Curious, Healing » healing

“The Armless Maiden” edited by Terri Windling

Sonia Connolly — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:23:08 +0000

Subtitle: And Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors

This is an anthology of fairy tales retold for adults, with the scary bits left in, and also the bits about resilience and survival. Yes, her father cut off her arms, but then the armless maiden rescues herself and her child through quick wits as well as magic.

The stories vary widely from beautifully retold tales, to heart-wrenching realities, to clunky pieces using child abuse for cheap drama. I imagine each reader would put different stories in the three categories.

Some of my favorites are:

“The Session” by Steven Gould, where an adult Sleeping Beauty has a therapy session about who, exactly, gave her that poisoned apple.
“Knives” by Munro Sickafoose, where a girl is isolated in a tower by her beloved father, and has to learn about the outside world after he dies.
Terri Windling’s “The Green Children” about a young girl whose mother killed her abuser, and Terri Windling’s essay about her real mother, who didn’t.
“The Little Dirty Girl” by Joanna Russ rings true about what’s needed for healing.

This is a book to read slowly, with time for emotional processing, and plenty of permission to skip the stories that don’t resonate for you, or that resonate too much.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“I Thought We’d Never Speak Again” by Laura Davis

Sonia Connolly — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 00:48:35 +0000

Subtitle: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation

Recommended by: Laura Davis’s website

Laura Davis is co-author of the classic book about healing from incest, “The Courage to Heal.”

This book is written with compassionate awareness that not all stories have happy endings and not all estrangements can be reconciled. Nevertheless, I cried while reading it, for all the estrangements I have been unable to reconcile, and for all the reconciliations that turned out to be grave mistakes, and for all the fears that I should have been able to do it all better.

It has concrete suggestions for how to evaluate the possibility of reconciliation and take steps toward it, as well as a variety of gritty, beautiful stories about others’ attempts and successes. Davis’ reconciliation with her mother is woven through the book.

Recommended, if you have the time and energy to work through the feelings it might bring up.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“In an Unspoken Voice” by Peter A. Levine, PhD

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 05:46:00 +0000

Subtitle: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

This book is billed as a “culmination of his life’s work” on the back cover. It recapitulates material from Peter Levine’s earlier book “Waking the Tiger” about trauma and the nervous system, and uses many of the same case studies covered in the Somatic Experiencing curriculum. Somatic Experiencing is Levine’s protocol for healing trauma, taught through the Foundation for Human Enrichment.

I liked his emphasis on the need for therapists to be present, flexible, and cooperative, rather than distant, rigid, and controlling. I liked his quote from an (unidentified) soldier returned from Iraq: “I have a Post-Traumatic Stress Injury, not Disorder.”

I liked his distinction between awareness and introspection: awareness is experiencing the inner glow of an ember, while introspection is examining it with an external flashlight. Awareness allows; introspection dissects. He also distinguishes between feelings (bodily sensations), and emotions (fear, anger, etc.) which arise when impulses are interrupted.

There are some annoying aspects to the book, starting with overuse of italics for emphasis. When discussing the history of scientific discoveries about trauma, emotions, and the nervous system, he repeatedly uses the words “prescience” or “prescient” regarding earlier researchers, even though they clearly did actual science. When talking about the calming effect of being near a peaceful person, he names three specific famous men and the generic “loving mother peacefully nursing her infant.”

This book would make a good textbook for Somatic Experiencing classes (aside from the annoying bits). It is too dense for a layperson to enjoy, and yet doesn’t cover the healing process in enough detail to be a technical reference on its own.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“CrowHeart” by Keelin Anderson

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:18:52 +0000

CROWHEART: becoming unwounded, a memoir of transformation

Recommended by: Keelin Anderson

To tell her story of healing from incest and emotional abuse, Keelin Anderson weaves together daily narrative, fiction, quotes, tarot readings, and dreams, all in present tense.

As I read, I saw places where our paths have overlapped, and places where they have diverged. We have both struggled with finding respectful healers to help us, and have vowed to be respectful of our own clients and their individual processes.

She consciously decides to invite spirit guides into her process. I did that for a while, but found that not all spirit guides are trustworthy, and I was better off looking within for guidance. I think there are many ways of contacting Spirit and healing.

Available from Lulu.

“Fixing My Gaze” by Susan R. Barry

Sonia Connolly — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:23:27 +0000

Subtitle: A Scientist’s Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions

Recommended by: jesse-the-k

This book was a revelation for me. At last, a book for which I am the perfect target audience! Susan R. Barry writes about the experience of having crossed eyes since infancy, and thus lacking stereoscopic (3-D) vision. After practicing a series of vision therapy exercises prescribed by an optometrist, she gains stereoscopic vision.

In addition to the convenience of being able to judge distances easily, she feels a part of the world she can see all around her rather than an observer of the world “out there.” She looks at the spaces between leaves with fascination. The steering wheel of her car “pops out” at her rather than appearing flat against the dashboard. Astonishing!

In addition to describing her experiences of monocular and binocular vision, she covers the neuroscience of vision, and the possible explanation for her ability to regain stereoscopic vision more than 40 years after the “critical period” of early childhood.

I also have slightly crossed eyes and lack stereoscopic vision. I believe I lost the ability around 4-5 years of age. I would love to get it back!

As both a memoir and a scientific overview, this book worked well for me. Because the author was present with her story, I felt included as well.

The only downside was the casual reference to animal experimentation. “Of course they can’t experiment on humans – so they harmed monkeys and cats instead!” (paraphrase) As much as I enjoyed the book, I almost stopped reading there.

Nevertheless, highly recommended.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Leaving the Saints” by Martha Beck

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 04:40:12 +0000

Subtitle: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith

Recommended by: Reading Martha Beck’s older books

I first read this years ago and loved it. I came back to it while writing a (forthcoming) article about spiritual abuse and faith. Since I last read it, I read her newer book “Steering by Starlight” and saw that her latest book is about weight-loss, so I started re-reading with trepidation. I still like this one, though!

This book is honest about extreme sexual and spiritual abuse and its effects, side by side with humorous details about daily life. She talks about forgiveness without preaching (much). She talks about how crazymaking it is to have someone casually deny reality. She talks about how wrenching it is to lose family connections because she tells the truth.

She also talks about her personal search for faith, first as the seeking camel, then as the discerning lion, then as the innocent, playful child.

In her last act as a practicing Mormon, she spoke to a huge crowd about domestic violence. “If something I said feels right to you, believe it. If it feels wrong, disbelieve it. The choice to believe or disbelieve, that’s what makes you free.”

Available at Powell’s Books.

“The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brene Brown

Sonia Connolly — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:26:43 +0000

Subtitle: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Addtional subtitle: Your guide to a wholehearted life

Recommended by: Brene Brown’s Ted talk on vulnerability

Brene Brown studies shame resilience and wholehearted living by collecting people’s stories and searching for patterns of what works and what doesn’t. It turns out that perfectionism doesn’t work. Neither does changing ourselves to fit in. Nor seeking certainty.

What does work? Worthiness, rest, play, trust, faith, intuition, hope, authenticity, love, belonging, joy, gratitude, creativity. Embracing tenderness and vulnerability.

The four elements of shame resilience: Name it. Talk about it. Own your story. Tell your story. But only to someone who has earned the right to hear it and won’t shame you further.

The gifts of imperfection: courage, compassion, and connection. Courage – originally “speaking one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.” Compassionate boundaries and accountability. “Compassionate people are boundaried people.” “Love and belonging are always uncertain.”

“Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance. You’re going to confuse, piss off, and terrify a lot of people – including yourself.”

This book went by too fast. I wanted more of the validation and relief I felt as I read.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Not Trauma Alone” by Steven N. Gold

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 21:56:05 +0000

Subtitle: Therapy for Child Abuse Survivors in Family and Social Context

Recommended by: Dr. Kathleen Young

This is an academic book, written in precise psychological language, containing enough material for a semester course. Startlingly compassionate insights into complex trauma and prolonged childhood abuse (abbreviated PCA) are built into a treatment model that focuses on the family context rather than individual traumatic events. It is evidence-based, building the case for its treatment model with a thorough survey of existing research. This is a profoundly respectful book, well worth the effort of reading it.

Part 1
The first section distinguishes prolonged childhood abuse from single-incident adult trauma. An abused child in an “ineffective family” is focused on survival and misses out on learning skills for effective living, as well as missing the love needed to thrive.

A quote from a research paper:

“Some of the most painful stories I have heard – from survivors of even the most brutal and unremitting sexual abuse in childhood, as well as people who have had the good luck not to have been subjected to this kind of horror as children – had to do with other ways in which they were not heard, seen, respected, or loved….children who lived in a home that looked OK, with parents who seemed OK and had a life that appeared fine and even privileged, but who never felt special, never felt cherished, never in their whole lives ran in the door knowing someone was waiting there who thought they were the most wonderful precious child in the world.” [Rivera, 1996]

“People who grow up abused, neglected, disregarded and abandoned as children are as adults at extreme risk for continued invalidation and mistreatment by society at large.” This is not only because of individual missing skills, but because of a cascade of consequences making people more vulnerable to revictimization.

“Paradoxically, our society’s emphasis on self-reliance, coupled with the propagation of inequities based on gender, ethnic background, financial status, and other social classifications, converge to restrict the access of already deprived and maltreated individuals to resources that would help them attain effective self-sufficient functioning.”

“The overriding objective of this form of treatment is teaching clients adaptive living skills for moderating distress and enhancing daily functioning.”

Part 2
The second section describes forming a collaborative therapeutic alliance and is full of insights I haven’t seen elsewhere. People who were extensively abused as children expect disdain and abandonment. Many survivors interpret questions as commands, and comply with the therapist’s implicit expectations of them to avoid conflict. There is both intense longing for connection and extreme guardedness born of painful experience.

“What these clients need is to be treated not as helpless children, but as adults who by surviving extraordinarily adverse circumstances, have already demonstrated the potential to endure the stresses and challenges of daily living. [...] Recognition, acceptance, and validation of survivors’ feelings, experiences, and longings is a helpful and essential aspect of treatment.”

“[R]emember that actions speak louder than words, and that subtle, guileless, spontaneous responses that implicitly communicate respect and regard for the personhood of the client speak the loudest of all.”

“[E]xploration of experience of child abuse in PCA survivors is most likely to be productive when it occurs under the initiation, direction, and guidance of the client. This material is highly charged, and strongly associated with a sense of helplessness and being controlled. It is usually best to leave it up to the client to determine whether and when to acknowledge and address it.”

The distinction is made between helping someone recover from a traumatic event and reconnect with existing skills and resources, and helping someone recover from a traumatic childhood where those skills and resources were never acquired, and need to be learned as an adult.

Part 3
The third part gives prioritized goals for the treatment process and strategies for how to achieve them. The collaborative therapeutic alliance is still the highest priority.

The first goal is the ability to manage and modulate distress. Anxiety-reduction methods are introduced, and a practice schedule is set up so that the client can practice the skills when they’re not immediately necessary. One technique is inviting the client to remember or create a safe place, and return there in imagination to reduce stress. Activity routines to interrupt depression are also proposed.

Dissociation is also addressed. Disconnection from the present moment is distinguished from internal fragmentation.

This goal is focused on adaptive functioning, rather than on exploring or reducing dissociation for its own sake. Grounding techniques are covered to anchor the client in the here-and-now.

While it is known that extreme trauma leads to dissociation, it may be that lack of attunement with family members may predispose a child to dissociation. “In this type of interpersonal context, where the attributions and appraisals of a child made by the people closest to her or him vary wildly, more or less independently of the behavior displayed, it is easy to imagine that the experience and perception of self would be similarly confused, mercurial, and disjointed.”

“[T]his approach encourages the practitioner to recognize the importance of being able to maintain a cohesive perception of the survivor despite the client’s own subjective experience of being fractured.” For the client, internal cooperation rather than integration is the goal.

The next goal is learning to exercise critical thinking and judgment. The capricious abusive environment may not have taught reasoning skills, and the survivor learns negative and detrimental beliefs, supported by adverse experiences.

“Familial relationships characterized by neglect and emotional detachment, domination, and criticism, and erratic and unpredictable behavior powerfully instill convictions in the survivor that she or he is unworthy and inept, and that others are malicious and unreliable.”

“Just as the unassertiveness and emotional dependency engendered by the family context renders a child more susceptible to abuse, the exacerbation of these characteristics by explicit abuse magnifies survivors’ risk of being abandoned, taken advantage of, and re-victimized.”

“The survivor ends up being blamed for what is actually the failure of the family and society to adequately equip her or him with the resources required for effective functioning as an adult. It is as if someone has tied the laces of child’s two shoes together, and then, when she or he inevitably trips and falls, berates her or him for being clumsy.”

It’s a good thing I don’t highlight books, or this one would glow yellow on every page. I wish every practitioner working with traumatized people would read and absorb this book. I would love to take a seminar from Steven Gold!

About the author.

“Riding Between the Worlds” by Linda Kohanov

Sonia Connolly — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:43:43 +0000

My response to The Tao of Equus doesn’t begin to express the impact it had on me. I immediately looked for Kohanov’s next book.

Riding Between the Worlds contains less abstract theory and more stories from clients and from her own life. It also contains a helpful adaptation of Karla McLaren’s work with emotions into an Emotional Message Chart.

For example:

Emotion Message Questions to Ask Intensification

Anger Proper boundaries should be maintained or rebuilt.

Incongruence.
What must be protected?

What must be restored

What is the emotion behind the mask, and is it directed toward me?
Rage, fury (exploding at those who’ve violated our boundaries)

Shame, guilt (anger toward self when we’ve violated others’ boundaries)

Boredom, apathy (masks anger that can’t be dealt with – a nonviolent coping strategy

Emotion	Message	Questions to Ask	Intensification
Anger	Proper boundaries should be maintained or rebuilt. Incongruence.	What must be protected? What must be restored What is the emotion behind the mask, and is it directed toward me?	Rage, fury (exploding at those who’ve violated our boundaries) Shame, guilt (anger toward self when we’ve violated others’ boundaries) Boredom, apathy (masks anger that can’t be dealt with – a nonviolent coping strategy

Kohanov validates my experiences with transmission of emotions from one person to another, describing the many ways that happens with both people and horses in her practice.

She also talks extensively about congruence and how important it is to both horses and sensitive humans. Incongruence, a mismatch between what someone is feeling and expressing, can cause trouble both for the incongruent person who is suppressing feelings, and the beings around them who may be the target of deception or explosive release.

Kohanov also presents her hard-won list of skills for building community:

Using emotion as information.

Sitting in uncomfortable emotions without panicking.

Sensing and flowing with the emotions of others, again without panicking.

Reading “misbehavior” as a form of communication.

Understanding the dynamics of shared emotion: distinguishing between instructive personal feelings, conditioned (False Self) emotional patterns, affect contagion, empathy, ambience, and emotional resonance.

Resisting the temptation to aggressively “fix” people, horses, uncomfortable situations, etc.

Creating a psychological container of support, what Kathleen Ingram calls “holding the sacred space of possibility.” This fully engaged form of patience is crucial to tapping innovative solutions that arise from the eighth ability:

Activating the Authentic Self.

The only sour note in the book occurs when she creates a false sense of suspense by telling half a story and then inserts 30 pages of other material before returning to the story.

Highly recommended for anyone who believes they are too sensitive or too emotional.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“The Tao of Equus” by Linda Kohanov

Sonia Connolly — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:34:47 +0000

Subtitle: A Woman’s Journey of Healing and Transformation through the Way of the Horse

Recommended by: A client.

Linda Kohanov and her herd of sensitive horses offer equine facilitated psychotherapy. Together they help both horses and humans recover from trauma, regain their balance, and treat each other with more respect.

This many-layered book contains autobiography, horse stories, client case studies, myths, theories about emotions and the brain, and diatribes about traditional horse training.

Kohanov convincingly claims that horses are intelligent partners, extraordinarily capable of reading and reflecting the emotions around them. She contrasts postconquest thought, divorced from the body, with preconquest thought, congruent with the body. Horses respond to lack of congruence as a threat, thus giving feedback to help people reconnect with their body and emotions.

One case study highlighted how we tend to respond to agitation by mirroring it. Instead, we can consciously calm ourselves, inviting the other person (or horse) to become calm as well. I’ll keep that technique in mind.

Before reading this book, I had heard of equine facilitated therapy without much interest. As I was reading it, I wished Kohanov’s ranch were closer than Arizona so I could go try it out. Her combination of sensitivity and groundedness sounds similar to the healing work I do.

Available at Powell’s Books.