For My Birthday: Revisiting My Goal

On February fifteenth, I'll be seventy-three years old.  Not one of the birthdays that exists as a milestone of life.  No, the idea of turning seventy-three elicits a "ho, hum" from me and probably from a lot of other people!  Nevertheless, it's a birthday.  And on birthdays I try to remember to examine my life and see if I've made any progress in any aspect of life--but particularly in therapy, in working my toward an improvement in my mental health.

So how do I know if I've made progress?  What is my standard?  How do I mark my becoming, my growth?  In the story below, you will find my answer to these questions.  In addition, in this little story that I began writing about twenty years ago, you may find the answers to your own questions. 

And yes, I have made progress this year.  That's all I need for my birthday--to know I've made progress!  You can do the same!

To the men reading this:  You will have to translate the story into your own terms.  Sorry.  I wrote it to be used with women's groups, so it is, I'm afraid, gender-biased.

The Egg

Everyone has heard the story . . . of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table . .  from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still. . . Who knows what beautiful and  winged life . . . may unexpectedly come forth from amidst  society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy  its perfect summer life at last!  Thoreau, Walden, 221
 
  Normally, the little girl would not have bothered the egg.   She would not have taken it from its cozy nest between the roots of the tall fir tree, for she understood its possible importance to the creature that laid it.  However, there was something about this particular egg that fascinated her, something that caused her to pause as she took the short cut home through the woods.   Perhaps she was entranced by the egg's translucent blue shell.  She felt sure that she could view the mystery inside if only she could find the right light.  So she carefully lifted the egg, tucked it into her hanky, making sure that she tied the corners securely, and carried it home.
    Once home, she avoided her mother and her brothers by going up the back stairs to her room.  She didn't know why she needed to avoid her family, but she felt an urgency to keep the matter of her egg private--just between the egg and her.  She bundled the egg into a soft, fuzzy pair of winter socks, put the bundle into the box that had contained the softball she had gotten for Christmas, and stashed the box in a remote corner of her underwear drawer.  "Safe!" she sighed with relief.  Yes, safe, but she wasn't sure why that was such a relief or why she felt the need to keep the matter to herself.  She did not dwell on that thought, however, for she was a little girl, and she needed to get on with the business of her girlhood.
    Concerned for the first few weeks that the creature inside the egg might not hatch, that it might rot and make a mess in her dresser drawer, the girl checked the egg every day, and every day the egg seemed the same.  At the end of a month, the girl opened the flap of the box and loosened the egg's wrapping so that whatever came out could make a soft nest in her socks and panties, but no creature emerged.  Discouraged, the girl decided to keep the egg as a curiosity, and she seldom bothered to check on it after that.   One dull, rainy Saturday afternoon, however, about a year after she had found it, the girl idly removed the egg from its hiding place and examined it.  She thought that the egg had grown larger and the blue of its shell had become paler, but she wasn't sure.   Maybe she was just imagining things--her mother always said that she had a big imagination.
    As the months turned to years, the girl became involved in the process of growing into a young lady, and she forgot about the egg in her underwear drawer.  Well, sometimes when she grabbed for a pair of underpants or some socks, she touched the box and considered checking on the egg, but she never did get around to removing it from its wooly bundle in the softball box.
    The day came when the girl left home for college.  As she was packing her things, she remembered the egg.  She removed the box from her drawer and gently unwrapped the contents.  The egg had grown, its shell seemed thinner, and its color had faded to a delicate blue, the color of the forget-me-nots in her mother's garden.  When the girl held the egg in the sunlight coming through her bedroom window, she could almost see inside it.   She tenderly rewrapped the egg, tucked it into its box, and replaced it in its hiding place.  "Maybe, when I come home from school at the end of the year, I will be able to see into the egg clearly," she mused for a moment, and then she dashed downstairs to the car waiting to take her away.
    Years passed; the girl grew into a lovely young woman.  She seldom returned to her home, and when she did, it was not for long.  She always had so many things to do that she never did remember to check her egg.  She married and raised a family.  One day, middle-aged and alone in life, she returned to her childhood home to help her mother get the house ready for sale.  That night she slept in her old room, in her old bed.
    The woman awoke in the middle of the night to the touch of a moonbeam on her face.  As she sat up and looked around her room, she remembered that she had not checked on her egg since she had last tucked it away so many years ago.  Curious about the egg, doubting that it had survived the years, and yet hoping that it had, she slipped into her sandals and padded over to her old dresser.  When she opened her underwear drawer, she saw that there in its corner was the softball box, just where she had put it before she left for college.  The box felt very light as she removed it from its corner and opened the flap.  She gently pulled the soft bundle from the box and unwrapped the egg in the palm of her hand.
    As the egg lay in her hand, its shell shimmered where the moonbeam touched it.  The woman watched, amazed at its fragile, porcelain beauty.  She carried it to the window where the light was stronger and where she might better see into the egg.   As she raised it into the light, the egg glowed.  Startled, the woman dropped the egg and closed her eyes so she could not see it smash onto the floor.  She did not, however, hear the impact of the egg on the floor.  Instead, she felt a soft touch on her shoulder.  Wondering, she opened her eyes and found herself looking into the face of a lady with the kindest, gentlest blue eyes she had ever seen.
    "Why, who are you?" the woman asked.
    "I am the lady from inside your magic egg," replied the stranger, and as she spoke, a breeze coming through the window touched her silvery hair and her long, blue satin gown, making them shimmer.  "Don't be afraid of me.  I'm your friend.  I've been your friend for a long time."
    "But what do you mean?”  questioned the woman.  "I've never seen you before.  Where have you been?"
    "I've been inside that egg you so tenderly and carefully kept safe inside your drawer for so long," responded the lady.   "I've been waiting for the moment when I could make myself known to you."
    "Oh, but you are so beautiful," sighed the woman, "and your eyes are so very kind."
    "I am no more beautiful and no kinder than you, my dear," replied the lady gently.
    "How can you say that?  I'm so dumpy and fat that I can't stand myself," wailed the woman, and she turned her back to the lady in shame.
    The lady put her arm around the woman's shoulders and softly turned her so she was looking directly into the lady's eyes.  She cupped the woman's face between her hands, smiled, and said to her, "I want you to take the hand mirror from your dresser top over to the window where the light is strongest, gaze into it, and tell me what you see."
    The woman did what the lady had requested.  She shifted the mirror until she could see herself clearly and gazed at her image.
    "Now, what do you see?"
    "Well, I see myself, my ordinary, frumpy self," replied the woman.
    "Look into your eyes.  What do you see there?"
    The woman stared intently at her eyes in the mirror for a few seconds and exclaimed in amazement, "Why, I see you in my eyes! When I look at my eyes in the mirror, I see you!"
    "No," countered the lady, "when you gaze into your eyes, you see yourself, your true self.  I am that true self of yours, the self that you kept safely hidden away in the depths of your dresser drawer, the self that inhabited the magic egg you found so long ago.  I was inside that egg, waiting for the right time to reveal myself to you.  And now that you know I exist and you have seen my beauty and felt my gentleness and love, the rest of your life will be different."
    In awe the woman asked, "But why am I so lucky?  Don't other women have magic eggs, too?"
    "Oh, yes," answered the lady quietly.  "Each woman possesses a magic egg.  Not every woman's egg fares as well as yours, however.   Sometimes an egg is damaged so badly when its owner is just a little child that the lady who emerges--if, indeed, she ever does emerge--is stunted and incapable of fulfilling her promise.   Sometimes an egg is so badly neglected that its contents shrivel and die, and the whole egg disintegrates into dust.  But many eggs survive the years, and the ladies inside emerge at the times when their owners most need them."
    "I see," replied the woman.  "But will you always be here with me? Will I always be able to talk to you and to touch you?"
    "I must leave you soon, but I will return whenever you need and want me," answered the lady gently.
    Alarmed, the woman asked, "But how will I find you?"
    In response, the lady took the woman's hands in her own and tenderly led her to the full-length mirror on the bedroom door.   As she stood behind the woman, the lady touched the woman's shoulder and said, "You need only stand before a mirror and gaze into your eyes, just as you did earlier.  Whenever you do that, I will come to you.  Try it again."
    The woman did as the lady bade her and there, in the image of her eyes, was the beautiful, gentle lady of the egg.  Filled with joy, the woman turned to give the lady a big hug, but the lady was not there.  A few fragments of pale blue eggshell glittered in the moonlight where she had stood, but the lady was gone.  A brief moment of darkness, a fleeting shadow, passed across the woman's face; she turned back to her mirror and gazed into her eyes.  And there, just as she had promised, appeared that wonderful and beautiful lady.  Feeling suddenly sleepy and filled with peace, the woman returned to her bed and slept.
    When the woman awoke, her room was filled with sunshine.  She padded over to the little pile of eggshell on the floor and carefully placed the fragments into the velvet-lined drawer of her jewel box where they would be safe.  Again, she stood before her mirror and gazed into her eyes.  Again, true to her word, the lady gazed back at her, serenely and lovingly.
    As time passed, the lady's presence became permanently etched in the woman's awareness.  Her trips to the mirror became less frequent as she grew more and more secure in her knowledge that the grace, kindness, and beauty of the lady were part of her.   With each new day, the woman felt her own love and beauty touch the lives of those with whom she came into contact, just as her life had been touched by the lady of the egg.

Some Comments on “The Day I Stopped Dancing” . . .

If you have read “The Day I Stopped Dancing,” the essay I posted yesterday, you may have wondered why I wrote it.  More than that, you may have wondered why I posted it!  After all, the experience of being violently sexually abused at age four was so secret and so shame-ridden that I kept it to myself until I was in my early forties.  And the only reason I became aware of the abuse then was that the memory was forced upon me by a flashback.  As I stated months ago in my post titled “What Good Are Flashbacks?,” flashbacks can serve to make a person aware of the need to get help, but they can also be as horrible to experience as the original traumatic incident from which they stem.  That is certainly true of this particular flashback.  So, frankly, until this morning, I was not sure myself why I wrote and posted “The Day I Stopped Dancing.”  This morning, though, I understood.

It’s been thirty years since I had the flashback that brought this abuse memory to my mind, and it’s been almost seventy years since the abuse incident, and now I find myself getting angry—very angry!—at the thought of sexual predators who abuse kids and who are not subsequently prevented from re-offending.  I’m angry, too, at the people who refuse to believe that abuse can derail a child’s normal course through childhood and leave that child isolated, anxious, and unable to trust if he or she does not get competent help at the time of the abuse.
 
Before a child can get help, however, that child must tell somebody about the abuse.  How many children will do that?  I don’t know for certain, but I would guess that many, many children are like I was—too scared to tell anyone.  So they carry the shame and the guilt and the secrecy—the whole burden that really belongs on the back of the perpetrator—into adulthood.  And then one day the system breaks down, the child-grown-to-adulthood goes into crisis, and finally, if the person is lucky, he or she gets the help needed to come to terms with the abuse. 

In the meantime, a lot of life has gone by, and a lot of promising relationships may have been destroyed by toxic behaviors driven by the unresolved abuse issues festering deep in the victim’s psyche.  This is what happened to me, and I can name dozens of other people who have experienced what I have experienced as a result of being abused as children.
 
Given, then, that children often are too scared to report sexual abuse and other kinds of abuse, how do we know what actually happens in a child’s mind when he or she is traumatized by abuse?  I suspect that often an adult being treated for the effects of child abuse has difficulty describing in detail the effects upon him or her of abuse that happened decades previously.  Describing, for example, the dissociation I experienced immediately after the abuse incident has been as difficult for me as for anyone else, most likely, but ever since I experienced the flashback that led me to the memory, I have persisted in trying to put the experience into words.  I have thrashed about in my head for years, trying to find the right words, the exact words needed to describe the moment the fog came between me and the light.  I’ve remembered the feeling, that millisecond between brightness and dimness and the sense that the world outside my hiding place was not as it was before the fog came. 

But how to tell another person about the fog?  According to Robert Frost, the “the fog comes on little cat feet,” but that wasn’t how the fog came to me at age four!  The fog that came to me then was more like a knife, suddenly severing my former connection to the world on the other side of the fog.  As I peered through the fog, my life looked different.  Suddenly, people with whom I had felt comfortable and happy became aliens, people covered in shadow.  Would they, too, exact a payment from me as Mrs. Greenleaf had done?  And so my life shifted from sun to shadow--the fairies no longer danced around the fairy rings all night and threw sparkles at the buttercups in the morning dew, and, as my mother said, I grew heavy on my feet and no longer danced. 

I understand now that the whole purpose in writing my post yesterday was to show through the eyes of my child self at age four how sexual abuse affected me so many years ago.  Something in me died as a result of the abuse—at least I thought it had died.  Now, however, I’m not so sure.  Maybe it didn’t die; maybe that little girl is coming out of the fog.  Maybe once again she—and I—will watch the fairies dance, see the buttercups sparkle in the morning sun, and maybe we will even dance.  Now, that’s a thought! 

It can happen—with patience, perseverance, and hard work, your adult self can bring that little child from darkness back into the sunshine.  If this is something you need to do, please do it.  You deserve to do it!  If you do it for you, you do it for the universe—for everyone.  Namaste.  Blessings. 

The Day I Stopped Dancing

The following essay addresses the violent sexual abuse I experienced when I was about five years old.  In this narrative, I describe the life-changing dissociative experience following the abuse.  This sexual abuse, coupled with other abuses, some inflicted by my parents, worked to change me from an outgoing, friendly, trusting little girl to a withdrawn, anxious little girl who felt as if she stood isolated and alone in the world.  Now, at age 72, I am finally beginning to get to know that little girl and make peace with her.  Although I have done my best to describe the situation without being graphic, the contents of this essay may be disturbing to you if you have had a similar experience.  In such a case, you might want to skip this essay.

"You were such a bouncy little girl; you were always up dancing on your toes.  I even considered sending you for ballet lessons.  But when you were about four or five, you changed.  You became heavier on your feet, and you didn't dance anymore.  I never understood what happened to you." 
  
My mother said those words to me when I was in my twenties.  At the time, I did not understand what had happened to me, either. Feeling that the words were significant, however, I stored them in that area of my mind where I store information that I suspect will be important in the future.  Later, when I was in my early forties, I had a disturbing flashback that enabled me to attach a memory to my mother’s words.  Since the flashback and the initial memory, I have been able to piece together the story and understand why, so long ago, I stopped dancing.
   
  By the time I was four, my mother had begun the practice of turning me outdoors to play after breakfast.  Most of the people at home in my neighborhood during the day were middle aged or elderly women, so I suppose my mother thought I would be safe.  I would like to think she thought I was safe, at least.  After breakfast, I made my daily rounds, stopping first at the home of a neighbor who owned a little fox terrier named Brownie, and I took great delight in feeding Brownie his breakfast.  When I left Brownie's house, my next stop was at the home of the neighbor lady who sold cream.  She fed me cookies and let me talk until she lost patience and sent me on my way. My last stop was at the house of Mrs. Greenleaf, a widow whose grown son lived with her.

 Mrs. Greenleaf's house was right next to mine, and her kitchen window looked directly into my bedroom.  Because her house was so close, I visited her often.  I liked Mrs. Greenleaf, and I believed she liked me, for she let me sit on her lap and cuddle.  When I was four, I figured that anyone who let me sit on her lap and cuddle liked me.  Why would I not believe that?  After all, I had seen other little girls sitting on laps and cuddling, and in my young mind, people liked those little girls, so why would Mrs. Greenleaf let me cuddle with her if she didn’t like me?  The fact that my mother refused to let me sit with her and snuggle caused me to doubt that my mother liked me, and I would not have asked my father because I was afraid of him.  So I regarded Mrs. Greenleaf as a precious source of affection and spent a lot of time at her house.  I did not tell my mother about this aspect of my relationship with Mrs. Greenleaf; what I told my mother was that the neighbor fed me cookies and let me talk to her.  Since I was a very talkative little girl, I suspect my mother was relieved that she did not have to listen to me.

  Although I did not understand it at the time, Mrs. Greenleaf exacted a payment for allowing me to sit on her lap.  Each time I snuggled on her lap and put my arms around her, she put her hand inside my panties and fondled me.   Even at age four, I knew that something was happening to me that should not happen, but I didn't understand it.  I was confused because nobody else touched me in that place and in that way.  Because she let me sit on her lap, I thought she liked me.  Yet I didn't think that people who liked other people would put their hands where she did.

     I continued to visit the neighbor lady, hungry for the closeness and affection I did not have at home, hoping each time I could snuggle with her and she would not bother me with her hands.  But each time she did.  She never talked about what she was doing to me, and I never did, either.  I didn't talk to anyone about it.  I wanted to tell my mother, but I was afraid she would be angry with me and spank me.  I knew that what happened when I visited the neighbor was bad because my mother and the Sunday school teachers had taught me that good little girls never let anyone see their underpants.  No, that part of my anatomy was off limits for all purposes except the most necessary and basic, but Mrs. Greenleaf did not seem to understand that.  So I knew that what happened when I cuddled with her was bad, and I also knew I was bad because I visited her and let her touch me in that place.  It did not occur to me that Mrs. Greenleaf was bad.

   One day my visits to Mrs. Greenleaf came to an abrupt stop.  When I look back, now, I associate that day so long ago with Good Friday.  In the church I attend, the Episcopal Church, on Good Friday the cross on the altar is covered with a piece of purple or black gauzy fabric that allows me to see the shape of the cross  beneath but prevents me from seeing the cross itself.  Each time I attend the Good Friday service, I feel a sense of deep loss, as if the light in my spirit has been dimmed, and I also feel a sense of panic, as if I have been separated from part of myself.  On Good Friday in the Church, however, I know Easter will come in two days, and I know that what I have lost will be returned to me.

    That last day I visited Mrs. Greenleaf was a Good Friday in my heart because a veil descended upon my spirit and separated me from the light in my life.  After Mrs. Greenleaf and her son had grabbed me and had held me down on the pull-out ironing board in her kitchen and she had pulled my panties down enough so her son could see my nakedness, she turned on the hot water tap in the kitchen sink, pulled my corduroy overalls and underpants all the way off, and then the two held the exposed part of me under the scalding hot water.

 I remember screaming and struggling to get away from them.  I remember tugging at the straps of my overalls, trying frantically to make them stay up.  And I remember Mrs. Greenleaf’s words as I tried to get out the back door: “I have magical powers, and even when you can’t see me looking into your bedroom, I can still see you and watch everything you do.  I can tell by watching you if you are telling anyone about what I did to you, and if you tell, I’ll find you and kill you dead. And what will your parents do with a dead little girl?  They won’t want you at all, and they will put you in a box and bury you in the ground.  So you had better not tell anyone!”  And I didn’t tell!  Not until I was age forty and remembered the incident when I had a flashback.

     I was not badly damaged physically that day, but there was other damage.  I ran from Mrs. Greenleaf’s house and managed to sneak into my house and reach my bedroom without my mother knowing.  I remember that as I hid in the darkness beneath my bed, a fog enshrouded me and separated me from the rest of the world. The world beyond my hiding place was unchanged, but a veil of fog prevented me from seeing that.  In addition, I knew that I was bad and would never be a good girl again.  What I had lost that day would never be returned to me.  I experienced the Good Friday darkness and sorrow, but no Easter joy or hope of joy awaited me.
 
   Now, with my adult mind, I can look back to my childhood and trace the effects of that day in Mrs. Greenleaf’s kitchen.  The foggy veil that came between me and the joy, the dancing, and the light in my life has never completely dropped away, although after sixty-some years and after a lot of hard work in therapy I can say that at times the fog clears enough to allow me to glimpse the full light of Easter just long enough to know it exists.  I am patient.  I have a sense of my young life before the darkness and before the veil descended, and that sense sustains me and reminds me to stay on my path as I continue my journey toward healing. 
 

Therapy: Better Late Than Never

After my father’s memorial service in August of 1962, somebody, a friend of my father I believe, let slip that my father had been an alcoholic.  “What a pity that such a brilliant man was an alcoholic.  He was simply too sensitive for this world of ours.”  Those were the words.  I was too upset to remember who the person was, and that information doesn’t really matter, but I remembered the words and have thought about them over the past five decades. Now that I have more knowledge of alcoholism, mental illness, using alcohol to self-medicate, and the accompanying behavioral quirks of both alcoholism and my father’s mental illness, I can look with more understanding and compassion on the members of my nuclear family—and on myself.  Compassion and understanding, however, do not erase the damages, the C-PTSD symptoms, resulting from living with a parent who has an untreated mental illness and who self-medicates with alcohol.  Dealing with those damages is a job only I can do.

Despite his outstanding performance in the classroom and his other accomplishments, my father was a shy person who avoided interaction with other people, including his family, when he was not required to be “on stage.”  He spent a lot of time holed up in the bedroom grading papers when I was very young; later, when we lived in houses with basements, he holed up in the basement where he built his ham radio stations.  In a recent telephone conversation with my brother, my brother revealed to me that our father had bottles of alcohol stashed in the basement where he spent so much time, a piece of information I did not have—one more piece I can use as I work to complete the puzzle of my own past.  No wonder I was oblivious to his alcohol abuse!  Because I feared his temper outbursts, I avoided him and avoided the basement. 

Like most young children, I craved my parents’ attention, but I learned to accept the fact that from my father I would get only negative attention.  I accepted his temper outbursts as being normal fatherly behavior.  I also accepted as normal the fact that he seldom addressed me directly unless I was doing something that annoyed him, and then he yelled at me.  Most of his thoughts and opinions regarding me were conveyed by my mother.  When I was a child, I did not realize that the messages my mother passed on to me from my father might really have been her own messages to me but credited to my father or might have been her spin on what he had said.  I was too afraid of my father to check this with him.  It was only when I was about ten and began babysitting in our neighborhood and observing other families and other parents that I realized his behavior was not typical. 

For one thing, the fathers I observed talked directly to their children.  My father did not.  I lived in the same house as this male adult who was reported to be my father, but because this person seldom interacted with me or addressed me directly, I doubted my own existence.  Was I really there?  If I existed, why didn’t this man talk to me and interact with me as other fathers talked to and interacted with their children?  Was I so inferior and so flawed that he regarded me as not being worth his time?  The only way I could explain my father’s attitude toward me was to conclude that there was something wrong with me, something that made me unworthy of being his daughter, but try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what that something was.  In addition to the shame I felt from my perceived failure as my father’s daughter, I felt shame at my failure as my mother’s daughter, and the result was a burden of shame heavy enough to sink a battleship.  Later, when I was a young adult and in college and tried to commit suicide, the shame did almost sink me.

My father’s ability to maintain silence peaked when I began high school. The school year of 1953-1954 was a record year of sorts, for that was the year he said nothing to me, nothing at all.  He had been awarded a John Hay Whitney Fellowship for his excellent teaching of the social sciences at R. A. Long High School, and he chose to spend his year attending Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.  He did not want us, his family, with him during that year.  I don’t know why. My mother, however, would not accept his edict, and so while he was off working as a ranger in the summer, she planned our trip and found a renter for our house.  To this day, I am not sure when she let him know about this.  However, well before school started, she packed us up, and she, my brother, and I traveled by train to New Haven.  As soon as we arrived, she began hunting for an affordable apartment, found one, and moved us in. 

From the day my father arrived a week or so later, he refused to carry on a conversation with my mother or with me.  If for some reason he simply could not avoid telling my mother something, he used my younger brother as a messenger.  At the end of the year and after we had returned home, he resumed speaking to her, and he communicated with me through my mother as he had done before the New Haven experience. 

This is not to say, though, that our lives resumed as if we had never spent the year in New Haven.  I, for one, discovered that I could detect subtle differences between the dynamics within my family before New Haven and the dynamics after our return home.  Although I am now not sure as to whether these dynamics actually changed or whether the experience of a year’s change in living environment opened my eyes to behaviors that had always existed, I knew for certain that the family in which I lived before moving to Connecticut did not seem quite the same to me as the family in which I lived after returning from Connecticut.  Most of the change, I realize now, can be attributed to my growing awareness of my parents’ abuse of alcohol.

I was always aware that my parents kept bottles of liquor available in one particular kitchen cupboard, but I never paid much attention until I was in junior high. Also, I noticed that when my parents came home from their teaching jobs, they regularly mixed themselves drinks.  I didn’t pay much attention to this until I was in high school.  Then I noticed that they often had more drinks after dinner and continued filling their glasses until bedtime, pausing only if they had paperwork to do. 

As I was about to graduate from high school, I realized that my father’s “sick headaches” that kept him home from work more and more often appeared to be related to the number of drinks he had.  And then one hot summer day when I was in high school, my father, who had been working at Mt. St. Helens as a park ranger and was usually gone all week, came home in the middle of the week.  He revealed to my mother that he had caught himself standing behind a co-worker, axe raised, ready to bring the blade down on the co-worker’s head.  He told her that he was going to Portland to find a psychiatrist and get help.  And that is exactly what he did.

I found out many years later that he had been suffering for most of his life from a serious and complex mental illness.  He diagnosis was “Borderline with schizoid tendencies,” a diagnosis that described his behavior accurately.* I learned this when I was in my early forties, and now that I know more about his illness, I understand and have forgiven his behavior toward me.  Forgiving him has not, however, taken away the marks his behavior left upon me.  At age 72, I’m finally getting relief from my Complex PTSD resulting from abuses in childhood and abuses in my marriage. *(See the Mayo Clinic website on the Internet for a list of symptoms of borderline and schizoid personality disorders.)

Along with my understanding of my father and his illness, however, and probably also because I am now seventy-two years old and somewhat wiser than I was when I was living in the same house with him, I have become aware of the courage he showed in deciding to take the step toward health.  The hope embedded in that act of courage may be the greatest gift he ever gave me, for his act inspires me to continue working toward my own healing. I witnessed, as a young adult, the change in my father after he began his work in therapy, and because my father proved that he could change his inner life, I know that I can heal. 

Because he entered therapy when he was in his late forties and died young, at age fifty-two, he did not have many years of relief from his demons, but I believe he did enjoy life more in those few years.  He joined the Unitarian Church and seemed to derive satisfaction from that.  He also seemed more relaxed at home, and I remember feeling I could be in his presence without experiencing some of my old anxiety and watchfulness.  He also talked more to me, although he never did mention how he felt about me nor did he indicate any regret he may have had concerning his treatment of me when I was younger. 

After my father died in August of 1962, I grieved not for the loss of what had been but for the loss of what might have been.  Now, however, in the year 2011, when I think of my father, I remember his courage in recognizing his demons, in seeking help, and in using that help to change his life.  I am inspired by his example at a time when I am working hard in therapy to heal the wounds of my own past. 

After Shame

If you read my last post, “Of Shame and Snowballs,” you know that I recently turned an important corner in my therapy.  All my old feelings of Shame suddenly seemed to melt away, and along with the Shame, went a part of the “old me.”  Now, I know the truth of the statement “Nature abhors a vacuum.”  Every time I have had an important insight into myself, and every time I have abandoned a dysfunctional part of myself, I have been in a state of discomfort until I have filled the empty space.  So what am I doing now to replace Shame?  What will I find to fill that empty space?

If you have been in therapy, you understand the problem I am having.  For one thing, the rest of my psyche has not heard the news that Shame is no longer with me.  In my experience, there is always a lag between insight and emotional response to the insight.  It seems to take a while for the news to trickle down through all the layers of wiring in the right side of my brain and for that part of my brain to realize that the old emotional responses are no longer functional or appropriate.  It’s as if the responses related to my feeling of Shame are now sitting in my right brain waiting to kick into action, but they no longer are wired into a live circuit.  They wait for the old switch to activate them, and they don’t know that the wiring has been cut.  What will happen to all those Shame responses?  I hope they just wither and die from disuse. 

Now I am in the process of finding a replacement for Shame, a tenant/tenet to inhabit the space that Shame occupied in my psyche.  While I am doing this, I feel a sense of imbalance.  My paradigm is shifting, but as it shifts, I feel somewhat off kilter.  Having gone through this process in the past, however, I know that the feeling of being off kilter is temporary.  All I can do is endure until the world rights itself.  That will happen.  And what then?  A beautiful rainbow?  We’ll see.  I’ll let you know.

Of Shame and Snowballs

Today I’ve been considering snowballs.  Snowballs?  Yes, snowballs.  You see, snowballs usually begin their lives as pristine objects formed in the hands of eager little children, but as the children roll the snowballs across the ground and as the snowballs gather snow and grow larger, they also gather little rocks, dirt, and all sorts of debris.  By the time the snowball is large enough to be the base for a snow person, it has incorporated into itself an assortment of dreck, garbage, and it is no longer the pristine object it was before beginning its trip across the lawn.
 
The snow person produced by the little children, then, bears the scars and blemishes of its journey.  As it melts, it sags and droops and shrinks until finally nothing is left but a puddle filled with pebbles, chunks of dirt, twigs, and perhaps even the droppings of a neighborhood dog. Such is the fate of this snow person made by the hands of little children.  He or she, unlike a living human being, has no control over her inner life—in fact, she has no inner life to control.  The upside to being a snow person, of course, is that snow people feel no psychic pain.
 
The downside to being a human is that, unlike the snow person, we do feel psychic pain.  All the nasty little bits of emotional garbage we collect and internalize as we roll over our life’s path do their damage.  What are these nasty little bits of garbage?  They are all the toxic, devastating bits of emotional fallout from abuse and neglect.  They are the hurts inflicted on us by adults when we are children, the hurts inflicted by our peers, and the hurts we inflict on ourselves.  All these hurts do their damage, some damaging us more than others.  Recently, I have stumbled across one of these bits of toxic fallout that has affected my own life more than most others.  So what is this toxin called?  It is called shame.

For decades I had read about the damage that shame does, how shame can affect self-esteem and cause a human being to feel worthless.  However, no article I had read had given me much information that I could actually use to help myself.  The articles told of the devastating effects of shame on a human being’s psyche, but they did not discuss possible origins of shame, the dynamics of shame, or give any clues as to how one manages to shed the toxic effects of shame.  Furthermore, I did not identify shame as being one of the specific factors that had eroded my self esteem from the time I was a child. 

Also, because I remembered being told by my mother innumerable times that I should be ashamed of myself for having done this or that, I reached adulthood believing that shame was tied only to certain acts that I had committed in childhood and later in adulthood and was not one of the more generalized but deeply-rooted poisons that interacted with other psychic poisons to produce my low level of self esteem, the belief that I was utterly worthless and completely unworthy of being in the company of other humans. Thus, until last week, I rolled over the path of my life largely ignorant of the role shame has played in perpetuating my C-PTSD.

If I ever had doubts about the value of therapy, my doubts evaporated last week!  Why?  Last week I met Shame head on and decapitated it, rendered it powerless!  How, suddenly, did I do this? 

First, a conversation between me and my therapist caused me to connect to some of my earliest childhood memories.  I remembered when I was about three asking my mother at various times if I could sit in her lap, and I remembered that she always said “no” and always had a reason for her “no.” Sometimes she said no because I was “too big for that”; sometimes I was “too heavy”; sometimes she was too busy or too tired, and sometimes she wanted to smoke a cigarette and I would be in the way.  Each time she turned me away, I felt sad.  When I was an older child and clearly too physically large to sit on her lap, she complained about having to touch me or touch my hair when she got me ready for school.  I remember her cracking me on the head with the hairbrush one morning when I squirmed, and I remember hearing her say, “I hate touching your hair.”

By then I must have achieved the “age of reason” because I remember thinking to myself, “Then why won’t you let me get my hair cut?”  She hated touching my hair, yet she wouldn’t grant me my request to have short hair that I could brush without her help.  I was smart enough to keep my question to myself; if I had asked her the question, she undoubtedly would have cracked me on the head with the hairbrush.  Why did she dislike touching me, and why didn’t she seem happy to be with me?

As my childhood turned to pre-teenage years, my sadness grew, and accompanying the sadness came a new element, a feeling of not being good enough and a feeling of being ashamed because I wasn’t good enough.  I felt angry at myself for being such a failure as a human being. If I had been good enough, I reasoned, my mother would have wanted to touch me and to let me sit on her lap.  Mothers of my friends liked touching their little girls, letting them sit on their laps, and holding them close. And if I had been good enough, my mother wouldn’t have cracked me over the head with the hairbrush or frowned at me all the time she was getting me ready for school in the morning and at other times.  She was never happy when I was with her, or so it seemed to me, because I was not the little girl she wanted.  I was a chipped Spode teacup she had bought on sale and could not return: she was stuck with me, and she was not happy about that!

When I was a child, I was never able to come up with a specific answer to “What’s wrong with me?”  If I had been able to answer the question, I might have tried to change whatever it was about me that my mother didn’t like. But I didn’t know what was wrong; therefore, I didn’t know what to change. By the time I was a young teen, I had given up on my mother, our relationship, and on myself.  I had concluded that I had come into the world “wrong,” and there was nothing I could do about that.  My shame was so overpowering that I often couldn’t look people in the eye when I spoke to them or when they spoke to me.  When somebody hurt me, I didn’t fight back or complain because I felt I deserved being hurt.  When my husband abused me, I felt I deserved his abuse and did nothing to stop his behavior.  For the past thirty years, I’ve been on my own, not living with anyone who has been abusive, yet I have continued to feel unworthy, ashamed, unable often to look at people when they have spoken to me or when I have spoken to them. 

All this has changed, however, in the past week.  Suddenly I realize that there is nothing inherently wrong with me, and my sense of being undeserving and unworthy is simply gone.  I don’t know where it went, but it’s gone.  Just like that!  Gone!

What brought about this change?  A sensitive interaction between my therapist and me, for one thing.  Also, shortly after this important therapy session last week, I typed something like “origins of shame” into Google and found an absolutely amazing article by Richard G. Erskine titled “A Gestalt Therapy Approach to Shame and Self-Righteousness: Theory and Methods.”  (See link at the end of this essay.)  And there it was—a description of how shame originates in a child, starting with a feeling of sadness that, like a snowball, develops into a sense of being inadequate and worthless as the child rolls along her life’s path.  Not only does Richard G. Erskine describe the development of shame in a child, but he also describes the process by which shame lowers a person’s self esteem:

“Shame also involves a transposition of the affects of sadness and fear: the sadness at not being accepted as one is, with one's own urges, desires, needs, feelings, and behaviours, and the fear of abandonment in the relationship because of whom one is. The fear and a loss of an aspect of self (disavowal and retroflection of anger) fuel the pull to compliance - a lowering of one's self esteem to establish compliance with the criticism and/or humiliation.”  Erskine  [Italics and underlining are mine.]

All I could say to myself when I finished reading the article was, “Wow!  He sure hit the nail on the head!  Thank you, Richard G. Erskine!”  For in that article, I recognized the process that had taken place within me, the process that began when I was very little and was told by my mother, “No, I want to smoke a cigarette” when I asked to sit on her lap and continued on when I as a wife allowed my husband to belittle and abuse me because I felt I deserved the treatment. 

A dear friend of mine has told me repeatedly, “With awareness comes change.”  How right she is!  And now that I am fully aware of shame and its toxic effect on my psyche and my life, I feel change taking place.  For one thing, during a family gathering on Christmas Day, I let a person in attendance know how I felt about her childish, rude, disrespectful behavior.  Others had felt as I had, but I spoke out.  I don’t know whether I made a difference by speaking out, but I know I felt better because I called the situation as it was and didn’t consider myself unworthy of speaking out.  That was a first!  The New Year, 2012, is almost upon us, and I’m wondering what the “second” will be—and the “third,” “fourth,” . . .   

I feel that as a result of my newly-found awareness of shame and its effects on my life, I have leaped over a gigantic hurdle on my way to healing.  I’m getting there!  And so will you!  If you are in therapy, take it seriously and work hard.  If you are not in therapy, find a competent and compatible therapist who is skilled in treating clients with C-PTSD and PTSD.  You are a human being, a person, and unlike snow people, you are capable of change and healing.  See how many hurdles you can jump and how far down the road to healing you can travel in 2012! 

Blessings and everything good to you in the New Year. 
Jean

(URL for Richard G. Erskine's article:  http://www.integrativetherapy.com/en/articles.php?id=30)
 

Before Shame

“Que Sera, Sera” and the Manifestation of Right Brain Material

For the past several weeks, I have felt extremely nervous each time I have gone to my therapy session.  Since I have been seeing this therapist for over a year and a half now, I noted the nervousness, noted that it seemed odd but determined that it probably was not related to the relationship between my therapist and me, and then figured “Que Sera, Sera” (roughly “what will be, will be”), as Doris Day sang on Your Hit Parade, the weekly radio program that my friends and I followed religiously in the 1950s.  Knowing how I process material in therapy, normally from my right brain to my left brain, I figured that whatever trauma information was lurking in the right side of my brain that needed to manifest itself was getting ready to do that.  However, I had not figured that the manifestation would be so upsetting and so horrible! 

My therapy appointment is at 1:30, so I caught my bus at noon yesterday, knowing that I would easily make my appointment with time to spare for my crossword puzzle.  I like to center myself in the waiting room by working on the puzzle printed each morning in the Portland Oregonian.  By the time I arrived at the bus transfer point, however, I was feeling “odd.”  I wasn’t feeling dizzy or sick or in pain; I was simply feeling “odd.”  Because I still deal with occasional PTSD symptoms such as spaciness and flashbacks, “odd” doesn’t alarm me, so I sat down in the bus shelter and hoped the feeling would pass quickly. 
  
Bus 8 arrived, and I knew I needed to get into it, but I had a problem, very likely the same problem Alice had when she drank from the bottle labeled “Drink Me”:  the world I saw through my eyes was not the world I normally saw.  The lines that normally are parallel to the earth were slanted and actively tipping, like a teeter-totter, and the lines that normally are perpendicular to the earth were leaning, tipped in all directions.  I looked at the bus, saw it tilted oddly, and tried to figure out where to put my feet.  I did my best to put my feet where I needed to put them in order to get on and find a seat, and then I managed to tumble onto an empty place.  After I had sat down, I looked around me at the other passengers, wondering if any of them had noticed my awkward entrance, but nobody had. 

As the bus progressed toward my stop, I had a chance to breathe deeply and get myself calmed down.  I was not dizzy—the world was not whirling around in my brain.  My memory was intact, and I knew perfectly well where I was and where I was going.  And slowly the “Drink Me” sensation went away.  Then I remembered that in the past I had had episodes of what psychologists call “derealization,” times when reality doesn’t seem what it is supposed to be.  The world outside my head does not look like it should.  In fact, Lewis Carroll did such a great job of describing the sensation of derealization in Through the Looking Glass that I sometimes wonder if he suffered from trauma! 

During my session, I described this experience to my therapist.  She suggested that I use colored pencils and paper and see what evolved.  Since I have learned that I can easily access the memories and emotions lodged in the right side of my brain if I write or draw with my non-dominant hand, I sat down, took a red pencil, and began to write.  What I wrote absolutely blew me away!

If you have read my website and my blog articles, you know I was violently sexually assaulted by the neighbor woman when I was between four and five years old, 1943 or 1944.  I effectively repressed this memory until 1980, when I had a flashback and remembered the basics of the assault.  Over a period of twenty years, I remembered more and more until I thought I had captured the whole awful memory.  Boy, was I ever wrong about that!

What I wrote with my left hand on Monday in my therapist’s office horrified both my therapist and me.  My message said something like this:  That woman told me that she had magical powers and that even when I couldn’t see her looking into my bedroom from her kitchen window, she could still see me and watch everything I did.  She could tell by watching me if I was telling anyone about what she had done to me, and if I told, then she would find me and kill me—dead!  And what would my parents do with a dead little girl?  They wouldn’t want me at all, and they would put me in a box and bury me in the ground.  So I had better not tell anyone!   And for forty-some years, I didn’t tell.  Anyone!  Not my parents, my Godparents, my friends—not anyone!

Wow!  Did this explain a lot!!  I remember as a child always having the feeling of having “butterflies in my stomach.”  That feeling made me antsy when I was awake and busy, and at night, I had a hard time sleeping.  Even my kindergarten teacher noticed my nervousness and noted it on my report card, although she dismissed my nervousness as “growing so fast.”  I was scared a lot of the time when I was a child, but I never really understood why I was scared.  All I knew was that I had that feeling of being scared and had nothing to cite as a cause for my fears. In junior high school, every time the teacher closed the classroom door, my stomach would lurch, and I would run to the bathroom to be sick.  I had no idea why I did this.  I learned, however, that I could walk out of school and simply go home without consequences, so I did this frequently.  Nobody ever said anything to me about skipping school, and I never told.  I was so happy to be home by myself where I could have peace and quiet with no doors shutting, no kids and teachers, and no people to notice my discomfort.

I grew into an adult diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.  Nevertheless, I coped with life and took no medication for my anxiety.  I graduated from college, survived twenty years of spousal abuse, raised two kids to adulthood, survived the divorce process, earned straight A grades in two graduate programs, retired from community college teaching, and here I am, a senior citizen getting help for Complex PTSD and writing about the experience.

The memory of this experience, awful and horrible as it is, is an essential ingredient in my healing process.  Now, for example, I understand so much more about why I have always been afraid of confiding in most people and why I trusted nobody, not even my parents, when I was a child.  Even yet, today, as a senior citizen,  my trust level is low. That’s a fact.  And the feeling I have had of not fitting into the world may be at least partially explained by this experience.  After all, a child living and reaching adulthood with such a monstrous untold secret truly would feel marked, like a leper in filthy rags wandering in a world full of shiny, unblemished holy beings.  That is how I have felt all my life! 
 
Why am I telling you, my reader, about this experience?  Because I want you to know that it is important to have faith in your brain’s/mind’s ability to heal itself.  If you truly want to heal from trauma, you will.  But if you do not have faith in your own healing powers, the process will take longer.  Your mind is the vault where your healing powers are located, and this same vault contains the materials upon which your healing depends.  If you have faith in your mind’s ability to process these materials and heal, then your healing will follow its natural course.  It will happen.  That’s the way we humans are made.  Your therapist can support your process, and your therapist can support you when you get frustrated with the process, but you alone have the key to your own healing.  It’s up to you to unlock the memories as they need to be unlocked.  If you are patient, attend to the still, small voice of your intuition, and have courage, healing will happen. 

Therapist Appreciation Day: Have You Observed This Day?

My therapist and I have, in my opinion, a good working relationship.  We have had our ups and downs, but throughout this process of dealing with my C-PTSD, I have tried to be honest with her and have had the courage to tell her how I feel about how things are going between us—from my perspective, at any rate.  This past Thursday, however, as I thought about my session, I realized that perhaps I have, at times, failed to let her know how much I appreciate her and to include her in my process.  I intend to apologize to her for this lapse when I see her on Monday.

You see, I have hit a spot in my therapy where I feel as if I’m in transition from one phase to another.  However, I’m not sure where I am going or what the next phase truly is.  I feel a tension in my therapy, as if I’m dangling over a crevasse and don’t know which way to jump—should I jump back to where I was comfortable or should I jump to the other side, unknown territory?  As you may know, the unknown is sometimes scary, and at times it’s a lot more comfortable to stay in the territory that is known.  That was—and IS--my dilemma.  I don’t know which way to jump!

I am, however, highly motivated to get through the process of recovering from Complex PTSD, and my dithering frustrates me no end!  I get angry at myself, and I browbeat myself, knowing all the time that this activity simply makes the situation worse.  And then I say things such as, “If I have time, I’m going to get through this all by myself this weekend” or “I know I could do this on my own if I just forced myself to do it.”  That’s what I said to my therapist on Thursday.  And then later, when I was riding the bus home and reflecting on my session, I remembered what I said, and then I remembered something else:  I’m not in this process alone!  She is there with me!
 
As soon as I remembered this simple fact, a peace settled over me, and I resolved to make this coming Monday my personal “Therapist Appreciation Day.”  I am not in this alone.  I have a companion on this journey, and I need to include her.  She can help me make this transition.
 
How could I have forgotten this simple fact?  Well, people with my background of abuse often get through life without a whole lot of help.  If a child learns at a very young age that the world is not safe and that no person, including parents, can be trusted to help, then often that child learns to cope with abuse without asking for help.  If, later, the child-become-adult is abused, then the person still does not ask for help—with anything! Such was my pattern. I never asked for help and never expected any help.  Never, that is, until I realized one day in 1980 that my world was crashing around me and that getting help was a matter of life and death.  Then I asked for and received the help I sought from a skilled, kind, and compassionate therapist.
 
That was about thirty years ago. I learned a big lesson on the day I asked for help in 1980:  It is possible to ask for help and to receive the help I need and want with no strings attached.  And along with the help, it’s also possible to receive a bonus gift of unconditional kindness, understanding, and empathy.

But old thought patterns die hard.  I certainly realize that now!  So, as I said, Monday will be the day I observe “Therapist Appreciation Day.”  Have you observed this day with your therapist?  It can't hurt, and it might help.

More on Complex PTSD

I check my stats page for this blog every day, and when I check, I look to see which articles seem to be most popular.  So far, the article titled “Complex PTSD: Does It Exist?” has been read more times than the others.  When I wrote the article, I didn’t expect it to be this popular.  In fact, I wasn’t sure that anyone would want to read it because it struck me as being somewhat dry and academic.  However, now I know that the topic appeals to you, my readers, and I will do my best to address the topic more often.  In the meantime, here are two articles I found recently which you might find helpful:
 
• http://knowledgex.camh.net/amhspecialists/specialized_treatment/trauma_treatment/first_stage_trauma/FirstStageTT_ch6/Pages/criteria_complex_ptsd.aspx
• http://drkathleenyoung.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/complex-ptsd/


If you read the two articles listed above, you will have a good idea as to the hallmarks of C-PTSD.  You will, at least, have a good idea as to the nature of C-PTSD as the practitioners and researchers see it.  You may not, however, get much of an idea from the articles as to how the problem appears to those who live with the disorder every day—those of us who find ourselves in a C-PTSD cage and are trying to get out and join the rest of the world.

Each person who battles C-PTSD experiences the disorder differently because each person is uniquely different from any other person.  Thus, when you read my description of my experience in the articles I’ve written for this blog, it’s important to remember that my experience of C-PTSD is unique to me.  There are, though, certain common threads that run through the tapestry of each person’s experience of the disorder.

One such thread is the presence of typical PTSD symptoms—flashbacks, dissociative episodes, numbing of emotions, etc.  The presence of these symptoms has interfered with my life to the point where I have long known I needed and wanted to do something to alleviate them.  That’s the main reason why I am presently in therapy, and it’s the main reason why I have attempted to get help in the past.  At present, I can say that I have actually tamed the symptoms to the point where they don’t bother me every day, and I can ride public transportation without being knocked off kilter by the symptoms.  Possibly, if I had the “non-C” PTSD, I would be finished with therapy by now.  I would be thrilled if I were ready to leave therapy because therapy is hard work that takes a lot of my time and thought.  That time, however, has not yet arrived.  I know it will arrive someday, but it is not here yet.

The problem is that C-PTSD is, as the name says, “complex.”  If my parents had wanted me, had been understanding and nurturing and had listened to me with empathy when I was a child, and if I had grown to be a mature adult with all the attributes of an emotionally mature adult and had been raped one night when I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, then very possibly I would have been diagnosed with PTSD.  I probably could have finished therapy a long time ago because I would have had sufficient ego strength to go through a course of EMDR or one of the other therapies found effective for healing PTSD.  I don’t know this for certain, but it’s likely.
 
In my case, though, the factors mentioned above did not apply to me.  I was not wanted, was not understood, was not given the parental attention I needed, was not treated with respect, and was sexually abused and abused in other ways.  When I reached the age of adulthood, I did not have the ego strength I needed to be an effective and mature adult.  And then I married a man who continued the treatment my parents gave me.  So over a long period of time, forty-two years in my case, I endured the sort of treatment that leads to C-PTSD and thought my life was normal, that every woman endured what I endured and that there was no alternative. The threads of prolonged exposure to abuse and neglect run through my tapestry as they run through the tapestries of most others who are trapped in C-PTSD.  The material from which the threads in my tapestry are spun may not be identical to that of other people who have C-PTSD, but the basic threads themselves are present.
 
So what, in my opinion, is the most telling factor, the factor that brings me up short and causes me to recognize and acknowledge the C-PTSD elephant in my own living room?  It’s the seemingly interminable nature of the healing process.  Like Sisyphus, I roll the stone almost to the top and think, “Success!  I’m there!” only to stand with mouth agape in amazement as I watch the stone roll back down and wait for me to roll it uphill again.  I manage to reduce the intensity of my PTSD symptoms, for example, only to discover in the process that I have some developmental gap that I need to investigate, understand, and fill if I am to truly enjoy relief from my symptoms. The process doesn’t seem to end, and that fact tells me that I’m dealing with C-PTSD and not the “non-C” PTSD.
  
If the process of breaking out of the C-PTSD cage seems so interminable and is so discouraging, why do I continue trying?  I continue because as I work in therapy, the bars are beginning to become less rigid and more flexible.  For example, I can sit on a bus calmly and without dissociating now when somebody gets on, tries to avoid paying the fare, and then argues loudly with the driver.  I may become irritated at the delay and the fact that somebody is so crass as to attempt to bully the driver into letting him ride free, but I don’t let the voices raised in anger and the menacing or threatening demeanor of the bully allow PTSD symptoms to take over my mind as I would have done a year ago.  My present response to a situation that in the past would have laid me low for the better part of a day tells me that slowly the cage bars are weakening and freedom is possible.  The little signs of progress comprise the carrot on the stick that causes me to plod along toward my goal, in other words.

What would I suggest a person have available to aid in his or her escape from the cage of C-PTSD?  Here is my list of necessary equipment:

• A realistic VISION of what life may be like without the present constraints of C-PTSD;
• The necessary RELATIONSHIP with a therapist who specializes in trauma work;
• The MOTIVATION to do the job;
• COMMITMENT to one’s self and to one’s goal;
• A RECOGNITION of one’s progress, no matter how tiny the increment;
• The HOPE that springs from recognizing progress;
• A sense of HUMOR to help get one’s perspective back when times are bleakest;
• The FAITH in the process needed to keep plodding along no matter what!
 
The above is my list.  You will have your own list, no doubt, but maybe my list will remind you of something you forgot to put on your list.  And my list above may not contain everything I need, but it does contain the equipment most important to me right now. 

To conclude, I’m no learned expert on C-PTSD.  I’m not a trained mental health professional—I have a graduate degree in adult education and a graduate degree in rhetoric, neither of which qualifies me as an expert on C-PTSD.  I do, however, have something many of the experts may lack, a diagnosis of C-PTSD, and that diagnosis places me on the inside of the cage looking out.  I hope that whatever I say to you as I write “from the inside out” is useful and inspiring and facilitates your rending the bars of your cage and making your way to freedom. 

Another Way to Look at EMDR

On November 14th, I discussed my feelings regarding my “failure” to be ready for an EMDR session.  As you may be aware, I have spent almost thirty years trying to find a therapist with the training and desire to help me relieve my PTSD symptoms.  If you are struggling with the same symptoms, you understand how the flashbacks, numbing, dissociative episodes, and all the other hallmarks of PTSD can disrupt your life and damage your relationships.  Thus, you can also understand why I am highly motivated to do the work now that I have a competent therapist who is trained to facilitate trauma work.  After all, I am seventy-two years old, and I want to get the job done while I have some life left!

The problem is that at times my desire to do the work and to do it quickly makes me impatient and causes me to be a real “Debbie Downer” to myself.  Then I need a couple of days to recover my perspective on the situation.  Usually, I process this sort of thing while I sleep, and this incident is no exception, for I awoke this morning thinking of  EMDR differently from the way I had thought about it on Monday, the 14th.  On that day, I was thinking only of EMDR as a means for reprocessing trauma energy, and I was remembering the horrible reaction I had to an EMDR session during the time I saw my previous therapist (see “Why Take the Time to Prepare for EMDR?”, November 8th).  When I awoke this morning, I remembered that EMDR can also be used to install resources serving to strengthen the ego and help prepare a person for the reprocessing experience.  As I see it now, installing resources is a totally nonthreatening experience, something to anticipate with pleasure.  At least, I anticipate the experience with pleasure—I want to feel better!

How does one install a resource using EMDR?  I’ve read various articles, including one by Shirley Jean Schmidt (http://www.dnmsinstitute.com/doc/rf-emdr.pdf) discussing the use of EMDR to install resources, and perhaps the information that I stored in my brain from my reading somehow connected last night with the questions arising from the distress I experienced on the 14th.  According to Shirley Jean Schmidt, one installs resources by bilateral stimulation just as one deals with trauma memories by bilateral stimulation.  For example, on last Monday if I had drawn a picture showing the satisfaction I had felt at some point in my life when I had succeeded in mastering an important task or skill, then I would have kept that picture and the emotion and thought behind it in mind as I either did the bilateral eye movements or did bilateral tapping on my knees.  In theory, then, if I had done that last Monday, I would probably feel less threatened at a later time by the task of using EMDR to process a memory associated with trauma.
 
To me, therapy is a process, but it is also a task, one that I am attempting to complete in order to improve the quality of my life. While I know that I may not accomplish this task completely before I die, I want to work hard to accomplish as much as I can so that I can enjoy more serenity and peace of mind in my last years.  Also, I divide the general task of going through therapy into a number of subtasks, EMDR being one of those subtasks.  Therefore, to me it is perfectly logical to believe that if I have achieved good results and attained satisfaction when I have accomplished other major tasks at other times in my life, I can at some point in the future look forward to experiencing satisfaction when I use EMDR to reprocess trauma memories. 

So guess what I am going to discuss with my therapist this coming Monday, November 21st!  Right!  I am going to propose that we install a few resources that will take away some of the fear I have of reprocessing a trauma memory via EMDR!  More coming on this topic at a later date.

November 14: Today's Work . . .

As I mentioned in my post titled "Coming This Week . . . ," I needed to deal with my anxiety today, and I didn't get to the EMDR.  Today was hard for me because I had expected to get some significant EMDR work done.  It didn't happen.  So I am disappointed in myself.  However, as my therapist said, my work is just going to take a little longer.  I need to be patient with myself. 

Complex PTSD is just that:  Complex!  And it takes longer to deal with something that is complex than it does to deal with something that isn't so complex.  For more information on this, see the essay on this blog titled "Complex PTSD:  Does It Exist?" 

Knowing the above does not make me feel better about the fact that I didn't get any EMDR work done today, but on the way home, I distracted myself from the feeling of failure by treating myself to a much-needed pair of new athletic shoes--and they were on sale for $44!  So something good happened, and for that, I am grateful. 

Appreciate the little pleasures in life, for they can cushion the bumps and help you keep your perspective.

More news as time passes . . .        

Coming this week . . .

If possible, I'll diary my experience in EMDR, starting later today, so that those of you who may be interested in utilizing this mode of healing can get some idea as to how it works. 

I will admit to being a wee bit anxious about my upcoming EMDR session because the last one was so problematic--see last week's post.  However, my present therapist knows what she is doing and firmly believes and practices the principle of "First, do no harm."  If my anxiety level increases today, we may spend the time dealing with that rather than working with EMDR. 

For a few weeks, then, I'll attempt to diary my experiences so that you can get a sense of how EMDR is affecting me.  We are each different, however, so the effect EMDR has on me may be way different from the effect on you.  But I believe that there are certain common threads that run through each person's experience.  If this is true, then what I have to say may be of use to you.  Jean

Why Take the Time to Prepare for EMDR?

As you know, if you have been following my blog, the goal driving my therapy has been that of alleviating my PTSD symptoms.  About two years ago, my PTSD symptoms, after having lain somewhat dormant for about ten years, came back with a vengeance.  It’s not as if I had been ignoring my psyche and not dealing with the dissociative episodes, the flashbacks, the numbing, and all the other classic symptoms of PTSD for the past thirty years.  Not at all.  Over the past thirty years, I’ve seen a number of therapists and have spent a lot of money and about twelve years of my life trying to do something about the mess in my head.  (For more on this, please read the other articles archived on this blog.)  Unfortunately, despite my efforts, I had not found a therapist who specialized in helping people heal from trauma damage until fairly recently.  Now I am seeing such a person and am getting the job done.

After spending about eighteen months doing ego state therapy work, I am finally approaching the next phase in my therapy:  EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).  The work in ego state therapy has prepared me for the EMDR, and now I am ready to make the transition.  Of course, I keep in mind the fact that progress in therapy, like progress in life in general, does not run in a straight line.  Progress in ego state therapy has been a dance called the “two step”—two steps back and one step forward.  However, I now have identified the parts that inhabit my psyche and seem to be most influential in their influence on my thoughts, feelings, and behavior.  More parts may announce themselves as I continue in therapy, but the parts of which I am now aware are working well together, helping one another, cooperating, and generally being friendly and supportive to one another. 

Instilling a spirit of cooperation among the parts inhabiting the psyche is fundamental to laying the basis for EMDR work, as is instilling resources or strengths in the psyche.  If this isn’t done, an EMDR session in the afternoon can result in a horrible, awful reaction in the evening. 

My previous therapist had, unfortunately, taken a shortcut with the preparation, having done virtually no ego-strengthening work with me.  One afternoon after I had been seeing her for about six months, she had me do a written dialogue between my left hand and my right hand, a powerful technique used to get in contact with one’s right brain, the side of the brain containing, among other things, emotional memories and memories of awful and traumatic events in one’s life.  After I had done this dialog and had explained the dialog to the therapist,  she clapped the EMDR apparatus on me and left it for a long time.

By the time I departed for home, I felt disoriented and spacey, and after I arrived home, I felt panicked and anxious, two feelings which became more intense as the afternoon and evening wore on.  And then it happened—I had a full-blown reaction, call it an abreaction or a flashback, whatever—and I was scared!  The reaction was directly connected to the material I had generated in the afternoon’s non-dominant hand dialog, and this material was not the stuff of which lovely, wonderful, and happy memories are made.  No, this material was the stuff of which nightmares are made and the stuff which drives some women to escape their husbands and other women to sacrifice themselves and become sexual slaves to their husbands.  Some people still do not believe that there is such a thing as marital rape.  I can tell those people a thing or two about marital rape that might make believers of them!  And on that afternoon, I relived just one episode of many episodes of marital rape during my twenty-year marriage.  The fact that this particular instance of marital rape took place in the kitchen when at least one of my children was present intensified my reaction, I’m sure.

When the reaction had run its course, I was frightened and disoriented, more fragmented by far than I had been before the EMDR experience.  I called my therapist, but she said there was nothing she could do for me.  She did suggest I use self-soothing techniques, but since I had never been taught to self-soothe and was not in the right frame of mind to learn by Googling, I hung up, knowing that the job of getting myself gathered up and re-oriented was mine and mine alone.  This was on Monday.  By Thursday I was sufficiently present in my body to leave my apartment and seek some help.  I found this help in the form of a young Episcopal priest, and by the time I left him, I was ready to take the next step, that of finding another therapist!  Every so often, I think about this experience and wonder if other clients of that therapist are experiencing a nightmare similar to mine. If they are, I hope they, too, find another therapist.

Because I am not easily deterred from a path that I consider essential, I did not give up the search for a therapist who could help me alleviate my PTSD symptoms.  And now, as I have mentioned, after spending about a year and a half preparing for EMDR, I am ready to take the next step and do it!  I know there is the possibility that despite the careful preparation, I can have a bad reaction to the therapy, but I also know that my present therapist will be there for me if I do.  I also know that she will do all within her power to minimize the chance that I will have a bad reaction.  Of that, I am confident. 

Why, after such a horrible experience with my previous therapist, do I believe EMDR is worth doing?  For one thing, despite the bad experience I had, I know EMDR works.  I can now remember the instance of marital rape I re-experienced that Monday after the EMDR treatment, and the memory no longer carries with it the full emotional charge.  Also, in about 1994 another therapist had successfully used EMDR with me to discharge the energy from another traumatic experience.  So I know EMDR does what the folks at the EMDR Institute claim it does, and because I want to do all I can to prevent sliding back into the pit of having my life disrupted by PTSD symptoms, I will give my best efforts to EMDR therapy. 

For more information on EMDR and to see if it’s something that might help you, please read the material on the official website:  www.emdr.com.

Filling In the Gap

In my last post (Developmental Gap??  What’s That??) I discussed developmental gaps and attempted to define the term as I know it and as it appears to apply to me.  The gap I identified in the previous post is the gap I call “lack of connection.” 

My parents took good care of me, as the owner of a Porsche takes good care of his or her vehicle.  When I was an infant, they fed me, changed me, and, just as the book recommended, they left me in my crib for four hours between feedings and changing.  When I was a toddler, they took pride in my Shirley Temple prettiness and my ability to memorize long verses so I could impress their guests with my recitations.  When I was in the early grades, my parents took pride in my ability to do well in school.  By the time I was nine or ten, however, they didn’t pay much attention to me.  By that time, I wasn’t much use to them, or so it seemed to me. 

My parents continued to take good care of me as I moved through childhood and through adolescence and on into adulthood, but they left me to my own devices most of the time.  I felt little or no emotional connection to either of my parents and regarded them as adversaries.  They had molded and shaped my behavior into that which was acceptable to them, to the people they knew, and to society at large, but we had not connected on a human level.  They didn’t know me as a person, and I didn’t know them.  What’s more, I had the distinct sense that they did not want to know me as a person, and they did not want me to know them.

By the time I left home for college, they had done their job, that of caring for my physical needs, educating me, instilling in me the societal values of the time—yes, they had done everything they were obligated to do, or so they probably felt.  They had, however, left to me the task of learning to develop a sense of attachment to other human beings. 

I have always been aware at some level of my awareness that I have lacked something most of my friends seemed to possess, but only recently have I understood what that “something” has been.  That “something” has been a sense of being “with” other people, of having a connection to other people.  Only recently have I been aware that my old, old perception of me being on one side and everyone else being on the other side may not be an accurate perception.  My therapist is working with me on this, trying to help me bridge this gap.  And the latest brain research says that my brain has retained sufficient plasticity to enable me, at age seventy-two, to overcome this developmental gap.

I have hope that my therapist’s belief in my ability to overcome this gap and the knowledge that my brain is still plastic enough to make this change will enable me to see clearly that my old assumption of life being a case of “me versus them” is a concept with an expiration date, a developmental gap that is within my power to bridge.
  
A psychologist friend of mine frequently reminds me that with awareness comes change.  I have learned through life that this belief is true.  When I become aware of a problem or a condition or a difficulty in my life, then I am usually able to make a change for the better.  Not being taught in infancy to connect securely with other people and not learning to believe that most people truly want to be supportive when they say they do have left their marks on my psyche and underlie my feeling of being isolated, but I need now to “put on my big girl panties” and work with my therapist to repair this developmental gap.  It can be done, and I will do it!  WE will do it!  Together.

Note:  After doing some heavy thinking about what I have said in this essay, I have realized that my reader may get the message that my parents' failure to connect with me is the sole reason for my difficulty as an adult to connect with others.  That, I believe, is not entirely the case. 

Many of us were raised in the first half of the 1900s when behaviorism strongly influenced child-raising theory, and a lot of young parents in this country bought into the same theory my parents accepted.  Somehow, though, many of my peers, women my age, avoided experiencing the "me against the world" mind set that has fed my lifelong feeling of isolation and has made connecting with other people or bonding with people so difficult for me.  

It could be that a lot of parents simply did not take the theory of the times as seriously as my parents did and did not apply it to the exclusion of addressing their children's emotional and spiritual needs--as my parents did.  In addition, the traumatic events of my childhood and the fact that after these events, I had no trusted adult to whom I could turn for help and support no doubt intensified my feeling of isolation. 

For almost my entire seventy-two years of life, the thought of suicide has dogged me daily.  The fact that I'm still here is proof that I have not acted upon the thought, of course.  However, just thinking about suicide has been enough to sap my energy.  I realize now how different my life might have been if I had learned to bond as a baby, if the traumatic events had not happened, and if I'd had a trusted person to talk to when I was a child.  Even if I'd had just one of these three elements, my life might have been different.  For one thing, I might not have chosen an abuser for my husband.

I am, however, a pragmatist, inclined to take the view that the past, damaging as it may have been, is over and done.  It's up to me to do what I need to do to shape my future into what I want it to be.  I have done that in some respects.  I entered graduate school at age fifty when I was finished raising my daughter, had a career which I loved, and then retired.  I now live on the Social Security I had built up and a small monthly annuity payment from the pension fund to which I had contributed. 

I am, however, not finished shaping my future.  Now I am working on repairing the damages resulting from childhood neglect and abuse and from abuses I experienced during the twenty years I was married.  Repairing these damages is a huge task, as any of you know if you have been in therapy and involved in doing the same thing I'm doing. 

I write the articles for this blog because I want to let you know that repairing the damages is possible.  Also, I want to give you information and share my own experience with you in the hope that whatever I have to say will somehow be helpful to you as you struggle.  If, through my efforts, I can help you, then my efforts are richly rewarded.  

What I would like from you, my readers, are your comments, suggestions for topics, and any ideas that would help me help you.  Also, if you have ideas that would help me make my website http://www.jfairgrieve.com/ more useful to readers, please send me those ideas in the comment form on this blog.  In addition, if any of you who have blogs would like a mutual posting of links--I list your link on my site and you reciprocate--I'm up for that!  As the adage goes, "It takes a village . . . "

(More on this topic of developmental gaps as I progress.  My next step in therapy is to start EMDR.  www.emdr.com/  According to my therapist, as I go through EMDR, more developmental gaps will surface.  When that happens, we will deal with them.)