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I’m reading Tattoos on the Heart, subtitled The Power of Boundless Compassion.  The author, Father Greg Boyle, tells about his work with “homies” (kids from the gangs) in the worst section of L.A.  “Empowerment rests in returning folks to themselves, to the very truth of who they are.  Gang members (and everyone, to that matter) are surprised to discover that they are exactly what God had in mind when God made them.  To discover that God is too busy loving them to be disappointed is life changing.  But there is work to be done besides — to engage in attachment repair, healing, collating of resilience, and the largest task of all: to redefine who you are now in the world.  All these constitute the empowering work a homie must undertake to be free and clear.  This is no small endeavor.”  This is in the interview with Father Greg at the end of the book.

This work can’t happen in a vacuum, or be learned from a book.  It requires that there be a human being who can love you enough that your life can change in the ways that Father Greg describes.  Reading about these kids, whose parents were drug addicted, or abusive, or disappeared, or killed themselves, or all of the above, makes me feel ashamed.  After all, I grew up in wealth, my family were “upper class,” I went to an Ivy League college and graduated with honors — I could have had a lucrative career or married and had children.  Instead I stumbled around, trying to learn social skills, trying to find a man who would love me, having lots of painful and destructive relationships, more than one breakdown.  I thought I was a defective person and hoped therapy would fix me.  I’ve been in therapy almost all my life.  Certainly continuously for the last 20 years of my life.  My parents were alcoholics, and I didn’t learn how that damaged their children until I was 42.  I did not understand that I had been traumatized in infancy until I read Peter Levine’s book on trauma, Waking the Tiger, where he says that an infant can be traumatized by being left alone in a cold room.  p49  When I read the chapter on hypervigilance, I went into a hypervigilance spiral that I experienced as “terror through the roof.”  p155   In the book it warns you that if you are triggered by something in the book, stop reading and find a Somatic Experiencing practitioner.  So I did.

I’ve worked with Somatic Experiencing, with five different practitioners.  It helped a lot, and part of my healing was learning about the physiology of trauma.  Now I am working with a new therapist, who deals with both trauma and attachment issues, which means the core experience of attaching to your caretaker at the very beginning.  Without this, your life has no foundation.  So you stumble around, trying to figure out how to live.  I was fortunate in being intelligent and going to good schools.  My intellect was engaged, supported, and rewarded.  Unlike at home, the assignments were clear and grades provided clear feedback.  So my intellect developed in a healthy way, and has given me a powerful tool to help me figure out how to live.  Unfortunately, as I learned very quickly, there are lots of difficulties that intelligence can’t help with.

As Father Greg says, the work to be done is “to engage in attachment repair, healing, collating of resilience, and the largest task of all: to redefine who you are now in the world.  … this is no small endeavor.”   I have to engage in the same work as the homies.  So far my life has lacked a “Father Greg” — someone who is so loving that they would get through my defenses against taking in anything from outside.  Father Greg describes this as someone who “through their kindness, tenderness, and focused, attentive love return folks to themselves.”  p192

This describes my new therapist, and she works in a different way than anyone else has.  She responds to me actively, and she gives me careful, minute and accurate feedback of a kind I’ve never gotten.  She describes what my face looks like or what my voice sounds like.  The person she is describing is VERY different from how I see myself.  That old image is imprinted in my cells and the neurons of my brain.  So making that kind of change, at the very foundation, is very hard work and often very scary.  It doesn’t leave much energy or attention for getting through an ordinary day, much less coping with extra tasks, like getting the oil changed, or dealing with bureaucracy.  Unfortunately, I have only a few friends who really understand this, so I am forced to be alone too much of the time.  Being alone triggers the original abandonment.  Sometimes I get very fierce and decide that this work is worth doing. Sometimes I think it’s just too hard and I would rather be dead.  So far, the one who is willing to work is winning out.

Yesterday I had the most difficult and painful therapy session I’ve ever had.  I’m going to record it here in case it is helpful to someone else.  It’s likely to sound very strange to anyone who’s not had the experiences I’ve had.  I was traumatized very early, in infancy, and probably traumatized over and over by being left alone too long.  Very early trauma impacts the development of the brain and nervous system.  I have suffered from periods of severe depression and terror all my life.  My first attempt to try medication resulted in 5 days of escalating terror, and I now realize that it was in fact a traumatic experience.  When I finally got on anti-depressant medication that worked, and found out what normal brain chemistry was like, I realized I had no memories of ever feeling that way.  For most of my life I thought I was defective, but the truth is that I didn’t have the skills necessary to live effectively.

One of the reasons I never thought I was traumatized was that I couldn’t remember a traumatic event, not realizing that it doesn’t take much to traumatize a baby.  Why someone is traumatized has more to do with their psychological development than the violence of the event.  I also didn’t have visual flashbacks.  What I had were body state flashbacks, which were things like sudden severe depression coming out of the blue, suddenly needing to withdraw or hide, etc.  Such relivings of the trauma can be triggered by almost anything: a tone of voice, a particular smell, a change in the weather, something so small or “normal” that it’s not seen as related.  Because trauma prevents the brain from processing normally, the memory of the traumatic event is not like normal memory.  Instead of being stored as a complete memory, it is separated into chunks: a visual component separated from the emotion that went with it, an emotion that has nothing to do with current reality, a movement of the body that doesn’t make sense, etc.  These “flashbacks” can be triggered by any little thing that is a reminder of the trauma.  They are experienced as in the present, instead of part of the past.

What I experienced in this therapy session were the feelings of an infant that has been left alone, feeling unloved and uncared-for, but also afraid that she won’t survive.  A baby has no concept of death, but she is truly dependent on another human being for survival.  So after a certain amount of time the baby has been left alone, her reptilian brain stem concludes that she’s in a life-threatening situation, and her system goes into trauma.  When I am waiting for someone to show up, it can become unbearable if it goes on too long.  “Too long” can start at about 5 minutes of waiting.

The reason this session was so hard for me was that it required me to get in touch with far off and barricaded parts of myself, who were in desperate pain, terror, and confusion.  I don’t think I could have done it if I hadn’t trusted my therapist a lot.

Hard painful session with Erica.  Having trouble connecting with her.  Cried a lot.  Found a part of myself, down deep in something like a well that closed in.  It was closed at the bottom so she didn’t fall forever.  She was just a little round ball – like an embryo.  Looking at her now I see that she’s curled up in a ball, trying to be as small as possible.  Erica said she was defending herself against my friend’s energy.  Seeing how much it cost to defend myself.  Periodically she would ask where my energy field was.  At first it wasn’t. Then it was out about 6 inches from my body.  When she asked where she was, I didn’t know.  Later our energy fields were overlapping in a sort of fuzzy area.  I think by the end they were more balanced between us and moving back and forth like breathing.  At one point she suggested I pendulate between the little tiny being and the things in the room which would bring me into the present.  So I did that, in fact I did it all the way home.  She would periodically ask how I thought she saw me.  That’s always a very difficult question.  Once I said she looked concerned.  Erica asked why.  I said “because you care about me,” and convulsed into tears.  So painful to imagine that someone could care about me.  She suggested I try to let it in, one drop at a time.  So I let one drop come in and the tiny being took it in.  “Where in her body did she take it in?” asked Erica.  I couldn’t see the tiny being as anything different from a ball, so I said in the center.  I imagined the drop as honey and it appeared as a golden glow in the center of the ball.  We did another drop, and then the little one said “That’s enough.”  Actually I put up my hands, palms outward, in a “stop” gesture.  I did it in response to a feeling of energy inside.  When I first got in touch with the tiny being, Erica said that we weren’t asking her to change.  I could feel the relief in my body.  No, she’s fine just the way she is, and I’m fine just the way I am.  With this permission, my body relaxed in relief.  When it was time, I didn’t want to go.

Toward the end of the session, looking at the root of my life in this tiny frightened and despairing being, I saw an utter lack of foundation for any sort of healthy meaningful life.  She had received no guidance and support, no comforting and reassurance, no tenderness and forgiveness.  Looking out across the wasteland of my life, a battered war zone with a very few bright lights and green fields, I cried out “I WANT A LIFE!”  Erica heard that cry as an “anguished protest for vitality, integrity, authentic expression and voice.”

Even though this work is so difficult, I know it’s the way to heal, perhaps the only way to heal.  The experience has to be felt in order to be processed.  Afterward, I didn’t feel rejuvenated, as I do after an encouraging therapy session, instead I feel lost, scared, and discouraged.  I hope/trust that it will lead to healing, but it looks like a very long journey.

Nancy Napier’s book “Getting Through the Day; Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children” has been a really helpful resource for me.  At first it simply validated my despair and sense that there was no way out.

For children who were traumatized, there was an undeniable need to be rescued.  Sometimes it’s hard to let go of an experience that feels so real, so immediate.  To imagine that you can take care of yourself might feel as overwhelming as it was then — and as unachievable.   p137

It’s as though part of us can’t bear to experience what it was like to be let down so horribly when we couldn’t do things for ourselves, when we had to depend on others.  To have needs that must be filled by others, and to have those needs ignored, humiliated, or abused, brings about almost intolerable feelings of vulnerability.  It’s even worse because, as children, we can’t not have needs.  We can’t turn them off completely.   pp138-9

Journal: My friend Barbara said she was using her mantra “I am worthwhile,” and it was helping.  Unfortunately, I have trouble with affirmations that I know are not true.  So I went back to my vision of the Universe, that I constructed from what I know of astronomy, and found I could say to myself “You are an important part of the Universe, you are a node in the web of light, you matter to the whole.”

Monday:  This morning I can add that I am an integral part of the Universe, and it doesn’t matter how well or how poorly I do my life, what matters is my integrity, authenticity, and my fierce commitment to truth and to compassion.  What I actually accomplish is nowhere near as important as the values I embody.  ‘Whatever you have done or not done’ is not what god cares about, is not what god’s doing in my life.  God is the Truth and the Compassion I embody.

Well!  That’s a lot better than yesterday.  That’s something I can hold on to, and can also share with the frozen baby.

Nancy Napier reminded me of the exercise of connecting your heart with the inner child’s heart.  First you imagine your own heart filled with light, it doesn’t matter what color.  I usually choose peach.  Then you imagine a line of light extending toward your child’s heart and ultimately connecting with it.  In this chapter she emphasizes being very gentle with the light, offering it to the child, but not forcing it.  I’ve done this before with lost children, especially one who was floating out in a void, unconnected with anything.  To contact the frozen baby needed to be very gentle, no faster than she could allow.  I’m so glad I was reminded of this exercise because it doesn’t require words.

This time the frozen baby is inside me, in my lower abdomen.  I see a parallel between her difficulty absorbing anything positive, and my adult difficulty.  I am opening my heart to her and offering her a connection, and allowing her to absorb it at her own pace.