Singing for Joy after Trauma: My Music Video!

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Kathy

On February 28, 2018, I published a hair-raising book on my first six years facing crushing infant trauma, Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder, now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128

On April 11, 2018, I was singing for joy in public in Mexico!  Yup, that’s me at left; click the photo for a better view. And here’s my first music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpx6j89aPWw

Visiting Mazatlan that day, I heard Jose the Tenor singing in Plaza Machado, the town square. He was so musical, I just had to join him in a spontaneous riff on Verdi’s Rigoletto. I couldn’t help singing–and then we couldn’t help dancing. Who cares if “La donna è mobile” is for tenors?  We nailed it!

Dr. Peter Levine was right in his 2005 book Healing Trauma: if we face the trauma squarely and walk through the pain, we can find such relief that it feels like “an experience of God.” [1]

I didn’t even know that I was sick until I was over 50.  Whu Nhu?  Then I discovered that I had un-diagnosed infant trauma, and I’d been living with half a brain since forever.

Music Heals to Our Core

It also turned out that the healing power of music is strong for trauma. In fact, my book describes how I used music to survive all my life.

I ran around at age four singing high scales to a Disney soundtrack and never knew it was Donizetti until I turned 30. As teen I holed up alone singing folk laments with my guitar or dancing for joy to the radio. Had this not be frowned upon, I might have made a career of it.

Instead I got a math degree and worked as an economist and with rocket scientists, but for the next 40 years I also sang operas and classical art songs in several languages for hours a week–for love, not money. I just physically couldn’t stop singing (and dancing) for decades.

The therapeutic power of music has a powerfully simple basis: human beings, like other life forms, are musical organisms. From conception, our first cell divisions occur in a rhythmic division by two, by two, and two again.

We are also not isolated but in a “duet,” in which our mother’s emotions, heartbeat, and other body rhythms are also encoded into our embryonic cells as rhythmic vibrations.

“The first music encoded deep within your memory are… the rhythms and tempos of your first cells,” writes neurophysiologist Galina Mindlin, MD. “As your cells began to develop with the comforting rhythms of your mother’s heartbeat and the whooshing sounds vibrating through her placenta and your umbilical cord, these first musical scores began entraining (two or more rhythms synchronizing into one) in your brain and orchestrating the essence of music for your entire being.” [2]

And we’re designed for this “duet” to continue,  from birth to age three and beyond, because a baby’s brain requires it.  We need a responsive two-way communication with an adult’s eyes and facial expressions for our brains to develop. Responsive, musical interactions with the mother cause an infant’s neurons to fire in neural circuits for affection, stimulating growth there and in the brain generally.

This pattern is so musical that neuroscientists and psychologists use the musical word “attunement” for the two-way infant-parent duet. It’s from the two English words “at” and “tune,” meaning “to bring into harmony.”  See my blog on this here: https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/allan-schore/

Or Not…

Or not. It turned out that I had a major deficit of this biologically-necessary positive musical duet experience from conception and after birth, resulting in developmental trauma and severe attachment disorder.

Instead of “comforting rhythms,” I was gestated in my mother’s anxiety and anger about an unwanted pregnancy. This led to an emergency caesarean and my immediate incubation for weeks, in an era before remediation when incubatees were routinely given phenobarbital to silence them. Then I was put in a back room to “cry it out” alone and raised by a stuffed cat.

I didn’t get that two-way duet. I didn’t get any musical anything for months or years after I was born.

So my entire body–which was still composed of rhythmically dividing cells– craved the musical experience. That craving was baked into my cells, but I didn’t get it, and I didn’t get it, and then finally one day:

Just imagine how wonderful it felt when I finally did get to hear and actually sing (and dance) real music!

Of course, music isn’t all it takes; we have to face the pain. But music sure helps.

My book and website show that some 50% of industrial nations’ populations have significant childhood trauma, often due to this lack of a positive musical experience in the womb and during early years. Half of us have child trauma, we’re not taught to look for it, and so we don’t get healing.

In fact, unaddressed childhood trauma is more likely to take 20 years off our lifespan. See the Appendix to my book at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128

Music has gone far to provide this healing for me and for so many.  Music should be much more widely used to treat trauma from childhood or at any time of life.

Footnotes

[1] Levine, PA. (2005, p.4, p.79-81). Healing Trauma.
[2] Mindlin G, et. al. (2012). Your Playlist Can Change Your Life.

 —————

Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post. Current software limits comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs).

News blogs expand on my book Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.  Watch as my journey of recovery teaches me the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Brous.  All right reserved. No portion of this website, except for brief reviews and live links to this website, may be copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever. All use must show prominent and clear attribution to Kathy Brous at https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com

Medical Disclaimer: This website is for general information purposes only. It is simply my own research. Individuals should always see their health care provider or licensed psychotherapist before doing anything which they believe to be suggested or indicated herein. Any application of the material on this website is at the reader’s discretion and is the reader’s sole responsibility.

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Parenting as We Were Parented

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Kathy

CLICK to BUY “Don’t Try This Alone”!

“License to Parent,” the new film by George Siegal, will be out soon. He interviewed kids to see how it felt to be parented, and often it wasn’t good (photo, left). In a May 6 post titled “We Have a Parenting Problem,” George writes that “parenting is the most important job in the world,” but “many parents have no idea what they are doing… what about the rights of the child?  It’s a strange balance in our society, if you think about how badly a parent is allowed to fail before the state steps in and does something…”

George wants new programs such as Minnesota’s state-wide early childhood family ed plan, with over 40,000 parents enrolled. He’s got more ideas, and all these programs are a great first step. Click here for the details: http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/we-have-a-parenting-problem

But George’s post has also sparked a debate about what else is needed.

“Baked-in” Trauma Over Generations

“I believe many of us parent the way we were parented, and that the presence or absence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) is often passed down and generational,” Boston writer and children’s advocate Christine Cissy White commented May 7 on George’s post.

There is often “community-wide trauma,” she notes; “some adults and families are traumatized by systems. We can’t look at kids without looking at families they are being raised by, and we can’t look at parents without looking at a wider community context.”

Christine is so right! The problem is that “poor parenting” gets actually baked into parents’ brains over generations. So parents need personal healing, as well as education and information.

“Parenting well does not come naturally. What comes naturally is parenting the way we were parented,” as Allan Schore, the world leader on attachment, often says. (1)

Almost all parenting that hurts kids goes back 3, 4, 10 or more generations. It’s “inter-generational trauma” that becomes ingrained in the parents’ subconscious, over and over, and unseen by anyone.

Attachment from conception to age 5 literally creates a child’s brain. When that parent’s brain was developing as a child, if they had their own traumatic childhood, then that’s physically the only parenting “software” they received.

So that’s the only parenting “software” they have to give.

That parent is almost physically incapable of passing on anything but what they received, which was trauma, to their own children. For extended documentation see my book, “Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder” at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128

Butt End of Evolution

In Chapter 17 of my book, I take it back to my great-grandmother. I’m the logical consequence of evolution, the “Butt End of Evolution,” I say. “Fear has been bred into our neurons since the cave days; it’s called the ‘negativity bias’ of the brain. Brains that feared more were the ones that survived to pass on genes. (2)

“Finally my great-grand parents faced so much fear in Europe that they traveled from England to South Africa to Australia to California in the bellies of steamers, having 13 children in 13 different cities. My Mom’s mom was the twelfth.

“Babies need a mom’s attention to grow brain structure. How much attention could #12 have gotten? Do the math. Poor immigrants went in steerage; #12 of 13 kids born in hellholes?  They lived in fight-flight 24×7. That ramped up cortisol gets frozen into our back muscles. That’s why my Mom had back pain all her life and so did Grandma; we all had the same trauma as infants.

“Grandma couldn’t have gotten much more parenting than the luggage! She had no parenting software to give Mom. ‘Mothering well doesn’t come naturally,’ says Allan Schore. ‘What comes naturally is mothering as you were mothered.’

“Great-grandma treated Grandma like luggage, so Grandma only knew to treat Mom like luggage. Mom didn’t even want the luggage. I’m third-generation luggage. I have so much emotional baggage, I couldn’t even procreate.  I was too terrified of what I felt during my own childhood, to have children.  Shrinks call it ‘refusal to repeat.’

“Many mothers have trouble handling their own emotions,” says Schore. If she’s too preoccupied, “she just can’t read the baby’s tone… facial expressions and gestures. You see inter-generational transmission of these deficits.”

Wounded Attachment Needs Attachment

For these reasons, healing parental trauma and what it does to their kids, and getting a driver’s license, are just different.  At least when I got my California license in 2011, we read a brochure and checked off boxes on a test. That can all be done by computer, no humans involved.

But traumatized parents have taken traumatic damage during their own childhood attachment relationships.  It goes really deep.

And what was damaged by an attachment relationship, can only be healed by a new human-to-human attachment relationship.

Parenting healing must include major face-to-face, person-to-person healing done by other human beings, with the parents, in support groups, therapy groups, and sometimes individual therapy.  This will take months and years, depending on the depth of the parent’s emotional hurts.  It needs the latest attachment and brain science healing modalities as described in my book.

Certainly we need to keep up the educational wing of promoting trauma-informed care in parenting, and films on parenting are important in this.

Yet parents will keep traumatizing children unless and until the parents themselves receive major healing to rewire their own emotionally-hurt brain circuits.

That takes time, emotional depth on the part of the healers, and major social investment.  How would we possibly do this?  That’s an excellent question; the only answer I have so far is that I just published a book about it.  I sincerely wish I had more of an answer.

But we must at least state the problem clearly, and be careful not to ignore it because it’s so difficult to address and so huge.

The problem is that traumatized parents themselves need personal healing, or they will continue to pass on their trauma, and so will their children.

Footnotes

(1)  Schore, Alan N. (6-15-11). (6-15-11). Affect Regulation and Mind-Brain-Body Healing of Trauma. NICABM.com/treating-trauma/?del=programspage

(2)  Hanson, Rick. (9-28-11). Neurodharma: How to Train the Brain Toward Mindfulness. NICABM.com/mindfulness-2011-new/

Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post. Current software limits comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs).

News blogs expand on my book “Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.”  Watch as my journey of recovery teaches me the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Brous.  All right reserved. No portion of this website, except for brief reviews and live links to this website, may be copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever. All use must show prominent and clear attribution to Kathy Brous at https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com.

Medical Disclaimer: This website is for general information purposes only. It is simply my own research. Individuals should always see their health care provider or licensed psychotherapist before doing anything which they believe to be suggested or indicated herein. Any application of the material on this website is at the reader’s discretion and is the reader’s sole responsibility.

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Posted in Attachment Disorder, Attachment Theory, Brain Science, Dissociation, Emotional pain, Trauma | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

I had a blast: “Mary Giuliani LIVE!” Apr 18

Posted on April 17, 2018 by Kathy

Mary and I had a blast on her Mary Giuliani LIVE Internet show April 18!  Trauma, schmauma, I want to go on the late night TV comedy circuit with her. You’re gonna love this video, especially if you’ve seen Mary’s show before, or my website here, or my new book, Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.  I start by showing that an adult’s head would never make it out of the birth canal (above), so babies are born with only a third of the brain online.

 Watch here or click photo below link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=461&v=gATHbPy4ZTM

As I say in Don’t Try This Alone, after decades of a bad marriage, I finally googled “domestic abuse” and was shocked to read that it didn’t require beating or rape. Verbal, emotional and financial mistreatment are also abuse, said a major university website.

I’d been clueless. “Whu Nu? He was the first Prime Minister of Burma,” I moaned.

CLICK to BUY “Don’t Try This Alone”

Well — Whu Nhu healing trauma could be such fun as this video Mary & I did?

Mary has won the Entrepreneur of the Year award for her show, and interviews all the latest authors on childhood trauma and how to go about healing.

We’re Mammals–Not Reptiles

I start the video with My Big Fat Adult Human Head and the birth canal because that’s one reason why babies are born with only the primitive third of the brain working, the Reptilian brain (brain stem), which we have in common with reptiles.  Our Reptile brain must work at birth to provide basic survival functions like heart beat, breathing, and digestion. Try thinking your way into doing those sometime.  Won’t work.

But–and here’s the key–the other two parts of our brain don’t function much at birth.

Reptiles only need the reptile brain; they’re born running.

But we mammals need more brain power.  Mammals uniquely have developed the “limbic brain,” the emotional lobe of the brain. We created it so we could have emotions, attach to other mammals, and care for our young–so that mammals could develop into more elaborate creatures than reptiles.

Reptiles don’t have emotions; they don’t have an emotional brain. A reptile adult doesn’t need more than a reptile brain, either–they eat their young, they don’t care for them.

The real trick is that from birth, we mammals need other mammals to hold us and gaze into our eyes (that’s called limbic resonance), to stimulate our mammalian limbic neurons to fire–especially in the right brain. From birth to age two or three, that’s our job: fire up our mammalian lobes and right brain. And we need other adult mammals to be present with us, looking at us, to stimulate our limbic neurons to fire.

Dr. Allan Schore, the world’s living expert on this, calls it the “first thousand days” from conception to age two.

Also, starting about age two, we need to fire up our frontal cortex, the huge thinking lobe of the human brain.  By developing most of the limbic lobe and frontal lobe after birth, a baby’s head triples in size from birth to age three.

Or Not

Or Not. If we don’t get that intimate presence, eye gazing, holding, and limbic resonance from another mammal, our mammal neurons don’t fire much during those first crucial years.

In fact, about half of us human mammals don’t receive enough mammalian presence as babies, as my book demonstrates at length.

I was an “Or Not” baby; I never got that mammal stuff. I was clueless. Finally at age two or three my thinking lobe fired up and went wild trying to over-compensate. I grew a Big Fat Left Thinking Brain, got a degree in math, learned several languages and worked with rocket scientists.

But my right mammal brain never got past the emotions of an infant.  “Whu Nu?”

That’s why well over half of our government, business, and other leaders are brilliant, successful–and totally clueless about the needs of our mammalian population.  They didn’t get that mammalian presence as babies, so later their thinking brains over-compensated. They learned early to make money and power plays, but their emotional brains are stunted and, well, infantile.  They  can’t feel what’s happening to other mammals. They just can’t relate.

To get healing, I had to go get that mammalian eye contact from my therapist and adult friends like Mary. That’s what my book’s about.

Mary Giuliani LIVE! Promo

Here’s the promo Mary wrote for our show:

Tired of Struggling with Finding or Maintaining Intimate Relationships?

Join Me For My Interview with
Kathy Brous
Author of
Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder
Ask Kathy Questions or Make Comments During the Show in Real Time
by Using the Chat Below the Live Stream Box at
Mary Giuliani, Winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for her Transformational Talk Show: http://marygiuliani.net/mary/

Kathy was an overachiever—an economist, technical writer, and classical singer married 27 years to her college sweetheart. It looked like Kathy was fine. But deep within her hid a pain from infancy so severe that a cascade of adult life crises finally triggered it. And once it exploded, the pain was unbearable.

Kathy discovered she was suffering attachment disorder, a psychological condition potentially affecting almost half the US population. caused by traumatic stress in the first three years of life. Attachment disorder correlates with the nation’s 50 percent divorce rate and widespread mental health issues. Yet no one talks about its prevalence, and hence so many sufferers go untreated, forced to live with their pain in silence—without a hint of its cause.

This was certainly true for Kathy. But when her initial forays into psychiatric help failed, Kathy decided to treat herself. It was a mistake that almost cost her life.

My chat with Kathy will resonate with anyone who suffered from a difficult childhood, or those who are currently struggling with finding or maintaining intimate relationships. The good news is there’s hope! Kathy’s story also shares a multitude of help and healing that are out there.

Tune in to learn the root cause of relationship struggles and join the conversation by asking questions with Kathy! Please join us April 18! Warmest regards,
Mary
Tune in each alternate Wednesday, 7pm Pacific
Watch Mary Giuliani LIVE Transformational Talk Show
Watch Replays of Past Shows
Subscribe On ITunes
Winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award http://marygiuliani.net/mary/

———————-

Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, politics, off-color talk, etc. don’t post. Current software limits comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs).

News blogs expand on my book Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.  Watch as my journey of recovery teaches me the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Brous.  All right reserved. No portion of this website, except for brief reviews and live links to this website, may be copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever. All use must show prominent and clear attribution to Kathy Brous at https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com.

Medical Disclaimer: This website is for general information purposes only. It is simply my own research. Individuals should always see their health care provider or licensed psychotherapist before doing anything which they believe to be suggested or indicated herein. Any application of the material on this website is at the reader’s discretion and is the reader’s sole responsibility.

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My Book’s Amazon Reviews: Music & Healing

Posted on April 3, 2018 by Kathy

I’m so grateful to have fourteen (!) 5-star reviews on Amazon of my book Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.  Click on the excerpt at left for samples. Below are other quotes.  More here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128#customerReviews

“The world needs this book! Until now, all the books on this I’ve seen are by therapists… I’ve wanted to hear what it was like from behind the eyeballs of someone who has done the work.”

“Full of the scientific why of trauma… A must read. Am buying copies for friends.”

“As an 85-year-old researcher… I extend my best wishes… Kathy has touched the heart of all those young people who unconsciously suffer from attachment disorder.”

“This is a front-row seat on the journey from being half-alive… to full embodiment and aliveness… Kathy combines engaging storytelling, humor, naked honesty and brain science to describe her journey…”

Music and Healing

I’m especially happy that several reviewers picked up on the role of music in my healing. Without music, I’d have been dead long ago.

“I’m glad to read about the role of music in healing that this book describes,” writes L.S. “When Kathy writes about how she sang Handel’s “Messiah” every year forever, it reminds me how my dad used to take the family to ‘Messiah’ every year…”

“She shares her struggles and understanding of the causes of her suffering, with great honesty, humor and a side order of music,” writes Zoedm.

Here’s my problem, which music addresses nicely:

Many moms, like mine, did not receive the neural equipment to feel what a child is feeling. Mom didn’t received it from grandma, and so on back in history.  It’s no one’s fault, but after many generations of this, I wound up as the butt end of evolution: https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/butt-end-of-evolution/

When this happens, we have little experience of what Allan Score calls “attunement.” He’s the top attachment expert in the US, and he literally uses a musical term for human-to-human resonance.

The human body is a rhythmic organ from our earliest cell divisions. Our cells divide in half, again and again, and we’re is designed to exist in a rhythmic environment which welcomes this and resonates with it.

Unless we’re an unwanted pregnancy, or mom’s under too much stress at work, or dad’s hitting her… or, or, or.  Then stress chemicals flood the womb and we get a hostile, caustic environment instead.  Under those circumstance, things usually get worse after birth, because no one is able to resonate to us in person, either.  For years, maybe decades.

The brain is a rhythmic organ, I later learned. The reptilian brain stem develops first, the rest of the brain from it, so Reptile propagates its fears through the entire brain, says Bruce Perry, MD. If Reptile is badly distressed, it painfully disables our higher emotional and thinking brains. See “Perry: Rhythm Regulates the Brain,” AttachmentDisorderHealing.com/developmental-trauma-3

Only “rhythmic regulation” can calm such a brain stem, he reports: “patterned, repetitive rhythmic activity: walking, running, dancing, singing, meditative breathing.”  Music can relieve pain because it works at the deepest levels.

Joy States

On the other hand, “joy states” originate, Dr. Schore says, when the infant feels physically:  “Oh, someone’s body is resonating with my body!”

That’s not a thought; infants don’t have cognition. It’s a full-body physical reaction.

But if no one held us and resonated, and we don’t get rhythmic attunement for years — and then we hear music which attunes to our emotions?

It feels like a huge explosion of finally getting what our body and soul has longed for — “since the sperm hit the egg,” in my case.

While I was healing, I’d often have an experience deep within that I couldn’t put into words. So I’d go find a song which resonated the same way. The music helped me put words to the emotion and not feel alone. Someone else had felt this, expressed it, and others had resonated. I wasn’t such a weirdo.

When I couldn’t express an emotion I’d feel lousy, but I learned that if I found a song that resonated with the feeling, I could identify the feeling. Then I’d have to feel it–so at first I felt worse. But afterward I felt a lot better.

When a parent feels what an infant or child is feeling and attunes to the child, that actually helps the child ease bad feelings, and learn how to feel good ones. If no one attunes, both bad and good feelings can feel scary to have.

I latched onto music as a kid because people didn’t feel what I felt, but the music did, so I felt better. I ran around at age four singing high scales to a Disney soundtrack. (I never knew it was Donizetti until I was 30.)

Did I mention “joy states”?  Go to minute 2:45 of this video: “For the First Time in Forever, I’m getting what I’m dreaming of!” says Anna in “Frozen.”  That’s exactly what I was: drop-dead frozen, like Elsa.

But Anna?  Her whole being is exploding in joy, and it’s all about the music.  This is what happened to me when I began to heal, as my book explains at length.

————–

Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post. Current software limits comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs).

News blogs expand on my book “Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.”  Watch as my journey of recovery teaches me the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Brous.  All right reserved. No portion of this website, except for brief reviews and live links to this website, may be copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever. All use must show prominent and clear attribution to Kathy Brous at https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com.

Medical Disclaimer: This website is for general information purposes only. It is simply my own research. Individuals should always see their health care provider or licensed psychotherapist before doing anything which they believe to be suggested or indicated herein. Any application of the material on this website is at the reader’s discretion and is the reader’s sole responsibility.

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Six-City Bus Tour: Campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Kathy

Join me and my friends at Calo Programs, Attachment and Trauma Network (ATN), the American Adoption Congress (AAC) and the Association for Training on Trauma and Attachment in Children (ATTACh) for their “Campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma.”

It’s a six-city bus tour May 4-11 to raise broad public awareness with a new website at www.endchildhoodtrauma.com.

Here’s their description:

Calo Programs is partnering with three of the nation’s leading authorities on attachment, trauma and adoption on a first-of-its-kind campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma.

We are collaborating with The Attachment and Trauma Network (ATN), the American Adoption Congress (AAC) and the Association for Training on Trauma and Attachment in Children (ATTACh) on a six city bus tour that begins in Seattle, WA on Friday, May 4th and ends on May 11 in Tempe, AZ.

The purpose of this six-city tour is to raise awareness of how childhood trauma impacts the development of 1 in 4 children in the U.S. and how these often-overlooked experiences can adversely impact children’s development, physical and emotional health.

> May 4th – Seattle
> May 5th – Portland
> May 8th – Sacramento
> May 9th – Los Angeles
> May 10th – San Diego
> May 11th – Tempe

“The Campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma” will include four hours of presentations, trainings, experiential activities and a resource fair to not only raise awareness, but to share a hope for healing. Please check out our website to learn more about this exciting event at www.endchildhoodtrauma.com.

I hope you can attend a stop on the Campaign to Heal Childhood Trauma. Feel free to spread the word!!

Kathleen
Kathleen Goughler, Treatment Advocate,
Calo Programs -Tel. 573-280-2065

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Now a Kindle eBook: “Don’t Try This Alone!”

Posted on March 22, 2018 by Kathy

I’m done!  I’ve just finished a seven-year trek to publish my book, first in paperback, and now as a Kindle eBook.  Here’s my Kindle: “Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder” – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN2J4TN

My Kindle link above also has a free sample which Amazon has selected to show the public.

Now the saga of discovering how sick with attachment disorder I was, digging deeper and deeper into it — then climbing back to be healed from the inside out — is over.  What a relief!

Of course, we all keep healing all our lives, plus now I’ve got a marketing maze ahead of me — but I’m going to take the time to slow down and feel the relief.

I really did have to face cellular-level pain “from when the sperm hit the egg,” and it hurt. A lot. That’s why this took so long.  It’s been like giving birth after an seriously long and grueling gestation.

I performed with apparent success as an international business gal and opera singer for decades, with no idea I was ill. Suddenly in 2006, I was in divorce from a 27-year marriage to my college sweetheart which left me bankrupt. I ran like hell, 3,000 miles from back East to California. Then both my parents died and 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,”  I decided. I saw one therapist who listened helplessly, a second who said “grow up,” and then I read enough studies on the incompetence of psychotherapy to quit.

Do It Yourself? Dangerous!

So I opted for do-it-yourself. That was a mistake that almost cost my life.

I wrote Grief Forgiveness letters to my ex and sobbed over my life-long marriage for 18 months. Yet after a week’s relief, intense “break-through” grief about my dad surfaced. I tried to face the dad pain–but the more grief I addressed, the more and deeper layers of emotional pain surfaced.

The feelings coming up were those of a younger and younger me. As I wrote forgiveness 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.

Then as I wrote letters to my mom, I went back, and back, and back – but where was the bottom, with a mom?

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. I began to feel emotional, physical, chest and gut pain like a 24 x 7 bone marrow transplant without anesthesia which went on for about three years.

My Big Fat Accidental Discovery

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. Imagine my annoyance when I had to give up even that, after seeing suicide’s nasty effects on a friend whose spouse took 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 am I found myself on the bedroom floor in a 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.

The phrase “She’s not old enough to be dropped off at school” kept repeating in my skull. I crawled to the sink, but had to hang on to the stuffed animal to stand up and brush.

Somewhere in a textbook I had read about regression, the devolution of the mind back through childhood development stages.

With my extensive notes of the last few years, I staggered into yet a third therapist’s office a week later, presented the goods, and asked, “Do you think I’ve just accidentally regressed myself back to infancy?” Upon examination, he leaned forward, eyes wide, and nodded solemnly, “Yes. Aren’t you scared?”

You said it, brother, but not nearly as scared as I was gonna be. Since the sperm hit the egg, I’d had traumatic attachment disorder, and bad.

“Yet there’s hope!” as Amazon concludes.  “Kathy’s story also shows: help and healing are out there!”

Read the book and you’ll see what it took–but it can be done.

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Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post. Current software limits comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs).

News blogs expand on my book Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.  Watch as my journey of recovery teaches me the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Brous.  All right reserved. No portion of this website, except for brief reviews and live links to this website, may be copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever. All use must show prominent and clear attribution to Kathy Brous at https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com

Medical Disclaimer: This website is for general information purposes only. It is simply my own research. Individuals should always see their health care provider or licensed psychotherapist before doing anything which they believe to be suggested or indicated herein. Any application of the material on this website is at the reader’s discretion and is the reader’s sole responsibility.

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“Don’t Try This Alone” Live on Amazon

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Kathy

Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder is live on Amazon in paperback!  Please forgive my long absence, but I had to finish it. Click the photo to see the full cover. Click here to buy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128

I really did regress myself back to infancy, it really was all just an accident–and I had to pretty much re-live the whole experience, to make sense of it for you. That’s why my book took seven years to write: I walk you through my story as it happened.

Here’s what Amazon has to say:

“Kathy was an overachiever—an economist, technical writer, and classical singer married 27 years to her college sweetheart. It looked like Kathy was fine.

“But deep within her hid a pain from infancy so severe that a cascade of adult life crises finally triggered it. And once it exploded, the pain was unbearable.

“Kathy was suffering from attachment disorder, a psychological condition potentially affecting almost half the US population. Caused by traumatic stress in the first three years of life, attachment disorder correlates with the nation’s 50 percent divorce rate and widespread mental health issues.

“Yet no one talks about its prevalence, so many sufferers go untreated, forced to live with their pain in silence—without a hint of its cause.

“But when her initial forays into psychiatric help failed, Kathy decided to treat herself. It was a mistake that almost cost her life.

“Told with candor and quirky, ironic humor, Don’t Try This Alone will resonate with anyone suffering attachment damage. It knows no boundaries; it strikes those who believe they had wonderful childhoods as well as the obviously abused.

“Yet there’s hope! Kathy’s story also shows: help and healing are out there.”

So here’s to life, hope, and our deepest healing!

Coming next: Don’t Try This Alone: the Kindle edition…

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Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post. Current software limits comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs).

News blogs expand on my book Don’t Try This Alone:  The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.  Watch as my journey of recovery teaches me the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Brous.  All right reserved. No portion of this website, except for brief reviews and live links to this website, may be copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever.  All use must show prominent and clear attribution to Kathy Brous at https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com.

Medical Disclaimer: This website is for general information purposes only. It is simply my own research. Individuals should always see their health care provider or licensed psychotherapist before doing anything which they believe to be suggested or indicated herein. Any application of the material on this website is at the reader’s discretion and is the reader’s sole responsibility.

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Healing Student Trauma: Film Debut, Orange County

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Kathy

paper-tigers-kelsey-movie-creditsSave the date Oct. 14 in Orange County, CA!  It’s the OC’s first screening of James Redford’s “Paper Tigers,” a film on how Lincoln Alternative High heals traumatized students with new relationships.  Such “Trauma-Informed Care” has begun in schools, medical settings, judiciary and social services nationally, with top results. It can help any organization.

Watch the two-minute trailer now: PaperTigersMovie.com

From rough areas, Lincoln High’s students were headed for the “School to Prison Pipeline.”  Then Principal Jim Sporleder took this Walla Walla WA school run by gangs, with 789 suspensions and 50 expulsions a year, and turned it around.  Suspensions fell 85-90%, expulsions fell 30-50%, and attendance, GPAs, and state exam scores rose. Graduation rates rose five-fold. Students got into college with $30K in scholarships. It was so dramatic that Robert Redford’s son James Redford made this film.

On Sept. 19, Mr.  Sporleder and my other friends at ACEsConnection spoke on this work at the White House in Washington. The White House Fact Sheet features ACEsConnection and our 10,000-person organization in its third bullet under “Online Community Support for Educators.”

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“Paper Tigers” Film Screening, Friday, October 14, 7 pm
Center For Spiritual Living, 1201 Puerta Del Sol, San Clemente CA 92673
– A documentary by James Redford, Director –
– Hundreds of screenings already organized nationally –
Admission free. To ensure seats, click “Register” button here.
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How did Principal Sporleder do it?   “Let’s stop asking kids ‘What’s wrong with you?’   Sporleder told his staff — and start asking ‘What happened to you?’  Then, let’s be quiet and listen with compassion.”

If a student used the “F” bomb, instead of detention they saw the principal. “What bad stuff happened that you’re so upset?” Jim would ask. “My Dad left for Iraq, again!” or “Mom’s drunk so no breakfast,” they’d say. They’d pour out their hearts until Jim reached them emotionally and they felt heard. As they could feel and verbalize emotions, they acted out less.

Leveraging the ACE Study

How did Jim Sporleder learn to do all this?  It began when he found out about the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.  The ACE Study revealed that some 50% of Americans suffer childhood trauma, and that it can flood students’ brains with toxic stress to where they can’t learn.

He also found a wealth of resources on ACEsConnection.com, the social network site for the ACE Study just cited by the White House this week.

Then Jim, the school staff and the students all studied the ACE Study together. Everyone saw that the students weren’t freaks, but instead their behavior was their bodies’ natural reaction to horrible experiences over years.  Student self-respect grew.  As Robin Williams told Matt Damon, “It’s not your fault:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYa6gbDcx18

The ACE Study and Trauma-Informed Care show that one caring, dependable adult, a teacher or other mentor, can give a kid the relationship they need to heal. Once adults “got them,” the students turned around.

–ACE Study Video by Dr. Vincent Felitti, MD, co-study director: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJCWPG478
–Full story on Lincoln High:  https://acestoohigh.com/2012/04/23/lincoln-high-school-in-walla-walla-wa-tries-new-approach-to-school-discipline-expulsions-drop-85
–Trauma-Informed Care  http://www.samhsa.gov/nctic/trauma-interventions

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Kathy’s blogs explore the journey of recovery from childhood trauma by learning about Adult Attachment Disorder in teens and adults, Adult Attachment Theory, and the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.
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Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post.  Starting 8-22-16, software will limit comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs) for a while, until we get new software to take longer comments again.

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Neurofeedback works: Van der Kolk

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Kathy

Bessel website pix vanderKolkportrait1CLICK to BUY “Don’t Try This Alone”

Psychiatrist and trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, MD posted a neurofeedback webinar August 9 that changes the map on trauma healing: http://neurofeedback2015.kajabi.com/fe/79711-rewiring-the-brain-free-ce-seminar . [Or try this link to a 5 min intro. His  72-min seminar is below at “Click Here to Begin Your Free One Hour:” http://neurofeedback2015.kajabi.com/fe/80095-support-neurofeedback-research-2015]

Please forward this to your lists of therapists, colleagues, anyone interested in healing. Dr. van der Kolk has promoted EMDR, yoga, and body work for decades.  Now folks with early trauma can check out neurofeedback.

I’ve so far done 10 months of neurofeedback and the healing is enormous. But it’s not known enough or funded. Getting word out could stop suffering.

At minute 20, van der Kolk shows graphics on how Sebern Fisher introduced him to neurofeedback. “She showed me drawings that traumatized kids did of their families (stick figures), then how they developed after 20 weeks of neurofeedback (real people), after 40 weeks (an attached group), and I was blown away by their development,” he said.

“There’s nothing I know that can do that,” he said. “When you see something like that, you pay attention. Can my psychoanalysis do that?  Can my acceptance and commitment therapy do that?  Can my friends who do EMDR or Somatic Experiencing do that?  No.  Nothing I know of can do THAT.  Time to learn new things.”

Don’t hire just any provider. A neurofeedback practitioner with 1. Five-ten years’ neurofeedback; 2. A certificate from EEGSpectrum.com or EEGInfo.com; and 3. Familiarity with attachment issues, is a good place to start.  A good neurofeedback therapist won’t do “one size fits all.”  Ask to be sure that they carefully adjust it to each individual and keep re-adjusting.

My blog on neurofeedback with links to Sebern Fisher interviews is here: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/neurofeedback/

Find a Neurofeedback Practitioner Online Directories are here:
1. EEG Spectrum International: http://www.esiaffiliatesforum.com/providers  2. EEG Institute Directory: http://directory.eeginfo.com/
Sebern Fisher says both are fine. Only #2 had a provider near me; he’s great. He’s got all 3 features above.  My insurance covers it for a $35 copay.

Am I In Tune — Or Not?

Neurofeedback Before & After mirasol.netAs for me, I feel calmer, more centered, less frightened, and less easily triggered every day. It works on long-term issues.

Still, I felt shocked as van der Kolk described “ways of being” which I have in spades, but never knew are symptoms of brain disorganization. This knocked me for a loop:

“Our brain is shaped by human interactions, by the way that people respond to us, to rhythms, voices, touch, sounds, how we make music together,” he said. “We are rhythmic machines; I talk to you and move my hands, my face, and I image you responding in kind.

“But if you talk to your partner and they freeze their face, your mind goes blank — because we need feedback… If the world does not respond to you, if people do not smile at you, if as a little kid  when you come home people say, “Oh, you again”?  You miss the experience of being in tune with people. It goes to the very core of our central nervous system.”

At this point (6 minutes in) I had to lay down and sob for 10 minutes. Feeling what he said totaled me.  I had no attunement experiences until I was 4  1/2 and my sister was born. No responses, no rhythm.

“If you have many attunement experiences,” he said, ” when you get scared, someone’s there so the feeling gets repaired; someone gets mad but soon they repair it, then you get a sense of flow with other people. You know we can do things together, we can work things out. You know I can have a voice because my voice has an impact on you. You can have a voice because your voice has an impact on me.”

Again I was sobbing.  What is he talking about?  Have a voice, what’s that?  I never had an impact. Work things out?  Unheard of.  I’m terrified at mis-attunement.  I have no experience that what I feel matters.

In abuse or neglect, he said, “these neural rhythms get broken. The most important parts of the brain to grow in first years of life get you in tune with people, tell you what to be scared of, when to feel safe, how to connect, how to be in synch.”  I was never in synch.

At minute 15:30 he shows astonishing brain scans (click on graphic above). When normal people hear a strange sound (“eeek”), he says, they need to figure out what it means, “so all the different parts of the brain synchronize to focus on that. They’ve developed an N-200 filtering wave that says ‘ignore your phone, your hunger… just pay attention to this sound.’

“But traumatized people have enormous problems filtering out irrelevant information. They are hyper-stimulated by sounds, sights, images, body sensation, have a terrible time filtering them out. As you see here, traumatized people have very different wave forms. Different parts of the brain are not in synch… which explains why they have such a hard time learning from new experiences… taking new information into the brain, paying attention, taking in life as it comes, learning from it.”

That’s me. I’m hyper-stimulated by sounds, sights, images, body sensation. Half the time I can’t filter them out.  This last point really concerns me.  I had no idea that most people can filter out these things.

I just called my neurofeedback therapist and told him that I need a lot more help. “I’m afraid both of us under-estimate how disorganized my brain is,” I said. “You may want to try other areas of my brain for your sensors and/or other procedures” during neurofeedback.

Thank Heaven for neurofeedback and fighters like Dr. van der Kolk.

Comments are encouraged, with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post. Current software limits comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs).

News blogs expand on my book Don’t Try This Alone:  The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder.  Watch as my journey of recovery teaches me the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Developmental Trauma, Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

Copyright © 2018 by Kathy Brous.  All right reserved. No portion of this website, except for brief reviews and live links to this website, may be copied or used in any form or manner whatsoever.  All use must show prominent and clear attribution to Kathy Brous at https://attachmentdisorderhealing.com.

Medical Disclaimer: This website is for general information purposes only. It is simply my own research. Individuals should always see their health care provider or licensed psychotherapist. Any application of the material on this website is at the reader’s discretion and is the reader’s sole responsibility.

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Orange County CA First Child Trauma Meeting a Big Success

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Kathy

On April 27, “HIMAG3259 Cherokee El, 5-2-14, James,KB, Dana w. bikeealing Orange County from Childhood Trauma” held its first meeting in Mission Viejo, CA at a local restaurant from 6 to 8 pm. We posted it on Meetup.com as the founding meeting of Orange County (CA) ACEs Connection.  I was honored to co-create the meeting with my dear friend Dana Brown, Southern California director for ACEsConnection.com.

We felt awe as three education activists, six professional trauma therapy providers, individuals suffering child trauma and a total of 12 people already acting as leaders in Trauma-Informed Care and resilience building, filled our table to overflowing.  An additional 15 folks who couldn’t attend due to schedule conflict signed up. That’s a total of 27 compassionate people, all glad to hear that finally there’s action to get ACEs child trauma out of the closet in the upscale, but down in-denial, OC.  My earlier blog on Trauma-Informed Care is here: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/trauma-informed-care/

We were all so excited we forgot to take a group photo — in lieu of which above are LA education leader James Encinas, myself, and Dana Brown in May 2014 at San Diego’s model Trauma-Informed Care school Cherokee Point Elementary: https://acestoohigh.com/2013/07/22/at-cherokee-point-elementary-kids-dont-conform-to-school-school-conforms-to-kids/

Everyone requested and donned name tags as we began by asking each to self-introduce.  Folks got so involved that they began asking each other questions around the table and networking on the spot. Soon we were really getting to know each other for more than an hour.

Next, Dana gave an overview of ACEsConnection and the ACE Study. Nearly two-thirds of Americans experience childhood trauma, according to the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, she said, and suffer chronic disease, depression and other illnesses because of it. Here’s the short video we posted on the invite (full text of invite is below): http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/ace-study-co-founders-tell-story-on-dvd-here-s-an-intro/

Dana then announced that we’re forming Orange County (CA) ACEs Connection, and asked everyone to please join ACEsConnection.com and then the Orange County group. You are welcome to go to ACEsConnection and join us here: http://www.acesconnection.com/g/orange-county-ca-aces-connection

I stressed that ACEsConnection will be the organizing platform for communication and future meetings; we’re just advertising on Meetup.com like posting an ad in the local paper.

Finally I introduced myself as author of a book and website on the incredible prevalence of attachment disorder and developmental trauma in the US:  http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/the-silent-epidemic-of-attachment-disorder/

I have the ACE Pyramid linking to ACEsConnection on every page of my website, I said, because ACEsConnection is action-central on the facts about and the healing methods for trauma.

Then all the participants began sharing their eagerness to expand our reach and include many more Orange County residents into the process of bringing hope and healing to our neighborhoods.  One educator proposed a screening of the key documentary on trauma healing “Paper Tigers” at Dana Point’s high school; a professor wants to organize a screening at her university in Irvine; a therapist wants to show it at her trauma clinic; another practitioner wants to screen it at her church.

The group asked unanimously for a second meeting, hopefully on the third or fourth Wednesday of the month, or perhaps in odd-numbered months as the founding group did in San Diego. Three activists volunteered locations for the next meeting; others proposed that ads be put in the local Penny-saver leaflet and/or county paper Orange County Register to build the next meeting.

One leader said publishing a schedule of speeches on specific trauma topics and healing modes is a great way to build meetings. The group was so positive that we may try to create a speakers steering committee at our next meeting to draw up such a list of topics and speakers from among us.

Everyone  was invigorated and looking forward to our next gathering.  Dana and I  will be in touch with everyone for more information on next steps.

==========================

Here’s the text of our Meetup.com advertisement that’s drawn 27 interested participants to date (and growing). Feel free to use it!

Nearly two-thirds of Americans experience childhood trauma, according to the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, and suffer chronic disease, depression and other illnesses because of it. Here’s a short video about it: http://www.acesconnection.com/blog/ace-study-co-founders-tell-story-on-dvd-here-s-an-intro/

Is that you, your child, your friend or family member, your student, patient, or client?  It’s likely.

Come meet us to learn how childhood adversity can last a lifetime — but it doesn’t have to.

It’s our first meeting of ACEsConnection in Orange County, CA, part of a growing movement now 8,000+ strong nationally and internationally on the social network http://www.acesconnection.com/

We’d love to see you and hear your story, whether you’re an individual suffering trauma, a service provider, educator, community organizer, concerned parent, or any compassionate human being. By listening, we can see how we might help one another in building resilient communities in Orange County.

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Kathy’s news blogs expand on her book “DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder—How I accidentally regressed myself back to infancy and healed it all.” Watch for the continuing series each Friday, as she explores her journey of recovery by learning the hard way about Attachment Disorder in adults, adult Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview.

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Comments are encouraged with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post.  Starting 8-22-16, software will limit comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs) a while, until we get new software to take longer comments again.

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