January 2010 Archives

Welcome to the January 29, 2010 edition of Carnival Against Child Abuse. The purpose of the Carnival is to be a place where important posts are shared with others who may not be frequent readers of an author's blog. I, myself, have realized that I cannot follow all the blogs I want to follow, so the monthly Carnival gives me a chance to see what else is out there. There are so many wonderful bloggers and you are all doing a wonderful service not only to yourselves, but to the cause of ending child abuse and recovering from child abuse. My sincere thanks to all of you.

If you, as a reader or author, know of other blogs that you find helpful, please encourage them to submit to an upcoming issue of the Carnival Against Child Abuse; and please bookmark that page so we can continue to receive high quality submissions from a wide swath of bloggers.

Healing Submissions

Kerro from "Kerro's Korner" presents 10 good things about falling apart. In keeping with the David Letterman "Top 10" theme, Kerro shares with us one of my all time favorite posts and she leads off the Carnival this month. Her post is helpful, encouraging, and validating.

Kate from "Kate1975's Blog" presents A Bliss List. Kate creates wonderful lists that I come back to time and time again. Her "bliss" lists are so encouraging. To see all 12 of them, click on her Bliss List Category.

Dr. Kathleen Young from "Treating Trauma in Chicago" presents Shame and Self-Blame After Trauma. Dr. Young addresses head on one of the most difficult topics for survivors. This is a post you may want to bookmark and come back to when you are brought down by shame and self-blame. She concludes her post with: "No child (yes, that includes you reading this!) is ever to blame for the abuse inflicted upon them by others."

Hope from "Hope for Trauma" presents One Year Strong, saying "It's about my Journey throught my first year without being inpatient. The search for trust, support and acceptance." It's a peek into what hospitals are like, and a commentary on how a therapist who specializes in trauma work can lead survivors in a new and different healing direction.

Ivory from "Shades of Ivory" presents All in the Telling, saying "Telling is the most difficult 'start' to healing." In my comment to her post I wrote "I am so sorry that you have lost so much in your journey, for your 'telling'. But I am sure you realize that if you didn't 'tell' there would be other consequences, and perhaps you would not have survived those." Thanks for telling Ivory!

Sarah from "A bit of this, a bit of that" presents If I'd Known Then, saying "Although this isn't really a survivor blog in the way that many of the blogs that submit to the Carnival are, I am a survivor, and that does affect my writings. This post has received such a powerful response from my friends that I wanted to share it with a larger audience." Her post speaks of a wonderful book where authors write letters to their younger selves. Sarah herself wrote one in her blog post. It's a wonderful technique, and personally I'd love to do that someday.

Shhh from "My Shush Blog" presents elephant in the room. Shhh writes about her experience with a "transitional object". If you don't yet have one, you would do well to consider one. I have several.

Innocencestolen from her self-titled blog presents Bikini Season, saying "I wrote this post based on my own frustrations with my body and realizing how alot of my problems with myself have all stemmed from my mother." She touches on the trouble many of us have with body image and how lessons from long ago still stay with us today.

Cornnut32 from "Picture of Experience" presents Pooh's grand adventure. This post speaks to the power of interacting with children in a healthy way.

Marj aka Thriver from "Survivors Can Thrive!" presents Trauma Processing, Therapy & Counseling, saying "In this post, I talk about my experience with therapy for my dissociative disorder, trauma processing and counseling. I also lament a bit on the fact that I have never been able to find a therapist who could provide all three of these things for me as I navigate the healing-from-abuse journey." It's a personal account of some of her healing journey. Thank you, Marj, for sharing what is obviously so personal to you.

Mike from "Child Abuse Survivor" presents Healing Isn't a Smooth Timeline. Mike reminds us that there are ups and downs in the healing journey, that we can make huge progress in a short time, and make little progress over a long time, and everything in between. This is good to be reminded of, because many of us have high expectations of ourselves (added also to outside expectations).

Temperance from "Crackers & Juiceboxes" presents Dear Trauma Therapist.... Tempy has done something here that few of us think to do or are able to do. She made a clear statement to her therapist about who she is, what her limitations are, and a commitment to healing. This reminds me of Elia Wise's poem "For Children Who Were Broken"; if you have not read this poem, I suggest you look it up.

Art Submissions

Shen from "Reunited Selves" presents Anger Work. Her work goes through a whole process of inner communication. She uses a left- versus right-hand technique to help her communicate inside, and it's something worth trying for those of us who have trouble with that issue.

Paul from "Mind Parts" (me) presents My Symbol, my most recent art therapy post.

Advocacy & Awareness

Katie at "Sharing our Spaces" presents False Memory Syndrome, saying "I wrote this about my recent research into whether or not FMS is valid." It's a very good look at some of the current debate on a hot topic.

Paul from "Mind Parts" (again, me) presents Is Dissociative Identity Disorder Real?. I've been meaning to address this for a while, and so here goes... I take on the ongoing debate on the existence of DID because there has been much discussion on blogs about this topic recently.

Paul from "Mind Parts" presents The Burden, a wonderfully done campaign video to end child abuse.

Patricia from "Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker" presents Ask About Incest If You Suspect It Is Happening, saying "I wanted someone to ask. I needed someone to ask. If you know a child that you suspect is being abused ask them. It may be what they are waiting for." As survivors, especially, we cannot turn a blind eye. Thanks for reminding us Patricia!

BloggerT7165 from "What about when MOM is the abuser?" presents Female sex offenders and their victims: Reference materials and scholarly papers. This post presents a comprehensive bibliography on the topic of female sex offenders.

Poetry

I deliberately don't provide commentary on poems. I feel as though they should stand on their own

Mary from "Nippercat's Home" presents The Boogieman.

Little Sheep from "My (getting better) story" presents scrubbing it off, saying "It's so worth it in the end!"

Little Sheep from "My (getting better) story" presents poem.

Jumping in puddles from "Sharing private moments through poetry" presents Don't find me.

Aftermath

Patricia Singleton from "Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker" presents Inspiration, Denial and Incest, saying "This post was written in response to a previous comment on my blog that told my readers who were survivors to just get over it and get on with their lives. Abuse doesn't stay in our past. It very much affects our today." I think it's important for readers to realize that survivor blog posts aren't all about inspiration. Blogs are heartfelt attempts to find ourselves, and many posts will be dark or about losing hope; they should be looked at from a global perspective. Thank you Patricia for pointing this out.

Colleen from "Surviving by Grace" presents Taking Care of Myself. Colleen has struggled like so many of us have about learning to take care of our bodies despite years of being neglected from abuse. Thank you Colleen!

Colleen from "Surviving by Grace" presents Sisters. Colleen takes on survivor guilt and comes to the healthy conclusion that "It was not my fault".

Kate from "Kate1975's Blog" presents Survivor’s Aftereffects List #1. Kate has posted a wonderful list of aftereffects from the book "Secret Survivors". The full list can be found in the Aftereffects Lists Category.

That's all folks! Thank you all for the honor of hosting this month's Carnival and for your wonderful submissions. You are all truly inspirational.

The Carnival homepage can be found at Carnival Against Child Abuse. There you can find current as well as all past editions.

One of the more interesting, and also infuriating, debates is the question of whether dissociative identity disorder (DID) is real or not. Some say it should be subsumed under another disorder (usually borderline personality disorder is the most often mentioned) and that it's a harmful diagnosis and causes those labelled with it to unnecessarily suffer. Many of these people also say that the disorder is largely iatrogenic, meaning caused by the process of therapy or caused by a societal pressure.

15 years ago, I debated online about this in a largely naive and idealistic manner. I'm not so much naive or idealistic nowadays.

The issue can get quite complicated, in part because those of us with dissociative disorders commonly switch in and out of self states based on our level of internal presence or cohesiveness or external demands. It's not uncommon to be in a part of ourselves who thinks nothing is wrong. We have learned to partition our internal experiences so well for so long, that eventually it becomes not all that hard. Then we can more easily agree with those who say it's not real. But these are merely denial states. The denial or seemingly "completely well" states often give us a little reprieve, but they rarely last long. When they do last long, it usually means there is a significant crash of reality to come.

The debate in the psychiatric community is really a "no win" debate. Not only are there conflicts about the reality of DID, but I am sure you all know there are conflicts about the validity of repressed memories. But that's a topic for another day. Both debates are not strictly "winnable" because each side does have some valid points. And each side is beholden to their point of view.

I sometimes do get sucked into these debates internally, but it never ends up in a good place for me. The internal debate attempts to mirror the external ones. And it just ends up causing a mass of confusion. The best place to be is to avoid the external debate and be true to your own experience. That is, if you can do that.

About 6 months ago, I had a discussion with a psychiatrist I know about whether what I experience is "real" or not. She answered by telling a Chinese proverb:

Then she said: "The interpretation that I read, said that the response was meant to negate the question, not to answer it. For centuries there has been debate and discussion of whether or not the dog has a Buddha nature. Just like there is debate and discussion about whether or not there is DID. But I like the interpretation that says Zhaozhou intended to negate the question, because I think that theological hair-splitting wouldn't get the young monk any closer to enlightenment and that a wise teacher like Zhaozhou would have known that. Indeed, my favorite interpretation of this story says that Zhaozhou's answer meant 'It doesn't matter!'"

It's very hard to be in a place where you can just say "It doesn't matter." But, really, I think this is the answer. If we can trust in our own experience and keep working at trying to make sense of it, then this is all we can ask of ourselves. It's not for others to judge our experience or tell us it isn't so. There is a lot of suffering that those of us with dissociative disorders have to come to terms with; but the suffering doesn't lessen by forcing yourself to believe that your internal experience isn't real. Just because it doesn't manifest itself in a simple blood test, doesn't mean it's not real. I like to think our job is to work at becoming more whole. We can have a chance at doing this only if we acknowledge our internal reality. Our internal truth.

Others will debate it for many years to come. Let them do that. And let us heal!

Here are some early morning ramblings after not sleeping all night.

I was reading an interview just a little while ago, on the somewhat unrelated topic of "intelligence gathering", and this was said:

I thought it was a rather interesting comment, because intelligence gathering and trauma healing are not so dissimilar. But I think he missed the point a bit.

I like to think of healing as having to put together a bunch of puzzle pieces (with a lot missing and without the picture). But on those puzzle pieces are the little dots, and as you put the puzzle together, patterns start to emerge and you get better and better at predicting and making decisions.

This photograph is of some work I did with my therapist last summer. I painted puzzle pieces of various sizes and arranged them in a way that made some visual sense to me. I had many color options, but I chose only red, white and black. We never quite finished, having intended to go back and rearrange and reshoot. The pieces are still sitting in my therapist's office on top of her bookshelf. Perhaps we'll take them out again soon.

On my A Healing Journey page you will see an image of a dissociative identity (DID) awareness pin. And if you follow the link on the bottom of that page you will see another. I took the inspiration from these, and Castorgirl's blog header.

On Christmas Day my wife, kids, and I watched the 1965 film "Sound of Music". It was a lovely movie and uplifting. I remember it being broadcast on television annually; it was a huge event for me along with the "Wizard of Oz".

I identified with the story on a number of levels. And only this past year did I know why. I was sure that it had parallels to my own life, with the multiple children each with their own "quirks", the nanny trying to get control and manage them, the father who was unaware of what was going on, and the threat of the German's and the fear that came with that.

Ultimately, as many of you know, the father protected his children and the story had a happy ending. I'd like to think my life will have a happy ending. Maybe I'm being too naive and too idealistic. But, who knows, maybe that's exactly how it will turn out!

It's all rather interesting because both of my daughters are playing and singing songs from the musical now. My youngest and I have been playing "My Favorite Things" together with her on violin and me on piano for about a month. My oldest is playing a medley of songs with her school band and chorus.

I took a particular liking to "Edelweiss" because the father, Georg von Trapp, sang that song to his children. It was a delightful scene in which he first became "aware", with the help of Maria, that he had not been paying much attention to them. There was another touching scene towards the end of the movie where he began to sing it to the large audience at the Salzburg music festival, could not get through it, Maria had to help him and then all the audience joined in as a statement of solidarity.

I've changed one word in the lyrics, next to last word, to make the song have meaning to both my inside and outside families:

I have been singing this to my kids and quite like the way it "fits". I recorded this song along with a vocal track and published it here a couple of weeks ago. But I had to take it down because there was a visceral reaction. So, a couple of weeks removed from that experience, I just recorded an ever-so-simple piano track. I wanted to play the song very simply because it's kind of like a lullaby.

I think it's perfectly appropriate to make this song my personal anthem.

I am pleased to host this month's Carnival Against Child Abuse.

Submissions are due by Wednesday, January 27th and I will publish on Friday, January 29th.

Submit at: Blog Carnival Submissions

A blog carnival is a collection of blog articles (or art or poetry) hosted on a single site for the purpose of bringing readers and writers together.

There is no theme this month, in part due to time being short.

Don't have a blog or need help? Send an email to paul@mindparts.org and I will help you. In particular, if you don't have a blog, I will be happy to receive your article by email and I will host it here as a "guest" submission with byline credit given as you specify. This is a great opportunity for non-bloggers to make a statement and "test the waters" so to speak.

On the submission page you will be asked to pick a category of: Advocacy & Awareness; Aftermath; Healing & Therapy; In the News; Poetry; or Survivor Stories. There is a new category titled "Art Therapy", so please feel free to send in your art! Also, your blog itself does not need to be about child abuse, just the post you are submitting. And you can submit older articles and more than one article.

I hope you submit! The blogging community has a lot to contribute on the subject of child abuse and healing. Let your voice be heard.

Again, to submit, click on over to: Blog Carnival Submissions

The news today reveals a telling commentary on where our society is at. I thought it was untrue when I first heard about it. But, apparently, it is quite real. Or, not real, depending on how you look at it.

Leave it to sex to sell multiple personalities. Yes, the world's first sex robot, Roxxxy, is not only anatomically correct and functional, but comes complete with five personalities. The owner can choose which personality he wants to interact with. And the personalities are customizable and can be programmed wirelessly over the Internet, even allowing owners to share their personality programs with others.

The inventor says his goal was to develop a companion, to help shy people and those with sexual dysfunction.

So, having lots of personalities is good, right? That makes me feel so much better. I can now stop therapy and resume where I was when I started.

I'm not sure if the inventor thought of this, or did his research, but what happens when the programming gets more complicated and the personalities start fighting with each other, or acting out?

We are now entering "Star Trek" land folks. I do remember several Next Generation episodes about this, almost always situated in the holodeck.

I'll wait for the holodeck, thank you very much!

News Story: Roxxxy the sex robot makes her world debut (AFP, 1/9/2010)

I'm trying to post twice a week here as that's important to me. Originally I was going to try to write something scholarly for today. But I'm just not able to right now, for various reasons. Some of you may know that I posted a musical piece I recorded the other day along with some commentary, but had to take it down the next day because it had a vocal track (alongside the customary piano track) and that, I found out rather forcefully from the inside, was too personal to share. I will post it again, without the vocal track, once I am able to record a slightly better piano solo.

Over the holidays, I found a cache of poems I wrote in the early 90s. I had a difficult time choosing which to post today. I know my last post was an optimistic review of where I've come from and what I've been able to accomplish. This poem is an 180 degree turn from that. It's not purposeful. I am not really this pessimistic. But lately I have been trying to get in touch with where I've come from, and I'm trying to connect the broad pieces of my life. I cannot forget where I was back many years ago, but at the same time I cannot be swept up by it either. This poem seemed to be the most appropriate to share, though I'm not particularly clear on why.

Here's the poem:

The poem is perhaps a bit controversial. I hope it doesn't offend anyone. I was not raised Jewish, but rather Roman Catholic, so maybe I am stepping over some boundary. I am not really sure exactly what I was trying to say. I can see the obvious meanings.

I am nearly certain I wrote this poem shortly after seeing "Schindler's List" in Winter of 1994. I remember seeing the film alone, and I remember crying for hours afterwards.

I wonder what you all think?