Falling Forever: How Childhood Trauma Gets Reprocessed Over & Over - Dr. Galit Atlas

Galit Atlas, thank you for being here. What was it like being a kid for you? How did you fit into your family unit and what was your own experience with emotional inheritance? I was a very a lonely kid who lived very much in my own head. Uh I think a lot of the imagination and and and making up things in my head were were ways to to feel [sighs] a connected, to feel hope, to feel that I'm not alone. I I had a lot of imaginary friends. In In Come Closer, my new book, I talk about my diary as being my friend, imagining the diary as a as a person that goes everywhere with me.

So, I I think that being and feeling so a alone really formed who I am. And and carrying my parents' a feelings of shame uh related to their own immigration. My father immigrated from Iran, my mother from Syria. And a feeling that they are not as good or that they don't belong and being very poor as children. So, a lot of it was it was very important for them that we, their children, belong. And somehow, you know, there was something about how I carried I was the oldest. I carried a lot of their shame and a lot of their um fears as as a younger a girl.

>> You open your book Emotional Inheritance with this quote. In those days, people will no longer say, "Those parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' What do those words mean to you, and what should the reader take away from them? It's a very interesting question because that actually not a lot of people ask me that. This is a very meaningful quote for me, even though I am not religious, but I grew up with that idea that my father used to talk about. That everything your grandparents did impact who you are. And he used to say it in a positive way.

He used to say that as a way to comfort, I guess, himself, but us as well, to say that you don't have to be afraid because your grandfather did all of these really, really good things for other people, and he will somehow he everything he did will is carried to the next generation. And so so when I wrote Emotional Inheritance, I remembered that I I kind of grew up with that idea, and I remember that, and I thought that is a really good, you know, reminder that communicate with my own childhood, and again in in some positive way in my history, which is also interesting because a lot of what I'm talking about in Emotional Inheritance is trying to integrate a the the symptoms, the negative things, the anxieties, and everything that one generation inherits, you know, from the other. But also, the resilience, the

strength, uh you know, the hope that that we inherit from pre- from previous generations. When speaking of traumatic experiences, you write in the book, 'In every developmental phase, the child will revisit the abuse from a different angle and with different understanding. Can you speak more to what you mean by that exactly and how can we use that information in the work of self-healing? The idea that Freud talked about what she called afterwardness after cool or natural height originally is the idea that we revisit experiences again and again and again from different angles. And so when Freud wrote about it, he wrote about sexual abuse and in emotional inheritance it is I talk about it in the chapter on sexual abuse the confusion of tongue chapter.

And that idea originally was about the fact that sexual abuse in childhood a does not necessarily register as traumatic. But it the meaning of it is changing and and the traumatic meaning of it is added later on as we grow up. So for example, when a child becomes a teenager and start being sexual it adds a layer. When the child is when the adult is having a sex for the first time or when they have a child and the child is at the age where when they were when they were abused. So every time we they revisit the same event that might not be registered as traumatic initially and reprocess it and it it adds new meaning and it adds new layer of understanding. And so I think that in some ways this is what we do in

analysis. We revisit experiences again and again and again and we think about them from different angles. Which to me is the most creative part of psychoanalysis is is really making connections, making connections between past, present, and future, and making connections uh and looking at things from from different angles. Another passage that really stood out to me was when you wrote, "Speaking of absent or abusive parenting, when emotional holding collapses, the baby usually stops turning to others and instead turns inward. When the baby feels dropped, she might experience what Winnicott called falling forever. It is the feeling of emotional collapse, an endless downfall with no bottom." What does that turning inward actually look like practically speaking? And if I'm someone who resonates with the feeling of falling forever, how do I stop it?

>> In many, many cases, turning in- inward is a way of saying I cannot trust anyone to take care of me. I cannot a- I cannot rely on you, and what I start doing is managing my own needs internally. And and starting uh start withdrawing actually from needing uh another person as a way to adapt. So, that's a real adaptation that what it does, it leaves a deserted dead parts of ourselves that we are not in touch with. You know? So, we are not we manage our own needs and we really leave parts of ourselves, especially our our our neediness, uh isolated in order to survive. So, that adaptation, the price that we pay for it from a Winnicottian perspective, is the price of of having deadness and not feeling fully

alive. And that is a very subtle thing that we see that when people really um abandon a part of themselves and and what I see as a clinician is that sometimes people do that and in the analysis they they start slowly uh recognizing those parts or feeling enliven either through the therapist or or with the therapist or or just like a bringing some some parts of themselves back to life. Uh again, that is done on a spectrum between healthy and less healthy because uh if from a narcissistic point of view a some people who are highly narcissistic will will enliven themselves through the analyst as an object.

So then when they separate from the analyst, they will have a really really difficult time because they need they they they're they become dependent on the analyst in order to survive and in order to feel alive. But the analyst in that in that beginning could could or might be only an object. I think in a more a in in some other situations that looks like a real alive collaboration between analyst and patient where they enliven each other and where we all have some deserted and and and I'll call it dead parts of ourselves. Some some parts of ourselves that we had to adapt and adjust to the reality and therefore we we abandoned them. And and I I feel that one of the most beautiful parts of analysis is that we we bring

those parts of our self uh back to life. And finally, when it comes to your work, what are you most passionate about right now? I I'm about to publish a new book, Come Closer, and it's about the connection, the link between our childhood wounds and our adult love. And it's about intimacy and closeness and sexuality and desire. All of the yummy things that I always like teaching and and working on. And I am I'm excited and nervous and and you know, overwhelmed at times because I bring that writing that I worked on for uh more than 4 years and where I really dared to do something that feels very vulnerable and and very uh exposed and really bring the reader in into my mind as an analyst, as an and as a person. And my

hope really was to allow people to see how how [clears throat] we all uh think, right? Analytically. What do we do when we sit with a patient? What scares us? What enlivens us? What uh what what you know, what inhibitions come to play? What makes us feel bad about ourselves? And all of these parts that both from from a more contemporary relational perspective is like there there are two psychologies in the room. So, I think about the patient's mind and I invite you into my own mind. And I am I'm both uh uh excited and anxious about uh bringing Come Closer into the world.