Posted by trouble on February 20, 2002, at 8:25:07
I've been reading your posts the last 90 minutes. One of them, which I responded to before (about our Bette Davis mothers) I read again twice thru to absorb it all. There are traumas in there that I don't think the human mind can accept, a couple experiences were like that for me, so unbelievable I could feel my brain ripping in two as one part tried to comprehend the experience while the other side was deseprately trying to negate it.
I met a woman in trauma recovery group who was treated similarly by her mother and she went on to split into several different personalities. It wasn't her special way of getting attention, it was genuine, she "lost time" and acted out in those modes and it really distressed her. She wasn't intellectual or jaded, she was really distressed about all this. Sometimes we didn't know what she was talking about, but we all felt honored when sitting next to her, like we were in a sacred space, her space, and that was her strength and beauty and willingness to love.
I mention this, b/c next to me hers is the most horrific childhood I've come across. I think your mom making you eat your own vomit qualifies you for the pantheon. I hope you have a chance to be in a group like the one I'm talking about, it was just the best ever group I'd ever been in, and there was no manual on fixing the crazies, the facilitators treated us w/ awe, they did a media blitz where they talked about us w/ complete respect. They were humbled by what we'd been thru, that we were trying to clear away the wreckage of our childhoods, and they picked up on our altruism, everyone in the group was putting their healing out, into the world. It was remarkable.
The support group was created by an international organization called PARENTS ANONYMOUS, for parents who beat their kids. The group I was in was for adults who were seriously abused and it was free. They called it PAST for (I kid you not) PEOPLE AGAINST STAYING TRAUMATIZED. Isn't that sweet?
But all this was in the early 1980s, and things were different then. I'm not impressed w/ the Zeitgist arouond here, lots of Cognitive and personality disorder groups...just made me feel bad. But that book you mentioned, The Inner Child, also from the early 80's? I read that too, and I loved it. And you're right, it is "unsophisticated" and all, but it was more healing to me than I can say, it really did speak to the child in me, w/out patronizing or being silly. To this day I remember him saying when you feel sad about the past feel as much as you can, feel all of it, don't leave anything behind, unplug the phone, feel, get it out...
Pretty powerful stuff.
Anyway, your thoughts on anhedonia really grabbed me too. I forgot that I'm not supposed to feel that way. But like you I do, and probably always will. But it wasn't suppossed to be this way and I don't want to forget that.
Whew!
I was actuallly looking in the archives for something Dinah hinted at about your having been victimized by the psychiatric establishment? Maybe that was on PB Open or a private conversation, anyway I couldn't find it.
But I'm interested in seeing any accounts of that sort of thing, if you know of a thread and want to pass it along.
take care, trouble
poster:trouble
thread:18569
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020214/msgs/18569.html