 Alexandra Hartman
Ellie Epp
March 31, 2006
(MS
Word format)
Early relational trauma and my gradual awakening to my body
"The body is the storm-center, the
origin of coordinates, the constant place of stress in [our] experience-train.
Everything circles round it, and is felt from its point of
view." William James
(86).
My mother was 22 years old, and eight and a half months pregnant
when my father was killed in the crash of a commercial airliner
in Japan. I was born two weeks later. I can only imagine my mother's
grief and denial. I can only imagine her pain, compounded by blinding
grief while giving birth to me alone in a hospital in Japan. I
can only imagine her rage at being robbed of her husband and the
father of her child. I can only imagine her sense of frustration
and failure when I refused to allow her to feed me, or hold me
in her arms for weeks after my birth. I can only imagine how she
felt when I reached to her for food, comfort and love.
I was a shy, solitary child and I spent
my childhood immersed in books. I had a low tolerance for stress
and I struggled to avoid feelings of anxiety and agitation. As
I grew older, whenever I felt fearful or overstressed I'd mentally
leave my body and observe my surroundings from a safe mental
distance. I also learned to pull my mind away from my body by
dragging my attention hard to my right. These retreats from reality
are known as dissociation, a defense mechanism against strong
feelings of anxiety that threaten to overwhelm the person who
is experiencing them. Dissociation is not uncommon, nor is dissociation
pathological in and of itself. Scaer defines dissociation as, "Fragmentation and splitting of
the mind, and perception of the self and the body" (Scaer). Dissociation
should be viewed along a continuum from mild dissociation, experienced
by someone so engrossed in a that time slips away unnoticed, to
dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder),
in which separate personalities develop for separate sets of memories.
Etherington calls dissociation, ".a mechanism that creates a split
in conscious awareness that allows the traumatized person to disconnect
from parts of their experience in order to reduce the impact and
thereby survive." (27).
For most of my life, I've focused on my
mind without having much body awareness. I've never taken great
pleasure in my body or pride in my body's appearance. I've never
exercised simply to feel my body move. I've always directed a
great deal of shame toward my body and concentrated instead on
using my mind for learning and communicating. Levine says, ".dissociation may be experienced as
part of the body being disconnected or almost absent." (17).
Henderson says, ".a decision has been made that "you" live up
there in your skull. That boundary at the neck cuts you off from
the greater part of your experience, your feelings, your perceptions,
even your mind. This leaves a lot of you uninhabited and unconsidered.
A lot of your life is not conscious in you." (27).
Dissociation is usually seen as a response
to severe trauma. "Trauma
has been identified as the principal antecedent to dissociative
disorders" (Lego, 1996), but I have no memories of overt abuse,
so for years I wondered if I had suppressed childhood memories
or if family confrontations might have prompted my retreat into
dissociation. Liotti finally gave me an answer to that question
when I read, "Interactions. not obviously comprising maltreatment,
can induce a failure in the integrative functions of consciousness
at the beginning of life and deserve the name of 'early relational
trauma...'" (478). In other words, a child can adopt dissociation
as a defensive response to influences other than overt trauma and
abuse.
Liotti says, "Traumatic losses. in the life of the dissociative
patients' mothers that took place. 2 years before to 2 years after
the patients' births proved to be a significant risk factor for
the development of dissociative disorders." (476) My father had
only been dead for two weeks when I was born, and my mother must
still have been in deep shock.
Liotti adds, ".a parent's state of mind, unresolved as to traumas,
may interfere in the communication between parent and child. .parents'
unresolved states of mind can induce .dissociative reactions in
the infant even when the parents' behavior does not obviously constitute
maltreatment." (477-8).
My mother gave birth to me alone in a foreign country, across
the world from her friends and family The joy that should have
accompanied my birth was tempered by enormous grief. Her situation
must have been almost unbearable. Liotti cites John Bowlby's work
with attachment theory which holds that :
".humans. are born with a strong, evolved tendency to seek care,
help, and comfort from members of the social group whenever they
are suffering from physical or emotional distress. .the care-seeking
or attachment system. is powerfully activated during and after
any experience of fear, physical pain, or psychological pain. Usually,
the propensity to seek protection and comfort is met with positive
responses from significant others. The inborn disposition to care
for one's kin. which matches the equally inborn tendency to ask
for help, provides the basis for a relatively smooth functioning
of caregiving- careseeking interactions. (477)
Normally, an infant's cries for food and/or comfort are met with
an instinctive and sympathetic nurturing response from the parent.
But when the mother is overwhelmed by her own grief and trauma,
she may respond to her baby's cries with sadness, stress or anger.
When unresolved traumatic memories surface
in the mind of parents while they are responding to the attachment
requests of their children, the mental suffering linked to these
memories activates the parents' attachment system together with
their caregiving system. In the
absence of soothing responses from significant others (perceived
as "stronger and/or wiser" than the suffering self.), the activation
of the attachment system arouses in the parent strong emotions
of fear and/or anger. Thus, while infants are crying, "unresolved" parents
may interrupt their attempts to soothe them. with unwitting, abrupt
manifestations of alarm and/or of... Caregivers' abrupt manifestation
of both anger and fear are always frightening to infants. The innate
defensive reaction of escaping from the signal of threat. ensues
in the infant. The increased relational distance, however, further
activates the (equally inborn) infant's attachment system, because
increased distance from the attachment figure innately strengthens
the need for protective proximity, whatever the behavior of the
attachment figure may be. The attachment figure. is "at once the
source and the solution" . of the infant's alarm, and this leads
to fright without solution (477).
Liotti cites specific neurological damage
caused by early relational trauma in, "the right-brain system (connecting limbic emotional
centers to the neocortex through the crossroad of the orbitofrontal
cortex) that is involved in coping with emotional stressors develops
along unfavorable lines in the face of chronic early relational
traumas." (478).
My mother's loss was clearly traumatic,
but I never understood how her grief could be interpreted by
me as an infant, but Gilligan says, ".as babies we pick up and respond to emotions in a third
of a second, registering pleasure or anger or whatever emotion
is felt by the person relating to us." (6)
I believe experiencing my mother's prenatal trauma and continuing
grief and sadness caused me to perceive my mother as a fearful
influence, and this encouraged me to dissociate, first from my
mother and then from my body.
As I've matured, I've found better ways to cope with strong emotions
than engaging in the more pathological forms of dissociation, however
at times of stress, I still try to distance myself with mental
distraction, food and alcohol.
As a child I was always hungry. Hungry for food, I hoarded sweets
beneath my bed and my body grew. Hungry for attention, I endured
criticism from my family and taunts from my peers because the appearance
of the body didn't conform to societal norms.
Hungry for rescue, I imagined myself a victim saved by handsome
men. Hungry for companionship, I pressed my back against my bedroom
door to prevent friends from leaving, while their parents called
them home. Hungry for acceptance as a young teenager I drank, did
drugs, and had sex with boys.
Hunger, desire and lack of control twist through my life like
cords, as does dissociation. I've always felt out of control, and
my body has never felt like part of me. It's felt like an other.
Like something I drag below me. I've never been satisfied with
the way my body looks, or appreciated how beautifully it works,
nor have I treated it with anything but contempt. I'm strong and
healthy, but I've responded to my body with restriction and hatred,
and never been able to rid myself of my desire.
Levine says, " I surmised that successful healing methods inevitably
involve establishing connection to the body" (28). To that end,
I've begun turning my awareness into my body by meditating into
it and discovering its inherent wisdom. The process is simple.
I lie comfortably rather than sitting on a hard pillow as one would
for traditional meditation. I make myself quiet and start to observe.
I begin at the center, and concentrate on the physical and emotional
impressions I find. Soon I notice my belly throbbing and burning
like a bowl of lava. I notice energy racing through my hands and
feet. And I find quiet answers there.
As Katherine Thanas says in her essay,
Hearing the Voice of the Body, "As this newly compassionate observing occurs, the object
of observation, the body/self, is transformed, and we move from
denial to acceptance, from rejection to inclusion" (44).
My emotions have been contained for 50 years, but when I meditate
on my body, they surface easily, because they're eager to be noticed.
There's deep sadness in my body, and I cry easily when I turn my
attention to it, but there's stillness there too. I am emotion
embodied. My body is wise. It is God. It is the spirituality I've
always hungered for but felt cut off from.
As Arnold Weinstein says, "[w]e are somatic
creatures, living in bodies, having emotions, bathed by sensations,
at times bubbling and simmering, at times dawdling and eddying,
hot and cold, nervous and calm, fearful and yearning, hungry
and satiated."
This is the way to my healing.
Works sited
Etherington, Kim (Editor). Trauma, the
Body and Transformation : A Narrative Inquiry. Philadelphia, PA,
USA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2003.
Henderson, Julie. The Lover Within : Opening to Energy in Sexual
Practice . Barrytown, N.Y: Station Hill P, 1986.
James, William. "The Experience of Activity," Essays
in Radical Empiricism . Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976.
Levine, Peter A. Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring
the Wisdom of Your Body . Louisville, CO: Sounds True, 2005.
Liotti, Giovanni. " Trauma, Dissociation, And Disorganized
Attachment: Three Strands of a Single Braid ." Psychotherapy:
Theory, Research, Practice, Training 41.4 (2004): 472-486.
Scaer, Robert C. "The Neurophysiology of Dissociation and
Chronic Disease." Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback
26 (2001): 73-91. 2 Apr. 2006 <http://www.trauma-pages.com/scaer-2001.htm>.
Steinberg, Marlene, and Maxine Schnall. The Stranger in the Mirror
Dissociation--the Hidden Epidemic . 1st Ed. ed. New York: Cliff
Street Books, 2000.
Thanas, Katherine. "Hearing the Voice of the Body." Being
Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment . Ed. Friedman,
Lenore, and Susan Ichi Su Moon. 1st Ed. ed. Boston: Shambhala,
1997. 43-47.
Weinstein, Arnold. A Scream Goes Through The House . New York:
Random House, 2003.
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