Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Meeting the Face of Homelessness at Jubilee Kitchen

When I first began helping out at Jubilee Kitchen in September, I imported into the situation some ancient baggage regarding my attitudes about the value of people in general. Until my experience helping at Jubilee, I was unaware that I had been breezing along through life on shallow attitudes dictated by a culturally infused implicit value system that assigned value to people according to the quality and quantity of their possessions. I thought of myself as a rather 'nice', understanding and compassionate person, but soon realized how 'hobo-phobic' I truly was.     


In becoming acquainted, albeit  peripherally, with this special population of men, women and children at risk for a unique type of human suffering, I managed to get in touch with the denial I lived in regarding the impact of human impoverishment, and in doing so, managed, for first time, to recognize the reality and depth of my own impoverishment, vulnerability and suffering.  That recognition enabled me to gain a greater understanding of our kinship as human people bound together by the inescapable fact of human misery. For no matter how much we separate ourselves into categories of 'have's 'and 'have not's', when all is said and done, we all share the same needs for food shelter and clothing, and we each bear personal responsibility for working to effect the economic transactions necessary to satisfy those needs.    


Our sociopolitical system seems intent on supporting the capacity for equal access to the means to accomplish this task. Yet it seems there are far too many factors that impede equal access to those opportunities, favoring those who enter life's race with an adequate (or better) foundation of support. Those who are born into families of rich economic, social, psychological, biological and cultural resources seem to face fewer barriers to having their most base needs met, and the structures that are in place, seem to reinforce their ability to multiply their assets at whim.    


On the other hand, those who have inherited impoverishment  in any of the aforementioned domains struggle daily to survive. They do so, but just barely. They are the disenfranchised. The mentally disabled who are simply unable to function in accordance with the high demands of the marketplace; they are the veterans suffering from post traumatic stress, who have yielded to the allure of substance abuse, to suppress the  pain of unbearable memories; they are the  deserted mothers with children who invested their hopes in a relationship with a man only to have their emotional vulnerability and spiritual poverty exploited.  They are the men who were released from prison, and whose measily pittance of a discharge grant only went 'so far' but not far enough to give them a leg up. They are the otherwise healthy: unemployed, the jobless, the fired, those whose unemployment benefits have expired. The litany of poverty continues as a common thread through every day, every year, every decade, and every century. And thankfully, good will organizations such as Jubilee Kitchen exist to meet the demands of this particular population at-risk.    


Outside of the back room kitchen banter, I did not really have much opportunity, due to time constraints and the demands of the daily tasks, to familiarize myself personally with the broad specter of persons that make up the Jubillee community.  Surprisingly, Jubilee does more for the homeless/hungry population than supply a daily meal.  For about 6-8 hours each day it provides a place to 'be'; a roof and a respite from the elements. A place to 'hang out' and make social connection. It also provides a medical clinic, a job bank, bus tickets for those going to employment interviews, counseling, a shower for those who need it and it also has a daycare component.  But most of all, it provides a bit of permanent hope for daily sustenance, and an opportunity to get their lives on track when they found those lives had fallen through the cracks and who have nowhere else to turn, since they have little to none  financial resources for use to engage other more formal resource mechanisms.    


I felt personally powerless to help, but I suppose I must be preparing for the right field if situations such as this invoke such an urge to help alleviate the suffering. Of course the issues of homelessness are so large and complex that it takes more than an empathetic individual to meet the challenges of this population. It takes an entire action system of dedicated professionals with access to resources, trained specifically to investigate the impediments that disempower, provide connection to resources  and identify solutions that are not only curative, but those that are preventative as well.   


As long as our current sociopolitical system remains in place, the problem of homelessness will not go away. As long as the predominant ethic remains one of self-interest and striving to multiply one's currency, the 'have's' will continue to thrive and the 'have not's' will continue to struggle with little hope for a better future. For the most hopeless among us, Jubilee extends that promise of hope.    


My experience with volunteering at Jubilee has given a much deeper awareness and understanding of the unique relationship between the giver and the receiver. At day's end, we're pretty much the same, and often each taking turns at one role or the other in the wonderfully intangible yet ecologically balanced charitable impulse.     

Monday, November 15, 2010

Relationships, Attachment and Hostage Taking

    I was originally attracted to the article in question because of its mention of the alluring taboo "Polyamory' in the title "Polyamory chic, gay jealousy and the evolution of a broken heart". The article itself reflected an interesting perspective, but the ideas that stirred my own subjectivity and elicited an impulse to comment were those where reference was made to the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.
    Bio-Psychology deals with the formation of neural nets, and the interactivity of the nervous and endocrine system, and particularly how the neurons themselves transmit chemical information from one to the other, and how  certain chemicals released across the synaptic gap activate the endocrine system to discharge hormones into the bloodstream and convey information that engages the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.  
    In speaking about  the 'protest stage'  regarding the human heartbreak experience relative to human relationships, Mr. Bering states that in the wake of a break-up, "at the neurobiological level, the protest stage is characterized by unusually heightened, even frenetic activity of dopamine and norepinephrine receptors in the brain, which has the effect of pronounced alertness similar to what is found in young animals abandoned by their mothers". It seemed to make sense to me, in light of the work done on attachment by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and more recently Mary Main, that what might be at the bottom of post break-up suffering, are really unreconciled maladaptive attachment  issues.
    If the child's Trust vs. Mistrust (Erikson) task had not been resolved, then it is likely that one or both of the players in a couple dyad may be using the relationship as the battleground to resolve their own attachment issues. Unbeknownst, the significant other may be surreptitiously cast as the surrogate parent of the one whose attachment bonds were never imprinted in a healthy, satisfying manner, and so they are carrying forward into all future relationships the only model available to them upon which to pattern subsequent relationships.
    So many emotions are elicited in the drama of relationship, each with its own accompanying brain neurochemical plasticity potential. Positive relational experiences patterned on a healthy model of early trust imprinting and bonding will tend to build neural connections that will activate and reinforce positive emotional states of well-being. On the other hand, brains that are building according to the effect of "pronounced alertness' hypervigilant and in continuous survival mode, may have more a tendency to develop Depression, lethargy, despondency and despair, as the continuous enslaught of those particular chemicals support a brain design network supporting maladaptive strategies for human engagement and relationship.
    In any event, the emotional structures that are built throughout our lives hinge upon the models provided in the earliest years of life by our primary caregiver. It would seem to make sense that unresolved issues in the earlier stages of human development would naturally be carried forward into subsequent  stages. It does not matter that the mind is not in sync with the biological demands of each subsequent stage. The 'beat goes on' as they say and is most obvious as we experience a seemingly grown adult acting like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum when their emotional needs are not being met in an adult relationship.


Based on the article: Scientific American Mind magazine, research psychologist Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast August 25, 2010. Title: Polyamory chic, gay jealousy and the evolution of a broken heart By Jesse Bering

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=polyamory-chic-gay-jealousy-and-the-2010-08-25

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Prayers for Bobby: An Analysis

Prayers for Bobby: A Coming Out Story for a Son and A Coming of Age Story and His Mother

    Prayers for Bobby is a true story based on the life of Bobby Griffith, a young man who from age 16 to 20 struggled with being gay while being raised in a devout upper middle-class Anglo-Saxon fundamentalist evangelical Christian family, before finally ending the struggle by allowing himself to fall off a bridge into the path of oncoming traffic, tragically ending his life in 1983.  
    It was his family's and his community's religious intolerance that drove Bobby to take his own life, yet it was his mother Mary who redeemed his memory as she herself, through gay right's advocacy, came to grips with the effects of her own internalized bigotry in the wake of his death. After seeking solace and understanding from the local Metropolitan Community Church, ultimately she redeems both herself and her son's memory,  eventually denying the religion that fueled his self-loathing, and coming to accept and acknowledge Bobby's orientation as a gift bestowed on him at conception. 
    Bobby was a typical all-American boy who began to question his sexuality (according to records found in his journal) around the age of 14-15. This journal entry reveals how around the age of 18,  he was ensconced in a terrible conflict between contrasting values of expected religious ethical behavior, and his own inner desires and longings:
    "What's wrong with me? I wish I could crawl under a rock. God, do you enjoy     seeing me stumble around this world like a stupid idiot? I think you must.         There's probably some kind of pill somewhere that would heal my brain or there's probably some kind of vitamin that I'm not getting enough of. -- Bobby's diary entry for Sept. 28 1981"
    Clearly, Bobby was caught in the tension of conflicting contrasts between psychic imprints of  'normalcy' , and the influence of local cultural values and customs imposed on him and his family. Unaware that these types of values are socially constructed, he and his family unquestioningly bought into the ideas that had been inculcated as part of their values system through frequent, repetitive religious and cultural reinforcement.
    As the matrix of Bobby's values system, his mother Mary provided the source material for his conflict. She herself had been raised in a religious environment in the 1950's, a period of time that thought suspiciously about homosexuality in general. The general attitude of the times condemned gay people as being sinful and destined for damnation. Bobby himself was born into the ascendency period of the Moral Majority's right wing evangelical movement's ideology which made the topic of homosexuality one of its more vocal targets of attack, thereby increasing the climate of hatred and bigotry around the topic of homosexuality in general.  Bobby's mother had absorbed these ideas into her own value system, and imparted these negative attitudes to her own family, as they had been imparted to her. Sadly, she failed to adjust her own bias, even though the American Psychological Association had stricken homosexuality as a mental illness from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual in 1973. Reparative Therapy began to be valued as the solution for 'curing' homosexual tendencies.  Some of those who failed to reap the promised effects of these therapies were left to struggle with the cognitive dissonance of homosexual attraction and subsequently were left feeling rejected (by God), betrayed (by their own bodies) and abandoned (by the community) when their prayers to be changed were left unanswered and their attempts at resistance were met with failure.
    Bobby's central life stage challenge at the time of his blossoming sexuality would require reconciliation of the biopsychosocial tasks inherent in the Identity versus Role Diffusion phase of his development. According to Erikson, this is a time when adolescents proceed to establish a sense of personal identity relative to their particular systemic connections, or they become confused about who they are and what they want to do in life. It was perfectly obvious that Bobby, under the circumstances, would not be able to meet the challenges of this phase, reconciling his rising biological impulses with those of the social environment he was enmeshed with. As a result, his own psychological development and balance would be interrupted and inhibited from further integration, leading him to exist in a state of constant conflict and unresolved psychic tension.
    Further contributing and undergirding his conflict was the authoritarian manner in which institutional influences dominated his environment, as regards the demands placed on him to adhere to their set of behavioral requirements. His own mother stated "I won't have a gay son" which to a 16 year old with no other recourse, would seem like an ultimatum and an indictment. The pastor at his church preaching about the 'evils of the flesh' and the local school culture cracking jokes about 'fags'  would further incriminate him and support a rationale for suppressing his true nature. In an effort to 'fit in', he experiments with heterosexuality, but he quickly realizes this is not his true self, and is obviously repulsed when his date encourages him to make a pass at her. Later on, when he moves away from home, Bobby finds a boyfriend and enjoys a dinner together at their family home.  As he observes the nature of their transactions,  he notices the stark contrast between how accepting they are of their own son's orientation and how rejecting his own family. Ultimately, this realization supports what he has already come to accept as true about himself: that there is something wrong with him that cannot be fixed, and from this point on, his own self-loathing becomes a permanently fixed. Unfortunately, Bobby does not resolve and reconcile the tasks associated with the Identity versus Identity Role Diffusion stage.
    Though not apparently explicit in the story, the film did hint at the violent  consequences that Bobby would suffer if he were to reveal publicly his true self. At one point after he confides in his brother about his struggle with his homosexual feelings after trying to kill himself by taking a bottle of Bufferin, it becomes apparent that the community finds out, and at a scene where Bobby attends a school dance, the supporting characters are seen exchanging furtive whispers as he mingles with the crowd, and at one point he is intentionally bumped by the shoulder of another boy who looks at him with loathing, daring him to meet the challenge of defending his own dignity. Bobby slinks away, aware that to do so with no support to back him up, would be suicide.
    How ironic, since Bobby's life was inundated with patterns of suicidal themes and tendencies. After all, his entire life up to this point had been formed and shaped within the aegis of a religious and environmental culture that killed the initiative impulse. Rather, the forces that controlled him, placed so many restriction on the types of activities that were permitted and those that were not, that this would have caused him to fail to resolve the tasks of the earlier Initiative versus Guilt developmental stage, and may well have impeded his ability to resolve those required in the Industry versus Inferiority development stage as well.
    As a result, when Bobby leaves home to live with his cousin in a different part of the country in order to escape the strictures of his repressive life, he finds himself at a crossroads. His new life exposes him to an environment that is the antithesis of everything he had been bred to embrace. He starts hanging out in unhealthy sexually permissive environments that are more exploitative than nurturing. He frequents a strip bar; he begins to drink alcohol, and while he himself is not shown to engage in risky sexual encounters, in a later scene he observes his boyfriend leaving an establishment arm in arm with another male. This crushes Bobby's spirit and apparently  is the 'straw that broke the camel's back',  as the next scene in the movie shows him at the bridge when he commits suicide.
    For Bobby, the breach of trust was too much to take. The rejection by his own mother, whose attachment bonds were conditional, the strength of which depended on her approval of him and his behavior, had a devastating effect. The larger themes of abandonment and rejection dominating his life had reached their apex, and he found himself faced with the irresolvable conundrum that he could not change himself to align with the expectations of God, mother and society, and so he ended the conflict once and for all in a tragic act of self-destruction.
    The roots of Bobby's conflict did not begin in adolescence. They began far sooner than that in the earlier stages of his development and the issues arose for him primarily from within the authoritarian style of upbringing. No matter what the stage of development, Bobby had not be allowed to learn from his mistakes, and all his behaviors were closely monitored and controlled. His trust bond with his primary care-giver was conditional. His Autonomic power was limited by the range of values that could be explored within the context and confines of his family milieu; shame for this family was a powerful inhibitor of behavior. As mentioned earlier his Initiative was suppressed as he was discouraged to develop interests that lay outside the range of his own white fundamentalist family value system, encouraging him to avoid 'bad' things  not approved by the family value system, and therefore developed a 'negative' style of engagement with life. Assuming all the challenges inherent in the previous successive stages of development had been satisfied and resolved, Bobby's life would have carried on in a much different manner.
    Had a favorable trust bond been immutably imprinted without condition,  he would have proceeded through subsequent sequence of life stages with far greater success. He might not have questioned his own capability and potential; he might not have lived with the ultimately unbearable stress and strain of internal conflict that caused him to end his life.
    Out of the ashes of Bobby's life arose a new dove, a phoenix of hope that helps us all to see that when we question those values we've assumed as sacred truth, our survival is not at risk. Certainly, Bobby's mother clung to a value system that kept her psychic life in tact as she refused to compromise it, but, in a strange ecosystem quirk of morality and values, her refusal to risk compromise caused something else to die: her son.  Had she been open minded enough to question her rigid mindset, and instead  engaged an objective dialogue when first presented with the issue as a contrast of conflicting values, her son may be alive today.   Even though she went on to transform her ignorance favorably for those who, like her son, struggle with the negative messages transmitted culturally around LGBTQ issues, it still remains that as long as those who hold the power of governance to shape and mold the attitudes that define what is culturally acceptable according to some arbitrary moral system based on dogmas and outdated, unfounded attitudes and superstitions, then the values of social justice upon which this nation were predicated will be mere empty lip service impotent to empower those most vulnerable to the rapacious thrust of majority rule. 


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The Novel: Middlesex by Jeffry Eugenides

On 'Middlesex'  by Jeffrey Eugenides
    The character I chose as the hypothetical client is the main character of the novel. Born Calliope Helen Stephanides into a Greek-American family of strong Greek Orthodox Immigrant influence and heritage, “Callie", unbeknownst to the family, is intersexed for many years, and subsequently is raised as a girl until he makes a decision to present himself as the male he believes himself to be.
    The novel was written as a memoir from Cal's point of view as 41 year old man, though throughout the novel, the narration modulates back and forth between the perspective of the girl, Callie, and the voice of the present-day Cal. However, the first half of the story is based on events that occurred prior to Callie's birth. As emigrants,  Cal's grandparents (his grandmother, Desdemona, secretly married her blood brother Lefty), after fleeing riots their homeland in Asia Minor upon arriving in Detroit Michigan, lived with a cousin who had migrated earlier from Smyrna, their birthplace.
    One of the major themes of the novel is the subject of incest between the two siblings, however, that did not seem to hamper their functioning as a married couple making a family of their own.  As a result of Cal's grandparents' diligence and hard work ethic, the family developed into an upper class immigrant family. They spawn and raise two children and after building up a successful family bar and restaurant business, the family moved into the Grosse Point neighborhood, at the time, a well established upper class neighborhood. As the grandparents fade into the background, Cal's father takes over the family business and continues to provide the same standard of living to which he had become accustomed.
    All three generations shared the same living quarters, assimilating into a culture surrounding them that was in the process of becoming homogenized, while in private maintaining their strong cultural ethic  and customs of dress, speech and superstition. Callie's grandmother refused to learn the english language, and at the point when Callie was about to be born, the narrator, Cal, explains how his grandmother, Desdemona , dangling a spoon tied to a string over the pregnant mother's stomach, predicted by the arc of its movement that Cal would be a boy, while his parents made preparations for the birth of a girl. They were delighted when Callie emerged as female, because their first child had been born male.
     As it turns out, Callie inherited the mutation for a gene that causes 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which impedes the conversion of testosterone hormone ( causes the brain to become masculine) and dihydrotestosterone (molds male genitals). The condition was not apparent at the time due to the under-developed status of her genitals at birth, and so Callie was raised as female. However, as she begins puberty and adolescence, she begins to wonder why she has not begun menstruating like her peers, and why her breasts are not developing. She has all of her other faculties in tact and is performing within the range of full functionality. Intellectually she is bright and  creative, but her body does not seem to be flowering as she anticipated that it would. Callie adapts to the deficits by becoming somewhat precocious in her social interactions, seeming mature and wise beyond her years, in spite of the fact that being an underdeveloped late bloomer, might cause her to feel inferior in high society adolescent culture.
        Now for the first time, we begin to see an identity beginning to form and take shape. As Callie's personality begins to emerge in adolescence, she seems to have liberal views, and this becomes apparent when she develops a 'crush' on one of her female classmates, whom she refers to only as the "Object Obscure". The Cal identity however seems to be invested in the social construct of binary gender relationships, and feels fear, guilt and perhaps shame at her attractions to her female friend. In her mind only boys and girls make valid relationship partners, and she sets out to align her outsides to match her insides.
    Still, in the secret of Callie's taboo attraction to the 'Object Obscure" she seems to find strength, and never once does she apologize for that attraction. Perhaps her fortitude and self-confidence are rooted in her bargaining power as a well adjusted young girl third generation immigrant girl having been born and bred in the crucible of a thriving, well established immigrant family.  Under-girded by the socio-economic potentates inherited in a life of privilege, unhindered self-determination and unfoiled self-efficacy, she rose above the obstacles inherent in her particular human struggle, unimpeded by the foibles of her fate.
    Cal, in retrospect, writes that he is a man trapped in an hermaphrodite's body, meaning to say, that while his genitalia are primarily seen as female (though his breasts are not well developed), his sexual attractions are toward females. When Callie reaches puberty, her testosterone levels increase, resulting in the formation of a larger Adam's apple, deeper voice, broader muscles, and a larger clitoris that resembles a penis. Eventually, Callie's parents bring her to New York City to see a foremost expert on hermaphroditism, who believes she should retain her female identity. The doctor determines that she has the XY chromosomes of a male after inspecting Callie's genitalia. He plans a gender reassignment surgery to make her female. However, Callie knows that she is sexually attracted to females, and decides to run away to pursue a male identity as Cal.
    In comparing Callie's life experience with mine, her life was very different than mine, almost quite the opposite, although we did share more than one thing in common. The primary similarity was our struggle with sexual identity, and our orientation being at odds with cultural expectation and strong family religious ethic. The other thing we shared was the manner in which we struggled as a result of our late-blooming process of adolescent development. I never shaved until I was 21 and had very little body hair, and for a long time, this caused me to carry a lot of shame at not having developed like other males.
    Culturally, Callie was born to the breed, and very well connected in lineage to her generational Greek Orthodox family. My parents on the other hand, had no real knowledge of their generational lines, and our class was in the lower economic sphere. Callie was one of two offspring, and I was one of eight who survived a thirteen year run of twelve births by my Roman Catholic mother. As mentioned, In one respect we shared the value of religiosity and did all of the things required of our religion, but like the characters in the Stephanides clan, we too had our secrets, and our ethical expression of those values were incongruent to the ideology that belied them.  Our parents told us not to smoke cigarettes, but they themselves did; they also told us not to use expletives, but they themselves did. Cal's grandparents knew incest was a taboo subject, but they made the choice to marry anyway. Callie's life exposed her to privileged degrees of educational experience, and my experience was in the local Roman Catholic parish church school. Even though Callie's grandparents appeared to be religious and had strong religious ethics, her own parents clung to the traditions merely out of habit. Because Callie was exposed to a higher degree of soci-economic currency, she was privvy to a broader range of opportunity than I, as the son of a hard working blue collar worker. Callie and I both however did seem to inherit the 'hard work gene'.
    When I think of the circumstances under which Callie might have had the occasion to become a client of mine, I would think that it would be at the point at which she runs away as a young minor when faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery. My effectiveness as a social worker might be compromised were she assigned to me.
    My initial impulse would be to want to shield her from the harm that she was facing in being forced to undergo the sex reassignment surgery. But I would also be conflicted about having her placed in foster care unless the placement was in a situation that would match the standard of living to which she had become accustomed and with care givers who would honor her right to self-determine. I would want for her comfort, and I'm not certain where this consideration falls in the specter of priority, or if in fact it does.
    I would definitely want the decision to have the surgery or not be hers alone and I would support her in whatever choice she made. However, my support, though noble in its intent, would not be springing from a sense of objectivity, but rather from my own desire to not have my own rights stripped away in such a dismissive manner. My ability to be objective would be at stake, since I would be too emotionally involved in her plight, and would be desiring to shield her from the struggles she faced.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Compulsive Hoarding : not just concrete stuff, mental stuff too

    After reading in the March 2010 edition of Discover magazine the article titled "What Quirk of the Brain Turns People Into Compulsive Hoarders?" the other day, for just a fleeting moment I understood the head and the heart of a hoarder.
    My particular brand of hoarding presents itself in terms of compulsive note taking and keeping (emphasis on the 'keeping' part), and it never dawned on me until after I had read the article that this is indeed the case, and not merely an incidence of the Barnum Effect. I made this realization as I was shuffling through old binders of kept notes from previous workshops and classes taken back in the period of 1996-2000 when I was working on my undergraduate degree in Organ and Sacred Music, and then later on my course work for the MM in Choral Conducting. I was hoping to avoid increasing the ever mounting price tag of my new educational endeavors here at the University of Pitt as I work toward a Master's in Social Work, so I thought that in order to serve that end I would simply recycle usable items from those prior educational phases.
    However, it was not that simple as I had imagined it would be. As I started to pour through the several volumes of binders overstuffed and pregnant with all sorts of topically arranged information, I found myself stuck in a dilemma as to which information was worth transferring from the binder to the trash bin. My mind seemed to enter panic mode as it initiated an assessment process regarding the question of the down side of pitching the old information. How could I justify throwing away these notes? In that moment I found myself nearly impotent to discharge the impulse to hang on to it, even though everything in the binders was replicated in a file system located on my computer's hard drive, and beyond that, it was also housed on a remote back-up server in cyber space. Nonetheless, there I stood, frozen for a long moment, uncertain of how to proceed.
    Standing there in that moment of hesitation I thought about Daniel, the hoarder from the article under consideration. Images of the television show "Clean House" began to crowd my mind.  For a brief moment I related to him and him plight. In my particular situation, there was no concrete sensual offense associated with the notes that crammed my binders, which were kept hidden from sight, packed in cardboard boxes. There was no pungent odor to mask with potpourri and equally offensive air freshers, no cockroaches dropping from the ceiling, no piles of useless trash crowding the hallway, restricting access and flow from room to room like clogged arteries---- but on second thought, maybe there was!?
    A I thought about it more objectively when later removed from the subjectivity of the moment, I recognized that my need to cling to the 'stuff' of the past actually did contain elements of the obsessive compulsive disorder that Daniel struggled with.  If a researcher had hooked me up to a brain scan machine at that moment and recorded the activity levels in the anterior cingulate cortex where the metabolic rates registers higher in moments of decision-making,
escalation of activity likely would have registered on the monitor.
    Had someone interviewed me and asked why I was retaining two forms of the same records and files, I honestly would not have been able to give them a straight forward answer, because, truth be told, I had not accessed the information in years. Here I was though, clinging to stuff in digitalized form, and while it was not so apparent to the real world I had to stop and wonder if the visual present in the article of a messy domicile dod not have its corollary expression within the mansion of my own mind. No, there were no odors, no visual debris, no tactile repugnance, still I found myself wondering if perhaps there were not at least some evidence of restricted flow in mental energy, some narrowing of the mental arteries as a result of the clinging to the unnecessary clutter in my mind.
    I had to ask myself: what purpose was being served in holding on to things that I no longer had use for? Perhaps it was merely some twisted loyalty to the past, and what  the information represented.  Perhaps my own identity was so wrapped up in the 'achievements" of the past, and to let these things go, would be facing death of sorts. Perhaps in my case, the roots of the  'dis-ease' did not run as deeply as Daniel's, or perhaps the disease was being manifested in a different way, still, my encounter with Daniel did prompt me to begin to consider how clinging to 'baggage' of the past keeps me tethered and less portable.
    As I thought more about the importance of the need to anchor, to attach, to imprint the bonding circuitry in early developmental stages of a humans life, it began to make sense that if the challenges of this life phase circuit had not been adequately forged, it would follow that one would seek to have it satisfied in many other allegorical forms throughout the life span.
    Regarding the failure of my own attachment process to supply the desired outcome, it would make sense that compensatory fear would drive a need to feel good about myself through the things that represented the goals I had attained, and the knowledge I had accrued. On the other hand, there is likely a bit of a 'hoarder' in each of us, and perhaps my over-arching attempts to manifest that through collection behaviors is innocent and non pathological. After all, in healthy ways, organizing can be a sign of efficient life strategy as long as it's done within flexible limits, remaining subject to reform as shifting environmental variables necessitate the need to readapt.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Attachment and Liberation

My  wondering and wandering through the tenets of attachment theory  led me to deep understanding of what stoked the overly compensatory behaviors of my life. Once I realized and applied what it had to offer, it all began to make sense: the larger themes of abandonment and rejection that puppeted me from the shadows; the perfectionism and the need to micro manage my environment and the resultant obsessive compulsive behavior..... with the expectation that by concretizing my reality, I would be given a sense of permanency and trust that had never been achieved in the earlier developmental stage of my existence. These lessons must be learned before we can move onto more productive stages. But since I never got the necessary imprint of value and worth, of trust and safety, I was doomed and destined to keep trying to fulfill those needs through out my entire life. Thru recovery I reached a level of understanding, enabling me to see the nature of my blockages, and then to realize ways to eliminate them from my life, and thus became empowered to resume my life. Now, the record is no longer skipping. And all with the help of the God of my understanding, who supplied the candle and the company along the way.


My family were not 'bad' people. My parents were well intentioned, though ignorant of healthy child rearing skills (which had not been modeled for them), however, their flaw was not in that they were under educated, but that they refused to take advantage of sources and knowledge systems beyond those approved by their Roman Catholic faith for effective solutions to the many dilemmas they encountered in their child rearing challenge. They had been raised thinking the voice of science unimportant, and thus their parenting approach became a carbon copy of that of their parents. Inevitably, they became one dimensional, emotionally and psychologically unavailable,  modeling ideas and impressed patterns of relating to their progeny that did not serve us as we carried those forms as relational models into broader relational experiences with persons, places and things outside of that milieu.

To replicate those patterns forward as life strategies became the approach for living and relating. However, once I began to learn that that strategy would not accomplish the goal of making connection to people, I modulated my behavior to the contrary strategy: avoidance and isolation. Soon, I began to use the pattern to my disadvantage by doing its opposite. Not having completed the necessary  circuit of healthy bonding to a trusted source of nurture, it became my lot ( I love the biblical imagery there ....) and destiny to keep repeating the search for the 'teat' that would sate my need for 'food': the bond of love; until that happened I would become and ever remain "Lot" frozen in place always looking behind, unable to forge ahead. I became attached to the 'spot' I was in. It seemed as though the only way to establish meaning for myself would be by hitching  my wagon to some other star (seeking yet again resolution of the elusive attachment bond through external sources).

Through the process of recovery I learned to choose nurturing 'stand ins' to supply the wiring that failed to happen in infancy, and once I developed  relationships of trust with a few reciprocal and trusting others, I was then free to proceed to the next stage of development: establishing a healthy sense of ego, separate and autonomous, and self-determining. No longer interrupted, no longer seeking attachment to something outside myself in order to find my value and meaning, I was then able to proceed with the process of becoming and fulfilling my purpose for being the 'star stuff' that I am created to be.

Now that I understand it better, I am no longer needing to be angry about it. Not only have I liberated myself from a lesson that I was not able to complete in a timely fashion in my earlier days of life, but I no longer have to blame anyone, or be anyone's victim, waiting for permission or approval before deciding which are the right choices for me.

Unimpeded, I can design my life using the resources at my disposal, given as a birthright when I emerged from the very first womb that bore me into physical existence.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Blog Blurbs: What is Toxic Shame?

What does it mean to take on toxic shame?


Shame itself is not a 'bad' thing, and is itself a normal human emotion; but Toxic shame does not help to build emotional stability and a healthy sense of self respect and self-esteem.


Toxic shame usually has its roots in the early childhood development stages of the past, and comes about as a result of a child in a vulnerable position being overpowered by expectations and demands of another stronger person, which cause the child to internalize messages which cue them to begin thinking poorly about themselves at an early age.


Usually the person in power is a parental figure or their representative, or a teacher, or a representative of an institution whose opinions have been adopted through public approval as being more credible and worthwhile.


When the weaker person asserts his needs, which are then invalidated by outright rejection, they are left with a sense that because their request is unimportant, that it follows that they themselves are unimportant. Or when they are treated in a harsh, dismissive, or demeaning manner; the child given this treatment feels the 'put-down' of being forced to acquiesce to the preferences of the more powerful person. They end up feeling diminished.


This sense of being discounted becomes normal and eventually establishes a template for life pattern responses, and leaves the more vulnerable person in a disempowered state causing them to question not only their own judgment, but their own needs. This teaches to them to invalidate and ignore the inner voice that arises to give them guidance and direction.


Furthermore, it teaches them to yield their power of self-determination to external sources, causing them to develop attitudes of dependency, always seeking validation from sources outside themselves deemed credible and valid by others.


As the proper exercise of right judgment is inhibited, feelings of low self-worth are continually reinforced creating a vicious cycle of thought patterns that are carried forward from moment to moment.


In order to reclaim now, it is important that one first reject the entrenched notions that they are not smart enough to make decisions on their own, begin to develop faith and trust in their own reasoning powers, allowing them to over-ride the long standing thoughts patterns that say from within "I can't", "I'm not good enough, or worthy enough".

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Triggers: Response versus Reaction

 “When you let others “push your buttons,” you give away power. You give them power to trigger powerful emotions at will. Once you are aware of your own reactions, you can disconnect the buttons so they no longer work. When buttons don’t work, people eventually stop pushing them. When that happens, you have claimed meaningful power.” Lost in the Mirror by Richard Moskovitz


This quote definitely inspired a response. I can succinctly remember the occasion when the light switched on for me regarding triggers. 

I had been at work, and something happened that instantly put me in a state of hyper-arousal. This was a unique situation, because it was actually the first time I became of aware of what was happening inside me, and how it was causing me to act.
Suddenly, without even thinking, I sprang into action, as if I was on my way to put out a fire!  My feet started moving very quickly, my heart started palpitating, I started hyperventilating, my mind started racing a mile a minute.

The second I realized what was overtaking me, I was able to stop myself. I stopped my feet dead in their tracks. I called a halt to the barrage of emotional energy that was flooding my brain. I began to shut out the ruminations that were pouring thru my mind, I sat down and focused on calming my breathing.

I began to relax, I sat there for a moment, and decided that whatever I thought about the importance of that which I was allowing to affect me in such a way. This was no crisis mind you. This was not a medical emergency. It was something of such little importance that I was aghast to realize how something so insignificant could have such a power to cause an automatic and involuntary reaction, a trigger as it is called.

This was the beginning of a new approach to my recovery. This was the moment I began to learn the difference between 'reaction' and 'response'.


Prior to this, reaction ruled me; it had power over me. It dictated the course of action that i would follow. It was the bridle in the horses mouth that when tugged left made me go left; when tugged right, made me go right.

In response mode, I can refuse the bridle. I just take it off, and make decisions without being controlled by my out of control emotions.

Later on during a time of reflection, I thought about this occasion, and while outside outside of reactivity mode with my wits about me, I was in a calm enough place to begin to recognize that there were patterns in my life when this often happened. Recognizing the patterns allowed me to get to know my motivations better, and then begin to question their validity.

Most of the deeper issues that spawned the type of reactivity mentioned above I soon realized were tied into broader themes of rejection and abandonment, shame and self esteem that ruled my life from the shadows, and held dominance over my present moments.

As I got to know and understand myself and my motivations better in times of reflective responsive lucidity, I began to create new patterns of response in my life, and in that way, I took back my power and began to reclaim now.

Monday, August 9, 2010

From Overpowered to Empowered

Christina wrote a brilliant blog over at Overcoming Sexual Abuse Website about How to Journey from Overpowered to Empowered. This message is an especially timely reminder for me because of the recent and seemingly on-going  major shifts and moves that I have made in my life over the last three years. And it always seems to be in life's 'cracks' where I discover the self defeating beliefs that tend to drive my life subconsciously from the shadows.

It's then that I discover all of the 'things' I use, and give away my power to, in order to achieve and maintain a measure of comfortablilty and balance in the rough transitional spots.  You mentioned two of my favorites and they are both would be remedies for  particular ingestive maladies that I had used during my life in order to keep myself 'in line' ie, powerless. 


Robert Anton Williams states: Inside of us lives both a thinker and a prover;  "What the thinker thinks, the prover proves". Fascinating how that little phrase characterizes the dynamic of both the victim mentality and the survivor/thriver mentality.  Once we flip the switch from glass half-empty (victim) to glass half-full mentality (survivor), then as you say, we can then gain the potential to move onto the next phase for designing the substance that we'll use for filling up the glass to full and overflowing (thrivor) mentality.  



How do you get from Overpowered to Empowered? We each have to answer that for ourselves, but this may give you a great place to begin.

Chosen

Chosen  (Click to watch)

Watching the men recount their stories and seeing their demeanor proceed from loquacious recall to halting deliberation gave me a clear perspective on our plight as male survivors, and gives a deeper understanding and a new compassion for survivors everywhere.


To each and all of you:


I am deeply sorry that you were CHOSEN


One of Them,


Ron

The Hole

On the first day... a man walks down a street...
Suddenly the world goes dark. He thinks he is lost.
Then he realizes he is in a deep hole. He tries to find his way out, and it takes a very long time. Once he is out the day is gone ... so he walks back home.

On the second day... the man walks down the same street.
The world goes dark again. He is in the hole again.
He takes a while to recognize where he is.
Eventually he finds his way out... and so again he walks back home.

On the third day... the man again walks down the street.
He knows the hole is there and pretends not to see the hole... and closes his eyes. Once again he falls into the hole, and climbs out ... and walks back home, the day lost once again.

On the fourth day... the man walks cautiously down the street.
He sees the hole and this time walks around it. He is pleased.
But the world goes dark again. He has fallen into another hole.
He climbs out of the second hole, walks home ... and alas... falls into the first hole. He gets out of the first hole... and walks back home... to think.

On the fifth day... the man walks confidently down the street.
He sees the first hole..... and recognizes it.
He walks around it... but forgets the second hole, which he walks directly into.
He gets out immediately... and walks straight back home - to weep and hope.

On the sixth day... the man walks nervously down the street...
The hole is there and he thinks "I won't fall into the hole again"... and walks around the hole. He sees the second hole, avoids the second hole... but as he passes, he loses his balance... and falls in. Climbing out he walks back home ... taking the time to carefully avoid all the holes.

On the seventh day... the same man goes for a walk....

... and chooses to walk down a different street.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

High Anxiety

Since attending the session 'Ascending to the Realm of Hope and Belief' led by Steve Gold at the recent MaleSurvivor Conference I've become more aware regarding the role anxiety has played in my own life through the years. 


My anxiety used to come out in secret crabbiness, edginess,  avoidance, which I masked, because I feared people would take advantage of me if I showed vulnerability, or abandon and reject me if I showed signs of imperfection.


As I continued to reflect on the anxiety, I came to realize that it had been chronic. I began to recognize its genesis and roots in the incestuous family system, and later reinforced as a result of the experience of having endured several rapes, one at knife point.  Indeed, I had spent a lot of time and energy stoking the anxiety level, keeping it alive, because relaxing it would mean letting my guard down, and I certainly never learned to live with my guard down. It was all I knew, and since there had been no emotional support to help in dealing with the consequences, I was left to struggle on my own in dealing with its legacy.


It soon became apparent that underneath lay the following core beliefs:
  • Disbelief that change is possible, due to a self centric view that I am evil, inept, incapable, irredeemably damaged, 'sinful'. The belief that the problem of 'Ron' is chronic and irreversible drove me to invest a lot of energy striving throughout my lifespan to perfect these imagined flaws.
  • I am undeserving : this core belief evolved due to the prolonged neglect and maltreatment by my caregivers who throughout the early development stage projected their own shame and negative core beliefs onto their offspring through the culture of their own religious and social conditioning, reinforcing deeply ingrained feelings of worthlessness and unworthiness.
  • Therapeutic gains are not sustainable: Panic state feels 'normal' so as things began to improve in recovery when blindsided by adversity, faith in one's capacity for healing and hope become questioned, triggering doubt and a return to former coping mechanisms.
  • The tendency to self sabotage when things do improve, in order to maintain the status quo safety zone of panic mode.


This workshop presented a question: on a scale of 1 to 10, where are you on an anxiety scale?I  had to admit, that I unremittingly hovered at 7 or 8, or higher.


I had been aware of my fight/flight/freeze 'tendencies' but never really recognized them as fixated orientational responses, or as a constant state of anxiety. The subconscious agenda throughout my entire life had been to mount a defense to quell that constant state of anxiety I lived under, constantly seeking control in order to ensure I was "OK' in the environment of the abusive system I was raised in. 

Since the family system that was supposed to protect me actually threatened me with violence and complete rejection if i did not remain silent about the abuse I remained hyper-vigilant in my attempts to make sure i was not getting into hot water territory with them. In order to maintain a sense of control, I learned to avoid new situations not approved by the values of the family system, keeping those things and people at arms length, for fear that they would hurt me, or cause me to be met with disapproval by those who I thought would desert or hurt me, if I failed to comply with the rules of the system. It makes sense that as a way of managing my stress response to the real and imagined fears conjured up under these circumstances, that I would be to allow myself only to become involved in  situations condoned by the systemic governance of the family, including jobs and relationships.


Dr. Gold reiterated the scientific finding that as trauma has the propensity to change the function and structure of the brain, reinforcing these types of responses, so healing has the propensity to change the function and structure of the brain so new, more effective and empowering responses are possible.


To begin to counteract the years of reinforced anxiety, I plan to dissolve the old patterns of coping and replace those with new representations of safety. I hope to be able to confront the reflexivity that has kept me protected all my life, to learn to trust a little more with each new encounter, thus expanding the aperture of my awareness to include other possibilities, opening my mind and spirit to new experiences.


The usual method for dealing with high anxiety is by use of an internal on/off switch, however Dr. Gold suggest using the 'dimmer switch' model, and thus learn to modulate emergency alert response incrementally, suggesting creating a "tool belt" of interventions that focus on sustained gains.


I found it immensely illuminating to know what was feeding the anxiety of a lifetime. The information has empowered me to risk actively seeking opportunities in new experiences of people, places and things to challenge and eventually depose those inner convictions that  suggest certain things/experiences may potentially harm me.


This workshop helped to erase the remnants of guilt and shame, debunking the harmful notions of the fearful false self that lived within, liberating me from the sense of inner anxiety, which supported the core beliefs that I was 'bad' and therefore morally reprehensible. It restored hope for a peaceful and happy and fulfilling life. 

This workshop experience provided the material needed to write the next chapter of recovery.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Belonging

my favorite quote of all time is from marilyn monroe in 'the misfits': 'If I'm going to be alone, I'd rather be by myself'. that pretty much sums up the result of a whole lifetime of isolation and not having learned the ability to develop social connections. i didn't learn to do that, primarily because i was threatened very early in my young life to never use my voice. not to talk about the abuse: i became scared silent, first and foremost in my own family, the school for learning skills and tools for developing self care techniques and networking capabilities. and this spilled into other aspects of my life as well. so i learned to shut up and put up, rather than to risk expressing myself independently. they had me convinced that i could not function or survive outside the sphere of their influence, and fearful of their retaliatory actions, little ron bought into it, and believed it for many many years.

at some point however, i had to turn the tables on that, by realizing that first, i had to stop rejecting and abandoning myself, to stop carrying on a tradition that had began decades ago, and which i reinforced in every new social relationship i encountered.

it has been a struggle to create brand new wirings in my brain that will reinforce new patterns of connecting. but, i've spent the last year and a half cultivating that skill, and have netted several new friendships, all more authentic than those shallow ones i had previously established based on 'don't ask don't tell' terms of endearment. don't tell me who you are, i don't want to know; i used to chose all the wrong people to affirm and validate me, and if i am honest, they are so very similar to the people who originally scared me into rejecting myself so many years ago, my very own family. i thought i needed their approval, so i just kept on trying to amend myself to their liking. well, gratefully, i have let them all go, and all those i allow close enough to nurture me now with their care and concern, must embrace every aspect of my being, or they don't get the right to be my friend. today, ron is making the rules.

building trusting and comfort-able relationships takes time, and i've noticed that in that development period, especially those of us who come here starving for authentic love and nurture denied us so many years, are easily hurt as the old familiar rejection and abandonment issues are exacerbated when we feel we've been slighted, ignored, or someway or another made to feel invisible and unimportant.

that's the flaw of these cyber communities. we can only get so close. and also, being that each of us are at differing levels of personal social development, different class, so diverse in our backgrounds, failing to spark a connection only serves in the end to reinforce those feelings of abandonment and rejection mentioned earlier. we long to imagine we've achieved some depth of closeness, and in some cases we have, but often those are only fleeting moments that prove themselves false as over time the flame of hope for finding the deep connections we've been denied so any years, begins to fade over the passing of time.

many of us will probably not get our deepest needs met here, but this site can be used to identify those needs, preparing us to go out into the playground of the 3D world and apply those principles to those real situations we encounter in the dream of everyday regular life.

that's my take on it anyway; very personal no doubt, but part of my story.