Guest: Valerie Sinason

We talk with ISSTD clinician Valerie Sinason (UK) about "infantacidal attachment".

The "still face experiment" video on YouTube is HERE.

The poem we referenced, which we wrote in 2020:

In the last week,
I watched my 5 year-old daughter's butterflies be born.
They came home with us
for quarantine,
a gift of hope and peace
while she herself is dying,
while my children miss their friends
and watch their sister fade away.

The caterpillars crawled
in the grime
as they learned to spin,
then hung themselves
from the top of the cup.

I know the feeling.

The metaphor did not escape me,
this therapeutic process
of freeze
where transformation is required -
quarantined
in a glass house
hanging by a thread
nothing the same as it was.

Before the chrysalis
there was a shedding of skin
I recognized as a shedding of me.

For all I have learned the last four years
about integration,
I thought the debate was between
brownies
and fruit salad,
as if I would get to choose my last meal.

But all of it was grime.

So I pretended to grow wings
while you locked me away.
I wrapped myself in dissociation
like a cocoon of worlds inside.

I never invited you in here.

No one warned me how sticky it was.

I watched their backbone start to form
like scales
that fell away
like therapy
talking away.

Therapy was taking away my dissociation
while I fought to lock myself in it.

If you have any heart at all,
you want to reach out
to reach in
to touch
to help them free the hardened shell.

But you cannot.

Because that wriggling work
is what makes them strong
is what sets them free
is what makes me
Me.

And I know
how cold and lonely it is in there,
in here,
where I am,
where no one goes
no one sees
no one knows.

You promise wings.
You promise freedom.
You promise flying free.

But all I remember
is the grime.
And all I know
is the crawling through filth.
And all I see
is that I have hung myself here
vulnerably
to be stared at
and gawked at
and not touched
while I am frozen
and cold
and hanging here
not who I was
and not yet free.

You say no parts left behind
or lost
or abandoned.

But I see my shell laying there
where I once crawled.

And these wings
still sticky
don't feel like mine.

And I can't yet fly.

You flick at my net
to show me that I can
like a bird pushing its baby out of the nest
and it hurts me
betrays me
stings me
scares me.

Except you don't push too hard
and I feel you wait
while I don't want to leave.

I would rather hang myself
there
where being frozen
has always kept me safe.

I am uncomfortable
with so many changes
and didn't know
I would come out
looking so different
than how I crawled in.

I cling to the net
because you taught me how to be grounded.

And I have always known
how to shelter-in-place.

I can see the outside world
where everyone else lives,
but I don't at all like
you sending me away
to go live there.

Because I do not know how to live.
I know how to crawl.
I know how to hang.

It makes me angry at you
(even though I am not)
when you try to send me away
from the place where I hung
away from where my shadow still stays
away from where my shell lies.

I don't know if you understand
that still feels like me
and the cocoon still feels safer
and the sun is still too bright for my eyes.

I am drying out my wings
and saying goodbye
while you unzip my world
to shoo me out
so I can fly
because you say
I was meant for the sky.

But all I remember
is the grime
and how to crawl.

And I don't understand
why you don't understand
that I don't actually know how to fly.

But what I do know
more than you know I know
is that there is no going back
and that I am relieved
to have the sticky washed off of me.

(I know, I know.
You never said I had to leave.
But I can't stay here
looking at the shell of me.)

Emma Sunshaw, May 2020

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