Frog Face

1991 aged 14 and 'frog face' started to follow me. I did not get away until 1997 then aged 20.

Frog face would wait for my school bus and lurk in the roads opposite. Frog face would watch me through the door to the sweet shop I worked in. Frog face would call, send letters and sit on the other side of the road watching our house. Frog face could appear at any point, at any time of day. I could not shake Frog face.

You may think that Frog face was a figment of my imagination, unfortunately that was not the case. For almost 6 years I was stalked.

As previously discussed I have a complex history. Frog face was just part of what has made that thick strong 'C' in the word complex.

Already fairly damaged in my world view, I found myself having to learn to live being disempowered daily. By the 'fear' of the 'ifs, maybes' by the potential of Frog face appearing without my control. I would stand on one side of my front door not knowing, would there be another note on the other-side. I jumped if ever the letter box clanged, or the phone rang.

For reasons I cant go into in this blog, I was unable to tell any one about my situation. All I will say is that Frog face was an adult who held a secret over me. To endure those days at the time, I believed outweighed the shame of anyone finding out. (As I said my perspective was already damaged).

So why write this? if I don't want to write about what happened and why?

Well I love brains, I love how they cope and how they protect themselves. During those years I found my brain doing just that. Protecting me in the best and most honest way it could. You see my brain was my greatest friend. We argued, we fought, we had stand offs! we did all the things together that BFFs do. But it has only been in the last three years that my best friend 'brain' has aloud me/us to share our friendships with others.

Over those long years my identity went from singular to plural. It still remains that way today, I am not an 'I' I am 'we'. At first I split myself in half. The day belonged to Frog face but the night was mine. During the day hyper vigilant, my whole focus was on avoiding and planning ways of out witting Frog face. At night I sewed a hidden pocket into my jeans. In it I tucked a protective knife 'we/I' would go out walking with the families fat springer spaniel. I'd walk in freedom owning my world and revelling in the sense of safety.

Pretty quickly I realised another split was needed if I was going to avoid anyone  knowing what was happening.  At school I created another split in another world as although bullied, it was at least 'seen'.

This splitting carried on until I was nine different people / personalities.  I jumped between these personalities daily depending on the environments encountered.

Soon we were all defined enough to speak for ourselves. We made an internal community. We had all our answers, we did not need anyone. Having lived through this process quite naturally and at the time logically. I have nothing but respect for grey matter.

I met Zippy and so started the great clamp down on the now completely dysfunctional set of people living in my head.  The greater the safety I could trust, the greater the need to want to quiet everything down into something less confusing. As Zippy says 'Carwen nothing directly bad has happened to you now for 13 years'. Today my personalities have been whittled down to bare shadows. Only their voices remain with me. I have learnt to accept them and accept us all living and chatting in my cortex. On good days we are friends, on bad days we are enemies  (especially when I'm tired), there is sometimes just complete overwhelm. But as my strap line says. I am Colourful Carwen, a crowded brain learing to be at peace with itself and its inhabitants!.

Not my words, but BIG THANKU Dan Segiel!!!!!

This is the first of a series on Interpersonal Neurobiology: Relationships, Health, and the Brain. 

How does knowing about the brain’s parts make mental health and happiness more likely to occur? 

On the one hand, we know that part of our mental life is shaped by how the brain functions. Neuroscience tells us that if we damage this or that part of the brain, our thoughts or feelings, memories or actions will be directly impacted. We also know that what happens in our relationships shapes our thoughts and feelings, memories and actions. And for these reasons, in Interpersonal Neurobiology we focus on seeing the mind as both embodied and relational. Embodied means that the mind is more than simply what happens in your head—it extends to at least the whole of the body in which “you” live.

But “you” also live within your relationships with other people and with the larger environment, the planet. So on the other hand, your connections with people and the planet shape your mental processes, from thoughts and feelings to decisions actions. This is why we say the mind is relational as well as being embodied.

The essence of mental life from this viewpoint is the flow of energy and information flow. Flow is the change of something across time. Information is a pattern of energy with symbolic value—it stands for something other than itself. And energy, in physicists’ terms, is the capacity to do something. This capacity creates a potential that extends from certainty to uncertainty as possibility is turned into actuality and then melts back into potential. Even if you just think of energy as a property of the universe that enables things to unfold that comes in various forms like light, sound, and heat, you’ll have a good starting place for how to just sense what the term ‘energy’ entails.

How energy “streams” or “flows” through our lives shapes our mental experience. If you smile at me and I don’t smile back, your feelings will be different than if I resonate with your smile, feeling the feelings inside of me and then revealing that resonance with a returned smile on my face, in my gestures, and in my tone of voice. Our separate bodies become “connected” as energy flows from you in the form of a smile that then connects with me. Your eyes and your ears pick up how that energy was received and two separate “entities” become connected as one in the exchange. This is how people come to feel “close” to each other even with physical distance that separates their physical bodies. Closeness is about resonance where two “systems” become linked as one.

Knowing about the brain is important in well-being because when we understand that the brain is a part of the body, and the body and relationships shape the mind, then mental health can be more likely to be catalyzed with knowledge of the brain as one part of the whole system of mind. Knowing about the brain’s different parts enables us to optimize how those parts work collaboratively as a part of an integrated whole. In Interpersonal Neurobiology we say that integration is the basis of health. Integration is defined quite simply as “the linkage of differentiated parts.” With integration emerges coherence and harmony; when integration is impaired, chaos or rigidity ensues. 

This background will prepare your mind to optimize chance experiences of life so that you’ll be able to sense chaos and rigidity and detect how differentiated areas of the brain—or differentiated aspects of your relationships with others—may not be functioning as a linked whole. Louis Pasteur once said that “chance favors the prepared mind” – and knowledge of the brain’s parts can prepare your mind to integrate your life by linking differentiated areas of the brain to each other, thus creating neural integration.

In the related blogs that follow this introductory overview, we’ll see the various players that, when known, can be intentionally shaped in how they function. For the brain, “function” means how energy and information are streaming through those particular circuits. Attention is the process that directs energy and information flow—within our brains, and within our relationships. And so we’ll discover that how we learn to focus attention can activate specific circuits. Where attention goes, neural firing occurs. And where neural firing happens, neural structure can be strengthened. When that firing is integrative, then we can see how using our attention in integrative ways can actually reinforce coherent integrative functioning in the moment and grow integrative fibers for future functioning to be more balanced, coherent, and harmonious.

So for now, this is enough for us to share. How you’ll learn to focus your attention with intention and knowledge in integrative ways will build the skills you need to create neural integration in your brain. Get ready for some fun!

INSPIRE TO REWIRE is a mark owned by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel and Mind Your Brain, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Ode Dur cortex (tiny poem).

Trigger and overwhelm went out to play,

Trigger and overwhelm said let's annoy amygdala today!

So they puffed and they fought

But amygdala had a chemical help of sorts.

In the end trigger and overwhelm, could no longer play all of each and everyday.

And then Big Brother cortex arrived, demanding to stay! He said to amygdala "we will no longer do things thier FFF way!".

So together amygdala and cortex began the fight, to bring trigger and overwhelm to their correct and appropriate height!

Three in one

There is a great big wall in my life at the moment. Split in two: one Carwen on one side and one Carwen on the other  (and then a third watching from somewhere high up).

Firstly let me describe the wall, it's made of thick concrete and it's all grey. The surface is smooth on one side but gritty and sandpapery on the other. It's tall so so tall and it's wide. In short it's impenetrable and it's so densely made even sound can not get through. The Carwen stuck on one side has no chance of getting to the Carwen on the other. Only the Carwen high, high up can see into both sides.

Let me describe each Carwens predicament. 

The Carwen on the left hand side is presenting what look like anger. She is volatile and flies off the handle in a moment. She is the strong, the determined and the fighter. The wall on her side is smooth and she uses it as a guard to watch her back. If anyone approaches this Carwen they are met with suspicion that can turn into attack at the mere fluttering of potential threat.

The Carwen on the right side is beaten. She has been trapped by this wall for such a long time. Her body is thin, tired and bruised. She loves the Carwen in the left hand side, she wants to calm her down. Understanding that really angry Carwen is only scared, the anger is a front for deep pain.

 But now she sits immobile, the wall on her side is  sandpapery and rough. It scrapes and shaves at her thin arms and legs. She has sat now in defeat and despair, knowing her twin is hopping around misunderstood and communicating everything that is not true.

The third Carwen, the observer. She looks down on the other two. She watches as if it were an amusing game. She looks from one to the other but feels nothing. There is not much to write about her as looking is really all she does. 

Occasionally she considers climbing down to help one or the other but she is met with such confusion as to who is in most need. So the result is to just sit passively and not get involved. She is frozen by overwhelm.

This Blogg I dedicate to my young fighter friend. I write on your behalf as you are to young, in the hope that my experiences will help others see meaning in yours.