trauma

Split

Posted on by SomatiCat

I watched Split and Glass on Netflix, where a fictional character with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) develops a personality with superhuman strength. James McAvoy was phenomenal, shifting seamlessly from one persona to another on screen. The story is a textbook case of severe childhood trauma: the psyche fractures to protect the vulnerable self. One of his identities, “The Beast,” punishes the undamaged—those who haven’t suffered.
[Spoiler Alert] The Beast sees the damaged as pure.

That’s what drew me in.

I have a friend with DID. Sarah is brilliant, cultured, well-read, and funny. She took many younger, “damaged” women under her wing. She was the one who introduced me to Broadway, gifting me tickets to Sondheim. We’d sit in cafes, visit restaurants, and talk about arthouse films and everything else. Her life sounded like a novel. She told me she was one of the first female TV producers—or something close. I’m not sure if Sarah is the original. I met two of her other selves: Tommy, a boy who constantly said, “Sorry,” and another, terrifying one—probably her internalized mother.

The switches weren’t as clean as in the movies. She once said she had a “Flat Earth Committee” in her head, which decided what she could or couldn’t do. That committee often said she wasn’t allowed to leave her apartment.

Before her DID diagnosis, she’d been given a charcuterie board of mental health labels: agoraphobia, depression, anxiety disorder. She’d been prescribed all kinds of medications. None of them helped.

Many friends tried to help her. After all, when she showed up as “Sarah,” she was wonderful. But over time, that became rarer.

I was the last one who tried hard. I had this urge to rescue someone else—maybe instead of rescuing myself. Her disorders were inflated versions of mine, so I could speak her language to a certain extent.

I don’t have DID. I’ve been dissociated, but not to that degree. I had dysthymia and episodes of major depression. Sometimes I wasn’t “allowed” to get out of bed. I had extremely low self-esteem and poor communication skills—unless I was in a professional setting. Then I became articulate, competent, impressive. I still have a voice inside that occasionally whispers, “Jump” or “Kill yourself.”

Over time, I realized that some of Sarah’s other personalities were sabotaging anything that might make her better. Whenever she admitted to feeling improvement, they lashed back—as if healing would erase them. As if their survival depended on her staying damaged. Ironically, their original role had been to protect her.

They exhausted me, as they had exhausted many before me.

I haven’t seen Sarah in years. She reaches out once in a blue moon—only in moments of desperation. The last time, it wasn’t even her. A mutual friend contacted me because no one had heard from her. Turned out she’d fallen and been hospitalized. She didn’t have her phone in the hospital room, so she couldn’t reach anyone. But she came up with an ingenious solution: she befriended the woman in the next bed and asked her husband to deliver a handwritten note to my building.

That’s Sarah—resourceful and fiercely capable when it matters. She once told me she’d made a deal with the “committee” to keep her alive. One of her friends with DID had died by suicide. Sarah wasn’t going to be one of them.

Eventually, I accepted Sarah as she is. There’s no “original” Sarah waiting to be recovered. She was already many when I met her. I just didn’t know it. She contains multitudes. Every piece of her is my friend. And I’ve let go of the childish fantasy that I could save her—or anyone else.

Everyone splits, to some degree.

There are incidents I don’t remember, but my body seems to. I don’t have a single, monstrous trauma, just layers: a verbally and emotionally—possibly sexually—abusive father; a manipulative, passive-aggressive mother; a narcissistic aunt; a silent, possibly borderline grandmother. Add to that a culture soaked in misogyny, inappropriate touches, and the absence of loving contact—and I was left scarred.

I didn’t split, but I did build personas: a tough bitch and an abrasive man—my internalized father—to protect the vulnerable child inside me.

I’ve spent decades re-parenting that little girl. I wanted her to grow up into who she could have been if she had been loved and left alone: a happy, loving, beautiful girl. A confident, capable woman who could love and be loved.

I didn’t become exactly what I hoped—but I like who I’ve become. I’m happy with this version of myself.

You can’t restore the original child. But you can hold your scars with tenderness. You can carry your pain gently, like something sacred. And in doing so, you become who you were always meant to be:

Clean and pure, with old scars.
Survive. Then thrive.

Giant Anteater

Posted on by SomatiCat

My high school best friend recommended me to watch a Japanese drama series, titled Brush Up Life. It is a story of a young woman, who suddenly died in a freak accident. She arrived at the reception desk of the “upstairs” office. A clerk at the desk told her she was assigned to re-incarnate as a giant anteater. She refused to be reborn as a giant anteater and asked the alternative option. The clerk told her that she could redo her life from the birth with her current knowledge and consciousness. The woman chose to start over and changed her life as she went. To make a long story short, every time she started over, something didn’t work and she died. So she kept going back to the start. Eventually she got the result she wanted (she saved her friends’ life).

My friend asked me if I could start over with current consciousness intact, what would I do. I thought about changing this and that. I would be on SSRI as soon as it’s available–I wasn’t diagnosed until in late 30s and I had developed a basketful of disorders. I would focus on physical fitness –I had eating disorder and was out of shape, a heavy smoker with alcohol dependency. I would move to the U.S. as soon as possible–I moved here in my late 20s and didn’t know my old country’s restrictive culture had traumatized me. I would study harder to get in a medical school –I applied for but wasn’t accepted and instead went to study liberal arts.

Then I realized I would be born into the same family and would have to do it all over again. The heroine of the drama has a “normal enough” and functional enough family. She tries to change things to save others. I can’t change my dysfunctional family. I can’t change how my parents deal with me. I would be born into the same family with all the pain, fear, shame, and anger. No. I would rather be a Giant Anteater. It would be much better.

My friend said she wanted to change one event, which traumatized and defined her life. Her parents moved from a metropolitan area to a rural city due to her father’s job and she was transferred from a private school in a large city to a local public middle school in a pretty tough district, where she was bullied as an outsider. She still can’t get over the trauma. She is now a professor of psychiatry at a local medical school, established and lives in a large house. She is married, has two sons, and they both are well-respected medical doctors. She has grandchildren, who live in the same city. I am freelancing, living in a small apartment with an old dog. I’m divorced with no children. From outside, she seems to have a good enough life. Still, she wanted to change.

I’ve been thinking about starting over, but every time I think of it, I end up choosing a giant anteater. I had a volatile life and I wish I could choose differently here and there, but if I changed any event I wouldn’t be able to be here. Every mistake I made, every bad choice I made, it was a ferry to carry me here and now. I have realized I am very content and happy with who I am now.

I just spend much of my life in constant stormy weather, hanging onto whatever I could to survive. And the deadly wind and current pushed the boats, ferry, or sometimes just a wooden lifesaver to where I am now.

So it’s possible to make peace with your life. I never expected to have this calm ordinary days at the end. (Of course, I spent large sum of money and time on this and that therapy.)

Father’s Daughter

Posted on by SomatiCat

If by chance I talk a little wild, forgive me; I had it from my father.

— HENRY VIII, ACT 1 SCENE 4

My childhood home was not a happy place. I didn’t know how being loved felt like. My younger brother told me once he made his presence as sparse as possible to avoid unpleasant encounters, well, mostly with our father. He also told me he had never felt loved by our father. When he was a pre-teen boy, he was always attached to our mother, like a baby monkey, while I don’t remember my mother’s touch. I had never felt loved by her, either.

My parents fed, clothed, and provided a bed and more than enough schooling. So I wasn’t neglected and was physically well cared for.

After multiple of failed relationships, I realized I didn’t know how love feels like. I didn’t have felt sense or reference point of being loved. I still don’t grasp the idea of being loved for just being me. I have to be needed and useful for the other person to be loved. That’s my false belief. Becoming aware of it was a great step.

My father passed away about 10 years ago after suffering Alzheimer’s disease. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in early 30s and he was insulin dependent for most of my life. His father and his older sister died young from complication of diabetes. There are many diabetics in his family.

After more than half a century of dodging genetic bullets, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and since I can’t take medications due to a severe and weird side effect from raised insulin level, I have been controlling it by diet and exercise only. Currently I wear CGM (continuous glucose monitor) and I finally understand what my father was going through.

I remember he said that he never enjoyed eating. He considered it as a bitter medicine. Even though he was on insulin, he was on tight calorie deficient diet. Our family never enjoyed dining out because of his diet restrictions. I always thought I didn’t want to be like him. So I enjoyed eating a lot. Now I am on a very strict diet. I can’t eat anything which I used to love–ice cream, cheesecakes, chocolates, sweet fruits, pasta, rice, pancakes… I don’t enjoy eating out with friends, because I can’t eat most of what they eat. I’ve learned that my blood glucose level dictates my moods. My father’s diet was not as scientific as mine. It was just a guess work and he was so disciplined. He needed to if he wanted to live. Now I am also disciplined regarding what I eat because I want to function.

It also dawned on me that my father must have experienced no felt sense of love. He used to say his mother, my grandmother, had loved his older brother, but never loved him. He didn’t know how love feels like. I had never felt sense of love from my grandmother, either. She cared for me when I was a little girl, but I didn’t get the sense of love. It didn’t start with me. And if you have not felt loved by your parents, it’s almost impossible to love yourself. I used to hate myself.

Fortunately my dogs taught me how loving and being loved feels like in my body. I remember my father used to take home a puppy and took care of it. The dog might have been the only thing he could feel love.

I don’t have children and it’s a good thing. Neither my brother. At least it stops with us.

If your family is loving, make sure to teach your daughters and sons to stay away from those who don’t know love. They could often be very attractive in a way only damaged people could be.

Savasana

Posted on by SomatiCat

I am not writing an anatomy book, nor a dissection manual, though I do use anatomical terms when they’re clearer than everyday language. This isn’t a book about scientific knowledge. If you’re looking for detailed anatomical information, there are plenty of great books to choose from. This is simply the story of my personal experience in dissection lab, facing cadaver, and how that experience has shaped my perception of who I am and how I relate to everything—especially my body, in this lifetime.

I once read about a meditation technique where you lie on your back and imagine your body gradually decomposing until it becomes a skeleton. I also learned that in Buddhism there is a practice called  Charnel Ground meditation, where you observes your body from the inside and outside while watching a real corpse decay. I found it intriguing, interpreting it as training to recognize that all material existence—including our own bodies—is just a mere fleeting phenomenon—no different from a decaying corpse. 

In Japan, we have kusozu, a traditional set of painting depicting nine stages of a body’s decomposition. It’s our version of memento mori. The paintings show the slow decay of a beautiful woman’s body, eaten by animals, reclaimed by nature, until it’s reduced to dry, white bones scattered on the ground. It’s a reminder that my body, too, is impermanent and transient.

When we experience unbearable trauma, our consciousness may dissociate from our body to protect us. The body becomes an object that performs a specific function, separated from the ”I” consciousness.  When I had sessions with a Zen psychology therapist, he often asked, “What do you feel in your body?”  Each time, I would look up at the ceiling, glance around the room, and search for the answer outside of myself. “Can you feel your feet on the floor?” he asked. While I could physically sense my feet touching the ground, that sensation felt completely disconnected from what I was feeling mentally.

I had little understanding of my own body. Even when I meditated on a corpse, I struggled to visualize it clearly.  With no conscious connection to my body, the corpse quickly became a mere abstraction of bones. I couldn’t grasp how complex and delicate the human body was, nor how it was related to my very existence.

Through gross anatomy training, I gradually restored the connection between myself and my body. Each time I stood at the dissection table, it felt as though I was slowly reclaiming my humanity. It has been more than ten years since I was initiated into human dissection, and I’ve spent over 1,500 hours in dissection labs. Now attending an annual dissection workshop feels like a Zen practitioner returning to the temple—a form of spiritual practice. It prepares me for the reality of death and dying, and reminds me of the importance of living fully in the present moment. 

In yoga, Savasana is the pose where you lie on your back, imitating a corpse. When we approach a dissection table in the lab, we face a donated body quietly resting in Savasana pose—the final posture we will all eventually take. 

Trauma Walking

Posted on by SomatiCat

The young woman walked straight to me and introduced herself. “Hi. I’m a survivor,” she said. “Hi,” I said.

It wasn’t a meeting for survivors of any kind. It was just a shamanistic drumming circle gathering. I was in a process of healing journey and was trying out many modalities. At that time, I was highly sensitive to other people’s emotional state and somehow my attention was habitually drawn to traumatized people’s energy. Even before she talked to me, I sensed a tightly wound vortex with thousands of black birds swarming against the dark sky and the vortex was walking toward me.

No, I don’t want to be sucked in that, I thought.

I was taken aback that the woman introduced herself to a total stranger as a survivor. I don’t remember if she said what kind of survivor she was. However, my mind interpreted as a child sexual abuse survivor. The fact she identified herself as a survivor made me think hard. She had chosen that word to define her state of being.

During the drumming, my attention was relentlessly drawn to the woman. No, I don’t want to be sucked in that, I thought again. I could sense that she was looking for a “hook” in people around her. She was looking for a survivor to share the vortex with.

After the gathering, I told my friend about the woman and asked, “Did I look like that?”

Do I look like that? Is a survivor my identity? Does that word represents my entire state of being? I had to think hard because I saw myself in her. Trauma walking, vulnerable and dangerous at the same time.

When there are predators outside of the room, we need to survive. Our sympathetic nervous system needs to be on high alert, like a tightly wound vortex. Once the predators outside of the room leave, we can unwind (deactivate) the sympathetic nervous system. For some of us, the predator is inside the room. We carry the predator with us.

After decades of therapy and numerous healing works, I don’t carry the predator with me anymore. I survived but I don’t define myself as a survivor. The trauma doesn’t define me.

Please do not judge

Posted on by SomatiCat

Don’t be too quick to judge those who suffer physically or psychologically.

I have never had migraine.  I know it is idiopathic and it is terrible.  But I don’t know how debilitating it could be.  Idiopathic means you don’t have control over what is happening to our body.  You can’t tell when it will happen.  You can’t do anything to prevent it.  You may avoid certain situations to minimize the chance to trigger attacks, but who knows?  It might be just waiting for us around the corner.  Once it happens, you just remain still waiting it to pass, hoping to survive.  After the first attack, you have to be constantly on guard.  There could be next attack at any moment.

Sounds familiar?

I have just been diagnosed with Meniere’s disease.  It’s idiopathic and I have no idea what triggered it.  In the last 6 weeks, I had 4 attacks.  Once it hits, I immediately have to lie down and wait it to pass.   Just raising head makes me terribly sick.  It won’t kill me but it is dangerous to stay upright because I lose balance.  Fortunately so far I was home when they happened. Now I am anxious.  What if it happens when I am riding subway?  What if it happens when I am walking alone at night?  What if it happens when I am walking down a stair alone at night?

I was suddenly thrown into a world full of danger.

Now I understand migraine is not just a headache.

You will never understand how debilitating it is to be a survivor of sexual assault unless you were sexually assaulted.  Yes, you can be compassionate and supportive, but you never understand how it feels.

So please don’t even think of judging those who are surviving.

 

Death Becomes Us

Posted on by SomatiCat

For a couple of hours, I didn’t exist. I was under anesthesia during breast biopsy surgery.  I was wheeled into an operating room and started counting.  Then I was no more.  No dream, no memory, no me.  Slowly I came back into being.   It was the most peaceful waking up I ever had.  I smiled.  If death is like this, it’s a blessing.  No dream, no memory, no me, total oblivion, that’s what I yearned for.  I looked for the peacefulness I experienced during the surgery.  I found Ambien provided the similar effect.  When I didn’t take the pill my nightmarish dreamscape came back with vengeance.  Eventually the nightmare started to seep in to my peaceful Ambien coma.  I stopped taking it.

Death was my parasite twin.  He was always with me so long as I remember.   I don’t know if a 5-year-old can have a concept of death. Nevertheless I remember myself telling my aunt that I was considering to “leave” but decided not to because if I left I wouldn’t be able to have my favorite cake anymore.

I’ve never been suicidal.  I was pretty careful about self-preservation.  Still there never was a day I didn’t think of death.  Suicide ideation, DSM V would say.  There is a code for that.  But where did it come from?  I wasn’t depressed when I was 5.

When my father was about my age now, he started have a cough.  His X-ray image showed a legion in the lung and he had a surgery.  Everybody including the doctors were sure that it was lung cancer.  My mom called me to come home to see him.  Everybody thought he was going to die soon.  After surgery, they found it was benign.  Still he had a lobe of left lung removed.   After he recovered, he showed me the long scar proudly multiple times.  We were not close but I visited him at the hospital.  My mother left for some errand and I was alone with him.  He suddenly said, “I thought I was a goner this time,” and he cried.  I didn’t say anything.   Neither of us were used to show vulnerability and neither of us knew how to deal with it.  That day I realized my father was afraid of death.  “So you are afraid of death and your daughter wants to die, Ha,” I thought.  It’s a joke, isn’t it?

He passed away at the ripe age of 86.  I started to understand where his fear came from.  My father was diagnosed to be diabetic when I was about 4 and my mother was pregnant with my brother.  It was early 1960s and a diabetic was not expected to live a long life.  After my father passed, I heard the family history from my aunt.  He lost his father, my grandfather, when he was very young.  My grandfather was diagnosed with diabetic when it was a death sentence.  He quitted his job as a police officer and stayed home doing nothing and lived another 7 years.  My father only knew his father as a sick man waiting to die.  Soon after, his older sister was diagnosed as diabetic.  She was married and had a kid.  When she became ill she came back to stay with her mother, my grandmother.  She soon died from complication when the kid was still young.   My father took care of his young nephew for a while as his little brother.

Now my father found himself diabetic.  He had a 4-year-old daughter and his wife was pregnant.  No wonder he was afraid of dying.  For the first time, I felt sorry for him.  I grew up watching him have an insulin injection every morning.  With every syringe he must have been fending off death.

My younger brother was diagnosed with diabetic when he was in 30s.  Last year I was diagnosed with diabetic.  We are both physically active and not obese.  I’m sure we inherited it from my father, and my father’s father.  Neither of us has kids to bequest the gene or fear of death.

I still occasionally have suicide ideation when I’m depressed.  But most of time I just enjoy my life.  Every day is a beautiful day to live.

Recommended Reading if you are interested in this kind of stuff.
It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
by Mark Wolynn
Link: http://a.co/1lVnzy4

 

Restricted Access Area

Posted on by SomatiCat

I am an adorable three year old.  A perfectly happy little girl with natural exuberance radiating from her smile.   Whenever I post my baby photo on facebook, many of my Facebook “friends” say, “You haven’t changed at all.”

And I’m like, “Yes!!!!” crying out my victory.  By age four, she was locked up behind a heavy door.  I dedicated the last 30 years of my life to find and raise her to be a woman she was meant to grow up into.

“You are too skinny,” Dad said. “You are ugly.  No man will marry you,” Dad said.   “Having girls is a waste.   I shouldn’t have had a girl child,” Dad said.  “Why aren’t you a boy.  I wish you were a boy,” Mum said.  “Your skin is too dark for a girl,” Auntie said, “but strangely red becomes you.”   “You were a tiny thing.  A tiny wrinkled faced monkey baby.  I was sure this baby wouldn’t survive,” Grandma said.  “Look at this girl’s eyes.  Too small,” Dad said…

I was too short, too dark, too skinny, too fat.

I was ugly and nobody would ever love me.  (Then why did you touch me?)

Everything about me was wrong.

Don’t believe what they say, Girl.  They are defective mirrors.  They reflect distorted, biased images of you, or maybe perceived images of themselves.  It’s not you.  You are a perfectly happy little girl with natural exuberance radiating from your smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nightmare that didn’t happen

Posted on by SomatiCat

This is a nightmare that didn’t happen.  I was about 11, sleeping in my room.  The door suddenly opened and my father came in.  He was yelling something and he threw things, talking to himself.  I hid under the comforter.  I heard him walk around in my room, talking to himself, throwing stuff.  Then he left.

I waited.  I waited for my mother.  I waited for my mother to come to check on me, comfort me.   Minutes passed.  Nobody came.  I fell asleep crying.

I woke up in the morning.  I found my stuffed animals were on the floor.  One of them, a stuffed kitty my friend gave me, was almost decapitated.  I didn’t understand.

I quietly went down the stairs, expecting my mom at least to explain what happened.

Nothing happened.

Nobody mentioned anything.  Mom was cooking breakfast.  My father was reading the newspaper or whatever.  Nothing happened.  I ate my breakfast and went back to my room.

That was the nightmare that didn’t happen.

But I remember that I sewed my stuffed kitty’s head back by myself, crying, saying to myself again and again, “My friend gave it to me.”

Decades and years of therapy later I confronted my father and asked what it was about.

He didn’t remember.

My mom came to me to tell that she had no idea and asked, “Your father didn’t hit you, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” I said.

It doesn’t matter.  It was not my father’s unpredictable rage that marked me.  It was the absence of my mother.  I learned that nobody would come for me.   I didn’t want to be the scared little girl, so I became my father.  “You have a temper just like your father,” my mother used to say.

Now I have many friends who are fathers.  When I saw their daughter perfectly safe with their father, not hiding from them, not tensing up at the sight of them, remaining soft and smiling, I wonder how they do.  It is a dream that didn’t happen to me.

Heartburn

Posted on by SomatiCat

Through sheer chance my G.I. doctor found I had Barrett’s esophagus during a routine physical.  The lining of my esophagus was turning into that of small intestine.  That sounds scary.  The doctor asked me if I had an acid reflux.  I didn’t.  Part of  the lining of my stomach was also turning into that of small intestine.  That spelled the possible C word.  I was told I must have a silent (symptomless) acid reflux and I’ve been on medication since.  Eventually my stomach lining turned back to normal, but I still have Barrett’s esophagus.

I haven’t had stomach issues for a long time.  Definitely I didn’t have heartburn.  Then I remembered I often had stomach ache when I lived with my mom. I remembered my mom used to tell me that my younger brother had a delicate digestive system.  When he got nervous or stressed, he threw up. I didn’t thow up but I remembered that after I left home for college, I sometime induced vomiting, probably more often than average young women.

Something clicked.

My original home had been making me sick.

I ran away as far as possible.  There are a continent and Pacific ocean between my parents and me now.  I visit them once a year and that is our compromise.  I used to stay with them for more than a week.  I got depressed.  So my stay got shorter every year.  One year, after spending 4 days or so, I had a severe stomach pain.  Another year, after spending several days with my Mom, I suffered IBS like symptom for two weeks.

My mom has spent her entire married life feeding somebody.  It was her role in the family.  She has taken care of my father, who has type 1 diabetes, for half a century.  It requires a lot of work to feed a diabetic.   Both my brother and I was a light eater when we were little kids, so it has become her mission to feed us as much as we would ingest.  Through therapy, I realized that my mom force-fed me and I was exercising to set a boundary by saying,”No, thank you.”

I told her I usually didn’t eat breakfast.  I woke up to find a breakfast ready on the table.  What can I do?  I ate breakfast: ham and eggs, toasted bread, and yogurt, milk and coffee.  Mom brought a jar of homemade jam to the table and told me to add it to yogurt.  I only ate plain yogurt, so I said, “No, thank you.”  “It’s too sour without jam.  You should add it,” mom insisted.  “No, thank you,” I said.   I told her I didn’t usually have a breakfast, that she didn’t have to prepare mine.  The next morning I woke up to find the same breakfast ready on the table.  “Do you like to add the jam to your yogurt?”  My mom asked.  “No, I told you I didn’t eat sweetened yogurt,” I said.  “It doesn’t taste good without jam,” she insisted.  “No, thank you,” I said.  I set a boundary firm, don’t I?  The next morning I woke up to find the same breakfast ready on the table.  I found she had added her homemade jam in my yogurt bowl.  I didn’t say anything.  I stopped feeling.  When it doesn’t matter what I want or what I don’t want, why should I feel anything.  I swallowed the sweet yogurt in silence.  “It is good, isn’t it?” she said.  That night I had an acute stomach pain.

It isn’t about a spoonful of jam in my yogurt bowl.  The same pattern repeated again and again for lunch, dinner, snacks and everything else.   Eventually I became a foie gras geese.  No wonder I had issues around eating.   I still can’t tell if I’m really hungry or not.

I told my friend the story and she said, “You have a nice mom.  She likes to take care of you.”  She made me feel that I was a thankless brat.  I felt like throwing up.  If you force a piece of chocolate into a child’s mouth, it still tastes sweet. But it doesn’t mean the child wants it.  “I told you it was delicious, didn’t I?   You like it, don’t you?  I was right.  You were wrong..  You don’t know how you feel so I’ll tell you how you feel.  I am right and you are wong.  How you feel doesn’t matter.”   This is how we lose the ability to be ourselves…

If you still think forcing a piece of chocolate in a kid’s mouth against his/her will doesn’t matter, just substitute it with a more sinister word.