Thursday, November 18, 2004
I'm Pretty Sure I'm Real
We sometimes meet people who just don’t believe we exist. They don’t believe the human personality can fracture into many pieces, or that memories can be locked away for most of a lifetime.
I don’t agree with much Sigmund Freud professed but his suppressed memory theory seems to be bearing out. He stated the brain suppresses unwanted memories related to trauma. Our brains are awash in chemicals and hormones. Memories are the result of a complex dance of electrical connections and chemical responses.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that traumatic events are processed differently in the brain on a chemical level from ordinary events. Dissociation, the mechanism whereby we became multiple, is in its most basic form merely a chemical process, probably similar to what allows a prey animal to die calmly in the jaws of a predator.
Memories created during trauma are also stored in different cognitive areas of the brain from ordinary memories. Recent studies under controlled conditions indicate participants could successfully control unwanted memories. Their attempts were associated with increased activity in the frontal cortex. This led to reduced activation of the hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with memory.
New information indicates we can avoid laying down unwanted memory tracks. Another study shows the brains of developing humans suffer permanent physical changes when subjected to childhood abuse or neglect. These changes are thought to be significant enough to cause psychological and emotional problems later in life.
Amnesia related to traumatic events such as combat, violent crime, concentration camp experiences and torture has been documented for over a hundred years. Recent studies show a large percent of childhood abuse survivors report forget some of the abuse they suffered. Some common components were that the abuses took place in early childhood, intense emotions were generated, and there was more than one type of abuse and the abuse included threats to safety.
Freud decided later in his life that the overwhelming number of horrific things his patients related couldn’t possibly be real events. He couldn’t conceive of child abuse being that prevalent and his professional colleagues as well as the public refused to acknowledge his theory was correct.
In the face of professional strife Freud backed down. Instead of actual abuse incidents he decided his patients were talking about sexual fantasies expressing their own repression or neurosis.
We suspect he was right in the first place.
Studies today indicate sexual abuse perpetrated by adults on children and adolescents is as high as one in three girls and one in ten boys.
As in our case, by mid-life the chemical locks on hidden memories often erode, releasing memories of abuse experiences in chaotic floods called flashbacks. Sometimes therapists are accused of asking questions leading patients to create elaborate false memories. Our memories flooded into our consciousness without any suggestion or help from health care professionals. They listened. They to teach us techniques to survive the horror, but they never suggested anything.
Many abuse survivors have family members who confirm their abuse memories. Our older sister has done so for at least some of our experiences. Some of our memories were merely softened so we could allow them to stay with us.
Our family raised chickens when I was young. Some of the chickens were destined for the stewpot while others laid enough egg to earn their keep at least for a while. It was a graphic lesson I never questioned. If you didn’t produce you could be slaughtered without prior notice.
My sister told me there were periodic butchering days, an event pretty common to farm and rural folk with flocks. I remember little about that but my sister can barely eat chicken to this day.
But I’d always remembered one incident in particular. My father had some chickens in a sack. He tied the neck of the sack to the exhaust of the car and ran it to kill the birds.
As an adult I wondered just how healthy it was for us to be eating chickens killed in such a manner. I mentioned it to our sister.
She looked at me quizzically and said, “Not chickens, kittens”.
The real memory flooded back. Our cat Lucy had produced a litter. They were allowed to live for a time but their days were numbered. Our father made us watch their execution. The kittens were collected, shoved into the bag mewling pitifully, fighting for freedom. The bag was progressively more still until it hung limp and silent. I was handed my favorite, a gray kitten with blue eyes. His eyes were open wide in death, his tongue chewed, and his fur damp. Over forty years later I finally cried.
You can believe what you want about multiplicity and repressed memories. It’s your life and it’s a reputedly free country. Some people choose to believe the holocaust never happened. Others tell me the Indians got what they deserved, where would the country be if left in the hands of savages?
Savages huh? According to Erich Fromm matriarchal societies are the most peaceful and offer a good quality of life. It seems to me the patriarchal European invaders could have learned a thing or two about something from the Eastern Woodlands tribes besides how to grow corn beans and squash to avoid starving. The Eastern Woodlands people prized their children. Parents seldom spoke a harsh word to them. Beatings were unknown. Child abuse was uncommon, as was rape, no matter what ‘historical’ novels try to perpetuate. A person who abused a child the way I had been would have been ostracized. There were multiples, and people who were ‘two-spirited’ – those who lived their lives as members of the opposite sex. These were so rare they were considered holy people who helped keep balance in the world.
You probably won’t learn much about that in history books either. History is written by conquerors to fit their societal needs. The American history myth and Hollywood stereotypes are all most people know about Indians.
Anthropologists are discovering our pre-contact cultures were a lot more complex then previously believed. Scientists now know agriculture developed here independently. Indian crops spread out from the Americas and are grown throughout the world. New theories about the earliest people in the “new world” are surfacing as older and older artifacts come to light. New credence is being paid to our oral history and stories passed from generation to generation. People are developing a new understanding.
I believe the same will happen over the next two decades for multiples. The media frenzy has largely died out. Raging arguments over whether or not memories can be repressed and resurface are coming to surprising conclusions supported by scientific studies and advances in understanding brain chemistry and function. Dissociative behaviors and tendencies are better understood.
Someday maybe more multiples will come out of hiding. Not because they want to be on TV talk shows, (sorry Oprah) but because they won’t be afraid anymore. I no longer care what people think. It doesn’t matter to me if they don’t believe I exist. I no longer need to cut myself to prove I’m real.
The real news is we’ve finally won. The people who abused us lost.
We don’t need to track them down, harangue them, sue them or charge them with crimes. We Qs are surrounded by people who love us. We are safe and happy and productive. No, we aren’t wealthy. We’re not living the American dream. It was never our dream anyway.
When yuppie kids at his school made fun of beat-up car, Thunder said, “You’ll never understand. The car I drive isn’t important. I’m complete. You need a cell phone just to survive.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful we don’t have to trudge through three feet of snow, cut up downed trees and drag logs back to our house to stay warm like we did last winter. I like having enough money for food. I’m actually considering getting TV. I mean what the hell are we going to do in December after we’ve finished this book? Supposing Pleiades continues to be mellow that is, there is still that two percent fear factor going on. I’m kind of hoping he hates being called Pleiades and shows up to tell me what his real name is. Once that happens we can see where he fits into the Q.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
I don’t agree with much Sigmund Freud professed but his suppressed memory theory seems to be bearing out. He stated the brain suppresses unwanted memories related to trauma. Our brains are awash in chemicals and hormones. Memories are the result of a complex dance of electrical connections and chemical responses.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that traumatic events are processed differently in the brain on a chemical level from ordinary events. Dissociation, the mechanism whereby we became multiple, is in its most basic form merely a chemical process, probably similar to what allows a prey animal to die calmly in the jaws of a predator.
Memories created during trauma are also stored in different cognitive areas of the brain from ordinary memories. Recent studies under controlled conditions indicate participants could successfully control unwanted memories. Their attempts were associated with increased activity in the frontal cortex. This led to reduced activation of the hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with memory.
New information indicates we can avoid laying down unwanted memory tracks. Another study shows the brains of developing humans suffer permanent physical changes when subjected to childhood abuse or neglect. These changes are thought to be significant enough to cause psychological and emotional problems later in life.
Amnesia related to traumatic events such as combat, violent crime, concentration camp experiences and torture has been documented for over a hundred years. Recent studies show a large percent of childhood abuse survivors report forget some of the abuse they suffered. Some common components were that the abuses took place in early childhood, intense emotions were generated, and there was more than one type of abuse and the abuse included threats to safety.
Freud decided later in his life that the overwhelming number of horrific things his patients related couldn’t possibly be real events. He couldn’t conceive of child abuse being that prevalent and his professional colleagues as well as the public refused to acknowledge his theory was correct.
In the face of professional strife Freud backed down. Instead of actual abuse incidents he decided his patients were talking about sexual fantasies expressing their own repression or neurosis.
We suspect he was right in the first place.
Studies today indicate sexual abuse perpetrated by adults on children and adolescents is as high as one in three girls and one in ten boys.
As in our case, by mid-life the chemical locks on hidden memories often erode, releasing memories of abuse experiences in chaotic floods called flashbacks. Sometimes therapists are accused of asking questions leading patients to create elaborate false memories. Our memories flooded into our consciousness without any suggestion or help from health care professionals. They listened. They to teach us techniques to survive the horror, but they never suggested anything.
Many abuse survivors have family members who confirm their abuse memories. Our older sister has done so for at least some of our experiences. Some of our memories were merely softened so we could allow them to stay with us.
Our family raised chickens when I was young. Some of the chickens were destined for the stewpot while others laid enough egg to earn their keep at least for a while. It was a graphic lesson I never questioned. If you didn’t produce you could be slaughtered without prior notice.
My sister told me there were periodic butchering days, an event pretty common to farm and rural folk with flocks. I remember little about that but my sister can barely eat chicken to this day.
But I’d always remembered one incident in particular. My father had some chickens in a sack. He tied the neck of the sack to the exhaust of the car and ran it to kill the birds.
As an adult I wondered just how healthy it was for us to be eating chickens killed in such a manner. I mentioned it to our sister.
She looked at me quizzically and said, “Not chickens, kittens”.
The real memory flooded back. Our cat Lucy had produced a litter. They were allowed to live for a time but their days were numbered. Our father made us watch their execution. The kittens were collected, shoved into the bag mewling pitifully, fighting for freedom. The bag was progressively more still until it hung limp and silent. I was handed my favorite, a gray kitten with blue eyes. His eyes were open wide in death, his tongue chewed, and his fur damp. Over forty years later I finally cried.
You can believe what you want about multiplicity and repressed memories. It’s your life and it’s a reputedly free country. Some people choose to believe the holocaust never happened. Others tell me the Indians got what they deserved, where would the country be if left in the hands of savages?
Savages huh? According to Erich Fromm matriarchal societies are the most peaceful and offer a good quality of life. It seems to me the patriarchal European invaders could have learned a thing or two about something from the Eastern Woodlands tribes besides how to grow corn beans and squash to avoid starving. The Eastern Woodlands people prized their children. Parents seldom spoke a harsh word to them. Beatings were unknown. Child abuse was uncommon, as was rape, no matter what ‘historical’ novels try to perpetuate. A person who abused a child the way I had been would have been ostracized. There were multiples, and people who were ‘two-spirited’ – those who lived their lives as members of the opposite sex. These were so rare they were considered holy people who helped keep balance in the world.
You probably won’t learn much about that in history books either. History is written by conquerors to fit their societal needs. The American history myth and Hollywood stereotypes are all most people know about Indians.
Anthropologists are discovering our pre-contact cultures were a lot more complex then previously believed. Scientists now know agriculture developed here independently. Indian crops spread out from the Americas and are grown throughout the world. New theories about the earliest people in the “new world” are surfacing as older and older artifacts come to light. New credence is being paid to our oral history and stories passed from generation to generation. People are developing a new understanding.
I believe the same will happen over the next two decades for multiples. The media frenzy has largely died out. Raging arguments over whether or not memories can be repressed and resurface are coming to surprising conclusions supported by scientific studies and advances in understanding brain chemistry and function. Dissociative behaviors and tendencies are better understood.
Someday maybe more multiples will come out of hiding. Not because they want to be on TV talk shows, (sorry Oprah) but because they won’t be afraid anymore. I no longer care what people think. It doesn’t matter to me if they don’t believe I exist. I no longer need to cut myself to prove I’m real.
The real news is we’ve finally won. The people who abused us lost.
We don’t need to track them down, harangue them, sue them or charge them with crimes. We Qs are surrounded by people who love us. We are safe and happy and productive. No, we aren’t wealthy. We’re not living the American dream. It was never our dream anyway.
When yuppie kids at his school made fun of beat-up car, Thunder said, “You’ll never understand. The car I drive isn’t important. I’m complete. You need a cell phone just to survive.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful we don’t have to trudge through three feet of snow, cut up downed trees and drag logs back to our house to stay warm like we did last winter. I like having enough money for food. I’m actually considering getting TV. I mean what the hell are we going to do in December after we’ve finished this book? Supposing Pleiades continues to be mellow that is, there is still that two percent fear factor going on. I’m kind of hoping he hates being called Pleiades and shows up to tell me what his real name is. Once that happens we can see where he fits into the Q.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
