nothing similar
13 years ago
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Vegetable violence
I received an email today saying that Youth Farm will no longer be able to have a regular drop-off of free fruits and vegetables because at the last two places that hosted the drop-offs, people started fights over free fruits and vegetables. Part of me wants to make smart-ass jokes about vegetable violence and the other part laments that people are so desperate for food or so rude and unrelenting in getting their own way that unsellable produce, on the edge of spoiling, is a cause for fist fights.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Awake
It's 2:44 a.m. and I'm awake. I've been awake since Mark tried to climb into my bed an hour and a half ago. I laid in bed for an hour and then decided to get up since I wasn't sleepy.
My sleep has been often interrupted this last decade and I have had years where I've usually been awake for hours in the night. Lately I've been sleeping all in one chunk.
I rarely talk about it or even really think about it during the day except to discuss it with my bodywork people.
Sometimes I find these nocturnal reflections helpful and other times I find them frustrating. At least I'm not waking up terrified these days. That was the worst.
I'm starting to feel sleepier.
Think I'll watch a video.
My sleep has been often interrupted this last decade and I have had years where I've usually been awake for hours in the night. Lately I've been sleeping all in one chunk.
I rarely talk about it or even really think about it during the day except to discuss it with my bodywork people.
Sometimes I find these nocturnal reflections helpful and other times I find them frustrating. At least I'm not waking up terrified these days. That was the worst.
I'm starting to feel sleepier.
Think I'll watch a video.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Brainwash
Read Brainwash because I wanted a better understanding of the psychological affects of abuse and torure. Here are some stand out quotes.
The Chinese...had set about trying to reform errant Communists by mistreating them, then using measured rewards and punishments to persuade them of the beauties of socialism. p.15
The idea of pain followed by rewards and punishments to change belief and behavior resonated so powerfully for me that I had to put the book down and take deep breaths. Rape by night and poached eggs on toast for breakfast. Being blamed for wetting the bed (yeah, that'd be semen) then when I would cry, being coddled instead because I was presumed sick. Yikes!
Pavlov's most important discovery came about not as a result of his meticulous experiments but by accident. In 1924 there was a terrible flood in Leningrad. The waters had risen so fast that Pavlov's dogs, trapped in the laboratory, were in danger of drowning and were forced to swim around their cages, desperately holding their noses above water. Luckily, a research assistant arrived just in time to free them.
Once the water had subsided and Pavlov's team got back to work, however, it became clear that something strange had happened: all the dogs' conditioned reflexes- salivating and so forth- had gone. For the dogs, the near-drowning experience had been so terrifying that their learnt behaviour had been erased. Pavlov's dogs had been brainwashed by their own fear.
Months later, when the dogs had been retrained, Pavlov decided to try an experiment. He positioned a hosepipe beneath the door of his laboratory and turned on the tap to see what happened. As the water ran into the animal compound, the dogs immediately panicked as they had during the great flood. Sure enough, when tested after the experiment, they had forgotten all their conditioning cues again....
In this case, he said, extreme fear or trauma transformed positive conditioning into negative conditioning. As had happened during the flood, the dogs became so traumatized that they did the exact opposite of what they had been trained to do. An aggressive dog might become docile; a friendly dog might bite a laboratory attendant. In the Ultra Paradoxical Phase, character traits were reversed.
From Pavlov's work, Sargant concluded that if an experience was violent or traumatic enough, it was possible to reverse behavioural traits outright. Under sever trauma the mind reached a point at which it simply could not function properly any longer and its wires crossed, reversing the polarity. The result was radical personality change.....
Given enough pressure and fear, he said, everyone would break down eventually.
Most importantly, such traumatised patients had a further trait: they were immensely, abnormally, suggestible.
p. 17-18
This is the stand out story of the whole book for me. That trauma can make animals and people forget everything they've learned and enough fear can flip them. In light of this, I've begun to rethink my experiences of hospitals and giving birth and how that ripped open all my old trauma. Unpredictable physical pain coupled with statements like "All the pain would stop if you'd only let me..." and everything I'd learned was wiped away, like the dogs and the water hose. I've also begun to wonder which extremes I flip between and I think several are- active and passive, optimistic and despairing, cooperative and uncompliant, and trusting and terrified.
I 'm not sure I feel better, precisely, but maybe clearer, with how utterly freaked out I was about being made unconscious to have my cyst removed. I was going to be unconscious and out of control of my body and I could not stop panicking although I could articulate why and make to choice to do it anyway. Like the dogs with wet feet, dignity and calm acceptance was not an option. How stupid and humiliated I have felt. But if it is true that given enough pressure and fear, everyone breaks down eventually, then even if I don't exactly feel comforted, perhaps, I can accept. I've simply found my breaking point and maybe I can learn compassion for myself on my worst moments of my worst days. And maybe, I can hold compassion and dignity in trust for everyone else who will eventually find their breaking point, too.
The prisoner should also be physically exhausted. Make him stand in a corner, or adopt a stress position, such as crouching on his haunches with his hands on his head. CIA research in the 1950s and 1960s showed that situations where individuals caused themselves physical pain (by prolonged standing, for example) were more effective at inducing confessions than those where the interrogator induced pain directly by beating. If the man is made to stand until he feels like talking, it's his own stubbornness that is causing the pain, and you can present this to him quite reasonably as the result of his own intransigence.
In all of these situation, it is crucial you make it clear to the subject that there is an alternative to this regime. 'They can stop all this by talking to you,' says the Intelligence Corps veteran. 'Simple! "All you have to do is put up your hand: 'I want to talk with an interrogator.' "Of course! Come along with us! Nice cup of tea! Once you're finished you'll be on your way to a nice prison camp, wherever, Not a problem.... convince him that really resistance is a complete waste of time: "The more you resist, the more uncomfortable life is going to be. Therefore, talk to me. Make it easy now." p. 355-356
After the sentence about individuals causing themselves pain being more effective than torture, I again had to put the book down and take deep breaths. This is the essence of my deepest dysfunction- being trapped into causing myself pain, damned if I do and damned if I don't. I hear vague whispers of Grampa here promising that he wouldn't have to smother me into unconsciousness if I was a good girl and obeyed him. And unfortunately, in a twist of pure evil, the people who most trigger this for me are medical people who promise to take my pain away at the price of losing track of my body or making me unconscious. The more desperate I became, the more terrified of accepting help. I was like the dog in the flooding cage who tries to bite the person opening the cage door to release her.
This deeply disturbing book caused Tim nightmares and I don't recommend it lightly. If you need an up close look at the effects of evil, which I did, then I highly recommend it. I will also recommend it for health care people and people like counselors who work with people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Chinese...had set about trying to reform errant Communists by mistreating them, then using measured rewards and punishments to persuade them of the beauties of socialism. p.15
The idea of pain followed by rewards and punishments to change belief and behavior resonated so powerfully for me that I had to put the book down and take deep breaths. Rape by night and poached eggs on toast for breakfast. Being blamed for wetting the bed (yeah, that'd be semen) then when I would cry, being coddled instead because I was presumed sick. Yikes!
Pavlov's most important discovery came about not as a result of his meticulous experiments but by accident. In 1924 there was a terrible flood in Leningrad. The waters had risen so fast that Pavlov's dogs, trapped in the laboratory, were in danger of drowning and were forced to swim around their cages, desperately holding their noses above water. Luckily, a research assistant arrived just in time to free them.
Once the water had subsided and Pavlov's team got back to work, however, it became clear that something strange had happened: all the dogs' conditioned reflexes- salivating and so forth- had gone. For the dogs, the near-drowning experience had been so terrifying that their learnt behaviour had been erased. Pavlov's dogs had been brainwashed by their own fear.
Months later, when the dogs had been retrained, Pavlov decided to try an experiment. He positioned a hosepipe beneath the door of his laboratory and turned on the tap to see what happened. As the water ran into the animal compound, the dogs immediately panicked as they had during the great flood. Sure enough, when tested after the experiment, they had forgotten all their conditioning cues again....
In this case, he said, extreme fear or trauma transformed positive conditioning into negative conditioning. As had happened during the flood, the dogs became so traumatized that they did the exact opposite of what they had been trained to do. An aggressive dog might become docile; a friendly dog might bite a laboratory attendant. In the Ultra Paradoxical Phase, character traits were reversed.
From Pavlov's work, Sargant concluded that if an experience was violent or traumatic enough, it was possible to reverse behavioural traits outright. Under sever trauma the mind reached a point at which it simply could not function properly any longer and its wires crossed, reversing the polarity. The result was radical personality change.....
Given enough pressure and fear, he said, everyone would break down eventually.
Most importantly, such traumatised patients had a further trait: they were immensely, abnormally, suggestible.
p. 17-18
This is the stand out story of the whole book for me. That trauma can make animals and people forget everything they've learned and enough fear can flip them. In light of this, I've begun to rethink my experiences of hospitals and giving birth and how that ripped open all my old trauma. Unpredictable physical pain coupled with statements like "All the pain would stop if you'd only let me..." and everything I'd learned was wiped away, like the dogs and the water hose. I've also begun to wonder which extremes I flip between and I think several are- active and passive, optimistic and despairing, cooperative and uncompliant, and trusting and terrified.
I 'm not sure I feel better, precisely, but maybe clearer, with how utterly freaked out I was about being made unconscious to have my cyst removed. I was going to be unconscious and out of control of my body and I could not stop panicking although I could articulate why and make to choice to do it anyway. Like the dogs with wet feet, dignity and calm acceptance was not an option. How stupid and humiliated I have felt. But if it is true that given enough pressure and fear, everyone breaks down eventually, then even if I don't exactly feel comforted, perhaps, I can accept. I've simply found my breaking point and maybe I can learn compassion for myself on my worst moments of my worst days. And maybe, I can hold compassion and dignity in trust for everyone else who will eventually find their breaking point, too.
The prisoner should also be physically exhausted. Make him stand in a corner, or adopt a stress position, such as crouching on his haunches with his hands on his head. CIA research in the 1950s and 1960s showed that situations where individuals caused themselves physical pain (by prolonged standing, for example) were more effective at inducing confessions than those where the interrogator induced pain directly by beating. If the man is made to stand until he feels like talking, it's his own stubbornness that is causing the pain, and you can present this to him quite reasonably as the result of his own intransigence.
In all of these situation, it is crucial you make it clear to the subject that there is an alternative to this regime. 'They can stop all this by talking to you,' says the Intelligence Corps veteran. 'Simple! "All you have to do is put up your hand: 'I want to talk with an interrogator.' "Of course! Come along with us! Nice cup of tea! Once you're finished you'll be on your way to a nice prison camp, wherever, Not a problem.... convince him that really resistance is a complete waste of time: "The more you resist, the more uncomfortable life is going to be. Therefore, talk to me. Make it easy now." p. 355-356
After the sentence about individuals causing themselves pain being more effective than torture, I again had to put the book down and take deep breaths. This is the essence of my deepest dysfunction- being trapped into causing myself pain, damned if I do and damned if I don't. I hear vague whispers of Grampa here promising that he wouldn't have to smother me into unconsciousness if I was a good girl and obeyed him. And unfortunately, in a twist of pure evil, the people who most trigger this for me are medical people who promise to take my pain away at the price of losing track of my body or making me unconscious. The more desperate I became, the more terrified of accepting help. I was like the dog in the flooding cage who tries to bite the person opening the cage door to release her.
This deeply disturbing book caused Tim nightmares and I don't recommend it lightly. If you need an up close look at the effects of evil, which I did, then I highly recommend it. I will also recommend it for health care people and people like counselors who work with people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Special note to Megan and Angela
Good morning, ladies.
You were just the antidote to everything crazy and intense and alone last night. I slept great, dreamed hard, and am waking up feeling unclenched, ready to face my day. I'm not sure how you do that aside from the cake and laughs but you bring out the sane and self-aware and resilience in me.
I am very grateful.
You were just the antidote to everything crazy and intense and alone last night. I slept great, dreamed hard, and am waking up feeling unclenched, ready to face my day. I'm not sure how you do that aside from the cake and laughs but you bring out the sane and self-aware and resilience in me.
I am very grateful.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Fealty and Brainwash
I've been reading some interesting book.
One book is called Brainwash and it's history of the last century of brainwashing. I originally reserved it because I was curious about the psychological affects of abuse and torture. I'm doing a lot of thinking about abuse and how it changes personality and will.
The other book is a fantasy book by Elizabeth Moon called Oath of Fealty. The old Duke who was secretly involved in worship of Liart, the god of torture, was killed and another Duke who serves gods of healing comes to the land. The Duke finds a pregnant kitchen maid who describes being ritualistically tortured and raped and then was told the child was Liart's. They forced her to swear silence and in speaking is afraid she'll be cursed. Here's the Duke's response:
Child, the gods forgive such oaths...you are not bound to Liart. You can renounce that oath and take a better one....you can't undo what's done, or unsay what's said...you can say differently this time.
I've repeatedly thought of this quote since I read the book months ago. For me this captures something essential in my healing process.
More reflections later.
One book is called Brainwash and it's history of the last century of brainwashing. I originally reserved it because I was curious about the psychological affects of abuse and torture. I'm doing a lot of thinking about abuse and how it changes personality and will.
The other book is a fantasy book by Elizabeth Moon called Oath of Fealty. The old Duke who was secretly involved in worship of Liart, the god of torture, was killed and another Duke who serves gods of healing comes to the land. The Duke finds a pregnant kitchen maid who describes being ritualistically tortured and raped and then was told the child was Liart's. They forced her to swear silence and in speaking is afraid she'll be cursed. Here's the Duke's response:
Child, the gods forgive such oaths...you are not bound to Liart. You can renounce that oath and take a better one....you can't undo what's done, or unsay what's said...you can say differently this time.
I've repeatedly thought of this quote since I read the book months ago. For me this captures something essential in my healing process.
More reflections later.
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Joshua Tree
I never got into popular music when I was a teen- never much impressed. A lot of it was vulgar or poor quality musicianship, and liking this or that was yet another status system I didn't care to play. So I avoided it as much as possible. I didn't listen to pop radio, didn't own cassette tapes except for a couple of Christian musicians, and in an unfortunately haughty twist of counter-status, secretly looked down on those who did- poor, tasteless lemmings.
When I recently heard people mention their top albums of all time and I had never listened to The Joshua Tree or Sergeant Pepper's, I reserved both at the library out of curiosity and just got them this last week. With all my solo driving around for home visits, I've had lots of time to listen. So I pop Joshua Tree in on Saturday morning on my way to New Prague, not expecting much from U2. With several back-up CD's ready for the probable ejection actually.
Wow- song 1, Where the Streets Have No Names knocked my socks off and then song 2, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For had tears running down my face. I had never heard anyone articulate my own dissatisfaction and longing like this before. Song 3, With or Without You perfectly captured my own dilemma of a couple years ago.
Then I came to a vista and saw my teen years from a different vantage point. I had believed I had found what I was looking for and despised those who hadn't. I had already put people into the piles of Living With You or Living Without You, no matter how miserable it made me. I didn't want to tear down walls and I wasn't burning down love. Not yet. It would take a whole lot of suffering, functionality and honesty, and some compassion and genuine kindness- it would take another 25 years of life- for me to begin to honor this kind of life.
These are songs for grown-ups and I was not.
But now I am and I'm getting myself the CD.
Because I already got the life.
When I recently heard people mention their top albums of all time and I had never listened to The Joshua Tree or Sergeant Pepper's, I reserved both at the library out of curiosity and just got them this last week. With all my solo driving around for home visits, I've had lots of time to listen. So I pop Joshua Tree in on Saturday morning on my way to New Prague, not expecting much from U2. With several back-up CD's ready for the probable ejection actually.
Wow- song 1, Where the Streets Have No Names knocked my socks off and then song 2, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For had tears running down my face. I had never heard anyone articulate my own dissatisfaction and longing like this before. Song 3, With or Without You perfectly captured my own dilemma of a couple years ago.
Then I came to a vista and saw my teen years from a different vantage point. I had believed I had found what I was looking for and despised those who hadn't. I had already put people into the piles of Living With You or Living Without You, no matter how miserable it made me. I didn't want to tear down walls and I wasn't burning down love. Not yet. It would take a whole lot of suffering, functionality and honesty, and some compassion and genuine kindness- it would take another 25 years of life- for me to begin to honor this kind of life.
These are songs for grown-ups and I was not.
But now I am and I'm getting myself the CD.
Because I already got the life.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Quotes
I've been watching two sci-fi shows, Sanctuary and Stargate Atlantis, and several quotes struck me. I wanted to type them here before I lose the paper I jotted them on.
The future is predetermined by the character of those who shape it.
Intriguing twist on the free will/fate question. In the story, this plays out in an unexpected climax to a battle scene between the good guys and the bad guys each being true to their character.
What's bred in the bone can't be undone in the flesh.
In context this was a chilling quote by a murderer about his daughter.
And this quote I heard two different ways as I was listening, both of which I find thought-provoking.
Feeling love and inflicting pain are mutually exclusive.
Feeling love and inflicting pain aren't mutually exclusive.
The first feels either clear and healthy or over simplistic, depending on how I tilt my head.
The second I find chilling and I can't decide if I'm cold because it's a clever lie or a painful truth.
The future is predetermined by the character of those who shape it.
Intriguing twist on the free will/fate question. In the story, this plays out in an unexpected climax to a battle scene between the good guys and the bad guys each being true to their character.
What's bred in the bone can't be undone in the flesh.
In context this was a chilling quote by a murderer about his daughter.
And this quote I heard two different ways as I was listening, both of which I find thought-provoking.
Feeling love and inflicting pain are mutually exclusive.
Feeling love and inflicting pain aren't mutually exclusive.
The first feels either clear and healthy or over simplistic, depending on how I tilt my head.
The second I find chilling and I can't decide if I'm cold because it's a clever lie or a painful truth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
