Archive for the ‘C-PTSD / BPD’ Category

Learned helplessness

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

“Learned helplessness” is a behavior observed in animal experiments. When a dog in a cage is subjected to shocks but restrained so that it cannot escape, it eventually stops fighting. Even when the door is open, the dog just lies there, “taking” it.

It has been proposed that people who suffered sufficient degrees of abuse (especially women, and especially those subject to intimate terrorism) eventually manifest this same tendency. This is used to explain why “she doesn’t just leave him”.

However, others have observed women in these situations, and have contented that the women do not demonstrate this behavior. In fact, they do still “rebel” in various ways. It’s just that that ways aren’t particularly useful or effective. Therefore, the thinking goes, the women are not “helpless”; they are just… well, they’re something that makes the results pretty much their own fault. “Hysterical” or “immature” or “manipulative” or something.

I think each position has merit, but is too absolute.

Another metaphor for “learned helplessness” is the elephant who was trained in its early years not to fight the chain holding him to a stake in the ground. When the elephant is small, that stake is sufficient to hold him fast. If he fights, he only tires (and perhaps injures) himself. Fighting has no positive result, and potentially negative results.

Once the elephant is grown, he has more than enough strength to pull the stake from the ground, but he never tries. Instead, he may toss its head, trumpet, give his mahout a dirty look, or otherwise generally act cranky or resentful. He does “rebel”, but not in effective ways. He learned long ago not even to try. Pulling the stake doesn’t even occur to him as a valid option.

This, I think, is a better model of the ineffective patterns resulting from prolonged abuse, especially when it started in childhood. The diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) generally includes the accusation of manipulativeness, but also condemns the sufferer for her ineffectiveness and clumsiness. The abused spouse is condemned for staying with her abuser, and her staying is used to accuse her of making it all up or blowing things out of proportion.

But the problem is simpler than that. She makes those dysfuntional decisions because she honestly can’t conceive of other options. She is ineffectual because she learned, long ago, that the effective means of rebellion were not options. Fighting for help (as a child) or leaving (as a spouse) simply never occurs to her.

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“We admitted we were powerless…”

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

Part of any Twelve-Step program involves agreeing with the statement that one is “powerless” over whatever is the problem at hand, whether alcoholism, codependency, or something else. This presumed powerlessness may be presented within a “disease” framework, such as calling alcoholism an “allergy” or referring to codependency as “Borderline Personality Disorder”.

I objected to this “disease” characterisation because it seemed to “blame the victim”. My parents and spouse abused me, and the results are my fault?!? Sure, I’m damaged, but I’m hardly “diseased”! But I’ve rethought the issue.

Imagine a child who was born perfectly healthy. While he was still just an infant, he was “shaken” to the point of having his retinas detach. It doesn’t matter that the child did nothing wrong; the fact is, he’s blind, and always will be. He will always have “issues”; the effects of the damage will always be present.

And if he tries to live his life without taking that damage into account– well, that’d just be crazy, and his life could easily become unmanageable.

Similarly, my sisters and I never did anything to “deserve” what was done to us. But that doesn’t matter; the fact is, we’re damaged, and always will be. The effects of that damage will always be present.

I need to start taking account of that.

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Child abuse as trauma

Saturday, December 24th, 2011

I’ve never claimed that my childhood was a happy one. When starting my research into the effects of my background, I kept coming across references to Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery. But I didn’t bother with it, since I’d “only” had a really lousy childhood; I hadn’t been “traumatized”.

But then a woman whose opinion I very much respect recommended that I read this book. I did, and was astounded. Ms. Herman makes the connection between soldiers, rape victims, and children who suffered long-term psychological abuse. She has even coined a term for the effects of that long-term abuse: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (also written as “Complex-PTSD” or “C-PTSD”).

The term “comples” is not meant to imply that what soldiers or rape victims suffer is “simple”. The distinction is meant to be in the circumstriction of inducing events. The soldier did not grow up in that war zone; he did not experience that battlefield trauma every day for the first decade or two of his life. The rape victim (assuming we’re not talking about child-molestation) did not grow up in that alley or back seat; she did not experience that assaultive trauma every day for the first decade or two of her life.

On the other hand, children who grew up abused did grow up in that terroristic environment; we did experience that intimate trauma every day for the first decade or two of our lives.

Instead of having a limited traumatic experience to overcome in order to return to our pre-existing mental health, we have little but traumatic experiences, and we have little or nothing healthy to which we can return. The “complex” part of “C-PTSD” is a reference to the thoroughness and duration of our abuse.

Unfortunately, because we never had a secure psychological foundation, the techniques for helping suffers of “regular” PTSD tend not to be effective for us.

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