Several years ago, I made an appointment with a therapist to try and resolve some early trauma that was causing me trouble. After I explained what had happened, the therapist dismissed the incident, told me I was wrong about the experience being traumatic, pulled out the DSM-IV, and proceeded to methodically read to me from it. Needless to say, that therapeutic alliance was short-lived.
The incident I brought to that therapist had actually taken place one dull, rainy New England morning many years earlier. I suffered significant damage which I later learned from non-DSM-IV literature, had apparently impaired a number of cortical and limbic structures in my brain. I was 13 at the time, and of the 25 or so people who witnessed the incident, not a single one of them – me included – realized the severity of the damage that had occurred. It wasn’t until almost 40 years later, as I began researching panic attacks, trauma and social neuroscience that I realized the actual, factual truth of that injury.
Backstorying to the Future
To help set a clarifying context – trauma is often best assessed in context – let me first provide a bit of backstory. Shortly after I turned four, the only option for my father for being able to regulate a violent temper – the result of World War II “battle fatigue” – was to abandon me, my two sisters and my mother. Once it was clear my father was gone, and she was able to move us into a State-subsidized housing project, my mother was then left to struggle with her own demons. The end result was that my sisters and I were minimally-parented, poor, wild, unkempt children. In some strange, ironically benevolent way, this was actually okay, since most all of the other kids in the housing project and Kathrine Brennan Elementary School were all pretty much in the same rickety, single-parent, Aid-to-Dependent-Children boat.
However, when I turned thirteen that all changed. I began to be bussed to Susan S. Sheridan Junior High, a much larger school in an upper middle class neighborhood. The kids in my seventh grade class wore clean, fresh-pressed clothes to school, together with socks that matched, and shoes and sneakers without holes. They had full sets of the World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica sitting in custom-built bookcases in their dens and libraries at home. These new kids were clearly different than me, and I was different than them. But I longed not to be.
History Dread
From day one, Mr. D’s first period Ancient History classroom at Sheridan was a place I dreaded walking into. He gave lots of homework that required encyclopedia-reading and demanded lots of class participation. After the first day in Mr. D’s class I took a seat in the back of the room where I hoped the six kids seated in front of me would shield me from his line of sight.
“Why did Sparta engage in a conflict with Attica in the Peloponnesian War?” Mr. D asked on the morning in question. I stared down at the penciled carvings in the desktop, my adrenaline rising. Punctuating the ensuing silence, Phyllis Granoff, Eddie Modell and Sara Cosgrove immediately thrust their hands up in response. And then suddenly I heard my name called, sending my rising adrenaline levels even higher.
“Why did Sparta engage in a conflict with Attica in the Peloponnesian War?” Mr. D. asked me again by name. I sat in frozen silence unable to answer. This scenario repeated two more times, increasing the tension in the room until finally Asa Berkowitz sitting behind me, simply blurted out the answer in frustration: “Because they were afraid of the power building up in Athens at the time.”
Then Mr. D. called my name and angrily asked me the question again.
Traumatic Shame
In that moment, sitting frozen with shame and humiliation, this single incident significantly altered my neurology, making history an unsafe subject for me and school classrooms unsafe places to be in general. For the next six years I was unable to say another word in a formal classroom setting! The structures of my limbic system – among them, the amygdala, the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland – had instantly paired school classrooms as synonymous with grave threat. Combined with the normal disorganization that massive increases in testosterone production does to the speech and language centers in the teen male brain, this incident left me essentially a barely functional autistic when it came to school; and all without anyone, including me, ever realizing it. And all without any real mal-intent on the part of any of the people involved.
This past Spring however, I discovered that the treatments I have been receiving for the neural disorganization that resulted from that seventh grade shaming have begun to pay dividends. In June, I was attending a seminar at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco entitled, The Wise Heart and the Mindful Brain. My friend Sean and I were kibitzing in the back of a room filled with almost 1000 people, when suddenly I heard my name being called out by Dan Siegel, one of the two seminar presenters. Without the slightest bit of hesitation I immediately stood up, looked around the room, made eye contact with several people, smiled and waved joyfully – something that, had I been able to do it 40 years earlier in Mr. D’s seventh grade history class, could have pre-empted many years of significant pain and suffering.
In a future column I’ll explore some of the emerging therapeutic methods that actually have been effective in addressing and resolving this kind of traumatic disorganization. And by the way, being read to directly from the DSM-IV is not one of them.
I was hoping you’d inform what the therapies were that helped you. Do I gather from the responses that EMDR was one? I am not familiar with EFT. My trauma is related to a God given gift that threatened a family member who caused me much trauma. To this day, I long to have that back. Just curious as to where to go next. Thank you for your blog. It’s funny, I googled the Four Disagreements…!
Dear Mark-
Isn’t the Internet amazing?!? I Googled my name and your blog came up. I honestly don’t remember that traumatic day for you in Mr. D’s history class, but I do remember being just as frightened as you apparently were of being called on to answer one of his difficult questions. And I do remember you (at least your name if not your face, which, if you are anything like me at age 61, is quite differnet than at age 13). I am so delighted to see that you have gotten your Ph.D. in spite of Mr. D. And, by the way, I have recently found that Phyllis Granoff is now teaching at Yale. I wrote to her recently to say hello but she has not responded. Let’s stay in touch now that we have reconnected.
Peace and warm regards-
Ed Modell
Your writing is fascinating. I am starting counselling with someone who does EMDR while also incorporating other methods. I have been through many traumatic events.
In the fall I will also be starting a two year intensive group called dialectical behavioral therapy.
And I also ask many people to pray for me too.
I also have a neurological disorder called Charcot Marie Tooth. I don’t know if that has anything to do with my neural pathways since I was born with it.
I am a parent also and that is another reason why I decided to read your blog. I am having fun reading through your past writing.
Mark,
Such a superb blog – I look forward to your entries and learn so much! I had a traumatic classroom experience with a high school algebra teacher that “nuked my neurology” in subtle but profound ways that mushroomed beyond math anxiety into full-blown performance anxiety of any kind over the years. It took over 25 years for me to understand what was going on and to seek EMDR treatment. All curriculum for teachers-in-training should address the potential damage they can (unwittingly, I presume) inflict on their students!
Blessings on you and your work ~
Melissa
Mark,
Your blog this week reminds me so clearly of an incident from my mid teen years when a church choir director asked me to mouth the words to the Christmas program (rather than actually sing). It was such a clear message of deficiency. She said that she planned to work with me further on my voice but never did and singing in the church was forever changed. Where once I had thoroughly enjoyed singing (particularly as we were all told in those days that we could serve God by using our voices in the choir), I withdrew from the choir and all organized music. I’ve never thought of this as a form of brain damage but have know for a long time that it damaged my self-esteem in ways I am sure she never calculated.
Many thanks for your thoughts on these subjects
Grace
Hi Mark;
Thanks for sharing this story. I was interested to hear more about your family and early experience, and really appreciate the deep and lasting impact of this kind of experience.
Without having any research to inform my experience, I’ve had some extraordinary results with EFT in clearing this level of historical trauma. I’m curious if the EFT process overlaps or intersects with the kind of research you’ve been doing or tracking?
And in case you’d enjoy, I have created a particular kind of measurement I call the “OY” scale of life trauma, as in (insert Yiddish accent) “OY, OY, OY”, such a terrible trauma!! Otherwise known as a “3 OY Trauma” out of a possible 5 🙂
–Shaina
Mark,
I have been quietly reading your work over the past few months and enjoying all of it. I want you to know that this example hits home personally and professionally. It was my experience, as a child, and is the experience of countless students I work with my the school counseling practice.
Thank you for articulating so well the destructive nature of traumatic learning.
Keep up the great work!