March 2010 Archives

I knew the Christian season of Lent was going to be challenging this year. It always is. But I had a number of important clues for why this one would stand out from the rest. For one, I have a level of internal awareness now that I have not ever had before. For another, internal parts that have dealt with religious issues have been active to a degree I have not experienced in well over a decade. I have had to attend to them, and since things are different now, the way I attend has taken on new significance.

This religious season did not start out well. And I was quite discouraged. On the very first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, there was a self-harm event that completely caught me off guard. I had somehow not remembered the importance of that day, even though we had talked about it several times in therapy. But parts inside clearly remembered. I then rededicated myself to do better and work more collaboratively to keep "all of me" safe.

My therapist and I have been planning for Easter beginning back at the turn of the year. And, in fact, one of the steps we discussed was going back to the church where a lot of my childhood abuse happened (see photo above). We knew this was a huge step, not to be done without careful consideration. But specific parts were very vocal in asking for it. We talked about all the pros and cons and thought it through carefully. And we waited and resisted the temptation to do it impulsively. We went together a couple weeks ago. The experience was validating, but there were all kinds of different responses. For the first few days, it was all seen as only a healing experience. But then one younger part thought it meant we can now go back to that church and even participate in the ceremonies (presumably as an altar boy). Other parts, particularly those who dealt with the more extreme conflicts about religion, were not heard from for at least a week. That troubled me. When I did finally hear from them, they were not happy, which is the mildest way I can describe their responses.

Immediately after going to the church, the clergy abuse scandal in Europe escalated. This was not any surprise to those of us who have dealt with this for a long time. But it has been big news for the scandal to reach the steps of the Vatican. The news has seemed relentless to me. As I wrote in Thoughts on the Catholic Church Abuse Reports a couple weeks ago, I know bringing abuses into the light of day will lead to healing and increased safety of children. But such news has always been destabilizing for me. That it comes right in the middle of the holiest time of the year, makes it even more so.

On March 19th, Pope Benedict read publicly a letter apologizing for abuses in Ireland. Last year, he read a similar letter during his visit to the United States. But the words were typical, saying some bishops made some "errors in judgment." And there were only words, not action. Then on March 24, the New York Times broke a story that the pope, then a cardinal, was the person who stopped church investigations of a Wisconsin priest who was accused of abusing hundreds of boys at a deaf school. The Times article said:

Swiss President Doris Leuthard has called for a central register of pedophile priests in her country. We would do well to have one in the United States as well. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there should be a special offender registry in the cases of any civil action of child abuse (in any church or organization, such as the Boy Scouts). There currently exists none. And in the Catholic Church, since civil cases were filed and settled with the Church, there are no civil authority records on most all priests. Most are listed by the non-profit group Bishop Accountability, but that is not the best solution for protecting children. I believe our sex offender registries are a bit of a joke, since someone can be on it for misdemeanor lewd conduct having nothing at all to do with a child, yet a defrocked, civilly sued, pedophile priest with dozens of victims, is not on the registry. That inequity is not in the best interest of protecting children. So, our governments must hold some responsibility in all of this and need to step up.

To slightly change the subject, but to give an idea of how disconnected the Catholic Church is from reality, Pope John Paul II's track to sainthood is being questioned. The former pope died five years ago. One requirement for sainthood is that there needs to be two attributed miracles. Here's one miracle in his file: A nun in France, had prayed to the pope for relief from what was believed to be Parkinson's disease. Two months after the pope died, she had a medically unexplainable cure. That's probably a miracle to someone, but how is it attributed to him? Recently, there has been news saying that she may not have suffered from Parkinson's at all, but rather another neurological disease which can be cured. Talk about misplaced priorities!

So much is happening at the same time for me. I am being inundated with Catholic Church news, which normally I do not pay much attention to. Inside feels like it is all rushing to a head coinciding with Easter. I have, as a result, been losing lots of time to dissociation, orders of magnitude more than usual. I know I have been psychologically switching self states like a revolving door. I also know that most of the time I am able to show to outsiders (including family) that I appear to be totally normal. This is validating in a sense, because it makes me realize how it was possible for most of my youth. That ability, really, is what dissociation was designed to do (and I will write more about this later).

In the process, safety—that overarching responsibility of mine—is being severely tested. I am trying my best to navigate through all of this muck. I am utilizing all my grounding and coping skills. But I am acutely aware that all of my best efforts may not quite be enough this week.

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Nearly a year ago, I wrote in this post the following:

In fragmented personality systems such as found in those of us with dissociative identity disorder, I think it is fair to say that, as a general rule, different parts tend to operate autonomously.

Of course, I am not denying that there are connections between the parts of the system. The connections are generally either loose or strict; rarely are they moderated and balanced. An example of a loose connection would be parts who do not know about other parts, or will do anything to push away other parts. Strict connections are usually the reverse, where parts will have strong alliances for the purpose of emotional protection, even if that means the body gets hurt through self-harm.

There are always very valid reasons for both types of connections. For example, in many systems, parts need to not know about other parts because behaviors or beliefs or feelings of some are intolerable to others.

The seeds of change are sown when one becomes aware that such a dissociated approach to living is getting in the way of living, let alone living well, or is putting us at risk of dying. Every dissociatively disordered person who attempts to heal, I believe, has learned that the coping that has governed their life has become a problem. In healing, we celebrate our ingenious coping strategy which without doubt saved our lives and our sanities. But we also accept that our remarkably adaptive strategy has become a disorder. I know this may bother some; that I am perhaps devaluing what was originally achieved. But, I really am not. My experience is that holding onto both is a crucial step in healing.

Why does this brilliant solution have to lead to a disorder? I know there is a group of multiples who are perfectly content living as multiples. But most dissociative systems do not evolve and lead to that destination. My belief is that as the dissociative child ages, internal connections become more rigid. On the one hand, alliances become stronger. But, on the other, some parts can become more antagonistic. This is, to my mind, a more common evolution. Parts were created for a purpose. They serve their purpose well. They keep doing what they do well. And, low and behold, habits form (if you want to use that word) and a way of navigating the world becomes firmly established.

One can easily say such an evolution can be applied to almost everyone, and they are probably right. But for the dissociative, the cost is usually a little higher, and the structure is a bit different.

Learning to break down dissociative barriers—and undertake the process of healing—is monumental work. I have written many times here about what the elements of that healing are. Some that come to mind are acceptance, responsibility, overall safety, balance, feeling, intellectual understanding, and love. I have also written about concrete steps to achieve each, chief among them is cultivating awareness through journaling, drawing, and any other form of internal communication, as well as increasing tolerance to emotions.

I thought I would share something I wrote many years ago and came across this past weekend—the motivation for this post. This letter was one of the first steps I took on the road to healing. I wrote it to "My Anger," but in reality it was a specific part with a specific name and I don't feel so comfortable sharing that here.

Maybe this was not the kindest or even the best letter I could muster. But it was a start. And I have not looked back since.

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If anyone had the impression that the Catholic clergy abuse scandal, which erupted in Boston in 2002 and spread quickly throughout the United States, was limited only to this country, they were mistaken. There was clergy abuse elsewhere, of course, and scandals at other times, including here in Boston a decade earlier, in Ireland last year, and in Germany and other parts of Europe right now.

I admit I have not ever paid close attention to clergy abuse news. It has been just too personally triggering for me. I do not search out news on the clergy abuse websites (e.g., The SNAP Network and Bishop Accountability). In fact, I avoid them as best I can because it does not help me to know everything. I also am well aware that I was completely destabilized in 2002. The constant stream of news at the time triggered my second round of collapse and then recovery. As I have written before, my first round was in the early 1990s. While it was known then that there was institutional cover-up and deflection, its scale was not known. I felt a certain sense of peace that came from all of this not being too publicly prominent.

However, I now know that public awareness of child abuse leads to accountability and makes children more safe. The Catholic Church thrived on secrecy. Left to their own devices, I am convinced there would be no pressure to change. For an institution with Jesus Christ at the center and guiding influence, I find their behavior unconscionable. But I can understand it. All institutions—and governments—want to avoid scandals, many even at the cost of innocent lives.

It really is not the abuses that bother me the most. Data shows that there are more offenders, by percentage, in schools. And, percentage of abuse of children by males in the general population is also higher. What is most hurtful to me personally was the cover-up, lack of empathy, and treatment of child abuse victims, and their families, as "disposable." I told I was being abused in the 1980s as a high school student, and though I greatly minimized what happened, the situation was resolved by our family moving to another church and not talking about it. The place we called our spiritual home for four generations was taken away in the bat of an eye, and the pedophile priest who had only been there for a decade, and who was attacking children, remained.

Obviously, I did not know much about justice back then or how to find it.

In Boston, the church did make efforts in the early 1990s to "reach out" to victims through internal investigations. But that was a case of "too little, too late." For me, a decade of silence had gone by, and I was in the midst of a complete psychological collapse. I simply could not trust the church. And I had good reason not to. Even through these investigations, they did not move to isolate pedophile priests and protect children. The only recourse for victims was to come forward and press criminal charges or file a civil lawsuit.

The focus of the church was always about its image. And since the church was "above the law," at least in practical terms, they had the upper hand. In many cases, there are voluminous records (see Bishop Accountability) clearly documenting abuse and acknowledgement by church officials that abuse occurred. However, this information was never disclosed to victims who came forward. The message from the church, through their lawyers, was never about validation and support, but about making the barriers to justice higher and higher.

Now, in 2010, the collective voice of survivors from all over the world is exposing the truth. We seek justice. We seek healing. But we also seek to stop abuse against children wherever it exists.

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There has been a push from inside over the past couple years to do more "meaningful photography." What I mean by "meaningful" is work that speaks to my own experiences more fully. Put another way, I want to do photography that is psychologically aware.

I got interested in photography around the time my kids were born; that was more than a decade ago. And since the kids were the focus for so many years, photography had been mostly about happiness and documenting happiness.

It didn't take me long to realize that photography was about seeing and not just looking. For someone who had lived a life based on dissociation, this was a real breakthrough and insight for me; a small first step in healing and becoming aware.

I have developed what was a small hobby into something a bit larger. I do some portrait work professionally, but my main interest has been photojournalism and sports which I shoot for local news outlets. Portrait work is intensely personal and requires a huge amount of "presence," engagement with the subjects, and directing. Sometimes I am simply not able to do that, which poses a problem if people have made appointments with me. So, I tend to minimize those kinds of assignments now. I sometimes become scared and forget all my skills and the images come out quite lousy, at least by my standards. It's too unpredictable, because sometimes I can be perfectly "on" and sometimes I can be "not at all there."

Photojournalism, in contrast, is a style of photography that is more detached and a bit less personal, but one could argue has a larger payoff because the images look spontaneous. The idea behind a photojournalism style of photography is that you become an impartial observer and document the details of the event. Mostly, the goal is to document all the scales of detail that you "see", from those that most everyone would recognize as the describing the event to those small elements that nobody really pays any attention to (e.g., the little kids poking their heads out from under the Bride and Groom's head table). It is really the only way to shoot live sports or any event where there are people going about their business.

Photojournalism is a microcosm of what healing from dissociation is all about. To see an event photographically, you must be prepared to do it from an "all of you" perspective. From this whole perspective, you can capture not only the range of length scales (from macro to micro) but also the range of human emotions. Sports is one great example, because there is always "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." Another is a wedding. And a third is any news event.

The photograph above was taken at a local elementary school's art show. I took many real-life people pictures at this event. But as I was looking at some of the art on display done by children, I stumbled upon this scene. In a self-portrait of a boy, I saw the reflection of other framed artwork several feet away. There were rows of art on display, and if I had to do this over again, I would have swapped out the reflected images that weren't self-portraits with ones that were. One of the tricks of photojournalism is that if you can unobtrusively change the scene, you assume you have the authority to do so, granted to you by your press badge, and just do it.

The obvious composition of this image would have been to focus on the boy, and the reflected images would blur. But that's what you see with your eyes and that would be boring. That image would scream "amateur mistake" because who would want reflected images in the background? Since there was no way to remove the reflections from the flourescent lights, I had to think about it in a different way and see beyond the obvious.

This is an image I would never had been able to make just a few years ago. I took me a while to get the meaning of what the reflections were telling me, for my eyes did not see this interpretation. Once I did, I composed the frame with the boy and the green background, focussed on the reflected images and opened the aperture to wide open at f/2.8, knowing that would blur the boy's face. Then, of course, the other trick to photojournalism is to not be shy to shoot because with digital, images are essentially free. So, I fired off about 30 other frames with various compositions and exposures. Then later I can decide which image works best.

There are multiple meanings behind this image. On one level, it could say that nobody really sees the boy as he is (i.e., he's a blur). On another, it could say that behind the boy is a complex world with various compartments and other selves.

What does this image say to you?

For those who are interested, there are some excellent books on photographic "seeing" and composition. They are:

• Andreas Feininger, Principles of Composition in Photography (1972, not in print so you would most likely find it at a local library)
• Michael Freeman, The Photographer's Eye (2007)
• Freeman Patterson, Photography and the Art of Seeing (1985, but updated in a 2004 edition)
• Bryan Peterson, Learning to See Creatively (1988, but updated in a 2003 edition)
• Henry Poore, Pictorial Composition in Art (1976 and still in print)

For other psychologically meaningful photographs on Mind Parts, see my Photography Gallery.

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The problem I have had with writing this blog recently is related to the "elephant in the room" phenomenon. In the last post, I alluded to the family crisis that has enveloped my family for the last few weeks. I feel as though I now have to write about it in order to move past it.

Here goes the drama:

We had a "family friend" who was continually pushing boundaries for a long time (10 or more years). I had always been incredibly uncomfortable with her, but she was my wife's "whacky" friend. For a while now, she has been trying to insert herself as an authority in our family and trying to control situations. She was overbearing. She thrived on creating conflicts or problems and being there to solve them. Many of these problems were lies or the facts were greatly twisted and exaggerated. I saw through most of them and questioned all of them. But my wife was not able to. This created a huge conflict between the two of us because she was convinced there were real problems, focused mainly on our children and on what I was not doing for the family due to my "problems".

A few weeks ago, my wife came home from her evening yoga class and said she got a phone call from our "friend" who said she got a call from one of our neighbors claiming we do not care well for our kids and one of the kids had said she is very sad and angry. The neighbor supposedly threatened to call child services on us.

I immediately confronted our "friend" through a phone call. I warned her that if this was a lie, that it would be the complete end of her relationship with my family. I am convinced she did not expect me to do this. My wife didn't want me to pursue it because she believed the "friend" might have been telling the truth and didn't want to irritate the neighbor or make waves. The "friend" said not to worry because she had someone on the inside of child services who could help us.

In the past, I may not have been strong enough to see through what she was doing. And may not have been strong enough to take action like I did. But over the past year or two, with my increased awareness, I had begun to question things. And this act was just over-the-top. She had done things like this. But this was well beyond everything in the past. I think my increased awareness pushed the "friend" to act in this way because she saw her control being taken away.

The next morning, I had a conversation with our neighbors, with whom we are fairly close. They said they had no idea what our "friend" was talking about. They claimed that no such conversation ever took place. My neighbor confronted our "friend", but through voicemail, calling her on the lie.

At 3PM that afternoon, I got a phone call from child services stating these allegations. This then required a letter from me to them, phone interviews with both me, my wife, and my neighbors. Child services also contacted my children's school to see if there was anything in their records that caused concern. I told them what I was certain had happened: that this "friend" called child services in order to keep intact her original lie.

For several days I was in "family protect" mode. The only problem was that I was not paying attention to a good deal of me.

After a couple days, the "friend" started to contact my wife, some friends, and relatives and act like she did not do anything and blamed it all on my mental status. In fact, when child services was called she said brought up my mental health issues.

By that time my wife and I agreed that my original warning of no more contact ever would be enforced. We told the girls a kid-acceptable story. I told many of our neighbors and relatives. I changed our house locks, security codes, and got blocks on Facebook. I told the school and talked to the principal. I told the kids that they are to treat this "friend" like a stranger and find help if she ever shows up. Luckily, she lives about 25 miles away, so there is no reason for her to be in our town.

Then I sent her a registered letter. The key paragraphs are these:

The story is bizarre, at least bizarre for my standards, because as this all played out, certain things started to click for me. As one small example, the "friend" had often called my 8 year old "our daughter" referring to she and my wife. And over the past several months she had been pushing to get my daughter to stay over her apartment. I never agreed to that, causing friction.

One of the problems is that I was not completely stable throughout the entire crisis because of being in "family protect" mode. I had periods, especially at night, when younger parts of me thought I was indeed making it all up or at least blowing things out of proportion. Or they didn't know what was going on at all. I had other problems where younger parts felt it was a violation to stand up for ourselves. It was not, in their mind, consistent with how things were supposed to be. Needless to say, this caused a great deal of difficulty and required a good deal of support from therapists, family, and friends.

So far, we have not heard from our "friend" since the letter. And the conflicts and drama we got used to experiencing as a family (due to the constant influence of the "friend") have completely gone away. Family life and married life seems much simpler now!

Now I have said what has happened. And, hopefully, soon I can begin posting some of those 30 "articles" I have started.

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