For me historically, holidays, anniversaries, birthdays and other marked dates that cycled around every year laden with hopes and expectations, fantasies and even magical prayers were always a terrible trap. Particularly those that were supposed to be occasion for lavish and abundant presents. In our family they of course usually were not. I certainly longed for that special gift on that one special day that would symbolize and communicate that I matter, that I was indeed seen, heard, and even cared for, at least for a minute. The non-Jewish kids thought that because Hanukkah has 8 days, we got 8 presents, one each night. Not so in our family, where it was more or less one. Invariably at least one of us wound up in the bathroom crying every year.
As I got older, my refuge came in being an impassioned creator of gifts. My little world became a lively whirlwind of craft, the sewing machine buzzing, the floor littered with colorful threads, scraps and wisps of the flighty tissue paper of Simplicity sewing patterns. It was happy little workshop, although it also failed in the quest to feel special, loved, seen, and valued. Nonetheless parts of that set of rituals persist to this day, although the media have rolled over many times. And a variety of craft has become an activity of absolute and unadulterated joy or I won’t do it. In our little cosmos of childhood neglect and trauma, however, the holidays approached with a family tradition of hope and dread. Norman Rockwell was most definitely MIA.
Although she never spoke of it, our mom must have had some sort of strong feeling about the holidays too, or at least some of them. She always told the story that she and Dad got married on Christmas Day in 1949, so they would “always have something to celebrate that day too.” And I am sure it is from her that I inherited my hopeless case of Christmas tree envy, as she also loved the glittering trees, and of course we could never have one. In my twenties when I lived with my “gentile” partner, every year we got our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. I loved watching the lights twinkle each night. Fire hazard or not, reluctantly we took the tree down on Valentines Day, swept up the little carpet of dry pine needles, and said good bye to the sweet smell for another by now only nine and a half months.
My husband and I emulated my parents just a bit, getting married the day after Thanksgiving, 1991. This year marks our 30th year of marriage, which is for so many reasons unimaginable. Between the trauma-neglect brain’s confusion surrounding time; the surreal blur of the Pandemic years, and the incredulity of not only living this long, but achieving and sustaining a joyful and lasting partnership… Well I never thought it would happen to me.
The nature of trauma and neglect is a surreality of time. The dorsolateral right prefrontal cortex which understands and regulates a sense of time, is one of the areas highjacked or knocked out by trauma of many kinds. It leaves a person feeling that this will never end. In a trauma ridden family home that is often true until the child gets old enough to get away. If you find it challenging or even impossible to practice affirmations and tell yourself something positive about tomorrow being another day, don’t compound it with self blame and censure. Just know that your poor old bushwhacked brain needs a hand and can get there. The cycling of the seasons, the inevitable approach of the seasonal markers of time getting away can be painful. It may seem to signify more loss: “life is passing me by…” Then the holidays threaten an even greater burden of weight.
And there can be the additional blight of anniversary reactions, another mysterious bearer of the trauma story. The body, emotional and sensory apparatuses log events in a wordless, impressionistic way such that even just the arrival of a season or time of year can bring a wash of felt experience or mood that may appear to “come from nowhere.” Perhaps the brain is summoning an emissary, like a “Ghost of Christmas Past” to deliver another chapter of the trauma story unknown to ordinary autobiographical memory. “Why do I feel so bad?” That may be why. It is easy to feel guilty or ashamed about not being cheerful and happy around these annual events. It is a ready reflex to sink into self-recrimination and compound the lousy mood with self-blame and self-hatred. That is one reason why I like physiology so much. I never imagined that science would be such a source of comfort! Repeat, “It is not your fault!”
It seems that every culture in the world, throughout time, has created its own repeating ritual traditions. They contribute to identity formation and a sense of continuity and even faith. It is often said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. However to keep doing the same thing and expecting the same result might be very sane indeed, and an adaptive practice. That has certainly been true of my little craft workshop.
When I got old enough, and blessedly have the resources and the privilege, my husband and I make a ritual of escape from the winter holidays. I despise what I call the “Three C’s” of these holidays: Commercialization, Consumerism and Commotion – at least in the US. The ever-present reminder to buy; what is certainly in the Bay Area off-the-charts traffic, not to mention the pressure to have families and loved ones to celebrate with… I find it all unbearable. We leave town and head for somewhere quiet, out of the way, and warm. One of the ironic perks of the COVID Pandemic, for those of us lucky enough to be healthy, was that all of that holiday uproar was perhaps tempered a bit. We just couldn’t mob the stores. Perhaps people did something parallel in the privacy of their own cyber worlds, but it was not as much “in my face” so to speak. I don’t mean to heartlessly and Scrooge-like disparage the ritual of gifts. I do also love them, when they have heart; are not obligatory or “transactional;” or part of some insidious unspoken “deal.”
I also like the annual reminder of charitable organizations, who toil tirelessly throughout the year, often doing the most difficult of work, and often on an underfunded shoestring budget, needing and requesting support. I feel better about their doing what I either can’t or won’t do myself, by helping as much as I can. I remember how some years ago now, San Francisco Mayor London Breed first got my “vote,” (not the most astute way of making political choices I’ll admit!) She wasn’t even running for anything yet at the time. I heard an interview where she told the story of growing up poor in San Francisco, raised by her grandmother. Without running water in their apartment, of course there was no money for Christmas presents. And then came Toys for Tots. “I got a present! I became that happy little girl who got a Christmas present!” Breed has loved Toys for Tots ever since, and certainly put it on the radar for me.
Although I am not religious, I do like the Jewish New Year tradition of self reflection. The Jewish New Year comes in the fall, usually in September so it coincided with what for me was the start of the school year. Nowadays I believe school starts in August which I view as a “crime against nature” as August to me represents high summer and is no time to start school! Anyway, the start of the school year was a laden annual marker in itself, and the injunction to review the past year and think ahead to the next one was a worthy and even somewhat natural practice. Cycles of the year, and known dates and events seemed to provide a welcome jog to my often-addled memory. Where was I last year on this date? And because it is a recognized date it may stand out in some way. Perhaps I can picture how I observed it then, which might open the flow to what my priority was then, what happened then? Where do I want to go in this next orbit around the sun? I used to journal. For some reason I don’t do that anymore although it can be a very useful practice.
IF we can do it without a whip I find self-reflection to be my go-to holiday observance. By whip, however, I mean self-reflection that is tinged with criticism, harsh regret and aspiration; or that smacks of judgment, even punishment. These are no way to celebrate a holiday! Hopefully I would never treat anyone else with tidings of judgment, blame and pressure to shape up! Why would I treat myself that way? There is even a contorted grandiosity in the expectation of exaggerated achievement or perfection; and there is a blessed humility in the act of heartfelt, realistic self-reflection, and flexible, fluid goal setting that allows for the unanticipated, which is often even better than what we planned.
Many do not know that the Hanukkah story is the story of a miracle. The “eternal light” is the ceremonial lamp that burns continuously in every Jewish sanctuary, symbolizing the eternal, unfailing presence of God. As the story goes, the Jews were embroiled in war with their then oppressors, and the eternal light in their Temple ran dangerously low on oil. At the key moment, there was only enough oil in the lamp to last one day, with the danger that the light would be extinguished. Miraculously the oil for one day lasted for eight, so the light burned on until the Jews were victorious, and able to replenish it. So besides being another celebration of victory over oppression, this miracle represents unending, uncompromising protection and comforting presence, maybe even hope? Not a bad symbol for our purposes I figure.
Milestones may also be a chronic rhythmic reminder of how painfully long recovery takes. One reason why I have been on an insatiable quest all these years, to learn all the newest and best evidence based treatment approaches for trauma, is that. It incenses me that after a childhood ravaged by overwhelming experiences not of one’s own making, survivors then have to spend years and seemingly endless amounts of money and time, to in effect, climb out of a hole and arrive in life. That is a tragic injustice as far as I am concerned, that I have dedicated my life to at least attempt to rectify. It is also important to know, that the devastating and seemingly endless duration is not your fault! Not your sloth or ineptitude.
Much of the deepest of injury is in the attachment systems of the brain and date back to developmental stages in infancy. This is not to make the duration appear worse or hopeless, but rather to “normalize” it. And I can honestly say, and this is one of those annoying things that therapists might say, every bit of my own journey which often felt (and even occasionally still does!) feel endless, serves me. As Bruce Hornsby says in his wonderful and timeless song Swan Song “To be sure I don’t regret much, not much at all.”
I believe recovery is a kind of miracle in itself. I do think of mine that way, replete with the many angels who entered my life as healers, teachers and helpers of all sorts. It is a good time to remember that, at least for me. So my wishes for all are Peace, Health, Love, and with luck, even some Joy. And because I can’t help myself, I must add:
Cheese on Earth!
Best wishes of the season!
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 our apartment building in New York, everyone seemed to have numbers on their arms, sad eyes and thick German accents. My great Aunt Gertrud would take me to the park in my stroller. She called me a “dickopf “ (fathead) because I was such a “terrible eater” right from the start. On Saturdays I often went with my dad on the subway to the orthodox “schul,” our special time together. I would sit next to him in the men’s section, my little legs dangling from the hard wooden bench, and braid the fringes on his “talis.” Other than that I did not get out that much. Mr. Shall the nice old man who painted portraits of each of us (see the portrait of myself age four); and Mrs. Bodine my piano teacher, were all in the building. So it was easy for me to believe, the whole world was like us.
It was only when I went to public school kindergarten that I began to get the confusing messages about identity that got more and more confusing as I got older. Fit in, but not too much. I learned the complicated word “assimilate,” which accompanied the complicated messages. My mother’s family, even though they had nothing, still identified with an intellectual elite, my grandmother proudly being one of the first women to graduate from Oxford. She tried desperately to talk my mother out of marrying my father, who never went to high school, (although he “showed” her years later by getting his MA from Stanford.) My dad was simply ferocious about our marrying Jews. So we were in some ways “superior?” certainly and thankfully not like them. And yet fleeing hideous rejection and persecution, many here were ignorant or prejudiced, so we might have to hide or prove ourselves as worthy or equal, or “pass.” Oy vey. And that was even before all the identity challenges of adolescence and then of moving to Indiana!
In the Colin Kaepernick movie “Colin in Black and White,” is one poignant scene, where the teenaged Colin has reached the long awaited milestone of getting his drivers’ permit and is out practicing with both of his white parents in the car. He is doing nicely, when he is randomly pulled over by a cop, apparently for “driving while black.” His father pipes up quickly saying, “What did he do, Officer?” The cop looks over at Colin’s dad, sitting in the passenger seat, and sternly asks, “Who are you?” His mother jumps in from the back seat, “We’re his parents.” And quickly adds, “he’s adopted.” It sounds almost apologetic. Variations on that scene repeat in the course of the movie, and one can only imagine how many times it recycled in his life. It reminded me of a time when I had a small crash on a bike trip in Oregon that left me with a whopping shiner. Walking down the small town street with a black eye, I could see people looking at me, looking at my husband, and glancing back and forth between us, trying not to be too obvious. I remember how ashamed I felt. Somehow it matters who others, even strangers think I am.
Colin’s life and identity formation as a person of color in a white world, was far more complicated than I knew as I saw him heroically taking a knee. Obama unfortunately does not address this experience in his recent memoir, which I doggedly trudged all the way through to its final 700th page.
This morning in the wee hours I heard another compelling interview, this time a young Pakistani man whose family were immigrants in Northern Ireland. I knew a tiny smattering about the fractured identity of Ireland. I remember when I was traveling in Latin America in 1981, following the news in the Spanish language newspapers of the Irish freedom fighter Bobby Sands as he struggled through an ultimately fatal hunger strike. The young interviewee, arriving in Ireland anxiously discovered that there was nary a brown face anywhere to be seen. Making it even more complicated was that his father was a devout, strict and authoritarian Muslim; and his mother had joyfully discovered and embraced Catholicism. Some of his childhood memories involved his mother secretly sneaking him out to go to be baptized, later to confession and ultimately Confirmation. These little clandestine escapades were exciting and special times with Mom. His father on the other hand, was fierce, harsh and demanding of both his mother and himself. Yet much like myself, his brutal father was also his greatest role model in some ways. I have always said that all of my best qualities are from my father, and he is the one whom you will most often hear me quoting and rhapsodizing. It has taken me years and decades to integrate these seemingly opposing pieces, and I suppose I am still not finished. This man felt quite similarly.
Caught in a clash of multiple identities, Irish, Pakistani, Muslim, Catholic, father, mother, he was plagued by the question, “who am I?” It was unanswerable. And he had a brewing rage toward his father that was only building, when in his teens, his father was mysteriously and violently murdered. The circumstances and facts of his father’s murder were never resolved, and his massive swirl of emotions and identity questions became a lifetime agony. I thought of my own little conflict, and how it has challenged me, and in comparison with that? Wow! And now I am doing what I always tell everyone not to do! It is pointless to compare or minimize one trauma against another! Don’t do it!
The developmental neuroscience researchers teach us that the sense of Self develops in the Default Mode Network (DMN) of the brain, deep in the brain’s most primitive region. This is like the idle mode of a car, where the car settles when it is not “under task” meaning in drive or park. It is where we drop for self-reflection or relaxation, if we are lucky. The infant brain develops in resonance with the brain of the caregiver, right hemisphere to right hemisphere. We begin to grow a Self through the consistent presence of a caring other: the gaze, the touch, the song, the loving emotional tone. That is how the little circuits begin to form and fire and wire, long before any of the complexities of life events intervene, distort, and compel.
So you may ask, why do I feel so bad? Why do I have so much confusion about who I am or what to do, or what is “right” or “good enough” or “real?” The answers may lie deep in the brainstem, long before we had the equipment for autobiographical memory, let alone the words. We needed that consistent other, and when that failed or was insufficient or absent, we lack for the essential tool to make sense out of all the many complications that might come later. For healing we need the consistent others, the touch, the song and the positive emotion.
As the Dalai Lama is known for saying “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible!” I would emphasize, be kind to yourself!
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 attachment literature Berkeley luminary Mary Main eloquently describes the “dilemma without solution.” For this bereft infant the source of safety and the source of terror, reside in the same person, who happens to be the most important person in the world: the primary parent. As every human baby is born into the world in effect a bundle of needs, these infants are born into an impossible bind, a perennial struggle with reaching toward and backing away all at once, in a painful and clumsy vacillation, that culminates ultimately in devastating freeze or collapse; and despair, ultimately devolving into numbing or dissociation. They are met with this destiny at their very arrival.
Dissociation is a confusing term in our vocabulary, because it corresponds to two related but distinct responses. It can mean both an emotionless, dull or numbing absence or failure of presence. And/or it can mean splitting off, i.e., separating or disconnecting into parts of the Self. Both can be the tragic outcome of this primordial neglect.
Admittedly I have two gnawing and often unpopular biases. One is what I call the “myth” of unconditional love. By nature, the human infant remains dependent longer than perhaps any other mammal. We would hope to be received and welcomed as a “bundle of joy,” a worthy hope that nature prepares us for. Nature’s design also is that the responsibility and the task of parents to attend to the unending needs of their infant child. That is why babies are so cute and irresistably charming, and why our systems are particularly laced with oxytocin, the love chemical, at this crucial time. Unconditionality is the birthright of that child, it is the parents’ unending “job” to provide and attend.
The child infant of course, has no words, only a cry. A “good enough,” present parent learns to differentiate which cry indicates which need: which indicates “I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m hungry, I’m lonely, I’m scared…” And again, according to the attachment researchers, the best of the “good enough” parents only get it “right” 30% of the time, the rest being a persistent dance of rupture and repair. In these happy cases, the child learns repair is possible. It is safe to receive or not, to need, to hope and to want, because one way or another, eventually we will return to homeostasis. Eventually Mama will pick me up and hold me, and all will be well. Gradually and with luck, we learn regulation. And this lucky child will also grow up with an ease about fundamental human need.
The child of neglect is not so lucky. Even hoping to receive becomes risky business. By any means possible, the child might try and fail to get attended to; get what they need for a while. They will experiment with various strategies: being cute, funny, inordinately smart, they might protest, attempt to be very good, even taking care of the parent. I am sure I tried all of them. In fact, my mother used to recall how at the age of three, little Ruthie was organizing the “little kids” in play, dancing around a tree. She would smile about it, I was desperately already then earning my keep.
When all else fails the child withdraws into the lonely devastation of numbing. And as placid as it may look from the outside, it is a state of high anxiety. From the inside it may come to feel like “nothing,” and there is no category for feeling. Self- reliance becomes something of an assumption or an identity. Need becomes a mortal enemy.
I have found that where many clients might reject the neglect designation, “self-reliance” seems to fit for them, and as it is highly regarded in the American culture of “rugged individualism” it may even seem like a compliment. However, the relationship to our fundamental species determined interpersonal need, our humanness, is distorted. Somewhere, deep inside, most likely far outside of awareness, the longing is logged: the missing experience of unconditionality, of being adored with nothing expected of us; of being understood without words, because the other makes it their task and their mandate to understand us; the expectation that our needs make sense to the other and will be gratified. And sadly our chance at interpersonal unconditionality, does not come again.
In adult life, however, the need might rear up, and center on an intimate partner. This is where my bias comes in: the myths that persist, in the fantasy of the child turned adult, is what I call the “myth” of unconditional love, of having a partner whose mandate it is or “should be,” to “meet my needs.” It is a trap, because (I believe) it will never again be someone else’s “job.” Sadly, by no ones’ “fault” that window has closed. There are schools of thought and even of relationship therapy that teach that these are reasonable hopes or even demands. I am afraid I am not of that school. Some couples argue about it. And it can be a very hard sell.
These last few historic years have faced the world with many unsavory truths. Two of them prominently featured human knees: George Floyd was brutally and heartlessly murdered with a heavy, unrelenting knee to his neck for over nine minutes, despite his cries and gasps for breath; and Colin Kaepernick’s heroic defiantly “taking a knee” in unrelenting protest against the unrelenting racism of this country. Both helped to fuel a growing Black Lives Matter movement, which I fervently hope will not get lost in the fickle march of history.
One thing I especially like about the language of Black Lives Matter, is that it forces the question of relevance and the hierarchy of our values. With or without our awareness, it addresses what we do or do not deem important. How much do we in fact care about the needs and dignity of others? There it is again, the often-inconvenient intrusion of human need, our own, the needs of others. How do we rank them? How do we respond to them? Both George Floyd and Colin Kaepernick have become kind of heroes to me, and firm gentle reminders, of what matters.
I have been doggedly watching for news of Colin over the now maybe five years that he has been black listed (no pun intended!) for his outspokenness about race and prejudice in the NFL and in this country, thus proving and consolidating his point. It has been a great sacrifice on his part. I eagerly looked forward to his recently released Netflix documentary Colin in Black and White. Last weekend I watched it.
Colin was adopted at birth by a kind hearted white couple, and grew up in a white world. The movie gives a closeup of his early years, and the many contradictions of life in a white and unintegrated world. It gives a whole new meaning to the word integration. And all the challenges of identity formation, the main requirement of our developing years, are heightened and further complicated by the unrelenting intrusion of race, and the additional complications of looking so “different” from his family.
Although the movie was perhaps disappointing to me in that it did not run very deep, there was one thing that struck me, and that harkens back to our theme. Colin was an all-around super star athlete. He excelled at football, baseball and basketball. When the time came, he was offered full ride baseball scholarships to virtually all of the most highly regarded universities in the US. But his dream was to be a quarterback. That was all he really wanted. Colin passed on all the baseball offers, holding out and tirelessly training for the elusive quarterback offer that almost never came. It was amazing to watch him painfully and steadfastly continue to work hard, endure and determinedly wait. When it finally does arrive, the viewer can see what a great sacrifice it has been for him to hold out for what was most wanted and cherished, and then to risk it and in effect lose it for his beliefs.
It is almost a mystery how dogged he is about his “first love,” being a football QB. Until we get to what for me, was the most poignant line in the whole movie. Describing his adoption story, he recounts, “my parents were all set up to adopt another baby.” He even knows her name, which I do not recall. At the very last moment, they learn that the baby they thought they were adopting, is “not available.” We are not told why, nor the race of the original baby. But they are offered Colin instead. His parents accept Colin, whom they love and thoughtfully care for and raise. But in the most profound and telling line in the film, Colin tells us, “But from the very beginning of life, I have never been anyone’s first choice.” He still languishes on the sidelines.
One of the perks of disordered sleep is that I catch some of the most quirky and extraordinary, imaginative programming on Public Radio. In this case, Public Radio Remix in the wee hours on Sunday mornings. The other day I heard a story about “the fadeout,” a particular style of ending songs that was popularized in the music of the 1970’s. I was fascinated, mostly because admittedly, I had never given a moment’s thought to how songs end. I never noticed how all AC/DC songs have the same ending, or the unusual, not always originally intentional endings of some of the most well known songs on the Beatles’ Sargent Pepper album, classic symphonic endings, even folkloric “shave and a haircut” type endings, or the “fadeout.” I simply never really asked the question: How do we end things? How do we determine what matters? Your “needs?” My needs? Football? Baseball? How do we harmonize them, integrate them, cooperate with nature? How do we order them with grace and dignity?
I woke up the other day with a crazy image. I saw two “bundles of needs,” old wrapped handkerchief-tied-on-a-stick type bundles, as from fairytale book illustrations. They have hands outstretched for a handshake. These two bundles of needs are greeting each other with “Pleasure to meet you!” What a great thought! With that, I fade out for today.
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.
Another remarkable BBC story in the wee hours inspired and compelled me; an interview with an Afghan refugee speaking about his narrow escape from the death grip of the Taliban, actually from death itself. Knowing he was in perilous danger, of survival necessity he had planned his precarious flight from the country. He describes his painful good-by to his dearest friend. His friend, understandably desperately worried about him, had wrapped his own passport in a little case. In the course of their heartfelt exchange he placed it securely in the speaker’s left side chest shirt pocket. The speaker tried to decline, but his dear friend, insisted that he might need it, and gently patted his friend’s left chest pocket. Hugging goodbye, they did not want to let go, not knowing if they would see each other again.
Sure enough, the protagonist was apprehended by a band of Taliban, badly shot up, left for dead, but he wasn’t. He woke up in a hospital, badly injured and not knowing quite what had happened. He had lost an eye and numerous bullets had to be excavated from various parts of his body. But no bullet had penetrated his heart. His friend’s passport in its little case, however, was riddled with shrapnel. By tucking the passport securely in his left chest pocket with great love, is friend had saved his life. Obviously, he recovered and healed enough to find his way out of the country to tell this story of angels on BBC. Moved, almost to tears, I was grateful to be up in the middle of the night to hear it.
When I was a little girl, I use to love to watch Queen for a Day. It was not exactly a “game show,” but had real life contestants competing for some larger than life prize. They were all women with tragic, hard luck stories. The winner would be crowned with a sparkling tiara, and handed a huge bouquet of red roses. The band played Pomp and Circumstance as she cried, walked ceremonious across the stage, and went to accept the prize: the much needed home when she teetered on the brink of homelessness; the desperately needed surgery for a sick child, or whatever her tremendous winnings were to be. I would cry as I watched her. Sometimes I would hold a small pillow in the crook of my arm pretending it was red roses like hers, and march with her. I loved that show. And I cried because I was so lonely, and because nothing like that would ever happen to me. Or so I thought. Now I know that is not true. Angels are all around, if we are paying attention.
When I was a recently certified sex therapist, I was pretty shy and withdrawn. As I always did with everything I would take all the trainings I possibly could, to try to fortify myself with knowledge, which as we all know, only helps so much if one has the integral sense of worthlessness that comes with neglect. I could never quite know enough to “break even,” or be as good as or as smart as the others. It was news to me when I heard in a training that we all become sex therapists because we “think about sex 24 hours a day.” And we all think we have sexual “dysfunctions” because no one ever speaks aloud about such things. Except, as I was to learn, in sex therapy trainings, or some of them anyway. There I might discover that I was not the only one.
I met Gina as she was a senior clinician who gave workshops all over the country. Sometimes I could attend one without even having to travel. I had read all of her books, at that time, I guess there were about 5 of them. I liked her 4-prong approach to sexuality which included body, mind, emotion and spirituality. She was a lovely, kind person and I learned a lot from her.
Some years later, Gina was vested with producing a special issue of the Journal of Marital and Sexual Therapy on “Extraordinary Sex Therapy.” I dislike academic journals so much that I am not proud to say, I avoid them for the most part. Probably because it was Gina, I took a chance and submitted a manuscript. Lo and behold it was accepted. With Gina’s help I landed my first ever academic journal article. It was followed by a few more over the years, although admittedly I have never particularly sought out that genre. That special issue of JMST was later published as a little book.
Fast forward to 2017, I was beginning to gestate the book that became my recently released book on neglect. I sought out a good solid consultant to help me with my book proposal and I found Waverly. She was a pro: extremely knowledgeable and experienced with helping people write book proposals that bore fruit into published works. She was no-nonsense and said exactly what she meant- not always what I wanted to hear but I knew I could trust her, which goes a long way with me. And although she was not warm and fuzzy, she was patient and I knew she wanted the best for me. We hammered out a proposal, and she taught me about resilience and persistence with the many drafts required to come out with something good, which I think we did. I was so grateful.
When the proposal was done, then I needed to find a home for the book, ie a publisher. I thought to write to Gina, and ask her if she might have time to look over my proposal and perhaps have any ideas where I might send it. Gina responded right away. She was generous and welcoming as ever. She also told me she really could not take anything on now. Then she told me she was in an advanced stage of terminal cancer and was getting ready to die. This news was so sad to me. But a deeply spiritual person, Gina was quite peaceful about it. 80 years old, she felt she had had a very good life. Content, she was spending her remaining time with her partner of many years and with great equanimity and even joy, getting ready to go. She did, however, offer me the name and contact information of her publisher at Routledge, where she had published all of her by now 6 books. She said “Just tell her I sent you; my name is gold over there.” So I did.
Shockingly, I got a return email within the hour. Gina’s publisher told me that she headed the sexuality department at Routledge, but that she had forwarded my proposal to their trauma editor. The trauma editor also responded immediately, and told me to send my proposal along. No joke that Gina’s name was gold! And everyone at Routledge was so prompt, responsive and kind to me. I did not know if that was because Gina had prepared the path for me, or because that is the culture of the organization, but it was a surprising and spectacular relief and joy that even my often-distorted perception could not deny. It was not long before I received a welcoming acceptance. We were good to go.
When I went to tell Gina the good news, and to thank her again, she had already departed.
Waverly and I had done so well together. She was delighted that our proposal had been successful. As I thought it through, I thought I would like to work with Waverly through the whole writing process. I like to write with an additional pair of eyes, chapter by chapter, to keep me accountable and on schedule, and also to help monitor my output as we went along. Re-writing is never easy for me, and doing it in smaller chunks, or sometimes what seemed like “wads” was somewhat easier. I wanted to hire Waverly to be my coach.
When I contacted Waverly to inquire, uncharacteristically she did not respond. I re-sent the email several times, resorted to text and finally even the old-fashioned telephone. Still silence. Then I began to wonder, was she OK? I knew she had not been feeling well.
I called the organization where I had found her and asked her colleague, “Has Waverly changed her contact info? Is she OK?” He paused and softly responded, “Oh Waverly, she passed away.” Apparently much like my own mother, she had been feeling mostly fine, then too late, an advanced and metastasized cancer became detectable, that precipitously and rapidly whisked her away. How very sad. Waverly was close to my age, and unlike Gina, she had had not time to prepare for the journey.
Both of these two precious women, delivered me safely to a worthy publisher before they took their leave. The book is at least in part, the work of angels.
The little girl with the imaginary roses never could have dreamed it, that such grace, such miracles “could happen to me?” I once found a simulated-antique large wall hanging that prominently reads “Work hard and be nice!” It has been hanging in my bathroom for many years, to keep me mindful. If I do that and pay attention, I will notice all the angels, and even perhaps better yet, sometimes be one.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on the 31st August. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
As I was pondering the recurring devastating dynamic between a couple I work with, a memory from my own life bubbled up. For those of us who have the minimal and spotty memory of early life, typical of neglect, these little forays into memory are rather like wandering through a curio shop. Much of what is there is uninteresting “junk.” But occasionally there is something surprising, or worthy of a closer look. Out of nowhere I found myself reflecting on a joke my father used to tell.
Our dad had a very quirky way of telling jokes. He thought he was pretty funny, but I remember also seeing a book by Henny Youngman a Jewish comic of that generation, and sometimes other joke books lying around, so he must have studied a little bit to make himself a more entertaining singing-waiter back in the day, and later in his profession as a cantor. When he told a joke, the “body” of the joke was unremarkable. But as he approached the punchline, he would burst into peels of laughter, to the point that he could hardly get the words of the punchline out. It would take a few tries. By the time he actually told us the punchline, we were all doubled over with contagion laughter and barely heard it. Then he would repeat the punchline maybe six times, and we would all be in stitches. In “ordinary consciousness,” it may not have been funny at all, but these moments of family hilarity now seem somehow sweet.
I remember one joke however, well I don’t remember the joke, I just remember the punchline, which was an emphatic “Ernest, Answer me!” And for some reason I just did not think it was funny. Ernest Ansermet (pronounced like “answer me”) was a world-class Swiss conductor of our dad’s era, a contemporary of Debussy and Stravinksy, so it was a play on words. But to me, a wife being desperate for her husband to just speak, was anything but amusing. I found myself remembering with a chill, the urgency, even terror I felt when the loved other would clam up, withdraw, or appear in a word, to abandon me.
Even before we got the PTSD diagnosis, neuroscience and psychology, and ultimately all the rest of us, were familiar with the “fight-flight” response to fear and trauma, even when we had little understanding of what trauma was. Later we learned that there was an additional adaptation or reaction to danger or fear: the “freeze” response. (We have since learned of a number of others, but those will be for another day). The freeze is the response to the “inescapable shock” situation, when fight and flight are simply impossible, like in the case of chronic torture, or abuse in the home where the nightmare does not stop, and the child cannot leave; or a prey animal being cornered and trapped by a larger, stronger, or faster predator. It also may be a kind of “death feigning” where the prey animal pretends to be dead so the predator will lose interest and just go away. Most predators don’t want to eat dead prey.
In the case of early neglect, the child learns early, that there is no point in crying or protesting, because there is no response, certainly not a favorable response. So withdrawal into the self is an understandable adaptation, and most likely becomes a default. If I know I have no impact, why bother? I might make myself more of an irritant or a blight than I already experience myself to be, or just simply call attention to myself which may not be such a good idea. Of course these are not “cognitions” or thoughts per se, as the cognitive apparatus is not nearly developed for a long time. But they are “procedural” or bodily, emotional or sensory modes that are installed rather like software, through experience. And they are stimulated in sensory ways at points later in life, so not experienced as “memory”.
One of the most devastating experiences that a young child can have, is what I refer to as the tragic poverty of “mirroring”. Mirroring is where the child experiences being seen, heard, and known, and in effect, “felt.” “Feeling felt” or an empathic reflection back to me, of what is accurately and receptively “me” is how I come to know who I am, and also how I learn to recognize and express feelings. The child of neglect has little or no experience of being mirrored. And without that, there are gaping holes and blank spots. As a cheese maker I object to these holes being likened to the holes in cheese. In the cheese-making world, those highly desirable, elegant markers of a good “Alpine” cheese, are referred to as “eyes”. In neglect, they are more like ravenous caverns of emptiness and hunger. They might be experienced as dull flatness, physical hunger, or some other misguided attempt at getting “filled up”.
As a result of the failure of mirroring, the child misses out on an emotional “education”. The capacities to perceive, identify and express one’s own emotions, and the emotions of others is minimal at best, as is a comprehension of why that would matter anyway. If the child is male, US and western culture will re-enforce a cognitive or “logical” default, and possibly devaluation of emotion. Although neuroscience has taught us that emotion is an important aspect of cognition and even coherent thought, that can be a very hard sell. Meanwhile if my partner is unexpressive of their own emotion, or rather oblivious to mine, if they are a child of neglect, it may be, not because they don’t care, but literally that they can’t – or not yet.
Powerful change is possible in psychotherapy. In a well facilitated couple’s therapy, a child of neglect can experience strong emotion safely and learn to comprehend and process it. Through experience some of the important brain areas are helped to develop later in life. Neurofeedback is another royal road to emotional intelligence, as it might bring relevant brain areas into connection with each other. None are a quick fix, and like working out, take consistency and practice to sustain change.
Of course, it can be very confusing when there is both early shock trauma, or incident trauma and neglect, which is most often the case. A child most likely cannot be assaulted, beaten, or somehow ravaged, with an attentive, caring protector present. Or if they are, there is a caring and comforting response process that can make a world of difference in impact of the injury. Often the failure of having a place to turn with the traumatic event is even more traumatic than the injury itself. When there is a history of both: incident trauma and attachment trauma/neglect, often the default for that child is fight-flight.
In the couple we opened with (a heterosexual couple although that need not be the case;) she had a tragic history of both. When he seemed to go silent and withdraw, she would vociferously protest. Her loud cries would awaken in him a helpless overwhelm, that left him speechless. When he did not speak, she would panic, and get louder and more shrill. He would withdraw farther. She would by now be semi-hysterical, running from a tiger, unaware of how both extreme and critical her screaming was. He felt so ill equipped to do anything to make it stop, that sometimes he would leave the room, the house, even leave her somewhere. I have seen couples mired in this dynamic where one partner was left on a dark street in an unfamiliar town, and the other drove off. They persisted a long time in their agonizing pattern. When this unbearable dynamic would constellate in my office, as it could on any topic, I could feel the sense of life-threatening emergency of both in my own body. It could begin with either partner. (And that was a hard sell indeed!). Both felt terribly victimized by the other. It might take weeks to recover. Both were desperate to learn what to do. These two were not unique by any means.
So, what is to be done? Well, there is little hope of convincing anyone that no one is to blame! At least not while activated. I always tell people, “The reason why you have me, is so there is one person in the room who is in present time! Everyone else is deep in their traumatic history. But there is no way to say that when we have two brains deep in trauma. So, what to do?
First of all, quiet the nervous system enough so the thinking brain comes back online. I might as well be “passing gas” in the wind, so to speak as to try and teach anything to anyone in that state. It is even hard to do this much, but I try to teach them: “stop action!”.
Take a break and breathe. Your breath is your best friend. Your inhale is ‘sympathetic’ or stimulating. Your exhale is ‘parasympathetic,’ or calming. So looooong exhale. I recommend closing the eyes, breathe in on six counts, out on nine, and do that, ten times. No one leaves the room.
It is hard to teach this, but as we learn to revisit the tragic stories of those two little kids, it eventually becomes easier. If from the quieter state, either one is able to say, “please talk to me…” or the other is able to say simply “I don’t know what to say,” or “I was afraid if I said anything I would make it worse…” a gentle truce may become possible. That is our goal.
I always wondered why I loved that old song by Peter Gabriel, “Please Talk to Me!”.
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.
Driving to work one day last month, I heard a snippet of news about a young man named Spencer Elden, now 30 years old, suing Nirvana and Kurt Cobain’s estate for a 1991 photograph of him, taken and used without his consent. He was a four-month-old infant then, he was naked, and the photo was displayed on the cover of a Nirvana record album. “What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody? I didn’t really have a choice.” Elden’s father received $200.00 at the time for the photo. No papers of any kind were ever signed. The album ironically called Nevermind, sold thirty million copies. It is still in circulation, with the photo. When I went to Amazon to have a look at it, admittedly, I was nauseated.
I remember when I was pretty young, probably not much more than 8. My dad got certified to be a “Mohel” in Yiddish pronounced “Moyel.” The moyel is the religious officiant at a “Bris” or circumcision. I remember being shocked at the time that an 8-day old infant was subjected to “that”. And my memory from that the time, is that no anesthesia was administered, with the rationale that an infant would not remember. We now know that although the brain’s anatomical capacity for autobiographical memory is not developed yet in an infant, and certainly not an infant of 8 days old, the emotional and physical imprinting may very well be. We certainly see experienced in therapy “procedural” and emotional memory from many ages where the cognition is missing.
With survivors of childhood neglect who often remember so little from their often very empty childhoods, that is much of what we have to go on, to re-construct a narrative of their lives. At the time that I first learned of this, I was horrified. I did not understand what difference it makes whether the child does or does not remember the pain. Would that mean it does not matter? The agony is real NOW! My 8-year-old mind was confused and shocked, and I didn’t get it. Apparently now, according to Wikipedia, anesthesia is recommended. I also could not understand why my dad would want to do that. Never mind the dignity, safety, or comfort of that little being.
As the research progresses about trauma and developmental trauma, we are coming to understand that the injury of being ignored, unconsidered, forgotten, not known, neglected, may be the most profound injury there is. Although I am not one for “comparing” trauma, i.e., who has the “worst worst?” because of our evolutionary design where attachment is so fundamentally wound in with survival for our species, it makes sense. Of all mammals, humans remain dependent on the primary caregivers perhaps the longest. We are hard wired to be connected, and when we are not, or not in a way that we can feel, the suffering and the deficits are profound.
I remember perhaps forty-five years ago I read a book called Hope Under Siege: Terror and Family Support in Chile. It is interesting to me how certain things stick in memory when so many of the countless good books I have read over my long book-worm years, are long forgotten. I read it before I came to psychology as an area of study, long before I knew anything about attachment or trauma. It was during my impassioned anti-imperialist years, a book about political prisoners held in the horrific prison camps during the months and years immediately following the fascist Pinochet coup in Chile on September 11th, 1973. The prisoners were brutally tortured, often with electric shock. I won’t go into specifics here, but I remember being haunted by the accounts and often literally kept awake by the images that lingered from reading about them. The prisoners of course were desperately isolated and alone. For all their families knew, they had “disappeared” and many of them in fact were never seen again.
What the book described, which made so much sense to me even then, was that the prisoners who had strong family ties, who could feel the connection and support inside of themselves, even when they were far away, even when perhaps the family had no idea where they were, those were the prisoners who did not “break” under torture. Those were the ones who did not give away any information that betrayed or compromised a comrade. Certainly not all of them, but the premise of the book, was that strong family connection, that is deeply internalized, can be sustaining under even the most dire of conditions. Although PTSD was not yet understood, let alone named or defined then, I am guessing that those who survived, of the securely attached, fared better in PTSD terms. That is just a guess.
We do know however, that certainly childhood trauma in the family, and often even outside of the home, cannot happen when someone is paying attention, watching, noticing, protecting, and taking care of that child. And the response of the parent when the child does tell, if that were to occur, is critical to the outcome. If the parent is minimizing, dismissive, unconcerned, or denies the child’s experience, that compounds the trauma, or may even be worse than the original traumatic event. And that happens way too often. “Oh, never mind” is an attitude. We want to forget or deny the unbearable.
Mr. Elden disappeared from the news. Who? Forgotten almost immediately after he made “interesting” news for a minute. The cycles of news are fickle and quick. We are distressed or moved by something for a minute, until another sensation comes along to take its place. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Spencer Elden, out of sight, out of mind. It is the essence of neglect.
Hope Under Siege is long out of print. I finally found a copy on eBay for $72.00. I will be interested to read it again.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” is now published. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
In 1968 I almost died of anorexia. I was 13. We now know that the whole spectrum of eating disorders are desperate attempts at self-regulation, and rife among survivors of all manner of trauma. We have a bazillion dollar eating disorder treatment industry and literature, although from my jaundiced view, none are very effective. Back then, I had a huge stash of books stolen from the library, (stolen because I was too ashamed to check them out,) about food, weight loss and nutrition. Only one was “psychological” in any way, and not much help in understanding what I was doing. That was Eating Disorders by MD Hilde Bruch, a rather psychoanalytic spin on all eating “pathologies,”. It had one page about anorexia nervosa, with strange pictures of a skeletal young girl, naked, with a blacking out of her eyes to make her unrecognizable. I would sit and stare at that frightening, frightened child. That is all I remember. (I did stealthily return the books through the library return slot, about 20 years later.) At 5 feet 4 and 79 pounds, I took my anorexia pretty close to the edge too, but somehow I did not die.
I was massively relieved and grateful for not dying, not because I was glad to keep living, but because I felt so guilty for nearly squandering life, and for distressing my parents. They seemed mostly, pretty mad about it, and the “treatment” was primarily what I would call “duress eating.” It was a nightmare, as eating or not eating continued to be, for about the next 30 years. Through desperation, unrelenting tenacious determination, and the blessing of renewed chances, I am pleased to say, that after years and decades of effort, the advances in understanding trauma, the brain and nervous system regulation; and my dad’s now famous words, I have a delightful and joyful relationship to food, I eat whatever and how much I want, and passionately bake, and make artisan cheese. I even have a pretty darn good relationship with my body, although I don’t like aging too much. My dad’s words, for any who have not heard them yet are: “You should always go to sold out concerts. You will get in!”
So one great lesson that I learned was that miraculously the body heals and returns to or discovers a healthful homeostasis, with some intention and knowledgeable assistance. I learned this again, when I had a serious and nearly fatal systemic and nearly septic infection that landed me very suddenly in the hospital for a week, truly believing I was dying; and again when my beloved sister came back from a bout of stage four cancer with a full head of new hair and a rich story to tell. I was terrified we would lose her, and well aware that not everyone, of course is so fortunate.
In 1980 iconic couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono came out with a favorite album of mine, Double Fantasy. Like many struggling couples (like so many of the traumatized,) they were known for the sentiment “Can’t live with her/him, but, can’t live without her/him.” The album was a collection of songs about emerging from that terrible morass into connection. My favorite song is the one called “Starting Over,” with its whimsical refrain “…when I see you Darling, it’s like we both are falling in love again, it’ll be just like starting over, wa wa wa wa…”
It is another kind of reminder of the miracle of second, third or however many chances we might have, after truly believing all is lost: relationship repair. The story of my re-incarnated relationship with my father will be another book in itself, that is on my list. Again, not everyone is as fortunate as I, and I also was one of the ones who tended to believe, “things like that just don’t’ happen to me…”
I have referenced before, that my first book was a sorry child of neglect. When it was published, I was too mired in my own dysregulation and shame, like many a parent, to do what was necessary for it to thrive. When I first hatched the book, I had been quietly developing the ideas for many years. Finally I had the gumption to attempt to put them out there. I approached a small publisher that was suggested to me by a sex therapist colleague and submitted my proposal.
At the time, on a frequent walk in the neighborhood of my office, there was a jewelry store. I loved to look in the window when I passed by. On one of those routine walks, I happened to spot a pair of earrings. I had never bought jewelry for myself before, but these lovely earrings were peridot, my birthstone, and somehow for the first time, I went inside. I spoke to a kindly young woman named Sonya, and I told her, that I had just submitted the proposal for a book I hoped to write and publish. I wanted to put a deposit on the peridot earrings, and if my proposal was accepted, buy the earrings. Sonya set that up with me, and when the proposal was accepted, I was rewarded and delighted times two. I set to work on the manuscript.
Somehow, I don’t know how it happened, I lost one of the earrings. Losing earrings is a hazard of moving too fast and not being mindful enough, or of a disconnected “vestibular system” and losing awareness of where one is in space, another common trauma symptom. I was sad, but in some sort of superstitious way I was spooked. I thought “Oh no! Perhaps that means the book will fail!” Not usually superstitious, I was rather haunted and fearful, and not without shame, I talked with my wise consultant about it. She said, “Well, how about talking with Sonya about getting another one made?” What a concept! All was not lost, and Sonya arranged with the artist to make a perfect new mate for my earring.
But the story did not end. In a way the book did “fail.” Or I failed like the parent of a neglected child. In my own private paralysis, I failed to support it in growing and going out into the world, so it languished and floundered and really did not venture out very far. Those who read it seemed to get a lot from it, but that hardly helped my shame. Some of my closest friends and supporters said, maybe as we launch the new book, re can resuscitate the first book. It really does merit a better chance. For the new book, learning from experience, I followed my own best advice and got the best help money can buy to help me, to be the midwife for the new book. And she has worked to help the first book, Coming Home to Passion, to find its place in a larger world. Like the child of neglect, with help, it is finding a voice and a spine. And the earrings have a new meaning to me.
In 2018 the volcano Kīlauea erupted on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was this volcano’s largest eruption in many hundreds of years and a fierce and fiery trauma to the surrounding area. Many were forced to relocate and a huge rescue effort was successfully waged to rescue animals, and of course humans in the vicinity. As trauma will be, it was a huge disruption. When we went back in 2020, the beloved Volcano Art Center was thankfully up and running again and the grateful artists were there to tell the story.
One of the artists told me, when I was admiring some peridot jewelry pieces in the store, that when the volcano erupted, it “rained peridot”. Apparently, some chemical reaction on the lava, produces the lovely pale green gemstone. Out of the ravages and roaring rage of violence and destruction, these dainty but tough sparklers scatter wildly. They are nature’s design. One earring disappeared, a new one came to take its place. I got expert help and the first book is finding its voice in the world at last. John and Yoko, as far as I know, spent their final years in connection and love until John met his tragic end. Many a traumatized client after a long and trying road finds regulation and joy; equilibrium and ease. I like to think it is nature’s design, if not without effort. And sometimes a big bang is what gets things moving.
In AA they say “Pray to God and keep rowing to shore.” And one needn’t believe in God, to understand that some of this mysterious process is organic and spontaneous, some is the sweat and grit of tenacious and relentless, persevering work. Hope and faith are required, at least some of the time, and we do have to get ourselves to the concert! Wa wa wa wa…
Have a listen!
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” is out on Tuesday September 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When the lockdown began to lift in our area, and I could begin to see clients live and in person I was ecstatic. As a somatic therapist, a self-identified “emotion hound,” and one who receives tremendous amounts of information about people through the energetic unspoken, remote work has been a strange and challenging journey for me. Apart from the inevitable headaches of technology, I later read, that the energy required to focus extra hard, and try to excavate that missing information in the inanimate screen, explained my splitting headaches at the end of the workday during those first months. I have since almost gotten used to it, or at least found a way to co-exist with it. Zoom has become a surprising component of my own “new normal.” I was also amazed to discover the difference when I began to see people live again. Some clients I had never met in person, having started our work during the Pandemic years. It was not surprising to me, but still somehow stunning to feel the difference both in our relationships, and in our progress.
I was also somewhat surprised when some people preferred to continue to work on Zoom. I can see the convenience factor of staying free of the travails and uncertainty of Bay Area traffic and parking which has ever been a “first world” frustration for me; as well as the blessing of saved time. The Pandemic factor as well, made sense to me, with none of us quite knowing the most prudent ways to proceed, especially those with delicate immune systems or other medical complexities on board. Still, in that still familiar neglect default, of thinking everyone would think as I do, I rather expected everyone to be as delighted as I was. When one client finally agreed to come in person, there was a way that he “opened my eyes.” He has a visual impairment, macular degeneration, which I knew about. I was empathically attuned. At the end of our first in person session, he groused, “So what is the big deal about live sessions?” Blinded by my own enthusiasm about being able to see him, it had not occurred to me, when he said “I can’t see your facial expressions. I can see your outlines, it is not very different for me.” This is a man who had been an avid bookworm all his life, he loved art and had toured the world’s great museums, and spent hours sometimes before one painting. Now that was gone from his life. I thought I had understood the grief of that. Forgetting about the lost world of facial expression, and how much that is part of relationship and true connection, I was stunned. This man had a devastating neglect history already. How could I have failed to see yet again?
As a long time restaurant worker, I have been pointedly aware of the deathly hit the restaurant world has taken during this last almost two years. Here in San Francisco where food commands an almost religious devotion, restaurants have been fighting for their lives, in a market that was fierce to begin with. Many have sadly shut their doors forever. As a baker, home cheesemaker and lover of food, I have followed the march of local food history, at least what is available of it, often while I stir the vat or feed my sourdough starter. I have wondered how my teachers and gurus who are not in the news, have fared. I must often just content myself with their tattered and increasingly worn cookbooks.
For me, one of the great blessings of this time, has been the plethora of emerging webinars and podcasts, not to mention the riches of Youtube with which I had never made more than a casual acquaintance before. I have been infinitely grateful for them, and routinely look for opportunities to see and acknowledge the unsung, the neglected heroes of administration and technological genius that bring them instantaneously into my kitchen with a few clicks. Trying to keep the neglected in view, I make a point of reaching out to customer service people, tech support people and Zoom presenters, even sending them cheese when I can! (It is the best way I know to say “thank you!”) Some parts of that I do not want to lose, and it is not clear how the culture, including my own little “culture” will change.
One of the advantages of my challenges around sleep, is that I am often up at odd hours or all hours. I hear NPR stories I might never have heard. Often the “stories” annoy me, as all day long I hear stories that are plenty interesting and enlightening. However I recently heard one that seemed to connect many brain regions that have never connected before, to form a wild and bright new network of thinking. I don’t even remember how it began.
I love music and I always have a song in my head. By now my clients are amusedly (or annoyedly?) accustomed to my lapsing into song during their session. “Let it Be,” “There’s a Hole in that Bucket,” “You Are My Kind,” oy vey! I rarely go to concerts anymore, even before the lockdown, but there is always a concert inside. I am not up to date on any music later than about 1985 or so, and admittedly I would barely be able pick Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga out of a lineup, although I follow the news. Madonna is perhaps my cutoff, and she is close to my age, at least parts of her are! So an interview with a young musician whose name I don’t even remember, was enlightening. In the course of talking about returning to live shows, he began talking about disability access to concerts. Again, I was rattled by my neglectful blindness to even thinking about these issues. When he referred too “Ability Rights Activists,” I realized I had never given a much thought to those people. Our office has an elevator. I thought I had that one covered. What about those who can’t hear or see? -In the literal sense. What about my own failure to hear or see them?
Feeling unseen and especially unheard has been an area of preoccupation for me, long before I began to study it in the attachment/clinical sense. In the stage of relationship havoc between my husband and myself, his failure to hear me was a redundant relationship refrain and frstration. As he began to lose his hearing literally in the expectable middled aged way, it became more so. Then began my echoing grumble about his getting hearing aids, thinking they would be the magic cure. When he finally got them and even began to use them, I started to recognize my own lousy hearing. When I finally got tested, I was diagnosed with severe hearing loss and got my own hearing aids prescription. Fortunately I have the resources to get them. Ironically, although hearing loss is a predictable predicament of aging, Medicare does not cover them! What a difference! I can hear! If only such a device were available to make the unheard heard!
It was suggested to me, that we prepare an audio version of my new book. When I asked my publisher, she said we must wait and see if there is a market for it. Of course I understand the necessity of the economic. We are all trying to make a living during these odd times. My esteemed colleague and friend Dierdre Fay, and her devoted husband and partner, read her new bestseller themselves, and made their audible version that way. When I asked my publisher if I could do that, she suggested we start with feeling out if there is a market. I am not sure what the tipping point is that constitutes a market. I have asked that interested or concerned readers, include their request in their Amazon Reviews should they submit one. I now sheepishly see the oxymoron in that as well. Those who are vision impaired may not be able to use the majority means to be heard.
For some of us it is a convenience or pleasure issue, like for me, it is an enhancement. For others it is a neglect issue, about being forgotten and left out yet again. Again, I ask those who are able, make yourself heard on this issue, to me or to Amazon! I have even received a similar request about the blogs. Let us know!
Neurotypical, Cisgender, Antiracist, Latinesque, Color, Differently Able, Aged, Neglected… Trying to keep it all in view., even as the Pandemic and Afghanistan overwhelm the senses. I guess I have been holed up in my own tunnel vision about those who are not seen and heard, while missing entirely, or almost entirely, the literality of both sides of the equasion: seen and heard. Until now. I think I need to go back to my publisher and say that this is a social justice issue, at least letting me do it myself, to make equal access available. Yes it is just one book, but isn’t that how all the social movements swell and progress? One little book or lunch counter at a time?
Thank you yet again NPR! I will have to see if I can find the young man who made that podcast, so I can thank him! And ask him my perennial question, “Do you like cheese?”
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” is now available online. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Early in my career, when I was in a post-graduate training program and just beginning to see clients, I remember when one of my first clients gushed hyperbolically about how wonderful I was. I was dazzled and delighted. “Maybe, just maybe I will be good at this!” I thought. When I proudly told my supervision group what she had said, a woman in my group, a year ahead of me in the program sarcastically retorted, “Isn’t transference grand?!” I went silent, feeling deflated and ashamed. And although at the time I thought she was snotty and mean, I never forgot her words.
Transference is the projection onto the therapist of feelings for a real or longed for important other, commonly but not exclusively a parent. What my colleague was reminding me, or telling me, was “It’s not about you, Dummy!” Also, we invariably come crashing down from the proverbial pedestal, to become worse than scum. I have since come to understand, how these projections can be some of the richest sources of information about a client’s often unremembered past. Neglect leaves such gaping holes in interpersonal memory, that other media of communication than the spoken word become the requisite vehicle for the telling and reconstructing of personal narrative.
I remember one client telling me, “I really don’t remember anything about other people. When I try to remember my childhood, I just see bushes, and maybe our various dogs.” We slowly began to learn her story by studying her present relationships, and dynamics she did remember.
It is curious to me, that as I find with many of my neglect clients, although I have blank or spotty memory about my childhood, I have vivid memory of books. I remember from second grade Sunday school a picture from a Bible Story picture book of Abraham smashing the idols. We were learning the Ten Commandments and the concept of “One God.” In Jewish synagogues there were to be “no graven images” meaning no images or statues of human subjects who might be attempting to upstage the One God. Abraham, in the picture, a young boy, not that much older than me, in his little toga with a stick thrashing the white marble statues to the sanctuary floor. I remember thinking this was very strange. The lesson was, we were not supposed to worship idols. Somehow I did not quite get it.
I was always a hero worshipper. I could not seem to find real people to connect to, I just did not know how. But I would create them out of some raw material that I found in the environment, and invent the relationships I did not know how to have. When I was about 12, my “first love” was Thomas Wolfe. He was an author who wrote mammoth 500-600 page novels, known to be autobiographical, where the protagonist was depressed, intense, insatiable, creative and desperately alone. Wolfe the writer died at 39. So even though he was dead, I believed I had found my match, he was like me, I was not the only one. Wolfe was from Asheville, North Carolina. It was on my bucket list to go to Asheville, see his home and the birthplace of all these stories that filled my world.
In 2012 I had the opportunity to go to Asheville for a Neurofeedback training. I was delighted! By now it was 45 years later. I had a different brain and a completely different relationship landscape, thankfully. I booked a hotel across the street from the Thomas Wolfe House, the boarding house Wolfe’s mother ran, that featured in all the books; and where the real people had lived. I spent a day taking pictures of everything there.
In the gift shop I bought a little miniature of the marble angel made famous in the title of his book Look Homeward Angel; and a 560-page biography. After the training I eagerly devoured the biography in the same devouring way that Thomas Wolfe the man had related to most people and things. I learned from the biography, that he was a misogynist, he was an alcoholic, he was antisemitic, he was racist. What was I thinking? Who was that young girl?
I recently heard Bessel van der Kolk say, “idealization is a defense against terror.” I was terrified that I was a different species, that there was never and never would be anyone like me. In my quest for a partner or twin, I had to make someone up. Wolfe was the clay. The void left by neglect is so gaping, it terrifies. We have to fill it with something besides bushes or book illustrations.
In my twenties I became politicized. By then I had given up on being seen or known by my parents. My father’s suffering and his hero story or overcoming his suffering and making a successful life, became the model. But I also was angry and rebellious. I wanted to get his attention and approval, but I also disavowed that wish. So, I chose something that would perhaps outrage or anger him. At that time democratic governments were tumbling all over Latin America, smashed by military dictators not unlike Hitler. I adopted an identity as freedom fighter, out to overthrow fascist rulers, and perhaps even die doing it. The ideal was Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Originally from Argentina, Che grew up with privilege and became a doctor. But he sacrificed everything to be an internationalist fighter, who led the Cuban people to freedom and died doing it. Perfect! That was who I wanted to be. The new female version of Che. Ever trying to fill the empty void left by neglect, find an identity, a way to be like my father, but not too much. To be seen and known, respected and loved. And with luck to die doing it, a noble way to end the pain. I tried to do this and had a terrible psychological crash doing it, which ultimately led me to psychotherapy.
The child of neglect, lacking a mirroring other, has no self to be. I have shown Ruth Lanius’s shocking brain scans of the child of neglect, whose brain is firing faintly if at all. The default mode network which is the home of the sense of self, is virtually missing entirely. “Without a self” as Lanius reminds us, there is no other. So we continue to create some version of relationship, but being distorted and alienating, they don’t last. Like many survivors of neglect, I left a trail of relationship wreckage behind me, until I finally attached to a therapist, and stayed for many, many years. I am happy to say I now have very fulfilling and mutual relationships, a partner of 35 years, and dear friends. But I did not grow the circuits in the way we were designed to. That is the task that neglect leaves us with. And that is why we must learn to become the therapists that can heal this.
In Cuba I saw a billboard that said “Seremos Como Che,” This means we shall be like Che. The emphasis is mine. We will aspire to emulate, but not to be him. The void of self is devastating. The tragic impact of neglect. Getting a spine, getting a voice, big tasks. And big tasks for the therapist to learn all the possible access routes to assist. We must also resist the temptation to buy into the inevitable projections, positive and negative, or even to recognize them when they occur. Another reminder of why the therapist who works with neglect, perhaps even more than any other therapist, must do their own personal work. We don’t want to miss that boat like our clients’ parents did!
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on the 31st August. 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!