Psychological Surgery & More Tender Mercies

Personal strength, protection, assurances, guidance, loving-kindnesses, consolation, support, and spiritual gifts are tender mercies. They are tender because they come in sweet and soft ways--a tap, a brief thought, a presence (David Bednar). This is not to say that they are weak. No, they are powerful, sometimes fierce in their capabilities, but the lesson of them I suppose (at least one lesson) is that a slight shift is still a miracle. Now that I think of it, I'd like to add that another lesson from the tender mercies is that a slight shift can be life=changing.

I read recently--unfortunately, the author is unknown to me--something along this line: if you didn't want to be portrayed as a jerk in my memoirs, you shouldn't have acted like a jerk in my life.

I will use tender mercies and this paraphrased quote to set the tone for this post today. I don't know how they relate yet, but let's find out. When I was about 6 months into my retirement from a psychotherapy practice. I had traveled some to Maine and Texas and the Outer Banks. I had written a lot. I had relaxed. My skin had cleared. My sense of humor returned and I was reading more. I made collages, drawings and paintings. I socialized regularly. I'd organized my kitchen and my closets. 

At one point early on in the retirement process, I worked in meditation about what I needed to do to heal more and to detox spiritually, emotionally and psychologically. I was inspired a little while after that to do energy medicine and some shamanic practices... that sort of thing. 

I had worked remotely with 3 shamans over the years that helped me a great deal. One was from the Apache tradition, another from a mixed tradition in the KY mountains, and the third from the Peruvian practice.  Prior to that, and many years ago, I had worked with a crystal healer and various other energy and body workers (breath, Reiki, Polarity Therapy). 

All of that helped me, if nothing more (as I always tell the skeptics) it helped frame my experiences as spiritual ones and that is always valuable to me. I like the big picture where things aren't personal and I can see the world and the heavens as more important than I am. There is something about being small and devout that is comforting to me. Also being just an atom--if that--feels nestled in, safe and secure and belonging.

My work to recover from work was largely spontaneous. It was that sort of thing that happens when you get out of the way and allow the natural balancing of what it means to be human to take place. The sleep regulated itself--swinging from side to side with long hours and shorter intervals and then opening up on the other end of the spectrum causing me to stay up sometimes 24 hours at a time. When i had a reservoir of long and good rest, feeling my body's needs more directly, I slept just as my body told me to. I evened out at about 6 hour 'nights'--typically 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. with occasional naps up to 2-3 hours every few days or so. Finally, I was on my body's schedule, not someone else's.

Food had an interesting place in my recovery period, too. At first, I felt I could eat and eat and still metabolize it all pretty well. I realized that the extra weight I picked up in the last 18 months of work was falling away slowly. Old pants began to fit, for example, and I was more comfortable than I had ever been at my top 'OK'  weight, which was what i considered to be about 20 lbs overweight. 

Hydration also took center stage after retirement. I consciously drank water all day long and felt the effects immediately of any dip in my intake.

On more elevated levels, many things occurred washing water under the transmutational bridge. For example, my dreams cleared--from anxiety dreams to ones of archetypal and 'big dream' valences... enjoyable and entertaining dreams... the dreams I had years ago and loved. They made sleeping a pleasure.

Also, in terms of spontaneous happenings, I had somehow 'pulled' a bitter, elderly woman into my personal life in a odd way. She had been a skilled colleague, peripheral and occasional social contact, and unfortunately, an episodic and heavy drinker.  I still don't know what triggered this. I had left work and she had been a cotherapist in 2 groups. I thought we worked well together and were on good terms. Was it a reaction to me 'abandoning' her?  

After my retirement, she began to send me what seemed like emails and letters written when drunk.  She appeared to believe I had harmed her somehow, though she didn't say specifically how, and I had no recollection of such issues. She sent multiple messages that I would call 'hate mail'. In them, she expressed dislike for me and gave examples of my 'character flaws' such as I didn't show empathy or compassion to anyone. She would pop in and out of the blue in emails and snail mail at intervals of a month or 2 between each episode of 'reaching out'. This went on for about a year. I wondered if this schedule correlated to her drinking binge schedule.

One day, unfortunately, I needed to relay some professional information to her about a former client of mine she had assumed care for. The ex client had found me on Facebook and sent a disturbing message. In hindsight, I could have informed her supervisor.

Right after I sent her the business related information, she amped up her noxious messaging again.  I received more 'out of the blue' expressions of her disdain. Weirdly, I found myself having a spontaneous and strange reaction... I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. It was spontaneous and very unexpected! It was definitely a tender mercy for my mental health.

I told the story of my strange reaction to trusted friends and laughed some more. It was as involuntary as crying when you don't want to cry, and as physical as sobbing. I still am both surprised and pleased with that reaction. It signaled to me another deep transformation that had occurred in my career related healing process.

After this bizarre hilarity, I realized that she had seeped back into my daily awareness, and I certainly didn't want to give her any more room in my thoughts. I asked an attorney friend for advice. Subsequently, I sent my ex-colleague the few sentences recommended to me by my friend. They amounted to the first round of a cease and desist notice. 

Setting that boundary released me more. In response to the last ranting correspondence I received,  I replied by email that if there is further such contact, I would forward it and all other such correspondences to the attorney. I said she and the attorney could discuss whatever she wanted to tell me between themselves. I included the attorney's name, number and address and said if she must send any more communication, please send it to the attorney. for her review and I would be informed of the correspondence content by the attorney.  She stopped. 

I saw her one time after that at a wedding and she left when I arrived.

Circling back around to the beginning of this post, what's all that got to do with tender mercies? Those bouts of laughter seem like grace that fell on me... like a gentle much needed rain. I have more ideas, but I will let it digest before more rattling on. The concept of petty tyrants and their place in ones spiritual life comes to mind. I will have to revisit Carlos Castaneda's magical writings on the topic and get back to you.

On Being the Prey of an Old and Impotent Man

Months had passed after making the transition to retirement...well, the retirement of that previous business I was involved in--therapy for the traumatized. It took a great deal of rest and machinations to make the transition. I knew I was worn out, but I did not know how much so. For about 6 weeks I slept odd hours, on my body's own schedule and deeply. I did remember my dreams, however. Mostly I dreamed--or rather, woke up thinking--about my last job.

For example, I would wake up seeing the thermostat that the lifeless male colleague would crank up to 85 and sometimes 87 degrees. This would broil me and my clients while not controlling his ambient temp at all. It comes as a trauma memory: a frozen snapshot of the thermostat reading itself. That one photo memory carried a great deal of emotion for me. It was the feeling of being the prey of a relentless predator day after day, but a predator with no real substance; simply a toxicity and irritation that wouldn't relent. It reminded me of what it mist be like living with with an aged and debilitated sexual predator--like a grandparent--who could no longer physically offend, but still spoke and was a daily presence, verbally oozing his toxins at every opportunity.

I began to think about the deeper story of the predator at my workplace, and had some pretty good gestalt sessions about it.

I have a lot of information about this man and his history. It seems he had gone down this road before which isn't unusual and was fired because of targeting a female colleague there too.You don't become that lifeless, predatory, obsessed, or petty overnight. You have to work up to it. Someone who noticed his acting out shared some background with me.

One morning, while still working alongside him,  I woke up to discover I had an opportunity to have and display mercy. The deeper information I was given about him was so sad that my felt need for revenge evaporated. He was already suffering far more than me although he may not have realized it. This occurred to me when I watched him race in and out of a therapy session multiple times one day. It's something that just isn't done. Finally I followed him and saw him standing in a hallway taking deep breaths, obviously in distress. He was having a panic attack. Another day I saw him typing and having palsied hand movements. Together with what I knew about his life, these scenes diminished him in importance and awakened my desire to have compassion despite his behavior toward me.

It was odd to me to have these thoughts, but it freed me. Whenever he acted out after that, I remembered his daughter was an opiate addict that he would chase around town, manhandle into his car, and take her home from a night out Meanwhile, he and his wife raised her young son, while their addicted daughter and her child lived with them. He and his wife hid money, credit cards and valuables from her. Another revelation about him was that his targeting of me intensified when I could not intervene in his daughter's addiction. I had a well known history of addiction work, and a known close friend on the medical staff of an addiction inpatient facility. He asked me to 'pull some strings' to get her off the short waiting list and into rehab quicker. I could not. I discussed it with my friend just to be in integrity about it, but we both agreed it couldn't be done in good conscience. 

Flights Home to Dark Nights of the Soul and Sciatica

 

External things have lapsed while a psychic hibernation has set in. It is my equivalent of a bear's Big Sleep although I have chosen to decline it this year.

Apparently, if there are enough foods about one can.

I've had to travel a little to detox out of the trauma of dealing with other people's trauma and hence my own for so long. It has not been a linear route by any means, but more a carousel of recovery. I pass this and it recedes, here comes something that had receded before.

I realized on the last leg of my last flight that I had not thought of any work-related pain at all till then. That was a good week away from distressful memories and intrusive thoughts. Apparently I had been in a part of my brain where these things did not exist. And then, due to years of reinforcement, I step into an airport with Louisville as my destination, and the pain returns immediately.

How merciful it is that the brain reserves its own hotel rooms, rent a cars, spas, museums, eateries and assorted touristy sites.

I watched a video last night about travel writing, and the best part, selling the piece upfront to fund the trip. That would be sumptuous. I wondered where I'd pitch for. I came up with these:

The train ride around the Copper Canyon from AZ to Mexico. I would stay at the Posada Barrancas Mirador for awhile

I would also pitch...

The interior cruise in Alaska

the Trans-Canadian rail excursion 

and then,

whatever the hell I thought of after the satiation had worn off.

Waking Up to More

I woke up thinking about why I am a bird of a different feather psychotherapist...and Fritz Perls came to mind...then quickly issues about the soul, shamanism, Vija Lusebrink, Jung, bioenergetics and Ken Keyes. Of course, there's more and then there's practice and the witnessing.

(A boyfriend in the 70's just floated through there. He had proposed that we be co-therapists for couples. I asked about that. He said it's incredible if we're clear with each other. We are clear so we'd be.

I'm sure we would have been good at that, but I know I wasn't clear about several things. I was very clear about that).

I had the grand fortune to become a therapist before managed care and was lucky enough to have worked a good while before it. I also had the privilege of working before research began to hover over human lives like an emotionless swarm of drones.

In my mind, the clinical work was the lab. My clients and patients offered up their lives as proof. There was time to witness and so perpetual opportunities to know all there was to know 

My training had to do with mending soul murder. I would dig carefully and tenderly, an archaeologist onto the grail itself and barely brushing. Then a covert shaman walked out of me to retrieve post-fragmentation bits and pieces. Many of my I thought pieces of the soul were splintered, held captive and even tortured, but they were still alive and worthy of rescue. As it turned out, a lot of us believed that although we spoke different languages about it.

Learning about Trauma

Thinking today about the many stories of violence I heard in my career.  In my early years there were several unusual cases. I had experience prior to these with psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, psychosis and the like, but I was new to the bareface of trauma.  One story that has stayed with me since then was told by a woman patient. She said she had been buried standing up as a child on several occasions by her father. She described having only her head unburied, and that her father instructed her to keep her eyes open and to watch what he did. She said the most agonizing 'show' was watching as he butchered her dog. She believed that if she did not watch, he would shoot her in the head.

Another?  Yes, there are others. I shall wait before reporting more. Simply typing them out is difficult.

Dream Architecture and Dig

I have occasionally dreamed that I was working throughout the years, and my recollections are typically of being in group. Sometimes, however, I have had an emergency situation involving a single dream patient. The most recent rendition was this past week. I had been binge-watching Criminal Minds and so on one of those nights had this dream: I am in a hospital setting that is not institutional in look or feel. Charged with 'doing group', I wind up with several rooms full of attendees. They are seated at tables, but there are simply too many to have in one room. I decide that I can do it anyway in a rather waitress-y style, moving from room to room and tending to everyone. More often in sleep I have issued directives to adolescents in group such as 'put your chair completely on the floor'. This was quite the issue in such groups. The teens like to kick back against the walls, balancing on the 2 back legs of the chair. It was a comfortable position. I knew because I had done it as a youngster myself... in my grandmother's house where it was allowed. There was something about the pitch of it all that felt great.

At the Backend of the Sylvian Fissure, Female Psychopathy, Mice and Men

Someone recently asked for my credentials and I found myself amused by that. It was the first time in my life that I felt no desire to have them known. It wasn't that I wanted to conceal them, but rather that I had no personal need to be acknowledged through them.

I soaked that up for a good moment, always thrilled to find salvation wherever it is--a new and unexpected freedom, a reprieve from the grind, respite from the relentless sun...

I hadn't even imagined such a thing existed, or that I needed it, or that it would feel so fine. Those little moments were 30 years in the making. I was surprised at my delight.

I laughed a little from that sense of relief and my absolute delight in it, but it seemed, I suppose, that I laughed off the request of the woman who had prompted it. Gathering up myself again, I suggested a silly thing and waited to see if she had a sense of humor: I could send you my resume. After a brief sputter for which I felt a twinge of guilt,she said flatly, dysphorically and pitifully: that would be great.

A thought went rumbling through on the tail end of that: It has always interested me to watch a cat play with what she thinks is a mouse.

And, quickly a train came pulling mental cars in a really fun few minutes where you have no choice but to sit and watch, eager for some good graffiti from up north.

It has always interested me to watch a cat play with what she thinks is a mouse.

Getting On Board After 30 years of it in one form or fashion,I'm still fascinated by the deeper, more 'abnormal' psychiatric issues--psychosis, personality disorders, trauma, emergencies. I suppose had I been an MD or RN, I would have liked the med-surg ER. An ex-near-boyfriend psychologist in-house colleague would say we're sending so and so over so you can install an ego. That level of work, but also extreme dangerousness, too.

Back to the Fishbowl I know I've mentioned the fishbowl psych ER, with goon squad stationed around before, but I keep going back there. How fantastic to know the spacing of chairs so that a lunge can be intercepted. You have to have a conversation if you can. Under any circumstances. Then, you have to wait for the privilege to be revoked by natural consequence...

That's the beauty of the no-life-time insurance cap and accountability to the litigious demographix in which one makes a distinction between the merely rich and the affluent.

Things go differently in the state nuthouse. You don't have to converse if it's too much trouble.

What a Woman Has to Do with It I have been off and on nostalgic for the power and control junkies since retirement. They were the hardest to detach from in the end; it required a clinical trauma bond exit strategy that has been slow in the execution and rather complex... I liked having a conversation if I could and making a relationship if I could. It was often like a really, really fine game of chess--so streamlined and without props. Well, maybe a cup of coffee and a dim bulb in a table lamp...

Those were the best moments. The worst were something very different, of course. The worst moments were still games, but ones you never heard of and so didn't know the rules until you were already in play.

You have to keep up or die in even the mortal combat of exhibition-only push hands with them.

The way you die without any evidence of combat or injury. That way.

The way of female psychopaths with their particular Sylvian fissures.

Personally, I've never found the garden variety female psychopath too frightening to work with. They're either overly concerned with a social facade, unable to manage cold detachment or very amenable to being understood. That's not a list of their characteristics so much as my own skewed and spontaneous sampling and how my clinical style works out.

The Woman, Mice and Men I've had the occasion here and there recently to consider a woman with a rather relentless power and control agenda. I dare say even in her best moments, it is in play--whether premeditated (it often is) or unconscious. However, another dynamic has revealed itself: she seems to over-estimate either her own psychopathic ability or her own intelligence.

Happily, lots of psychopaths do this.

I think of it this way: she's found the Sylvian fissure through chronic psychic masturbation and deep neediness for parenting, even though she is very long in the tooth by now.

Being older helps her some. It has given her intrapsychic chops--long hours of psychobabbling around in her own 'process'. Consequently,she's fiddled with the thermostat in there, straddling the hemi-crevasse at the fissure and is surprised that even a thing exists. Crawling around back, she has actually managed to breech the fuse box to the right temporoparietal junction.

Then, there is the use of auto-eroticism in various forms. Her anatomical tinkering, plus religious going here and there to services rendered by all sorts of providers, has inflated her grandiosity.

She feels powerful when sexually stimulated, for example, and psychic masturbation stimulates and soothes her, too.

All of this is supplemented with picking up housewifey (in the dullest, most classically sexist sense) self-help books to parrot. In short she's a collector of manipulative tactics, still unable to cope straight on effectively, but managing a passable shell with a social facade.

Of course I am speaking of the garden variety female antisocial. The petty thug we might call her male counterparts. The maneuvers of these women bode ill-fatedly for their lovers, but is only a mild irritant for acquaintances.

The problem with lovers is that they are stewed in oxytocin and have let go of the drop floor button. They see no reason to dispose of her completely until, as they say, they do.

As psychopaths go, such a woman's psychopathic career seems to be a mediocre one, with very little promise in sight because her Achilles Heel is 3-fold:

1. She has very little self-control. Her limbic self is still wide open. No one among all those providers has successfully installed an ego. Consequently, there is insufficient detachment and this cripples her efforts. For example, she misses social cues that, if properly used, could make her more efficiently dangerous.

2.Too much labor is required to maintain her self-absorption. It isn't an uninterrupted flow. She's not graceful with it and it drains her to hide it. For example, she has to manage impulses almost everywhere she goes and is exhausted by it. 3. Her cognitive facility is not so sharp that she is dangerous at large. She is not intellectually gifted, for example, and she is poorly educated.

We shall be grateful for all that.

Some things are just mercy gifts to humanity.

Where Diagnostics Meet the Road There's a good deal of confusion out there about what psychopathy is. It is often equated, for example, with the more well known Antisocial Personality Disorder, or APD.

There are associations, but not quite what many think.

Here is the formula:

All psychopaths have APD.

Not all people with APD are psychopathic

Going back to our case subject for illustrative purposes... She appears to have been served a combo platter on the old school Axis 2--antisocial, histrionic, borderline and narcissistic characteristics. Of course, this cluster of traits is often exactly that: a cluster. It's not rare at all among the psychiatric population.

It is dreaded, but it is not all that rare.

and while all of those constructs are useful descriptors of pertinent strategies, the limbic connections she must manage undermine her psychopathic aspirations routinely. This is due in large part to the fact that she is the type of psychopathic practitioner that doesn't want to be found out.

The result, of course, is a great swath of damage when she has the opportunity to bring a victim to close range and inside her hunting ground., but overall, since she doesn't detach easily enough to cut her losses, move on, and hone her skills, very little cost to society.

That's all more mercy falling like rain, but makes for little seaworthiness in her self-chosen life goals.

You might want to know what the life goals are. I have to say we haven't discussed them,but

There are several brands of self-determinationists in the psycho-therapy world at large. Basically, you support the patient's chosen goals and honor the right for all patients to determine the trajectories of their own lives.You see the dilemma already. When the patient's goal is satiation, perhaps we can hang in. When the taste is for human spirit, then what do we do?

The classic psychopath guns for satiation as a prime directive. We can only hope that our denial has a kernel of truth or two in it.

Perhaps psychopaths are rare. Perhaps we have insulated ourselves enough to evade the targeting of the few out there. To feel safe, we have to play those odds.

But there are glitches in that plan. There are also holes in our research and even more anectdotally, basic misunderstandings. Perhaps.

One of the most touted is that female psychopaths just don't get caught as easily and so we misinterpret that to mean that there aren't many.

However, and you'll see my bias now, there are various possibilities about why we don't catch them and drag them into prison as often as we do their male counterparts. This would suggest that they are either smarter than male psychopaths or we are more stupid than we need to be when they're around.

I vote for a little of number one and a whole lot of number two.

Part of our delusion and denial is that women and men psychopaths are basically the same. What if they aren't? What if we don't find so many women who are like the men? What if we discard the real female psychopaths when we find them because they do not meet our gender neutral diagnostic criteria?

Also, whoever said that a psychopath has to commit crimes to quality for membership?

Ironically, too, she is not very educated, but has learned to parrot spiritual principles and to whack away at others with assertiveness and other 'skills' picked up here and there. She seems to think that reading a few books about love languages or the like is helpful. She is the victim of new age hodge podge and clinicians who have not been perceptive enough to diagnose her correctly. Consequently, she balloons iatrogenically into an infantilized grandiosity and insists that her feelings have to be heard and processed. All of that is fine, of course, except she cannot heed other social cues or access empathy. It is really a sad sideshow of what modern psychotherapy can produce after countless hours and many dollars.

It is really an ethical problem for people in the profession--akin to the problems of surgeons who continue to operate on the surgically addicted. According to Hart and Hare (1996), all individuals who have been diagnosed with psychopathy will also have APD but not all individuals suffering from APD will be diagnosed with psychopathy. In short, the psychopathic diagnosis reflects a more severe disorder than APD. "The variety and severity of criminal acts performed by these women, as well as their capacity for cold-blooded violence, are similar to those committed by their male counterparts" (p. 102). Research suggests that young women who later become psychopaths may look different than young men who later present the same disorder. Specifically, Verona (2006) found that young women who later develop the disorder show a more relational form of aggression characterized by jealousy, self-harm, manipulation, and verbal aggression. Other research has examined the importance of relational aggression among females, suggesting that women may display aggression differently than their male counterparts. Crick and Grotpeter (1996) studied relational aggression, also known as covert aggression, which is a type of aggression in which harm is caused by damaging someone's relationships or social status—and it’s different from the type of aggression (typically, physical) that males show each other. Relational aggression tends to be more subtle and manipulative.

Journaling to Get Answers When You Wake

 

I am still transitioning from a 32 year career as a therapist into retirement. Work was more than a fulltime occupation so it has taken awhile. A lot of factors caused me to decide to retire when I did. Some were tediously financial. I just can't review them one more time except to say that it worked for me. More pertinent factors, though, were emotional, psychological and even collegial and not. Interestingly, my clients did not much figure into the equation, nor did my love for my work. It was time.

I find that my decision to retire had a lot to do with the larger themes of work I have done in my life--the core issues of one's growth and development. In particular, today, my retirement had to do with resolving the issue of others' choosing to do me harm.

I have, from time to time, been the object of obsession for a few people in my life. As a pre-school child, I was incorporated into a vengeance obsession by a man who hated my father. This man intended to kill me, but obviously did not.

Later, I was the object of my teenage cousin's masturbation obsession. I see now I was just an  available entity.  I believe my mom took care of that with the help of an older cousin. I don't think any of this abuse was discussed with my dad and I knew somehow not to do that when he returned later that fall from work. 

Then, in high school, there were 2 guys that would now be said to have stalked me. Both were age mates and I'm sure were simply nuisances in the way other girls experienced love struck boys, too, but I did not find it endearing or just a boy thing  I beat one of them up, swinging him around by his polo shirt until it was stretched to double its size. When he fell down I kicked him until he crumpled up crying. I remember my words from all these years ago, "Now leave me alone".

The second was easier to scare off. Once I was over the flattery of him appearing here, there and everywhere in the neighborhood, he appeared at my school. even transferring he said from his private school to be near me. I'm not sure the was really the reason for the ransfer. Looking back NIW I tink it was probably a forced transfer because he was so uncontrollable. o my school and saying he'd done so to be near me, I began to be afraid of him. One day he followed me home from school, from a distance, taking the unusual turns I took to see if he were really following me. I asked him what he was doing at one point. I was suddenly afraid of him. He said he wanted to know if my mother would let him live with us because his father threw him out... When I got home, with him along side and circling me, I told mom. She said "stay here" and went out to where he sat on his bike, having sent me in to ask if he could live with us. That was that.

In college, an older and married Iranian man who was also a student, would cruise the parking lot after our German class saying "get in, get in". I had quite a trek across the parking lot to my next class and he would drive around the lot slowly to come back to me as I walked. When I wouldn't get in, he'd open the passenger door, lean over and say crazy things like "I just want to teach you the things a woman should know..." This had happened maybe 3 or 4 times, each time with something similiar being said. He said once, "you know what I like about my wife? She gets up early to make herself beautiful for me". I would say no, thanks and keep walking, but on the day he said he wanted to teach me things, something very righteously vicious boiled up in me. I stopped and went to his car. The passenger door was open as usual. I closed it and leaned into the window. He said "I knew you liked me". I said, "the next time you do this, I will shoot you". He said something to the effect that I wouldn't kill him. I said "you're right, but I will shoot you". He laughed and pulled away fast enough to squeal his tires. That was the end of that. In class after this, he wouldn't look at me, but would busy himself reading.

I told my roommate about this and she said she couldn't be my friend anymore because she was a pacifist. I asked her if he tried to rape me and I defended myself, you would think I'd done something wrong? She said she would--that violence is never ok. I posed some hypothetical situations to her, trying to regain her support and approval in general. I loved her a great deal and was terribly hurt that she thought I should allow someone to hurt me. I felt devalued, less important than an abstract. I remember one hypothetical that I posed to her was what would she do if she had the power to keep someone she loved from being killed in the moment of danger. She said she would let it happen because she could never commit an act of violence. I tried to persuade her that letting another person be killed would be violence itself, but she said no, it wouldn't be. Her conscience would be clean. I understood this all to mean that my life was less valuable to her than her ideals. It hurt me deeply.

I got very depressed after this and had insomnia for months. I went to a priest on campus to discuss it. He was a sort of non-violence expert, a student of Merton and an ethicist/conscientious objection advocate/advisor (this was during the Vietnam draft). He said that he believed that in my hypothetical she would have consented to violence by her lack of intervention--violence by assent. He also said that rejecting me in the first place was an act of violence. I never discussed it with her after that and took some solace in having discussed it with the priest. I began reading Merton and fell in love with his writings. When the semester ended,we changed roommates. She told some other girls that I was crazy and dangerous and that's why she had to change to another room. I went back to discuss this with the priest and he said, "she is continuing her violence" and something else to the effect that I could choose to be a true pacifist and walk away from it because no one would be harmed by me doing so. I do remember him laughing and saying "It was all about being a pacifist, wasn't it?"

There are more examples of being at odds with someone because I thought I was going about my business and doing the right thing. I imagined these people intruding upon my free passage and my feelings of safety and peace of mind. You never know, though, how you are pulling these kinds of experiences to you. Therapists and mentors have suggested that my personal attributes and behaviors have to be examined. What I have looked at mostly--the recurring themes--have been my confrontive nature and saying what I think, along with refusing others' attempts to control me. Those aren't always the same thing. Voicing my opinion is not always confrontive, for example, but some, more men than women, have not liked these things about me. It has off and on been painful to me. I have been told that I expect others to like me and told in a way that makes it seem pathological. I've argued that expecting others not to like me seemed more like pathology to me.

So, back to the decision to retire. I still have the firm belief that others shouldn't bother me and that they shouldn't bother me directly or passively. Also, I still believe that everyone should deal with emotional issues quickly and get them behind us so we can carry on. This last belief is what my husband has said is very endearing to him and one of the things he has liked about me since we were "kids" (20 something, really). He's a fan of not letting emotions make decisions, clearing the air, shaking on it and getting back to square one. This was the explanation he gave me to clear up the cognitive dissonance I felt one day when he proclaimed, "I love you, Marie. You think like a man".

I don't think he meant a battering, narcissistic man. I think he meant the kind of man he is and his brothers are and his uncles, his grandfathers, nephews and friends are. That's a man horse of a different color than I've encountered elsewhere.

So, a strangely colored man horse found me particularly distasteful in my workplace. Finally, he was revealed as who and what he is and that healed emotional issues for others in my office. What I had to do to heal myself was journal--extensively. I also spoke with a psychiatrist or 2. One is my doctor and the other is my friend. The best help I got from both of them was to revisit my tendency to draw out the craziness of others. My doctor said that's why you are so good at your work. You squeeze out the pathology and get down to fixing it. My friend said, "oh, Marie, you know exactly how to deal with guys like this". He wouldn't elaborate. He laughed at me as he is wont to do.

So, I set about journaling. I journaled and I journaled like a non-literary man. I said the facts as I saw them and stripped all emotion from them as best I could. When I woke up the next morning, I heard the words, "You have an opportunity to be merciful". I applied that principle to the most recent troublesome man in my life. When I look at him now he seems broken and fearful. That has relieved my burden to see him more clearly. I don't understand why he hates women, but I have come to see that he does hate them if they are strong and give him no favors. On the other hand, if they are strong and give him favors, he follows them around closely and gets them lunch and other small favors of ingratiation.

I asked my 12 Step sponsor about the concept of mercy and we had a good conversation about it. We decided that many people have the ability to ruin the lives of others and that by choice they can or they cannot. In this situation, I can continue his torment or not. I have a great deal of information that could be very upsetting if I shared it. I choose not to.

I have never chosen to hurt him. I have fantasized about it, but I only acted to stop him from hurting me by confronting and speaking my mind factually. In the end, he hurt himself far worse than he hurt me. Now he flees from his office and has panic attacks in the hallway.

He has figured into my decision to retire, but it is not to get away from him. I'll be happy not to see him anymore, but really, I will be happy to be away from his unhappiness. There is nothing left in him but unhappiness and he drives it around all day and sits in it and talks in it. The joy of being there has been overtaken by the unhappiness that encapsulates my joy. My joy is in session with my clients. We laugh a lot. We dig through pain and then we take our "commercial breaks" and laugh before we dig through more. It is amazing work. I have been so lucky all my career.

I think this man has come to symbolize toxicity, unhappiness, cruelty and all the decisions one has to make to have those and have them every day, all day. This is a step out of my family of origin's dysfunction. I tell people I don't have a family, my parents are dead. They were my only family really. The rest made too many decisions to be toxic, unhappy, and cruel to each other every day. We left them. My parents knew there were choices to make about things like that. I am so glad they did.

So, after all this work of trying to find out what I have symbolized to my tormentors, I journaled myself into finding out what my tormentors symbolize to me: the opportunity to be merciful and to walk away.

photo: Magic Highway, Marie Monroe

The Unconscious Victim in a Work Group

It's been a long time since my last entry and a great deal has happened in the world. I have let world events recede and have been reading and writing articles about family of origin dynamics replicated in the workplace. Among the impersonal events I have been exploring was the behavior of a classically 'personality disordered' manager. The manager was known to have distorted boundaries with employees and to choose one employee per distinct era to be her chosen best friend at work. For example, one she chose as her handy man and he was favored during renovation at her home. Another was a young woman in whom she routinely confided information about the woman's teammates. Another yet, was a woman that she made sexual remarks to such as "If we had met somewhere else, we would have done it by now".

Whenever she 'elevated' an employee to 'parentified' status, she also demeaned another. These chosen would also rotate as her cycling of needs and interests would change. Her moods were decidedly cyclic, too. Gregarious laughter, touching employees as she talked, making 'joking' comments about race, religion and sex. At other times, she would brood, have a flat facial expression and 'go underground' in her collusions and divisiveness. She had a habit of discussing her non-favorites of the moment in private meetings with employees. The employees shared these among themselves as a way of protecting each other and consequently, ourselves. She also would cyclically have angry outbursts about issues like addiction, religion and parenting. She would switch when others disagreed with an intervention she took with a client or her evaluation of a client's needs. Just as she chose favorite employees and scapegoat employees, she did the same with clients--at times relentlessly attempting to trap her clients and prove them incompetent.

Little was known about her personal history although she would drop hints over time. She was especially triggered by men, targeting them with her disregard and disdain, but also with intense anger if they disagreed with her. She was competitive with women and discussed women who disagreed with her as crazy and sick. Given these dynamics, it makes sense that she would choose her "peers" from among her subordinates. Male employees would be targeted if they did not please her. Female employees would be targeted if they challenged her. As manager, her power differential insured that most would suppress whatever came naturally that would displease her. This made subordinates the perfect "peers".

It occurred to me that she replicated the dynamics of her family of origin rather directly and unconsciously. This included grooming of the children to meet their 'manager's' needs, parceling out of affection to the children by the caregivers, controlling children with affection withdrawal and verbal and emotional abuse. The incestuous quality of her interactions with subordinates also suggested that there was sexual abuse in the family. Not only was it present, but it was the dynamic through which one gained favored status. Those who did not participate in the sexualized power dynamics were ostracized and specific efforts were made to isolate the 'out of control' member among the 'family'.

Psychosis, Borderline Personality Disorder and Psychic Gifts

Deep in the interiors of psych hospitals, long prior to the new generations of anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers and anti-depressants, many patients spent a great deal of time in active psychosis. This still happens, of course. Many people have simply had disrupted brain chemistry for so long they cannot return to anything like a normal and stable state. Also, 'treatment' facilities are not set up to resolve issues, but rather, to medicate them and reduce harm--thereby reducing liability to the facilities.

Interestingly, if you were to talk to the psychotic people who had been 'successfully treated', you would find that a great majority of them simply learned to keep certain things to themselves.

Many, many psychotic patients are medicated and functionally frozen in a deteriorated state and live there until they are discharged back to a lifestyle that will deteriorate them further and in other ways. Granted, there is more fluidity once non-compliant with medication or injured again from substance use, but even this florid psychosis cannot resolve as we have seen in a pure holding environment with good resources, proper structure and the permission to let the ego rebuild itself naturally. These luxuries--resolutions of a psyche that dismantled its incompetent self--are things of the past for most. True holistic psychiatric treatment is hard to come by. I doubt we are interested as a body politic in supplying the street people with it.

All of this is to say that quite strange things happened in those hospitals and with those patients. Not the least among them are the psychic experiences I witnessed. For example, I was late to a group one morning--only by a minute or 2--and came rushing in to meet my patients already gathered together for me by the psychiatric ICU nurse. We met daily at 8 a.m. Among my patients were those who were suicidal, delusional and hallucinating. Generally, we had a pretty good run of it. We kept it light and highly structured as well as short. Basically, it was a rather successful 20-30 minutes to start the day with as much orientation and grounding as possible.

So, this one particular day, the woman I had referred to as severely borderline and chronically suicidal said I am so glad you didn't die in that car crash this morning.

It had indeed been a car crash that had delayed me that morning, but I had not spoken of it to anyone. I was just a few cars behind a horrible crash at an intersection. I had started out unusually early that morning, wanting to take care of some lingering paperwork. My early start gave me just enough time to witness the crash and to be stranded by it for some time.

I thanked her for her expression of gratitude for my safety and we continued with group. Not far into it, however, she offered a second and surprisingly out of character statement. She said, Marie, I think I should slash my throat.

Other events that I think best described as 'psychic'--for lack of better explanations--have occurred through the years like that. Sometimes I was the recipient of the psychic information and many times it came from borderline patients. Once I felt a woman whispering in my ear. It was brief and very real in my perception. She said I'll see you soon. She did indeed. She was re-admitted to the hospital after several months of no contact following her previous admission.

Another time I dreamed that a teenage girl called me to say This is Shauna. I'll be there tomorrow morning. I didn't know Shauna, but she did indeed arrive in the flesh the next morning for her admission.

Illusions and the Pursuit of Power

There are always good reasons people seek power and control, but very few acceptable reasons in normal events. I've worked with some strange coworkers who were consumed by this--not many, but those who were, were unusual people in a negative sense. This morning a statement about this phenom occurred to me in my groggy awakening: My back is so sore from you clawing your way over me to a higher position. I imagined fresh wounds: scrapes, pain, infection in my flesh. Of course, some were decidely sociopathic, but I'd say more were that horrible combination of narcissistic and compulsive. Strangely, I prefer the sociopaths. They are at least conscious. The unconscious clawwers are the worst for me.

The Russians are Coming

On social media today people are asking about the day JFK was assassinated--what was happening in your life if you were alive. I was in the 3rd grade and on the playground of my school. I remember the teacher up on a little hill calling us all in and with urgency, that we had to hurry. On the way up to her another child said the president was shot. They sent us home to be with our families. I worried about my dad. Did that mean he was in danger, too?

911 and the After World

I was working in a state mental hospital that morning and when I arrived my coworkers were already following the story. Our patients had been, too, and many of them were already very fragile. They were quite distressed. I ran their debriefing and when we were done, we found that the 2nd tower was down. I don't remember much of what happened next and after all these years the few things that stand out are those memories, going to a conference in Hilton Head where some clinical first responders came in from NYC and discovering some time later that children thought the recurring images of the towers were different buildings all over the world. They thought the world was coming down one building at a time. For me, that was the most powerful impression: believing that suddenly the world was collapsing.

The Familiarity of Kidnap

I once had such a very profound and indelible image of a young woman who had been missing for sometime in a northern state, perhaps Minnesota?? that I called the local sheriff to report what I was "seeing". The guy who answered the phone there at the sheriff's office was genuinely polite and said "Well, tell me what you have. We don't have anything."

I told him I saw a young woman, adolescent, in lingerie she had been made to wear, now abandoned at the bottom of a quarry-like place. I saw her freezing to death and unable to climb out. I thought she was dying from exposure and starvation.

I also saw the land above her. It was an open stretch of rolling hills. There was a large metal building on a rise, like a warehouse... and this building overlooked a highway. There was nothing else around. It seemed like maybe large vehicles or farm machinery was kept there in the building. The highway was very busy--like an interstate.

The man at the sheriff's office said he couldn't think of a place like that, but they would work on it. He thanked me.

He asked if I'd done this before and I said I had had images--some that had panned out and some that never did.

I watched the news for some time and never saw anything more about her.

I had been working for sometime with a mentor to find balance in these sorts of experiences and I wrote to her to tell her about the images I had seen and the degree of upset I was having about this. She gave me some exercises of protection to work with and said "There, that should take care of your kidnapped woman"

I would say that this was early in the 2000's although I am not very good with chronological time, but I believe that I have been working consciously with 'my kidnapped woman' rather consistently since then. Previously, it was very unconscious. In 2013 I continue to actively and proactively pursue the work.

I am now reading Room by Emma Donoghue. It is a novel told through a 5 year old boy's eyes who was born to a woman who had been kidnapped and held in an 11 by 11 soundproofed shed for 7 years. While I had been kidnapped for only an afternoon as a child, I have slowly realized that one can be captive without knowing it, of course, and that my own sense of the world was akin to the one Jack developed in his mother's captivity.

A Kidnapped Child, Woman.

Garridos' neighbours reveal 'Creepy Phil's' drug-fuelled orgies with the hillbillies

By Andrew Malone

UPDATED:19:28 EST, 30 August 2009

Certainly, Walnut Avenue is a grubby, primitive and predominantly white area. Many of the homes are little more than wooden shacks with children playing in the dirt outside.

'Creepy Phil': Garrido had wild parties in his garden

Drug and alcohol addiction are widespread; back yards are littered with cars and fridges. Astonishingly, the area is home to 144 rapists and paedophiles.

'People here live off the grid,' says one local police source. 'That means they use drugs, don't pay taxes and never pay their bills. They live as they want to - and pay no attention to anyone else. And everyone who lives here is very happy with that arrangement.'

Read more: Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

In the year I graduated high school...

Warhol's Mao paintings were banned in Chinese exhibitions.

The Valley Curtain. 1972. Colorado. The Christos.

And Then There Was

wikipedia says that the year of my birth, 1954, was "a common year" that began on a Friday "on the Gregorian calendar".

It gives the following as significant events that year:

Marilyn Monroe married Joe Dimaggio and the first nuclear submarine, The Nautilus, was launched that year.

President Eisenhower warned that we should not become involved in Vietnam and mass use of polio vaccine for children was done for the first time.

A hydrogen bomb test was done in the Pacific on Bikini Atoll and the first color TV set was made by RCA and sold for $1000 per 12 inch screen.

Bill Haley released Rock Around the Clock and it is said that rock n roll was born that year at least in its popular craze form of screaming mobs of teens.

Richard Nixon is vice president and Joe McCarthy worries that the US Army is a little soft when it comes to Communism.

The Unification Church is founded and Roger Bannister breaks the 4 minute mile.

Brown v. Board rules that school segregation is unconstitutional and "under God" is added to the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Himalayan K2 summit is reached and Sports Illustrated is born.

Lord of the Flies is published and Miss American is aired via TV for the first time.

Texas Instruments makes the first commercial transistor radio and Godzilla premieres.

The first Hyatt opens and the Iwo Jima Memorial is dedicated.

The first Burger King opens and the first electric drip coffee maker is invented.

My My My Generation

I start the day wanting to add another entry here, but I am tired of the violence. I'm thinking about how my life has been peppered with it, both personal and impersonal--including having been maced in my high school hallway when students--teens, mind you--were somehow en masse deemed dangerous. What began as a high school prank: everyone leave the building and then return promptly, was somehow suddenly "a riot". What could be the result of students doing such a thing?

Ironically, a coach/teacher--not very good at either--had passed around a cup in which he'd sprayed mace so that everyone could experience it not long before the macing in the hallway. We thought it an interesting exercise and painful although now I am not sure it was a wise decision on his part, of course, and somehow it was 'trending' and topical. I wonder now if that was his own private efforts at some crowd control and was he the 'macer'?

It wouldn't surprise me even though I can't remember much about him...his name, his subject...but I do remember his presence and how I do not have much of a visual of him probably because you would avoid eye contact with such a presence if you could anyway.

He seemed piggish. Or does to me now. Interested in being top dog as they say and interested in some notoriety among his younger charges...not the popularity of a young 'peer-like' and cool teacher, but as someone not to be messed with--more power-interested and I suppose powerless in his sad life.

Much older now, I am convinced his was a sad life. It is a feeling really more than any other kind of information. A bad feeling.

The fatigue I feel is not surprising as I think about this blog this morning. I am of the generation that watched soldiers in combat every night on the news. Body counts were daily news items like weather and sports. The images I have are soldiers in green with WWII like helmets and rifles hunched over and advancing toward something. Lots of gunfire and smoke.

This was well before my own peers would even consider the draft as something personal, but I do suppose that we expected war was a daily event. Perhaps because we were just past puberty and had entered the immortal realm of adolescence, we didn't worry about ourselves yet.

So I am tired of violence. An ironic statement. I would imagine that very few of us would not tire of violence, but I am of the generation that marked its coming of age with large and violent events. I would think that it is not much different for other generations, but I wonder how much say, of the WWII generation had these kinds of images? The soldiers surely, but as I recall, not many shared too much of that in my daily life although I was the generation to inherit those warriors' distress through dad and uncles and all their friends.

As I contemplated another blog entry this morning I found myself with so many choices I ground to a halt of fatigue. Jonestown? Heaven's Gate? Manson? Richard Speck? Kent State? Vietnam?

Those were the highlights, of course. I began to look around for more pleasant impersonal events. Those are harder yet I am sure no less interesting and if I begin to shift my vision, no less few.

But it is a difficult shift.

Railroad Killer and the World Gone Silent

I had been following the news about this man before he was arrested and had some 'connections'. On my way to work one morning I crossed the railroad tracks on Oak St. in Louisville and noticed the world was silent. "Even the birds", I thought. Later that day I heard that the killer had been at St. Vincent dePaul's shelter. By this time, his photo was out.

The second connection I had was in a hypnogogic image one night. I saw him dressed in a white shirt and white pants, leaning up against a concrete wall. The sun was intense, like in the southwestern US and he was looking up and down the street, squinting into the sun. "He knows he's being hunted and that he's almost captured", I thought.

CNN

Authorities: Suspected serial killer 'street-smart' June 24, 1999

" Confirmed sightings in Kentucky

Barnard said there were confirmed sightings of Resendez-Ramirez from June 16 through June 18 at homeless shelters in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. The suspect reportedly was wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a baseball cap.

Resendez-Ramirez is suspected of committing an August 1997 slaying in Lexington, but he has not been tied to any killings in Louisville.

Interviews with witnesses in Louisville indicated the suspect was headed back into the Lexington area to perform migrant work. Investigators located a farm in Russell County in southern Kentucky where he had worked in 1996 and 1998.

Investigators also uncovered a photo taken after he was arrested near railroad tracks in 1996.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9906/24/texas.serial.killer.03/

Police said Resendez-Ramirez has earned money in the past by donating blood and working on cars

.

The suspect, authorities said, had been in touch with relatives in Lexington "within the last few days."

Crime Library

Angel Maturino Resendiz: The Railroad Killer BY Joseph Geringer

"Terror Near Tracks One of the more romantic elements of American folklore has been the crisscrossing rail system of this country — steel rails carrying Americans to new territories across desert and mountain, through wheat fields and over great rivers. Carl Sandburg has flavored the mighty steam engine in elegant prose and Arlo Guthrie has made the roundhouse a sturdy emblem of America's commerce. But, even the most colorful dreams have their dark sides. For nearly two years, a killer literally followed Wheatfield America's railroad tracks to slay unsuspecting victims before disappearing back into the pre-lit dawn. His modus operandi was always the same — he struck near the rail lines he illegally rode, then stowed away on the next freight train to come his way. Always ahead of the law. Angel Maturino Resendiz, 39 years old, was apprehended early this month (July, 1999) after eluding state police for two years and slipping through a two-month FBI net until, after nine alleged murders, he was finally traced and captured by a determined Texas Ranger. Known, for apparent reasons, as "The Railroad Killer," Angel Resendiz (who was known throughout much of the manhunt by the alias Rafael Resendez-Ramirez) has been called "a man with a grudge," "confused," hostile" and "angry" by the police, the news media and psychiatrists. He is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who crossed the international border at will. Most of his crimes took place in central Texas, but he is suspected of having killed as far north as Kentucky and Illinois."

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/resendez/track_1.html "HUNTSVILLE - Angel Maturino Resendiz, the serial killer who claimed he was half-man, half-angel and could not be killed, was executed here Tuesday for the December 1998 murder of West University Place physician Claudia Benton. Maturino Resendiz, 46, who killed as many as 14 people as he criss-crossed the nation by rail and in the process came to be known as the "railroad killer," was the 13th person to be executed in Texas this year. As execution witnesses — members of his family and those of four of his victims — filled the tiny chambers set aside for them, the killer nodded toward them and apologized for his crimes. "I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me," Maturino Resendiz said in a quiet voice. "You don't have to. I know I allowed the devil to rule my life. I just ask you to forgive me and ask the Lord to forgive me for allowing the devil to deceive me. "I thank God for having patience with me. I don't deserve to cause you pain. You did not deserve this. I deserve what I am getting." Before drawing his final breath, the killer, who claimed to be Jewish, prayed in Hebrew and Spanish. George Benton, husband of the doctor who was repeatedly stabbed and bludgeoned in the family's home, lashed out at the killer, the Mexican government, which had supported his appeals, and opponents of the death penalty."

'Railroad killer' offers apology at execution Maturino Resendiz asks for forgiveness: 'I deserve what I am getting' By Allan Turner | June 28, 2006

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Railroad-killer-offers-apology-at-execution-1891401.php

Eileen and Andrea Yates

Andrea Yates as she appeared some time before the murders (left, date unknown) and soon after the murders in 2001 (right)

Eileen Starbranch

I was sitting in my house in Louisville and looked up to the TV to see Eileen Starbranch on the screen. She is a psychiatrist I worked with in Houston at 2 different hospitals. I always admired her work and her demeanor and when I realized one night that I could not take another step forward, I called her to say so. She met me in the rain, in the dark on the night before Thanksgiving and helped me get admitted to a psych hospital in another town under an assumed name. I had overdosed for some time on alcohol and was having a rather severe mixed episode of substance induced bipolar d/o. When Andrea Yates killed her children, it was due to a tragically fulfilled prediction of Eileen's. Eileen was one of the MDs who had treated Yates for psychosis.

"In Andrea's first posthospital visit, Starbranch told her that even though she was feeling better she should "remain compliant with [her] medications." In the past Andrea often took half doses or skipped her medication altogether. Depending on drugs made her "feel like she's weak," she told her PHP therapy group. By the next visit, August 16, 1999, Starbranch reported in disbelief that Andrea "is talking of wanting off medications!" She "wants to get p.g. [pregnant] and have more kids. Wants to homeschool the children." On August 18 Starbranch wrote, "Apparently patient and husband plan to have as many babies as nature will allow! This will surely guarantee future psychotic depression." Read here Read more: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Andrea-Yates-A-Cry-in-the-Dark/4#ixzz2UHIsADJB

Eileen Starbranch

Andrea Yates

"A psychiatrist, who treated Andrea Yates in 1999 after she attempted suicide twice following the birth of her fourth child, testified in her murder trial this week that she warned Yates not to have another child because it might prompt another psychotic episode. Dr. Eileen Starbranch told jurors that Yates suffered from postpartum psychosis and was out of touch with reality.

Compatriot Fatigue

I have had a revelation about my work. The periods in which I've experienced Compassion Fatigue have been many and some were quite intense. There were times I drank too much, became so anxious I could not drive or sleep, became impulsive to the point of angry outbursts and cried easily.

Those were the most severe.

These episodes were, in retrospect, episodes of PTSD. I had an awareness of that during them, but the full scope of the disorder was not evident to me until later. Mine has been more of a complex PTSD that I've had to manage since my childhood. As I've progressed in my career--always interested in the most complicated cases and high risk populations--it has, of course, compounded. Since I insisted upon having a personal life as well as a career, there was more trauma to be had naturally.

What I have found is that PTSD is a given in my personal life and Secondary PTSD is a given in my chosen field. There is nothing adverse about choosing a career that will traumatize you, although that sounds ridiculous. It is simple, however, if you are a person that needs intense experiences in order to feel something. In another field that may be a less frightening piece of information because it would be couched in less clinical terms such as "adrenalin junkie". I don't want to jump off a mountain in a wing suit so I talk to people in the psychological abyss. I am a psychological adrenalin junkie.

This is not very different from being a first responder in an immediate disaster or catastrophe. We consider those heroic acts and we are grateful for people who do them. I would not dare claim heroism, but I do understand the motivation of first responders. For some wonderful and perhaps dark reasons, they have the emotional and psychological abilities to go head first into gore. I have the same abilities in psychological gore.

The need for compatriot support in adrenalin careers is crucial. I'll delve into that a little later, but it occurs to me now--almost at the end of my career--that the majority of my own Secondary PTSD experiences in my work have been built upon the failings of my colleagues and supervisory/administrative staff to tend to me adequately when I was falling. I don't mean to blame them, but hope to point out some inherent problems across systems that employ high risk responders.

'Angel' is Not Always a Term of Endearment

It's very frustrating to have worked with some clients that I can't talk about. I could add to the folklore about a couple of notable folk. The frustration I feel is more the writer in me wanting to go on ad nauseum about them because they were enormously interesting people that I grew to like a great deal.

I spent most of my evening tonight--the first of a long holiday weekend--researching such a man that I knew in the 90s. He was paroled to my treatment program from another state and it seems now many years later, he has continued his life's work that sent him to federal prison in the first place. He's a fugitive as I write this and if caught will 'serve' more than one life sentence. Apparently, he's been a successful fugitive for some time now.

What I most remember about him was his presence--a large man, very grounded, rooted really, into the earth. He was very still, but comfortably so and not dangerous to anyone there in the least. Actually he was very approachable and I'd often sit with him in the smoking area to smoke and chat.

We found common ground quickly. He enjoyed the 'spirituality' talks I'd give as part of the program and we'd discuss metaphysics, gemstone healing, sweat lodges and the like. He told me I was an angel and said he meant the ethereal one, not the endearment.

I was a companion in the pipeline back to his family, his business and his life after a decade or so in prison. He always talked to me at a 90 degree angle, looking off into the distance, but speaking very quietly and staying quite engaged.

The rest of the people in the program kept their distance, but acknowledged him politely in passing. I was the only staff person who liked him. Others were angry about his arrogance although I didn't see it. I think his solitude seemed arrogant to them as did his business--an organized and large affair of some fame and notoriety. His calm annoyed and angered my colleagues. They interpreted that as arrogant, too. Whenever he interacted with anyone he was always polite, consistently, and seemed authentically present and kind.

He was, as it turned out, exceedingly wealthy from his illegal activities and known among his business associates as a good and trustworthy man. I'm certain that he had been very violent in his business although violence was not his business. He seemed to be a man who would use violence to protect the boundaries he had established and his boundaries were well fortified around a kingdom of treasure and the family he had made from similarly minded associates. He came from a very closed society whose non-criminal members were equally as fierce and demanding of their carved out lives. Within that culture he was not aberrant, but he was a kingpin, well-loved and talented.

I find myself, as I always did, wishing him well.

Metaphysics, An Internal Humvee, the Abducted Freed and the Wilderness of an Intrapsychic Alaska

My most recent "big dream" was a continuation of a dream motif--vehicles--I've had for some years. It began at my first recollection in college years when I dreamed that I could use a roll of 35 mm film and ink pens to transport myself. The film was unfurled and created a type of toy scooter that I stood on. If I held Bic medium point black pens in the proper combination between my fingers, and manipulated them just right, I could lift off the ground a few inches and move forward. This was pre-queled with waking notions as a child in which I would, from time to time, kick a particular rock ahead of me and follow its path as my actual path and transportation forward. It seemed as good a direction finder as any and I did participate in choosing my fate somehow.

The recent dream involved a Humvee of the color pictured here, but of much larger proportions. It was a vehicle I owned, and had for some time but had forgotten about. In the dream I was very excited to rediscover it. This dream came in response to a friend's request for healing. I don't remember the meditation prior to the dream. I fell asleep exhausted that night from work stress and extreme vicarious trauma.

It was a magnificent and fortifying dream--a curative, restorative and healing dream. I have felt better ever since. I rose up through the fear that surrounds me and am now able to see my still suffering colleagues with compassion. My previous and serious bout of 'compassion fatigue' was not for my clients, but for my co-workers. That aspect of compassion--having compassion for my colleagues--is essential to my work as a trauma therapist. When it was failing, I could barely tolerate going into the clinic. Now, I am up a few levels and am not suffering, but resuming my role as the informal morale officer which has always come easily to me.

I have had recent problems with being the natural morale officer. It is involved in my life long struggle to avoid the scapegoat role of any group I am in. With time and much practice, this has eased. It is still a point around which polarization happens, but now my 'tormentors' are more restrained. The polarization seems to happen when I am particularly happy. It has been a core healing for my life's work to not mind if others are differently attuned emotionally or if they take my happiness as an affront. I have almost become used to being emotionally separate in my feeling states--at least, I expect it, but it is still very troubling to be targeted and disliked for it. I've learned that if I keep it low key it garners less resentment. I have also learned that if I don't mind the targeting, the targeting goes away quicker. It is always better to leave one's taunters with their taunting sitting still in their own laps.

As for Alaska...I have, since early childhood, been interested in survival in the wilderness and under other extreme conditions such as being lost or homeless. I was fascinated by stories about Alaska and spent many hours daydreaming about how I would survive in my own Call of the Wild story. Of course, all children are interested in survival, but my particular interest, was in surviving the extreme scenario, many of which I witnessed and was a participant in during my youth. These included an explosion, a building fire, witnessing an arterial bleed, witnessing the immediate aftermath of an industrial accident, a high speed chase with gunfire, being taken hostage, witnessing the use of lethal force to free me and witnessing two attempted assassinations of my father—one of which involved my capture for an afternoon. Those were the high profile taglines. Along with those came the snapshots of traumatic memories embedded in the events such as: firemen in full gear, with axes, chasing me; a fountain of rhythmic blood taller than me; a dismembered hand; and hiding quietly, fearing my father would die and then consequently, so would my mother and me.

I enjoyed the challenge of imagined survival in the outback of Alaska. In my 30’s I decided that I would die in a small plane there.

I was taught survival techniques in extreme circumstances for a child. My father would practice with me, putting me in various holds meant to restrain me and having me reason my way out of them. He made it play and it was fun, but I learned a great deal—what to do if grabbed from behind and in various ways—from the front, each side, by my hair, with a hand over my mouth, when picked up...I didn’t realize until decades later that he feared I would be kidnapped. I learned to handle weapons. I was told that I should always use a shotgun when frightened because I wouldn’t have to aim, but I was only allowed to fire a shotgun once since I was so small. It knocked me down and bruised my shoulder. This was to teach me how it felt, he said, so I wouldn’t be surprised by it if I ever had to use it. I used a handgun more. My father would stand behind me and we would use all of our four hands to hold and fire the weapon at cans.

Shotguns were propped in the corners of our home. A handgun was on the entry hall table and another worn by my father in the house. At night, that one was on the bedside table. I never touched them without instruction to. I used to worry that my father would die every time he went to work. I especially worried if he were late coming home. A dispatcher would call to keep us informed since there were no cell phones then. This was during the time that we would often leave in the middle of the night to go to one of 2 other places that my parents called “our apartment” and “our little house”. My father taught me informational rhymes to jump rope with. They contained the addresses of the 3 residences, phone numbers, parents’ names and a code name. I still remember them.

Freeing the Prisoners of the Planet

Jaycee Dugard Captivity Site

Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped on June 10, 1991, in South Lake Tahoe, California. Dugard was 11 years old at the time and was abducted from a street while she was walking from home to a school bus stop. Searches began immediately after the kidnapping, but no reliable leads were generated. She remained missing for more than 18 years. On August 24 and 25, 2009, convicted sex offender Phillip Craig Garrido visited the campus of UC Berkeley accompanied by two girls. Their unusual behavior sparked an investigation that led to his bringing the girls to a parole office on August 26, accompanied by a young woman who was then identified as Dugard.

Garrido, 58, and his wife Nancy Garrido, 54, of Antioch, California, were arrested for kidnapping and other charges. On April 28, 2011, they pleaded guilty to Dugard's kidnapping and sexual assault. Law enforcement officers believe Dugard was kept in a concealed area behind Garrido's house in Antioch for 18 years. During this time, Dugard bore two daughters who were ages 11 and 15 at the time of her reappearance. On June 2, 2011, Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 431 years imprisonment; his wife received 36 years to life.--From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Penecostal Pedophiles and Women in Chains

Spiritual and religious abuse has been a recurring theme among my clients and one I'm sure many other therapists have encountered. It has always seemed so profound to me. Not just distrustful of whomever the perpetrator might represent on earth (a man, a woman), but also distrustful of the greater being he/she represents, too. Women in chains may go deeper in my turmoil than even the most heinous spiritual/religious abuse. I'm talking about women in basements naked and chained to the walls. Women who sweeten a drug cartel deal. Women who have not known for years where they are.

photo by Julian Cardona

"Rape Trees" Found Along Southern US Border

Mariela Rosario

By Mariela Rosario | 03/11/2009 - 16:00 | From beheading to kidnappings, there seems to be no limit to what the Mexican drug cartels are willing to do to assert their dominance—and they deal not only in drugs, but also in humans. The majority of the coyotes who help undocumented immigrants cross the border are affiliated with the cartels.

Although many politicians would like to believe that the violence will stay to the south of the border, the reality is that it has already begun to affect South Western states. The revelation that Phoenix is now the "kidnapping capital" of the United States only affirms what many residents already believe.

Now, a new method of marking territory has crossed over into the United States. "Rape trees" are popping up in Southern Arizona and their significance is horrific. These "rape trees" are places where cartel members and coyotes rape female border crossers and hang their clothes, specifically undergarments, to mark their conquest.

Sen. Jonathan Paton (R-Tucson), recently invited officials to describe the problems being faced in his home state to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. Paton said violence along the border has escalated dramatically in the past year, "We want to go after these crimes," he insisted, "It’s an unbelievable situation, and we can’t allow that to go on in this country."

For more info. visit truthout.org or read the follow up article at Latina.com. http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/news-politics/rape-trees-found-along-southern-us-border

Flying Crystals

Dream: I am in a market in Greece and have been shopping at a vendor's stand that sells rocks and minerals. After I move away I decide that I want more items from the stand, but rather than go back to it I lift my hands and will crytals to fly to me. My hands are covered with tiny crystals. Then I hear a voice that says I need kunzite and I lift my hands again to attract it.

Prisoner of War

Dream: I am in a jeep and driving alongside a train. In the train are detainees heavily guarded by armed soldiers. I know that it is just a matter of time before I am taken prisoner because I am visible due to a light inside the jeep that I cannot turn off. A soldier--German?--pulls me out of the vehicle and I am held hostage. Fast forward through multiple sexual assaults that I am aware will happen but I do not experience in the dream. I am at a celebration of my return from captivity and ask someone how long was I away? They say 2 years and I am so excited to have dissociated all the way through my captivity and to have no memory of it.

Ted Patrick “father” of deprogramming and thrice-convicted felon, typifies the former Cult Awareness Network“deprogrammer” – prone to violence, scornful of the rights and beliefs of others, and willing to do anything for a price. Patrick had been revered by the old Cult Awareness Network (CAN) its predecessor the Citizens Freedom Foundation, appearing as an honored guest and featured speaker at their conventions. His methods have been emulated by numerous deprogrammers, including Steven Hassan, Rick Ross, Hana Whitfield and many others. Patrick worked to make kidnapping and assault appear socially acceptable. As long as the crime was directed against individuals whose beliefs could be made to seem odd or unusual to the rest of society, any common thug could earn substantial sums simply by billing himself a “deprogrammer.” Patrick’s past reveals that he comes from a background which made him no stranger to crime. Patrick’s father opted for the lucrative profession of pickup man for local mobsters running the numbers racket. Patrick began earning his living as a professional kidnapper and hired thug, targeting members of various religions for violent “deprogrammings.” Patrick has admitted that deprogramming: “may be said to involve kidnapping at the very least, quite often assault and battery, almost invariably conspiracy to commit a crime and illegal restraint.” Patrick has asserted that religions recruit members by hypnotizing them on the spot with “beams” emanating from the knees and elbows and other parts of the body. This to Patrick classified a potential victim as a “mindless robot” and fair game for violent tactics. When once reminded that such tactics violate constitutional protections of the First Amendment, Patrick retorted by describing freedom of religion as: “one of the biggest rackets the world has ever known.” Patrick’s career has earned him a string of criminal indictments stretching from San Diego to New York. The charges range from kidnapping to violent abduction and sexual assault, including rape. Brute force is the hallmark of Patrick’s kidnappings. In a book defending his violent techniques, Patrick described the kidnapping of a Christian who resisted abduction by bracing himself against Patrick’s getaway car. Patrick forced the man into the car by squeezing his genitals until he let out a howl and doubled up in pain. “Then I hit,” Patrick wrote, “shoving him head first into the back seat of the car and piling in on top of him.” He described another abduction: “Joe and Goose [two of Patrick's henchmen] both had a hold of Ronnie … so I started on the other guys, you know, Maceing them, hitting, whatever. The Mace didn’t really work. I mean it worked, but they kept fighting. I’d spray somebody and then they were still kicking and I had to just kick them back.” Court papers filed in Massachusetts show that Patrick assaulted a man with a straight-edged razor during an abduction while, by Patrick’s own accounts, other abductions have utilized kicks, punches and other forms of violence. In Ohio, Patrick and several others were indicted after abducting a 20-year-old woman and taking her to Alabama, where she was repeatedly raped over the course of the seven-day “deprogramming.” Patrick announced afterward that he was giving up deprogramming. At the time of the Ohio abduction, Patrick was on probation for abducting a Tucson waitress; his probation was revoked after it was learned he had accepted several thousand dollars for the “deprogramming” of the Ohio woman, and he served a year in jail. One of Patrick’s attacks, an unsuccessful deprogramming attempt on a Catholic nun in Canada, resulted in an official government prohibition against Patrick entering Canada. Ignoring this, Patrick slipped back and forth across the border numerous times to continue his career in Canada as a kidnapper-for-hire, eventually assaulting more than 50 people in that country. Patrick, who received up to $15,000 plus $250 per day expenses for a single deprogramming, used violence not only to change individuals’ religious beliefs but their political persuasions and even their sexual orientation. In one case, Patrick resorted to rape in an attempted deprogramming of a woman who was a lesbian. Government prosecutors, wise to Patrick’s lifestyle of violence and force, have jailed him repeatedly on numerous charges, with three felony convictions. Yet, in extremist circles, Patrick and his methods are still considered worth emulating. Ida Camburn has been a supporter of Patrick’s and recommended the violent use of deprogramming. Keith Henson, a convicted hate criminal, advocates deprogramming and made this statement on the Internet in May 2001: “Deprogramming is currently out of style, but it or something much like it is badly needed.” Apart from his deprogramming activities, Patrick’s criminal record includes charges of cocaine use and parole violations. the above is from Religious Freedom Watch http://www.religiousfreedomwatch.org/religious-experts/false-experts/ted-patrick/ retrieved on 9/23/12