Denial and the Danger of Butterflies: A Reposting of an Important Post

The following post is one I wrote two years ago.  I'm re-posting it now because I'm afraid it has been buried, and the topic of denial is so important--as is the topic of dissociation, denial, in the case of the "butterflies."   I also want to honor the contribution of Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her work in helping people become aware of the power of denial, especially as denial relates to abuse and to death.  Denial can be a friend and can temporarily spare us pain, but it can also be the cause of pain and lead to death.  I was lucky--my therapist had faith in me and cared about me. Our relationship helped me heal to the point where I could see the truth in my situation:  My children and I were being abused, and I had the power to stop the abuse. 

My former husband said to me several months after I reported him, "If you had not stopped the process, one of us would be dead."  Now that I have read "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans and "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout, Ph.D., I know I would have been the dead person.  Scary!  If you are trapped in a domestic violence situation, I urge you to find help before it's too late.  Go to a women's shelter and let the authorities deal with your abuser.  Press charges, as I did.  That is your only chance to find freedom and get your life and the lives of your children back. 

In 1981, I attended a Life, Death, and Transition workshop held by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross at Corbett, Oregon. In one of her lectures, Dr. Kubler‑Ross talked about touring the German concentration camp sites shortly after World War II and her surprise at beholding gorgeous butterflies drawn on the walls of camp barracks. The prisoners, she said, drew those butterflies so they could deny the danger and the death inherent in their everyday reality.

As I listened to Dr. Kubler-Ross describe the butterflies, the concentration camp barracks, and the possible mental states of the prisoners, I felt a deja-vu sensation. What Kubler-Ross was saying about the prisoners and their butterflies resonated within me. I realized, then, that my daughter and I had been prisoners in our own concentration camp, and I remembered my own butterfly.

At the end of summer in 1978, my family and I returned to Centralia, Washington, after having lived for two years in Germany. We bought a house and proceeded to settle in. The following few years was a period of new beginnings. In 1980, our son went away to college, our daughter started sixth grade, my husband began a new position, and I began a job as an insurance clerk. And along with these beginnings came the beginning of stepped-up sexual violence in my marital relationship.

Now, some thirty years later, I can see the text-book dynamics of domestic violence at work—my isolation and lack of female friends in whom I could have confided, my fear of displeasing my husband and triggering his violent temper, and my inability to see that I was being abused. In 1980, I knew my life at home was not what I had hoped it would be when I married in 1961, but because I had no idea as to what behavior took place in the bedrooms of other women, I had no frame of reference, no way I could evaluate my own experience. Although I did not know it at the time, my mental state was much the same as that of the Jews described by Dr. Kubler-Ross: I denied the danger inherent in my situation, and I waited, expecting my situation to improve. To help me wait, I, like the Jews who drew on the walls of their barracks, painted an imaginary butterfly on my bedroom ceiling.

My butterfly was merely a piece of ragged wallpaper on the bedroom ceiling, but my imagination added details and glorious colors to that gray, torn bit of wallpaper until it became a beautiful Monarch. As I lay in bed, I would stare at the ceiling, willing my self to fly from my body and become one with that butterfly. As the months passed, I became more and more skilled at flying. I reached the point, in fact, where I flew to the ceiling whether I wanted to or not. My body could be making the bed, changing clothes, or doing whatever it was expected to do, but I was on the ceiling the whole time, velvet wings flapping, watching from above. One day, however, I caught myself in mid flight, understood where I was going, knew why I was going there, and realized that my flying had to cease.

How or why did I suddenly recognize the reality of my situation? I can only surmise that the fact I was in therapy had something to do with my sudden insight. A few months previous, I had begun seeing a therapist because I felt so fragmented that I had to talk myself through my daily routine in order to function effectively. Each step of the way, I had to tell myself aloud what I was doing or what I was supposed to do, including during my job as an insurance clerk. Luckily, other than my boss, who was out of the office much of the time, I was the only employee, and normally not many clients came in person to take care of their business. When somebody came in, I was able to greet the person, converse, and do what was expected. When I was alone, however, I was forced to resume my dialog in order to do filing or other paperwork. After living for about six months in this condition, I knew I needed help.

Thus, when I entered therapy, I believed that my increasing inability to think or reason effectively and clearly without talking myself through my day was a sign that my cognitive abilities were breaking down, but I did not connect this with the abuses I endured in my marriage. I worked hard in therapy, and my therapist was supportive and concerned. As time passed and I became more trusting of my therapist, I found myself beginning to think more clearly without having to talk myself through daily tasks. In addition, as thinking became easier, I became more and more aware of the chaos outside my head. In the bedroom, I flew to the ceiling less often, and I became less and less tolerant of my husband’s rages, of his violence in the bedroom, and of his verbal abuse. I began telling him when I didn’t like what he was doing to me.

In addition to becoming more aware that I was being abused, I also let my husband know that I would not tolerate certain of his practices with our daughter. For example, rather than cringing in fear when he stood our daughter in the corner after dinner, shouted multiplication problems at her, and then cursed at her when she failed to give the correct response, I let him know that his behavior was abusive and unacceptable and had to stop. Although he did not completely stop this behavior, the after-dinner sessions became less frequent. Perhaps in response to my newly-exhibited assertiveness, his behavior changed—at least, that was my thought. He threw fewer tantrums, spoke more respectfully, and generally became less violent. He even asked me to buy our daughter some pretty dresses, something he had never done before. I happily assumed that our relationship was improving and that my husband was trying hard to control his volatile temper.

The change in my husband’s behavior caught me off guard. I relaxed around him and became more trusting. At this point, life looked good. My husband’s behavior toward our daughter and me was improving, so I thought, and I allowed myself to hope that in time, we would become a stable and loving family. Like the Jews lured into the gas chambers by promises of hot showers and clean clothing, I was seduced into believing that my husband’s outwardly changed behavior was an accurate indicator of his intentions. Thus, the truth of our situation hit me like a sucker punch when I walked in on him one spring evening in 1981 and caught him in the act of using our daughter for his own sexual pleasure.

Shortly after discovering the abuse and when I had my first chance to talk to my daughter without my husband being present, I learned that after we returned from Germany, he had begun grooming her for the abuse and had begun the abuse in earnest right after her eleventh birthday. Each time I left the house to shop or to run errands and left her home with him, she became his prey. And because our daughter had spent the first three years of her life being bounced from one foster home to another, she was especially vulnerable and eager to please him. She had no desire to displease him and risk being sent back into the foster care system.

Because her father had told her that if I learned of the abuse, I would be jealous and wouldn’t love her, my daughter was reluctant at first to give me any but the most general information regarding what had transpired between her and her father. After I reported my husband, however, and she realized that he  would no longer be living in our home, she gave me details of incidents. As the details emerged and I became progressively more horrified at the abuse she endured, my anger intensified. How could my husband have performed those atrocities on an innocent child, a child who had spent the first three years of her life in the foster care system, a child who needed so intensely to feel our love as her adoptive parents? How could he have been so, so selfish? How could he have been the person I was married to for twenty years? My anger and those questions swirled around my mind as I tended to the practical matters involved in establishing a new household, one in which I was the head and the sole parent of my thirteen-year-old daughter.

Thirty years later, I still can’t answer those questions. My daughter is grown and married. According to her, her life now is okay. I admire her. She is a good person, kind and loving despite the abuse she suffered. I’ve been on my own since that day in 1981 when I reported my former husband to the police. And since then, I’ve had no need for butterflies on my ceiling or for flying to join them.

"Over-Sharing" and Self Harm: A Post Inspired by Another Blogger

 

This morning I read a post by another blogger, Anna Rose Meeds, who publishes Rose With Thorns on Word Press (http://annarosemeeds.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/opening-up-to-the-world/).  I follow her blog and recommend it to all of you.  Among the challenges in Anna Rose's life are Aspergers, PTSD, and eating disorders--pretty tough issues!  I am impressed by the courage she has shown in writing about her life and her challenges, for she tackles some topics that are familiar to many of us but which few of us discuss.  Two such topics that she covered in her latest post are "over-sharing" and self harm, cutting.  After I read her latest post, "Opening Up to the World," I was inspired to also write about these two topics because at one time I, too, struggled with these issues.  I'm a lot older than Anna Rose, and my challenges were and are somewhat different from hers, but I thought that maybe my story might be helpful to those of you who are struggling.  Her story was certainly helpful to me! 

My story begins back in the late 70s, after my family and I returned from living for two years in what at the time was West Berlin, Germany.  When I write about this now, I feel like such a fool.  I was so naïve! I did not know that my husband had been dating other women, one of them fairly seriously.  I didn't know this until later, until after I had become a single parent.  But the point is that a lot was going on in my family that should not have been going on, and at some level my mind picked up on it, but I was not consciously aware of it.  There was the cheating, but even worse, my husband exhibited sexual behaviors that I knew intuitively were not quite on track, and I had nobody to ask about this.  However, what bothered me more than anything was the lack of privacy he afforded our daughter, especially when she took her bath.  I let him know that at her age, 12, she needed privacy, but he paid no attention to me.  I also let him know that his walking around the house with nothing but his underwear on was not a good idea.  He let me know that I was old-fashioned and a prude and that he was not going to change.  After all, he was in charge of what went on in his home.  I felt powerless to do anything but try to make sure my daughter got her bath before he came home from work or while he was outside working on our farm. 

As time passed, my stress level rose, and I found myself frequently spacing out and numbing, but I didn't know why this was happening.  Then one night during an especially tense, painful interaction with my husband, I had a flashback that took me back to my experience of violent childhood sexual abuse when I was four, a memory that I had buried for almost four decades.  Again, I had nobody to talk to about this flashback, so, scary as it was, I kept it to myself.  I did tell my husband in hopes that he would have compassion for me and stop tormenting me in bed, but my revelation meant nothing to him, and he continued abusing me.  In fact, he became rougher with me.  Later, after we had separated, I asked him why he escalated the abuse during sex, and he replied that he wanted to see if there was anyone in my body.  I was dissociating during his abuse, and he could sense that I was not "there."  His solution?  Get rougher, for eventually I would be forced to let him know I was there.  His tactic didn't work, but if the situation had continued much longer, he might have killed me.  He told me that.

During this time, as the tension built, I fell apart inside, fragmented.  I didn't know what was happening to me;  I just knew that something was happening that caused me to "come apart at the seams."  That was the way it seemed to me.  I felt like Humpty Dumpty, as if I were broken into little bits and couldn't put myself back together.  And when people asked me, "How are you?", I told them.  As Anna Rose says, I "over-shared."  I gave them much more information about my inner life than anyone cared to know, I'm sure.  And then, later, when I had a quiet moment to think about what I had done, I realized that my over-sharing had made people uncomfortable, and I felt like a freak.  That was not ME!  The "me" I knew did not reveal my inner thoughts or my pain to others!  That sort of thing was a social no-no, and I knew that.  So why did I do it?  I didn't know.  Maybe I was going crazy.  Maybe not! 

Then one day before Easter in 1981 I walked in on my husband as he was fondling our daughter.  I reported him to the police and reported the incident to the therapist I was seeing for depression.  That was a turning point.  I became a single parent, continued in therapy,  went to graduate school, found a job I enjoyed, and made friends.  As time passed and I gained some control of my life, I also began gaining confidence in myself.  And then one day I realized that I had stopped over-sharing.  Just like that. 

Why did I over-share?  Well, since the period of time when I did that corresponded to the period of time when I was least confident and seemed the most fragmented, I can only imagine that the pressures from my environment and the lack of organization of my mind caused me to behave in ways that were not normal for me.  My inner turmoil was such that over-sharing gave me some release.  Over-sharing, however, also left me embarrassed and caused me to become reclusive so I would have less opportunity to talk to people at a time in my life when I truly needed friends and contacts.  Those days are over, now, and one lesson I learned during those horrible times is to have a bit of compassion for my imperfect self. 

Just as over-sharing may have given me some release from the pressures of my inner turmoil, cutting provided me short-term release from psychic pain.  I've since read material explaining how inflicting physical pain upon oneself can provide relief from psychic pain, and that was my experience back in April of 1981.  Luckily, about six months prior to reporting my husband, I had begun therapy.  My therapist diagnosed me as having a situational depression.  The problem was that we did not know what the "situation" was--it was as much of a mystery to me as it was to her.  I had a vague notion of being at fault for whatever was happening to my family, but I could not tell my therapist specifically what I had done. 
 
As for the abuse I suffered, I didn't tell my therapist because to me being abused was normal, and I thought it was normal for other women.  Why would something as normal as being the object of rough sex and being constantly reminded that I was stupid be important enough to tell my therapist?  However, when I found my husband abusing our daughter and reported him, I was able to identify the "situation."  And since I was already in therapy, I didn't have to waste time finding a therapist I liked.  That was a good thing, for my psychic pain was excruciating and unrelenting during the first few months after my husband left.  And somehow I discovered that I found relief from that horrible psychic pain when I took a paring knife and cut into the skin on my thighs and when I beat my head on the sharp corner of our bedroom door frame. 
 
As I remember it, after a few months, the cutting and the head-beating behaviors faded into the background.  My therapist and I became closer, and as I met people I enjoyed when I volunteered at the Salvation Army food bank, the pain subsided to the point where I didn't feel the need for relief.  Because I had felt so guilty, I didn't tell my therapist about the cutting until I no longer needed to do it .  I knew cutting was wrong, but at the time I did it, I needed to do it.  The guilt I felt intensified my sense of failure as a human being and made me all the  more miserable.  By the time the pain subsided to the point where I didn't need to cut myself, I felt strong enough to let my therapist know I had been doing it, and to my great relief, she didn't get angry with me or yell at me.  She put her arms around me and asked me to promise her I would tell her if I did it again.  I never did it again. 

As you know, I am seventy-four years old, older than most of you, and it's been over thirty years since I suffered to the point of needing to cut myself and needing to "over-share."  But those periods of my life, all the pain, the horrible incidents of abuse, will stay with me as memories until I die.  Now, thanks to my work in therapy and EMDR, when I remember the events, I don't feel the distress as I once did.  I have found some peace.  I wish the same for you! 

"Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward and learning to enjoy whatever life has, and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.”  --St. John Chrysostom    

On the Road: Thirty-Three Years Later

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For a while, now, I’ve sensed that I am reaching the point where I will no longer need to be in therapy.  Oh, I don’t mean that I am “cured” or even completely “healed” from C-PTSD.  I don’t believe that C-PTSD is ever completely gone from a person’s psyche.  But I do believe that a person can reach the point where C-PTSD is manageable without the support of therapy.  And I believe I’m reaching that point. 

As you know, I’ve been working on my healing for many, many years—sometimes with a therapist and sometimes on my own.  My active journey began in about 1980 when I was married, raising two kids, taking care of my family and working at a part-time job.  That’s when I had my first flashback, the one that brought vividly to mind my sexual abuse at age four. 

Prior to that flashback, I had some odd experiences which I can identify now as having been dissociative experiences, but at the time, I just chalked them up as “odd experiences” and forged ahead with my life.  One particularly memorable experience took place in a train car one day when I lived in West Berlin, Germany, in the 1970s.  I was eager to get home from the produce market, so I took the U-Bahn rather than the bus.  The car was crowded, and I found myself pushed into a corner, unable to move.  A fog came over my mind, and suddenly, I was up on the ceiling of the train car, looking down at myself, a figure pressed into the corner by the bodies of the other riders.  The train stopped, people left the car, I had a bit more room, and I popped back into my body.  An odd experience, one that I didn’t forget, but one I was afraid to talk about.  I filed that experience in the mental file in which I stored the derealization and depersonalization experiences that filled my childhood.  Not something I wanted to talk about!

I first entered therapy in October of 1980 because I had auditory hallucinations that interfered with my daily functioning.  In order to take care of my home life and my work life, I talked out loud, directing my behavior aloud so that I could hear myself and follow my own directions.  I was not capable of hearing my inner voice, my thoughts, because my thoughts were all scrambled and buried under the loud classical music I heard in my head.  But when I told myself out loud what I needed to do, I could hear my voice and follow my own instructions.  I knew I had to do something about my situation, that I could not continue living in that condition, so I made an appointment and began the therapy journey that has brought me to the point where I am now—thirty-three years later. 

I’ve seen a lot of therapists, some effective and some not so effective.  I will say that even the ineffective therapists have been, for the most part, concerned and well-intended; the problem was that most of them neither understood my condition nor understood how to help me.  One I saw in the late 1990s both understood and knew how to help but moved before he could help me.  A few were so in need of help themselves that they traumatized me in their attempts to help themselves.  So from 1983, the year my first therapist retired, until 2010, the year I began seeing my present therapist, my therapeutic journey led me through a wasteland of partial oases and lots of seemingly-endless miles of burning hot sand.  Why didn’t I just give up?  My answer to that question is that I had a wonderful therapist in the beginning of my journey, so I knew that wonderful and effective therapists existed and I knew that sooner or later, if I just kept looking, I would find another one.  And I have.  I’m a stubborn old gal, and I’m not the easiest client to work with, most likely.  But, then, my therapist is pretty stubborn, too. 

Thursday she and I are going to see if we can do some planning for my future therapy.  I’m glad we are doing this.  She and I both sense a shift in my focus, and I feel good knowing that we are working together to understand and figure out what I need.  There have not been many times in my life where another person has cared enough to see life through my eyes and to understand what I need.  My parents were incapable of this, and my former husband was too busy satisfying his own selfish and sick needs at the expense of our children and me.  So just knowing that my therapist cares enough to put forth the effort needed to understand me and work with me to plan my therapy is validating for me.

I called my therapist yesterday afternoon, after I returned home from seeing her.  She had teased me about the fact that I do so much of my work outside my sessions, and on my way home, I began worrying that maybe she felt unneeded.  I wanted her to know that was not the case, so I called her.  She returned my call, and I told her my concern.  I let her know that without her, I could not have succeeded in alleviating my PTSD symptoms and achieving the sense of peace that I experience now.  What has she done that has been the most helpful?  Well, she has been herself, her kind and wonderful self, but even more important:  she has had faith in my ability to succeed in therapy.  She has had faith in me.  And her faith in me has worked wonders! 

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

-          King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition

My prayer for you is that you, too, have a therapist who has faith in you, and, even more important, may you have faith in yourself!  Shalom . . .

Suddenly, It’s Quiet, Continued

Part II

The following post, Part I and Part II, is my attempt to describe my internal experience of trauma when I was a child and later, when I was a woman living in a domestic violence situation.  As I mentioned in the introduction, this morning I realized that my inner battle appears to be over--the white flags are up.  Am I healing?  Yes, I believe so.  I am, as people say, "cautiously optimistic."  However, PTSD and C-PTSD can be healed, and after so many, many years of internal struggle, I believe I am at last experiencing the peace I have worked so hard to achieve.

As I wrote this first section, I felt a deep sadness for the little girl I was.  Nobody knew I had been sexually abused by the neighbor woman or abused by my parents, and nobody knew how hard I struggled to do what I was supposed to do at home and in school.  Nobody knew about the war inside me and the constant screaming and sobbing.  There simply was nobody I could tell.  And even if there had been, what could anyone have done?  During the 1940s, probably nothing!  I might have been sent to an asylum, in fact, diagnosed as being schizophrenic.

Thank God that we now know about C-PTSD and "parts"!  And thank God for the rugged spirit of my Scottish coal-miner ancestors.  They didn't give up, and neither did I!  

October, 1980

It’s a fall day in October, a day when the dead leaves lie on the ground, crisp, red, and golden.  The morning fog has lifted, and I can see the neighbor’s horses romping near the river, manes, golden and brown, lifting and falling rhythmically in time with the thud of hoofbeats in the sodden pasture.  Nature is at peace.  “But what is wrong with me??”  I ask myself this question, over and over.  I find no answer. 

So what is happening to me?  I hear music in my head.  Loud, classical music, familiar pieces I played in the school orchestra when I was a kid and played the bassoon.  I know the pieces inside and out, and I can hear the part of each instrument.  No, I don’t just hear a melody; in my head, I hear the whole piece, all the parts.  If you want me to hum the trumpet part, I can do that.  Any part. 

And then, suddenly, I hear another piece on top of the first piece, another piece of classical music, and this new piece is fighting with the first piece for domination of my head.  “God, why can’t I turn the music down?  Why can’t I separate the two pieces?  Why is this music so loud?”  And when my son comes home, I put my head next to his and ask him if he can hear the music.  He looks at me blankly.  He doesn’t understand.  I take his look as a “No!”  I’m the only one who can hear the music. 

I want to sleep.  If I can sleep, I won’t hear the music.  But I have things to do—dinner needs to be cooked, the house needs to be tidied, dishes need to be washed, clothes need to be put in the dryer—too much to do to sleep.  So I begin directing my behavior by talking through each step, whispering so nobody will hear me.  So nobody will know.  That works.  By telling myself what to do, I bypass the music.  My ears take in my words, my brain focuses on the spoken messages, and I can function.  What a relief!  Once again, I have found a way to carry on as if nothing is wrong.  Once again, I can get my work done. 

The next morning I get up, the music begins, and I eye my husband’s closet where he keeps the guns.  I hate guns!  They scare the hell out of me!  But maybe a gunshot would do what nothing else will do.  And then, as gently as a maple leaf drifting to earth in a fall breeze, a thought comes to mind:  “Perhaps that nice lady who I talk to sometimes when I take my daughter to therapy can help me.  Maybe she can tell me how to turn the music down.  It’s worth a try.” 

April 1981

That nice lady and I have been working together for seven months.  The music has faded, and now I hear  just the old battle sounds, the screaming and crashing and sobbing.  Sometimes I believe I hear my five-year-old self weeping. Even those sounds are muted, however.  I can think.  And my eyes are opening to sights in my household I have not seen before, sights that I do not like.  I am wondering if perhaps I am wrong in believing that every evil I behold is my fault.  Maybe evil exists outside of me.  Maybe evil is happening to me.  Maybe I am a receiver and not a doer of evil.  Maybe, maybe . . . 

*   *    *

On the Thursday before Holy Week in 1981, I caught my husband in the act of sexually abusing our daughter.  I turned him in and filed for divorce.  My therapist and I worked together until fall of 1983, when she retired.  By that time, the war in my head had faded, although not entirely.  I found a part-time teaching position in the local community college learning center.  I loved the work, and I went back to school and earned two graduate degrees.  I retired from community college teaching in 2004.  In the period between 1984 and 2010, I saw fourteen therapists.  None of them gave me a diagnosis of C-PTSD, but a couple of them recognized my PTSD symptoms and tried to help.  The one who was most skilled left the area before I was able to benefit from his help. 

Once again, in 2009, the war heated up, and I heard the screaming, the crashing of metal and the shattering of glass.  I sought help and found a therapist, but she  did not have the training to help me.  By the time I found my present therapist, in 2010, the war had grown more intense.  I asked my therapist why, at my age, after so many years of not experiencing abuse, I was once again experiencing the PTSD symptoms.  She said she didn’t know, but she knew that if I worked hard, I would heal.  And I am.  She was right.

Suddenly It’s Quiet: Do you suppose the war is over?

Jean, Age 9

Part I.

The following post, Part I and Part II, is my attempt to describe my internal experience of trauma when I was a child and later, when I was a woman living in a domestic violence situation.  As I mentioned in the introduction, this morning I realized that my inner battle appears to be over--the white flags are up.  Am I healing?  Yes, I believe so.  I am, as people say, "cautiously optimistic."  However, PTSD and C-PTSD can be healed, and after so many, many years of internal struggle, I believe I am at last experiencing the peace I have worked so hard to achieve.

As I wrote this first section, I felt a deep sadness for the little girl I was.  Nobody knew I had been sexually abused by the neighbor woman or abused by my parents, and nobody knew how hard I struggled to do what I was supposed to do at home and in school.  Nobody knew about the war inside me and the constant screaming and sobbing.  There simply was nobody I could tell.  And even if there had been, what could anyone have done?  During the 1940s, probably nothing!  I might have been sent to an asylum, in fact, diagnosed as being schizophrenic.

Thank God that we now know about C-PTSD and "parts"!  And thank God for the rugged spirit of my Scottish coal-miner ancestors.  They didn't give up, and neither did I!  

As I was drying my hair this morning, I suddenly became aware that my head was quiet.  The hairdryer was the only sound I heard.  When I turned it off, I thought of the song “The Sound of Silence”:  My head was silent.  Peaceful.  “Do you suppose the war is over?”  I asked myself that question, wanting to answer “Yes!” but afraid lest I be wrong.

When I was five, I thought the violent activity in my body was butterflies, huge butterflies batting their wings against my insides.  I tried to trick those butterflies by bounding out of bed as soon as I opened my eyes, thinking that I could somehow leave those pesky insects in my bed if I got up before they did.  At that age, the war was confined to my stomach.  By the time I was old enough to go to school, however, the battle had spread to my head, and I knew I was dealing with more than just butterflies:  There were people inside my head, and those people were fierce fighters! 

But how did those people get inside my head?  I didn’t know.  But I was certain there was a war going on inside my head because I could feel that war.  I felt the unrest and the anxiety, the battle for my consciousness.  I sensed the artillery fire and the explosions of land mines and grenades.  I could hear the screaming and the dying.  The moaning of those in pain.  But who were those people?  I didn’t know them, or so I thought.  And if I didn’t know them, why would they be fighting in my head?  I didn’t know—I just didn’t know.

I remember sitting at my desk in the elementary school classrooms.  In those days, the desks were nailed to the floor.  The desks, like the teachers, were immovable.  As I sat at my desk, I, too, was nailed to the floor.  And the battle raged within me.  I was tied up, gagged, and held hostage in my classroom as the battle raged within me.  The teacher closed the classroom door, my stomach lurched, and I knew there was no escape.  I didn’t always make it to the bathroom before I threw up. 

In the upper grades and junior high school, the academic material became more challenging.  I worked hard at forcing my mind to think when I needed to think.  I pushed myself until I thought I would, like Humpty Dumpty, shatter into tiny bits and not be able to put myself back together.  Thus, I managed to override the violent sounds in my head most of the time, but even when I was at the blackboard solving long division problems or complicated multiplication problems, I could hear the gunshots and the screams in the background.  By then, I was aware that there was more than one place in my head—a thinking part and the part where the battle raged, and I became an expert at forcing myself to access the thinking part so I could get my schoolwork done. 

By the time I reached high school, I was so good at thinking and dampening the sounds in my head, that the battle noises seldom bothered me.  Oh, if I deliberately tuned in to them, I could still hear the screams, the sobbing, the crashing of metal on metal, the shattering of glass, but normally the war remained beneath my awareness.  For the most part, my thoughts predominated, and I heard my thoughts and not the battle sounds.  This relatively peaceful condition prevailed until sometime in 1980, and when the battle noises in my head broke through in 1980, I knew I needed help! 

End of Part I

Part II Coming Soon

“Are You Happy?”

Jean, 2013

Yesterday, another blogger, some twenty years younger than I, asked me this question.  I wrote back and let her know that I needed some time to think through an answer but that I would get back to her soon.  And I did.  But the answer did not come readily or easily.

Fifty years ago, I was a young mother with a toddler, the sunshine of my life.  We were living in a shack, a tiny two-bedroom house with plywood for siding and walls that didn’t quite meet the ceiling in places.  My former husband and I were university students trying to earn our teaching certificates.  I brought in some income by cleaning for a wealthy woman who had cancer, and he worked the swing shift at a lumber mill.  Late afternoons and early evenings were my oasis in a desert of hard work and stress—all I was required to do was to enjoy my young son.  Just as an oasis in a desert of sand and burning sun makes the journey tolerable, that time spent with my son made my day bearable. 

During those early years as wife and mother, I knew—or thought I knew—that once we earned our teaching credentials and found work, our living circumstances would steadily change for the better.  I dreamed of a future that included living in a nice house in a small town where our son and any future children we might have could grow up and enjoy life and where, later, my husband and I would enjoy a retirement that included taking trips to exotic locations and simply growing old together, financially secure and happy in our relationship.  When my dreams came true, I would truly be happy—so I thought.  

My dream of future happiness seemed entirely reasonable at the time, and it appeared to have a good chance of becoming reality.  After all, I didn’t want anything outrageous like a yacht or a mansion—I just wanted lasting, loving relationships with my spouse and children, relationships that would withstand the ups and downs of life and be comforting in our old age.  What I did not know was that my dreams of the future were preventing me from seeing the reality of my present, that in the then-present, I was locked into a domestic violence situation and my children and I were suffering.  After each incident of abuse, I would say to myself, “But if I just try harder to keep the peace, things will get better.  Then we will be happy.”  

And then one day shortly before Easter in 1981, all my dreams of future happiness evaporated before my eyes, suddenly, like the poof of smoke that obscures the reality of a magician’s trick: I walked in on my former husband as he was in the act of abusing our daughter and saw and felt the terror on my daughter’s face.  Later, as I dialed the police station to report my husband’s behavior, I knew profound changes were coming, and they did come. 

I was totally unprepared, however, to see my dream of future happiness disappear before my eyes.  Never would I realize my dream of growing old with my spouse, taking trips, and “riding off into the sunset” together.  That was NOT going to happen!  I could no longer say to myself, “But if I just try harder to keep the peace, things will get better.  Then we will be happy.”  That dream was gone, gone, gone!  And I had no replacement for it.  Nope!  The present was all I had, and I was forced to deal with it.  If you have read my series of essays titled “Fallout,” you know that I did deal with the then-present, and you know the extent to which my dreams changed after I placed that call to the police.  You know my story.

As a retired psychologist friend says, “With awareness comes change,” and she is so right!  Through my own introspection and determined efforts in therapy, I have become aware of my past reality, much of it, at any rate.  I say this with reservations because it seems that when I think there are no more shadows waiting in the wings of my psyche, one will emerge and take center stage.  Now, at my present age of 74 and considering my present degree of inner awareness, the nature of my dreams has changed, and along with that change has come a change in my experience of happiness.

For one thing, at this stage of my life, both my dreams and my happiness are now, right now.  I divorced in 1983 (see “Fallout”) and have remained single.  I decided on that August day in 1983, after returning from the courthouse where I signed the final papers, that my priorities were to be 1. raising my daughter and 2. becoming my own best friend. Those two priorities have guided my life for the past thirty years.

When I left for graduate school in 1987, I felt that I had done all I could to prepare my daughter for her life as an adult—she was almost twenty and was living in her own apartment—and it was time for me to focus on my own life.  Between the years of 1987 and 2010, I earned graduate degrees and enjoyed a thirteen-year teaching career which I loved.  While going to school and teaching, I spent time in therapy and gained some understanding of my past.  Until I found my present therapist in 2010, however, and received a focused diagnosis and effective help, I seemed to make slow progress toward becoming my own best friend.  Since I have been freed from the demands of work and have been seeing my present therapist, though, I have made quantum leaps in getting to know myself and becoming my own best friend. 

So, finally, after all these years and all these words, am I happy?  Yes, I believe I am.  Somehow, my innate curiosity about life and the tendency to always seek out the good in my experience have survived the tumult of my childhood and twenty-year marriage, and those traits have helped me keep my head above water and have saved my life, my sanity, and my ability to experience happiness and contentment. 

Now I am happy in the moment, or if not in the moment, I am happy at the thought of the very near future.  Where once my happiness relied on thoughts of what might be in the far distant future, I now can find my enjoyment in anticipating a special movie arriving in my mailbox in the next few hours.  And then, as I watch the movie, I am content to be sitting in my recliner and simply watching the movie.  The thought of eating lunch with a friend makes me feel happy, and when the time comes, I find myself happy being with the person and enjoying our conversation.  I am happy when I post an article to my blog because just thinking that perhaps somebody will find my message useful in some way makes me happy. 

So after all this verbiage, my very short answer to my blogger friend’s “Are you happy?” is “Yes, I am.”  Call me a “thrifty keeper” or “Pollyanna”—I don’t need much to be happy.  I am happy because I have chosen to be happy.  That choice is available to everyone.  Becoming my own best friend has helped me identify that choice and embrace it.  

Alice Revisited: "How can I recover from derealization?"

I am posting this article because last week a reader made his or her way to my Google blog by asking, "How can I recover from derealization?"  By typing "derealization" into a search engine, you can find many good professionally-written articles discussing this symptom, and this clinical information can help you understand the phenomenon.  However, my purpose in writing the following article is to help you see the symptom through my eyes, the eyes of a person recovering from C-PTSD.  In addition to giving you a description of the phenomenon through the eyes of a client rather than a practitioner, I may be able to help you allay some fears you may have regarding derealization.    At the end of this post you will find a link to a previous article I wrote on this topic. Embedded in the article is a link to a clear explanation of derealization.  I believe that as you work to recover and heal your C-PTSD, you may find that incidences of derealization will become less frequent as your other symptoms fade–I say this based solely on my own experience.  None of the clinical articles I have read has speculated on a connection between reduction of general PTSD symptoms and reduction in frequency of derealization incidents. 
   

`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); `now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!' (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). `Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can; --but I must be kind to them,' thought Alice, `or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I'll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.'  (From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Project Gutenberg.)

 If you have ever struggled through an episode of derealization, you understand the surprise, consternation, and panic poor Alice experienced after she ate the little cake labeled "Eat Me."  When I was a child, I understood Alice's feelings all too well, for I sometimes struggled just as Alice struggled in my attempt to make sense of my distorted perceptions.  Usually these episodes took place when I was on my way to and from school or when I was sitting in my classroom.  Trees, normally perpendicular to the earth, swayed menacingly and at odd angles; my feet, though safely tucked beneath my desk at school, appeared to be so far away that I couldn't reach them; the teacher's familiar face became the face of a stranger.  Scary?  Certainly!  But what could I do?  Nothing.  When I was a child, I felt powerless to do anything about anything.  

The episodes came and went, and I said nothing to anyone about them.  As time passed, they were simply part of my life--like eating, brushing my teeth, and doing schoolwork.  By the time I was in high school, though, I seldom experienced the problem, and the derealization episodes faded into the past.  When I entered college as an undergraduate, however, I was once again plagued by the symptoms, but as before, my fear rendered me unable to reach out for help.  I thought, in fact, that there was no help for my condition, and I did not want to risk being labeled as "crazy" and locked away in an institution.  Again, I felt there was nothing I could do but endure the symptoms and try to forget them.

After I graduated from college, I found a job, married, and had a baby.  The symptoms did not return until late in my marriage, near the time in 1981 when I caught my husband abusing our daughter and reported him to the police.  After that, I had episodes of derealization from time to time, but because they did not occur frequently, I simply got through them and tried not to think about them.  As I look back, a pattern emerges:  My episodes of derealization have occurred most frequently at periods in my life when my anxiety and stress have been most intense and when I have felt physically or emotionally threatened. This insight is supported by the information in the professionally-written articles I have read, such as this one--  http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/Dissociative_Subtype_of_PTSD.asp 

Recently, since I've been in therapy with my present therapist, I was surprised by my old nemesis once more.   Here is my account of the episode as I described it in a previous post (see link at the bottom of this page):

One day a year or so ago I left my apartment to go to my therapy appointment.  So far, very ordinary.  I caught my bus and rode to the transfer point.  The closer I got to the transfer point, the odder I felt, but I simply forced my mind to focus on what I knew was the here and now of reality.  When I reached the place where I had to leave the first bus and catch another bus, forcing my mind to focus was becoming a struggle, but I was determined to keep the ground beneath my feet and get  to my therapist's office without incident.

As I waited for the next bus, the world outside me began appearing more and more distorted, and when the bus finally arrived, I had to fight internally to get onto it.  You see, the bus should have appeared to me as a rectangular shape having 90-degree angles, but instead of a rectangle, the bus was a parallelogram, a four-sided figure with parallel lines but not having 90-degree angles.  I can't tell you what anything else looked like because I seemed to have tunnel vision at the time.  I managed to figure out where the steps would be and got into the bus and sat down heavily, hoping nobody noticed that I was having a problem knowing where to put my feet.  Nobody did notice, thank goodness.

As the bus traveled the few blocks to my next stop, I regained my perception, and the feeling of unreality faded.  I was so glad to arrive at my therapist's office and to wait in her peaceful waiting room!  By the time I saw her, my mind was fairly clear, and I told her about the experience.  She appeared interested but not surprised.  

The incident described above is the last incident of derealization I have experienced.  For two years, now, derealization has not loomed large in my life; no, now it is just a symptom among other C-PTSD symptoms.  My guess is that the Ego State Therapy work and the EMDR work I have done to alleviate my PTSD symptoms in general have probably reduced my chances of experiencing derealization.  However, if I should have more of these episodes, I know that I do not need to suffer by myself.  In addition, now that I have information about derealization, I am not afraid of the symptom.  I know I'm not crazy, and I know that my various PTSD symptoms are part of the big picture, just another pesky reminder that C-PTSD is a condition that may always "be there" for me to some extent but a condition that I am learning to manage and control as I heal.  If there is a "next time" and I find myself experiencing an episode of derealization, I plan to keep my cool and do my best to focus and remain rooted in my surroundings--just as I managed to do when I climbed onto the bus.  Mindfulness--that's what it's called. 

“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch Painter 
( https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g? blogID=1991681586811138369#editor/target=post;postID=264648316031779499;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=40;src=postname)  

After EMDR: An Insight That Makes Me Furious! (Continued)

 

(Courtesy Google Images)

Part II:  I Connect the Dots

As I said In Part I of this account, I’ve dealt with my abuse.  I’ve remembered the experiences, and I’ve desensitized myself to a great extent, thanks to EMDR.  When I remember, the memories don’t carry the emotional load they once did.  The memories no longer have the power to overwhelm me, but that doesn’t mean they are not still present.  Now that I have desensitized myself somewhat to the memories, I find myself able to connect some dots that I had not previously connected.  For one thing, I believe now that I understand more fully the long-term effect of my childhood abuse experiences. 

After I reported my husband for sexually abusing our daughter in 1981, I did a lot of reading on the topic of child sexual abuse.  I read, for example, that many victims of father-daughter incest—or of sexual abuse, in general-- become promiscuous.  I did not become promiscuous, perhaps because I was so young when I was abused.  To the contrary:  I know now that my sexual self remained four years old while the rest of me moved on in life.  

As a result of being abused at such a young age, I failed to understand why my peers in junior high went crazy over boys, and I failed to understand why my peers in high school were more interested in dating than in doing their schoolwork.  I didn’t date and didn’t want to date.  I had no interest in having a boyfriend and in what my peers called “necking.”  The whole “teen scene” seemed silly to me, in fact.  While the other girls were “cruising the gut,”** going to the drive-in movies, and “necking,” I was babysitting and earning money. (** When kids “cruised the gut,” they crowded into cars on Friday or Saturday night, drove slowly down Main Street, and did whatever they needed to do to call attention to themselves.  At least, that’s what the teens in my hometown did!) 

Despite my lack of interest in boys and my failure to understand why my girlfriends were so boycrazy, however, I went through puberty sensing that even though I was physically normal, whole, I was missing a part of my self.  I have, in fact, gone through most of my life feeling like a jigsaw puzzle that is almost complete but still lacks a couple of pieces.  The problem has been, though, that until recently, I have not been sure which pieces I have lacked.  Now, at age 74, I know:  I lack the pieces which, when gathered together, might be called “mature female sexuality.” 

How am I now suddenly able to answer a question that I had not been able to answer earlier in my life?  How is it that I now know which pieces of my puzzle have been missing all these years?  All I can say is that the answer came in the form of a sudden insight, one of those “connect the dot” answers that a person just “gets.”  And I believe my mind was free to connect the dots, finally, because the EMDR treatments have released much of the trauma energy that has interfered with my thought processes. 

So now I know; now at my age of 74, I finally understand why I have gone through life sensing that I have been incomplete, that I am not a complete woman.  Well, let me revise that concept:  I am a complete woman, but the part of me that would make me aware of that fact is still stuck in the year 1943.  That part has never caught up with the rest of me.  It’s there, completely there, but that part of me is like a butterfly stuck in the chrysalis stage—it has never matured into the beautiful creature that it was meant to be.  That’s what child sexual abuse does if the victim has not received effective help after the event/s—child sexual abuse prevents normal development--it stunts the child-victim’s inner growth.  So now I know, and now I can identify the missing pieces of my puzzle. 

Now the big question:  How do I FEEL about this revelation?  How do I FEEL about having spent all my life wondering why I have felt incomplete, not like other women?  How do I FEEL about the result of connecting my dots??

It’s going to take me some time to figure out how I feel, but off the top of my head, I will say this:  For about six years, I was a practicing Roman Catholic.  When the matter of priest sexual abuse and bishop collusion cracked open over ten years ago, I began distancing myself from Catholicism.  At first, I hoped Pope Benedict would take a firm stand and make corrections—defrock the offending priests and bishops and clean house.  As time passed and I realized that was not going to happen, I grew progressively more disillusioned until finally I decided there was no point in waiting for the Pope to take action because he was not going to do so.  Now we have Pope Francis—what will he do? 

Thousands of victims are no doubt awaiting an answer to that question.  Some of those victims may have spent their lives as I did, looking for the missing puzzle pieces, wondering why they felt like incomplete human beings but not really sure why they felt that way.  Some may have gone in another direction and wondered why they never felt sexually satisfied.  And others may have gone in other directions.  To answer the question, then, as to how I feel, I feel sad—very, very sad.  And I’m FURIOUS!  Absolutely FURIOUS!  In my heart, I can only believe that Jesus Christ shares my feelings—my sadness AND my fury! 

It will take me some time to process this matter further.  For instance, how do I feel about having my sexuality stuck where it was in 1943?  How do I feel about having lived my life feeling incomplete, a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing?  How do I feel about having missed out on dating and the other normal activities of teenagers?  And what I am also wondering is this:  Will my butterfly ever emerge from its chrysalis and soar, free and beautiful?  I don’t know the answers to these questions yet.  Given time, I will.  Even at my age, I will. 

For inspiration, here is a quote by Bono—

When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined. 

After EMDR: An Insight That Makes Me Furious!

Jean, Age Four

Part I:  Background and Flashbacks

Have you ever sat down to write and found yourself immobilized, fingers not wanting to tap the keyboard?  This doesn't happen to me very often, but today I find myself wanting desperately to express my thoughts and feelings but having a helluva time doing so!  Why?  It’s the nature of the material, the long term effects of child sex abuse.  It’s a topic that I thought I had made peace with, but obviously I have not, completely.  However, I am going to forge ahead with this post because I believe the information may be useful to others.   A word of caution:  If you have been sexually abused as a child, be cautious.  If you find yourself being triggered by what I have to say, stop!  Please do not continue reading.

During the period when I was three, four, and five years old, I endured violent sexual abuse by a neighbor woman and less physically violent but just as emotionally violent abuse by my parents.  I’ve described this abuse in several of my posts—“Shadow Girl,” “The Day I Stopped Dancing,” and “My Own Comments on The Day I Stopped Dancing.”  Please use the search feature on either blog to locate these titles if you are interested.  I don’t need to repeat the material here. 

First of all, I have recognized and dealt with the memory of being violently sexually abused by the neighbor woman.  The memory of the event that happened back in about 1943 vaulted into my awareness in the form of a flashback some thirty-nine years later, in about 1980 near the end of my stressful marriage.  Initially, the material in my flashback shocked me, for until then I had buried the memory deep, deep, deep.  Little by little, over the next few years I remembered more of the event. 

Then, in about 1994, I had what a therapist called a body memory, but what I believe was really another, more complete, flashback, so complete that it terrified me!  I remembered the neighbor’s kitchen, the appearances of the woman and her adult son who abused me, and the specific details of the abuse.  I felt the hands holding me down and felt the steam of the hot water as it splashed over my body.  It couldn't have been more complete! 

For those who question the authenticity of my memories and who think that my memories may have been suggested by a therapist, let me reassure you:  I was not in a therapist’s office when I had the flashbacks, and I had not discussed my abuse with a therapist prior to my first flashback in 1980.  When I saw my first therapist, I wasn't even aware that I had been abused! In addition, after my first flashback, I not only returned to my hometown to verify the locations of my house and the neighbor’s house but I also questioned my mother as to the physical appearance of the neighbor woman and her son—this without telling my mother why I wanted the information.  The information I received from my inquiries substantiated the information I received during my flashbacks.

In addition to re-living the violent abuse, I have re-experienced the feelings associated with the photo sessions my parents forced me to endure when I was four and five years old.  The difference between these sessions and “normal” photo sessions that kids tolerate in the course of childhood is the fact that I was forced to pose stark naked in front of my parents’ friends and was yelled at when I tried to cover myself.  So during the time I was being terrorized, humiliated, and embarrassed during the nude photography sessions, I was also being groomed by the neighbor woman in preparation for her final, violent abuse event.  Now, that’s a big psychological burden for a little girl to bear!  I bore it without telling anyone at the time, but decades later I found myself no longer capable of keeping the secrets. 

Recently, I have undergone EMDR to release some of the distressing energy surrounding the events.  Now I can remember without having to feel the horrors.  The abuse happened, and now I am able to understand it and some of its effects more clearly.  I can look back and understand, too, why I had bad dreams as a child and why I became claustrophobic in elementary school and frequently threw up when the teacher closed the classroom door (See http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/conversion-disorder/DS00877)  I also can understand my lack of trust for people and my fear of closeness.  My parents forced me to pose nude for their friends, and the next door neighbor woman fed me cookies, fondled me, and then violently sexually abused me.  Why would I trust or want to be close to anyone?

A little girl might escape severe emotional damage by these events if she were helped to process them right after they happened.  This might be the case today.  However, back in the early 1940s, help for traumatized little girls was not readily available.  In my case, too, why would I have trusted my parents enough to have reported the neighbor woman’s behavior?  After all, my parents were also my abusers.  So I was a child caught in a trap of silence, a child who grew up possessing huge and horrible secrets that festered for decades before breaking into my awareness.  And all the time that these secrets festered and spilled their toxins into my subconscious mind, I was living my daily life unaware of them. 

Next—Part II: I Connect the Dots

Ego State Therapy: Cowboy Builds Herself a "More Stately Mansion"

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea! 

By Oliver Wendell Holmes

Preface

Like the little sea creature in Holmes’ famous poem “The Chambered Nautilus,” Cowboy has decided to build herself a “more stately mansion,” in this case, a small apartment in a horse stable. Well, “mansions” are relative–to Cowboy, an apartment in a horse stall, complete with odors, dirt, and mess, is a mansion, a place where she will feel comfortable, accepted, and cherished for herself.  Her neighbors will love her, and she will love them in return.  After all, isn’t building a comfortable, welcoming mansion for our souls a goal of therapy?  In my opinion, it is.  So carry on, Cowboy!

Cowboy Decides to Build Herself a Mansion

After more than three years of working with my present therapist, I have reached the happy place where I can toggle back and forth between Ego State Therapy and EMDR as needed.  For the past several weeks, I have been again working with my ego states, to be specific, with the ego state I call Cowboy.  This post, then, is a continuation of sorts of the previous post titled “Whadda Ya Do With An Outdated Ego State With An Attitude?” 

You may recall that Cowboy has shown evidence that she suspects her protective qualities are no longer as badly needed as they were formerly.  In fact, she is showing signs of isolating herself from the other parts in Jean’s psyche, as if she may suspect that change is blowin’ in the wind, but she doesn’t want to participate.  She doesn’t want to change!  Well, if Cowboy refuses to change and other parts agree to change, what a mess that will be!  You see, Cowboy has been a major player since I was a little girl (see “Whadda Ya . . .” for more on this), and if Cowboy doesn’t adapt to changes in her environment—in this case, by “environment” I mean changes in my perceptions of myself and my life as I progress in my therapy—if she doesn’t become more of a team player, then Cowboy and her “attitude” can possibly impede my progress. 

Of course, I could simply throw Cowboy out the window, just banish her, do her in, in other words.  On the surface, that might be the easiest tack to take.  But, no, I can’t do that!  Cowboy is part of me, one of my ego states.  No ego state can be destroyed; transformation is the only course to take.  She has served a purpose within my psyche for a long, long time, and she has helped me through a lot of my life’s brambles and briar patches.  Without Cowboy, I’m not sure I could have survived my childhood.  After all, Cowboy was there to remind me that I was tough, that I didn’t need my mother, and that I could take care of myself—despite the fact that somewhere in my heart I knew that I truly did need my mother. 

However, since my mother did not know how to be a mother and didn’t even want to be a mother to me–she made that clear–I was much better off to follow Cowboy’s lead and soldier on through my childhood without a mother.  Nope, there is no way I am going to do away with Cowboy!  She deserves my love and respect, and she deserves the effort and time I must spend in helping her transform herself and her role.  Besides, there will be times in my future when I’m sure I will need to call upon her to help me out.  So Cowboy may not be as protective and assertive in her role as in the past, but however she is, she will always be welcome in my psyche.

So how do I go about helping Cowboy transform herself?  First, I need to understand Cowboy, and this means remembering back into my childhood and remembering what went on in my mind at the times when Cowboy stepped in to help me.  As I mentioned in my previous post about Cowboy, my mother was not my advocate—she did not give me emotional support when I needed it.  At Cowboy’s urging, though, I made up my mind that I was better off not needing my mother.   “I can do it myself; I don’t need a mother.”

Cowboy materialized in my psyche, then, to serve a purpose:  she protected me from an existential despair, the despair that arises when a child realizes she has no emotional mother.  The times when Cowboy arose in my psyche were times when I was most in need of comfort and emotional support.  She helped me through those times.  But what about Cowboy?  Was she ever in need of support or comfort? 
I asked myself that question yesterday as I worked on my ego state dialogue.  As I reflected on that question, I realized that Cowboy, being part of me, may have needed a mother, herself.  Did she?  As I dialogued with Cowboy, my respect for her grew.  Why, she longed for warmth and comfort just as I did!  She had so many heavy responsibilities, which she fulfilled faithfully, and where did she go when her chores were done?  She retired to her sterile, tidy cubicle in the office part of the arena.  Did she have much in common with the other parts who lived in that area of the arena?  No!  Cowboy was, I recognized, very unhappy.  How could I help her?

What would make me happy if I were Cowboy?  I asked myself that.  My answer:  Acceptance, human warmth, kindness, the feeling of being valued for my own self.  Cowboy found all that, ironically, in the little rustic cabin she built for Aurora in the stables.  As a result of spending time enjoying Aurora’s hospitality and heart-felt kindness, Cowboy realized that she would be much happier living in an apartment in the stables near Aurora and her beloved horses than in her sterile cubicle.  Having made this decision and having obtained Aurora’s permission to add an apartment on to Aurora’s cabin, she set about preparing a blueprint so construction could begin. 
So that’s the story of Cowboy thus far. 

 But it’s just a story, isn’t it?  If telling this story is my Ego State Therapy process, how do I know this process is helping me, Jean, to change? After all, the goal of any form of therapy is change, good change, positive change that improves the client’s quality of life.  My reply is this:  As I write about Cowboy’s transformation, I feel the change.  Whatever takes place within Cowboy, resonates within me. In this case, I feel something somewhere inside me relax and release stress.  As Cowboy enjoys tea and crumpets at Aurora’s cozy kitchen table in the company of Jeanie, Aurora, and Gemini, the wise old land tortoise who is the keeper of Imagination and Intuition, I feel pleasure in the company of my fictional companions.

 I say “fictional,” but the characters in my Ego State Therapy dialogue are fiction only in the sense that they are metaphors for the parts inhabiting my psyche.  Hey, it works!  In the process of writing my dialogue, I’ve alleviated my PTSD symptoms without taking any medication.  My mind is the best healer I could possibly have!

For a clear, basic explanation of how Ego State Therapy works, please click this link:  “http://www.esti.at/index.php/about-ego-state-therapy