http://www.psychology.emory.edu/Faculty/fivush/silenced%20self.pdf

The first half of this chapter includes reference to how western and eastern cultures as well as men and women differ in how we remember things that may have been traumatic.

Good literature on men specifically is thin in comparison to what's written regarding women so my apologies that this discussion is based primarily on a paper written about silenced and voiced memories in regards to womens sexual abuse.

I thought at least the gender related bits were poignant in that they made very clear to me just how disassociated mens roots with emotions tend to be.

So much of my learning to cope with my ADHD has revolved around becoming an adult emotionally. This paper pointed out to me just how extreme the problem is. If I read this well and understood properly, it suggests that not being rooted to our emotions keeps us from developing meaningful and loving relationships.

I found the first half of this paper tremendously encouraging. Although I don't exist in a community of men and have always surrounded myself with women, I know now why that is.

I was raised by a women who believed very strongly that emotional integrity counts.

Any thoughts would be welcomed with open.. I mean, a hand shake! eheh
Cheers! Ian.

Ian I tried and got a blank page ..It sounds like an interesting article I would like to read it.

Ian I tried and got a blank page ..It sounds like an interesting article I would like to read it.
Hi auntchris, it is a very interesting article. I read half and will read the other half tomorrow when I can click refreshed for my brain. :p

It takes a long time for it to load, so try it again. At first I thought all I was going to get was a blank page.

Regards,
Coral

A long time to load? It's only taking a hair over 40 seconds for me here, on dialup.

Now, I haven't read the article, yet, but I find it interesting that itschaotic notes he's surrounded himself primarily with women. I've always felt I don't relate very well with men. I thought it was because things like sports, cars, and fixing things weren't really important to me. Maybe I'll get a new insight from reading this. :D

I'm on a dialup too sadly but it took about the same time to load as exeter has reported.

Maybe try right clicking on the link and choosing "save as" might be better. You'll need Adobe Acrobat or some other *.pdf reader to view this file. A quick search will point you to a free download.

Maybe some search like this:
http://shorterlink.org/155

Hope this helps.
Ian.

Ian-

Interesting reading.

One of the reasons I think artists embrace music, or feel compelled to create tangible material (i.e. pottery, painting, etc.), is because language is so limiting when emotions are the subject.

In my dealings with children, I am as careful as I can be to listen and speak without gender and/or culturally specific expectations. I am deliberately, conciously open to any kind of self-expression children of either sex choose to relate to me. I do all in my power to let children tell their story, their way, without censure.

It is clear to me that one of the keys to self-acceptance is, ironically, tied to how adults do or don't respond in the formative early years that this article refers to.

The subject of violence and/or danger is the one area of adult/child conversation where I do allow personal and social mores to be clear.

For example, one four year old I have contact with has bitten himself, and called himself a jerk in front of me.:(

He is intense, bright and agitated, and it's taken the better part of a year for him to get to a point where he trusts me enough...

...believes that I care about him, and take an active interest in him...

to forego trying to get my attention and express his frustration in self-destructive and anti-social ways.

Active listening may be a gender specifically learned behavior I have been culturally programmed to embrace...but that's OK with me. I hope it is a skill that will help me help children live full and healthy adult lives.

Hey there Ian,

This was very hard for me to read, but worth the trying.

Hard first because I had to force myself to sit down and read it (I saved and hard-copied it) and second because it hits pretty close to home. I have been abused in a handful of ways and have been trying to figure out just how I was affected by the individual instances. Third, still very sore from my last relationship with a BPD female who I had to separate myself from for our mutual good. Stings.

There is a lot of repressed detail and placement in my memories. The trouble being that the age of the worst of it was also the age range that usually is forgotten anyway. But the device of the transposition of event location is pronounced in me. Shocks the stuffing out of me when I talk to my Mother about where what happened. I seem to have moved the events away from the house that contained the married and integrated family and into the house of single-parenthood. Perhaps to save my mind from the pains and pressures that go along with them happening in their actual location. (My Father may have been in the house, working in the dark room, BOTH times the weirdo babysitter did what she did) And the fact that my Dad couldn't handle his temper or the idea of small children in those days is probably enough internal pressure for that house. But the list goes on, blah, blah, bleck.

I remember the exact year of grade school and in which room I began to realize that I was blocking out swaths of my life, including friends, events, you name it. It was my awakening and the beginning of the self-hatred as near as I can figure. Being awake to myself and seeing my life as well as I could face it dance before my vision whenever I tried to believe. That is the year I began going to the office for getting in trouble and fighting. The year my grades began to drop far below former grades. The year I fell in love for the first time, and the year I realized I couldn't believe in anyone loving me. Hard stuff for a lil' 4th grader!

The year after that my Father left for LasVegas to do something or other and never returned except for maybe 3 visits and my 1 visit down there (hellish!). The last time I saw my Father was for 15 minutes at my HS graduation. And 12 years later (this last Christmas) he got back in touch and came over to see my baby niece and what remains of the family.

Being raised by my Mother (and raised as the dependent child, now codependent), I was probably imbued with at the very least more 'female' emotional skills, or some facsimile there of. I have for years been an 'open book' kind of person, which is not always a good thing to be, but helps in therapy to some extent.

My friends were always female until the pressure of all the remembered trespasses (mostly female perpetrated) pressed in on me. Then I struggled to be around the guys, and that meant usually just 1 other dude. My male friends would come to me throughout HS when they had questions they couldn't conceive of asking another guy. And I usually could come up with answers.

I don't know what to make of it all, but there's something there.

Fer now I needs to lay down and blow off all the tension that is living in my back and neck from revisiting the last lady thing.

G'night all, unless I get up again at 4am
FP

Stuck, I like the picture you paint! I'm sorry it's taken a bit of time to get back to this. I loved your commentary here.

I have no idea whether this is even relevant to the topic, but I have been brought close to tears twice today reading "To Kill a Mocking Bird" to my ADHD eleven year old daughter. We have been reading a chapter a day for several days now and I felt this teary thing comming on yesterday while we were reading.

The memory, or wishful thinking more likely, of an adult capitulating to a child's wisdom, is bringing me to a marshmellow consistency. I don't know why this feeling brought me to thinking of this thread but it did. It may be that I learnt from my Mum in much the same ways as you seem to be teaching the children around you. Allowing children a voice is tremendously powerful. If you are acting like you say you are, there are many children better off for having engaged with you on any level. This is the very essence of parenting, and I find it so lacking in many children's needs.

I love children. I love how bright and flexable their understanding is. I love how mailable their powers of adaptation are. I'm forever pushing to the very brink of their abilities, if children will bite the hook at all. Very often I'm rewarded by the child raising the bar in response. I'm best with small children but my favourites are the teens. They have a flagrant disregard for their mortality and can smell a fake from 100 metres. My ADHD shines brightly in this context.

You must love your work. The times I get to dig into this stuff in a major way are when my teaching/counselling wife has some live wire teen come to stay with us in the summer. We have a tiny little shack in the bush and live a pretty primitive life style by most urban standards, but the land and river flowing through the 155 acres of oak and poplar teaming with wildlife pretty much makes up for the lack of indoor facilities for us. Brilliant eyed teens with raging hormones and a brimming sense of adventure often think they are in heaven when they comprehend the intensity of the environment. We usually have lots of dogs and horses around to break up the action into bite sized pieces too. :)

For dinner last night we were joined by one of these kids now grown with an 8 month old in tow. She first came here driven to ride horses when she was 14. She begged to work in the garden in trade for lessons and saddle time. The love and care she's showering this little baby with is heart warming. It's not about money as she's pretty tight for cash. Instead it's about a humility on her part for the wonderment of life's longing for itself. This child will be granted a voice by her mother at least. The father is another sad story.

Your compassion for children brings that teary feeling to me like the reading did. I was despised as a child. Ridiculed and deemed disgusting, for my similarities to my Mum's side of the family. We were all a fractious lot of brothers, three. I guess your account has left me knowing my tears are for the freedom I've found, in not having to pass that negative tone along to my youngest. She's so much like I was it's scary.

If you haven't read "To Kill a Mocking Bird" lately, you might enjoy it.

=================

FP, it was hard for me to read too. The only way I can get through stuff like this is in hard copy in a comfy chair. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with this strategy.

Thanks for taking the time to contribute.

I'm nearly twenty years into a marriage, and still relationships are evolving for me and us. My wife and I are in the midst of crunching up new directions. I've become much stronger and confident over the last 18 months or so and this contrasts sharply with the previous 14 years of passive compliance, as I grew up and away from substance abuse.

Once meds came into play by way of Dexedrine, I found my zest for life again. It's been getting rave reviews from the kids but not from my wife. Last night I was up very late making myself heard again, on subjects that challenge her in ways she's not been challenged in a long time. It's dangerous territory as you may well imagine, but it's also very exciting to once again risk change, and reach for the stars. I expect she's well up for it. She's a dyed in the wool linear thinker. I'm a clear cut case of lateral thinking! She's very brave.

My father is a twisted soul. I spent the last week of February with my folks and for the first time in my 46 years I was free of the triggers that have up until now, plagued my relations with my Dad. I didn't even have to try, and it was ever so powerful a place to be. There has been a lot of painful trials to get to this place but, it was some sweet to be there so solidly. Between my coach, the meds, this support group, and all the work on self esteem and self image, I'm more hopeful now than ever before that some of my dreams might still be possible.

I carry my stress in my back too. I run 10 or 12 miles a week and meditate regularly and even with all that, I still get caught some times with a painful reminder of the ongoing internal struggle. Strength to you.

I know I should have read the source article again to refresh my memory and tie this all neatly into the topic, but I'm too tired. I'll hope you all can tolerate my long winded rambling. Both your voices were a great comfort to me today.
Cheers! Ian.

Ian,

As much as I scoff at my paper piles, until I can afford a lightweight E-Book type interface to carry over to the bed, I'll always be a hard-copy man. Besides, sometimes even the corrected 85Hz flash of the monitor is too much for me. Paper doesn't flash or buzz (well, usually).

I can only imagine being married for that long. I only was able to date about 3 years ago, and have only been involved with 3 ladies, for 3 months, 10 days, and 3 weeks (respectively). I have allowed myself to get way too close to some very troubled persons (or families, in the first case). It is comforting to think that I may find myself with someone who is accepting, encouraging. Too much fireworks and not enough honesty and communication in these 3 forays into the shared heart. Being less swept and more safe would a good next step. Here's to the future.

After 12 years my Dad was plunked down in front of me with a busted hip, a possibly damaged brain, and a sweetness that is disturbing to me in the context of all I had to remember. He still has some mechanisms that rub the wrong way, but I have boundaries now to protect me (never had them before). Thing is that after 12 years of absence, I don't know the man. He is working so hard to make up for lost time, it is cute, but disturbing. He cannot make up for all the stuff he pulled. The best he can expect is to become a well-loved friend. We are all lucky and blessed that everyone on the inside is handling things so well. There has been much anger and guilt and hopelessness. Most everyone is ready for some slow and steady healing. (Miracle # 5096243-c)

I gotta' get on the exercise wagon. I hear it's just the ticket for ADD/ADHD. I don't even treat my back pain anymore. When I perceive that I am hiding something from myself it helps to motivate the looking into myself and trying to deal with things. In fact, that is what made me come to this site in large part. I had seemingly exhausted my Dad and Mom related hurts in counseling (for the moment) and knew that I still had my old issues still. So I knew that the back pain was just showing frustration at what I have been tripping over the whole time, what I have been diagnosed with over and over.

Here's hoping that all of what seems off-topic actually ties back to the original article anyway. As there was some background to the study, so there is background to our lives.

There's the pesky sun coming up again.
G'nighty, FP