Traumatic memory—get informed

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.

The trauma myth

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.

Is "The Critic" Running Your Life?

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.

Studying the family tree

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

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"

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

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.

Why yoga?

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

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.

Basking in a warm glow

This morning I wakened with a sense of delicious happiness. Ah yes, my warm glow had to do with the amazing launch for my book, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist. The book launch was weeks ago, but this is the first time I’ve been able to bask in the pleasure of recalling that evening in the auditorium of Women’s College Hospital.
 
Right after the launch, I left for two weeks in Germany where I’d booked my flight and registered for the annual International Focusing Conference months ago. The timing wasn’t great. It allowed no time to simply reflect on and luxuriate in the memories of the launch. The launch was over and the next thing I knew, I was packing all the copies of Confessions of a Trauma Therapist I could possibly carry in my suitcase, backpack and a Loblaw shopping bag, and heading for the airport.
 
Back to this morning: My mind goes over and over all the faces who came to break the silence and tell the terrible secrets of child abuse. In my mind’s eye I see the hundreds who came to support those who are on a healing path. Since the launch, I’ve had the chance to speak to a number of people for whom the evening opened new understanding of child abuse and its impact on the lives of its victims. And I’ve heard from the victims who have fresh determination to heal from their own invisible wounds. Survivors, those who are dealing with their abuse have told me they have fresh insights into what’s needed for healing.
 
I’m hearing, too, of people who were there whom I missed seeing. And, as I lie in bed first thing in the morning, I go over and over recalling all the wonderful people who crowded into the auditorium on that magic evening.
 
With support and caring like that, surely child abuse will one day become a bizarre and ugly relic of the past, something people know occurred historically, but can no longer exist in the current atmosphere of vigilance and caring for children.  
 

Germany: a traumatized nation

For many years I traveled to Germany to teach about psychological trauma at the Focusing Zentrum Karlsruhe. A psychotherapist has a unique window into the society in which she lives. My years of teaching psychotherapy skills in Germany allowed some very special insights into this foreign country’s history.

Germans suffered terribly from both the first and the second world wars. War, however, is not the crux of their suffering. The trauma begins with German child rearing. I believe that traditional German child rearing is responsible for Germany’s history of wartime atrocities.

Germany has a well-documented history of intentional cruelty and shaming of children dating back to the1750’s. Well meaning parents followed the advice of “experts” who told them how to raise an obedient child. What mattered was that the child would grow into a citizen who would obey orders. To this end, crying babies were shaken to scare them into never making their needs known. Children were shamed and beaten to make sure they never followed their own feelings and wishes.

No one who benefited from secure attachment as a child could have carried out the brutal orders German soldiers inflicted on their victims. As a result of their childhoods, they had no access to their own feelings. If you can’t experience your own feelings, how can you empathize with others?

The lesson for all of us is this: If we want to live in a peaceful world, we need to take great care to raise our children with love and caring.

How can you forget something so terrible?

I’m in Germany at the International Focusing Conference. Today I gave a workshop on traumatic memory. The theme was why it’s possible to have no memory of terrifying events.

First, I wanted the participants to be clear on the definition of “traumatic.” Often people use the term to describe a memory that is merely bad or painful. A traumatic event has to be (1)inescapable and (2)intolerable.

Our natural impulse when something threatens us is to go into a state of fight or flight. If we can’t fight and we can’t flee, we freeze or dissociate.

Normal children are capable of dissociating in order to survive. Dissociation is learned at an early age and is a highly developed skill. I tell my clients that yogis go into a cave for years to learn this skill.

What does it feel like to dissociate? Some people describe it as looking at the world through a pane of glass while feeling nothing. Others float on the ceiling and look down at what seems to be happening to somebody else. Yet another common form of dissociation involves simply leaving the body and feeling nothing.

At one time, dissociation spared us from feeling the full impact of a situation we couldn’t tolerate. Otherwise we wouldn’t be capable of this advanced mind/body control. It allowed us to participate in some parts of normal childhood, such as going to school.

In a nutshell, our brains are designed to assure the survival of our species. Dissociation deserves our respect.