There's more, GS...
I stole some time at work the other day to post, because everything started to come clear very quickly and because now I've figured out the tech problem I've been having - too many computers!
I was logged in permanently on 3... Today, I'm taking the afternoon off... my comp time... for the extra hours I've worked in the last week.
It's as if I had all the puzzle pieces and I simply couldn't fit any of them together in a convincing way without 2 key pieces - Jill Taylor's book and explanations about L/R brain personality/selves and the fact that people with disturbed primal attachments (which made me remember Carolyn's GREAT thread) with their primary caregiver don't develop full the r-brain centers. The paper I found was: Attachment trauma and the developing right brain: Origins of pathological dissociation. Author is Allan N. Schore, UCLA School of Medicine. It's heavy on the neuroscience - but still readable.
To paraphrase the gist of this attachment issue:
If a mother doesn't respond to the cries of an infant... the infant's terror escalates... until it finally "shuts down" and withdraws from the unbearable aloneness.
If a mother responds inappropriately - with anger, frustration, impatience - the mother becomes a NEW threat... and in the neural pathways, there's built up over time the connection that mom is scary... mom is to be feared: disrupted and disturbed attachment, in other words. So r-brain doesn't have the experience of being cared for and soothed by an appropriately responding mom. It doesn't add that neural pathway connection to it's reference files.
OK: r-brain is responsible for feelings of well-being. Dr. Taylor's descriptions of her stroke and how comfortable she was in her r-brain experience - even though she was aware she was having a stroke - are a case in point. She LIKED the way she felt. And she realized that this was a place of healing, too. When she needed to, she slept or dozed - drifting in/out of that r-brain experience. Her stroke affected her L-brain functioning - the process-oriented, linear, how-to part of her brain.
A memory came to me; something that happened to me and is part of our FOO's scrapbook of memories. When I was 3-4, I was sleeping and dreaming. The ice cream truck came by... and my brother tried to wake me; Mom was going to buy ice cream. But I told him to go away and let me sleep - I was dreaming that Roy Rogers & Dale Evans were going to adopt me and I would be able to go live with them. My brother still razzes me about this... but in light of all this work I've done, I can only think WHY would a 3-4 yr old prefer a dream of living with another family to ice cream?? (This has been a conscious memory all my life... and it's validated by my brother's remembering the incident). The only reason I can think of is that I didn't feel safe, my needs weren't being met, and I was ignored. In reality, I was usually expected to keep an eye on my brother - and I have another memory/real event to back to back that up. So, I've realized slowly... that this problem of mine goes back way before the trauma I experienced. I suffered some sort of attachment injury with my mother - and was aware of it (albeit juvenilely) - even at 3-4. I KNOW both types of disturbed attachment, that I've described above.
Here's the real kick in the pants for me... when I was "little Amber" (before Twiggy)... I was allowed to drift off into whatever world I could self-soothe or self-calm in. With a scary, unpredicatable, intruding home environment, I learned to do this quite well. My mother really didn't care - and the fact that I expressed no needs - asked nothing of her - suited her to a T. That made me a "good girl", you see.
But later - when I was Twiggy - she wouldn't allow me that place of healing that I needed. My environment was still unpredictable - and during the traumatic time, downright dangerous - and by then, I was hypersensitive as all abused children are, if they're not permanently withdrawn. To recover from the rape - and all that was done to me after - I wanted to retreat to my self-soothing, self-calming r-brained self. But I wasn't allowed. I was punished for this. And the odd thing - the important thing - is that I wasn't immediately dissociated after the rape: I was still quite functional, rational, and acting on a legitimate fear of the rapist returning.
My mother disappeared after the rape. I spent time with my Aunt - and I was confused, injured, emotional, but STILL RATIONAL. I didn't know where my mother went or why. It was only after I returned to that house, with my mother, that I gradually slipped away...
mostly because she gaslighted me about what happened. Lied. Blatantly.
Expected me not to remember. (yet she's told me even in the last few months what a great memory I have; yeah - it's a photographic memory.)
But my mother was getting increasingly crazy - scary crazy - and I think at that time, during the time I was shunned & forced to put Twiggy away - I suffered or re-experienced my original attachment injury.
By that time, I'd discovered that nicotine was a wonder drug: it enhanced Lbrain activity - which my mother wanted. But it also gave me an escape from her, long enough to access r-brained me - reducing the intensity of my anxiety, anger, and resistance. And my mother said: whatever works; it could be worse... tacitly giving permission to me to smoke - because my Lbrain had been completely "programmed" with the projections she'd been pushing on me.... and she REALLY wanted me L-brained, being the resident adult in the FOO, and to keep me away from the r-brained memories I had. Would've ruined her illusion of control over me, don't ya know?
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So there it is. Finally, the WHY I smoke... what purpose it actually serves for me. And also: the way to quit smoking. I've trained myself - all my life - how to access r-brain self: to make art, to meditate, to self-soothe - all ways to experience well-being. My last "problem" is convincing L-brain, that nothing bad will happen if it's no longer hyper-anything; the little dictator; the "monkey" that zen buddhists train to run up & down the pole. It doesn't get killed off - only given the work that it is intended to do... NOT the work of R-brain.
My tai chi teacher says it takes 5000 repetitions before something new, is completely integrated or seems "normal". That's about 9 months of not smoking (ironic??)... and you GET there by not smoking "this one". By not letting L-brain "remember" to smoke. By doing something else, instead. Like "stepping to the right" long enough to forget about the cigarette.
<< side note: Twiggy is helping. I've gone to buy smokes & walked out without them. I've tried to light them - but missed. I've broken them, flicking ashes out the jeep window. And yesterday: (caveat: I'm JUST FINE) I lit one while sending Mike off to work and had butane all over my gloves & robe & scarf... I caught myself on fire. I have a r-brained memory of playing with the valve on the lighter... and was for a split-second amazed at the fire on my hands... before my instinct (twiggy?) dropped me to the ground while Mike patted out the flames. Just the butane burned; my gloves weren't even singed and I never felt any heat. I WANT TO QUIT. My L-brain just doesn't know it yet - after I threw my clothes in the washer and washed my face & hands, I found matches & smoked that damn cigarette. SIGH >>
My 2 sessions with my T were the frosting on the cake. When I said L-brain seemed terrified that I would dissociate without nicotine and that this would be bad - she called it for what it was: a rationalization. Says she has zero-tolerance for rationalizations. Banishes them immediately. She said: if you feel you want to smoke: smoke. If don't: don't. And of course,
feeling - that level of integrated feeling - is r-brained. As my hubby says: how bad do you want it?
Smoking itself is the problem these days. It's only reinforcing the OLD neural pathway connections... making me vulnerable to over-stimulation in my environment, weak boundaries, unclear thinking. It IS - not a symbol for - it IS a continuation of the abuse I suffered... and it's coming from my own self - the Lbrain programming. My life will soon change and I'm determined, strongly, that smoking doesn't go with me into that new phase of my life. I DON'T WANT IT anymore. Whatever else happens - fuzzy thinking, time distortion, r-brained experience - it's worth it if I can stop the abuse engraved in my brain (for survival's sake) that's playing over & over like a record with a skip in it.
As Hops said: a hug is a boundary... smoke is a boundary. These words sent me searching for the 2 pieces that - without which - I couldn't complete the picture. (Hops: I'll need your address - I WANT to send you something!
)
Taking that first step off the tall, tall cliff now... and if I flap my arms enough, I KNOW I'm gonna fly. Ain't no other option... not for me.
