I had my weekly counseling appointment this morning. I’m seeing a new therapist because my previous therapist (beloved) retired. Prior to her departure, she steered me to Stacy who was someone she admired. This process of getting to know a new therapist is not my favorite. I avoid having to do it by being committed to the person I work with. There’s not much I can do about retirement.
A by-product of the process of sharing what makes me who I am with a new therapist is encountering new perspectives on the inner turmoil that makes a life. I shared with her my history of childhood abuse, self-harm, institutionalization, and long, long recovery. It includes the part of my experience where voices spoke to me in my head and the subsequent making peace with those parts.
One way for her to understand me is to read a book I wrote about the experiences. It also brings up opportunities for her to ask questions and for me to clarify. She has an inherent understanding of why childhood trauma (or any severe trauma) might cause dissociation which demonstrates the incredible creativity of the human brain to find ways to survive.
When I talk about being in Child Study and Treatment Center, the youth portion of Western State Hospital, in 1972, it’s hard for people to understand how that experience could be both extremely life affirming and of virtually no therapeutic value. It got me out of my parents’ houses. I got to see movies, camp, hike, and ride trains. I learned I could ask for a hug when I wanted one. It enabled me to live with my grandparents. What I did not learn was anything about acknowledging or managing trauma.
In 1972, arm cutting was not on the forefront of media. There were not dozens of kids in each high school around the country expressing their pain via overt self harm. It was new to my middle school counselor. It was new to the school principal. It was a rarity at Child Study at that time. It leads us to a conversation about being on the leading edge and born at a time when the issues in my life were not represented around me or in media.
My brother-in-law is an example. Born in 1955, Philip had severe autism. It was difficult for the doctors of the day to diagnose. It was an era where the cause for autistic children was blamed for what specialists called “the refrigerator mom.” When in doubt, blame the mom. The harm it did to Philip, Ronnie, and her parents is incalculable. Philip was pulled from his family and placed in a state mental hospital because there were no treatment protocols, support systems, or understanding for how much potential Philip might have. Had he been born 40 years later, his entire life experience would have been different as would that of Ronnie and her parents. It was not to be.
Fighting through my experiences on the forefront of what is commonly known by society has been a pattern for me. I told Stacy about transitioning from female to male and back to female in 1978-79 and working for civil justice and disability rights. I told her about doing standup comedy in 1986, telling humorous stories about mistaken gender identity.
“The trouble was back then gay audiences were in hysterics. Straight audiences couldn’t even allow themselves to laugh. That’s all different now.”
This leads me to my current struggle with virtually undiagnosed neurological difficulties. Do I have MS, transverse myelitis, idiopathic neuropathy, partridge in a pear tree, or what I euphemistically call “No Walk-us?” There is no western medicine treatment for what ails me. The medicines offered only suppress my neurological system. In talking to people with similar neuro symptoms, it appears that neurological disorders are on a spectrum and many are closely related. However, western knowledge isn’t there yet.
My personal theory is that my neuro-system has been in a state of over threshold since I was little as I learned to ignore the fear and panic as I was assaulted. I have been in a physical freeze while my system bleats out an alarm for over 60 years. I think this is enough to cause a misfire of communication from my nervous system to my brain.
This leads me to acknowledge to my new therapist a simmering, burning inner rage. It’s a neurological dis-ease based on trauma. Western medicine does not acknowledge this paradox. To do so, might cause us to ask why we continue to fail to address trauma of many types. Why we continue to deny generational trauma when the evidence is everywhere around us.
These last few months I worked with a veteran who was in the army for 27 years. He survived nine deployments without serious injury. A year ago, he had a motorcycle accident which seriously messed up his shoulder. He said, “Nine deployments and I get taken out by my bike.” He shook his head.
He was full of barely restrained energy. He was fun and playful. Even while I enjoyed him, I sensed trouble inside. He told me his best friend was killed during a deployment last fall. I told him I was afraid for him. I sensed his rage was Hot. “Don’t burn yourself, buddy.” In frustration, he quit his job two weeks ago. I said, “Don’t put yourself in harms way.” He suggested he had a friend that was hooking him up with a contract back in the middle east. When the fire is too hot, life gets cheap. I can’t save him. I can only send him love. I suspect I’ll never see him again.
Inner rage: some are aware of it. Women friends, African American friends, Jewish friends, disenfranchised of many types—people who experience both individual and societal harm not for what they’ve done but merely for who they are and the value our society places on us, seeing us as “them.”
Starting at three or younger, I was subjected to years and years of abuse, sexual, physical, and emotional, because I was my father’s property. He could treat me however he liked, hit me, assault me, and all the while proclaiming it his absolute right. By intimidation, instilling fear, and far superior strength, he could enforce his fiefdom on our family.
Once after he had beat me with a belt, including the dog within an inch of his life, my mother took all the belts out of the house to her parent’s house. His response, “Bring them back or I’ll use one on you!” She brought them back the next day. He beat me, insisting he would continue until I cried. I wouldn’t cry. That holding in harmed me.
Being subordinated to a man who uses his power this way, who said with no trace of humor, “I brought you into this world, I’ll take you out,” I learned the freeze part of flight, fight, or freeze. Freeze was the only life protective resource I had. When a deadly animal has you in its sights, do not move. Don’t give it something to chase. Don’t give it something to fight. Appear to not pose a threat. If it’s not too hungry, you may survive. My father was such an animal. In freezing, I survived but not without cost.
When I talk to my therapist about my long, long road to life sustaining mental health, the other side of the coin is how trauma and abuse has hurt my body. My neurological system is in an uproar. Often nerves don’t communicate well leading to altered motor skills and sensations. Western medicine has nothing definitive and loves to say I’m not trying hard enough. It’s hard for me to resist agreeing.
When I explain the dynamic that after mental health it’s the body’s turn, I believe I know that the neurological damage is in part a result of sustained mental and physical trauma. If during my formative years I suppressed this global frozen rage towards my father and to some degree my mother, it has inhabited my body on a cellular level (and I’m not talking AT&T here).
Those very cells that resonate and sing out with universal connection when I see an enchanting sunrise or trees that go to the horizon are the same ones that contain the anger of hundreds of atomic bombs because the rage has gotten down to my atomic level.
It begs the question, “What does one do with atomic rage?” There are thousands of answers. With rage at the cellular, they are not easily followed. I have to find a way to point it outwards, away from me, and not inside. It requires a lifetime of practice. It’s trial and error. I won’t be done before my time is over. Listening to Freddie Mercury sing, “Who wants to live forever?” with his soaring voice and impassioned plea, I know no one gets to live forever. I’m okay with that. The pointed elegance of life must surely wear down like the stone under flowing water. The beauty is in the process. No one owns the end. Still, the rage burns.
L’Chaim.
Joceile
2.21.2020
[Picture of the male and female nervous system.]
