Panic alarm goes off.
Weee-wahh-weee-wahh-weee-wahh!
*Emotional flashback politely proffers Charles its magnificently red-satin-begloved paw.*
Gulp.
Richard Grannon has taught Charles to recognise the emotional flashback.
I am making progress!
I embrace change!
Argh. That familiar, hot feeling of rage washing over him. That constricted sensation in his throat and his chest. That surge of blind, condensed fury.
Richard Grannon – on numerous occasions – has respectfully pointed his YouTube followers in the direction of Pete Walker’s seminal book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (not forgetting his earlier, groundbreaking text The Tao of Fully Feeling) available free on Amazon Kindle, Charles has noted, if you are able to work out what the hell signing up to it actually means for your long-term fiscal and psychological well-being (which Charles isn’t, so he has purchased both, at inordinate expense, in paperback).
It was Pete Walker – an American therapist – who first made the connection between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (typically experienced by war veterans with its characteristic mental flashbacks – triggered seemingly at random or by certain stressful situations) and Complex PTSD/R where the victim experiences emotional flashbacks. This means that they don’t have visions, as such, but they are engulfed/obliterated by feelings instead. These feelings are distorting, panic-inducing, arbitrary, overwhelming.
The original cause of these ‘emotional’ flashbacks isn’t as pointed and specific as in the standard PTSD (i.e. one, specific traumatic incident). They are sourced in a kind of watercolour wash – a destabilising blur – of traumatic experiences (generally associated with long-term physical and/or emotional childhood abuse: neglect, harsh criticism, cruelty, mixed-messages, parental unreliability/unpredictability). Over time this wash of abuse effects the brain’s HPA axis (these are the glands that relate to threat perception) and the individual’s baseline state becomes dis-regulated – fluctuates and nose-dives with no perceptible external cause. The primitive parts of the brain responsible for fight/flight responses are perpetually over-stimulated. The person is then emotionally hyper-normalised. They try to stop feeling (feelings are at once utterly overwhelming and completely unreliable). They try to block these unwelcome responses and end up over-thinking things or simply checking out. Feelings become the enemy. Feelings attack. They must be repressed. They become dangerous and unpredictable.
There is so much Charles still has to learn.
The Toxic Inner Critic.
Perfectionism.
The Trauma Tunnel.
Entitlement.
Emotional dis-regulation.
Developing critical thinking skills.
Learned Responses.
S.N.A.F.U. (situation-normal-all-fucked-up)
The Somatic Body.
Semangat.
Emotional flashbacks.
If only he could get started!
Why, why, why can’t I get started?
Although he does know about the Hand Mnemonic. He has almost got the Hand Mnemonic down pat. It’s a part of the basic skill-set that Grannon introduced, online, and in seminars, during an earlier phase (before the big American backers got on board and encouraged him to stop doing too much for free and being such a wildman/smart-arse).
Ah. The inter-relatedness of things. Yes.
There’s always something else.
Isn’t there?
Something else?
To look for?
Must. Find. Something. Else.
Easier.
Quicker.
Cheaper.
Better.
Searching.
For something else.
An add-on.
A bonus-ball.
To make it okay.
To feed the hunger.
To block that GIANT GAPING MAW inside that longs to be filled but cannot be filled.
Empty.
Just a massive vacuum within inhabited by a swarm of anxiously buzzing bees.
What’s next?
What’s next?
Indecorous?
Immodest?
Fuck Avigail! Screw her!
The emotional flashback is seductive. But it isn’t real. It is just a learned response. Grannon compares it to a looping tape that is suddenly triggered and then starts playing in the mind (trots out a familiar, painful tune) but has no useful purpose. It’s exaggerated. It’s ultimately destructive. It simply generates anxiety and pain. It’s anti-social. It’s inappropriate. It’s infantilising. Worst of all, it’s self-sabotaging.
His cruel Inner Critic compels Charles to remain at the approximate developmental age of a fourteen-year-old boy.
Charles is the Peter Pan of the emotions.
(Hello?
Hello?
Where Tinkerbell?)
When Avigail recommends that Charles covers his drying rack with a sheet, Charles’s mind flashes back (without him knowing it, because the flashback is emotional, not intellectual) to the time (the many times) that his father, Barri, humiliated him by announcing to his extended family, during the evening meal, that he shouldn’t be allowed orange cordial with his food (he never asked for cordial! He never asked for it – even though he was thirsty! Even though he was bone dry!) because he was still pissing the bed. Charles wet the bed in his father’s house on weekend visits because he was too frightened to get up and go to the toilet at night after he’d flushed on one occasion and had been slapped for waking his grandfather (whose bedroom was adjacent to the toilet). And then, when he didn’t flush, he had been attacked and ridiculed for being dirty and bad-mannered and ill-bred.
‘This may be acceptable in Bulgaria,’ his father’s first/only wife hissed, pointing angrily into the golden bowl (Charles held firmly by the collar of his pyjama top, his three half-brothers sniggering in the background), ‘but it isn’t acceptable here.’
TRI BRAWD!
TRI BRAWD!
TRI BRAWD!
That’s what Charles feels when Avigail calls him immodest. All the anxiety. All the ridicule. All the humiliation of his father’s earlier attacks.
Six minutes remaining.
Avigail is saying something.
Charles tries to –
SHAME!
tune in –
HUMILIATION!
over the blare of his –
FURY!
emotional flashback.
There is the sound of something falling in another room.
EH?
‘Is the cat okay, do you think?’ Avigail is wondering. ‘She took quite a tumble before …’
She?
SHE?!
What is it with this infernal woman and she? Charles asks himself.
Meanwhile, he is surreptitiously tapping the thumb of his left hand (the left is his dominant hand) with a finger of his right.
I AM KING OF MY OWN SERENITY
I AM THE RULER OF MYSELF …
he intones, visualising a crown,
I AM SOVEREIGN,
he intones.
Tap, tap, tap on the thumb.
I AM SOVEREIGN.
Next, the index finger –
Tap tap tap …
WITH THIS, MY INDEX FINGER, I AM POINTING AT THE INNER CRITIC – THE NEGATIVE, ‘PARENT’ VOICE – I AM POINTING AT HIM AND IDENTIFYING HIM.
GET LOST!
I WILL NOT BE ATTACKED AND DOMINATED BY YOU ANY LONGER …
Tap tap tap …
Next the middle finger …
tap tap tap …
LEARN HOW TO SAY NO!
BE BOUNDARIED!
SAY NO TO THE INNER CRITIC.
SAY NO TO YOURSELF.
BE MENTALLY STRONG!
AND DON’T BE AFRAID TO SAY NO TO OTHER PEOPLE, EITHER! WITHOUT FLINCHING! BOLDLY. UNAPOLOGETICALLY. BETTER STILL, WITH A SMILE …
‘The cat’s fine,’ he mutters.
Wang Shu is
talking on the phone in Chinese. As she talks, though (presumably in an unconscious attempt to distract herself from the broom/toe trauma), she is casually busying herself with other stuff. Initially she takes a couple of the herbal teas down from the top of the refrigerator and sniffs them, sceptically. The Fennel Tea disgusts her. The Turmeric and Ginger Tea succeeds in not entirely provoking her ire. Next Wang Shu opens the refrigerator and looks inside. There are three types of live probiotic yoghurt on the top shelf. All are out of date. Wang Shu picks one up and holds it, quizzically, to the light. She winces. She returns it from whence it came. Next Wang Shu smells the milk. She winces again and casually carries the milk over to the sink as she talks on the phone in Chinese.
‘Zonggong duoshao qian?’
…
‘Huh?’
…
‘Duoshao?!’
Charles says – almost to himself – ‘I actually just bought that milk this morning.’ Wang Shu pours the milk down the sink. She then returns the carton to the fridge and continues to inspect the fridge’s contents. She pulls out some broccoli and smells it.
She shakes her head. She places the broccoli down on the counter and then indicates over her shoulder (presumably to Ying Yue) that she needs some assistance.
Ying Yue bows slightly (it’s more a curtsey than a bow, really) first to Charles, then to Avigail. ‘Is this refrigerator to be included in sale?’ she tentatively asks.
‘I haven’t quite decided,’ Charles admits (the refrigerator is not included in the sale).
People who suffer from porous internal boundaries because of a history of abuse find it virtually impossible to say ‘no’.
It’s JUST TOO HARD!
I … I … I … I … can’t!
Tap tap tap …
LEARN HOW TO SAY NO!
BE BOUNDARIED!
SAY NO TO THE INNER CRITIC.
SAY NO TO YOURSELF.
BE MENTALLY STRONG!
AND DON’T BE AFRAID TO SAY NO TO OTHER PEOPLE, EITHER! WITHOUT FLINCHING! BOLDLY. UNAPOLOGETICALLY. WITH A SMILE …
Wang Shu indicates – more aggressively now – that she needs assistance (still talking in Chinese, still facing into the open fridge). Ying Yue shuffles over to her mother’s side. Wang Shu points to the broccoli. Ying Yue wants to stop her mother from behaving inappropriately but she CANNOT SAY NO to Wang Shu. She is Wang Shu’s echo, her mirror, after all. Ying Yue grabs a hold of the broccoli. She presses her lips together, agonised. She swallows, nervously. She inhales. She holds her breath. She turns around. She carries the broccoli over to the bin (where Charles still stands). Even though Ying Yue is holding her breath (so is now – to all intents and purposes – completely invisible), Charles finds himself …
LEARN HOW TO SAY NO! BE BOUNDARIED!
Tap tap tap …
… pressing down on to the bin pedal with his foot. The bin lid swings open …
The pedal bin is illumined.
The broccoli is illumined.
Ying Yue (still holding her breath), gently drops the (illumined) broccoli into the (illumined) pedal bin. It nestles up against the bloodied tissue and the cellophane wrapper of a value pack of jotters (unlined. Illumined). Charles releases the pedal. Ying Yue exhales.
Avigail finds Charles’s patent lack of concern for his cat deeply perturbing. She has no idea why she suddenly keeps gendering everything female. She knows that the cat is called Morpheus and Morpheus is a boy’s name, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
The Greek god of dreams?
Ah …
The River of Forgetfulness?
The River of Oblivion?
That elusive guy in the Matrix films?
Avigail also has no idea how she might stop Wang Shu from emptying out Charles’s fridge. She is slightly concerned that stopping someone from emptying out a stranger’s fridge may be bad luck to the Chinese. Although (curiously) she suddenly remembers how empty things (an empty stove, an empty bucket, an empty house) are considered unlucky by Jews.
Avigail wonders what is good luck to the Chinese (aside from the number 8)?
She is also perturbed by Ying Yue’s breath-holding which strikes her as quite odd. She is unable to fully grasp the complexities of Ying Yue’s relationship with Wang Shu, but she suspects that it isn’t entirely functional or tremendously nurturing.
Ying Yue reminds her of an exhausted marsupial.
‘Ying Yue,’ Avigail asks, ‘what, aside from the number 8, is good luck in Chinese culture?’
Ying Yue pauses mid-way between the refrigerator and the pedal bin. She is clutching a mouldy block of cheese which Wang Shu has just handed her. Ying Yue is holding her breath so kind of imagines that Avigail can’t see her.
Hmm. This is complex. Does she exhale and answer, or does she try to answer while still holding her breath?
She isn’t sure.
Charles (as if sensing Ying Yue’s disquiet) silently opens the pedal bin.
Fourth finger … tap tap tap … ring finger … tap tap tap …
MUST SELF-PARTNER …
Tap tap tap …
Ying Yue takes this as a sign. She throws the cheese into the bin:
a hit!
then exclaims, very quickly, in a single, breathy expulsion:
‘Uh … colour red – lucky colour … auspicious … wedding colour …
uh … lucky dragon …
uh … turtle …
yes … venerable turtle lives to great age …
uh … lucky fish … for wealth … for abundance …
and uh … lucky circle – always round shape is very propitious …
uh … lucky oranges … uh … word for orange is same-like as word for lucky and same-like as word for gold and gold is always lucky …
Uh … yes … lucky turtle … for long life …
Uh …’
Her eyes frantically scan the room, hunting for inspiration.
‘In the Ancient East there is a dragon … she is called China –
We are all descendants of the dragon.’
Ying Yue begins to sing; she has an oddly haunting, reedy, keening voice.
Ying Yue sings in Chinese. It is a traditional song which she only really knows because it has been reworked by the ridiculously handsome American-Chinese pop star/film star/environmental activist Wang Leehom. If Avigail or Charles could speak any Chinese they would hear:
In the Far East there is a river,
its name is the Yangtze River
In the Far East there is a river,
its name is the Yellow River
Although I’ve never seen the beauty of the Yangtze,
in my dreams I miraculously travel the Yangtze’s waters
Although I’ve never heard the strength of the Yellow River,
the rushing and surging waters are in my dreams …
‘YING YUUUUUUUUUUUE! ’Wang Shu suddenly bellows, slamming the fridge shut with a violent smack:
‘CAN’ YOU HEA’ I ON THE FUCKING PHONE?!’
5.
SORRY I’M LATE, BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO COME
As Ying Yue sings, Avigail (disarmed and horrified in equal measure) instantly forges a series of cultural connections. She remembers the Evil Eye and the lengths her bubbeh would go to in order to confound its wicked machinations …
The little red strings tied around their wrists.
Spitting three times (psi! psi! psi!) and hissing kinehore whenever she mentioned anything good happening (bragging was considered unwise – certainly unattractive – even dangerous).
Salt in the corners of the rooms in new houses or in the pockets of new clothes.
A safety pin pushed under a shirt collar before a long trip.
(Metal was always considered lucky because the Hebrew for iron – barzel – is an acronym of the names of the mothers of the Children of Israel:
Billhook
Rachel
Zilch
Leah …)
W
indows always propped very slightly ajar so that evil spirits might make their escape.
Holy books always kept very firmly shut so that evil spirits mightn’t gain access.
The lucky number 18 – chai – the lowest emanation of Elohim.
Oh yes, sneezing; both as a grave omen and as a powerful indicator of a profound truth recently uttered.
It all comes flooding back.
Home.
Ouch.
How raw that word feels. How sharply this briefest of syllables cuts. Such a savage noun.
Avigail vaguely recalls being taught about how the world was created from the twenty-two Hebrew letters – in ten speeches by Elohim. Yes. Ten speeches which – altogether – combined to contain everything there is. All ramifications of things. Each possibility. Every iteration. So the world was born of words. These simple twenty-two letters; the humble building blocks of the universe.
I Am Sovereign Page 6