The Rose Garden, Chapter 13 – Fighting the Scars

Fawn in grass, Source http://www.forestwander.com/fawn-in-grass-2/, Author ForestWander, (CC BY-SA 3.0 United States)

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11: 28).

Sometime in my late teens my pain and anger finally surfaced, and I lost my faith.

Throughout college, I declared to anyone within earshot that I was an atheist and existentialist.  Rather than bow before a God Who — as I saw it — would allow good people to suffer, I preferred to deny God’s existence.

Perfectionism and Procrastination

The evil in which my father had engaged produced a variety of scars on my psyche.  Perfectionism and its companion procrastination were among these.

Writing errors had to be liberally covered over by correction fluid, expunged.  Fasting was the ideal; a mouth full of food, and I was committed to bingeing.  If I so much as awoke later than planned, the day was marred.

It seemed far easier for me to be “perfect” than to be normal.  I had no idea what it was to be normal.   And if I could achieve perfection, perhaps my father would love me again.

Perfectionism is defined in Father-Daughter Incest by Judith Lewis Herman as behavior involving the setting of standards “high beyond reach or reason [1A].”  According to Lewis Herman, perfectionists strain “unremittingly toward impossible goals”; measure themselves “entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment [1B].”

Perfectionism hinges on the belief that making mistakes is the same as failure.  Standards can be set so high they “actually interfere with performance [1C].”  The perfectionist dare not “risk being average,” yet filters out positive comments [1D].  “The underlying belief of the perfectionist is that high standards will keep chaos at bay [1E].”

For incest survivors, a corollary of the belief is that lowering standards — even once, even briefly — is equivalent to the irretrievable loss of innocence.  My first panicked thought on being involved in an auto accident was that my record was now no longer spotless.

Related to perfectionism is paralysis:  better to do nothing than fail.  There is, however, another component to paralysis.

Fight or Flight Response

Most people today are familiar with the fight-or-flight response to danger.  The so-called “acute stress response” was first described by American psychologist, Walter Cannon, in 1929.  According to this theory, animals react to threats either by fleeing or facing them.

The response is automatic, with the sympathetic nervous system triggering the release of specific chemicals to prepare the body for either activity.  Stress results when we can pursue neither course of action in response to threat.

Freeze Response

More recently, psychology has begun to recognize the existence of a freeze response [2].  Think of a fawn frozen in tall grass at the approach of a predator.  The stimulus is overwhelming.  Yet neither fight, nor flight is an available option.  The fawn’s best chance of survival is, in effect, to disappear.

In humans, the freeze response is now believed the tie-in to dissociation.  The predator is so nearby his stench fills your nostrils.  The blood pounds in your ears.  Your heart threatens to explode.  Yet you cannot move, and cannot defend yourself.

Tragically, trauma in humans (especially the young) can have a permanent impact on the nervous system.  We do not possess the capacity to “unfreeze” readily when the danger has passed, so carry the trauma forward.

Situations that mimic key aspects of the traumatic event reproduce the response, and we are once again immobilized with dread.  In the context of molestation, sexual intercourse need not take place for permanent damage to be done.

Anxiety and the Law

While I cannot speak as a research scientist, I do — as an abuse survivor — have firsthand experience of this extreme form of anxiety.

I never had difficulty speaking before an audience.  As an attorney at trial, however, I anticipated being disemboweled.  I experienced this as a physical sensation:  virtual paralysis and the need to cover my abdomen.

It had taken an epiphany to get me into the profession.

Brought up in the Bronx, the daughter of immigrants, I had no thought of pursuing the law.  My interest was first piqued during high school.  My history teacher was studying law at night.  Somehow he always managed to work the law into his lectures.

I found the subject enormously engaging.  However, when I spoke with a guidance counselor about a career in the law, she told me not to bother.  Women at that time constituted only about 3%-4% of the profession.  I put the idea of becoming a lawyer aside.

In college, my music teacher thought I should be a music critic.  My speech teacher recommended I become a speech therapist.

After college, I was initially at a loss for what to do.  I tried environmental classes, finding my reaction at odds with that of other science students.  They seemed excited by the sight of a polluted pond, where I was irate.

My first love suggested the law, but I was reluctant.

One rainy afternoon, I stood hanging onto a strap at the back of a crowded bus, with a little old lady beside me.  Just below us, a teenager sat carelessly sprawled across two seats, smoking.

I found the situation intensely irritating.  He could easily have given the older woman a seat.  I believe I said something, to no avail.  At any rate, I got off the bus early, fuming.

Stomping along in the rain, head and shoulders thrust forward, I suddenly had to stop and laugh aloud.  It finally struck me that injustice had, from my earliest years, moved me more than anything else.  This was simply another instance.

As a lawyer, I prepared my cases carefully.  I reviewed each allegation; examined the evidence from every angle; interviewed witnesses closely; researched the applicable law, medicine, and engineering.  I was honest, thorough, and reliable.

However, trials I approached like a woman approaching the gallows.  This was a direct result of the abuse.

At such times, I struggled to complete routine tasks as if underwater.  When it came time to walk into the courtroom, my stomach would knot, my hands grow clammy, and my mouth dry.  It took every ounce of my will not to double over before the jury.

Nonetheless, I persevered.

My fear was always that I would be at a loss for words.  I saw no distinction between public speaking and trial work, albeit that the latter involved confrontation.  Without a “rational” basis for my reaction, I felt craven.

The answer to this riddle is readily apparent.  In school I was safe; at home I was not.  Speaking up in class held no fear.  From my father, I had no escape.

Though governed by set rules, a trial situation is fluid, dynamic.  For me, therefore, it evoked the molestation where public speaking does not.  My abdomen is the part of my anatomy where my father generally began his advances.

With each case I tried, my anxiety increased.  I could as easily have thrust my arm into a meat grinder, repeating the process with the stump.  This was a result of what I now recognize as retraumatization.  I was the one on trial, not the clients; my veracity, at issue.

The standards governing attorney behavior mandate that an attorney decline (or transfer) a case, if the attorney’s physical or mental condition would materially impair his or her ability to represent the client.  We are ethically bound to protect our clients, even against our own shortcomings.

There came a point I could not, in good conscience, undertake trial work any longer, and gave it up altogether.  That aspect of case handling I left to others.

Fighting the Scars

For me, a children’s book set at the time of the American Revolution had significant bearing on this.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes and Lynn Ward is the story of a young silversmith who loses the use of his hand [3].  The accident embitters the boy at being denied his chosen profession.  By the end of the book, he has come to terms with the tragedy, and surgery promises to restore some function in the hand for him.

I read Johnny Tremain when I was twelve or so.  What stayed with me was the lesson that if we cannot erase the scars, we may yet release them sufficiently to function.

I still at times set unattainably high standards for myself.  I continue to experience some degree of social anxiety — the sensation in public that my every action is under close scrutiny; will be judged and found wanting.

I struggle in settings such as cocktail parties, weddings, even church services.  I no longer try cases.

But I have always felt it incumbent on me to fight against the scars.

—

[1A through 1E]  Lewis Herman, Judith, Father-Daughter Incest, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1982, 2000 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.

[2]  Simply Psychology, “Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn:  How We Respond to Threats” by Olivia Guy-Evans MSc (reviewed by Florence Yeung and Saul Mcleod PhD, 11/9/23, https://www.simplypsychology.org/fight-flight-freeze-fawn.html

[3]   Forbes, Esther; Ward, Lynn, Johnny Tremain, New York, Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, Copyright © 1943 Esther Forbes Hoskins, 1971 Linwood M. Erskine, Jr., Executor of Estate.

Anxiety is further discussed at Chapter 17 Illness

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