Kimberly Key

Honoring Traumatized Families this Memorial Day

As we grieve fallen soldiers on this Memorial Day, I would like to dedicate this post to people everywhere who have a family history that was touched by war.

Some may not realize the roots of Memorial Day stem from the tradition of decorating graves from the Civil War (Decoration Day), a war that almost tore the country apart. Considering the upheaval and conflict in the country, it is fitting to remember the Civil War disaster and what it took to unite people and ensure freedom along with remembering similar themes from subsequent world wars. As Goethe said, “He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living hand to mouth.”

Ideally, remembering would be enough yet history often repeats itself—and the colloquial definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again while expecting different results. Why is remembering not enough?

As a therapist—and veteran, military brat, and descendant of WW II traumatized survivors—I have studied and long been fascinated by the generational transmission of trauma and grief from war that has transformed people and families in unknown ways. In fact, I think a lot of family conflict, abuse, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse stems from traumas from the wars that scarred our ancestors.

When left unprocessed (which was common for centuries and still is, especially among military personnel), grief and trauma can come out as abuse, detachment (emotionally shutting down), unconscious fear, and escapism (through substances, workaholism, excess screen time, etc.). Moreover, sometimes some family members tend to hold the excess emotions that other family members have discarded while others may become the rebellious scapegoats. Thus, each particular family member unconsciously plays out a familiar role that has been echoed in previous generations. Doing a family genogram—a type of family tree that documents relationships, careers, and psychological patterns—can eerily reveal how entrenched roles are recycled through the generations. The good news is that patterns can be changed.

While a therapist might work with an individual and family on genograms and processing grief and trauma in their lives and from those inherited by previous generations, it is not new. Many indigenous cultures have had a strong relationship with their ancestors and practice ancestral healing. They do not try to discard where they came from. Instead, they hold reverence and respect and offer prayers and rituals to earlier family members in the belief that ancestral pain may be a cause of one’s current pain.

With that shared, I am not sure how many people in America know their ancestral history. I take note that this day is often celebrated with festive barbeques, echoing that people have forgotten and perhaps that they don’t want to look closer. Perhaps forgetting represents the detachment and numbing effect of prior trauma. “Why look back when you can keep moving forward?”

My answer is that looking back and understanding can facilitate forgiveness and associated peace and compassion. Looking back can foster empathy and allow one to release old wounds stored in the DNA and inherited neural programming. Looking back can also reveal some heroes, role models, and powerful lessons. Looking back can empower your future and future generations, especially when you share lessons from your family history with your children.

For me, looking back helped me understand how my paternal grandfather was traumatized by WWII and his time on the USS Indianapolis (which was referenced in the movie, “Jaws” and famous because it was torpedoed and 576 men were eaten by sharks until the remaining 316 people were rescued four days later). My grandparents had a terrible divorce which scarred my mother in many unfathomable ways that led her to acting out in my childhood. Meanwhile, my father’s parents were prisoners of war and I grew up hearing abhorrent stories from my grandfather while my grandmother passed somewhat young from cancer on my father’s birthday.

Here is the takeaway. I was in a foster home for a short time because my parents were charged with child abuse. I know this deeply affected my brother and sister—and their children who faced similar and most likely worse experiences. I am horrified and saddened to have witnessed this. I do not share this in any way to dishonor my family. It took a lifetime for me to process and heal from these wounds and to be able to admit some of these secret parts of my upbringing. I deeply love my family and ache that deep wounds have repeated themselves. I sit in meditation and prayer for them daily and also try to practice ancestral healing. I do not blame anyone in my family. I do blame wars though. That is why I dedicate this post to the families on this Memorial Day as I think there are more losses than we realize. I hope this inspires reflection and healing for others.

Is the News Reinforcing Your Trauma?

Mary was seven years old when she witnessed her father assault her mother. It was the last time she saw him as her mother packed their belongings that night and moved across the country. Mary resolved she would avoid being be like her mother and would do everything perfectly so that a man would never harm her. Instead, Mary dated a series of men that were emotionally and/or physically abusive. To make matters worse, all of them left her and triggered her deep abandonment wounds. Mary (not her real name and addressed here with her permission) came into my office to work on childhood trauma and abandonment issues. Now, her daily diet of news (which is steeped in traumas, leadership betrayals, political strife, emotionally charged legal decisions, and climate change) is triggering Mary’s trauma wounds while increasing her anxiety and depression. 

Mary is not the only one. I would suspect that every person is touched by current events, whether they realize it consciously or not. There’s even a phenomenon known as a Morally Injurious Experience (MIE) that comes from experiencing a traumatic event or situation that conflicts with one’s moral beliefs. In a military context, it has been defined as engaging in or observing betrayals like a leadership failure, or violence and sexual assault, along with situations where a person has been unable to prevent an injury, death or war-related destruction. Thus, one can have a childhood trauma like Mary did when observing her father assault her mother and then one can have an MIE when observing other people's traumas and betrayals in other contexts. Moreover, an MIE can retrigger unresolved traumatic wounds from childhood.

Trauma Recovery is Challenged by Broken Trust

 

Betrayals break trust. Cover-ups break trust. Discrimination breaks trust. Moreover, leadership and hero betrayals can have traumatic consequences for many. Examples include heightened despair, anxiety, guilt, shame, resentment, spiritual and existential angst (meaninglessness), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, self-harm, relationship distress, and exacerbated medical conditions. Healing from broken trust can be challenging; and witnessing repeated reports of trust violations in the media can cement a mindset that is resistant to healing.

Be Mindful About Media Consumption to Avoid Exacerbating Trauma

Be aware that media headlines thrive on material that can trigger trauma and reinforce mistrust. Remember, the news motto is, "If it bleeds, it leads." Pervasive distrust, betrayals,  toxic communications, bullying behaviors, and violence often dominate the headlines and can be tiggering for  people, especially for those with a deep history of betrayals from their earliest authority figures. Watching endless news about leadership betrayals can trigger traumatic feedback loops that sustain the trauma and increase depression and anxiety, along with giving fuel to not so positive coping mechanisms. So, please pay attention to how news and media consumption may inflame past traumas. Working with a therapist about your responses to media and leadership betrayals can help.

What can you do if you are triggered?

• As in a hurricane, check your doors and windows and stay inside. That means check the messages that are coming into your ears and out your mouth and make sure you are okay, safe and that you’re not doing something that inflames the current conditions.
• Evacuate if you must and find shelter where it’s safe. Seek help with a professional, group, and surround yourself with trusted friends. 
• Avoid getting into triggering debates and arguments with others, while re-evaluating relationships that thrive on negativity.
• Employ more green time over screen time. Getting outdoors can expose you to healthy oxygen and neurochemicals from the plants and trees while getting some vitamin D from sunshine.
• Take care of your physical body and nourish it with healthy foods, water, and exercise. Get sleep.
• Don’t be afraid to call 911 in an emergency.

Healing from Family Dysfunction: Understanding How the Past Keeps Pulling you Back and Impacting Your Life

Grief often brings people to therapy (Photo by Nik Shuliahin)

Most people come to therapy after a relationship (family or career) has erupted. They begin to question themselves and wonder why they are hurting and how they can feel better. Therapists then begin asking about their past and inevitably associations with current complaints come to the surface. Sometimes to the dismay of clients. However, there’s hope for the client when one’s formative blueprint can be understood.

For instance, think of the most painful family hurt you ever experienced. One that left you with such an indelible scar that you suspect it has unconsciously impacted your relationships, career, and satisfaction with life. Then imagine learning that thousands of people overcame strikingly similar experiences—to the point where other family members healed, grew closer, and even transformed into stable, loving, mature, and dependable people. Imagine they also attained their best personal successes.

That’s what going graduate school was like for me. I learned about thousands of real life happily ever afters. Yes, I learned about tragedies too, yet I saw the hope and possibility of genuine family healing. Heal a family and you can help heal the world.

I couldn’t wait to dig in and help people achieve their most cherished and often unconscious dream of healing their family patterns and creating a new life that was healthier, meaningful, and filled with genuine joy. While I cannot give everyone therapy, or even help everyone I work to attain a complete transformation, I can do my best to share what I have learned (and am learning) to help you make the changes you desire. I realize it can be a challenge to work with family members that do not want to change, so I encourage you to keep working on yourself. People cannot play tug-of-war with you if you are not picking up the rope.

The Lesson of the Rescuer

For every rescuer, there is a victim. For every victim, there is a persecutor. People familiar with psychology may know about Karpman’s Triangle. Stephen Karpman developed a model that captures one of the most common triangular interactions among people: Victim, Rescuer & Persecutor. The fascinating thing that Karpman reveals is that each role has an egoic payoff.

Victim: “Poor Me” (The victim avoids responsibility and becomes dependent, getting their egoic needs met by having people do things for them. They also succeed in getting attention, for both the rescuer and the persecutor are focusing on them.)

Rescuer: “Let Me Help You” (The rescuer rushes to the aid of the victim and gets a two-fold egoic payoff by being perceived in a positive light and simultaneously avoiding their own problems and feelings.)

Persecutor: “It’s All Your Fault” (Every persecutor needs a victim and their egoic need of feeling powerful and superior is fulfilled when they blame, attack and bully a victim. Like the rescuer, the persecutor gets to avoid any real feelings and fears they have.)

While people tend to take on a primary role in the triangle, they will often shift and take turns taking on the different roles with each other. Thus, the rescuer may get upset with the persecutor and take on the persecutor role and attack them, placing them in the victim role. The victim may then rescue the persecutor. Or the persecutor may shift into the rescuer role, with endless variations of role-switching. The goal is to recognize the trap of the triangle and to distance oneself from getting seduced into any of the roles—especially when it’s so entrenched that it’s the only culturally acceptable way of behaving in the family

Triangles Prevent Intimacy

One of the ironies about falling into the trap of playing the victim, rescuer, and persecutor triangle is that it impedes the true intimacy each person desperately craves. Humans are social creatures and we need each other. We thrive in community and derive meaning from belonging and having a sense of purpose. Studies in Psycho-Neuro-Immunology (PNI) have now shown that long-term, supportive relationships can improve our immune functioning and prevent disease. Studies also show that having adverse experiences in childhood (from maltreatment, dysfunctional familial patterns like the Karpman Triangle, poverty, and discrimination) can reduce immune functioning and lead to an earlier onset of diseases and reduced life spans. Thus, we need each other yet we need safe, healthy, and nurturing relationships that are driven by true intimacy. Not reactive, egoic defense patterns that sustain connection in surface ways.

As Salvador Minuchin, pioneer of family therapy, revealed: behind a nagging wife is a lonely women—and the husband who responds to the nagging will get sucked into the trap of hounding and evasion. She hounds and he evades. Or vice versa. Hounding can be like the victim role of the triangle. Again, people take turns playing the different roles of victim, rescuer, and persecutor. Or evader. The deal is, no one who is succumbing to playing a role is addressing the underlying needs of each person. The egoic reactivity (the roles in the triangle) becomes a substitute for the cry of true intimacy.

Asking for something deeper from another person requires a level of vulnerability that people are not often prepared to admit. Moreover, getting vulnerable and going deep may be seen as needy or codependent. Today’s-increasingly individualistic and narcissistic culture tends to deepen the divide between deeper connection and surface relationships. Please know, however, that going deeper in vulnerable ways in an attempt to increase real intimacy (or “into-me-see”) IS NOT CODEPENDENT or NEEDY. Instead, codependence involves falling into a state of perpetual role playing (victim, rescuer, persecutor, evader) that stems from ego protection without revealing the heart’s real feelings and intimate needs.

Myths about the Ego

The ego is not a bad thing. It is protective. Imagine the ego as a kind of bodyguard. It tries to protect you when it senses hurt and danger. Sometimes it works. Like when it urges you to run away from fire or seek shelter in the rain or drink water because you’re thirsty.

At other times, the ego does not understand the full situation and only knows you are lonely, so it attempts to solve the loneliness in a primal Hulk fashion (such as, getting mad at the person that’s ignoring you and hounding them or insisting you go eat the chocolate cake because it remembers that it made you happy in the past). Your ego, or personal Hulk bodyguard, does not mean to sabotage you. It is just operating at a lower primal state to protect you. Unfortunately, this means there is often a disconnect between it and your higher brain and your vulnerable heart—which impedes how you may communicate and relate to others in that moment.

While it might seem like the goal is to kill the ego, I would offer that it might help to tend and befriend your ego. Get to know it and its triggers. Appreciate when it’s doing its job right and learn to disarm it when you’re in conflict with someone. Take space as you need and then try to return and repair as possible. If you feel like you are the only one showing up and being vulnerable and that you’re dealing with someone who can’t let go of their ego defenses, don’t be afraid to take a step back. Perhaps your heart can be filled with compassion for the other person and the unfortunate ego battle that might be hijacking intimacy.

Boundaries

While it would be nice to be intimate and present with everyone all the time, that is not realistic. There is a space and time for surface communication and deeper connection. In intimate and close relationships, we try to make more time for the deeper connection. People can be authentic and real without revealing their every deeper thought and feeling with anyone that will listen. Additionally, relationships are a give and take. There needs to be healthy reciprocity. One person cannot carry the emotional baggage for both people. If they do, that protective Hulk may hijack your best intentions and throw back into the merry-go-round of victim that seeks out a rescuer and then begins persecuting the other person. That’s how triangulation occurs. When relationships require a steady pattern of venting to another person, it sets up a dynamic of role playing. Thus, setting up healthy boundaries may help diminish the dangers of triangulation. Just try to do it from an authentic heart space and not a blaming, victim, or persecutor place. Looking within will help you identify your motives.

Health Tip While Working on Relationships

Life is a process and no one is perfect. Be gentle on yourself as you work toward health and healthy intimacy with others. PNI research has shown that negative thoughts can increase inflammation and conditions that allow cancer cells to grow and other diseases to thrive. Thus, watch the resentment, hatred, anger, and despair you may feel. Note that nagging, evading, playing victim, blaming, and even rescuing can be fraught with negative thoughts. If you don’t believe me, take a moment to ponder the thought processes of someone else in those roles. Most likely, those same thoughts occur for you too. Fortunately, PNI research has shown positive thoughts can help to neutralize the inflammatory responses in the body. One of the most profound findings in PNI research is that feeling AWE can help to decrease inflammatory cytokines that cause disease. Feeling awe can be cultivated when we pay attention to the synchronicities around us and when we take a pause from our relationships and experiences to consider how they might be serving us. It is like seeing the magic in life and realizing this is a joyous adventure filled with amazing little surprises that point us to new discoveries. Life can be a magical treasure hunt, so please don’t lose faith and hope in this magnificent game of life. Like tends to attract like, so do not be surprised if more awe experiences reveal themselves as you increase your feelings of awe.

Understanding Despair, Grief & the Pain of Rejection

Father of logotherapy and concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl, said, “Despair is suffering without meaning.”  

Forlorn comedic writer and actor, Woody Allen, said, ““To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”

The Buddhist "four noble truths" state: 1) existence is suffering ( dukhka ); 2) suffering has a cause, namely craving and attachment ( trishna ); 3) there is a cessation of suffering, which is nirvana; and 4)there is a path to the cessation of suffering—nonattachment.

How ever you roll the proverbial dice, pain is an inherent part of life. From the moment we are born, both the baby and its mother are contorted into physical pains that are so intense, the mind is wired to suppress the memory of the pain.

The emotional pain that follows if the baby is abandoned or neglected can impede the baby’s self-soothing mechanisms and lead to a lifetime of more intense grief to losses—perceived or real.

There is also a hefty amount of research that suggests the cumulative amount of losses in one’s life can take a toll. Add aging, diminishing hormones and declining organ resilience and the bounce back to loss can be more challenging.

One thing I want to point out is that the pain from loss and grief is real. Many can imagine what isolation does when a person is subjected to solitary confinement. Or recall dogs that have been left in cages and begin chasing their tales and exhibiting other anxious symptoms. The loss from the death of a loved one or losing a job or the rejection of a cherished family member, friend, or beloved creates a similar dynamic.

To illustrate it with another example, there was an old Japanese experiment that demonstrated the impact of others on rice. Three jars were filled with fresh picked rice. One was placed in a dark closet by itself. The other two were placed next to each other. The words, “I love you” were taped to one jar while the words, “I hate you” were placed on the second jar.

After one month, the rice that held the words, “I love you” was still fresh and smelled sweet as if it had just been picked. The second jar of rice with the “I hate you” note had rotted, turning black and smelling foul. The observation is that loving attention can sustain us in ways that aid our health and longevity. Negative attention can harm us. This is where the lesson from the third jar comes into play.

The third jar that was segregated in a closet by itself had rotted almost immediately, and far sooner than the jar with the “I hate you” sign. Isolation, abandonment, and despair from loss can be real—and the most damning experience.

It can cause a host of ailments, including anxiety, depression, and in extreme cases—death. Death can be as sudden as heartbreak syndrome or suicide, or slower from a deteriorating illness.

Finding ways to process the grief and loss are as important as finding supportive relationships around you. It is also essential that you honor your own personal path to healing and give yourself space to realize there is no one right way or timeline.

Sometimes the people we most care about may be not be there the way we want or need them to be. This can happen because the pain and loss brings up their own losses or fears of losses, so they can’t handle your pain. Finding others with similar losses can help in such situations, along with support groups. Or finding new friends by seeking out passions and hobbies like, painting classes, sculpting, hiking clubs, bird watching, yoga, cycling, martial arts, and the list goes on. Fill in the list with something you’ve never tried!

Also, it is okay to protect your boundaries when people tell you “should” or “must” as in, “You should do…” or “You must do…” because those often signal that its their own internal scripts, or parental introjects, and many times it may not even apply to you.

The big thing is that being pushed to heal tends to backfire, so gently informing others that you’re not going to get over it (like in the death of a loved one) and that you thank them for trying can help teach them. In time, you’ll find and develop ways and relationships to help you get through it.

Acknowledging your pain, processing it, cultivating positive relationships, and finding meaning are the steps for healing and growth. Spirituality is often at the heart of the deeper healing—and studies reveal prayer and meditation helps to heal bodies and minds in innumerable and unexplainable ways.

Cicero wrote in 44 B.C. as he was approaching his own death, “While we are trapped within these earthly frames of ours, we carry out a heavy labor imposed on us by fate. Indeed, the soul Is a heavenly thing come down from the celestial realm, pressed down and plunged into the earth, contrary to its divine and eternal nature. But I believe the immortal gods planted souls in human bodies to have beings who would care for the earth and who would contemplate the divine order and imitate it in the moderation and discipline of their own lives.”

He proceeds to cite a number of great thinkers that believed the same thing. Whether it is belief in fate, the soul, an eternal heavenly place, or just the mystery of not knowing, the belief in a higher purpose tends to provide the deepest healing to the severest of losses.

Genius physicist, Albert Einstein, wrote, “There are only two ways to live your live. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

The death, loss, or rejection may bring pain. The pain is real and deep and through the journey of it, may the ethereal miracle of the shattered pain be like the seed that is destroyed to make room for the emerging plant. May your despair heal through all the necessary steps that lead to your personal and wonderful seedling.

Part II to last post - A Spiritual Solution to Grief, Recovery & Free Will

I have a confession. It concerns the reason for the long delay of my writing Part II to my last post. It also discloses a bit of personal information. I offer it, however, as a way of illustrating the grief and recovery process.

My mother passed a few months ago. Honestly, it was rather unexpected. Yes, she had been ill and hospitalized a few times. This last time was the worst and the doctor gave her a timeline—one year. He added that he had seen people live for up to six years. They released her from the hospital on a Friday and she passed two days later. I wasn’t even there. I live almost 2,000 miles away and since she was getting released from the hospital, I had decided to visit her the following week for Mother’s Day. It aches that I wasn’t with her and wasn’t able to physically hug her and tell her I love her.

Ironically, I considered writing about the grief process after I returned from her funeral. I have the information and training. I could use it to write about grief stages for others, I told myself. A couple of weeks passed. Then I had an ah-hah moment and began to write about how people can overcome their genetics (and contrary to the response from one commenter in the post, I actually have been in discussions with many researchers that believe our behavior is hard-wired by our genetics). Yes, I was on a secret mission to counter that argument and then give solid research on how we can all be more in control of our genetic predispositions and live healthier and happier lives.

Of course, now I can see that all of that was in reaction to losing my mother. She had diabetes and was only 62 years old. I began to get upset that her food and lifestyle choices are what took her away and left me alone and with all this sadness and guilt. (Funny how we make it about ourselves.) So in a classic grief move— where one feels out of control due to the internal mix of denial, anger, bargaining and depression—I took control. Taking control is a hallmark symptom of grief because we feel out of control, so we overcompensate and attempt to take more control. Usually our efforts fail.

That’s what happened to Part II of my blog. I wanted to tell people about all of the research on healthy living. I wanted to warn people about the dangers of sugar, obesity and inactivity. Heck, while I was at it, maybe I could address all the addictions in the world—from smoking to workaholism and all the isms. How about the dangers lurking in the 1,000+ invisible chemicals that saturate non-organic coffee beans? Or the dangerous phthalates that are leeching into the liquid of all those healthy looking water bottles? Is anyone remembering Chicken Littleright now? “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

Takeaway number one—the next time you’re annoyed by someone preaching on their soap box about something, maybe you can be a little patient and realize that maybe, just maybe, they are feeling a wee bit out of control and it’s just their attempt to overcompensate. With that disclaimer, I’m still going to share how I have been arriving at that ethereal stage of grief—acceptance. It even provides the answer that was promised in Part I of my blog! (How’s that for making up for lost time?) Please Click here to continue reading full post on Psychology Today... Thank you!