Ahistorical Therapy

The “short-term” therapies are intended to help people think or behave in more productive ways. That’s good. But I think they’re inadvertently demeaning, because they are ahistorical. They offer an appealing pitch: your history doesn’t matter; you can learn to do your life better, starting today. Why not give it a try? Wouldn’t you like to make better choices or be less miserable?

I’m reading a book by Scott Anderson titled “Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.” At the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire had fallen apart and new countries were created, the victors played for power, oil, territory. They ignored the history of the local peoples. We’re living with the consequences.

I think we treat ourselves with similar disrespect when we ignore or downplay our own histories. “Oh, you nearly died? Well! Good thing you didn’t! Stop moping and cheer up.”

This approach, while sensible (you didn’t die), ignores the need for someone to hear your story. You can’t be real to yourself, or really know the crisis is over, until someone cares about your story.

Maybe what happened to you is inconvenient. Maybe nobody has time or energy to listen. Maybe your story makes other people uncomfortable. Still, if your story doesn’t matter then you don’t matter.

As usual, there are pros and cons. It’s good to learn to do things in ways that turn out better, and the pragmatic therapies will help teach you. But your experience in life, and the “unproductive” thinking or behaviors you learned, have been your life. That’s your history. It matters — you matter — so be nice.

My “survival” is killing me. . .

As a frightened child, I did whatever I could to be safer.  I came up with, and still feel compelled to:

Eat!

Don’t Move!  Hold Still!

Be Invisible!  Don’t Exist!  Erase Your Self!

Try Harder!

Silence!

Today, these efforts, originally designed to improve my chances of survival, are killing me.  They create extra pounds, muscle tension, self-compression, anxiety, and the consequences: a too-high BMI, inadequate exercise, and high blood pressure.  They’ll kill me.

“I” know this.  My body-memory (the earlier me who lived through my childhood) doesn’t.  I guess I have to draw her out, listen to her terrors and desperation, and then . . . maybe . . . she’ll listen to me reassuring her that she’s safe, doesn’t have to do all that anymore.  Maybe . . . she’ll be willing to see that today I exist and am managing my/our life.

I know this internal split is typical of trauma: the part of self that’s in shock stays frozen in time; the on-guard “hyper-vigilance” never relaxes.  It could happen again! . . . Now!  Preparedness feels protective.

But survival today depends on understanding that the war is over.  What’s valuable in wartime (focus, ignoring feelings, being geared up to fight) is a disaster in peacetime.  At least it is for me.  So that’s the challenge.

My inclination is to spend more time listening to the scared part of me.  If it feels heard (by me), maybe it will know it’s no longer alone.  That’s already better.  And, eventually, maybe it will consider my suggestion that it doesn’t need to be ready-to-defend at all times, because the war is — in fact — over.

Inside or Out?

Because I grew up in a tiny rural town, I spent a lot of time in my head.  Not much was happening: the sun came up and went down, millions of stars lit the night sky, the palm tree grew, the chickens scrabbled for worms, lizards basked in the sun, my brother and I ran around naked in the mild summer rains, we watched out for snakes and scorpions.  This was Cave Creek AZ in the late 1940s.  Phoenix was 30 miles away (now it’s next door) on a dirt road.  There were 300 people in Cave Creek, and none of them lived within view.

So I found activities inside my own mind.  I watched the earth and its scrub plants, felt the sun on my back, petted the wire-haired dachshund when she was around — and daydreamed, either alone (mostly) or with my brother, who made up stories with me.

I’m now 71, and just realizing why I’ve always watched people who live in-the-world as if they were a different species.  I live in my thoughts and give sporadic attention (as required) to “the world.”

Of course I get less done.  My life is nothing to be ashamed of — it’s been interesting, reasonably successful, and it isn’t over yet — but I wonder what would have happened if I’d being “doing” instead of mulling, daydreaming, wondering, turning things over and over (like the fascinating patterns on a lizard’s back).

I’m sure the mental habit was reinforced by my position in the family: second child (less important), girl (less important), and aware that my greater safety and approval depended on being as non-intrusive as possible.

Anyway, at my advanced age I’m realizing I have this way of being, and I don’t have to.  It’s familiar; it feels “normal;” but I want to get my books finished and published; I want to play the violin better; I want to move my body more.

Part of this shift in awareness comes from my odd but compelling urge to get Italian citizenship.  My father was born in Trieste, and I’m applying to the Italian government on that basis.  Lots of hoops to jump through, but the process means I’m reading a lot of documents about my father and feeling closer to him   He went through various versions of hell — and, I’m realizing, he never complained.  He was a do-er; each day was a new day, and he liked it.  That’s where my brother learned it, and finally, I guess, I’m going to learn it, too.

Where Attachment Lives?

I’m reading a book by Michael Gershon, M.D., called “The Second Brain” (1998).  He’s a neurobiologist fascinated by the intestinal tract, which apparently has an independent nervous system, a brain of its own:  a piece of guinea pig intestine living in “organ broth” will respond to internal touch with peristaltic nerve activity.  No neural connection to the brain upstairs or spinal cord.

It’s amazing, and mind-boggling for a non-biologist like me, but the whole concept makes me wonder if what psychology calls “attachment” is more allied to this downstairs “brain” than to the one upstairs.

I wonder, in particular, because I’ve realized that words are almost useless in helping someone deal with an eating disorder, or even an attachment disorder.  Somehow words are the wrong “language.”  And this “second brain” absolutely does not care about words, so maybe that’s where these deeper, early emotions live.

The pragmatic approaches like cognitive or dialectical behavior therapy modify how your upstairs (verbal) brain manages your relationship to food and digestion.  But what about all those feelings related to food and eating?  Feeling full, feeling safer and connected, feeling bigger and stronger and maybe armored, feeling the power of autonomy, feeling reassured, feeling consoled.  What about those, regardless of what you do about food?

And, by the way, 95% of your body’s serotonin is generated in your gut, as is 80% of your immune system.  What?!  I’ll read on.

Just the Facts (about the fat)

I have a client who has lost a lot of weight but hovers around 250 pounds.  She’s healthy, exercises a lot and regularly.  No crises.  But she would like to take off more weight.  She has the normal “I’ve had enough” signals, but she overrides them.

We’re trying to figure out what magic she’s endowed food with.  We found the usual: food offered consolation, safety, and a sense of autonomy (rebellion against parents who were trying to help her not get fat as a teen).  She had a relationship with food when she was lonely, and, by god, she owned her life.

I suggested food was like a placebo, and it did reassure her (because she believed in it), but we should try to find the real medicine, so she wouldn’t have to seek soothing carbs every day.

She mentioned offhand food (or eating) made her “real.”  Well, that’s important.  Everyone needs to feel real to herself.  Maybe we could find a way for her to feel real that didn’t involve extra food, or the act of eating.

Then she added quickly, she didn’t want to blame anyone.  Like her parents? who made her throw away the candy she’d been hoarding, or shamed her about the candy wrappers they’d found hidden under the bed.

Those incidents coincided with puberty, her parents fighting toward a divorce, and her being bullied at school — all at once.  Where else could she turn?  Food was easy to get, cheap, delicious, and consoling.  Good solution, with unfortunate side effects.

Was she blaming her parents for their inadequacy, blindness, or whatever you want to call it.  No.  Becoming real to herself — acknowledging and feeling her experience of those years — wasn’t blaming anyone.

They loved her and had done their best.  They were good people, with limitations.  There were no bad guys here.  They just didn’t know how to say, “Wait a minute.  She’s eating a lot of candy.  What is she really needing?  And can we help her get it?”  They didn’t recognize that the eating was a symptom.  They had no medicine for the disease causing the symptom of her sugar-seeking.

But she did.  If she could acknowledge how things had “really” been for her — and realize she wasn’t blaming her parents — maybe she could stop running, protecting them (and her relationship with them).  She could take care of herself with no morality attached.  Normal.  Not against anyone.  That’s how it had been (for her): she’d been scared, lonely, confused, feeling helpless.  Things happen.  Those were the facts of those moments in her life.  No one’s fault, and not happening now.

Am I Really an “Uzbek”?

That’s not important — I know nothing about Uzbek culture — but it’s what I used symbolically in a dream.  I was on a train, and I watched a young woman dying by poison.  At the end, she had seizures and flung herself through the window onto the ground outside the train.  People laughed, and I realized that’s the part every viewer looks forward to (the seizures, as entertainment).

Then I was gripped by the poison.  I was so surprised!  I had only a few moments, felt the poison killing me, didn’t understand why it was my turn, and then acceded — said to myself, “Oh well, that’s what happens when you’re an Uzbek.”

Awake, I think I was dreaming about the power of belonging.  We don’t know who we are unless we’re a member of something.  Since my “something” gave me a reduced and lonely idea of myself, I’m still struggling to withdraw my identity from that small group (my Uzbekistan, my family).

Do I — do I — agree with my local culture?  Is it okay for me to belong in something like a group that administers death and laughs?  No.  I have to shift some of my identification out of my group and onto myself.

Especially since I come from a group that barely registered my reality, it’s a challenge.  I’m still pale, compared to my vivid awareness of them.  I need to pay more attention to my feelings, what makes sense to me, what I prefer — and then trust those perceptions, base my life on them.  The hardest part is believing me instead of the group will.  I think it’s an act of faith, and practice (making it familiar) will help.

I’m starting to believe I’m not an Uzbek.  I need to get off that train.

The baby-bathwater problem

We confuse the baby and the bathwater in two pervasive, important ways.  One is (feminine) beauty, and the other is sexuality.  Both involve men as the bad guy, but that’s not right, either, because the men who swim in these distorted waters also lose parts of themselves.

Beauty affects us all.  We cherish a vase, a painting, or jewelry made yesterday or thousands of years ago.  We invest billions in making ourselves more beautiful.  As Archie the cockroach (of “Archie & Mehitabel”) wrote: if the butterfly people swooned over in the elevator had been a cockroach, they would have stepped on it.  We care about and respond to beauty.  We can’t help it.  It pleases us.

That same beauty has been co-opted by romance and male preferences, right?  Men won’t look at us unless we’re nubile, have the perfect body du jour, wonderful hair, etc.  That makes some women (including me, historically) decide to ignore their own physical self.  I’m damned if I’m going to please some man, the way my male-worshipping mother did.

But the problem is the male-worship, not the beauty.  My mother mis-usedbeauty (as do millions of other women) in a power relationship.  More beauty = more power to attract.  Yes, that’s often true, but it’s about power — and not really about beauty.  Beauty becomes a tool, a means toward a pre-selected end.  Beauty is so much more than that.

I wish early feminism had made this distinction.  Many of us deliberately didn’t beautify ourselves, because beauty was contaminated by the historical injustice of male authority.  I want beauty back without caring whether it pleases some male.  If he likes it, or dislikes it, is peanuts compared to its real importance.

Then there’s sex, again in the realm of power.  Any female who’s been sexually exploited feels the predominance of power in a realm that should have nothing to do with power.  Sexual connection is a grand thing, celebrated by poets and other artists for centuries.  It has its own beauty, immense and profound.

I meant it when I wrote that the men suffer, too.  Men who view beauty as a commodity aren’t able to wash in its soul-restoring waters.  Men who see sex as an outlet for their own urges don’t experience the earth-centering connection of a sexually sharing relationship.  They’ve been as brainwashed as the women.  It’s a shame.  Everybody loses; even the folks who sell us ways to be more beautiful or more sexy, because their souls are corrupted.  And our culture loses, because we squander some of our richest human resources.  Look at the ugliness we create . . . .

So enjoy beauty, your beauty, the beauty of others and of the world.  It isn’t guilty or shallow or frivolous.  It’s eternal.  And if your sexuality has been exploited, take it back; it’s too precious to leave in the hands or mind of someone who doesn’t even know what he was playing with.

Beauty or sex, we need to save the baby.  Toss the dirty bathwater, but keep what matters.

P.S.  I write using the dominant male-female relationship paradigm; the same values apply regardless of gender.

Shifting Gears about Trust

C’s parents are aging, and she’s had a bad relationship with them for years:  physical abuse, shaming, unjust accusations, and a general indifference to any of her feelings or (real) successes.  It’s been horrible.  Part of her knows there’s no hope for improving  relations before they die, because they are so emotionally limited.  Another part of her has to keep trying, or, at least, hoping.

It’s one of the worst binds:  the person(s) you love the most, with an open heart and no reservation (like your parent) is the same person who hurts you.  The person whose approval will give you safety and the feeling you’re entitled to live is the same person who endangers you, beats you, shames and betrays you.  There’s no way out.  (Therapeutically, there is, but it always feels impossible in the moment, because it is.)  Either you brutalize your own feelings by trying not to care for them (even though they’ll always matter), or you keep putting yourself in emotional or physical harm’s way by staying in the game. Terrible, un-resolvable choice.

There’s so much human indifference and cruelty in the world — girls being sold into sexual slavery, tribal or other group atrocities, murders, etc. — I have to admit that humans can be dangerous.  Not just in theory, and not always, and I won’t stop having friends or enjoying good experiences, but I think I should stop being surprised when awful things happen.

Like C, I had an unsafe family, so I flop back and forth between utter distrust (lots of solitude, thank you!) and trusting without discernment, wandering cheerfully through life like a naive child.  I’ve been fairly lucky that not too many bad things  happened to me.

Childhood should be the exception to having to think about trust.  Children should be protected from horrible things, because they truly have no defense against them.  They can’t leave, they can’t fight back, they can’t even know how bad something is because they have nothing to compare it to.  As children grow, they should be taught to protect themselves, but without anxiety.  You don’t have to be afraid if you’re sensible and careful.  In fact, much of life functions pretty well for us lucky ones.

I was taught to be trusting and stay child-like, because it suited my emotionally exploitive family (they were limited, unable to do better, despite some good intentions).  Compliance was rewarded.  So I came up backwards: believing I had to trust, even while I hid emotionally behind good cheer, collaboration, and whatever charm I could muster.

Given the evidence, today I think I should not trust the world until whatever or whoever it is proves trustworthy.  There are a lot of trustworthy people, activities, etc., and I’m not withdrawing from life  But I want to stop being surprised when something bad happens.  I’m tired of it.

This doesn’t feel like a defeat, or even a moral judgment.  It just is.  Why would I bemoan the sun’s coming up in the east?  It just does.  I’m reminded of the story about the scorpion who cajoled a frog into giving him a ride across the river.  Despite the frog’s reservations, the scorpion persuaded him he wouldn’t bite the frog on the way across.  “Why would I do that?  I’d drown, too.”  Half-way across the river, he bit the frog.  “But you said…” spluttered the frog.  The scorpion shrugged:  “I’m a scorpion….”

Humans can be dangerous.  Children aren’t able to digest that reality and should be protected.  C doesn’t need her parents now.  She does need to respect how scary it was for her to cope with the danger and emotional abandonment in childhood — not just what they did, which she’s clear about, but how she felt, which she’s afraid to approach.

Once she accepts the emotional truth of her experience, she’ll be able to stop generalizing about trust.  I’m trying to do the same.

Another Hard Lesson

Two women clients last night, both struggling with the same issue: the balance between belonging and being a separate self.  There’s an axis:

Belonging <——————–> Self

The question for each of these women, in very different contexts, was how to find the comfortable place on that axis.

The first woman is in a long-term marriage that often hurts her, because her really nice husband keeps changing his mind and can’t cope with anything that feels pinned down.  His autonomy apparently feels jeopardized with the slightest breeze of long-term planning.  He says yes, but the next day he reneges.

The second woman is in a job with a supervisor who has poor boundaries.  They’ve taken on more work; the supervisor is pushing hard and wants this woman to do the same.  But this woman has a family with elementary school aged children; she wants (and needs) to get home.  Her plate is already full-to-overflowing.  She’s beginning (?) to resent her employer’s expectations, but is scared to say anything.

I made the therapeutic mistake of pushing her — telling her what she could say to her employer, why it mattered, and so forth.  We did touch on what held her back (which was interesting), but I could tell I was bullying her.

This morning I woke up realizing why I’d become so vehement: my poor mother was needy (as was this second woman’s), and both of us had held ourselves back to keep Mom company — because each mother needed it, because we each loved our mothers, because we needed it to be OK with Mom for us to move on, and it wasn’t.

Her mother was from Central America, latina, where no one of that generation pulls too far away from the family (especially females).  And she was unhappily married.  My mother was just traumatized, frightened, and dependent.  And unhappily married.  How do you leave that behind, when you love someone?  And what love is stronger than the mother-child bond?

The horrible, unpalatable truth (for both of us) was that staying back with Mom made no objective difference in Mom’s life.  Let’s take me.  I didn’t take care of myself physically, refused to become attractive (also because of a history of sexual abuse), and was the Snow White her stepmother would have wanted — not attractive, no threat.  I listened, I provided emotional support.  Like this second client, I made her feelings and needs more important than my own.  But that changed nothing!  She wasn’t any happier the next day.  I threw my life away (for too many years) for a lost cause.  When she finally did get happier, it was because she had some good-enough therapy.  My energies had only helped her in the moment — I was depleted, neglecting myself, angrier by the episode, and I hadn’t really been helpful.

Although…and here I get stuck: I had helped her in the moment (the thousands of moments when she confided in me, leaned on me for reassurance, etc.).  Is that worth enough?  It’s “enabling” but it did help her.  She was drowning and I pulled her to shore.  The next day she fell in the water again, and I pulled her to shore.  What does a child know about telling her she should learn to stop falling in the water?

When I lived in Bolivia, people were very much members of their group, their family, their city.  It was amazingly peaceful, not struggling with this “individual” stuff.  Maybe you didn’t like some of the people in your group; maybe you hated having to go to Mom’s house for Sunday dinner every week; maybe you felt too constrained.  But you didn’t wonder who you were.

If, like me, you’re aware of both pulls, I guess you have to find your place on that axis, or maybe walk back and forth to the appropriate place for different parts of your life.

The latina client was surprised to consciously recognize that, working with gringos, she couldn’t count on their thinking about the effect of their behavior on her.  She, as part of a group (in her sense of self), was always careful of other people.  Her employer was going after what suited her and the organization.  She wasn’t being careful about how this affected my client.  If she had been, she’d have reduced the work load (because the organization couldn’t afford to hire another person, and both she and my client were already stretched).

What I felt this morning in a rush of tears was that my mother had been an emotional cannibal.  She’d taken, and taken, blindly, in the throes of her own need.  It happens.