14
OUT WE WENT, INTO THE frigid night air. Memories from past Canadian winters, adventures in the woods running from bears and stargazing, were pleasantly relived by Lauren as she found some deer tracks on our property. She showed me how to understand what the deer were doing by looking at their hoof prints.
When we got back inside she was strangely sweaty and wanted to take a shower.
Her body was beset with unrelenting extreme shifts in temperature. Overheated from our walk, an extended cold shower left her chilled and unable to warm back up.
Child abuse victims often feel claustrophobic taking a warm-water shower which also made her feel faint, dropped her blood pressure, and made her heart unsteady. Her condition quickly degenerated to a medical crisis.
"Erik, you've got to do something. I can't cope with what's happening to me. I want to die, please, help me to die!" Lauren pleaded in anguish, tears streaming down her ivory cheeks.
Having been through a number of her near-death episodes, I suspected, I hoped a flashback was gathering strength like a thunderhead about to explode into a major storm.
Trying to remember what the therapist told me, "Lauren, what you're experiencing is just a memory, you're not really dying."
"Help me, Erik, please help me get through this," the beleaguered Lauren begged.
"Let's go visit Carmen and play with your puppy a while," I suggested, but with no apparent affect as the episode continued to escalate.
Lauren's suffering child alter was not responsive and may have been unconscious or even near death.
In past co-consciousness sessions Lauren had told stories of being cold and still, with chains around her wrists. She was three years old and had passed out on a cement floor. Her dog had been locked in a work room. Someone's hands were around her throat, causing her to black out.
As I continued to strategize, Lauren started to respond. Her child alter was terrified and feared for her life.
The situation was getting critical and I had to think of something that could turn things around.
Using the concept that the child alter's mind was receptive to suggestion and would accept literal statements, I handed her one of my keys.
"Take this key and unlock the chains around your wrists. That's right . . . now, I'm going to pull those hands off of your neck and I want you to put the handcuffs around the hands that were on your neck. Are you ready? Okay, let's do that right now."
The strategy was working. I’d engaged the child's distraught, panicked mind in a process that gave her control over the threatening events unfolding in this deadly revived memory. The perpetrator was now in chains.
"You have the only key to those chains. Put that key in this strong box. Now close and lock the door with the key inside."
With that final act of reassurance she became calm and relaxed.
"Please, can I get my puppy and go out to play in the field?" the child alter pleaded.
"Certainly, go right over to the shed and open up the door," I said.
The calmed child now went to release her dog from captivity and together they entered a beautiful meadow, warm with a sun that was always shining, colored with flowers that were always in bloom.
The event passed and another necrotic memory had been excised. With her inner child safe, Lauren faded slowly to sleep.
LAUREN HAD BEEN SUFFERING from insomnia for weeks, but this night, with her beloved pet dog by her inner child's side, she slept soundly. The only other break in her broken sleeping pattern occurred during a week-long stay with some friends who had a dog whose presence seemed to generate a secure safety zone for Lauren.
The next evening saw a return of the depression, chills, and low blood pressure, but when her estranged husband and sometimes lover called to arrange a rendezvous, all the symptoms disappeared.
He still had the ability to affect her flashbacks, or did she shift into another alter that was not experiencing any problems at the time?
A flashback passed over was an opportunity missed to mitigate a malignant memory. Dr. Peterson claimed that in time Lauren would be able to work through future flashbacks by managing a conversation with the alter in crisis.
I found that hard to believe, but while Lauren was gone with Kurt I had a chance to come down from the almost constant strain I was under. Christmas was only a few days away and I took time to wrap some gifts and look over the long lists that Lauren had been preparing.
ONE OF LAUREN’S ALTERS was a meticulous planner and organizer. Christmas was not a happy time for Lauren's child alters. Growing up, Lauren was singled out as being too naughty to deserve the kind of presents the other children received. She was set up to fail at household chores by a strict code bent on breaking her down so they could build her back up. It was the kind of tough love they’d been subjected to as children. Toughen up or die was a common Canadian survival code, not without some merit I suppose given the harsh conditions in that part of the world.
Lauren’s uncle joined in and was even harsher with her when the parents were gone. It was as if he needed to convince himself that she was a bad girl in order to justify what he was doing to her.
Back in the present with me, Lauren sensed she had the chance to make up for all of those past contentious Christmases.
She began with a basic list of people she wanted to give gifts to. Day by day that list grew. Then, she began extending the number of presents each person was getting. And even a dog we didn’t have was on her list—yep a pup she spent a week with while visiting friends in northern Wisconsin. One of Lauren’s alters saw this Christmas as a chance to make up for some of the lost love she had for a childhood puppy.
"Lauren, honey, these are wonderful ideas for presents but please try and set some limits on your spending," I reluctantly pleaded while sensing that one of her younger alters was in control of this year’s Christmas preparations.
I didn't have the heart to play the Scrooge so I went along with all of her suggestions and did my best to get into the spirit of Christmas giving. It wasn't hard and I didn't mind dipping into my savings to help recreate a fantasy Christmas for Lauren especially since it might actually have some therapeutic value.
Lauren infused a number of family and Canadian Christmas traditions into my typically sparse Midwestern holiday celebration. A freshly cut tree was ready and waiting to be decorated, but the timing had to be right. Decorating the tree was a Christmas Eve tradition for her. Placing the strings of lights was a painstaking process.
Only the lights could show, not the wires connecting the lights. The Christmas tree I picked out looked good but had sharp needles which constantly poked Lauren's hands as she probed the interior, weaving the wires in and out and around the branches. I suggested we get another one she could work with in comfort.
Normally, I would have considered that an unnecessary inconvenience and expense, but I was moved by Lauren's intensity and determination to make this a perfect Christmas. I sympathized with her driving need to compensate for years of past Christmas disappointments.
I saw what was happening as the best possible gift I could give her. I loved her dearly and wanted to do anything I could to help her regain wellness. The new, fresh, soft-needled, blue-hued pine was in place and Lauren began again to precisely set in the lights.
This organization alter could be compulsive and obsessive. Lauren toiled over that task for hours. Starting and restarting, modifying and repositioning, over and over until the appearance was just right.
In her wintry Canadian home growing up, Lauren recalled that decorating the tree was her mother’s job and she too was a perfectionist. This kind of overcompensation could be expected from someone who deep down in the hidden recesses of her mind, where only she could see, sensed her true nature scarred. The whole family was scarred.
Their insecurities required that they presented themselves to the outside world as high achievers—accomplished, award-winning, successful people. Unable to alter their deep-seated inadequacies, they often compensated and compulsively constructed a much different persona for the world to see.
Their own self-doubts and feelings of self-deprecation were managed by the reassuring approval and recognition resulting from their achievements.
In Lauren's case, her high-honors academic standing in school, and later winning the model of the year award in all of Canada were followed by her brief success as an international supermodel. Later, exotic dancing provided approval, as did being chosen the mate of a much sought-after local rock star.
In her mother's case, rising to the level of a pharmaceutical executive allowed her to be penitent and pay for her sins of omission by helping others with her company’s medications. As an administrator she experienced considerable control over her surroundings, control that didn't exist in her personal life. As a geologist, her father helped energy companies find oil, while her uncle had a global reputation as premier sculptor.
The Christmas lights finally in perfect position, next on the perfect-Christmas-tree list were the ornaments.
Lauren brought with her from Vancouver a number of cherished tree trinkets, many of which were handmade. They were not in the best condition, having been carried and often crammed in army tote bags from one campsite to another as her gypsy's life unfolded.
Although her actual holidays at home were often tearfully traumatic, Lauren was now seeking to rewrite the past by using her Christmas accoutrements as a foundation to reconstruct, in the present, the kind of Christmas experience she could only have dreamt about in the past.
Some were so old—gifts from her grandparents when they were still alive. Others had the look of the North woods—robust white-tailed deer, bear figures, elk, and other animals. Still others had been constructed by innocent young hands as Christmas craft projects.
Cards and candy canes were allowed! One ornament was electronic. A small light flashed inside. You had to bend over to peer through an opening. If you did so, you were greeted with a heartwarming scene of a rustic log cabin with a glowing fireplace decorated for the Christmas holidays.
The next things to come out of her Santa’s sack of Christmas memorabilia were her Christmas stockings. Traditional white and red, one had her name embroidered in green letters and one was lettered for Santa.
"Remember, Erik, the stockings are to be placed at the foot of the bed," Lauren directed, choreographing the unfolding scene with a level of skill that would have impressed Frank Capra.
"All right, I can handle that," I agreed compliantly.
"And the stocking-stuffer gifts are not to be touched until Christmas day morning, okay!"
"That's fine."
"Then, after we've gone through the stockings we can open our presents," Lauren explained with an It’s-a-Wonderful-Life holiday gleam in her eye.
THE GIFT LIST HAD GROWN to spread-sheet proportions for her friends and family. Lauren's impressively creative intellect was displaying its full capabilities as each gift was related to something special about the person it was intended for. And there were multiple gifts for each, all interrelated in some way. She paid attention to the smallest detail. A number of gifts were returned and exchanged because they were not quite just the right size or color.
For me, it was like a game, a trip back in time to the exuberance of unbridled childhood Christmas joy, like the Christmas morning I’d actually got the Santa Fe Lionel train set engine I’d been obsessing over for months.
On the surface, Lauren seemed very happy. Below the surface were lurking the demons that drove Lauren mad during horrific past Christmases. I feared her quest for a perfect holiday was going to be inevitably disappointing, if not a crushing blow to her frail, fractured inner ego.
CHAMBER OF CREMATION
The memory alive -
she crawls within
she closes the door
with devilish grin.
Reversing the nightmare,
she produces the flame;
she recreates the chamber
as she suffers its pain.
The log smolders
as the smoke does rise -
reality chokes her -
she sheds her disguise.
Cross her burrowed brow
the fire's fierce light does flash
startled she screams stomping it to ash.