Article on difficulties of being a parent when you're also an adult survivor of child abuse.

I want to first share with you how very appreciative I am of you. How important you are. Not only to the parents and children with whom you work, but also to those generations not yet born. Your life becomes a powerful message, and each time it touches a parent, it reaches farther into the future than you can imagine.

I've been asked to speak to you today about assisting parents who are also abuse survivors. This is clearly no simple task. There's so very much to consider, so much to think about, and far more that you need to do. Where do we begin?

Let me share a bit about who I see these people with whom you work to be. Survivors are, in general, from my perspective truly amazing people. They've been wounded and battered and yet have come to possess enormous strengths. Please never, for a moment, fail to recognize these strengths or forget the degree to which they have suffered. How painful it is to be haunted -- haunted by betrayal, abandonment, deprivation, abuse, depression, anxiety, low-self esteem, and so much more. They want your respect and need your compassion if there is any hope that you might eventually earn their trust -a trust that is often hard won and sacred.

Parenting offers tremendous gifts to survivors, providing them with opportunities to heal old wounds as they develop a loving relationship with their children. It is also often an enormous challenge. To parent effectively is difficult for those of us who receive significant support and were blessed with positive role models. To do so without these benefits can very often feel overwhelming.

J. Patrick Gannon in Soul Survivors: A New Beginning For Adults Abused as Children wrote: "Parenting for the Survivor before or during recovery is like facing a fork in the road: at major junctures you will need to take a different road from your parents in the manner you raise your child." Anyone who's faced a new road can appreciate how easy it is to get lost along the way. Your job in part becomes that of a tour guide, pointing out the areas that require caution, making recommendations, and providing general assistance and support. Before a guide can be effective in facilitating the journey, he or she must be very clear regarding the destination. When providing guidance to parents, it's very helpful to have an understanding of where the parent wants to go. How would the parent like to be different from his or her own parents? What is he or she afraid of repeating? Where are the places that the parent gets triggered into falling into unhealthy patterns with his or her children? How does the parent know that he or she needs support, direction, or a break from the demands of parenting? What are the parents dreams for his or her children? What kind of parent does the survivor of child abuse want to be? What is his or her vision of being a good parent? Who are his or her role models? What unresolved issues will be raised for the survivor during the course of parenting? How will the parent know he or she has been triggered? What will the abuse survivor do, and whom can he or she turn to for assistance when these issues arise?

Gannon points out that child abuse on one level is about the abuse of power, and cautions that if a parent hasn't worked out their own feelings regarding the power imbalance they suffered as children, they risk these issues resurfacing in their relationships with their own children. Parents, counsels Gannon, must possess greater power than their children in order to effectively guide and protect them, however it's also important that children maintain some age-appropriate control in order to effectively learn how to live in the world.

Survivors very often struggle with sharing power with their children and tend to respond by gravitating towards one extreme or the other. They either assume too little control and responsibility, or become over controlling. Survivors who were neglected as children may in their attempts to offer more protection and guidance than they themselves had, exert far more control than is healthy for their children. On the other hand, those survivors who were dominated by their parents may overcompensate by abdicating control and responsibility. It can be helpful for parents to ask themselves when working on issues of power and control, "Do I find myself telling my child what to think and how to feel?" "Do I allow my child to make choices?" "Do I expect my child to behave like I would under the same circumstances?" "Do I avoid making family decisions or providing discipline because I'm afraid that I'll make a mistake, become too much like my own parents, or lose the love of my child?" "Do I allow others to make decisions regarding my child that I should be making?" When assisting parents in working on these issues, I often gently point out that sometimes we do the wrong thing for the right reason.

It's very common for an adult survivor of child abuse to become triggered when his or her child does something that the survivor wasn't allowed to do as a child. The survivor, who spent years of feeling helpless, now finally has the power to fight back and often does. Unfortunately it's easy to lose sight of the fact during these times that the anger and indignation that's been activated in the parent should never be directed at the child. While the anger that the survivor feels isn't wrong or unjustified when it gets triggered, it's critical that the parent learns how to effectively deal with these feelings by directing them away from his or her children, not at them.

Gannon offers the following suggestions to parents regarding how to effectively deal with anger.

• Become aware of the body signals that indicate that you 're becoming angry.
• When you experience these signals occurring, take a time out by placing your child in a safe place until you cool down, or request that a responsible adult take over if one is available until you're feeling calmer.
• Attempt to understand why you've become so angry. What has your child's behavior triggered in you?
• Reach out to a support person, share what you're feeling and explore what it is that's been triggered.
• Write in your journal regarding your child's behavior and its connection to the buttons that have been pushed by the behavior. You might want to ask yourself in the journal, "Do I feel more like my parent or myself when dealing with my child when I'm angry?" "What situations push my buttons?" "What is my own inner child feeling during these times? "If the ghost of my parent begins talking though me during these times, what is the ghost saying? That my child has no right to express certain feelings? That my child has no right to make a certain request? That parents should never ever be questioned? That my child doesn't love me?
• Engage in behavior that will help you to constructively discharge your feelings. You might chose to write in your journal, exercise, make a phone call, scrub walls, etc.

I would also add that parents who learn relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation and deep breathing become far more able to control their anger than those who have not.

For many adult abuse survivors, particularly those who grew up in families that lacked appropriate boundaries, physical and emotional closeness can be confusing and even frightening. It's not easy to establish proper boundaries as a parent when you didn't experience them as a child. It's often necessary for those who work with survivors of child abuse on parenting issues to provide guidance in helping the parent to learn such distinctions as, what's appropriate to share with a child and what's not; when the needs of the parents should supersede the wants of the child; when does physical affection become sexual arousal; when does discipline become abuse; and when does parental authority become over control.

Many adult survivors tend to underestimate their strengths in regards to parenting. It's important that you help them identify and build upon their skills and abilities. Just as you hope to teach parents how to best nurture and care for their offspring, the parents with whom you work need your encouragement and support. It's been said that the best teaching comes from example- by providing parents with positive feedback when ever possible, you not only encourage them to continue doing what works, you also model an important skill that children so desperately need from their parents. In honoring the parent, it can be possible to assist the parent in honoring his or her own child.

I've left a tremendous amount unsaid. I'm sure that this comes as no surprise. How does one capture the tremendous amount of knowledge and skill required in meeting the needs of the adult survivor of child abuse who parents? Just as parenting is an ongoing process, so is learning how to best teach effective parenting an ongoing journey. To some degree, that's perhaps part of the beauty of your job - there never ceases to be opportunities for growth. Bless you on your journey....

next: Until We Meet Again

Loving internal boundaries can allow us to achieve some integration and balance in our relationships and our life experience.

"I needed to learn how to set boundaries within, both emotionally and mentally by integrating Spiritual Truth into my process. Because "I feel like a failure" does not mean that is the Truth. The Spiritual Truth is that "failure" is an opportunity for growth. I can set a boundary with my emotions by not buying into the illusion that what I am feeling is who I am. I can set a boundary intellectually by telling that part of my mind that is judging and shaming me to shut up, because that is my disease lying to me. I can feel and release the emotional pain energy at the same time I am telling myself the Truth by not buying into the shame and judgment."

We need to own that we have the power to choose where to focus our mind.

We can consciously start viewing ourselves from the "witness" perspective.

We all do this anyway but we learned to watch our selves from a place of judgment and shame. It is time to fire the judge - our critical parent - and choose to replace that judge with our Higher Self - who is a Loving parent.

We can then intervene in our own process to help us be more Loving to self.

"We need to take the shame and judgment out of the process on a personal level. It is vitally important to stop listening and giving power to that critical place within us that tells us that we are bad and wrong and shameful.

That "critical parent" voice in our head is the disease lying to us. Any shaming, judgmental voice inside of us is the disease talking to us - and it is always lying. This disease of Codependence is very adaptable, and it attacks us from all sides. The voices of the disease that are totally resistant to becoming involved in healing and Recovery are the same voices that turn right around and tell us, using Spiritual language, that we are not doing Recovery good enough, that we are not doing it right.

We need to become clear internally on what messages are coming from the disease, from the old tapes, and which ones are coming from the True Self - what some people call "the small quiet voice."

We need to turn down the volume on those loud, yammering voices that shame and judge us and turn up the volume on the quiet Loving voice. As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are feeding back into the disease, we are feeding the dragon within that is eating the life out of us. Codependence is a disease that feeds on itself - it is self-perpetuating.

This healing is a long gradual process - the goal is progress, not perfection. What we are learning about is unconditional Love. Unconditional Love means no judgment, no shame."

This is what enlightenment and consciousness raising are all about!

Owning our power to be a co-creator of our lives by changing our relationship with ourselves.

We can change the way we think.

We need to detach from our wounded self in order to allow our Spiritual Self to guide us.

We are Unconditionally Loved.

The Spirit does not speak to us from judgment and shame.

We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience.

We need to work on integrating Spiritual Truth into our relationship with the mental and emotional levels of our being so that we can achieve some balance with, and between, all the levels of our being.

The Twelve Steps are a formula for integrating the Spiritual into the Physical. The Ancient Spiritual Principles (and the tools they provide) which underline the Twelve Step Process work because they are aligned with the Universal Laws of Energy Interaction.

Through admitting powerlessness out of ego-self we gain access to the unlimited power that is available to us out of our Spiritual Self.

"We must start recognizing our powerlessness over this disease of Codependence. As long as we did not know we had a choice we did not have one. If we never knew how to say "no," then we never really said "yes."

We were powerless to do anything any different than we did it. We were doing the best we knew how with the tools that we had. None of us had the power to write a different script for our lives.

We need to grieve for the past. For the ways in which we abandoned and abused ourselves. For the ways we deprived ourselves. We need to own that sadness. But we also need to stop blaming ourselves for it. It was not our fault!

We did not have the power to do it any differently.

As long as we are holding onto the guilt and feeling ashamed, it means that on some level we think we had the power. We think that if we would have just done it a little differently, if we had just done it "right," if we could have just said the "right" thing, then we could have controlled it and had it come out the way we wanted.

The part of you that is telling you that is your disease. The part of you that tells you that you are not lovable, that you are not worthy, that you are not deserving, is the disease. It is trying to maintain control because that is all that it knows how to do.

We are not "better than." We are also not "less than." The messages that we are "better than" come from the same place that the messages of "less than" come from: the disease.

We are all children of God who deserve to be happy.

And if you are right now judging yourself for not being happy enough or healed enough - that is your disease talking. Tell it to fuck off!!

It is not who you are - it is only a part of you. We can stop giving power to that part of us. We can stop being the victims of ourselves."

The disease has power when we believe the critical parent voice.

When we are feeling something "negative" and buying into the negative messages is when we go into the downward spiral - when we crash and burn.

(Emotions are not negative or positive, it is our reaction to them that gives them value - i.e., sadness is very positive when we are grieving, if our perspective is aligned with Truth.)

"If I am feeling like a "failure" and giving power to the "critical parent" voice within that is telling me that I am a failure - then I can get stuck in a very painful place where I am shaming myself for being me. In this dynamic I am being the victim of myself and also being my own perpetrator - and the next step is to rescue myself by using one of the old tools to go unconscious (food, alcohol, sex, etc.) Thus the disease has me running around in a squirrel cage of suffering and shame, a dance of pain, blame, and self-abuse.

By learning to set a boundary with and between our emotional truth, what we feel, and our mental perspective, what we believe - in alignment with the Spiritual Truth we have integrated into the process - we can honor and release the feelings without buying into the false beliefs."

The child in us has a reason to feel like a "failure."

Because our parents weren't capable of Loving themselves or of emotional honesty - we felt like there was something wrong with us.

We felt responsible for the deprivation or abuse or abandonment that we experienced.

"The hardest thing for any of us to do is to have compassion for ourselves. As children we felt responsible for the things that happened to us. We blamed ourselves for the things that were done to us and for the deprivations we suffered. There is nothing more powerful in this transformational process than being able to go back to that child who still exists within us and say, "It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong, you were just a little kid.""

We need to have internal Boundaries with and between the emotional and mental components of our being so that we can:

• feel our feelings without being the victim of them or victimizing others with them;
• achieve some balance between feeling and thinking, intuitive and rational;
• know which feelings are telling us the Truth and which are reactions to old wounds so that we can discern between emotional honesty and indulgence.

Boundaries:

• with the disease/critical parent voice so that we can stop giving power to the judgment and shame on a personal level & stop letting our own mind be our worst enemy;
• between being and behavior so that we can take responsibility without blaming ourselves;
• with our inner children to allow us to Lovingly parent and set boundaries for the wounded children within which allows us to own the magical, spontaneous, creative, Spiritual child inside;

Boundaries which:

• allow us call on the Power Within any time, any place, that we need it;
• allow us Integrate the Truth of an Unconditionally Loving God-Force/Goddess Energy/Great Spirit into our experience of the process so that instead of just knowing Spiritual Truth intellectually we can start feeling it emotionally;
• allow us to relax and enjoy life more.

"It was vitally important for me to learn how to have internal boundaries so that I could lovingly parent (which, of course, includes setting boundaries for) my inner children, tell the critical parent/disease voice to shut up, and start accessing the emotional energy of Truth, Beauty, Joy, Light, and Love. It was by learning internal boundaries that I could begin to achieve some integration and balance in my life, and transform my experience of life into an adventure that is enjoyable and exciting most of the time."

next: Learning to Love Our Self

Anorexia nervosa

Research suggests that about one percent (1%) of female adolescents have anorexia. That means that about one out of every one hundred young women between ten and twenty are starving themselves, sometimes to death. There do not seem to be reliable figures for younger children and older adults, but such cases, while they do occur, are not common.

Bulimia nervosa

Research suggests that about four percent (4%), or four out of one hundred, college-aged women have bulimia. About 50% of people who have been anorexic develop bulimia or bulimic patterns. Because people with bulimia are secretive, it is difficult to know how many older people are affected. Bulimia is rare in children.

Males with eating disorders

Only about 10% of people with anorexia and bulimia are male. This gender difference may reflect our society's different expectations for men and women. Men are supposed to be strong and powerful.

They feel ashamed of skinny bodies and want to be big and powerful. Women, on the other hand, are supposed to be tiny, waif-like, and thin. They diet to lose weight, making themselves vulnerable to binge eating. Some develop rigid and compulsive overcontrol. Dieting and the resulting hunger are two of the most powerful eating disorders triggers known.

What age groups are affected?

Anorexia and bulimia affect primarily people in their teens and twenties, but studies report both disorders in children as young as six and individuals as old as seventy-six.

Overweight and obesity

Studies suggest that about sixty percent of adult Americans, both male and female, are overweight. About one third (34%) are obese, meaning that they are 20% or more above normal, healthy weight. Many of these people have binge eating disorder.

In addition, about 31 percent of American teenage girls and 28 percent of boys are somewhat overweight. An additional 15 percent of American teen girls and nearly 14 percent of teen boys are obese. (Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, January 2004) Causes include fast food, snacks with high sugar and fat content, use of automobiles, increased time spent in front of TV sets and computers, and a generally more sedentary lifestyles than slimmer peers.

Binge eating disorder

A recent study reported in Drugs and Therapy Perspectives reports that about one percent of women in the United States have binge eating disorder, as do thirty percent of women who seek treatment to lose weight. In other studies, up to two percent, or one to two million adults in the U.S., have problems with binge eating.

Eating disorders and substance abuse

About 72% of alcoholic women younger than 30 also have eating disorders. (Health magazine, Jan/Feb 2002)

What about compulsive exercising?

Because anorexia athletica is not a formal diagnosis, it has not been studied as rigorously as the official eating disorders. We have no idea how many people exercise compulsively.

Body dysmorphic disorder (includes muscle dysmorphic disorder)

Not yet an official diagnosis, but may achieve that status soon. Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) affects about two percent of people in the U.S. and strikes males and females equally, usually before age eighteen (70% of the time). Sufferers are excessively concerned about appearance, body shape, body size, weight, perceived lack of muscles, facial blemishes, and so forth. In some cases BDD can lead to steroid abuse, unnecessary plastic surgery, and even suicide. BDD is treatable and begins with an evaluation by a mental health care provider.

Subclinical eating disorders

We can only guess at the vast numbers of people who have subclinical or threshold eating disorders. They are too much preoccupied with food and weight. Their eating and weight control behaviors are not normal, but they are not disturbed enough to qualify for a formal diagnosis.

Eating disorders in Western and non-Western countries

In a study reported in Medscape's General Medicine 6(3) 2004, prevalence rates in Western countries for anorexia nervosa ranged from 0.1% to 5.7% in female subjects. Prevalence rates for bulimia nervosa ranged from 0% to 2.1% in males and from 0.3% to 7.3% in female subjects.

Prevalence rates in non-Western countries for bulimia nervosa ranged from 0.46% to 3.2% in female subjects. Studies of eating attitudes indicate abnormal eating attitudes in non-Western countries have been gradually increasing, presumably because of the influence, at least in part, of Western media: movies, TV shows, and magazines. Researchers conclude that the prevalence of eating disorders in non-Western countries is lower than that of Western countries, but it appears to be increasing.

Mortality and recovery rates

Without treatment, up to twenty percent (20%) of people with serious eating disorders die. With treatment, that number falls to two to three percent (2-3%).

With the appropriate eating disorders treatment, about sixty percent (60%) of people with eating disorders recover. They maintain healthy weight. They eat a varied diet of normal foods and do not choose exclusively low-cal and non-fat items. They participate in friendships and romantic relationships. They create families and careers. Many say they feel they are stronger people and more insightful about life in general and themselves in particular than they would have been without the disorder.

In spite of treatment, about twenty percent (20%) of people with eating disorders make only partial recoveries. They remain too much focused on food and weight. They participate only peripherally in friendships and romantic relationships. They may hold jobs but seldom have meaningful careers. Much of each paycheck goes to diet books, laxatives, jazzercise classes, and binge food.

The remaining twenty percent (20%) do not improve, even with treatment. They are seen repeatedly in emergency rooms, eating disorders programs, and mental health clinics. Their quietly desperate lives revolve around food and weight concerns, spiraling down into depression, loneliness, and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

Please note: The study of eating disorders is a relatively new field. We have no good information on the long-term recovery process. We do know that recovery usually takes a long time, perhaps on average three to five years of slow progress that includes starts, stops, slides backwards, and ultimately, movement in the direction of mental and physical health.

If you believe you are in the forty percent of people who do not recover from eating disorders, give yourself a break. Get into treatment and stay there. Give it all you have. You may surprise yourself and find you are in the sixty percent after all.

Miscellaneous statistics

From England: A 1998 survey done by Exeter University included 37,500 young women between twelve and fifteen. Over half (57.5%) listed appearance as the biggest concern in their lives. The same study indicated that 59% of the twelve and thirteen-year-old girls who suffered from low self-esteem were also dieting.

Dieting teens: More than half of teenaged girls are, or think they should be, on diets. They want to lose all or some of the forty pounds that females naturally gain between 8 and 14. About three percent of these teens go too far, becoming anorexic or bulimic.

Unrealistic expectations: Magazine pictures are electronically edited and airbrushed. Many entertainment celebrities are underweight, some anorexically so. How do we know what we should look like? It's hard. The table below compares average women in the U. S. with Barbie Doll and department store mannequins. It's not encouraging. (Health magazine, September 1997; and NEDIC, a Canadian eating disorders advocacy group)

Determining accurate statistics is difficult.

Because physicians are not required to report eating disorders to a health agency, and because people with these problems tend to be secretive, denying that they even have a disorder, we have no way of knowing exactly how many people in this country are affected.

We can study small groups of people, determine how many of them are eating disordered, and then extrapolate to the general population. The numbers are usually given as percentages, and they are as close as we can get to an accurate estimate of the total number of people affected by eating disorders.

Now, that having been said, the journal Clinician Reviews [13(9]) 2003] estimates that each year about five million Americans are affected by an eating disorder. But there is disagreement.

The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders states that approximately eight million people in the U.S. have anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and related eating disorders. Eight million people represents about three percent (3%) of the total population. Put another way, according to ANAD, about three out of every one hundred people in this country eats in a way disordered enough to warrant treatment. If you want to know how they arrived at this number, e-mail their staff.

next: For Parents: Eating Disorders Are A Serious Mental Health Issue
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Teachers are trained to handle students who lack discipline, the slow learners, the extremely bright, and even kids faced with ADHD. What I've discovered, though, is that they aren't prepared to teach the students suffering from depression. Just like anyone else, teachers are very perceptive when it comes to identifying disturbed, possibly depressed students in their class, yet they often seem incapable of and uninterested in helping that student.

When I was depressed my sophomore and junior years in high school, the academic world was the last place I wanted to be. Like anyone suffering from depression, I wasn't deliberately trying to disrespect the teacher's efforts to conduct a class, but the depression overwhelmed me so that I could only see things in the broad spectrum, as opposed to concentrating on one situation at a time, such as a single class.

I found that the majority of my teachers dealt with me in one of two ways. The solution easiest for them was to ignore the fact that I wasn't absorbing any of the information being taught and simply assume that the apathy they were perceiving was typical of high schoolers. The other path was that of talking to me on a personal level. I think we are all aware of the very well defined student-teacher line; therefore, for teachers to ask the student to discuss their problems puts them in a very awkward position. Teachers are different from other adults because they hold a position of superiority over students that is especially apparent when discussing something of a personal matter.

Teachers can help to lighten a depressed student's load by creating a comfortable classroom where the student knows he/she is cared for and where the student doesn't have a time limit to suddenly cheer up. Depression takes a lot of time to get over, and school does not have to be a negative place of responsibility. If I had had a teacher that did at least one of the following things during the period of time I was depressed, I might have turned my act around a little sooner, or I might have had a more positive outcome in school.

Three tips for dealing with students who are depressed in the classroom:

1. Don't ignore depressed students. It shows that you don't care and invites the students to give up, guaranteeing their failure. Draw them out in class discussion and do whatever it takes to stimulate their minds so that they don't, in turn, learn to ignore you.

2. Let them know that you care, but without getting too personal. Help them to update any missing assignments, or set up extra study time - whether they accept your efforts or not all depends upon the severity of the depression . The fact that you've proven you care can make all the difference in the world.

3. Never give up on the student - regardless of how long they haven't wanted to put forth any effort in your class. Students can tell when a teacher no longer believes in them and expects them to fail, and it only ends up making the situation worse than necessary.

Contributed By Alexandra Madison

next: Intervening in Child and Teen Suicide
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~ all articles on depression

Welcome to the HealthyPlace.com Mental Health Bookstore

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Abuse Issues
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A report on a presentation¹ by Dean F. MacKinnon, M.D.,², Smooth Sailing, Spring 1998.

While studying the genetics of affective disorders, Dr. Dean F. MacKinnon has been working with families in which several members have bipolar disorder. Recent analysis of data from a large epidemiological study of the 1980s showed that 20 percent of families affected by bipolar disorder (but only 1 to 2 percent of families in the general population) are also affected by panic disorder. In other words, panic disorder clusters in families affected by bipolar disorder. Dr. MacKinnon is exploring the likely existence of a genetic subtype--perhaps a distinct form of bipolar disorder--that is responsible for the combined disorder (bipolar disorder plus panic disorder). The work may assist researchers in other studies of the genetic transmission of bipolar disorder.

As background, Dr. MacKinnon explained that panic disorder is characterized by panic attacks, with sudden, severe onsets of extreme anxiety. They are self-limited at twenty minutes to one-half hour, with physical symptoms that may include racing heart or palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, tingling, and nausea. Psychological symptoms include feelings of derealization [changed reality], depersonalization [unreality], and imminent death. Panic attacks can reoccur in the settings of previous panic attacks, leading to avoidance of those settings and sometimes to agoraphobia (fear of open spaces [or of leaving home]). Many people go the emergency room during a panic attack, believing that they are having a heart attack.

The study was limited to families in which at least three closely related members had bipolar disorder, and they were selected from the clinic population or from volunteers in the community. Blood was drawn from the family members for DNA testing. A psychiatrist conducted a structured diagnostic interview to confirm the diagnosis of a mood disorder and any other psychiatric disorders. Also, the research team examined the medical records and took a family history of the study participants to be sure of the diagnosis (some physical disorders cause symptoms similar to those of mood and panic disorders).

The researchers found that 18 percent of the participants with bipolar disorder also had a diagnosis of panic disorder--a much higher rate of panic disorder than is found in the general population. In participants with unipolar depression, however, the rate of panic disorder was very low. If one member of a family affected by bipolar disorder has panic disorder, the chance that other bipolar members will also have panic disorder is 30 percent. Finally, rates of substance abuse and eating disorders were higher in the families affected by bipolar disorder than in the general population.

Dr. MacKinnon reminded the audience of the recent statistical evidence that a gene related to bipolar disorder is located on chromosome 18. While testing DNA from the participant families affected by bipolar disorder, the researchers detected a bipolar-related gene on chromosome 18 in some families and not in others--adding to evidence of multiple genetic causes for bipolar disorder. In families affected by bipolar disorder and panic disorder, evidence for a bipolar-related gene on chromosome 18 was very strong

The researchers want to learn more about the timing, frequency, and treatment response of panic attacks in people with bipolar disorder. Antidepressants are the treatment of choice for panic disorder, but they may worsen mania. The researchers hope that recognition of the manic-panic connection will lead to early diagnosis and improved treatments.

¹Presented at a DRADA/Johns Hopkins symposium, Baltimore, MD, April 30, 1998.

²Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

For more information contact the
Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association (DRADA)
Meyer 3-181, 600 North Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21287-7381
Phone: (410) 955.4647 - Baltimore, MD or
(202) 955.5800 - Washington, D.C.

Source: National Institute of Mental Health

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"By the way, the hardest part of unconditional Love is accepting wherever we are at in the moment, no matter how uncomfortable. The hardest part of acceptance is not the difficulty of allowing others their process (although Lord knows that can be very hard); it is allowing ourselves our own process without shame and judgment.

I can do that now most of the time. I know now that when it feels like crap it is not punishment, it is not because I am bad or wrong or defective. What I know now is that when it feels like shit that means that I am being fertilized to help me grow."

Spring is the time of birth and rebirth of new beginnings. And all new beginnings need nurturing.

This is true not only in nature but also for people who are involved in the very natural process that is healing and recovery. The Spiritual path is our natural path, is the reason we are here in these bodies on this planet. And in order to walk a Spiritual path, it is necessary to reprogram the mental perspectives of life that we learned growing up in a Spiritually hostile, shame-based society.

Perhaps the first, and certainly the most nurturing, thing we do when starting to walk a Spiritual path is to start seeing life in a growth context - that is to start realizing that life events are lessons, opportunities for growth, not punishment because we screwed up or are unworthy.

We are Spiritual beings having a human experience not weak, shameful creatures who are here being punished or tested for worthiness. We are part of an extension of an ALL-Powerful, Unconditionally Loving God-Force/Goddess Energy/Great Spirit, and we are here on Earth going to boarding school not condemned to prison. The sooner that we can start awakening to that Truth, the sooner we can start treating ourselves in more nurturing, Loving ways.

The natural healing process like nature itself regularly serves up new beginnings. We do not reach a state of being that is "happily ever after." We are continuously changing and growing. We keep getting new lessons/opportunities for growth. Which is a real pain in the derriere sometimes but is still better than the alternative, which is to not grow and get stuck repeating the same lessons over and over again.

This human experience is a process that involves inherent conflict between the continuously changing nature of life and the human ego's need to survive. In order to insure survival (which is the ego's appointed task) the human ego needs to define things. What is food? What is friend or enemy? Who am I and how do I relate to them? What can hurt me and what brings me pleasure? It also learned that it is healthy to have a fear of the unknown (it was important to check an unknown cave for saber toothed tigers before strolling into it.) As a result, the ego fears change and craves security and stability. But because life is constantly changing, security and stability can only be temporary.

The way it works is that the ego's definitions put us in a box - this is who I am and how I relate to them - and the life process keeps breaking up our box. Every time our box breaks we have to let go of some of our ego-definitions in order to grow. The time when we break out of the box is the time we are the most scared and confused because we have just had to surrender some of our old definitions and we do not know yet what is going to replace them - and the time we most need to nurture ourselves. But because we were taught that if we are doing it "right" we shouldn't be confused or scared, that is the time when we beat ourselves up the most. We are the least nurturing to ourselves when we are growing the most, at the time of a new beginning.

Those times when we feel like we are "falling apart," "losing it," going to pieces," are the times when we are growing. In a little while (little is a relative term, how fast we recover depends on how much we are judging ourselves, the more we are shaming and abusing ourselves the longer it takes) we start to get a feel for our new expanded psychic environment. We find some new definitions and built ourselves a bigger box. We start to feel safe and secure again. We have grown and broadened our horizons and it feels like we are finally "getting it together." We get comfortable with the new dimension of consciousness we have entered. That is when it is time to break out of the box again - to fall apart, let go, process some more issues.

The more we understand that this is the way the process works; the easier it becomes to not judge and shame ourselves; the more capacity we have to Love and nurture ourselves. Life is constantly changing. There are always going to be endings and new beginnings. There is always going to be grief and pain and anger about what we have to let go of, and fear of what is to come. It is not because we are bad or wrong or shameful. It is just the way the game works.

So there is good news and bad news. The good news is that a New Age has dawned in human consciousness and that we now have tools, knowledge, and access to healing energy and Spiritual guidance that has never before been available. We are discovering the rules of the game that we have been playing for thousands of years by rules that don't work.

The bad news is that it's a stupid game - or at least it feels like it some of the time. The more we understand that it is a game, that this is just boarding school, the easier it becomes to nurture ourselves by not shaming and judging ourselves. We are going to get to go home. We don't have to earn it - that's what Unconditional Love means.

next: Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls