Coronavirus, Bananas & Developmental Trauma

Two hours ago I walked into a Trader Joe’s to get OJ and bananas and walked out with over $100 worth of frozen meals and dry goods.

Despite having shopped at two other grocery stores last night and thus having a full refrigerator, the combination of empty shelves, overloaded shopping carts and the speed at which people combed the aisles was panic-inducing.

I KNOW we have enough food and just yesterday morning rolled my eyes at other people’s over reactions, but back in my car I realized the logical part of my brain had not been powerful enough to override my mirror neurons as they screamed at me to mimic the intense emotions and dysregulated behavior of those around me.

Driving home, I was too flooded to listen to my usual audiobook or even leave a voicemail update for a friend who reached out last night to check in on our family.

Even crazier was unloading my groceries and seeing I had bought a total of 32 bananas from the three stores I had visited in the past 12 hours. A few minutes later, I realized it was because a friend who lives in another state had texted me yesterday afternoon that her grocery stores was out of bread, onions and—-you guessed it, bananas. The process of internalizing the emotions and experiences of others had begun hours ago not when I walked through the doors of my local Trader Joe’s.

The battle I have faced, the last 24 hours, to choose my own emotional and behavioral response to my world’s reaction to the Coronavirus, has taught me much about the impossibility it would have been as a young child to have felt differently than my mentally-ill parents.

When sharing stories about my family growing up, I often expect so much of my younger self. Even as young as age four, I can find fault with my coping methods—that I wasn’t more separate from the darkness going on around me or that I didn’t stand up to the unhealthy behavior of my caregivers or that I didn’t learn earlier how to have not needed their care or connection.

But at 46 years old, I can’t even walk into a chaotic grocery store and only get what I need when others are fearfully stocking up. How kind is it then that I demand of myself as an adult to no longer carry any trace of those I grew up engulfed by?

What story do you need to tell about the emotions you were surrounded by growing up in order to be more patient and kind with yourself as an adult?

The Luxury of Anger

Growing up, my mom described me, even as early as three years old, as being prodigiously well-behaved.

“I could correct you across the room with only a glance,” she’d say with a smile.

That always felt like praise until my oldest turned three, and I discovered the incessant use of the word no during the “terrible twos” was no match for the task of emotionally regulating a three year-old who had her own opinion about every. little. thing.

This past month, Christine Lawson’s book, Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable and Volatile Relationship, has called me to reframe my impeccable self-control as fear of my mom’s erratic mood swings.

Anger was a luxury.

Whether it’s Emmanuel Sanders celebrating a touchdown catch or a Nuggets guard staring down an opponent after dunking over him, league rules around “taunting” confine athletes to a razor thin bandwidth of emotional and cultural expression while simultaneously paying them to perform at levels of superhuman intensity.

Anger is a luxury.

In The Week’s article “It’s 2020 and Women are Exhausted”, Zoe Fenson writes:

Warren and her fellow female candidates are being distilled to the most basic and dehumanizing of stereotypes. Because in our American patriarchy, when accomplished, outspoken women pursue positions of power, they are routinely painted as unreliable and unlikable — snakes in human form.

Anger is a luxury.

And yet anger is often the only fuel explosive enough to initially thrust the vehicle of justice out of the gravitational pull of Cape Canaveral’s oppressively humid atmosphere.

Last week, Illinois Representative Bobby Rush, introduced the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Though named after a 14 year-old boy murdered in 1955 for supposedly looking at a white woman in a sexual manner in a grocery store, legislation criminalizing lynching was first introduced in 1900. After 120 years, passage could finally add lyching to the United States Criminal Code making it a federal crime.

At her son’s funeral, Mrs. Till Mobley propelled the Civil Rights Movement to a new stratosphere when she, against sheriff’s orders, opened her son’s casket, publicly revealing his mangled body.

She permitted several photographers to take pictures of her son’s disfigured corpse and urged the publication of the gruesome images. “[People] would not be able to visualize what had happened, unless they were allowed to see the results of what had happened,” she later said. “They had to see what I had seen. The whole nation had to bear witness to this.”

Anger was necessary.

What rules did your family have around expressing anger? What do you remember being furious about as a child? How did it show? What injustice was it seeking to counter? What story, if told, would free you to see your anger as an ally in birthing change in your life and story?

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

Denver Story Group: Monday, March 16th 6-9pm in Littleton

(2 spots left)

Between Touches Zoom Call: Tuesday March 24th, 6-7:30pm MST

(1 FREE guest spot left)

Relief in Powerlessness

In the summer of 2012, I began realizing our family’s time on the mission field was coming to an end. I’ll spare you all the gory details but suffice to say that I wanted a deeper level of emotional wholeness as a sexual abuse survivor and the resources I needed for such an intense process simply weren’t available.

It was a tortuous decision for someone who had “made life work” in confining emotional spaces for fifteen years.

Was this phase of life truly different? Was I at my tipping point? Couldn’t I figure this out, without having to leave?

I remember thinking one day, “This would be so much easier if my team leaders would just send me home.” And a split second later I knew I’d hate that too.

For eight, eternally long months I battled my inner demons as I chose to care for my own soul over other people and things. Slowly I realized it was a choice only I could make—unless of course I were in full-blown crisis. And that is the convenience of a crisis—others are forced to choose for you.

Suicidal depression, extramarital affairs or substance addiction would have compelled others, whether it was morally or legally, to push my own eject button.

Choice is a risk.

Which means…

Choice may cost us something of immeasurable value.

Therefore…

Choice feels like a burden.

So…

Powerlessness becomes a relief.

Those tortuous months of choosing for myself gave me two wonderful gifts:

1) A visceral reaction of disgust to stories (like in the musical number below) where the path of abdicating choice is portrayed as an easy escape route.

2) Opportunities to walk alongside clients at the same crossroads—will they choose to care for themselves as faithfully as they care for the world around them?

The battle to hold a sense of agency over our lives is so important to win because abdicating to powerlessness can be retraumatizing, creating even more fear in holding power in our own lives.

What important choices did you make growing up? What were the risk factors in those moments? Did these experiences encourage you to exercise choice or abdicate your power in order to avoid blame, isolation or rejection? In your life today, what’s a situation in which you would rather not choose? What collision are you hoping to avoid? What story, if told, would massage some of the scar tissue constraining your authority in caring for yourself?

From the song “On the Steps of the Palance” from Into the Woods:

Better run along home
And avoid the collision
Though at home they don't care
I'll be better of there
Where there's nothing to choose
So there's nothing to lose
So I'll pry up my shoes
Wait no thinking it through
Things don't have to collide
I know what my decision is
Which is not to decide
I'll just leave him a clue
For example, a shoe
And then see what he'll do

Now it's he and not you
Who is stuck with a shoe
In a stew, in the goo.

NEW MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS

New offerings tailored to your needs!

Beginning March 1st: Membership packages designed for….

individual growth, service providers & professional therapists.

TRADITIONAL COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP:

Four-person online communities designed to offer personal care and support as you engage your past in finding greater freedom in the present.

One spot left in my newest group! Visit for FREE to see if it’s right for you! Next group call takes place on Wednesday February 26th 7:00-8:30 AM MST.

Cost: $75 per month (3-month minimum enrollment)

Last month to join at a 20% discount—price increases to $95 on March 1st.

NEW FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS:

Want to deepen your therapeutic leadership & presence?

Like me, many of you desire to see wholeness in the lives of others! Beginning in March, I’m offering a unique learning opportunity for social workers, chaplains, nonprofit employees, ministers, small group leaders, and missionary care specialists.

Subscribe as a service provider and receive:

• monthly content (including a 30-minute audio file expounding on important therapeutic categories)

• monthly article engaging three key questions from community members

• Access to an optional members-only 60-minute learning call designed to equip you in leading from your own story work in your vocational ministry

12 Memberships Available

Cost: $55 per month (3-month minimum enrollment)

NEW FOR INDIVIDUAL GROWTH:

Want fresh ways to connect with your story?

My most basic membership subscription includes:

• monthly content to engage with on your own or share with a community you are already a part of.

• 25% discount ($30 off) on 75-minute coaching calls for months when you need additional personal processing support

Enroll now to begin in March and receive access to your choice of two past months of content for FREE.

Unlimited Memberships Available

Cost: $25 per month (3-month minimum enrollment)

NEW FOR THERAPISTS:

Want a supportive community in which to share about your own story while honoring professional boundaries?

Beginning in March, I’m offering a therapist-only space that provides the privacy you to need to engage your story and discuss work challenges without navigating dual relationships.

Membership includes…

• monthly content (includes a 30-minute audio file lecture on key therapeutic categories)

• Access to an optional therapist-only 75-minute processing call: a place to share your personal connections with the material and discuss therapeutic categories & implications with your clients.

• access to an optional online discussion platform for professional resource sharing and referrals

8 Memberships Available

Cost $65 per month (3-month minimum enrollment)