1940s through the 1960s, Bruno Bettelheim, renowned psychologist, researcher, and educator at the University of Chicago, advanced further acceptance of the theory with the medical establishment and with the wider public.
Although understanding of autism has evolved since then, I find it interesting that some time ago, the connections were already being drawn between maternal emotional distance/absence, the young, developing brain, and subsequent social withdrawal. I also think that my serious, intellectual, decidedly cool-tempered, proudly Oxford-educated grandmother might have qualified as a refrigerator mother to our mom. She was stiff and unaffectionate, undemonstrative and matter of fact. She certainly was not a fairytale baking and gift-bestowing type of grandmother, either, and when our mother was a child, pre-Holocaust, being of substantial means, I am sure nannies contributed to the distance. No wonder our mom, from my point of view, was disconnected and lacking in emotion, presence, and warmth.
Confidence or knowledge that repair is possible makes the inevitability of imperfection bearable and survivable.
In our part of the world, hovering in the shadow of Silicon Valley, where many over-achievers are made, horizons are crowded with the so-called Helicopter Moms. These are the micro-managing moms that are on top of the child’s every move, pushing and pulling, prescribing and buzzing, or roaring as it were around the suffocated and overstimulated child. The hovercraft is everywhere, researching and making decisions for the breathless little one, who has no opportunity to even see what the choices might be. Play dates, after-school activities, sports teams… These are the parents overzealous in the stands, cheering the child on as if their lives depended on winning the championships.
In his 2017 book, The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life, professional baseball manager Mike Matheny describes in detail the behavior of these roaring sports “chopper” parents, many of them trying to compensate for their own mediocrity, or failure, living vicariously through their young jock child. Mothers are far from immune. The incidence of Tommy John shoulder surgery, once unique to elite professional pitchers, has proliferated among younger and younger kids, being allowed and perhaps overly encouraged to practice and play too much.
Helicopter mothers are of course not limited to athletics, but it is a good example of the child being micromanaged, controlled, pressured to perform in some way that does not originate with their own will and preference, and too much. The same can be true for playing a musical instrument, some other form of art, academics… anything really. In effect, the child is a foil or surrogate, an alter-ego, and not a unique and treasured individual. Treasured most specifically for their exquisite uniqueness.
The term Tiger Mothers was originally associated with Chinese mothers who mercilessly pushed their children academically to the point of illness and injury. In effect, it is a variety of abuse. Although that is where we got the term, I am more inclusive in how I would use it, having seen examples of these poor, exhausted kids across national and ethnic borders. I have been amazed hearing what kids had to do to be accepted to a local high school, in the way of not only academics and sports, but additional extracurricular activities (not to mention the application process itself and the tuition costs of such schools!) I would be breathless and wiped out from merely hearing about it! Perhaps the mothers did not roar or bite, but ferocity of the wild feline often sadly did seem to fit. I would find myself uncertain as to whether it was good news or not when the final acceptance or rejection from the school arrived.
It may seem counterintuitive to recognize profound neglect in such seemingly attentive, “involved,” seemingly child-centered parents. It is similarly painstakingly challenging to help such a child of any age recognize their experience as neglect. Some may be blindly “successful” in their honed abilities and live dissociated and detached socially and/or emotionally: Kanner’s autism. Some may crash in their struggle around partnering, finding the fulfillment of the marriage and family part of the script beyond their super capabilities. Some may be like the superstar Miss USA, Cheslie Kryst, who seemed to have it all, and shocked the world when she committed suicide by jumping from a high building. As Amy Tan powerfully stated, “loneliness is not about being alone, it is about not feeling understood.”
In spite of being seemingly swaddled with devoted attention, when what is being seen is not really me, it can be some of the most devastating, life-destroying iterations of neglect. Especially as the child, whatever their age, feels so guilty and unentitled to feel bad.
I recently heard an interview with Michelle Obama, talking about her new book, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. She said that we can create authentically independent, strong, and self-actualized kids by being present as long as they need it, then showing them that we trust them enough to let them do it their own way. Parents evolve, she said, from “managers to advisors,” thus enabling kids to grow into, and feel free/able to manifest, their own unique authenticity; kids that have the delicious opportunity to say with pleasure and pride, “That’s me!”
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.
Some time ago, I wrote a blog about the man who cleaned my car windows, knowing I had no cash to give him. After it happened, I tucked a neatly folded twenty in a pocket of my purse and zipped it in, hoping I might see him again someday. For weeks, even months, I craned to look for him as I passed the gas station, but never saw him. Slowly he dimmed from my crowded mind, and the twenty languished and perhaps crumpled a bit as it got buried deeper by time. This morning, rushing, stealing a minute on my way to the office to get gas, a man with a squeegee approached.
Lo and behold, it was him! The other time he was wrapped in a blanket and was a rather shapeless, assumably human form. Today he was in black jeans and a loose, ragged hoodie, so I could see his skinny shape. His short, sparse hair was graying, his brown skin wrinkly in that ageless way of the streets. He came into focus; I mean, I could see him. I set about pumping gas, he set about cleaning windows, and when I finished, I dug up the twenty I had squirreled away for him all those months ago.
Approaching the man, I said to him, “I want to tell you something…” His eyes widened, startled, as if he weren’t used to being spoken to, or not softly. I said, “a long time ago, I was here. I did not have any money, and I told you I had no money. But you cleaned my windows anyway.” I said it again. “I had no money, but you cleaned my windows anyway! I was so moved!” My throat wavered with emotion, and my eyes filled just a bit. “Thank you.” And for a long moment, I looked deep into the ageless brown eyes, which could’ve been anywhere from 50 to 80 years old. They teared up a bit too. We were just two humans together on this earth. “Thank you,” I said, “you are a good man.” I gave him twenty. With a modest, toothless smile, he muttered, “God bless…” I don’t believe he had seen a twenty in a very long time. He finished making his way around the car, doing an extra good job on the windows, and I drove off into the early morning dark to start my day.
For that one long moment, we were simply two humans connecting in the complex and simple endeavor of being human on this earth. That nameless-to-me man could check how many of the most salient neglect boxes? He was homeless, of color, aged, who knows what else? At the end of the hard workday, warming up the car to go home, the gas gauge lit up “full,” and my heart lit up “full,” too.
Thirty years into a blessedly happy marriage, the early days seem like a dim nightmare. Cycles of mutual trauma activation were endless, and we could not stop fighting. I truly believed we were the couple from hell. After firing five couples’ therapists and burning through an exorbitant amount of money, we lucked onto one who practiced then new to me, Imago Relationship therapy. We learned the structured Intentional Dialog, and that is where things began to “pivot” (to use the latest “word du jour”) and improve, to the point where I quickly went out and trained in Imago, which was my portal into becoming a couples’ therapist. Before our own life-changing experience, I would not have dared to venture a toe into that swirling vortex, certainly if trauma and neglect were involved.
The first step in Intentional Dialog is mirroring, where the listener or “receiver” repeats back the precise words of the speaker or “sender” line by line. Needless to say, it was tedious and time-consuming at first, but I will never forget my first experience of mirroring. Having my very words come back to me, unadulterated, uncensored, unedited or “corrected,” simply, authentically mine, was dazzling. That was when I first came to understand the priceless value of being truly seen, heard, and known.
From the very beginning, the nascent sense of self emerges from the intentional and consistent (“enough”) presence and mirroring of the mother or primary caregiver. Seeing one’s own reflection in the loving eyes of the other, resonating from right hemisphere to right hemisphere, the child’s brain slowly develops, a rhythm emerges between the two, self-regulation and a growing default which evolves into “me,” begins to form. Mirroring is the seed from which the human organism sprouts, grows, blooms, and fruits. Being seen and known is a core, essential developmental hub, and it is what is glaringly and tragically absent, or largely so, in neglect. Neglect is tantamount to being born, or cast into the world without a spine. How is one to stand up? No wonder neglect, barely visible to the untrained eye, is the most devastating of all trauma.
Having my very words come back to me, unadulterated, uncensored, unedited or “corrected,” simply, authentically mine, was dazzling. That was when I first came to understand the priceless value of being truly seen, heard, and known.
Like a caterpillar into a butterfly, cheesemaking is another seemingly magical metamorphosis. My little measuring spoons begin at 1/64 of a teaspoon: a minuscule amount of some microbial culture added to the vat of simple milk inspires a bubbling cauldron of coagulation into something solid, wonderfully nutritious, and delicious.
So it is with mirroring – being truly seen, heard, understood, and known: these immeasurably primal and fundamental developmental experiences are the essence of being, and being in a relationship. A measure of that elixir is the birthright of the fortunate. It is the traumatically missing experience of neglect, most necessary for healing. And every time we experience a moment of it, in therapy, in all manner of relationships, in the world, one’s sense of self is fertilized, reinforced, and encouraged.
Although I occasionally had clients who had been homeless sometime before I met them, my experience with the window-washing man woke me up to realizing, that perhaps I had never really looked at and seen a homeless person as an actual person; more than simply an avatar of the “homeless problem” which is notorious and ubiquitous here in San Francisco. First, recognizing and then looking into the eyes of this man, reminded me of the essential and transformative magic of real “sight.”
Mirroring is a prime ingredient in the psychotherapy of trauma and neglect, not sufficient, but unquestionably necessary, as is the presence which makes it all possible. And indeed, my clean windshield makes it possible for me to see! I hope our window cleaning protagonist is having a good breakfast somewhere!
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.
When we were kids, every year about this time, a little old man would show up early in the morning at our door, all dressed up in a well-worn dark suit and tie, with a yarmulke on his head and a tattered old prayer book under his arm. He would look up sheepishly from under his bushy brows and mutter with a smile, “Is this the Big One?” Our dad called him “Old Man Horowitz,” or sometimes “Horrible Horowitz.” He was coming to catch a ride to temple for the Yom Kippur service if he had the right day, which he often did not.
Yom Kippur is one of the “high holidays,” the most important days of the Jewish year: a day of fasting where the service is all day long. Once he got his formal career, our dad was a cantor, and he rather disdained what he called the “once-a-year crowd,” which were the congregants who only showed up on the high holidays and were not seen or heard from the rest of the year. He preferred to sing and have the refrains to his calls be from a full sanctuary. (I grew up to be even “worse” than the once-a-year crowd, and I really don’t go at all.)
However, some things about Yom Kippur do appeal to me. It is a day of reflection, a day of taking stock or accounting of who I have been through the year, and what I may have done or not done. I generally do a lot of that anyway throughout the year, a conscious review of all aspects of myself. But I respect and appreciate assigning specific days of the year for that essential practice.
Moral injury is a relatively recently identified category of trauma that involves the experience of committing acts or failing to act in ways that run counter to one’s own value or belief system, usually outside of one’s control.
Admittedly, to me, Yom Kippur can have a moralistic tone. Also known as Day of Atonement, there is even a prayer with rhythmic breast-beating as misdeeds are recounted (which always oddly secretly evoked an image of Tarzan. But no disrespect intended!) I am deeply committed to evaluating, owning, and repairing the damage I propagate, and a systematic and “fearless” assessment, as we say in AA, is all good. It truly is the opposite of neglect: being intentional, self-aware, responsible, and open-eyed about my impact, especially in relation to other people. How much trauma, not only neglect trauma but all kinds of trauma, interpersonal or not, could be preempted, forestalled, or intervened upon in time, were this the practice of our species?
From a moral injury standpoint, such mindfulness offers a space for continued processing. Moral injury is a relatively recently identified category of trauma that involves the experience of committing acts or failing to act in ways that run counter to one’s own value or belief system, usually outside of one’s control. It is the scenario of having no choice or being obligated by authority or circumstance and then left with regret, guilt, rage, grief – all of the above about one’s behavior. Residual feelings may be agonizing to try and resolve.
I once had a client who, when she was 16 and newly driving, had had a fatal car accident in which her best friend was the passenger and was killed. My client, now in her forties, had had to live with the memory and the tragedy all those years. I know I have memories, perhaps that do not involve a literal death, that haunt and linger. To designate special time for continuing the process of acknowledgment and remorse, even ultimately self-forgiveness is a comfort. I do agree that stock-taking is always good.
An apology is a profoundly powerful interaction and deeply important to me. Most of us have rarely heard a truly heartfelt and healing apology from anyone who has hurt us, or hurt us the most. There are also many misconceptions surrounding it as if an apology is some sort of admission that “it is all my ‘fault’” or that it connotes some sort of defeat. Such beliefs often make for stinginess or with-holding of apologies, as if my owning my part will mean you don’t own yours – a sadly transactional way of viewing repair!
Perhaps apologizing reveals the unbearable admission that I have made a “mistake” or done something “wrong,” which may seem on the order of life-threatening. For many survivors of trauma and neglect, perfectionism may be on the order of survival, so making a mistake and just saying “I’m sorry” may feel almost like dying. Or it may be a quick resort to lip service to get it over with, meaning little if anything. On local public radio, the comedic/sardonic news program Le Show has as a regular feature “Public Apologies of the Week,” showcasing how truly ridiculous and often (perhaps unintentionally) quite hilarious they often are. However, in real-time, with authentic personal hurts, they are no joke at all.
These topics are massive, and I definitely have a book in me on them. I will make two key points about apology here. Many have heard me say them before. And although there are indeed preferred “apology languages” as per Gary Chapman’s little book The 5 Apology Languages: The Secret to Healthy Relationships, these are the “Esperanto” of apology:
First, if I say I am sorry, followed by an explanation of why I did what I did, the potential benefit of the apology evaporates. Poof! If I say, “I am sorry I was late. The traffic was so god-awful on the Bridge…” it may be true, but it sounds to the other who has just waited an hour for me and missed an important appointment like excuses, however “true” and unintended that might be. And the “injured” party is eclipsed by the story, which is again, all about me.
If instead I say, “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting! And you missed your appointment on top of that. I know how disappointing and annoying that would be, especially with how busy you are and how you rushed to be on time yourself.” This will have an empathic tone and probably land with the desired healing result. Even saying first, “The traffic was hellish, “ and then “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting!” keeps the hurt person in the primary emotional spotlight and out of further neglect. How many neglect survivors have waited, forgotten for interminably long times, because “something delayed or distracted” the other?
Secondly, if I say, “I am sorry you got upset!” however well-intentioned, it fails in the essential healing balm of ownership. By not naming what I actually did, you can be left wondering or feeling blamed as emotional or pathological, as if there is something wrong with you. Authentic, humble, (and prompt if possible!) ownership is key. My 2 cents!
For many survivors of trauma and neglect, perfectionism may be on the order of survival, so making a mistake and just saying “I’m sorry” may feel almost like dying.
Forgiveness is a big and complex topic. And although I am utterly committed to reparative growth on both the micro and macro level, where trauma and neglect are concerned, many questions can arise. It is true that often perpetrators of the worst harm are, in some ways re-enacting their own unresolved trauma. That certainly does not let them off the hook, but does it somehow open the heart for forgiveness? Well, sometimes, but certainly not always. If a young person who shoots up an innocent bunch of school kids is a child of tragic neglect, that is so sad all the way around. But what does that mean in the way of forgiveness? What do I owe him?
On the one hand, perhaps the most profoundly transformative experience of my life was arriving ultimately at hard-won authentic forgiveness for the person who may have hurt me more than anyone ever. But perhaps the impulse to forgive does not generalize to all sentient beings. Well, not for me. Unfortunately, I cannot whip up the compassion to forgive Derek Chauvin, whose merciless knee vanquished George Floyd in 2020. I am not that “good.” Again, much more to say on all of this.
Attachment researchers have taught us that even among the best of “good enough” caregivers, whose attunement and resonance are at the percentile highest, the percentage of time these attachment stars are in such optimal attunement is 30%! That is right! 30% is as good as it gets. All the rest of life is a dance of rupture and repair, rupture and repair, rupture and repair. I like to think of “repair” as my middle name, so impassioned as I am about it. And yet I know it is not for everyone. A commitment to forgiving when I can is the best I can do, and the humility to also know that the person who benefits the most when I do, is me!
The high holidays also mark the turn of the Jewish year. Another of the traditions that I do like is the apples and honey: dipping apples in honey for a sweet year to come. Shana tova, happy new year! And may this next cycle bring sweetness and ever more healing.
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.
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!