Thursday, September 15, 2011
origins of ADD and Leaky Gates (Part 4/4)
Frank: Yeah, and to this day I ache to be touched – just ache. And they wouldn’t touch me, they didn’t want it to get infected… Of course they weren’t touchy people anyway, so that was….
Dr. AJ: Were they very religious?
Frank: No. I was when I was a child. Boy, I used to pray every night: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, please let me die before I wake, and please, dear God, my soul you’ll take. I used to pray to die every night.
Dr. AJ: Gee, your life was miserable. Can you imagine a life like that?
David: Back to your point, coherence. Coherence was a problem; organization was a problem; time management is a problem.
Dr. AJ: Ok, how about organization?
David: Again, Pressure inside is just blowing the gates, and blowing cohesion – blowing all neurological cohesion to shreds. There’s no cohesion of gating.
Frank: The pressure disorganizes you.
Dr. AJ: So the leaky gates don’t allow you to co….
David: Come together
Dr. AJ: So what does this have to do with leaky gates?
Frank: You are stopping the leaks from coming up?
David: That is a good metaphor. It’s like the body – it’s whole function is going to stop the leaks – the leaky gates and try to give it cohesion. And it’s failing. Right?
Ken: It’s true, but there is another element for me. A lot of times it’s that I don’t care. I don’t care enough to organize something. I don’t care about anything a lot of the time, except finding some kind of peace or connection to myself inside, you know, getting…
Dr. AJ: That’s the whole story.
David: I can understand that.
Ken: It’s like… I finally can cry and then it’s… all this is me, and now I finally feel right. I was going to say that… (turning to David) you were saying something about always being bad or something. For me I’ve always had this unconscious feeling that I’m bad, or not right or something until it finally connects – a connected feeling, and then it’s, Oh, yeah, this is me. It finally feels right. And it’s very rare too.
Dr. AJ: It sounds like a nightmare.
David: Dr. AJ talks about having cohesion in therapy and having connected feelings. I understand that, and I can see it in my patients when they have a connected feeling and see the difference. But, I don’t know how to explain it but there’s a part of me that says, I don’t give a damn about a connected feeling, as long as I’m connected to the crying and the hurt it’s almost like I don’t care what it’s about. And it’s not like an abreacted disconnected feeling, it’s just that some of that pressure that gets put out from me it’s like worth a million bucks, when you go through a lifetime of…. (near crying) and nobody gets it. And you get pounded and pounded, and then they sit you down and say, what are your goals in life? And you just sit there. And part of you feels bad because you don’t have any and you know that you should and you can’t, but a secret part of you just wants to say Fuck you! Go to hell! Don’t talk to me about goals.
Dr. AJ: Because?
David: It’s been hard enough to get here. It’s been hard enough to get through life up to this point.
Dr. AJ: No goals.
David: Goals, goals, what are goals?
Frank: Wow, I’ve always had goals. But one of the things in my life was that when I got to a certain age… Well, everybody my age was supposed to do that – so why don’t you? Well, nobody ever taught me – and each thing – I remember the first – the first Primal I ever had about that - not being able to do things that I’m supposed to do. It started out with my writing – that I couldn’t get published and the feeling went right down to when I was sitting on the toilet saying Mama, Mama, come and wipe me I’m done. And her saying, you’re old enough to wipe yourself, now do it! But nobody ever taught me how. And now I’m supposed to know how, because I’m old enough to know how. And it was the same way… and the big thing that triggered it was when I was first married, my gramma called me up and said, Uncle Rex said you could buy his house, so you guys can have a nice house. I’m going to take you to the bank and get all the paperwork done. And I went with her the next day to the bank, and I sat down there – that was the first time I’d ever been in an office in the bank – and I sat down there, and just before the bank manager came in, Gramma says, This is your loan, now you have to handle it yourself. I didn’t even know what an escrow was. And the thing is that I was qualified to get the loan with the GI Bill. But I didn’t know that. (shrugs).
Dr. AJ: So they don’t educate you, either. They don’t talk to you…
Frank: They hung me out to dry.
Dr. AJ: When I tell my friends that when I was young my parents never said anything to me… they sent me away for three years, well they never said you are going to so and so, they just packed my bags and I was off. They don’t talk to you. (Motions to David) Is that true with you? That’s bizarre isn’t it?
David: I remember asking my dad, You said you were in the army, Dad, what did you do? None of your business. Dad, how old are you? None of your business. What’s insurance. Dad? None of your business.
Dr. AJ: So what should be the cure for this? I’m curious, you said the program helped you. You saw the program?
David: It didn’t help me, help me. It gave me a little bit – like they understand what I go through. That’s about it. But they don’t really understand it.
Frank: How do you deal with ADD? You go to Primal Therapy. One of the biggest gains I made – it was just so funny and I remember telling you about it (motions to David). You get this little feeling and it goes (motions with finger tips together, and shifts them slightly) click. But it affects everything. My inner core just went click… A change in attitude, and that’s when I stopped beating up on myself. It had been a heavy session and David had just said I’m not going to let you come in here and beat up on yourself anymore. And I thought he was in his shit.
Dr. AJ: What.
David: He thought when I said that, that I was in my shit.
Frank: Cause he seemed harsh – and that’s the only time I’d ever seen him harsh.
Dr. AJ: Right.
Frank: But the next day it was just like… God, I don’t need to beat up on myself. I don’t deserve this.
David: And I don’t want to get too close to someone. And I never can trust them. And I remember this particular day just after a feeling, (shrugs) nothing. Ok, I just had a feeling, and walking out the door, and walking down the street, and walking among people and not feeling that fear, that anxiety… and it was like: Oh, my God, this must be what my life could have been. And I had to take pause. It was like… where’s the fear? It was quite an eye opener.
Dr. AJ: You too, Ken?
Ken: Oh, yeah, I mean I’ll just have moments when I have a feeling and really feel connected. It’s just like a moment of grace. It’s like… I’m here and I’m not scared, and I’m not wrong or anything.
Dr. AJ: You live with it all your life and most of the time you’re not aware of it. That’s just you…
Ken: Yeah and then those moments are gone… well, that was something but I can hardly talk about it. Then it’s gone and it’s like, I think there’s something there. I think there’s something better.
Dr. AJ: It’s funny, huh. And
PRIMAL PRINCIPLE: you don’t feel unloved until you get some love in the present, then you can go back and feel unloved. Otherwise, you carry it around with you until you die.
Back to what you were saying, Frank.
Frank: I was talking about the feelings I was having in that session when David told me I couldn’t beat up on myself. And as I remember it was a lot of feelings about my whole family beating up on me. Literally, my brother used to beat me until I was unconscious sometimes.
Dr. AJ: And the parents do nothing, right?
Frank: Oh, they’d say (shaking his finger at Dr. AJ) Now you’d better stop doing that. When I got my eye put out and the doctor said I couldn’t have any jars to my head, they’d say, Now if you hit Frank, you’d better make sure you hit him on the arm and not in the face or the head anymore. He can’t take any jars to his head. And my dad would say, So help me God, I’ll tie your head down in brackets, so it doesn’t move when I beat you.
Dr. AJ: It’s amazing, isn’t it? Well, listen. Guys, we’ve got to have staff meeting.
Ken: Let me say one quick thing, back to the outlet, and me not being ADD – I don’t think. One other thing, when I was a kid. It was all physical, like the sports, and I was one of those kids with a lot of tics. I’d just be going nuts with tics (histrionics), I was all over the place. So it came out physically for me.
Dr. AJ: Yeah, it got channeled into his body.
Frank: Yeah, I’d have said that’s an ADHD thing.
David: I never experienced tics like that, but I remember a session years and years ago that Dr. AJ did for me. In the middle of the feeling I was going towards the birthing, and my eye started to tic involuntarily, and it just kept ticking and ticking. It was just the weirdest thing.
Ken: Mine were voluntary, Mine were voluntary. It was just something that I had to do. Like I could make myself not do it but I felt like I had to do it.
Frank: Like flexing your muscles.
Ken: I would make it happen.
David: Oh, you would.
Ken: Yeah, I do it now even. Sometimes. Not as much though, and I try to hide it as much as I can. When I was a kid it was a lot more exaggerated (demonstrating).
David: Well, what does it do for you?
Ken: I don’t know, it’s just something I have to do it’s some sort of tension outlet or something.
Frank: It’s like an isometric thing. You stretch the muscles so you can relax them.
Ken: Yeah, they were all over the place.
David: I have a similar thing.
Dr. AJ: You don’t have that.
David: Oh, you’ll see me in staff meeting sometimes and my eyes will go like that and my facial expressions. I think it’s similar to what you’re talking about. I think it’s just a little discharge of that pressure or tension or something.
Then talk of the business mechanics of the meetings. Finally Dr. AJ turns to Frank.
Dr. AJ: Was it elucidating?
Frank: Oh, yeah, it was particularly elucidating listening to David. Realizing he had real experience of what I go through.
Dr. AJ: He’s a classic ADD, a classic. It wasn’t until he was with me that I encouraged him to go to school. He didn’t think he could learn. He was sure he couldn’t learn.
David: Yeah, that and I just didn’t want to go through the nightmare of it. And go put myself back into that.
Frank: I was really afraid when I started and when I found myself competing with these young girls… There were 12 of us in the class and 11 of them were girls. They were young girls, and a lot of them already had their masters in something else and they were all the scholars of the school and… How the hell did I get chosen to be in this group? Of course, thank you, and I also got a lift from Joseph Wambaugh.
Dr. AJ: Of course I was also a severe ADD and I could barely make it out of high school and couldn’t concentrate much. And what happened was, when I joined the navy they gave you intelligence tests. And I forgot about it because I had no intention of going to college. But one day when we were on our way to Okinawa and Saipan. We were on a ship – we’d had seven battles already and were on to our 8th battle. Then a destroyer pulls up and says we’re taking Janov off the battleship and taking him back to officers preflight school, because my IQ which I had taken 2 years before was very high. So on the way to a battle, which is serious shit – lot of kamikazes. Then when I went to school, I got straight “A”s and I thought: you know what? I can do this. I could feel my brain change.
(The End)
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Parasympath, leaky Gates and having goals:
ReplyDeleteWhen I was about 11 years old I had no goals because I was not sure I would live long enough to start anything… or it didn’t matter because they (my parents) had always work waiting for me, no time to play… I suppose to have not my own ideas… I was trouble from birth on… I took too much time getting born, and now it takes too much time to finish a simple task, remembering how my mother used to yell at me.
I could not concentrate in class, my mind was busy thinking about the next beating and what I could do to avoid them... or if my brother would molest me again … and if it is true that I could have a baby from what my brother was doing to me.
I couldn’t concentrate, no matter were I was, even when I was alone. But, I could drift away - not often… watching how peoples mouths moved, seeing their faces, their movements, but hearing nothing.
All I wanted was the feeling of being alone, far away from anybody, from any noise. I didn’t like the rain drops banging against the window sill in the night; it was too loud and I couldn’t hear if anyone was coming, maybe my brother again or my father to beat me.
Today I still don’t like to be pulled in to doing something, however I pack a lot into one day and accomplish very much, if I can organize my day and move at my own pace and without being interrupted. I still like to be alone.
Sieglinde
Art,
ReplyDeleteIt's great to hear you admit that you had ADD... not that you were one who had ADD... but that through your role as a professor recognize it.
So... hello MR professor in your own world of being a professor... professor together with us who is about to become professors in our own lives... for our own purpose.
Thank you very much Arthur Janov
Frank
Sieglinde: Your life was hell. How do any of us survive? goo luck art
ReplyDeleteDr. Janov, thank you.
ReplyDelete“How do any of us survive?”
My only choice was to remove myself from the place and the country where everything reminded me of how I was abused.
At the age of 42, I gave away everything I owned, purchased a ticket from Germany to the US, without knowing anybody here or having any English.
I thought I was safe in America: wrong again, the memory and the pain traveled with me across the ocean.
Eight months later, after finishing writing about my childhood, I became suicidal. However, there was one line I wrote, which became a insight and reality, a reason to live, - and later I wrote the sentence to many other victims:
“go back in time, to place of your childhood pain, and on the way out you leave the pain behind you”.
Now at age 62 I know it is true.
9 years ago I heard about “the primal scream” and knew for sure my “going back” was the only right thing to do. It saved my life and sanity.
Sieglinde
Dear Art,
ReplyDeleteI am so similar to David. I too, have leaky gates, add, inability to organize my life, pressure from inside, have no goals.
It is funny, since I started to take my medications for tics, I have milder add. Me too am too physically like Ken. I have tics, Tourette syndrome.
This series of four articles is great. It is great because we can see vivid talking, vivid dialogues, which I love. And you asked questions rightly, and in right time. Primal Principles are like theoremas in mathematics.
Nenad
Sieglinde:
ReplyDeleteI've been reading your comments here and your autobiography. You might disagree, but like Art, I think you are a hero.
You "light the way."
I'm not being simplistic. Just trying to show appreciation for folks who are honest about their pasts...and show others how to survive nonetheless.
And not merely survive, but thrive. And inspire others. Not in a cheesy TV evangelist way or like "self-improvement" gurus who shill DVDs on how to "succeed" without talking about the hamstrings (cut by parents, etc.) of their targeted "needy" people.
You and Art and others show how to live with integrity by openly disclosing your OWN lives, showing how life CAN be lived even if one was robbed of the love/security that was all our birthrights.
We ALL should have been given what we NEEDED in utero and upon exit. That most psychology glosses over that in its "up by your own bootstraps" clap-trap is insane. Why tell a guy/gal he should not pity themselves, but instead become an Olympic sprinter when our legs were amputated?
How many "shrinks" have really dealt with (by primally delving into) their own damaged pasts? They are like desk-jockeys hectoring combat vets to "snap out of" PTSD. Never having walked in others shoes (or their own, really) who are they to advise ANYONE?
You matter to me and a lot of others. You have true grit. Please, keep on keepin' on! In dark moments its comforting to hear someone else whistling in the dark.
Trevor:
ReplyDeleteYour kind words made something happening – I could cry.
The para-sympath says thank you very much!
Let me say this: I’m not a hero. At the age 42 I was like a cornered wounded animal with only two choices - get the trauma-hell out of me (3 and 2nd line) - or die.
For this reason, “psycho-experts” can NOT tell me much or how to deal with trauma.
Trevor, I hope you did not get triggered or even depressed.
Keep on whistling! It’s liberating.
Kindly,
Sieglinde
An email comment: "Hi Dr. Janov,
ReplyDeleteThis article about ADD is very close to me.I was good student in elementary and high school but on faculty neurosa was stronger.This days I ask my self is this possible?-36 years my birth trauma(and other brain bombs from my childhood) are origins and shadows of my life style,my behavior,reason why I am alone,what kind of woman I choose,who are the people I choose for friends..I am man "closed from top",this concerning my breathing and my voice,and now is much better then before.Feelings and reality are heat and ice on my face slowly melts..I can feel my stomach,and when I lay down in my bad and talk slowly,gently and quietly:"Mom,dad,I can't alone,be warm mom.."I feel pain,it's mostly in lower area,and I say and feel,and say and feel,and pain growing and growing,and I feel it,then at the and I must go to toilet.Same feeling was at the tests or when I was learn to drive a car,or when I have to do some danger job I'm not qualified enough and I can't say it,or when I wait to meet girlfriend which is same like my mother..To be baby,helpless,unprotected and hopelessness during birthing,without oxygen,how did I survive that,ALONE?!I don't know,but I know it's still here,in me. To deny that influence in everyday life got no sense,but some day I will solve all that,in Primal Center,I hope I will.Do that alone is difficult,but if I must.. If I could say to you all thoughts and insights I have about primal theory,therapy and life view at all, you would be say:"Man,you catch everything,this what I made and discover really works to you!" Feelings,I can feel how important they are..And,when I admit all ice and emptiness of my life I say to my self:"Keep on moving-aikido.."Good night shidoshis. "