Monday, November 29, 2010

The Ex "Doesn't Believe It" (Asperger's) And Denies Son Might Have It

Yep

The ex "talked to some people who know about these things" (my kids tell me).

And she doesn't believe I have Asperger's or NVLD.

And she doesn't believe son has it.

Because if he did, he'd use it as an excuse to "be lazy". So she doesn't believe it. Because all he has to do is work harder and any issues he has will go away.

Or so the kids tell me about her reaction.

I'm going to go for supper with son if he's available and find out what the hell.

I expect she talked to her sister, who has an education degree, but works as an admin officer at the school board, and her mother (hat tip to Smitten for that piece of analysis) and they decided son doesn't have it and that its just laziness and an excuse. And that the ex is flat out lying about having talked to "people who know". Because that's her pattern. Talk to the family, get their sense of things, and then attribute it to "experts".

Bizarre

She was 100% in favour of getting son tested until he told her about my diagnosis and discussed with her him getting tested.

She was pushing him to get tested before I was done my testing and saying she'd pay for it all. She has said since he was little that there was something odd about that boy (which we have always agreed on). He has a funny gait/run. He doesn't give a shit what anyone else thinks. He's highly argumentative. Not aggressive/pushy/mean, but always demanding and needing to be right. We both agreed he was odd for his whole life.

And then all of a sudden - no. He doesn't have it. And it's laziness. That's how/why Smitten suggested it was from the family, not the ex's own ideas.

Fuuuck...

What a dumbass

Some interesting Autism/Asperger's videos and links

Exploring the subject. Because I am pretty sensitive about the outcomes of being labelled different (you've all read about bits and pieces of my childhood) i want to underline that other than being a little nerdy in person, I am not as obvious as some of the folks in these videos.

I fear being labelled. I fear the results of being labelled. I am not a cliche or stereotypical case. I fear you, my friends, some of whom haven't ever met me in person, will think less (or substantially differently) of me because of the label/diagnosis.

i am funny and engaging and warm - i am very different from the cliches. i want to be me.

one of the counsellors here at the clinic talked to me about labels (her son has non-verbal learning disorder [NVLD]) and about being pigeonholed. i have found that i am worried about those labels. i thought i wouldn't be.

i was enthusiastic about my impending diagnosis. i was looking forward to it. i was counting the days. and then my sister reacted the way she did. and all my courage and liberation fell away and i ended up back to being frightened of who i am.

Smitten reminds me that the reception has been benign and/or positive from pretty much everyone other than my family - and that i need to take the time to internalise the fact that unhealthy responses are coming from unhealthy people - my family - and that these people also constitute a lifetime of emotional abuse.

yeah...

and i'm distancing myself from my family to assist my emotional equilibrium. why hang around with people who affect me negatively? i am making an effort to spend time with people who actually like me and accept me.

but my family still pushes my buttons hard... without even trying (or trying very hard - i can't say if they actually make an effort to treat me poorly, or if i'm so overly sensitive to them that i add too much history onto anything they do or say, or if it is just a pattern of treating me the way they do... and now it's unconscious

anyway,

As i said, i have been poked and prodded by psychologists and ed psych types for my whole life, and none of them flagged anything before one in particular (this last summer) took note of my poor reaction to (and inability to relax because of) having light from a window on one eye (i was sitting at a right angle to the window in his office) and dark/less light on the other. he suggested i look at something that has been dubbed "hypersensitivity" or "hyperarousal" - and books about the "Highly Sensitive Child" and the "Highly Sensitive Person"

and here i am. trying to wrap my head around it. it's different than i thought.

my reactions are different than i thought they would be

and this long essay started as me just posting a few links to some videos and an article, but quickly turned into me trying to assure those of you who haven't met me that i am not a social misfit...

so here are the videos:





and a really interesting article from Wired Mag:

The Geek Syndrome

Autism - and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome - is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math-and-tech genes to blame?

Friday, November 26, 2010

I have been officially diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and Non-Verbal Learning Disorder (NLD/NVLD)

What does it mean?

Not much

Despite having been poked and prodded and tested and screened since i was a young child, it wasn't until this last summer that i realised that there might be a neurological basis for various issues in my

life (all three of the kids in my family were either skipped or accelerated to higher grades - i was the person used as the basis for a series of enrichment programs and experiments in the schools i attended as the teachers/schools tried to figure out what the hell to do with me/us because we were that bright).

None of the experts - including a whackload of doctors and psychiatrists and educational psychologists and educational learning consultants have ever realised it until now.

Several thousand dollars and just about 6 months of testing later - voila!

even the guy who was testing me couldn't believe the results. I think he may end up writing a scholarly paper about it/me. apparently, in his words, my "incredible intellect" appears to have enabled me to compensate for all these years such that no-one realised it until very specific tests were done to evaluate specific cognitive functions in a manner that couldn't be compensated for.

it's also been hard to diagnose through the other trauma - the PTSD messes stuff up in the interviews and behaviours side of things, but the actual hard testing with pictograms , memory, and cognitive ability - symbolic interpretation and the like - clearly show that it's real - again - even the guy that was testing didn't believe it and consulted with several colleagues who do adult testing across Canada in order to review his results for errors

----

Asperger's - you know - like Sheldon in the TV show Big Bang Theory

except i'm not like Sheldon. I am funny, gracious, sensitive, emotional and all that stuff. Pissy's met me in person - she can back me up on this. others who read this blog have also met me and would, i assume, back that up as well

BTW - the wikipedia information won't help much - it describes a much more classic case

----

Oh, and I also have synesthesia - even if i had no idea of what it was until 6 months ago

----

Asperger's

My brain functions differently than other peoples' brains. I process sensory information and other things differently.

Asperger's is part of autism spectrum disorder. So is Non-Verbal Learning disorder.

Theoretically they are supposed to be separate and can't co-exist, but i guess i'm special...

well - they can co-exist - because the diagnosing criteria are still not fully complete, because the condition/structure isn't fully understood - so, it really is only theoretical that they can't co-exist.

i do not fit the classic symptoms

i have some social interaction issues, but not that were ever really noticed as being out of line or extraordinary - i would be described as "nerdy" more than anything

i get obsessive on some topics, but i can generally figure out (maybe not right away) when a person is giving me signals to stop talking

i have noise issues

i have light sensitivity issues

i get distracted by TVs flickering (that's why i hate TVs in restaurants and bars)

i usually look at a person's mouth when they talk, not their eyes - which is okay - except sometimes when i am focusing i look down - which in the case of women often means my gaze ends up on their cleavage - and then i suddenly realise where i'm looking and have to look elsewhere (i am, of course, a big fan of cleavage - it's just rude to stare at it [unless requested too...]). that can be awkward when i suddenly "snap out of a reverie" and the lady realises where i was looking when i suddenly avert my gaze. but i've survived to date...

a couple of ladies i know who have extra hair on their upper lip also cause me problems because i will be staring at their mouths - especially since both have a habit of sort of playing with the extra hair at the corner of their mouths...

i don't read body language well

and i usually don't pick up when someone is lying to my face - the most preposterous of bullshit will slip past me until i'm walking away - then i'll go "hey! that was bullshit"

i have an unusually rich and detailed fantasy life

messy writing

highly developed language skills - but lousy math and spatial skills

i have discovered that i get way higher marks (30-40% higher) on exams and assignments when i do them in a dimly lit room with no distractions - now i understand why
(c.f. my post this is fucking bullshit for comments on how exam time limits burn me)

occasional obsessive compulsive behaviours

i have a need to pre-plan and pre-script a lot of stuff so that i have a template of expectations for various scenarios. one of my compensating mechanisms is pre-planning and pre-scripting all the possible scenarios i could encounter in an unfamiliar situation in order to be prepared for any eventuality (my best friend said to me once "you have a plan for what to do if a 9 foot tall man with 6 arms walks into the room and smacks you in the head with a halibut" (for the record, i didn't have such a plan at the time, but once he raised it, i did think of a plan - just in case). so, by now i have a whole range of off-the-shelf responses to things and it is all just natural...

it also explains why it would be easy for me to think and believe that the world should work the way i was told it did (nice, helpful, gentle, kind). and why it would take SO long for it to sink in that it doesn't work all nicey, nice... and why i would have such massive anxiety when the world didn't work the way i was told it should (hey - think sensory input issues and massive cognitive dissonance might cause fibromyalgia...?)

i have issues with some fabrics and textures against my skin

there's a whack of other little things that i would list, but maybe later - they are small and no-one would know except for me.

even Smitten would not have guessed until we started to delve into all of this. now she can see the behaviours in hindsight, but previously just thought "hey, that's him"

just because most of you haven't met me, i don't want any cliches to form in your mind as you think about me. so i will be preemptively defensive and mention that Smitten thinks I am perhaps to most sensitive male she's ever met (my sister, bless her overachieving heart) says "what about the "lack of emotion" part of the diagnosis? if anything you are overly sensitive!" (i guess she's NOT overly sensitive...).

my sister is in overachieving denial - if i have it, then she might have it - and that would make her less than intellectually perfect - and we couldn't have that...

my Dad is contemplating getting tested as well. i have told him i think he has it - he's way more of a dufus than i am when it comes to interpersonal relations, my son will be getting tested, and my daughter wants to know if her math issues are related. my dad wants to know if he has it because it might explain some of the crap that happened to him when he was a kid - getting beat up all the time, being a little spacey, usually off in his own world, various obsessive behaviours. my nephew (brother's son) has non-verbal learning disorder. his other son is fairly ADD (also part of the autism spectrum). i think my brother has it too for a bunch of reasons. studies show that 46% of first degree relatives of an asperger's person will have traits either clinical or at sub-clinical levels

anyway, more later - it's not going to change my life on an immediate basis, but will, i expect, have some longer term effect

the most important one is that i get to allow myself to be not perfect.

and i no longer have to beat myself up when i don't achieve what my parents demand(ed) i achieve - perfection (which i usually failed at) - what all those teachers demanded i achieve - and just never could

i can just say "fuck you"

i am me

and only me

and i can be who i want

----

i don't want to use this as a crutch or an excuse - just a tool to understand myself and the why of things

i don't want to be defined by this - even some of the doctors i work with just cannot believe the diagnosis when i told them

most of my co-workers knew that i was getting tested - they couldn't understand why because "there's nothing wrong with you. you couldn't have it." my co-workers at this job and the last have told me they often come for lunch because they think i'm really funny and want the yuks

(can you feel the "OMG - they might think i'm not perfect" panic creeping into this post? i can...)

i've told some co-workers of the positive diagnosis, but they have filed it under "and, so?"

i don't want much of a "so" in my life

just to understand

that's why the noise and the lights bug me

that's why i have to hide and "re-order" myself sometimes

that's why i just don't get it sometimes when i am duped by people

but there is really no external affect

as i have more to say on it i will post

----

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

i have sensory crossover

i can smell colours sometimes

i can see shapes and sparkles in my vision field

i have a real issue under some specific light conditions with sensory crossover (grey and glare - oh, you mean fucking winter here? i hate winter)

sometimes sounds, and sometimes rhythms will cause colour and light cascades (looks like the patterns on windows media player)

sometimes it will happen during sex - that's pretty distracting, i'll tell you... weird patterns forming while going at it

i talked about it a little when i was a kid and got called stupid or silly and stopped talking about it. as i got older i was afraid i'd get locked up as nuts

then, while discussing stuff with my sister, i got brave and mentioned it

she told me she has the same thing and gave it a name - Synesthesia

i talked to one of the doctors here and she gave me a book about it

again - mine isn't real bad like some of the extreme cases - but it is still real

and now i know what it's called, and i know i'm not nuts

----

i'll post more, but that's pretty much it for now

once again - please don't put me in a box with this label

talk again soon

----

Catch these videos - i picked the girl out as having Asperger's, but not the one dude.





The following video describes more classic symptoms than mine:

Saturday, October 30, 2010

The Divorce Is Now In Effect - I Am Actually Single

As above. It is now 31 days since the 29th of September - the day of the judgment. It takes effect today.

July 4, 2006 is the day I left.

An arduous journey.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

the simple ability to be

preamble for readers:

my sister is attending one of the top two english speaking universities in the world. she is attending on a full salary and expenses scholarship (and her salary is about what i make in 3 years... and i'm doing OK). the list of recipients of this scholarship over it's history is a who's who of world notables ranging from people you've never heard of to Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Nobel nominees and laureates.

my sister is an overachiever of the highest order

i'm proud of her and her achievements

but she has issues with people and relationships and still trying to measure up to everything my parents demand.

she is a pleasant enough - if at times manically loud - person. she is highly professional, but interpersonally often awkward. she has not had a lot of successful relationships with men. she was married and divorced. her ex-husband is now dead from a medical condition.

FYI: she is the oldest of the three of us. i am the youngest

---- email from me to her (about 10 days ago) ----

> ...now be here at [university]

[tangent]

there is a whole whack of preamble that should be at the front of this comment - so i hope that the short version will suffice, and that you will be ok with a broad brush, and lack of nuance or soft-pedalling

please interpret no criticism and only positive intent

----

i believe that you are one of the most capable people i know

i hope that now that you have been a [scholarship scholar] and a peer with the best and the brightest in the world there at [famous university], that you will have achieved the elusive "good enough" that i believe was demanded of us, and that we always seemed to fail at (c.f. parents - early/ middle/current programming)

that as you live this lofty life, in this lofty surrounding, that you will come to a gut - because our brains lie to us and keep us dancing the jig [c.f. Shirley Temple] demanded of us to play out the role of parent aggrandising prop - a gut understanding that you are good enough

good enough for you

for yourself

and that the joy and satisfaction of being fully comfortable with self will be granted

that each of the three of us will find serenity

----

i was asked this weekend what i would like said about me at my funeral. the person asking said he would like to be remembered as a "good father, who loved and cared for his children"

i thought for awhile and said that i didn't want anything said at my funeral - that i would like to be the last one to go so that i could make sure that all who preceded me that i cared about would be cared and comforted

that i didn't actually want anyone to think anything about me

that my desire was (is) to, at my death, to have lived at least the preceding day (and hopefully many years) fully at peace with who i am with no nagging doubts about my "worthwhileness" as a human being

serenity

the simple ability to be

with nothing more desired

[/tangent]

----

her response:

"No offense heard or taken. More later"

----

[she was leaving for an international trip of some duration two days later [that she is still away on] - so the short form reply is fine by me - she had no time to think through and craft a reply)

Monday, March 01, 2010

4 conclusions

[email to Smitten - same day as the last few - 2/22/2010 3:45 PM]

Subject: DO NOT FEEL YOU MUST READ THE STUFF I SENT IMMEDIATELY

(she was working on a paper that was due the next day, but i NEEDED to write and share what i had realised, and NEEDED to send it right away too - to make it real to me)

as above

it is for discussion at a later point

----

the last email "Emotional trauma can have a negative impact on early development"

this piece is quite useful for me to understand what happened in my early childhood

it fits with my 4 conclusions of yesterday (and while i actually physically vomited while writing this email, i still feel good. i still feel alive)

----

1) what happened to me was stupefyingly unfair

- pretty self-evident...

2) the world does not work the way i was told it did (work hard, be good, don't fight, do unto others... and everything will be fine - the world will be your oyster)

and the effects of the world not working the way i was told it did?

"small children have no way of assessing whether or not they need to be scared, nor how scared they need to be. Kids look to a caring adult to woo them back to a sense of calm and equilibrium when they get scared. They depend on what scientists call "an external modulator", namely the parent, to restore their sense of inner calm because they lack the developmental maturation to calm themselves or to understand the source of their fear."

"The meaning the child made out of painful events. Children are "magical
thinkers" their reasoning is immature and not always grounded in reality. It is based on their developmental level. They need the adults around them to help them make sense and meaning of painful circumstances. Without this, they come up with their own meaning based on their level of development at the time the problem occurred."

----

- but what if the adults and family members and peer group tell them the reason their world is fucking up is because the small child is a fuck up (as opposed to being a 3 year old... [who are intrinsically fuck-ups from an adult perspective...]) and lacks discipline and focus or lacks ability (see further sibling and peer group taunts, e.g. "are you ever stupid...")?

----

"Our bodies don't really distinguish between physical danger and emotional stress.

The natural fear response associated with our fight/flight apparatus will cause the body to react to physical or emotional "crisis", by pumping out sufficient quantities of what are known as "stress" chemicals, like adrenaline, to get our hearts pumping, muscles tightening and breath shortening, in preparation for a fast exit, or a fight.

But for those where the family itself has become the proverbial "saber toothed tiger", for whom escape is not really the issue, these chemicals boil up inside and can cause physical and emotional problems.

And family members may find themselves in a confusing and painful bind, ie.,wanting to flee from or attack, those very people who represent home and hearth.If this highly stressful relational environment persists over time, it can produce what is called cumulative trauma."

----

3) the people who were the interpretive source for me (family, church, [political party], and peer group [school]) did not act the way they told me acted - goodness, honesty, justice, caring, caring about others

- so when words do not match actions, but i relied on the others to be my interpretive lens - when i didn't listen to my gut - something had to give....

"Distorted Reasoning: When our family unit is spinning out of control, we will tell ourselves whatever is necessary to allow ourselves to stay connected. This kind of reasoning can be immature and distorted. It can also produce core beliefs about life and relationships upon which we build more distorted reasoning and that we live out throughout our lives."

----

4) because my perceptions didn't match what i had been told, i lived in a world that was essentially made up - a fantasy world where the philosophical structures that made up the world i was fed (in my child's gullibility) i spent my time in that made up world where the construct worked, even if it didn't match reality. so i detached further and further from reality and lived more and more in many fantasy worlds - one of which i declared the real world - even though it too was a construct - the world where people matched their bullshit professions of ethical and moral standards

----

"Over time, we lose the ability to tolerate intense emotion so that we can think about what we.re experiencing on a feeling level. At the most extreme level thought and emotion become disengaged. When this happens, our thinking selves and our feeling selves become out of balance, split off from each other. This undermines our ability to use our thinking to understand what we.re experiencing on a feeling and sensory level. At the most basic level, we lose touch with ourselves."

----

i actually believed people's words. i listened to their words, not their actions - and words are only what? 7% of communications. i look at peoples' mouths when they talk - not their eyes, and not their bodies, and not their actions...


"Development of Rigid Psychological Defenses: People who are consistently being wounded emotionally and are not able to address it openly and honestly may develop rigid psychological defenses to manage their fear and pain. Dissociation, denial, splitting, repression, minimization, intellectualization, projection are some examples."

----

the rest - it is well described under the section of that email headed:

"Following is a list of some of the traits or characteristics someone who has grown up with addiction and trauma may exhibit."

Saturday, February 27, 2010

"The ability to escape is central to whether or not we develop PTSD"

[email to Smitten 2/22/2010 3:11 PM]

you [Smitten] will already know most of what is in this article

the critical take-aways are after the sentence/paragraph beginning with:

"Emotional trauma can have a negative impact on early development"

----

How Do We Learn to Self Regulate?

. Nature and Nurture: Each tiny interaction between parent/caretaker and child actually lays down the neural wiring that becomes part of our brain/body network.

. As the parent interacts with the child, the child learns the skills of relating and regulation which are then laid down as neural wiring.

. The child takes this new learning into his world of relationships, experiments with it, gets continued feedback and continues to lay down new wiring based on what he is seamlessly picking up from his environment and the relationships in it.

. Early experiences knit long lasting patterns into the very fabric of the brain's neural network. (Lewis) And these neural patterns form the relational template from which we operate throughout life.

. As children, if we get frightened or hurt, for example, we look to our mothers, fathers and close people to sooth us, to help us to feel better, to bring us back into balance.

. We learn to "tolerate" our intense feelings when we.re young and as we get older, .holding environment.

. When our skills of self regulation are well learned during childhood, they feel as if they come naturally, as if we always had them.

. When they are not well learned, we may reach to sources outside of ourselves to restore the sense of calm and good feeling that we cannot achieve ourselves, namely drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling and so on.

. The ACOA/ACOT [adult children of alchoholics/trauma] syndrome can reflect problems with early attachments or relationships. Children who learn the skills of relating and regulation from unstable parents internalize unstable patterns.

What is the Limbic System?

The limbic system is the body/mind neural network that governs our emotions. Our moods, appetite and sleep cycles are some of the areas of functioning that fall under its jurisdiction.

The limbic system

. .sets the mind's emotional tone,

. filters external events through internal states (creates emotional coloring),

. tags events as internally important,

. stores highly charged emotional memories,

. modulates motivation,

. controls appetite and sleep cycles,

. promotes bonding

. directly processes the sense of smell and modulates libido. (Amen)

Our emotions circulate throughout our bodies as brain/body mood chemicals that impact how we feel.

Problems in our limbic system may manifest as:

. When we have problems in our deep limbic system they can manifest as moodiness, irritability,

. clinical depression,

. increased negative thinking,

. negative perceptions of events,

. decreased motivation,

. floods of negative emotion,

. appetite and sleep problems,

. decreased or increase d sexual responsiveness or social isolation. (Amen)

. an impaired ability to regulate levels of fear, anger and sadness,and may lead to chronic anxiety or depression.

. substance or behavioral disorders,

. problems in regulating alcohol, eating, sexual or spending habits

All of this is what impacts our emotional sobriety.

How is emotional sobriety undermined?


Emotional trauma can have a negative impact on early development. It can both interfere with our ability to use our thinking brains to decode our emotions and it can create problems in our limbic systems.

Our limbic systems get set on "high" we are over sensitized to stress and hence, we over react to it.

Our bodies don't really distinguish between physical danger and emotional stress.

The natural fear response associated with our fight/flight apparatus will cause the body to react to physical or emotional .crisis,. by pumping out sufficient quantities of what are known as .stress. chemicals, like adrenaline, to get our hearts pumping, muscles tightening and breath shortening, in preparation for a fast exit, or a fight.

But for those where the family itself has become the proverbial "saber toothed tiger", for whom escape is not really the issue, these chemicals boil up inside and can cause physical and emotional problems. And family members may find themselves in a confusing and painful bind, ie.,wanting to flee from or attack, those very people who represent home and hearth. If this highly stressful relational environment persists over time, it can produce what is called cumulative trauma .

Because the limbic system governs such fundamental functions as mood, emotional tone, appetite and sleep cycles, when it becomes deregulated it can affect family members in far ranging ways.

Problems in regulating our emotional inner world, can manifest as:

Homes that aren't calm, that are in, what we might, call chronic chaos, undermine our body.s ability to maintain a regulated state. Over time, we lose the ability to tolerate intense emotion so that we can think about what we're experiencing on a feeling level. At the most extreme level thought and emotion become disengaged. When this happens, our thinking selves and our feeling selves become out of balance, split off from each other. This undermines our ability to use our thinking to understand what we.re experiencing on a feeling and sensory level. At the most basic level, we lose touch with ourselves. [italics mine - cadbury]

Why Children Can.t Understand What's Happening to Them

. There are three significant points of brain development that greatly influence how a child processes stress. They are reflected in the development of the amaygdala , the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.

. At birth, the child.s amygdala , which is part of our fight/flight/freeze or survival brain, is fully formed. Because it is fully formed, infants and children are capable of a full blown stress response from birth on. (Uram)

. However, the hippocampus or the part of the brain that interprets sensory input as to whether or not it is a threat, is not fully functional until between four and five years of age.(Uram)

. And the prefrontal cortex , which is where we have the ability tothink and reason, is not fully developed until around age eleven. (van der Kolk).Because of these three factors, when small children get frightened and go into fight/flight/freeze, they have no way of interpreting the level of threat nor of using reason to modulate or understand what is happening around them. They can not use their sensing or thinking to help to regulate their level of fear.

. Small children have no way of assessing whether or not they need to be scared, nor how scared they need to be. Kids look to a caring adult to woo them back to a sense of calm and equilibrium when they get scared. They depend on what scientists call "an external modulator", namely the parent, to restore their sense of inner calm because they lack the developmental maturation to calm themselves or to understand the source of their fear.

PTSD: When Escape is Not Possible

. Whether or not escape is possible (van der Kolk) The ability to escape is central to whether or not we develop PTSD. When we can.t get away from a traumatizing circumstance, when we can.t .escape. we're more likely to develop long term effects in what is now called a post traumatic stress reaction. This is partially related to the freeze response and it.s affect on the body/mind system.( van der Kolk)

. The meaning the child made out of painful events. Children are .magical thinkers. their reasoning is immature and not always grounded in reality. It is based on their developmental level. They need the adults around them to help them make sense and meaning of painful circumstances. Without this, they come up with their own meaning based on their level of development at the time the problem occurred.

. The basic genetic makeup of the child (Krystal) What biological strengths and vulnerabilities the child is born with.

. The length and severity of the stressor, how long did stressful events persist and how serious were they ? (Krystal)

. The age of the child at the time stressful events were occurring, young children are more vulnerable to being affected by stress than older ones.

. The quality of attachment with the mother/parent (Schore), A secure attachment with a parent can act as a buffer to stressful events.

. Whether the child has access to sources of support, one bonded relationship in their young life is shown to be he single most important factor in having resilience, and (Werner) a secure attachment with the mother, is the strongest predictor of success in adulthood of any other factor.

The Importance of Repair

. Repair can cause neuronal growth as new pathways integrating both problems and the solving of problems get laid down

. Repair also allows our shame response, (Shore?) to become part of personal growth. We learn from our mistakes. Something went wrong and we learn ways of setting it right, of mending what was broken or restoring a lost sense of connection. This process, that occurs in the context of a relationship, creates new neural wiring just as any learning does.

. This type of interaction gives the child meaning that makes sense to him so that he can let go of his fear, so that he doesn.t have to hold a low level of anticipation and fear and remain hypervigilant, waiting for the next problem to show itself.

What is Relationship Trauma?

The kind of emotional and psychological trauma that occurs within the context of a relationship, usually a primary relationship such as those within the home.

One important thing to understand here is that even well intended parents can cause significant emotional and psychological pain for their children. As we discussed in our previous chapter, the child's limited brain development and their total dependency on their parent, can make them very vulnerable to being hurt.

I use the term relationship trauma to describe the set of symptoms that directly result from experiencing the types of abusive and demeaning relational dynamics that mobilize our fight/flight responses on a persistent enough basis, so that emotional and psychological damage occurs.

Characteristics of Trauma and/or Relationship Trauma

Following is a list of some of the traits or characteristics someone who has grown up with addiction and trauma may exhibit.

. Problems with Self- regulation and emotional sobriety We go from 0 - 10 and 10 - 0 without intermediate stages, no shades of gray.

. Emotional Constriction Numbness and shutdown as a defense against overwhelming pain. Restricted range of affect or lack of authentic expression of emotion.

. Learned Helplessness When we feel we can do nothing to affect or change the situation we.re in, we may develop what's called, learned helplessness. Learned helplessness means that we form a pattern of helplessness, we give up,

. Loss of Trust and Faith (van der Kolk) When our personal world and the relationships within it become too unpredictable and unreliable we may experience a loss of trust and faith in relationships and in life's ability to repair and renew itself.

. Hypervigilance (van der Kolk) When we are hyper vigilant we carry a low level of anxiety around with us. We may scan our environment and relationships for signs of potential danger or repeated relationship insults and ruptures. We may over read signs from others, even a raised eyebrow or a look in someone.s eyes can cause us to want to spring into a defensive posture. We "wait for the other shoe to drop", we "walk on eggs shells"

. Easily Triggered/Hyper-reactive This population can be very hyper-reactive, they can over responding to relational stress, blowing conflicts that could be managed out of proportion into unmanageability, particularly if they are feeling vulnerable. Their brains/body has become over sensitized to stress, they over react to it.

. Depression The limbic system regulates mood. When we are deregulated in our emotional system we may have trouble regulating feelings such as anger, sadness and fear, all of which may contribute to depression . And high levels of coritosol which are associated with the fight/flight response arealso found in high amounts in people who report feeling depressed.

. Distorted Reasoning When our family unit is spinning out of control, we will tell ourselves whatever is necessary to allow ourselves to stay connected. This kind of reasoning can be immature and distorted. It can also produce core beliefs about life and relationships upon which we build more distorted reasoning and that we live out throughout our lives.

. Loss of Ability to Take in caring and support from others (van der Kolk) The numbing response along with the emotional constriction that are part of the trauma response may lead to a loss of ability to take in caring and support from others. Additionally, as mistrust grows, so does our willingness to accept love and support

. High Risk Behaviors (van der Kolk) The clients that I see who are engaged in chronic high risk behaviors seem to be trying to do a couple of things. One, they seem to be trying to jump start a numbed out inner world, to feel something. Or they appear to be acting out intense emotional and psychological pain. Another dynamic that appears to be operating is that they are trying to alter their mood, that the high risk behavior serves to get them .high. by stimulating a rush of .feel good. body chemicals. Speeding, sexual acting out, spending, fighting, drugging or other behaviors done in a way that puts one at risk are some examples of high risk behaviors.

. Survival Guilt The person who .gets out. of an unhealthy family system while others remain mired within it may experience what is referred to as "survivor's guilt". Tendency to Isolate People who have felt traumatized may have a tendency to isolate themselves. They may have trouble reaching out for help, they have a pattern of feeling hurt and vulnerable-reaching out for help- getting ignored or put down.

. Development of Rigid Psychological Defenses People who are consistently being wounded emotionally and are not able to address it openly and honestly may develop rigid psychological defenses to manage their fear and pain. Dissociation, denial, splitting, repression, minimization, intellectualization, projection are some examples.

. Cycles of Reenactment The reenactment dynamic is one of the core features of how trauma from one generation gets passed down through subsequent generations. We tend to recreate those circumstances in our lives that feel unresolved or unconscious.

. Relationship Issues Relationships are where relationship trauma takes place. They tend also to be where the effects of relationship trauma reemerge. Some of the ways in which they reemerge are in being easily triggered, bringing old patterns into new relationships (reenactment patterns), transferences onto partners or children, transferences onto friends or authority figures, being hyper vigilant hence creating an emotional atmosphere of anxiety and suspicion or being easily triggered hence creating instability within the relationship and unnecessary pain.

. Traumatic Bonding Traumatic bonds, may develop between parent and child or siblings in alcoholic homes, for example, may be left to care for each other and older siblings may have too much power over their younger siblings.

. Desire to Self Medicate These are misguided attempts to quiet and control a turbulent, troubled inner world through the use of drugs and alcohol or behavioral addictions.

----

http://tiandayton.com/emotional-sobriety/signs-of-emotional-sobriety/

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

"...torture will trigger a survival instinct..."

[WARNING - ANOTHER REALLY LONG POST]

this information was discovered while i was trying to find a reference to rigid thinking - rigid thinking is one of the elements of the psychological make-up of a person who is likely to experience traumatic bonding and the entrapment and abuser identification it entails, and post traumatic stress disorder

i had rigid thinking - not because i am not open in many ways - i didn't ever think of myself as rigid thinking - it was, and is, quite uncomfortable for me to say, to admit, that in many ways i am/was rigid in my thinking

what was i rigid about? i had/have a number of hard cast ideological positions:
- men are bad, self-centred, rude, uncaring, blindly focused on goals with little regard for the feelings of others
- men are lazy
- women are better, caring, nicer, kinder, more insightful than men
- women are hard working
- i am a man, i am bad
- i am usually wrong
- others know more than me
- women have special insight into people

while i still consider myself a strong feminist, my experiences as a child, and my early exposure to feminist thought and activism (and the pages of redbook, women's day, cosmo [my sister's], and even playboy), as well as the fact that the political men around me WERE egotistical jerkwads, and the fact that the ladies treated me very well - they were nice - the men weren't - led me to a fair level of self-hatred

more rigid thinking:

- i will be a different kind of man
- caring
- loving
- decent
- considerate
- able to cook
- able to plan a dinner party
- able to organise events
- able to sew
- able to clean
- able to care for children
- i will be the kind of man women wish for

- i am loyal
- i am committed
- never will i waver from my relationship commitments
- never will i waver from the goal of making my marriage work
- i will not fight
- i will not belittle or denigrate my partner
- i will always be supportive and understanding
- i will always engage
- i will always search for the source of my partners feelings
- i will never belittle "feelings", i will always treat them as real and valuable and in need of full consideration

you know much of the list from reading he blog so far - it would take too long to detail it and i'm getting sick of how long the list is...

so, yeah - this list and my own dysfunction were just waiting for a whack job to come along and exploit it/me...

[An Email To Smitten - Monday, February 22, 2010 02:54 pm]

[after the previous email I Feel Good, previously posted]

---- the email ----

a discussion about torture by someone who studied it in detail - underwent torture, and traveled around the world to meet torturers and those who had been tortured

and yes - if you are wondering - this email is not about people being tortured by the U.S. (well, it is - peripherally) - it is about me

it is about understanding the abyss

it's about more lignin and cellulose attaching itself to the trunk of the mighty oak - understanding the cracking - understanding the forces that press - understanding the need for flexibility - not rigidity

[edit for blog: this is about understanding why i didn't fight back, didn't leave, didn't fight or flight. about making sure i understand the answer to the overarching question: WHY? why could i be abused and tortured like i was - how?]

[speaking mostly about waterboarding]

"Torture in captivity simulation training reveals there are ways an enemy can inflict punishment which will render the subject wholly helpless and which will generally overcome his willpower. The torturer will trigger within the subject a survival instinct, in this case the ability to breathe, which makes the victim instantly pliable and ready to comply. It is purely and simply a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation."

- Malcolm Nance, Small Wars Journal
former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE)

Waterboarding is Torture… Period

---- outtakes from his words ----

Torture in captivity

reveals there are ways an enemy can inflict punishment which will render the subject wholly helpless and which will generally overcome his willpower

The torturer will trigger within the subject a survival instinct

the victim [is] instantly pliable and ready to comply

[torture of a captive is] a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation


---- background material not in the email to smitten, but sent to her prior ----

"...a stalking cheetah leaps from its cover of dense shrubbery. As if it was one organism, the herd springs quickly toward a protective thicket at the wadi's edge. One young impala trips for a split second, then recovers. But it is too late. In a blur, the cheetah lunges toward its intended victim, and the chase is on at a blazing sixty to seventy miles an hour.

At the moment of contact (or just before), the young impala falls to the ground, surrendering to its impending death. Yet, it may be uninjured. The now limp animal is not pretending to be dead. It has instinctively entered an altered state of consciousness shared by all mammals when death appears imminent. Many indigenous peoples view this phenomenon as a surrender of the spirit of the prey to the predator, which, in a manner of speaking, it is.

Physiologists call this altered state the 'immobility' or 'freezing' response. It is one of the three primary responses available to reptiles and mammals when faced with an overwhelming threat. The other two, fight and flight, are much more familiar to most of us. Less is known about the 'immobility response.' However, my work over the last twenty-five years has led me to believe that it is the single most important factor in uncovering the mystery of human trauma.

Nature has developed the immobility response for two good reasons. One, it serves as a last-ditch survival strategy. You might know it better as 'playing possum.' Take the young impala, for instance. There is a possibility that the cheetah may decide to drag its 'dead' prey to a place safe from other predators; or to its lair, where the food can be shared later with its cubs. During this time, the impala could awaken from its frozen state and make a hasty escape in an unguarded moment. When it is out of danger, the animal will literally 'shake off' the residual effects of the immobility response and gain full control of its body. It will then return to its normal life as if nothing had happened. Secondly, in freezing, the impala (and human) enters an altered state in which no pain is experienced. What that means for the impala is that it will not have to suffer while being torn apart by the cheetah's sharp teeth and claws.

Most human cultures tend to judge this instinctive surrender in the face of overwhelming threat as a weakness tantamount to cowardice."

- Dr. Peter Levine, creator of the Somatic Experiencing therapy regime, in his book Waking The Tiger

three reactions, not two

flight, flight, AND freeze

immobility

"...I believe that the key to healing traumatic symptoms in humans lies in our being able to mirror the fluid adaptation of wild animals as they 'shake out' and pass through the immobility response and become fully mobile and functional."

"It's About Energy

Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the ''triggering'' event itself. They stem from the frozen residue of energy that has not been resolved and discharged; this residue remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and spirits. The long-term, alarming, debilitating, and often bizarre symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develop when we cannot complete the process of moving in, through and out of the ''immobility'' or ''freezing'' state. However, we can thaw by initiating and encouraging our innate drive to return to a state of dynamic equilibrium.

[bold mine]
Let's cut to the chase. The energy in our young impala's nervous system as it flees from the pursuing cheetah is charged at seventy miles an hour. The moment the cheetah takes its final lunge, the impala collapses. From the outside, it looks motionless and appears to be dead, but inside, its nervous system is still supercharged at seventy miles an hour. Though it has come to a dead stop, what is now taking place in the impala's body is similar to what occurs in your car if you floor the accelerator and stomp on the brake simultaneously. The difference between the inner racing of the nervous system (engine) and the outer immobility (brake) of the body creates a forceful turbulence inside the body similar to a tornado.

This tornado of energy is the focal point out of which form the symptoms of traumatic stress.
To help visualize the power of this energy, imagine that you are making love with your partner, you are on the verge of climax, when suddenly, some outside force stops you. Now, multiply that feeling of withholding by one hundred, and you may come close to the amount of energy aroused by a life-threatening experience.

A threatened human (or impala) must discharge all the energy mobilized to negotiate that threat or it will become a victim of trauma. This residual energy does not simply go away. It persists in the body, and often forces the formation of a wide variety of symptoms; i.e., anxiety, depression, psychosomatic and behavioral problems. These symptoms are the organism's way of containing (or corralling) the undischarged residual energy.

Animals in the wild instinctively discharge all their compressed energy and seldom develop adverse symptoms. We humans are not as adept in this arena. When we are unable liberate these powerful forces, we become victims of trauma. In our often unsuccessful attempts to discharge these energies, we may become fixated on them.

- Dr. Peter Levine, Waking The Tiger

---- end extra background ----

"Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want - because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop."

"On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture . he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: .If you want to survive, you must learn that .walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow... He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered .the Barrel. version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk."


----

captive

trapped

no escape

no defense

strapped to the board

unable to resist

---- extra not in the email ----

captive - parents, siblings, school, church, political party

- parents who picked apart every detail of what i did
- a brother who literally tortured me (kneeling on my biceps, sitting on my chest, - slapping my face, taunting me for hours at a time after school when i was 10, 11, 12)
- schoolmates who made a game each recess and lunch hour out of making my nose bleed, knocking me down, and kicking and beating me
- parents and school teachers who would not help me, telling me to quit being a whiner and to fight my own battles (hey - it was the '70s...)
- a sister, 5 years older, who took great pains to belittle my thinking in order to brown-nose to my parents
- a brother who did the same
the constant refrain "are you ever stupid" - yeah, maybe, but i was also littler than them - developmentally speaking, how would i ever catch up until i became an adult?
- parents who promoted competition and rewarded only success with love, attention, and affection
- a priest at the church (catholic school) who actually told the other altar boys to rough me up as punishment for my dad's politics, and who preached against my dad from the pulpit
- a political party that was full of backstabbing and skullduggery (and we were the nice party...)
- being a child warrior in that political party and engaging and assisting in vile character assassination, edge of the line tactics, and using my status as a child to do things like listen in to conversations in order to "help"

nowhere was i safe - not at home, not at school, not at church - and my life experience as a political "child soldier" taught me that anything you can say can be used against you any time

and parents who were products of violent households themselves - who did the best they could but neither they, nor their society had the tools, nor the information to heal them

parents who fought all the time - viciously verbally (no physical violence until about, i think, 6 years ago - dad hit mom with a towel - one blow - two occasions)

i hate fighting sooooooooo much

i would do anything to avoid it. even now when they fight it makes me freeze and be nauseous. and dad tries to drag me in to their fights all the time, he is always phoning trying to organise the 3 of us kids to "put pressure on your mother to act a little better" as though some kind of political maneuver will fix their marital problems...

---- end extra material ----

"Characteristics of Adult Children of Trauma and Addiction

Children of Alcoholics are traumatized living in an addicted family.
Discover the behavioral characteristics of Adult Children of Alcoholics.

Learned Helplessness: A person loses the feeling that they can affect or change what.s happening to them.

Depression: Unexpressed and unfelt emotion lead to flat intenal world . or agitated/anxious depression. Anger, rage and sadness that remain unfelt or unexpected in a way that leads to no resolution.

Anxiety: Free floating anxiety, worries and anxieties that have no where particular to pin themselves or look for a place to project at, phobias, sleep disturbances, hyper-vigilance.

Emotional Constriction: Numbness and shutdown as a defense against overwhelming pain. Restricted range of affect or lack of authentic expression of emotion.

Distorted Reasoning: Convoluted attempts to make sense and meaning out of chaotic, confusing, frightening or painful experience that feels senseless.

Loss of Trust and Faith: Due to deep ruptures in primary, dependency relationships and breakdown of an orderly world.

Hypervigilance: Anxiety, waiting for the other shoe to drop . constantly scanning environment and relationships for signs of potential danger or repeated rupture.

Traumatic Bonding: Unhealthy bonding style resulting from power imbalance in relationships and lack of other sources of support.

Loss of Ability to Take in Caring and Suppport: Due to fear of trusting and depending upon relationships and trauma's inherent numbness and shutdown.

Problems with Self Regulation: The deregulated limbic system can manifest in problems in regulating many areas of the self system and thinking, feeling and behavior. Go from 0 - 10 and 10 - 0 without intermediate stages, black and white thinking, feeling and behavior, no shades of gray as a result of trauma.s numbing vs. hi-affect.

Easily Triggered: Stimuli reminiscent of trauma, e.g., yelling, loud noises, criticism, or gunfire, trigger person into shutting down, acting out or intense emotional states. Or subtle stimuli such as changes in eye expression or feeling humiliated, for example.

High Risk Behaviors: Speeding, sexual acting out, spending, fighting or other behaviors done in a way that puts one at risk. Misguided attempts to jump start numb inner world or act out pain from an intense pain filled inner world.

Disorganized Inner World: Disorganized object constancy and/or sense of relatedness. Internal emotional disconnects or Fused feelings (e.g., anger & sex, intimacy and danger, need and humiliation).

Survival Guilt: From witnessing abuse and trauma and surviving, or from .getting out. of an unhealthy family system while others remain mired within it.

Development of Rigid Psychological Defenses: Dissociation, denial, splitting, repression, minimization, intellectualization, projection, for some examples or developing rather impenetrable .character armor..

Cycles of Reenactment: Unconscious repetition of pain-filled dynamics, the continual recreation of dysfunctional dynamics from the past.

Relationship Issues: Difficulty in being present in a balanced manner; a tendency to over or under engage, explode or with draw or be emotional hot and cold. Problems with trusting, staying engaged or taking in love and caring.

Desire to Self Medicate: Attempts to quiet and control turbulent, troubled inner world through the use of drugs and alcohol or behavioral addictions.

Sources:

* From Trauma and Addiction, Dayton 2000 (van der Kolk 1987, Krystal 1968)"


- Characteristics of Adult Children of Trauma and Addiction