Book Review by Dr. Tracy King
My Life Naked And Raw by Steve Stachini Prologue by Dr. Tracy King. Independently published (2020) available on Amazon and Stachini.Shop ISBN 979-8636824954
I met Steve Stachini, through a mutual contact, in his role as a carer (a duty learned early on in his life). As I am a clinical psychologist, he asked if I would edit his book and offer a view of the content from a professional perspective. With the turn of each page, I have been struck by the intense resiliency that he has, which has emerged from awareness of his own vulnerability. Naked and Raw does what it says on the tin, it is an exposure of truth and pain. We are permitted to enter the perspective of a child growing up in an emotionally, physically and sexually abusive environment through the eyes of a man, situating himself in the ongoing family dynamics, knowing the secret they all share.
Not just one secret but many incidents at different times, that were to unravel over the years. Now in black words on a white page, we too enter that world and learn how life is never ‘black and white’ or ‘all good and all bad’. Each experience is a building block to who we are and contributes to decision about who we definitely do not want to be – and yet all of this, the accepted and the denied, is the unique beauty of what we bring to the world. For Steve and his siblings, the system and other adults around the family failed the children, people knew, and nothing was done – a familiar narrative for many I work with.
From feeling his emotions, and knowing his vulnerability, Steve was able to connect with compassion – self-compassion and compassion for others. He used detachment sparingly to compartmentalise and adapt to the environment he was having to survive, but he kept a thread back to the underlying feelings, not entering the long-term doom of denial, that prevents processing. The move from vulnerability to compassion is not an easy journey but one he persevered with and culminated in the writing of this book to help others, no doubt with a therapeutic impact upon himself.
This is not only a remarkable story of survival and the strength of the human psyche, but it is also a story of hope and inspiration for others with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The experiences we have in childhood, particularly in the first few years, have a huge impact on how we grow and develop. They impact our physical and mental health and shape our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It is the quality of our key attachment relationships with carers and the potential trauma processing or adjustments needed, for any major life stressors that contribute to who we are.
As therapists we are more aware than most that attachment refers to the pattern of the relationships we have had with our carers early in our lives. They are who we initially look to, in order to survive, as babies are unable to move and fend for themselves. An emotional bond is created so those around us can look after us and feel that pull to assist in our survival. This is evolutionary, so we are fed but also the emotional bond to the carer is key for development. It is why the cry of a baby can feel so aversive, the sound creates a stimulus, to which the adult will respond, all being well.
‘The Wire Mother Experiment’ by Harry Harlow in 1958 showed us how when baby monkeys were removed from their natural mothers and were provided with a surrogate cloth or wire mother, that they would spend significantly more time with the cloth mother, due to the tactile comfort that this provided. He then went on to show that monkeys preferred tactile comfort over food, as the wire mother was the one providing food and yet they would still go to the cloth mother. They would go to the wire mother when extremely hungry and then return immediately to the cloth mother. If a fearful stimulus was placed in the cage, they would instantly return to the cloth mother for comfort. It is the sensitive response and security of a caregiver that is important as opposed to the provision of food. Those kept with surrogate mothers for more than 90 days, became emotionally dysregulated, did not know how to be with each other, were easily bullied, had difficulties with mating and the females were unable to parent adequately. Humans need a close attachment bond and ACEs disrupt this.
‘The move from vulnerability to compassion is not an easy journey but one [Steve] persevered with and culminated in the writing of this book to help others, no doubt with a therapeutic impact upon himself.’
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The way a parent or carer responds to their child will impact on the child’s attachment style, which becomes their template for all other relationships and creates the way we first make sense of ourselves, the world and others. If we have experienced safety and a secure bond (from our needs being met or when they are not, this rupture is repaired imminently and adequately) we will develop a positive template for other relationships as well as positive feelings about ourselves and others.
When our early attachments are negative, we risk going on to have difficulties with relationships and our mental wellbeing. ACEs may be a single incident or prolonged and chronic, but they evoke intense stress. They are times where safety, security, trust and bodily integrity have been broken. As was the case for Steve. Examples of ACEs are:
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Neglect
• Living with someone who abused drugs
• Living with someone who abused alcohol
• Exposure to domestic violence
• Living with someone who has gone to prison
• Living with someone with serious mental illness
• Losing a parent through divorce, death or abandonment.
In 2014, a UK study on ACEs showed that 47% of people experienced at least one ACE with 9% of the population having as many as 4 ACES (Bellis et al, 2014). Steve experienced 7 of the 10 listed during his childhood.
So many people like Steve have had to start life surviving not living. I see this in my own clinical practice. Specialising in complex trauma, over my 23 years of working therapeutically, I have been faced with men and women who have battled demons from the first breath they took. Like attachment, experiencing ACEs can have an impact on our future physical and mental health. The traumas and stressors themselves are barriers to the formation of healthy attachment bonds. The impact of ACEs can be:
• An increase in the risk of health problems, such as cancer and heart disease, as well as increasing the risk of mental health difficulties, violence and becoming a perpetrator and/or victim of violence.
• An increase in the risk of mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress; the majority of people I see presenting with mental health concerns have ACEs in their life story.
• The longer an individual experiences an ACE and the more ACEs someone experiences, the bigger the impact will be on their development and their health.
• Emotional regulation difficulties.
• Capacity to make and keep healthy relationships.
• Ability to manage behaviour – often underlying concerns are communicated through behaviour, as words are not present to offer narrative to the internal pain. There is an inner conflict of keeping secrets yet yearning for love and help.
The healing journey from ACEs is a move from a position of victimisation to a place of ‘I will survive’ with an eventual move to ‘I will thrive’. Victimisation is not something to feel shameful about, it is a natural stage of trauma processing, and it is often the thought pattern that has enabled the person to survive in the environment they were raised in. However, long term, once out of the immediate dangers, it keeps a person reliving their trauma and undermines their sense of self. Aside from reparative relationships in everyday life, therapy is often required to move through the stages of healing. However, the challenge is that one of the side effects of insecure attachment and ACEs is a lack of ability to help-seek effectively. There are many complex thoughts that arise such as: ‘This doesn’t happen to others’, ‘I don’t deserve help’; ‘People will think I am weak’; ‘It was my fault’; ‘I can’t shame my family by telling the truth’; ‘People will hate me’; ‘People will leave me’; ‘People will think I am dirty’. We know from the research in group therapy that sharing stories with others can remove the sense of isolation and start to break through the inflexibility of these thoughts that boomerang us back to the past.
If we keep things to ourselves, we limit the way in which we understand things. Without the expressed narrative, we fail to give experiences a ‘realness’ that they have once they’ve travelled to another person’s reality. The realness itself, can be the obstacle to sharing. We can also seek the help we need, once we realise that others have needed it too. I often use survivor stories with my clients therapeutically, as this mirrors the sense of ‘I’m not alone’ in one-to-one therapy, that groups easily provide. I have seen the benefit first hand in groups that I run, where similar narratives are shared. Prior to sharing and understanding that we are not alone, change can feel impossible. Once the adversity is shared, there is space to consider the strengths that have developed as a consequence of the experiences, and strength can come with a sense of similarity or community that is built from hearing the narratives of others. On the flip side, I also use survivor stories to work with perpetrators of abuse (often victims themselves initially) to build a sense of victim empathy, as a move to manage future risks of offending.
Books such as this, are also essential in parenting training when working with parents who have not had the best models of parenting to learn from and who struggle to understand how their experience has understandably negatively shaped their own interactions with their children. They struggle to see the long-term impact of their behaviours or have empathy for the experience of the child. Often affording them an expectation of emotional awareness and physical abilities beyond their chronological years.
Steve’s story in Naked and Raw is ever more important to the above goals, as research shows us that men are less likely to seek help for psychological issues. Evidence suggests they are on the whole, naturally less emotion focused in their coping strategies. So, Steve’s journey can help other men to come forward, seek help, and know they are not alone.
Many studies show that self-compassion (being kind and understanding to the self instead of criticising and sitting in judgment of perceived shortcomings) is essential for recovery from ACEs. Survivors often show a marked fear of self-kindness and warmth, as this has never been modelled to them. They have to believe they do not deserve such things to make sense of why someone that should love and care for them, would hurt them. We need to find ways to make sense of things as children, in order to stay in a relationship upon which we still depend for survival. Life can then become a series of reactions to triggers that are not always even known but are a direct link back to those original experiences. Shame and guilt play a part in this. For men, given gender expectations in society there can be extra impact from thoughts such as, ‘I should have done something,’ evident in Steve’s story. Self compassion has elements of kindness versus judgment, mindfulness versus over identification with thoughts and a sense of community rather than isolation. Compassion is protective, as it builds resilience.
Even just being aware of how past adversities can impact current functioning, has been enough for healing to fast track in many of my clients. Trauma memories are fragmented flashes in the mind, like a rip tide pulling in many directions. Providing a coherent narrative starts to anchor the self in one place.
A trauma-informed approach to therapy includes making a person aware that ACEs are common, and the impacts are individual and yet universal – offering a sense of normalisation. It’s a move from thinking ‘What is wrong with me’ to ‘What happened to me’ and Steve’s Naked and Raw account of his survival, through compassion is an ideal companion to attach to, for anyone on their own road to recovery. The content at times may be triggering and it is important to keep ourselves safe in the material we expose ourselves to in life. However, our triggers are the threads back to our true selves and tracing those threads back, at a time that is right, in a way that feels safe, is the way that we learn to thrive.
“I have great faith that stories such as Steve’s will help many on their own healing journeys.”
