More in Common on Culture War

Posted on by under politics, trans

More in Common, a centrist body committed to bringing people together, has done a deeply transmisic act.

For their briefing paper about culture wars, they asked people about various issues, both Do you support or oppose various actions? And Is your view on this action important or unimportant to you?

There were three trans-related issues, framed as follows:
Allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports
Public institutions holding family-friendly drag queen shows
Protecting female-only and male-only spaces in places like bathrooms and hospital wards

The third of these has a completely transmisic framing. The word “protecting” implies there is a threat. Of course we “protect” women’s spaces from men, though often not from male cleaners. The framing treats trans women as no different from men.

It would have been easy to frame this issue in a trans-friendly manner. Do you support excluding all trans women from women’s services such as toilets and changing rooms in shops? Or, if naming hospital wards, the survey could point out that a lot of wards have single rooms. My friend, dying, had a single room. I suggest “excluding” rather than “including” in the phrasing, because currently trans women have a right to be in these places, according to the statutory code of practice.

The introductory page has links to download the briefing paper and data tables giving the questions and answers. 76% supported “protecting female-only spaces” and only 6% opposed, which is unsurprising given the framing. 69% said this was important, and 10% unimportant, which would mean the population is seething with transphobia. But, when I go into toilets I have still not been challenged, though I am more and more afraid of saying that in case I jinx it.

On pronouns, 39% agreed using pronouns is basic decency and respect, and 35% said it was compelled speech contrary to personal beliefs. Yet I am not misgendered. Possibly, people gave the anti-trans response because it was suggested to them. Had they been offered the phrase about decency and respect alone, more would have agreed. So, More in Common normalises anti-trans talking points.

The net opposition to trans women in women’s sports was 48%. The question did not distinguish elite from amateur sports. The public were even opposed to drag queen story time, by a net 7%. More people found these matters unimportant than important.

Having said all that, the report has some useful stuff. It quotes Steven, from Blyth, saying transgender inclusion would not “change his life”, which if he’s cis seems obvious. Simone, also from Blyth, said the anti-trans politicians are merely ignorant. Richard from Wokingham called Rishi Sunak “disrespectful” and belittling in his attitude to trans.

However an imagined leaflet promising in its title to “protect women’s only [sic] spaces” was seen as more interesting and important than one to improve bus routes. The least popular title was about renaming streets to reflect modern diversity.

They recommend that politicians “talk about the issues that matter most to the public”. Well, of course they do. They’re More in Common, not some Tufton St junk-tank or the Daily Mail wanting to win votes through stoking hate. They say trans issues should not be dealt with by trying to create electoral wedges, but for the election politicians should stick to everyday concerns of the public and work through trans issues behind the scenes. This “working through”- they don’t say if it might mean scrapping the trans parts of the Equality Act, and the Human Rights they are based on. That settlement allows trans exclusion if there is a good reason- it’s just that there never is a good reason.

It’s not just the far right and hard right who spread hate on trans. We are not safe with anyone. Any organisation which, like More in Common, sees itself as reasonable, balanced, sensible and centrist may preach trans-exclusion. It’s a huge contrast to what they said less than two years ago.

38 Degrees commissioned the report. They say they want people to get “a fair chance in life”. Well, perhaps not trans people. Owen Jones had useful points on the report.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International condemned the UK government for breaching international human rights commitments and curtailing human rights protections, including its blocking the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. And the Parliamentary Assembly of the ECHR spoke up for trans across the continent, with a good speech by Jeremy Corbyn: he said that ending anti-trans discrimination “is why we exist”. Some people see that the attack on trans is an attack on human rights and freedoms.

For a by-election, Rachel Reeves visited, and I got to see the back of her head. She spoke for seven minutes, then rushed off. A man had wanted her to sign her book for him, but she got away too quickly.

Ready to be the Exile

Posted on by under new life, trans

In therapy, someone might value their own feelings for the first time. The therapist finds the person’s wounds, the times in the past where the world has overwhelmed them.

Later there will be a time for an academic understanding. I have no idea about other clients. But for me as client, healing comes in being in the Exile, the part which could not cope, which was rejected by a protector, and feeling her feelings in the moment of overwhelm, despair, splitting off, becoming Exile.

I was blessed to watch a therapist and person in action over zoom, and as they find the person’s exile I become that exile, feeling the hurt and need to protect and incomprehension, curling up in anguish, and hearing the need of the person for me, the exile, to get up and be an adult and only when I feel the person’s love for me, the exile, as I am, being able to move from that foetal position.

Two days later, there was Heather, co-creating my liberation.

I wanted to go back to The Piano Incident. I was eight, disputing with my mother, weeping though Big Boys Don’t Cry, and part of me became the Exile, lost, abandoned, weeping on the floor. Part of me became the Protector, as young as the Exile but with an idea of how to survive: Get up! Do the more difficult thing, and stretch yourself! Be a Man!

In 2009 I told people of the incident, every person I imagined I just might be able to trust with it, and I felt the full anguish of the Exile as if possessed by her. I told of lying on the floor crying, and my mother just looking at me: “SHE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND!” With all the hurt of that Exile. And then in September 2009 I realised. Oh, riiiight. She didn’t understand. She was who she was, with her limitations. It felt like forgiveness, a great step forward.

It was. I had been trapped in the pain of the exile, reliving it, unable to move on. I could not process that pain. Then I “forgave my mother” and put the pain in the background again. I obeyed the protector, getting up, trying to stretch myself, Getting On with my life and work. I realised it was not forgiveness, for that implies a wrong, but acceptance of who she was, a human being.

I feel that moment in my body now as I tell Heather of it, of my back tenser than ever and my gut repelled but my head up, hopeful, facing the world again: I managed about another three years. I was not ready to heal, so I girded my loins, and kept them girded until it was no longer possible and I retreated.

Now I am ready. I lie down on the floor, and curl up in my misery. I am that exile, in the moment of splitting, weeping, arguing with my mother. She stands over me, and part of me splits off to be the Protector, who knows what the Person must do: Be a Man, do what I am asked even if I think it stretches me too far. That frightened yet certain eight year old stands over me, beside my mother.

As the Exile, I feel my No, my disgust, in my gut. As I imagine the Protector my back tightens in stress.

The risk with affirmations is that they reinforce the Protector not the Exile, but I state the affirmations both need to hear.
Now, I am grown up.
I have agency. I can stretch myself if I wish, or refuse to attempt the difficult thing.
I have choice. I can do what I want to do. I can love what I love.
I can be my feminine self.

I dance my joy. Movement expresses my feelings even better than writing.

Then I think of some of the things I choose. I choose to look at art. I want to see a Caravaggio, loaned from Naples to the National Gallery. I choose to play the piano. These are things my parents introduced me to. Are they truly my choice? I think of them. Various experiences of art are soul-responses, my delight, my reality. I am clear enough on that. On the piano, we discuss the Pathetique sonata. My mother did not like how I put my whole body into those great crashing chords at the end of the first movement. Somewhere, Beethoven uses the instruction “Break the piano.” It was a fortepiano, wood-framed, but still.

-Rock and Roll!
-Yeah!

This is me. I want to play that piece so that someone thinks, I have never quite heard it like that, and it is the only way to play it. And I am far from that class of pianist.

These things that I want, I have so much work to do that perhaps they are impossible. I desire to be my feminine self, and it is no longer forbidden, but I have so much work on my voice, to project it in a head-resonance, unbroken pitch. I want to be a counsellor, and there is so much training to go through.

I feel the tension. But it is not the miserable tension of the Protector, that eight year old boy inside me.

If therapist and client simply look at the wound, and discuss how the client feels about it now, they may hardly advance at all. It might just reinforce the Protector, the false introjected understanding of what must be done, seeing the pain from the Protector’s point of view. I find that feeling myself as the Exile at the moment of exile, feeling the despair and anguish and accepting them, then stating the affirmation the Exile needs to hear, is liberating. The Exiles are us. We need to process their feeling, and for me that means feeling and accepting it.

I feel the Protector inside me, and give him a hug. Thank you for that work. You do not need to do it any more. I know you meant my good, and have carried that anguish all these years.

The vagus nerve is mine, to feel what I feel. I will not reject its responses. My chakras are mine, to feel what they feel, the information I need.

I can make a fuss

Posted on by under new life

In Internal Family Systems, we find unconscious parts of ourselves which could not deal with a situation we were in, or the feelings that evoked, so blanked it from consciousness. The unconscious part, the “Exile”, is defended by a “Protector”, a way we react: it comes forth when the Exile is reminded of its shame. Others call this a Trigger.

In finding the Exile and helping it process the emotion about the original trauma, Richard Schwartz asks what age the exile thinks the person is. The exile’s understanding is frozen at the age of the trauma: if it occurred when I was three, then the exile thinks I am three. So, we find out what age I was when the trauma happened.

Then we tell it how old I actually am. I am 57, able to accept and process the emotions, and having a particular view of the trauma- it was unfair and wrong and I do not have to tolerate such things. So the protector is unnecessary. Well done, good and faithful servant, now relax. The exile is integrated, the trigger is disarmed, the person has a quantum of healing.

For two people to be perfectly attuned and also both free may be impossible. Our relationship ruptures, and when we repair it we strengthen it. I saw a presentation by Mali Parke on anger. She explained when there is a breach without repair, one will descend through stages: from social engagement into fight/flight, or activation; then freeze, where the body is tense; and finally enter immobilisation, seeing no possible action to take. Immobilisation is a major component of depression. Repair means getting back to social engagement.

This is a post about joy, liberation and empowerment. There is one bit which is disgusting: I ingested a long hair or fibre, and in the shower I felt it extruding from my bottom. I pulled on it until it all came out. I felt disgust and discomfort, but also an imperative for my survival:

I must not make a fuss.

I must not discuss this. I must not even show any feeling about it. Now, I have no recollection about such an experience before, and it is disgusting (my feelings are valid) but not in itself traumatising or life-changing: in my ideal understanding of emotions in the living human I could feel disgust and then move on. But I also felt that imperative.

I felt a need to process this with Kate. I did not want to discuss the hair, which provoked my inner conflict, but the conflict itself. I can’t get it out of my mind. I feel I ought to be able to feel disgust, process the feeling, move on. Or to just suppress the feeling and move on. Instead I want to talk about the feelings, in order to process them. But I can’t meet her eyes.

Part of me is telling me not to make a fuss. However another part believes Self could process the feeling and move on but for the protector which demands that I don’t make a fuss, don’t be conscious of the feeling or show it.

What does the protector (or Exile, whatever, the distinction is unclear now) need?

It is immobilised. I am moved to act this out: I curl up on the floor. What do I need? Not reassurance, but to be told that my feelings matter. How old is that part? I do not know. Rather than tell it I am 57, I say I am adult now, and can create beautiful things that people love.

And- I have a partner who loves me! I can make a fuss!

Only then could I tell her about the hair. Starting this story with the hair feels like a sign of liberation.

In March 2023 the exile was too young for an age in years to be meaningful. When I said, “I am old enough to go out, get food, come home, prepare and eat it” that produced a relaxation in me, a relief. It felt right. In Chichester Cathedral I felt constrained, possibly immobilised, and an age statement seemed irrelevant, as I was enmeshed until age 30. Saying I am 57 does not, by itself, indicate greater power or agency. Instead, I have come up with a statement about myself, now, which mitigates the hurt.

I am able to make decisions about where I go and what I do.

That produces the same quantum of relief.

I have a number of these affirmations:
I am old enough to go out, get food, come home, prepare and eat it
I can create beautiful things that people love
I have a partner who loves me, who will accept and help me process my feelings
I can make a fuss
I am able to make decisions about where I go and what I do

In each, I am saying what the Exile needs to hear in order to feel safe. “I am 57”- that is, I am an adult, able to move through the world as an adult- is the IFS equivalent, but when it is not enough for me these bespoke affirmations heal the Exile and bring it home. Then, I am looking out through my own eyes is an assertion that the Exile is home and free.

My partner loves me. I can process my feelings with her. If this co-dependency, it is not a bad kind. I am human. I need relationship. Possibly, having ruptured my relationship with tout le monde when I depended on my mother and became enmeshed, I am repairing it through Kate now. I can respect and love myself if I can connect and experience her respect and love. Possibly a therapist could help me heal, with love- or even with clearly perceiving and accepting, valuing, me, and communicating that.

My friend does not like affirmations. They feel like something she is supposed to believe- some off the peg concept that will make her improve, such as, “Every day in every way I get better and better”. This is different: it is the truth about the adult that the exile, the lost child within, needs to hear.

I have guessed the affirmation I need, and felt it freeing and empowering me. I have guessed an affirmation for another, seen her relax as she welcomes it and feels its truth, and it is one of the most delightful experiences I have had.

Then I ask the person to imagine themself as that lost child, hugging this big, beautiful adult that they are now, feeling held and supported by that adult, as well as imagining themself as the adult hugging the lost child. She was lost, and is found.

Genspect

Posted on by under science, trans

Genspect is a trans-denialist organisation: its members deny that trans is a way people are, and that transition is a valid or valuable life-path. Therefore therapists who are members should never be consulted about anything gender-related, and nothing it says about trans people or gender dysphoria can be taken at face value.

Trans people exist. Trans is a thing, in every culture, in every time in history. Genspect denies or minimises that. What can we learn about it from its website?

First, it is a grift. At the top of the page, a large lilac button says “Donate”. At the bottom of the page, it says “Donate” again, and below that a button says “Donate now”. There is a huge amount of money in anti-trans campaigning, and Genspect people want some of it.

They try to appear reasonable, even compassionate. The first headline is “A healthy approach to sex and gender”, and they claim to include professionals and trans people among others. They only include those who accept its trans-denialist viewpoint. On the page headed “Our position”, it becomes clearer what they really want, beyond money.

They want a “non-medicalized” approach. I want that to be an option. However, I want to achieve it by radical trans-acceptance, and they want it by driving trans underground.

They claim there is currently an “affirmative” approach. This is clearly false. Listen to trans people about how hard it is to get treatment we want. Before the Tavistock GIDS would refer to endocrinology, their therapists gave an average of 6.7 appointments before referral (Cass, para 13.11). Those appointments were devoted to challenge, questioning, and assessment whether family dynamics or other causes brought the child to seek gender treatment. There is no affirmative model. Genspect believes there is, because it calls any system where any child at all gets treatment “affirmative”.

At the Tavistock, 727 in four years nine months got puberty blockers. Of those, 489 got cross-sex hormones, after further psychological appointments. 2579 received only psychological assessment or treatment. If there was an “affirmative” approach as the trans-denialists define it, all of them would be on blockers. Yet Genspect claims that the current affirmative model means that medical intervention is “the first line of treatment”.

So their claim that they want schools to be neutral, supporting pupils to explore, not encouraging or discouraging any particular path, is false. They say they want a “slower, more thoughtful” approach, that is, even more appointments than that 6.7 average before any action is taken. And their claim that they have no prejudice against trans people, by which they mean people who have transitioned, is also clearly false. They deny that opposing medical treatment trans people want is transphobic.

They want a ban on medical transition for children and young people. They disapprove of social transition, and claim parents should not accept it when their children say they are trans. Instead parents should “provide thoughtful guidance on the reality of biology”. The term “young people” is ambiguous: the page implies people are “young” until they are thirty.

There’s a great deal of scaremongering on their site. They claim puberty blockers for trans children are “experimental”, and insinuate they are dangerous. They do not indicate any advantage of giving PBs to trans children. They are arguing a case, rather than providing information.

They attack the idea of “gender identity”. Well, it may indeed be unverifiable and unfalsifiable, but the evidence is that trans people exist, whether cis people have a gender identity or not. They say in identical twin pairs where one twin transitions, only 28% of the other twins transition too. But, because of societal transphobia, transition is terrifying. Many trans people put it off indefinitely, despite knowing their own desires. And, that trans might not be entirely genetic does not mean it is not real.

They support gender nonconformity. So do I. Gender stereotypes are bad. But they are also widespread and strongly enforced. I don’t know if a human society without gender stereotypes is possible, or if in such a society there would still be trans people, but I do know in all societies some people are trans.

They want to emphasise the voices of detransitioners. They do not mention retransitioners. I want all people with lived experience to be heard, and the vast majority are those who transition just the once, and go on living their lives in their true gender.

They say that trans youth are no more likely to commit suicide than others with a mental illness, but the better comparator is to children without mental illness. Trans is not a mental illness. They report, rightly, that there has been an increase in children identifying as trans, which they blame on the internet. Well, growing up before the internet, I could never have imagined childhood transition. We are not all as single-minded as Dora Richter. Genspect just assume that this means the children are not trans, really, that there is “rapid onset” gender dysphoria, though the original paper called this merely a hypothesis.

In their articles their loathing of the very idea of transition becomes clearer. This one suggests that developmental trauma causes trans identification. Could curing the trauma make the trans identification go away? The thought is extremely tempting to trans-denialists, those who find trans so repellent that they deny trans exists. It’s also tempting to parents of trans children, who would like a reason to believe their children were not really trans. And it could be a huge source of angst for trans people, considering transition and wondering if it were right for them, and even whether they could be cured. Internalised transphobia is horrific.

The article says it’s likely cure the trauma, cure the trans: trauma causes dysphoria, which the sufferer attaches to a trans identity, then the “affirming” psychologist concretises that. The author, Laura Haynes, says that trauma causes “emotional dysregulation, narcissism, and rage” which are visible in trans rights activists: rage towards women and desire to become women. A lack of separation and individuation, a toddler-like failure to perceive reality (sex is real) characterise TRAs according to her, and no child benefits from “permanent feigning, endocrine disruption, or genital surgery”.

“Shouldn’t we be willing to get to know an unhappy child, before assembly-lining them into sterility and brittle bones?” What a lot to unpack. Merely getting to know the child and the trauma will cure them, but “affirming” doctors are just an assembly line, harming them out of “gender ideology”. This is not a rational or proportionate view of professionals who treat trans children, it’s as full of hate as she is against trans women trying to live our lives and saying things she does not like.

She may be right that treatments for developmental trauma are safe, but they will not cure gender dysphoria if the child is trans. In her last paragraph she suggests “affirming” doctors or parents are traumatised too, inflicting their trauma on “confused” kids who aren’t trans really. That level of denialism means she is incapable of being rational around trans people.

I am traumatised. I don’t know how many people have a hostile inner critic- Psychology Today implies the answer is “lots”. Mine is considerably less hostile since March last year. But from inside, it seems that trauma was more likely to make me deny I am trans than believe it, and since my critic has ameliorated, I am no less trans. It might even be possible for trans people to be mentally healthy, contrary to Haynes’ belief.

Unfortunately, some parts of the NHS are using “training” from people like Genspect.

Medicalising trans people

Posted on by under trans

Trans people should not have to pass, but we do.

We should not be medicalised, having to undergo painful and dangerous procedures. Trans men should be able to keep their breasts, if they want, for any reason. Trans women should be accepted as women however little effort we devote to our appearance just as all women should be valued no matter what they look like. But there is pretty privilege- that is not the world we live in.

We suffer hostility when we don’t pass. We are noticed, and that is enough to be ill-treated by some random bigot or just an ordinary person having a bad day. Transphobia and transmisia are ordinary. So we should be able to choose whichever hormonal or surgical intervention we desire.

Trans children treated with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, PBs and CSH, may pass- the voice broken or unbroken as appropriate, the hips the right shape, facial hair, or not, as needed. There are trans people transitioning now, without the support of PBs because they never got through the waiting lists, hips wrong, voice wrong, face wrong. Their chance of passing was taken away in a long, slow, disorienting lie- yes, you might get what you want more than anything else in the world, but not yet; tantalised by the thought of Blockers, always out of reach.

The trans person who got blockers in time is infertile. Fertility matters. I would have been an awful father, making a real mess of my children, controlling, perfectionist and self-hating. And, had I been able to transition and do the work of self-acceptance I am now doing, I might have been a good parent. I like children.

There are reverters. There’s Keira Bell, and Pamela Paul found two more willing to speak to her. Searching for that, I found this 2022 Los Angeles Times article pointing out that Paul is a transphobe: I can’t imagine anyone having the energy for that, or the LAT printing it, now.

Six weeks after I first read Paul’s article, that detransitioner lives with me. She goes to a doctor, who says her sex looks congruent enough. She asks, Wait, what sex do you think I am? Of course, the doctor thinks her male- because PBs and CSH work!

Perhaps she thought transition would be the answer to all her problems, that everything will be perfect. And now it is the Great Mistake of her life which has ruined everything. Her mission was a successful transition, and now her mission is a successful detransition, and until she completes it her life is on hold. Again.

In 2018 I wrote, Don’t have GRS. At the time I regretted surgery, having been told by two women separately “I could find a man like you attractive- but- no penis!” In practically the same words. I have sexual problems arising from the operation, and my choices are: blame myself, blame the cruel, hard world, or move on. None of these please me. Wanting the world to be other than it is is humanity’s greatest source of misery and the only thing that changes it.

So I would give every child who asked for them, PBs and CSH, because every decision that matters closes off possibilities that matter, and things must be grasped, or the possibility withers unfertilised, a dead mockery. Trans adults have been trans children and remember knowing they are trans as children.

In this imperfect world, being a trans person who passes is an acceptable outcome, and fertility might be an acceptable price to pay for that. Hilary Cass rejected all the peer-reviewed, academically published studies showing that PBs and CSH had a good outcome because they were not double-blind. That is only justifiable if you consider the only possible reason for treating trans children with hormones is reducing mental distress at the time of treatment, rather than achieving the result the child wants. But then, that is the reason those prescribing give. Cass would also prevent children from socially transitioning without a doctor’s permission. It is “not a neutral act”, people say, thinking their wrath against trans allies thereby proven wise and good. In reality, nothing that matters is a “neutral act”.

I would agree with Cass that fertility really matters and it should not be risked lightly, if I did not also believe some people are trans, and with intense societal transmisia passing really matters. There are no perfect outcomes for trans people. We can’t have it all. Let us choose, and live with the consequences, however young we are. And anyone who would restrict treatment because of the testimony of detransitioners does not sufficiently value the facts that some people are trans, and that passing matters. Then they should listen to retransitioners, including those who lashed out in rage at their doctors when they detransitioned.

Do trans children “desist”? Much research alleging they do was based on a gender identity disorder diagnosis of children who did not say they were trans, and whose breaking of gender stereotypes was called pathological. This matter is furiously disputed. Regret rates in adults are low. In any event, the suffering of trans children forced to undergo the wrong puberty, forced into a life where passing is deliberately made difficult, should not just be dismissed.

More Larkin: he moved me to tears this morning.

…we should be careful

of each other, we should be kind
while there is still time.

The Cass report is welcomed by the Government, the Opposition, all the press with The Observer particularly delighted; and to find critiques you need small blogs and obscure websites, like my own. So here are some I like. Sonia Sodha’s vile ranting and gloating in The Observer led me to Dazed, which led me to Gender GP, which led me to the figures from Cass’s own review of the patients.

Of 3499 patients discharged from the gender identity development service 727 went on puberty blockers, and 489 went on cross-sex hormones. Fewer than ten detransitioned.

Of 2415 of those patients never referred to endocrinology, 0.5% detransitioned. Unless you believe trans is a bad thing to be, and the best result for a trans person to be living in their gender assigned at birth, this shows that transition is right for trans people.

Opposing transition because nobody detransitions is like opposing gay sex because after it someone might never have straight sex.

Cass’s arguments against social transition are like the arguments for a gay age of consent of 21: causing pain, and producing no benefit. The figures are on pp168-9 of the report.

Cass makes a lot of a large increase in referrals in 2014, calling it “exponential”. However the number of referrals in 2020/21 was lower than that in 2017/18. Thanks to David Allsopp.

Also see Dr Natacha Kennedy. She cited Cal Horton on how Cass harms trans children through “(1) prejudice; (2) cisnormative bias; (3) pathologization; and (4) inconsistent standards of evidence”. Here are responses from Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Dragons

Posted on by under science

I was fortunate to come across one of the few remaining populations of native English dragons.

They are very friendly, and even allow people to pet them.

See this cheerful grin.

Here is a Coypu, or Capybara, or some other mammal beginning with C that you can’t quite recall what it looks like. Its greeny-yellow fur is beautifully strokable, even down its tail.

I went to see the Woodwose, who shared his ancient wisdom with me.

His friend the Ent has grown treeish of late.

Adverse childhood experiences, implicit memory, empathy, trauma

Posted on by under new life

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are not just bad stuff that happened; they have been quantified, defined in a list of ten, and subject to research on their effect on adult health. Here’s the quiz.

The ACEs list is about violence- fear of hurt, being hit, sexual assault- and being unprotected- feeling nobody loved you, not having enough to eat, biological parents abandoning you- perhaps by bad things happening to household members- being mentally ill, going to prison, being alcoholic, mother being hit.

I note that question about mother or stepmother being hit, but not father or stepfather. I don’t know enough about the test to critique it.

How is it used? It is a definition of childhood abuse and neglect which can help children now, by letting teachers and others see children who need support; it can show how important that support is, through the observation that people with a high ACE score are prone to physical and mental illness. Even, we can have some sympathy with someone in prison, because of their high ACE score. They have done bad things in part because they had it bad.

And, as the NPR article explained, some people with a high ACE score have resilience, possibly because of a loving, supportive relationship as a child- with a teacher or grandparent. The CDC has things to say on ACE, and there have been studies.

So ACE score is an indicator, but not a predictor. To make a theory of why some people have difficulty with resilience, I find the concept of implicit memory, which I came across through Bonnie Badenoch, more useful. The amygdala lays down unconscious memory based on your feelings, and then interprets the world according to those memories. So ACEs would affect that; but in some people good experiences would mitigate it, and they might turn out resilient anyway.

I may have come across ACEs before, but online saw a presentation by Carey Sipp, who scores nine out of ten. She “stopped the toxic cycle for her family”- her children are now in their thirties.

I score zero on the ACE list. Here’s me in 2016, unable to justify to myself or others why I feel so unable to go out to work. I had the idea that it did not matter how badly I suffered in childhood; what mattered was how I am now. So, if I “stubbed my toe once”, that was enough: I did not need to have suffered something no human could bear. I still judge myself, even after the experiences of healing the baby, about how much I suffered, really, but much less.

I was terrified my sickness benefits would stop, and now they have stopped I am glad of it. I was terrified the system would say I did not qualify. I have no idea how to make a life for myself beyond isolation. Those healing experiences make it easier to accept how badly I have been hurt, and the concept of implicit memory gives a theoretical backing I can accept intellectually. I want people saying they are hurt to be believed, however they express it, and the hurt of those prisoners to be recognised even if they cannot articulate it.

After writing this, I worked with Heather. She mentioned the Still Face experiment. I curled up, in horror and pain. She commented how my body’s movement showed my feelings flowing. Yes: and with a trans person, resonating, I was wriggling in delight. We discuss my mother. Considering her, I am watchful.

Oh, I took some notes. At one point I demonstrated what my mother did to me, with an old metaphor: I crumpled up a piece of paper, then gently and painstakingly smoothed it. She crushed me. I am smoothing myself out. “Take your time,” Heather said. My fear is inherited from my mother. It was hers. But she would not have been conscious of fear: for her, I am sure her way of being was rooted in self-respect and doing Right. In both, she appears normal, even admirable, to the world. Well, she maintained a marriage for 33 years, until death; she brought up two children; she had a job, and left a house with its mortgage paid off. It’s a reasonable life, if unremarkable. It has conventional marks of success.

She wanted to appear normal, and not be seen. I believe she was terrified of being seen and known, of her feelings being knowable. I say again about looking out of my own eyes. Yes, says Heather, I had told her. She wanted to hear again. It makes me feel powerful, makes me delight in my body.

My concept of normal is my mother’s. It is from the 1950s, and she could just about make it work in the 1980s. In the 2020s, it is impossible. My algorithm has broken down in terrible confusion. I hide away. That fear is hers, though she never felt it consciously.

I have an image of cuddling my mother, who shrinks to a baby. I love and succour this baby, cradling her in my arms. She need never fear again. I will love you. You are loved, free to be who you are.

It is not the 1950s, but the 2020s! Come, see how the world has changed, its full beauty and terror, its majesty and incomprehensibility, feel your freedom. I will love and support you.

Prompted by Heather, I move my body, feeling a physical sense of opening out. I feel love, freedom, power. I feel in my body, in my heart, gut, throat chakra. I need not classify, now, those feelings, or even understand them. They are there, to accept, and to explore and know over the coming months.

Virginie Gautreau

Posted on by under art

John Singer Sargent in his portrait of Madame X, or Mme. Pierre Gautreau (Virginie Amélie Avegno), achieves an effect I have not seen elsewhere. I like to sit and look at paintings, and try to avoid the reflection of the spotlights. But here, Sargent uses that reflection to highlight her features. From almost any angle (see above), her hair glistens.

Here, see the shine on her temple and jawline.

The background glistens in the light, and the light effect follows the line of her shoulder and upper arm:

The background glistens, but her profile is clear:

Here is the Google Art Project version. Reproductions, physical or digital, cannot reproduce the effect of moving in front of the painting and seeing the light reflected in it change, always flatteringly. I found it a wonderful experience. It belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, but is currently exhibited at Tate Britain, until 7 July.

And- is it me, or is there something weird about her right elbow?

A Liberation

Posted on by under new life

I am looking out of my own eyes. I have rescued something within me, that was stuck or imprisoned. My unconscious sense of what I needed led me. I trusted it, and followed it, step by step, without any idea of where it was going. Kate held the space, in love, without commenting.

To contact the unconscious, Bonnie suggests drawing or nondominant handwriting. I did not want to do these things. The leader wanted me to explore through movement, and I assented. I stood up, in order to move through the space of my living room. I was led to lie down.

I moved my arm. It was me, and not me, moving it. It was the process, whole-me, all that is within my skin. My conscious self assented to it. Something unconscious moved it. My left arm moved at random, and I knew it was a baby’s movements, when the baby is learning what connections in the brain will allow it to co-ordinate movement. We make, prune and myelinate connections, learning what connections control limbs to do as we wish. I am myself as a baby, on the floor, unable to roll over. Yet the baby’s cry does not bring my parents. They have an idea that babies must be taught to sleep and eat on schedule. Possibly there was something more than just that between me and my mother.

In this moment, my upper back which holds my habitual tension does not feel tense. The baby’s was not so tense. The baby was in touch and aware of vagus nerve stimuli: I was in touch with my “gut feelings”.

My gut resented my parents’ actions.

That resentment was too much for me, as a baby. I was dependant. I had to propitiate my mother. Having felt the gut feeling, and suppressed it, the tension in my back returned.

My inner critic is now challenging such perceptions, but not denying them with the full force of terror it held before. I am sure enough that this is what is going on.

Again I was led to move by my unconscious, and again I assented. I voiced what I was doing. I am now an adult, and can show that stuck baby within me that I am an adult. I can sit up, and stay sat up unsupported. I vocalised that. Then, I can crawl around the floor. Something in me is giving an amused (not derisive) challenge. “Mmmm. Really?” But it is true enough for me. I crawl around the room. Then, I stand up. I can stand, unsupported. I take a step. I can walk, all by myself.

And now, I am looking out through my own eyes. The baby, who was not heard and responded to- something froze in me at that time, and it is unfrozen. I have been getting more and more in touch with bodily sensations for some time, but my body now feels more alive than before. When I say, “I am looking out through my own eyes” I feel joyful and energised.

There is an exercise at the end of the Hoffman process designed to let the “inner child” experience growing up. I may be using ideas and concepts which I have taken in. I have a sense that my mother’s fear lives inside me: it is hers, and not mine. I may approach that, later. I have a sense that it is a fear inculcated when she was a baby. I want to heal my mother, and so heal myself.

Walking back from the park, Kate and I watched a cloud. In the time it took to walk the length of the street, it had vanished into thin air.