THE SANCTUARY AND INNER LIFE ~ Come on an adventure! Picture a marsh reserve full of refuse, strange rusted pieces and broken glass, along with lone clumps of blooming daffodils, nesting redwing blackbirds in the bushes, skunk cabbages, charming creeks, impassable mud ~ We are going to look at the Inner Life as if it were this marsh. We are going to look at old habits and traits and attitudes and responses and see what we find there, in comparison with what we might regard as a mature and admirable model. We are going to need a safe, dry, comfortable place to stand to do an assessment to find out what is here. We are going to need some tools, some trash bags, the Aububon books for identifying turtles and plants and insects and birds. We will have to figure out how much energy and time we have for a session. We may have to build up tolerance for this work, maybe do it for a few minutes at a time. We look at this wildlife area and see that it needs cleanup and that it has potential. Who or what is present? In disguise or not? Who is in charge around here? What are the dangers? Where do the paths lead? What is out-of-date? Where does the buried treasure lie?  What is in the trash can? How and where do we empty it? What laws govern this place? Does it have trespassers? Is it fenced? Is it welcoming? Does the sign say NO TRESPASSING? Are children safe here? The Inner Sanctuary is calling ~

     In her chapter titled “Reconnection” in the book Trauma and Recovery Judith Herman writes that the survivor, ”having come to terms with the traumatic past…faces the task of creating a future.” A new self and new relationships must be developed. Herman writes that the beliefs that previously gave life meaning  no longer sustain the survivor and that she must now find a new sustaining faith. The author compares the process to immigration. Survivors must build a new life within a different culture. Re-education is often indicated.

     I have decided to go back to college and I find that as a senior citizen I may go tuition-free. Classes begin one day before my seventieth birthday. The first class that attracts me is a writing course called Creative Nonfiction. The second is titled The Psychology of Attachment in Early Childhood.

     In many ways, “reconnection” is a misnomer for a person born into a cult because a healthy connection to the world was never made and will occur in recovery for the first time.

       The pansies are outdoors, as if spring were on the way, but one brown oak leaf reveals the season as autumn. I photographed them today at Skillins in Falmouth Foreside. The waterfall in the rear greenhouse is rebuilt, peaceful and lovely. I thought of buying orchids but knew I did not want orchids brought into bloom by somebody else. I already have an orchid, and it  is coming into bloom for the first time on a plant several years old. I have African violets. I have garden planters full of impatiens and petunias happily blooming indoors. No, I did not go for flowers.  I came home with several small starter plants ~  a Strawberry Begonia, and Baby Tears, an Artillery Fern, and a Creeping Charlie so luxuriant that I cut off several stems to root in my double soapstone vase.  I brought home a package of Tasha Tudor Christmas cards with an illustration of corgis and children carrying Christmas greens.  I went to the greenhouse for its peace and stillness and beauty, and to stop my heart from banging.

     This morning a woman shouted at me in public and called me a name that might have been appropriate if I had been a canine. The dispute was over a parking space and I believe now that she was grievously in the wrong, but at the time I felt nothing but shock and panic. My fight-or-flight response is still seriously disabled. The space was directly in front of the Morning Glory health food store, where I planned to shop. Ignoring the ruckus I went inside and found my aloe vera concentrate and gluten-free flour and sea salt and was about to search for other items when I realized that The Screamer probably wanted to shop in this store, too, and that as soon as she found a parking spot she would be here. I imagined her continuing her harangue at me and I did not feel safe. I paid for my items and left as quickly as I could, with my heart pounding. I sit here safely at home and sip on a bottle of Arizona Green Tea with Ginseng and Honey, but wonder how normal people deal with this kind of thing? Humor is supposed to kick in somewhere, and something called “self-soothing.”

     The holiday season approaches. I have plans and secrets and preparations that I note down on a pad of holiday stationery.  Holiday joys are always so tenuous and ephemeral, and vanish so easily. I  hold onto them, ink to paper. Especially today I am grateful to have a tangible list ~ the suri alpaca shawl almost completed, old embroidered linens freshly laundered and ironed, special ingredients for baking from the King Arthur flour company, knitted washcloths, handmade soaps, Renaissance music by the Baltimore Consort, Durufle’s Pie Jesu, terrariums for partridgeberry and mosses, a salad with dried cranberries, roasted beets, and blood oranges, pie with pastry leaves, antique china ornamented with birds, my Celtic harps, a drawerful of handmade jams, Sakonnet wine, the SILK puppet show, and my “new” Chopin Nocturne, Op. 37, No. 2 with the thirds and sixths in the right hand.

     I remember to take deep breaths.

     Some things cannot be proven. They might be true and they might be false. Perhaps in the course of a lifetime we will be able to prove or disprove them. More likely, these matters will always remain in the speculative realm.

      During childhood and sometimes into adulthood we are dependent upon others for support and survival. Sometimes we are surrounded with people who believe strongly in certain unproven things, believe their faith is a virtue, do not tolerate opposing viewpoints, and who insist that we believe the way they do.  Perhaps we prefer to believe what they believe.  Doubts may arise in us but we dismiss them, not wanting to face the consequences, for all of us, if what our support persons believe to be true should turn out to be false. Perhaps we reassure ourselves that no one will take advantage of us or deceive us with untruth because we have God’s protection and our very faith will protect us.

I have “reasoned” this way in the past and now think it was a recipe for disaster.

     “Isolation, alienation, and shunning are an ongoing difficulty. As a child I was shunned by the outside world for dressing and behaving differently from my peers. The cult members of the inside world eventually shunned me for following my own inner voice instead of obeying blindly. After I left the cult, the outside world shunned me because I had in the past belonged to a cult. Lastly I was shunned because it was evident I was a damaged person. Even counselors did not want to deal with my issues.”

     The above quote is from my memoir. Recently I sought a new therapist and one was found who had much experience dealing with cult survivors. He took a week to consider whether or not he would work with me, but was burned out and could not.

     While I appreciate that he knew his own needs and capacity, a part of me is devastated at this news. No substitute therapist with similar skills has been found. A still unhealed part of me feels shunned yet again. I have worked at recovery for decades, but the pained part of me is feeling that I am still not good enough, not acceptable enough, not even to have someone to help me.

     Another part of my being speaks up and says, ” Therapy is not the only tool for recovery. I will find another way. Everything is going to be all right.”

     At the age of twelve Jan Yoors ran away from home and joined a Gypsy  kumpania, learning the language and ways of the Lowara people. In his book The Gypsies he describes  Gypsy women reading the Gaje’s futures from lines in their hands. In response to the boy’s curiosity about this practice, the noble Gypsy girl Keja intoned on his behalf a long monologue, explaining that ”the avidity for fortune-telling came from an inability to cope with one’s anxieties,” adding that “instead of satisfying, it created a self-perpetuating greed for prophecy, akin to compulsive gambling, only more harmful since one lost not money but insight.”

     This is a book filled with amazing description and wisdom and is the first  I have read that presents an inside view of Gypsy life.

     The photos are of my Auch grandparents and my mother when she was a young child.

We were always free to question the complex theology we were taught, and would have reassured anybody who asked. At the same time, illnesses and deaths amongst us were explained as the consequences of disobedience. Spiritual doom was pronounced upon persons who left the group. We were forbidden to contact them and we knew that we would be cut off in the same way if we were ever foolish enough to leave. We believed that all of this was true and right and justifiable. Under these circumstances, what member was truly free to make a close examination of the beliefs and decide whether or not to remain in the group, especially when we had no support system whatever on the outside? Where was the fresh air necessary for an inquiry? We did not know that many surrounding factors in our everyday lives limited our abililty to think and to question and decide. We considered our beliefs logically unassailable. We did not know that in a realm where nothing can be proven or disproven, a variety of unchallenged possibilities could all seem logical and true. We followed one thread with blinders to all the little bypaths and sideroads that could have taken our conclusions in many different directions.

In how many other ways do I still avoid asking tough questions today, fearing where the inquiry might lead me? And how do I arrive  at a good decision when the consequences cannot be anticipated? I suspect that educated guesses play a significant role in our decision-making. Teams of experts may be available for the privileged but not for most of us. I remind myself often that in order to choose wisely I need to listen to my heart as well as to my mind and experience. I think that intuitive perceptions are one of the most precious assets in a decision-making tool kit.

As a cult survivor who was not permitted to make her own decisions  far into her adulthood years, I remind myself that the Freedom to Think is a privilege that can never be taken for granted.

I forgot some of the old injuries until something jolted my memory. Now to my horror I suspect that an old wound has not healed, and, most disappointingly, that I have no reserves to ward off new injury. And so I roll up my sleeves and become my own trauma team.

After all these years of integrating a scattered self I find it momentarily useful to detach from emotions and look at the injury from the viewpoint of a calm and wise outside observer. I assemble my medical staff to ascertain whether the wound is real or imagined. It is found to be real, untreated, and festering. Belatedly, it must be cleaned of debris, sewn up, bandaged, encouraged to knit together and heal from the inside out. The patient needs rest and peace, deep breathing, a gentle and pleasing environment. Some members of the team try to discover what instrument or weapon caused the wound. They try to determine whether the injured person is safe from future attack. Is some type of self-defense a good precaution? Does she need a more effective look-out system? An awareness of enemies to the rear? The ability to recognize wolves in sheep clothing? What else might be needed?

Many have conspired to urge me to forget the injury, to forgive, to rationalize it away, to minimize it, to recognize the dangers of prolonged anger. But who has been there to draw attention to the actual wound and wisely assist in its treatment?

The miracle is that the injured person and the healing team exist together within one being.

The word “defense” suggest a missile shield, or something as convoluted as the electric shock fencing that protects the dog owner from fines administered by the animal control officer. Aikido uses the strength of the opponent against himself. The suit of armor defended a knight from strikes by his enemy. Our nation’s spy network and my own eavesdropping, when I was still in the cult, are attempts at self-defense by secretly listening in on the enemy’s plans. Ladybugs introduced into the garden are defenses against aphids, scale, and mites. A lie is an attempt at self-defense. Nature camouflages creatures for their defense with protective colorings that blend into the environment. Defense obviously takes many forms.

“Who is in charge around here?” is a question I am fond of demanding of the grandchildren, and it always elicits a boisterous response. But who is in charge of a Defense Mechanism and how wise or far-seeing or benevolent is the General in charge? First of all a defense mechanism is unconscious. A secret boss runs the show, perhaps a kind of Wizard of Oz.

My 1984 Psychiatric Glossary defines a defense mechanism as an unconscious intrapsychic process serving to provide relief from emotional conflict and anxiety. This small volume and the Sixth Edition of Psychiatric Nursing are perhaps long out-of-date but have served me well over many years. The nursing volume tells me that the mechanisms any individual will use depend upon the person’s developmental history, successes and failures, and “the degree to which his personality successfully negotiated the several stages of psycho-sexual development or failed to do so, becoming partially fixed at an immature level.” ~I find that statement very helpful. Later in this chapter, titled “Mental Mechanisms and Motives,” I read that Repression is the basic mechanism, serving to keep out of conscious awareness that which is repressed, that “repression is an automatic pushing into the unconscious of thoughts, feelings, needs, or fantasies which if allowed to remain conscious would be painful, dangerous, or disturbing.” The authors say that “some persons use up so much of their energy defending themselves against the return of repressed material to consciousness that they have very little energy left with which to enjoy life and to meet life’s problems.”

A healthy individual attempts to bring hidden defenses into consciousness and handle conflict more efficiently. I fully understand and accept that not everyone is able to do this, but it remains my personal goal, whether realistic or not.

I read further into the challenging descriptions of defense mechanisms. Intellectualization is a form of the defense called Isolation; a splitting-off of the feeling attached to the idea. A person who resorts to intellectualization deals with an emotionally charged subject by means of long, learned, philosophical, “objective” discussions; according to the authors. The ideas are expressed but the attending emotion is not expressed, nor even felt, by the patient. I am amused by the term “patient.”

My own experience is a severe PTSD reaction when any person in my presence resorts to Intellectualization. I experiment now with some language that might de-fuse the situation for myself. I imagine saying, “This is an emotionally-charged topic and we are attempting to discuss it dry; without emotion. I am experiencing distress because I am reminded of the head/heart split pervasive throughout my childhood.”

To explore the topic further I ask the question, “Why is it that I have few peers and actively practice ten different art forms?” The Glossary defines Sublimation as a defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, by which instinctual drives, consciously unacceptable, are diverted into personally and socially acceptable channels. Composer Robert Schumann composed his Opus 17 Fantasia while separated from his beloved Clara. A year later he said, “Now I have no reason to compose in so melancholy a fashion.”

Do artists need to judge themselves harshly, seeing their creative works as Sublimation? Sometimes I conclude that psychology only takes us part of the way toward the answers we seek.

When I research Peer Relationships I am surprised to find that the usual focus for this topic is on child and adolescent development, as if the term does not apply to adult persons. I seek insights into the nature and formation of appropriate adult peer relationships.

All of my peer relationships during childhood and young adulthood were broken up by the cult leadership. I would have to assume that some of my inexperience in forming healthy peer relationships today can be attributed to a missed developmental stage. But is this the sole explanation for my difficulty?

The psychiatrist I saw for several years in the 1980’s told me that because I was gifted, I would find only one or two of my peers in every hundred people I met. I wonder what criteria led him to this conclusion. I disagreed with him. I believed then, as I do now, that every person is gifted. I concede that the gifts of many persons may lie undiscovered and dormant, or are misused, but giftedness is not limited to the arts or to verbal intelligence. The ability to relate does not depend upon finding a clone of ourselves. I believe that I might find peers among persons of widely differing experience. I may only find one or two peers out of a hundred or out of a thousand people, but I think this unfortunate reality has little to do with any person’s giftedness or supposed lack of giftedness.

What other factors might be contributing to my difficulty?

I suggest that Old Ways may be interfering with the growth of healthy peer relationships. We live in a culture that even after decades of evolvement due to the work of the feminist movement is still heavily influenced by a persistent Power Over and Control mentality, especially male control.

What factors might encourage a person to drop the habit of controlling others and instead seek to co-create with other persons? I experience that there are treasures, including relationships, that one needs to let go of instead of holding onto with the grip of death; treasures that are easily stifled, that need room to breathe and grow. I speculate that much controlling behavior arises out of fear of loss, maybe loss of something as simple as the old and familiar ways of thinking and behaving, however ineffective they may be. To become peers, two persons need core identities strong enough to hear and enter the experience of the other without loss of the self. Another person represents Difference. Is difference threatening or intriguing? Does difference necessitate conflict?

I have always admired those who seek out persons of different viewpoints in order to debate important topics with them, clarify viewpoints, weed out assumptions, sharpen arguments.

My thoughts on this topic are incomplete. I welcome contributions. Please share your insights.