Confessions of a Trauma Therapist by psychotherapist Mary Armstrong

The effect of sexual abuse on the young

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:51:00 +0000

A small child has no understanding of sex. It’s unthinkable that the activity could be “bad” when the perpetrator is a trusted authority. The child is in no position to “agree” to sex, not having the life experience to make such a judgment.

For me, the big people were my dignified old grandfather whom everyone respected and my heroic father returning home in his soldier’s uniform from the army. I was brought up to obey adults. I also knew not to tell anyone what I did with these big men.

Life was very confusing. One summer day my friend Robby and I were busy with our three year old explorations in a neighbour’s back yard. We found a collection of empty flower pots.

Robby pulled down his tartan shorts and showed me how he could pee into the flower pots standing up. I was amazed. Looking at his fleshy equipment I couldn’t have been more delighted if he’d shown me a newborn puppy. I squatted over the flower pot and took my turn.

When it was time to go home, my mother greeted me with anger.

“You’re a very bad, nasty girl,” she snapped.

“I didn’t do anything,” I managed to mutter, having no idea what my sin had been.

Never looking me in the eye, she whipped me around so that my back was to her full length mirror. My skirt was caught up in my underpants. Oh, I remembered, the flower pots. Somehow that meant I was bad.

I don’t know whether I ever cleared my head enough to wonder why playing with Robby was so bad but what my father and grandfather did was okay. It was all too confusing to even think about.

The link between child abuse and domestic violence

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:38:00 +0000

Last week I trundled a dolly of my books to the conference held by Sick Children’s Hospital for professionals working in the area of child abuse and domestic violence. Domestic violence? I wondered. It surprised me that these two areas were being so closely linked.

I thought about it for a moment and soon realized it made perfect sense. We all tend to restage our childhood traumas in adulthood. We parent the way our parents did, unless we consciously change. Change calls for awareness and some help in living life differently.

I remembered the sessions I had attended at the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation conference in Atlanta. The trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk described the 200% increase in boys who witnessed their mothers being beaten becoming beaters.

Dr. Martin Teicher of McLeans Hospital discussed his research on the impact of child abuse on the brain. He told us that, for boys, witnessing domestic abuse has the most disastrous results. For girls, familial sexual abuse has the highest impact on their future functioning.

Child abuse leads to repressed rage and dissociation, difficulty in establishing trusting relationships with other adults – the list goes on. All of which bring us to an increased likelihood of domestic abuse.

Where do we start? We need to work at both ends to prevent child abuse. This means identifying, educating and supervising parents where children are at risk. It also means helping the children who are suffering so that they don’t grow up to either abuse or fail to protect their own children from being abused (because they’ve learned to dissociate to avoid pain or are numbed into a state of helpless, childlike terror.)

Seeking help for sexual abuse victims—it's a new world

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 22:10:00 +0000

Last Tuesday I was talking to The Ontario Network of Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Treatment Centers across the province. I was sitting in a room in the Hospital for Sick Children with one other person and a couple of TV screens. The people watching were in their various settings picking up my talk about the effect of child sexual abuse across one’s lifespan on Telehealth (video conferencing).

To illustrate I used my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist, and discussed my own life as told in my memoir. Corry Azzopardi, a social worker who has been with the SCAN team (Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect) for nine years, was the moderator sitting beside me in that room with the two screens.

Why was this so amazing for me? When I began to recognize and treat the wounds of child sexual abuse in my adult clients, almost no one believed this crime against children existed in our society.

My husband, psychiatrist Dr. Harvey Armstrong, had been a pioneer in believing and helping children at The Hincks Treatment Centre when he was a resident in training there. He had an unusually wise supervisor, Dr. Gus Hood, who also believed – despite the fact that the psychiatric text of the day taught that child sexual abuse happened only once in a million families and that probably the psychiatrist would never meet it.

That was in the 1970s. During my years of maturing in our society, nobody had ever heard of such a thing. There was absolutely nowhere I could have gone for help as a child. All I could do in order to survive was forget.

Thank goodness today’s well-trained dedicated professionals not only believe their clients, but know how to help them heal and transform their lives.

Russell Williams – “Call me Russ”

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 14:14:00 +0000

We’ve all been shaken to the core by this seemingly upstanding leader who turns out to be an evil sadist. The question most of us ask ourselves is this: How could this man be that man? How can the same person be a pillar of society and, at the same time, a depraved, heartless killer with a fetish for women’s lingerie?

Russell Williams, we’ve found out, is married to a woman who is respected by her colleagues and friends. On the surface, their lives together looked ideal: two successful adults doing good work for their communities.

In my own professional and private life, this has always been a burning question for me. We all know of self-righteous politicians who are revealed to have a secret and perverse sex life. Most of the perpetrators of my clients are pillars in their communities, popular heads of companies, church leaders and educators recognized with plaques and thanks for their years of service. My own grandfather was the epitome of self-controlled respectability.

It was this same question that led me to study German history for many years. I was teaching trauma therapy in Germany, getting to know my students and their parents who had often served The Third Reich. The participants in my workshops who were usually born just after the war. They’d often been beaten and shamed by their parents. It turned out that Germany has a long, well documented history of cruel child rearing known as “Black Pedagogy.” How, I wondered, could these gentle, sensitive older people I was meeting be the same people who beat their children and carried out unspeakably brutal acts under the Nazis?

What happened to Russell Williams to turn him into a monster? Was he born to be heartless and evil? Or did something awful happen to him? It’s an important question to ponder.

Don't be a bystander—that's all the help the perpetrator needs from you

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 14:08:00 +0000

What can each of us do to prevent a child’s life from being ruined by abuse?

First, we need to be aware. We need to deal with our own denial or dissociation around child abuse. Society’s denial and refusal to believe that child physical, emotional and sexual abuse are endemic allows child abuse to continue unchecked. It’s so easy to deny what you’re seeing or hearing.

In her wise and carefully reasoned book, Trauma and Recovery, Judith Hermann says this:

It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides….It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering.

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens (pp. 7&8)

Which brings me to my own recent experience when the Globe and Mail published a favourable interview about me and my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist. No sooner was the article posted on the paper’s website than those whom I can only assume are perpetrators announced in authoritative tones that recovered memory had been proved not to exist and that I was some sort of hysterical female ruining the reputation of the men who are long dead and unable to defend themselves.

Those of us who join together in the fight to prevent child abuse need to be aware of these dirty tactics.

Traumatic memory—get informed

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:45:00 +0000

Want a fast and easy way to gain accurate, up-to-date information about traumatic memory and dissociation? Go to www.isst-d.org/education/trauma-info.htm. Then click on students and public.

Next, click on dissociative disorder information or trauma information or frequently asked questions.

The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation is a society of clinicians, researchers and academics that exists to train professionals and educate the public about psychological trauma.

Or you might Google traumatic memory. I did and I found solid, informative papers by leaders in the field of psychological trauma. Under Scholarly Articles for Traumatic Memory, click on van der Kolk and you’ll find this expert’s paper explaining the following:

“Trauma is an inescapably stressful event that overwhelms people’s coping mechanisms.” He describes “the differences between the recollections of stressful and traumatic events.”

A study of 46 subjects with PTSD indicates that “traumatic memories are retrieved, at least initially, in the form of dissociated mental imprints of sensory and affective elements of the traumatic experience: as visual, olfactory, affective, auditory and kinesthetic experiences. Over time, subjects reported the gradual emergence of a personal narrative that can be properly referred to as “explicit memory."

In my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist you can follow my personal process as my “traumatic memories were retrieved at least initially in the form of dissociated mental imprints.” I was in my late 40s before I had a personal narrative that made sense of my life and was a clear memory of incest.

Why traumatic memories are different

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:14:00 +0000

Traumatic memories are different from “bad memories.” Traumatic memories are those memories which the brain recognized as intolerable and inescapable. When we cannot live with a memory most of us are capable of dissociating. That is, the terrible event is not something we remember. This is a survival mechanism. Our brains don’t store what is too terrible to remember.

Soldiers experience this when they have witnessed what’s too horrible to endure. Survivors of torture and imprisonment in repressive regimes describe “forgetting” the terror they experienced until later. Children who are being abused by the adults who should be protecting them have to dissociate the memories in order to survive the betrayal.

Not everyone is capable of dissociating. My hunch is that children who are not able to dissociate and who live with unbearable suffering are those children who suicide or die in “accidents.”

The point is that the brain doesn’t store traumatic memory the way it stores other memories. It takes a little effort to learn about how the brain deals with events that are too awful to store and which we cannot escape.

You can go online to learn about traumatic memories if you don’t have that knowledge now. If you choose not to learn, then please do not say, “But how can you forget something so awful? I remember everything….” That’s really hurtful and insensitive to those of us who have lived with dissociation. If you don’t make the effort to understand, please don’t pretend you have a valid opinion.

The Globe and Mail tells my story

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:58:00 +0000

What an amazing feeling to waken this morning and find my story in The Globe and Mail! Sarah Hampson interviewed me about my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist and there was my photo and her description of our meeting right on the front page of the Life Section.

Then I went to the Internet and found it on the Globe’s webpage. But wait a minute, it had just come out and already people were commenting on it. They sure weren’t wasting any time. Let’s see…what were they saying?

Oh! They were all saying with a tone of authority that the issue of recovered memories was dead: that it was all in my imagination. They, of course, didn’t identify themselves or state their credentials for making such a statement and clearly they had not read my book.

“They” are ready to pounce on any information that might inform the public of our society’s endemic child sexual abuse. “They” are usually perpetrators who are waiting in fear for the children they once abused and who are now grown up, to sue them for their retirement savings. It’s an all too common event in the fight against child sexual abuse.

Anyway, since you’re reading my blog, you no doubt know differently. Please go to the Globe and Mail link given below and – if you feel comfortable doing so – leave a comment.

Read The Globe and Mail story by clicking this link: HERE

Old messages that hold us back

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:52:00 +0000

We all carry old messages, sometimes called implicit memories, from our early life. They’re messages we picked up from the world we were born into. They’re so much a part of us we barely know they exist.

What are your old messages? Maybe you learned:
-that you weren’t lovable
-that you weren’t smart enough
-that the world was a really scary place
-that you had to build a wall around yourself to be safe

Whatever your message, it’s probably not true in your present day world. It’s important to take a good hard look at these old tapes. They can be self-fulfilling.

-If you’re convinced you’re stupid, you likely avoid trying to get more education or a better job.

-If you consider yourself unlovable, maybe you don’t let people get to know you. Maybe you keep others at a distance so they won’t see how defective you are.

-If you think the world is such a scary place, you probably don’t take advantage of opportunities that come your way.

-Ask yourself if you really need to stay so hidden from others.

Once we identify our old messages, we need to take a good hard look at our current reality. What is the evidence for my stupidity? Are there signs that I’m not so stupid, like a graduation certificate? Or a good evaluation at work?

I’m unlovable? Is there somebody who loves me in spite of my faults?

When was the last time I was actually threatened by the world?

Are the people in my current world really dangerous to me?

It’s really important to learn what your old messages are and begin to change them.

Is your mind racing?

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:28:00 +0000

Is your mind racing, planning, worrying, relentlessly reviewing the past or agitating over the future? This is a useless waste of energy and a misuse of the mind. (see my blog post of July 25/10, How To Take Control of Your Mind).

It’s important to ask yourself why your mind is racing. Why does your frantically busy mind think it’s important to keep you in an agitated state? What’s it keeping your from paying attention to? What would you be thinking about if your mind weren’t racing? What’s the real problem here?

Ask yourself: If I weren’t worrying about all that, what would I be thinking about?

Often the racing mind is just a cover up for the real problem. To get at the real stuff, we have to quiet the buzz and the static of the racing mind. We need to get quiet and ask ourselves what we’re really upset about.

Most often it isn’t about the seemingly endless list of chores to be done. Rather it’s about the relationship we’re in or the disappointment we’re experiencing in our own lives. Sometimes memories are trying to surface in our consciousness: memories that the mind doesn’t want us to know about.

All the worrying in the world about the past, the future or the jobs to be done, won’t address the real problem, whatever it is.

Recognize the racing mind for what it is. A distraction. A red herring meant to keep us from dealing with what really matters.

Do you have experience with a racing mind? Perhaps you’d leave a comment below to help others. I promise to reply to your comment.

Stress can wipe out memory

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:21:00 +0000

Memory is stored indelibly when an event shakes our world. We can all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when 9/11 occurred. Stress at exam time helps us commit more to memory. Up to a point, then, stress helps store memory.

Knowing this, people who do not understand trauma have difficulty accepting that intolerable stress can wipe out memory, as it often does in childhood abuse. My own book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist: A Memoir of Healing and Transformation tells my story of uncovering memories of child sexual abuse when I was almost 50.

I know it’s amazing. But it’s true. The normal child’s brain does not store what is too terrible to survive. Forgetting allows the child to continue to live within that family or situation when no other life is possible. After all, a child can’t decide to live elsewhere.

I’m always surprised when I meet otherwise intelligent people who cannot fathom that it’s possible to wipe out a childhood history of betrayal by the adults who were supposed to protect you. I forget that many people still are not aware of the prevalence of child abuse.

Recently, I told a neighbour the subject of my recently published book. This well educated, caring man expressed disbelief. It was really a stretch for him to view me as one who had been traumatized by child sexual abuse. I don’t look like Precious (from the movie of the same name), after all, and I didn’t grow up in a slum. That I could have forgotten the abuse in my childhood until I was nearly 50 was mind boggling for the poor man.

It takes some effort to learn about memory storage and to understand how something too terrible to remember, a secret too awful to know, can be pushed into the unconscious to allow the child to survive.

Do you have an experience to share? I’d like to hear from you in the section for comments on this blog.

The trauma myth

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:03:00 +0000

There’s a new book on trauma called The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children – and Its Aftermath. I ordered it online from Amazon. The promo interested me. The author, Susan A. Clancy, a researcher at Harvard, claims that the adult survivors of child sex with adults did not find the sexual activity traumatic at the time it occurred.

I was interested. From my clients’ stories and from my own experience with my father and grandfather, I know that physical force and fear are not necessarily involved in child sexual. The perpetrator is most often a trusted, loved adult authority.

The abuse for these children does not meet the criteria for trauma. It wasn’t intolerable and inescapable at the time. The lifelong damage they suffer comes from the guilty secret they must hide, their sense of betrayal when they’re old enough to understand the meaning of sex and their shame about participating in these acts. Clancy is certainly not the first to point out that, for many children, it’s often not the act itself that causes the problems. “They made it clear to me that the abuse was not traumatic for them when it was happening because they had not understood what was going on,”she writes. (p.55)

When the book arrived I was shocked to read the author’s claims that child sexual abuse damages people because “of therapists and others who make a business of treating the supposed victims.”

Whooaa, there! Something was very wrong with this book. What’s more, she said recovered memory was nonsense. (Clearly, Susan Clancy has not read my detailed account in Confessions of a Trauma Therapist of how my memories surfaced in my late 40s?) Anyone who knows about recovered memory realizes 50 is a usual age for memories to surface.

Confused, I went back to Amazon where I’d ordered the book and read the reviews. (I should have done this in the first place before I spent my money on such nonsense) It turns out Susan A. Clancy has no experience as a psychotherapist. She is a researcher and associated with a group of people who deny that children are harmed by sex with adults.

Guilt: a useless emotion

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:29:00 +0000

Years ago, Dr. Eugene Gendlin, my psychological mentor, told me that guilt is a useless emotion. “It doesn’t do anybody any good,” he said. “It just makes you feel bad.”

I pondered that for a long time. Wasn’t guilt what normal, decent people experience when they’ve betray their own sense of fair play? When they cheat or lie? Would I be responsible and reliable without my guilty conscience?

Back in those days, I wasn’t aware of feeling shame. Later, I learned that shame is the last emotion we become aware of. In fact, shame is such an uncomfortable feeling that psychology has only recently studied it. Most people squirm at the thought of studying their own shame.

Since shame is the inevitable outcome of child abuse, it seems important to get a handle on it. But what’s the difference between shame and guilt?

Guilt is in response to something we have done. Shame, on the other hand, is about who we are. There is something innately defective or wrong with us.

That means that we can do something about guilt. We can make amends, change our behaviour or apologize.

Maybe that’s what Dr. Gendlin meant – that we don’t have to carry our guilt with us. Maybe the message is this: Do whatever you need to do and drop your guilt.

What do you think? Please let me know by writing a comment in the space provided below.

Is "The Critic" Running Your Life?

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:12:00 +0000

The Critic is that inner voice or feeling that tells you you’re no good, just lazy or somehow defective. Everybody has one and every psychological system recognizes it. Focusing calls this destructive super ego talk The Critic.

Where does it come from? In childhood, we internalized the way we perceived the voices of our authority figures, usually our parents and teachers. Now these voices are no longer outside. They’re in our heads.

Does it have any value? Probably your Critic just wants you to be a successful human being. But it goes about it the wrong way – like those parents you hear screaming at their little kid to shape up. Their intention is all right. The way they go about it is damaging.

The Critic has no value. It’s not your conscience. It’s not what keeps you on the straight and narrow. (It may take a while to convince yourself of this.)

How should I deal with it? Don’t engage with it. You’re sure to lose! Here are the steps.

1) Recognize it. We become so accustomed to this disparaging voice that we don’t even notice it. How to recognize the Critic? It speaks in a shrill, harsh tone. You’ve been feeling fine and suddenly you feel lousy. (Your conscience speaks in a still, small voice. It might give the same underlying message, but your conscience speaks softly and puts it in a way that won’t undermine you.)

2) Tell it in no uncertain terms to get lost. Treat it the same way you would (hopefully) deal with a person in real life who was following you around, making you feel terrible about yourself.

3) Practice this until you can be the winner in the fight for your peace of mind. Remember that the Critic’s mission is to keep you from being all that you really are.

You’ll never be rid of it entirely, but it’s your job to cut it down to size.

How to take control of your mind

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:52:00 +0000

Have you ever paid attention to all the chatter that goes on in your head? Do you believe that valuable thoughts and ideas fill your mental space all day long?

Care to find out what’s really happening in your mind all day long? Chances are you spend a lot of energy mumbling to yourself and agitating over what’s already happened or might happen in the future.

Here’s an exercise designed to help you get to know your mind. I learned it from my spiritual teacher, Swami Sivananda Radha when I told her I considered my thoughts too important to set aside so that I could keep repeating my mantra all day. She challenged me to get to know my mind on a more personal basis. Maybe it wasn’t as productive as I thought, she said. Here’s the exercise she gave me:

1) Sit in a comfortable place where you will not be disturbed. Have paper and pen nearby, but not on your lap.
2) With eyes closed or open, observe your train of thought for ten minutes. Just let your mind go wherever it wants.
3) At the end of the ten minutes, write down all the thoughts you’ve had.

What are your conclusions? Are you really thinking profound thoughts? Or are you just producing boring and repetitive ruminations that raise your blood pressure and make you anxious? Is there anything of value going on in your idling mind? Would you be willing to exchange it for peace and quiet?

Try the exercise and let me know what you discover. Please leave a comment in the space below.

You can change your brain!

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:41:00 +0000

I’m fascinated by John Ratey’s book, A User’s Guide to the Brain. Ratey tells us that it’s up to us to make the most of the brains we’re born with. Our genes and our brain do not predetermine our fate unless we allow this. We may be predisposed to anger, overeating or abuse of alcohol, but each time we overcome our particular weakness, we help change the brain. The brain has amazing plasticity, not only when we’re children but throughout our lives!

By viewing the brain as a muscle that can be weakened or strengthened, we can exercise our ability to determine who we become. Indeed, once we understand how the brain develops, we can train our brains for health, vibrancy, and longevity. Barring a physical illness, there’s no reason why we can’t stay actively engaged into our nineties (p. 17.)

In other words, use it or lose it.

All our brains have the same general features that make us human. But each of us develops an “exclusive brain suited to our particular needs” (p. 31.) This exclusive brain has been developed in response to our environment and our experiences.

In the case of early trauma, the brain develops to survive a hostile environment. This ability to adapt allowed the human species to survive warzones and extreme hunger. “The brain is a dynamic, highly sensitive system that may adapt, for better or worse, to almost any element of its environment” (p.6.)

So, what do you and I do if our brains have been shaped by early abuse? First of all, we need to be grateful for our brain’s ability to adapt and allow us to survive. Then it’s up to us to train our brains, as Ratey says, for health, vibrancy and longevity.

When I come to think of it, my own efforts at re-training my brain to feel safe and loved have centered on being physically fit, surrounding myself with caring, decent people and increasing my self esteem by being successful in my work.

Do you have some ways you realize you have changed your brain? What has worked for you to lessen the effects of early childhood trauma?

I'd like to hear from you. Please leave a comment.

Studying the family tree

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:10:00 +0000

We can all benefit from studying our family trees. Once we have an accurate picture of where we come from, much of our life struggles make sense. Too often we are told only of the characters who reflect well on the family. Erasing the troubled and the weak only confuses us. If we don’t have the truth, we cannot come to a conclusion that makes sense of our lives.

In a recent Globe and Mail, Sarah Hampson interviews James FitzGerald the author of a new memoir. She describes him as belonging to high-WASP culture. In What Disturbs our Blood: A Son’s Quest to Redeem the Past, the author explores the psychology of his father and grandfather who both committed suicide at the height of their careers as successful medical pioneers. “In my family if you become successful you end up crazy or dead,” says the author.

The shameful secret of the suicides was something no one in the family would discuss. Fitzgerald had to work hard to get the story. He describes himself as a “traitor to his class” setting about to reveal the inner working of high-WASP culture.

“Learning the truth made him feel as though he wasn’t crazy himself. He could finally come to terms with the complexity of his childhood,” says Hampson.

“His two sibling have been supportive of the work. The telling of the story has helped them too,” says Hampson. (The Globe and Mail, Monday July 5, 2010.)

Does that sound familiar? Only when we understand our own family history and what we experienced in childhood can we be compassionate with our bewildering and embarrassing failures in life.

The truth sets us free.

What do you think? Is it always best to know the truth about our families? Or is it sometimes better not to dig up skeletons in the closet?

Leave your comment in the space below.

The Amygdala: your brain's watchdog

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:22:00 +0000

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of stepping off the curb and almost being run over by a truck. But you weren’t! Before you knew it, you’d jumped back on the sidewalk. You were probably amazed that you reacted so fast.

You can thank your brain’s survival system, the fight or flight response. You didn’t have time to register that there was a truck threatening your life. There was no time for thinking. Your limbic system’s amygdala saved your life.

If you’re a trauma survivor, there may be times your amydgala embarrasses you - like when you are startled by someone coming up behind you, causing you to nearly jump out of your skin. When you were a child your amygdala fired and fired, with good reason. It’s as if the amygdala got worn out when you lived with intolerable and inescapable fear as a child.

In your present life, situations that remind the amygdala of the terrifying past–smells, sounds, visual flashes, anything that the brain’s watchdog perceives as threatening your safety–set off the alarm system in your brain.

Your amygdala doesn’t distinguish between your present safety as an adult and your vulnerable life as the child you once were. Trauma therapy and relaxation may lessen its vigilance, but since it’s neurological, you just have to learn to live with it.

It’s worth establishing a friendly relationship with the amygdala. After all, when you were suffering and frightened, it was working very hard to help you survive. Developing a hostile relationship with it will only make things worse.

Telling and "Dying"

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:32:00 +0000

The first time I disclosed my own history of child sexual abuse publicly, I was presenting a workshop on trauma to a conference of colleagues. This was early in the North American therapeutic community’s awareness of the brain’s role in trauma. The setting was a resort near Boston. The conference was the annual International Focusing Conference.

In my presentation I mentioned my own history of childhood trauma mainly as a point of interest, merely stating the fact without any of the details.

A number of my colleagues came up to me afterwards and offered their condolences and surprise that something like this had happened to me. I felt pleased with the knowledge I had brought to the conference and with my courage in presenting it.

I went upstairs to my room, intending to get ready for the evening’s socializing. That was as far as I got. I was hit by an inexplicable black hole of depression. Suddenly I felt horrible. Any liveliness I had felt earlier in the day was smothered in grey ashes.

There were several colleagues who would have been very willing to use their therapeutic skills to help me through this mysterious bog of despair. But I was too frozen to ask someone to help me.

It wasn’t until weeks later when I met with Dr. Ralph Bierman that he led me to realize I was living out my father’s threat – you tell, you die. I had told and now I was dying.

Our bodies seem loaded with persecutory triggers, ready to paralyze us with anxiety or depression when we tell our terrible secrets.

A tidal wave of love after disclosing child sexual abuse

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:39:00 +0000

I’m feeling incredibly loved and supported these days. Why? Ever since I published Confessions of a Trauma Therapist people have been coming up to me to express their caring and sadness that I carried a heavy burden in my earlier life. I’ve never had so many hugs.

Readers have been thanking me for helping them deal with their own painful childhood memories. Many express their appreciation that I put into words the way my memories gradually surfaced. Others tell me my struggles help them validate their own difficulties and feel less shame for what was done to them. They all send me their thanks and their caring.

As well, I’ve heard from old friends who send me love and their understanding. Some knew about my childhood. Some didn’t. One dear friend whom I haven’t seen very much in recent years, shared with me her own recovered memory of child abuse.

Publishing my memoir was, on my part, an act of courage. It took me a long time to decide to go public with a story that laid bare my unsavoury childhood and would bring pain to my extended family. Did I have a right to upset my sister and my nephews and nieces? I had to balance this against the good my book would do out there in the world.

I decided to put my story out there to help the thousands of others suffering from the invisible wounds of childhood trauma. I never anticipated all the love and caring that would be directed my way when I told my story. I am once more reassured that telling our secrets is healthy and good for everyone, even though telling sets off alarm bells in our psyches.

EMDR? What's that?

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:04:00 +0000

Before I learned Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing, I had considerable success in treating victims of childhood trauma. Yet, there were always some aspects of trauma remaining. People were still triggered into panic by sounds, smells or sights which are benign in the present but propell them back into a terrifying past. This happens so fast there is no time to think about it. As well, their exaggerated startle response to any sudden noise remained.

What wasn’t known back when I was using standard therapies, is that trauma is held in the right side of the brain, the emotional side. The trauma does not have access to the left brain, the logical, cognitive side. It’s only an eighth of an inch between the two halves, but the spark can’t jump the gap, so to speak. EMDR allows the right side to connect with the left and “reprocess” the experience.

How is this done? EMDR treatment involves the bi-lateral stimulation of the brain: left side, right side by directing the eyes from side to side, tapping the hands, using headphones to send sound to the left and then to the right ear. This bi-lateral stimulation uses the brain’s natural way of dealing with upsetting emotion. Think of the rapid eye movement when someone is dreaming. Dreaming is not enough to handle the terror of trauma. The brain needs added help to clear the emotion.

EMDR takes advantage of the brain’s natural way of dealing with emotion. The EMDR practitioner guides the client’s eyes with her fingers, a light wand or a light bar. Sometimes the practitioner uses light tapping on the hands or knees.

Typically, clients start out very upset by the memory and end up putting the upset in the past where it belongs. Measuring the degree of upset on a scale of 0 – 10, people may start out with a 10 and end up with a 0 or 1.

Practitioners of EMDR specialize in helping clients heal from psychological trauma. They are psychotherapists with a thorough understanding of trauma and its effects on people. The eye movement described in this post is safe only in the hands of such professionals.

You can find out more on the EMDR website at www.emdr.org.

8 reasons why focusing may be for you

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 14:25:00 +0000

Have you ever heard of Focusing? It’s a sort of inner yoga and it may be just what you’ve been looking for. Focusing teaches you to access your own deepest, wisest self. It takes you to a deeper level of awareness than is ordinarily possible. It teaches you to be with yourself in a compassionate, caring way.

Check out the reasons it may be right for you.

1)Are you wondering what underlies your anxiety, shyness, depression, malaise?
2)Do you have voices in your mind telling you you’re no good, stupid, unworthy, lazy, dirty, bad?
3)Do you feel you’re to blame for the bad stuff that happens around you?
4)Do you have trouble being compassionate with yourself?
5)Do you have trouble making decisions?
6)Do you look to others to tell you what’s right?
7)Would you like a sure-fire way of knowing your life is on the right track?
8)Would you like to experience yourself as a unique and wonderful organism in the universe?

In other words, would you like to have a way of knowing what’s right for you without asking somebody, tossing a coin or getting out the Ouija board?

Would you like to be able to check inside your body for guidance? Focusing teaches you how to recognize your body’s signals, those physically felt responses to your life that are meant to keep you doing whatever is life seeking for you.

In my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist, I tell how Focusing helped me safely access my repressed memories of child sexual abuse and how this practice guided my healing. If that sounds useful to you, I’ll suggest some ways you can learn to Focus.

You can learn to Focus from the Bantam paperback by the same name or go online and find a teacher at www.focusing.org. It’s simple to learn and, as most profoundly simple things, it can take you to some very deep places.

Three essential life lessons my yoga guru taught me

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:15:00 +0000

During my ten years of studying with Swami Sivananda Radha, my guru brought order to my inner chaos. One of the most effective practices involved determining priorities for each day. Everything else could fall into place around the most important events. Balance was central to the yogi’s life. Balance, however, did not have to occur in the space of one day. It could be over a period of time. For example, on some days getting things done might be the priority. On another, relaxing and self-care might be central themes.

She was the first feminist I met. Women need a room of their own, she told me. Very few women, even those in large houses, have a room where they can close the door and leave everything untouched until they return. If you can’t have a room, at least have a part of a room which is out of bounds to others.

On energy: think of your energy like fuel in your gas tank. Never run on your reserve. Another time she told me that energy was like a bank account. Some activities and people give you energy. These are like deposits in your account. Other activities and people drain you. These are withdrawals. Try to keep as much money in the bank as possible.

On food: if you think it’s bad for you, for goodness’ sake don’t eat it.

On abortion: It is hard to find a human birth. Usually the soul does not enter the fetus until the last moment. If a fetus is aborted, the soul is not destroyed. It simply goes looking for another birth.

On an altar: Make a special place in your house for prayer and meditation, even if it’s just a place where you don’t ordinarily sit.

Today, thirty years later, many of these practices still serve to structure my life.

Why yoga?

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:28:00 +0000

Long before I knew that my “irrational” fear and anxiety were caused by child sexual abuse, I was drawn to yoga’s promise of inner calm. This was in the 1960s and '70s when most North Americans associated yoga with culturally dissonant contortions performed by skinny men in loincloths. I knew no one who practiced yoga.

As it turned out, yoga was the perfect choice for someone who had lost any sense of her own body to child abuse. I was desperate for some way of relaxing the spasms in my shoulder, neck and back muscles. In my yoga class, I was safe and separate on my own mat. There was no competition. No one was watching. For the first time in my life it was safe to concentrate on what was happening in my body. I was fascinated.

As the months went by, my muscles firmed up. I felt more energetic and even peaceful for hours at a time. I was hooked. It was possible to imagine another way of being: a way that was relaxed and joyful.

Today, there are many types of yoga available. You can choose the one you prefer. Classical hatha yoga was what I found and later taught. After class I always felt soft and loving toward the world. I also studied Iyengar yoga which the founder, B.K.S. Iyengar, designed for the western body. It is strengthening and emotionally grounding. By contrast, following a class I always felt ready to take on the world. There are many other varieties. Shop around until you find the one that suits you.

Back when I was a yoga teacher, adults did not generally go to fitness classes. People like me were attracted to yoga, people who had never been keen on sports or exercising. Maybe this is because we associated breathing heavily from physical effort with the terror we once felt.

Today there are so many types of fitness classes. The choice is infinite. But I still think yoga offers remarkable healing power to those who were traumatized as children. Yoga teaches us mindfulness, the opposite of dissociation. In yoga classes you learn how to relax your own tension and change your emotional state with your breathing. Yoga puts you into a friendly partnership with your own body. This in itself is uniquely beneficial.

Dreams tell it like it is

noreply@blogger.com (Mary Armstrong) — Fri, 28 May 2010 22:16:00 +0000

Dreams, even if they’re bizarre or scary, are always benign. At the very least, they release feelings we haven’t been able to handle during the day. Dreams serve to keep us emotionally healthy.

Unless we’ve learned to control our usual bias, a scary dream will frighten us just as it would if we were awake. If we don’t know how to control our usual response to the story the dream brings, the message will escape us. Dr. Eugene Gendlin’s book Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams explains how to get beyond our usual reaction so that we get to the actual message.

I believe our dreams often try to get our attention. Maybe there’s something we’re ignoring and need to be aware of.

In my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist, I cite the recurring nightmare my mother had when my sister and I were children. For me, it falls into the category of a dream that was attempting to make her aware that her child was being sexually abused. Unfortunately for me, my mother remained bewildered by the bad dream.

Throughout my youth my mother often told us about a disturbing, recurrent nightmare. It was always the same. She, her mother, my sister, and I were in a pastoral, grassy setting in the sunshine. The children were gamboling like lambs in the long grass. Suddenly there was a sinister change. Something was terribly wrong. The sky darkened and the long grass was wet and slimy. My mother was repulsed and horrified. She couldn’t stand the feeling of the wet grass on her legs. She tried to find her children, who were in great danger. She always wakened in a cold sweat from the nightmare. (p.180)

Too bad for me that my mother didn’t learn to interpret her own dreams. If the dream had managed to break through her denial, maybe she’d have protected me from the men in the family.