Learner Therapist (57) … Retraumatising forever!

Torrey Orton
March 24, 2015

When the family makes a late, uninvited and seemingly unavoidable return…

There are many things about trauma which are difficult to understand, both for the traumatised and their friends and colleagues. High among the list is re-traumatising within the family, or other social system(s) of origin (e.g.-schools, clubs, churches…). Poor relationship choices are almost unavoidable, at least the first times around. These choices arise from inappropriate relationship needs shaped by the original abuses.

Maybe you wouldn’t have heard the one about the parents who had to call on their children for rescue from their everyday self-management incompetence? Or the one about the parents whose most abused male child bought them a new house after they lost the family home and then they lost it again, having never acknowledged the gift before losing it? But the parents who refuse to stay away are another thing. Here’s such a story.

The two children have long before moved to a distance beyond daily or weekly visits to or from their parents…both at times to other sides of the globe. One finds himself back in the monthly visit range with Father and weekly with Mother, while himself in the early stages of child raising and attempting to integrate family and continuing work demands with a rigorously perfectionist self-assessment system in place. It’s one of the unintended consequences of his parents’ respective withholdings of affection and engagement with him 35 years ago, amplified by conflicting gender role expectations arising from their southern European origins. Now, Mother can’t resist commenting on child rearing practices and behaving in ways which replay almost verbatim to his children the treatment she dished out 35 years before to him.

Dad has kept himself to the old family town more than a day away and retired with such bad effect that he’s lost all of his retirement funds except a vaguely commercial property in said town. He’s acquiring a new wife and the prospect of a sale of the property, but with no commercial nous that would ensure he doesn’t lose it all again. He, like Mother, keeps number two child, a daughter a few years younger than son, appraised of the collapse of his financial worlds. This sharing elicits without soliciting (and so all the more powerfully demanding) a financial sympathy which slides into a felt obligation to help. This sense is then imposed on the son with blind complicity by number two’s intermediation of the messages about the parental decomposition.

This would not be too much if the children were rich and calmly located in the upper end of their parenting cycles, but they are not. And the implied burden of the assistance they should provide is unequally spread, too. Because number two lives in another country she can’t remotely be expected to house Mother as she slides towards a physical infirmity paralleling her financial one. And note that this pattern of implied obligation, openly but indirectly (through Number Two) proposed, also repeats the pattern of indirect expectations the children had been subjected to in their childhood!!

Abuse creates guilt in the abused, almost without exception (and completely beyond the understanding or appreciation of the ‘normal’). The re-traumatised, as Number One and Two are, get to revisit the experience of guilt when their incompetent parents reappear with more or less explicit pleas for family succour and without acknowledgment of the abuse which created the original guilt. The children now have the guilt of their desire not to succour the incompetent and abusing, which Number One has made a professional life around as policeman, and similar occupations!!

 

Travel funnies 2013 (4)

Torrey Orton

June 24, 2013

“Amber waves of grain…”

I grew up with this line incised in memory through a thousand singings of America the beautiful in primary school I imagine (because I can’t really remember) and finally in an unlikely place and time I saw amber grain waving in central France a few weeks ago!! And I’ve looked at a lot of grain in Australia in the last 40 years!! The waving grain struck me in two different settings: one, upland farmlets in the Parc Mercantour and, two, much larger broad acre plantings along the TGV pathway in Burgundy between Beaune and Lyon. I think the revelation of this obvious experience has escaped me in Oz all these years because the grain growing season is winter when we almost never go to grain growing areas and the grain grown in our neck of Oz is thinner on the ground per hectare than the dense covering of early summer French grain growth. It really did wave and look like waves as it did so…high enough to have peaks and troughs but not to break. There were no green or amber horses to be seen.

Seen, and then again…

We went out for a bite on our first night in Montpellier to a central city area called La Comedie after the opera house which heads up one end of the Place which is the main public open space of the central city, fed by a tram line populated with recognisable versions of our imported trams in Melbourne, save for the better paint work, cleanliness (nil tagging) and overall state of repair of their French originals. As we wandered around a bit before settling for a beer and a bite we were passed by a guy of 50ish talking somewhat impressively to himself in those exclamatory bursts which suggest a thrashing of insight is assailing him but felt like it was assaulting us. This is not too unusual in cities these days, and judging from some 15^th century Dutch paintings we saw in a museum on the Place a couple of days later, may have been typical of any level of close human habitation over at most times in human history.

A day later we were back for a shopping tour of the Pentagon – a wholly inappropriate modernity attached to the Place – and there he was again. At hearing/seeing him I thought: some people’s lives are to keep reappearing as a bad dream in the lives of others, invasively demanding attention they need but can’t get, yet we cannot just tell the dream to go away.

“man section”…

..it said on the right hand front side of a wooden drawer whose left front side said “pen knives”. The whole sat under a glassed in display of various products of knives used correctly. I was attracted to the weird usage with its implication of something hairy beyond the handle. Turned out to be an offering of hunting knives around the size of the one I carry in my walking backpack thanks to a long ago gift from a Chinese friend who noticed during our living in china 30 years ago that I always carried a Swiss Army knife complex enough to live off the land with if necessary.

Of course, the “man section” in question was in the local handicrafts section of the Buda Pest public market, a mid-19^th century iron and brick barn of railway station proportions, light and airiness so my expectations were roused in that blank but irresistible way that a sudden touch of hominess (the man section in this case) came into view. Foreign places produce in me a disposition to search, to find the familiar in the foreign while thinking I’m looking for the foreign.

The Antigone…a star of failed grandiosity

Finally, two last takes on the grandiosity theme. One, the Antigone in Montpellier is a roughly 70’s production leading off from the above Place and competing with it for grandeur but failing miserably, so much so that the cafes which line parts of its 1.5 kilometre of fading 5 story mixed use living and business buildings are barely making it and the infrastructure is

scruffy and needing renewal it may never get. The thing never worked and so is grandiose??

Two, in reflecting during lunch (which was quite presentable, as usual) in one of said cafes it occurred to me that this business of judging grandeur, greatness and grandiosity is very much a matter of taste, which in turn is very much a matter of those two enduring sources of human potential – gifts of birth and the inherited social standards which accompany them, often enough incongruously. Similar observations can be made about ethical as aesthetic matters.

Learner therapist (35)…… Spaces for feelings

Torrey Orton

May 2, 2013

Partial out-of-body experiences…

Getting to, creating, or discovering the experiences I describe below is one of the first concrete steps in objectifying the inner dynamics of the chronic trauma which affects patients’ lives. The feeling of these dynamics held at a near distance to themselves is a kind of self-outing, but in the privacy of therapy. This is what a safe therapeutic place supports. For instance…

 

… I’ve recently seen a guy who I first saw 4 years ago whose injured inner world was so close to the surface that he could barely stand being looked at, couldn’t bear to hear his name used or himself to be referred to, even indirectly – in short, he was a raw, exposed wound. He always sat on the edge of his chair, posed for a quick departure. He could also acknowledge that this is how he was – poised for a quick departure in life. Speaking to the presence of his demons was a pathway to keeping him in the room…but the speaking was often somewhat indirect.

 

Another guy could put the black hole of his depression aside just to his right, roughly parallel with his shoulder. It was just on the edge of his peripheral vision, but easily accessible through my pointing, gesturing or even nodding at it … bringing its fullness back into the control of his awareness, without dropping him into its endless decline. So he was having the experience of keeping the threat under control, without denying its existence or blocking it out with palliative self-medication.

Often another patient pulls herself down out of the grip of her demons just there in front of me and I can ask where did they go, are they still in view, can you feel them? And she may say ‘Yes, just here or there’ (gesturing to one side or the other) and usually a bit in mid-air (even a figment is real, after all). While in their grip, she has been contorted in her chair, drawing back and up into a partial ball, while slightly patting/massaging herself on the forearm…with glimpses of scratching or pinching herself…

And then, in all three cases we can discuss the ‘treatment’ of the demon(s). Questions like: Do you want to go there now (pointing at the suspended traumatic contents)? Is there a part you want to look at now? How is it to have it just there? Can you keep it there? And, often, early in the therapeutic engagement, this amount of direct attention riles the demons and the patient begins to fall back into their black hole. The pointing may itself rouse the demons, making their presence more aggressively felt again, more gripping than when observed or sidelined by their relegation to the space. This is something I’ve felt before akin to action at a distance, like gravity, but immediately perceptible to the other like a virtual hug offered across the therapy space without touching but my arms held in an encircling pose…

Holding their demons within reach is also an enactment of the patient’s internal disconnect between their injured and well parts… between their competent and incompetent selves…recovery from which requires slowly increased ability to shift back and forth between the split parts, progressively integrating them. A kind of internalised exposure therapy perhaps?

Coincidences…… revisited

Coincidences…… revisited

Torrey Orton

March 17, 2013

 

That more and more coincidences seem to be appearing in my life has been in my awareness for some years (see from four years ago Appreciations (16)-Coincidentally yours? in www.diarybyamadman.blogspot.com ) …and I’ve lost a sheaf of them as a result of not noticing my awareness. So here comes a reinvented topic range.

I am regularly reminded of the existence of apparent coincidences by the correlation between my recalling a certain ex-patient 6 or more months or up to 3-4 years after their stopping therapy and their calling for a new appointment. This correlation is so common in my practice I now expect any recollection to be followed by a reconnection. Perhaps from now I’ll begin recording the first to track the arrival, or not, of seconds.

I’m aware, also, that coincidence is often the expression of some kind of familiarity which in turn (?) is enlivened by personal recollection, by the fact that people and events come to mind in apparently the most unlikely places. This is in turn arises from our natural emotion-based filing systems. Many of their contents are connected in pre-conscious ways revealed over-and over again by associations coming into view with no immediately obvious relation to present events….etc.

 I have always had a talent for running into people in the strangest places, so that these days I expect if I visit a foreign place someone I know, usually from the distant past, will pop up for an unarranged hello. They are almost always more than pleasant events, happenings in public with ashamed priests to the contrary notwithstanding.

So let’s get a bit more systematic, starting with data collecting.

Pinky presences and absences

I was standing Saturday morning witness to the harassing of patients at the FCC a week ago with another Friend of the FCC and the regular security guard. We enjoy good bantering Oz male bonding and re-bonding every Saturday. His aversion to more recently introduced bonding activities like hugs from colleagues of varying ages and sexes is notorious among us, which doesn’t prevent some of the younger Friends persisting in the hope they can re-educate him, or maybe it’s just cultural insensitivity both ways.

Anyway, one such effort had just been rebuffed and I, addressing the other Friend (a young gay woman quite new to the witness role), wondered what he would do if I offered a hug and in the same breath stretching my 7 foot wingspan in an embracing arc towards him from about 8 feet away. He stood there rigid and blank faced. He is very disciplined. A few tours in Vietnam, 13 years in the Army subsequently and 30 plus years consequently of professionally securing all kinds of installations and events underpin his resilient presence.

“Did you notice his left pinky twitch slightly?” I asked her in his hearing. Neither she nor he had noticed, and maybe even I didn’t either though it seemed so at the moment. My suggestion was strong enough that he started feeling his left pinky with his right hand … and suddenly said “Shit” with the force which assures its authenticity, shocking us all (even the HoGPIs across the foot path) in the way deeply troubled expressions usually do.

He discovered he had lost his company ring, a ring he never takes off. Its fit was always a smidge loose. He was stricken, thrown into a flurry of activities, all fruitless until six days later, to discover it. Turned up in a corner of the wash room in the security company office…found by a colleague who came out from a hand wash wondering whose ring it was.

How did I know to covertly tell him to check for it in the first place?

 

What floor do you want?

He did not say or ask when he followed me into a CBD lift a few days back. I was somewhat hurried and touched L-5 by mistake, then my desired L-2 which sits just below 5 on the pick-a-story pad. The delivery guy just behind me reached over to touch L-12 and I mumbled a quick apology for my miss-selection, which he had not noticed. But having it pointed out in my act of contrition, he realized that he actually needed L-5 to complete his deliveries. He would have realized it when he got to L-12 and still had stuff left over.

How often do I get to do something wrong (adding an unnecessary stop to the lift ascension) and have it made right by chance?? Did I know this one, too? Is it like the pinky absent its ring? No. That was getting something right (his pinky did twitch) and getting something more and totally unexpectable (no one on site at this moment knew he had lost his pinky ring) for me and him.

Are these just examples of being in synch, “on the same page”, in tune….with others?

A train ride and the coincidence of this coincidence

I’m thinking about coincidences and a patient walked in, not knowing of my emerging attention to coincidences, and launched into a coincidence of his which was enormously informative for his work and our work, not even seeing fully the parallels between them all. It went like this.

He was standing at a local train station and an older woman (80ish it turned out) asked which platform the Alamein train left by. He checked it out and told her “the one we’re on now”. ..with which she initiated a discussion that went on for the wait and subsequent ride, largely consisting of aspects of her life like being a non-graduate engineer most of her life and having learned whatever was necessary as new tasks came her way from management (which is how he’s living his professional life) and having been the inventor of a famous piece of sheep shearing technology 50 years ago and now pursuing a PhD in some applied area, until she got off. He listened in quiet astonishment at the unlikely claims, so astonished that he didn’t get her name, not because she withheld it.

The name came after his arrival at his aunt’s home, which was why he was awaiting the Alamein train. As he regaled her with the sheep-shearing engineer’s story aunt reached for an article about a “mature age” PhD candidate at a local university saying “she sounds like…” and handed him the article, confirming to his multiple amazements that she was not fabricating, just reporting, her life. For he, too, is in the middle of a self-built professional life converting what he feels is a thin educational foundation into an already professionally acknowledged value for others. If he were looking for a role model he could hardly have done better than her.

 But then, we don’t look for role models until we don’t need them, almost. Once we are well down our life roads, the supporting tuition may just pop up. An unnoticed coincidence may be no instruction at all. An acknowledged and embraced coincidence may be confused with our own developing awareness.

Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice

Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice
Torrey Orton
April 30, 2010


As so often, out of sleep came a new theme – being here. This is not new in world history or local practice, but it is new for me to notice moments of everyday life that may be what the proponents of presence are referring to. Here's the first.

 

To wake or not…

These days I sleep with increasing lightness, a movement encouraged by my growing awareness that sleep's end is coming each new day. I often wake 30-40 minutes ahead of the alarm, which itself is inconstant, having different settings from day to day. My therapist would tell me therein lies my own inconstancy of sleep and be right but irrelevant to my emerging points now.


Two points
These points are: one, should I rise, or not, so much in advance of the alarm? And worse, two, should I rise at the moment of the alarm's bzzz, bzzz if I have slept up to the alarm's sounding? These two moments have the same challenge under different conditions. The first has more time than the second. Its space for thinking is bigger and so, strangely, more confusing. I can consider more options. The more space the more attraction for awareness to fill it, to populate it. I often do not seem to have a choice not to populate it.


Once the populating begins - often about subjects like this post - thoughts arise out of the upper depths of consciousness. These usually are structured thinkings about currently occurring work issues. And more strange, the material that populates it is often a comfortable fit with my overall low level of general arousal – I can contemplate a very precise thing for some minutes; an argument (an account) about it flows naturally. They follow their own path to an appropriate, usually transferable, conclusion. I make notes about them for use later. In the process I have decided for less sleep and more awake for the day.


An everyday moment of pure choice?
The second condition's time is 5 to 8 seconds I think. The boundaries are the distance between the bzzz, bzzz initiated conscious awakeness and turning the alarm off. This opens the door on a very slight possibility- that I will not get up just then – in which exists for some seconds a suspended state, a present but not engaged state that may be being here. I have to be quick or else I'll sink into blogthought diversions.


My day's rhythm is set in this moment since the underlying question is 'how pressing is my day?' arising in the dome of my awareness of the total substance of it – a global forecast of stressors without distinctions among them. I imagine this dome as a mini-me version of a lava dome (see Mt St Helens, USA) in an active volcano.


A pressing day…
This moment is a critical one for my taking control of the new day, or more likely for my being taken control of by it!! With a moment's being here comes the position, space or location in which to interrupt the naturally occurring flow of my whole system. At high stress times this matters, since automatic stress response habits engage to reduce potential stress before it is felt consciously…and so blocking me from certain realities altogether.


My first try seldom reaches the intended target
In the reflection created by the above excursion, I am aware that even trying to capture such a moment of apparent being here is a fraught enterprise. The word formation and deployment processes drive the experience out of range…making it impossible to capture the thing. Maybe I will get better at this with practice?? We'll see I hope. Getting better at it would mean my being able to use clearly, for example, 'position', 'location' or 'space' to characterise a "here".