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.
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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).
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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.
