by Naomi Judd
One of the therapists explained that panic attacks are often based on lack of attachments. This was new information for me, but it didn’t surprise me in the least. At one point, I was given two large poster boards to use to make a genogram, which is a family map. I was instructed to draw both sides of my family tree and write out significant personality traits of each family member and how I interacted with them. A genogram is used to identify unhealthy relationship patterns in the family and helps reveal where dysfunctional behavior and beliefs germinate.
As the clarity of who my relatives really were became visible on the boards, I was also faced with my immediate anger over how the abuse and trauma of decades of untreated mental illness was destroying the next generation. As small children with little experience, each of us probably surmises that the way our family members behave is the way all adults are normally. In my circumstance, I didn’t have one single family role model who reflected a mentally healthy attitude through the stages of life.
The therapist worked with a professional who specialized in genealogical signs of mental illness. When he looked over my genogram, he couldn’t believe it. He called in another expert to help him study my history. My grandparents, aunts, and uncles on both sides were all deeply peculiar and ran the gamut of emotional disorders from agoraphobia to obsessive-compulsive, from extreme narcissism to pathological issues that rendered them unable to function in any regular social circumstance.
On my mother’s side, my great-grandmother and all of her adult children lived in a closed-up, dark, cigarette-smoke-filled house. They were rarely seen in public, outside of working at the Hamburger Inn, the restaurant managed by Grandma Burton. No one ever smiled or laughed in that house. Daddy’s sisters, except for my aunt Toddie, all had their dysfunctional quirks, superstitions, and paranoia that kept them isolated from society. They were reclusive and compelled to follow their established routines, never extending themselves beyond their comfort zones. I tried to charm them into smiling and coax them into the daylight or out for an adventure, anything I could think of to bring them joy, but they never responded. Not one of them ever gave me a gift, played a game with me, or even took me to the city park across the street from where I grew up.
When I was out on tour, I would send my aunts letters and postcards from various cities. I would stop by to see them in Kentucky if I was anywhere in the region. Daddy always appreciated that they seemed to lighten up a bit when I was around. I put a lot of energy into making them feel I cared about them. But it was rarely returned. They would stiffly hug me hello and goodbye, but that was it. No one ever told me they missed seeing me or made any inquiry about how I was doing. Filling out the information for these family boards with some of the counselors helped reveal to me what my aunts truly were: profoundly depressed and self-absorbed agoraphobics, with obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Aunt Pauline never married. She never went to see a doctor or dentist. Her hair went completely gray in high school. Once Granddaddy Judd bought her the farm property, she moved there and never left or traveled anywhere else her whole life.
Aunt Evelyn could not function socially at all. She never went on a date and had no friends. She stayed inside, by herself, compulsively cleaning the house all day long.
Aunt Ramona had a possible chance at a normal life when she found employment on an army base. There she met a man and got married. But she never extended her life beyond that. She had to stick to a specific routine and not waver, such as only going to the grocery store at 5 p.m. on Fridays. None of them would even go to church.
When each one of them, Pauline, Evelyn, Ramona, and Faith, died, she had no one to attend her funeral. Not one of them had a single friend. The love I felt for them was futile because they couldn’t access their own emotions. I was surprised when a long-repressed truth rose to the surface. I had hateful feelings for my aunts when they were all dead. My memories of being subject to their mental illnesses made me furious at my own parents. But what could I expect? My parents were cut from the same cloth and made little effort to change the way they were treated as children in how they treated their own kids. Daddy was never spontaneously affectionate to any of us, although I longed for his attention even more than Mother’s. As a child, I knew the exact sound of his pickup truck coming down the street and would run to the front gate to meet him. I’d attempt to throw my arms around him, but that would usually result in a fast hug as he brushed by and headed inside for his dinner. Every Friday night I would watch boxing on TV with Daddy, even though the sight of the fighters’ swollen faces made me wince.
I would take any opportunity to spend time with him. I was a “daddy’s girl,” which, looking back, didn’t mean that much, except in my own mind. He never gave me any special attention or privileges. The only time I had physical contact with him was when I got a whipping, which would happen with the slightest misbehavior, anything he considered a public humiliation.
I always had honor roll grades on every report card. It was expected, but luckily I’ve always been an enthusiastic learner. One year, in junior high, a teacher wrote “whispers in class” on everyone’s report card in the comment section, even though I had an A in her class, too. Daddy was furious that I received any unfavorable comment and got his belt ready.
At a very young age I found a pain-free way to receive my punishments. My mother had a very thick rubber girdle with plastic stays sewn into it. It was so sturdy it could stand up on its own. I would tell Daddy that I had to use the bathroom. Then I’d sneak into Mother’s dresser drawer and pull the girdle armor on under whatever I was wearing. I never felt one lash of the belt, but I certainly hollered and carried on as if I did. Since Mother always thought I was “being dramatic” about everything, I figured I might as well live up to her description. Following the whipping, I’d return the girdle to the drawer and go on my merry way.
The last whipping I got was at age seventeen. I had gone on a double date to a movie at the local theater. We missed the start time of the first movie and waited for the second show, which caused me to be late for my curfew. I was only hoping the boy who dropped me at my front door couldn’t hear Daddy telling me to get ready for a whipping. It’s the last time the girdle came to the rescue. But the damage to my self-esteem was far more painful than any stripe his leather belt would have made.
In hindsight, I only had two ways of knowing that my father loved me or was proud of me: He paid for me to have piano lessons and he taped my school picture to the cash register at his gas station for all of his customers to see. Every time I went to his gas station, I would check to make sure my picture was still there. I think I didn’t take my father’s lack of affection personally because I never saw him display any affection to my mother, either. Daddy only once took Mother out to a movie, The Bad Seed. They never invited other adults over, even though Mother’s cooking would have left them wanting to return.
I’m not sure that any of the three generations of mothers on my mom’s side ever produced a drop of oxytocin, which is the chemical messenger produced in the brain when a mother is bonding with a newborn baby. Not surprisingly, my lack of attachment to my mother stems from her lack of love and connection to her own mother, Edie Mae.
In Scottsdale I learned that the first attachment to a child’s primary caregiver is the most important relationship in life. By the time the child is age three, the brain is already 85 percent developed. This early relationship with the mother and father sets up a person’s emotional patterns and even biological foundation. Holding, kissing, smiling, and laughing all create specific neurochemical activity in the child’s brain. This leads to healthy brain systems and gives a child a solid foundation for future relationships and attachment. Lack of attachment or bonding with a parent can have long-term repercussions for the child. It can take years to repair the emotional damage from early neglect. Sometimes the damage can’t be undone. Many who lack that early bonding grow up to be adults who rarely feel secure in their relationshi
ps and can suffer depression and panic disorders. It became clear to me that my own strong attachment to my daughters came from my determination that they feel loved and treasured for who they are.
There were times I failed as a mother when they were young, but I have to accept that I had had no support system on a day-to-day basis, no partner who was active in their lives, and had not learned good parenting skills from my own mother and father. However, my motivation was always to give them a good future with many opportunities.
Each session with the therapists uncovered new damaging evidence that I had never had a family who loved, encouraged, or protected me. I had toughened up at a very young age and found my own way, but even success won’t fill the deep hole left in the psyche when a child grows up in an unsafe atmosphere, rarely being affirmed or even acknowledged by the adults in her life.
When Larry would return to the center to pick me up at dinnertime, I would be emotionally drained. He was gentle and didn’t ask many questions. He would figure out some type of food for us to carry out and take back to the inn. I still didn’t want to be seen in public. I didn’t want anyone finding out about my severe depression and anxiety. “Look, Harold. There’s that crazy Naomi Judd. What a shame!”
On a couple of evenings, Larry and I went for a long drive in the car and sang along with the radio. I would look out the window at a landscape that was endlessly the same: parched brown desert, dotted with sharp-edged succulent plants or cacti that could pierce one’s skin. It seemed like a reflection of my internal landscape, barren and colorless, with painful, knife-sharp memories. Would the search for my mental well-being ever end?
Chapter 11
Reliving the Past
I was emotionally exhausted and wanted to go home at the end of my first week of intensive outpatient therapy. I had cried many times in the previous seven days and I thought I had no more tears to shed and had come to grips with the memories. The therapists discovered that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and had been for most of my life. The accumulation of repressed negative emotions over the years was now taking its toll on my sanity and sense of well-being. As one therapist advised me, “Your subconscious is trying to get your attention now. It’s screaming that you have to pull these memories up. Look at them in the light of day. You must finally realize how they are negatively affecting your present. Talk about it all.”
Larry also thought it was a good idea for me to continue on and process more of my post-traumatic stress disorder. I thought, Therapy is nothing like a concert tour. You can’t move on to the next city and a whole new atmosphere the next day. Therapy is more like an archaeological dig. You have to persistently move the surface aside to get at what’s underneath. Most of what you find may be broken, with sharp edges, so often it feels painful or hopeless. But you have to stay with it to excavate and analyze the specifics of what really happened in your past and how that has influenced your mental health today. I agreed to stay on track.
The next morning, as I was getting dressed I thought about my next-door neighbors when I was growing up, Cecil and Mary Agnes. They were a salt-of-the-earth-couple. Cecil ran the chicken hatchery in Ashland. They had three daughters who were my playmates and they always included me. When I was at their house Mary Agnes would say, “I have four daughters.” She and Cecil were both very affectionate and would hug me as much as they did their own girls. I cherished their attention. I found every opportunity I could to spend time at their house, which I knew as well as my own. Long after I left Ashland, Mary Agnes would send me cards saying how proud she was of my success. Whenever I would give an acceptance speech at a country music award show or the Grammys, I would always picture Cecil and Mary Agnes, sitting on their blue floral couch, watching me. The last time I saw the two of them was when I was the grand marshal in the Ashland Fourth of July parade. I was sitting up on the backseat of an open convertible, waving to people lining the sidewalks. Something caught my eye in the doorway of our church and I turned to look. It was Cecil and Mary Agnes, smiling and waving at their fourth daughter. Even across the heads of a dense crowd, their genuine affection reached out to me and captured my heart. I contemplated how my life would have turned out if I had been their actual daughter. Would I have memories that made me pace the floor almost every night after waking up with a panic attack?
* * *
Through an additional therapy called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), I delved into the traumas that came from feeling a lack of attachment. EMDR is a therapy technique that uses the natural way our eyes move in REM sleep to process traumatic feelings and memories that our brain is unable to process during sleep, which is when we are usually able to resolve our feelings about an experience. However, if the experiences are extreme and traumatic they get stored in the nervous system and repressed from our consciousness. They are still there, inside of us, along with every sight, sound, and smell associated with the traumatic experience, and can replicate the original stress response every time they surface. These unprocessed emotions and memories create disturbances in the normal function of emotions. EMDR is seen as breakthrough therapy in unlocking the traumatic memory and moving it out of the nervous system and into a normal memory that isn’t fraught with the original feelings of danger.
As it turns out, I have many, many memories that I had locked away because, for much of my life, I had no way to express my emotions to someone I could trust. Most of my memories were heavy and traumatic, but they don’t have to be. Even something that appears to be a simple life experience can hold a feeling of trauma that gets suppressed. For example, it could be an incident as fleeting as being embarrassed in front of the classroom once as a child. No one else remembers it, but you may have stored it away and it still affects your belief system about your intelligence.
I was able to process some traumas that I had remembered for many years, but whose ability to affect me I thought I had gone beyond.
The worst memory to process through EMDR was finally dealing with a horrible time when I was so desperate to have the feeling of being loved by someone, I unwittingly put my children and myself in a path of danger I honestly didn’t see coming. My shame about this time period, in my mid-twenties, was so overwhelming I had pushed it far down into my subconscious. Even though I had spoken of it in public once or twice, in sympathy with women who needed sheltering from abuse, it was as if I were telling someone else’s story, certainly not my own. I had never processed the lasting trauma of being punched, hit, and raped by a guy on heroin whom I dated in 1972.
Unbeknownst to me, he had bipolar disorder, which I had no clue about until years later, when I had more understanding of various mental illnesses. Early on in the relationship, he was full of love and passion, a talented artist and poet, and very protective and attentive to Wynonna and Ashley. In my fantasy, he was a charming knight in shining armor. Then, after a period of time, the gate started to swing in a different direction and he became full of jealous rage for a day or two. At first I thought it was a temporary insecurity since the relationship was new, but then the gate was blown right off the hinges. He began to stalk my every move at work and home, getting verbally aggressive and physically abusive by hitting me several times when he was convinced I was seeing another man, which I wasn’t.
Even though I had begun to be terrified of him, I abruptly ended the relationship. He trailed me constantly, leaving me threatening notes where he was certain I would find them. For a short period of time, I didn’t hear from or see him, so I thought my nightmare might be over. Then there was the heart-stopping moment I pulled into my driveway and saw in the rearview mirror that he was carrying boxes into the apartment directly across the street. He had rented the place so he could watch my house day and night from his balcony. I was petrified that he would kidnap one of my girls to get my attention. They couldn’t understand why I rarely allowed them to play outside.
One night the phone rang at 2 a.m., waking me up. He w
as on the line, saying that he had Wy in his possession. I couldn’t breathe. She had begun sleepwalking occasionally and had managed to open the front door, sound asleep, and head down the sidewalk toward Sunset Boulevard. Because he was stalking my apartment, he saw her come out onto the porch.
I was grateful he didn’t hold her hostage and returned her safely to my arms. I thanked him, with my knees shaking in fear, still finding it hard to reconcile my feelings from when I thought he was a safe person in my life with the monster he had become. As a master of manipulation, he tried to use the incident as a bargaining chip, asking to come inside the house. It didn’t work on me anymore. There was no turning back. I recognized fully what an unstable person I had allowed into my life. I never wanted to see his face again. I shut the door quickly and double-locked it. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night as he sat on the porch talking to me through the locked door.
I could never feel safe, again, and one sleepless night followed another. I knew I would have to relocate as secretly as I could, but I didn’t have the money for a security deposit on a new apartment.
I started to pick up some modeling jobs, after my day job, to put away a little cash to be able to move away. Then, one evening, when the girls were spending the night with our neighbor and my new friend, Nancy, and her little girl, Gabrielle, because I had a modeling gig that ran late, I arrived home to find that he had broken into my house and was hiding out and waiting for me to return.
When I walked into the house, he grabbed me and smashed my face into the wall. Then he dragged me around the house by my hair, while he rummaged through everything I owned, spilling the contents of my purse out onto the floor, overturning drawers, and pulling everything out of the closet, looking for proof I was seeing other men. After that he threw me down hard onto the wood floor, and using his booted foot stomped on my torso, then ripped my clothing and raped me.