| 1. Preface, Part I: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder, July 26, 2013 2. Preface, Part II: This Is Gonna Hurt, August 1, 2013 3. Forward, Part I: The Day That Einstein Feared Has Arrived, August 2, 2013 4. Forward, Part II: Hole in My Heart, August 9, 2013 5. Chapter 1, Part I: Death and Taxes, August 16, 2013 |
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Right: Attachment Disorder 1a |
Post #1 of an ongoing series Are parts of your brain dark? Silly, you say. Well, did you ever have a broken heart? Closer to home? Hey, I had such a successful global career that I didn't know it for decades, but parts of my brain were dark, and my heart was way far broken. So goes Attachment Disorder – and it turns out maybe 50% or more of Americans have some brand of it. No wonder we've got a 52% divorce rate and a Congress that can't seem to function (not to mention the ratty |
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| odds in internet dating). Science has only recently demonstrated that unless kids (and other mammals) are given deep emotional connection (“attachment”) from birth by parents or others, infant neurological systems just don't develop well. They can now do brain scans showing that whole chunks of neurons in some brain regions don't fire; it's dark in there. The resulting attachment disorder causes intense emotional pain that is transmitted by the brain stem to the neurons around the heart and other viscera, producing, literally, a broken heart - and it hurts, big time. While this means a lot more of us do need to have our heads examined (we need help!), it is definitely not “all in our heads.” This ain't just our imagination. Attachment disorder is a medical condition at the interface between the emotions and the body. When a mother doesn't respond to her baby with strong positive emotions (whether mom's being battered, has bad stress at work, or is just a jerk), the infant's instincts read that as a survival threat. This floods its bloodstream with fight/flight stress chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. But a baby is helpless to use these to act in self defense; if some adult doesn't make the baby feel safe, stress chemicals overwhelm its brain and within 45 minutes the baby goes into clinical shock.1b What began as emotional stress, ends in physical brain damage. I performed with apparent success as an international business gal and opera singer (in several languages) for decades, without the faintest notion I might be shrink fodder. Suddenly in 2007, I was in a divorce from a 27-year marriage to my college sweetheart which left me bankrupt and running like hell 3,000 miles away. Then both my parents died, plus I had two bad rebound affairs – five life disasters in 18 months. It felt like being hit by two cars, two trucks, and a jet airplane. I came to where my father died in 2008, and I couldn’t cry. “You need to have your head examined,” me, myself, and I decided. I saw one therapist who listened helplessly, a second who coldly said “grow up,” and then I read enough studies on the incompetence of psychotherapy to barf. So I quit therapy in 2009 and opted for do-it-yourself. |
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| A friend gave me a book on grief and, heeding the ancient wisdom that forgiveness clears heart and mind, I began to write Grief Forgiveness letters to my ex, my mom, and my dad.2 I drew myself a cartoon, “This is going to flatten you for a few days (to face all this pain),” but then I'll be ready to re-marry. No need to jump off my balcony. Grief, however, doesn't do take-out orders. I sobbed over my feelings towards my ex for 18 months, even held a funeral for my lost marriage. Yet after a week's relief, intense |
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| “break-through” grief about my dad suddenly surfaced. Taking a breath, I had at it again, but the more grief I addressed, the more and deeper layers of emotional pain surfaced. The feelings coming up, I gradually saw, were those of a younger and younger me. As I wrote forgiveness letters to my ex, I felt feelings from back in my twenties. As I wrote letters to my dad, I felt feelings from grade school; the voice of a five-year-old girl literally popped up speaking in my head at times. (I'd sung the lead in Verdi's opera “Joan of Arc” around 1996, but this sure was a stretch.) Then as I wrote letters to my mom, I went back, and back, and back – but where was the bottom, with a mom? |
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There were so many deep layers, it felt like falling through miles of rock layers as deep as the endless striated walls of the Grand Canyon. Some days, I made jokes and friends took pictures of me moving striped mountains. Some days I began to feel emotional pain, with physical chest and gut pain, of an intensity resembling nothing so much as a 24 x 7 bone marrow transplant, no anesthesia, which went on for about three years. It was all an accident. I didn't mean to do it, a point I never tired of making later to astonished doctors and in prayer (God took it in stride). But once I was falling through the layers of the Grand Canyon, there was no way to stop - short of alcohol or the like, which disgusted me - or suicide. Jumping off my balcony often did seem quite attractive, it turned out. |
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Imagine my annoyance when I had to give up even that, after seeing suicide's nasty effects on a friend whose spouse went that route. I literally had no exit and it stank – so down and down I went, down through the layers of flash-backs and pain until one 2011 morning at 2 a.m., I found myself on the bedroom floor in the fetal position, clutching a large stuffed dog, and eyeing a soggy toothbrush with which I had not even been able to brush my teeth before crumpling.
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