Editor’s note: The following article was submitted by the Lovefraud reader who comments as “Pearl.”
By Pearl
Someone on this blog once mentioned a book by Alice Miller and Andrew Jenkins, and it caught my attention. So now I’m reading The Truth Will Set You Free—Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self.
Even though I’m only about halfway through the book, I wanted to share parts of it because it is so important to what a lot of us are working on—forgiving ourselves and trying to understand why this (fraud) happened to us. I know this won’t apply or appeal to everyone, but it might help some of you as it has me. Miller’s ideas help me understand why I was susceptible and forgive myself for my blindness—my inability to spot a “bad guy.”
Miller focuses on childhood—on how corporal punishment (spanking/whipping) and humiliation—cause a type of blindness in adulthood that can lead to being manipulated and UNABLE TO SEE THROUGH LIES. She emphasizes that the kind of parenting and education aimed at breaking a child’s will and making that child into an obedient subject by means of overt or covert coercion, manipulation and emotional blackmail leaves long-lasting imprints on the way we think and relate to one another as adults.
Here is the cycle as she sees it:
- Traditional methods of upbringing, which have included corporal punishment, lead a child to DENY suffering and humiliation. (Can anyone related to having a high pain threshold? Where did I get that bruise or cut—I don’t remember getting it? Ever feel humiliated at being spanked, paddled or whipped as a child? Ever experience a parent being insensitive to suffering?)
- This denial, although essential if the child is to SURVIVE, will later cause emotional blindness.
- Emotional blindness produces “barriers in the mind” erected to guard against dangers. This means that early denied traumas become encoded in the brain, and even though they no longer pose a threat, they continue to have a subtle, destructive impact. (The memory of how to respond to such crappy behavior from our parents and authority figures is still there.)
- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.
- Our bodies retain a complete memory of the humiliations we suffered, driving us to inflict unconsciously on the next generation what we endured in childhood, unless we become aware of the cause of our behavior, which is embedded in the history of our own childhoods.
As children, some of us learned to suppress and deny natural feelings. Some of us lived in a world where our feelings were ignored and denied.
All the beaten child remembers is FEAR and the face of the ANGRY parent, not why the beating was taking place. The child may even assume he had been naughty and deserved the punishment. Miller writes that in the absence of a witness who can empathize with us in childhood and genuinely listen to us, we have no other way of protecting ourselves from the pain but to close our minds to it.
In a bid to blot the fear and pain of our abused younger self, we erase what we know can help us, we can fall prey to the seductiveness of sects and cults, and FAIL TO SEE THROUGH ALL KINDS OF LIES.
Having this information helps me understand why I was “ripe for the picking.” It also goes a long way toward helping me forgive myself and move on in the healing process.
This entire post soooo hits home. I can relate how an abusive upbringing sets up the potential for not setting boundaries and being blind to future wrongdoings to us.
My ex-S took his new wife (he got married less than two months after our divorce was final and had begun seeing her while pretending to reconcile with me during our separation) to the same place we had vacationed at two years in a row. I thought, wow, real original! He also took her to NY to see Phantom, which he had all done before also. So I see that this is the norm for these sick S’s. Sorry I am not the only one, but I know I am in good company here.
This was such an insightful post; thank you! It really made my day to read everyone’s comments. I know I may be a bit damaged, but my feelings are not off! I know I will be alright.
egirl: Welcome home … we are all here for you.
Peace.
Pearl,
Thanks for bringing that to us, and going to the work of writing it all out.
I see myself in so many of those “adaptations” that warp our emotional systems and survival skills.
Kids are so resilient. They just continue to grow up, if a trauma and a coping decision blocks some part of their development. They grow up around the wound.
I was incested, but that’s not the most important thing in my family background. The important thing was that the incest was just an extension of the physical and emotional abuse that had gone before. It was that kind of environment.
When I was in therapy a few years ago, digging down into those memories to try to sort myself out well and finally, I was surprised to discover that the incest wasn’t the bottom of it. This scene, when I was about three, came up:
Me (in tears): Mommy, Daddy just yelled at me for no reason. I was being good!
Mom (irritable): Well, you’re just going to have to be more careful not to make him mad.
And when I remembered it, I remembered the whole thought process of that smart little kid. First, I was astounded that she wasn’t going to stick up for me in the face of this unfairness. Second, I was hurt that she wasn’t comforting me, and was acting like it was my fault. Third, I had a bad sinking feeling that there was no fairness here and therefore no safety.
And then, I figured out that my father was a scary person. I had nowhere else to go. I’d have to do whatever I had to do to stay on his good side. And that my mother wasn’t going to be any help at all, and in fact seemed to be on his side.
Kids don’t process with all those words, but they go through all those emotions in a heartbeat. And they learn that fast.
I don’t know if that was the first time that situation came up. It was just a scene I remember in the kitchen of a house we left when I was three and a half. The dynamic of that scene was played out over and over, with my father becoming increasingly violent and unreasonable through the years. I think I decided that he was crazy and my mother was a pitiful beaten-down person when I was six or seven. But deciding that didn’t change the threat we lived with. The incest, which went on for four years with no one, and certainly not my mother, to rescue me, was just an extension of the bullying. We were terrorized.
The idea I had, that I could leave that family and conduct a normal life if I was good enough at acting like a person with a normal childhood, was the hope that kept me sane. And then, I guess, it made me insane. Controlled, perfectionist, terrified of failing and living on the street, willing to accommodate the most extreme and ridiculous demands, attracted to and trying to please dominant partners, because it was what kept me safe.
Was I just made to be a sociopath’s prey or what? I told my ex when I threw him out that he should send my father a thank-you note for everything he got from me.
I could say that, but at that point I really didn’t understand what was going on with me that made this relationship possible. Why I hadn’t recognized him as a predator. Why I hadn’t thrown him out of my life sooner. Why I was so obsessively attached to him.
When I read the list Pearl wrote, the first thing I thought was, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could link these syndromes with our involvements?”
I mean really link them. So that when we looked at our involvement with the sociopath in our lives, we would see it as a manifestation of this kink in our emotional and survival systems.
These syndromes, as described in the Betrayal Bond, are so perfectly described. When I read them, I thought, “That’s what I was doing.”
I could see the equation that ran from my history to my chronic behavior to my attraction to my collaboration to my difficulty in breaking free. It’s not that my ex wasn’t a disgusting, heartless leach, and the worst possible partner for someone with my issues. But I acted like that anyway with everyone I got involved with.
The problem with him is that I didn’t get what I usually got back for it. Which was the undying love and gratitude of someone just as dysfunctional as me. I would happily have supported this guy and sorted our his problems and given him anything he wanted, if he’d been smart enough to provide me with the illusion of emotional safety.
Did I mention that before the sociopath, I was an overcommitted workaholic whose dreams were always deferred because I was just too busy taking care of everyone else? And too exhausted by my anxiety about whether I was doing a good job to think about much more than what was immediately in front of me?
I was so screwed up. My life was so screwed up. Before I met this guy. I just couldn’t figure how what I was doing wrong. Not just that. I just could let go of the strategies that I thought were keeping me alive. The strategies that little girl adopted so long ago.
By the way, if you’re wondering what I did with that memory in therapy (after the sociopath), I got right behind that little girl’s shoulder and said, “You’re right. It wasn’t fair. He made you scared and now you can’t trust him, and that’s a terrible thing. I’m so sorry you feel bad. You’re smart, strong, beautiful little girl and you deserve better.”
Or something like that. It must have been the right thing, because I felt that little girl in me take a deep breath and change her mind about what she was going to think about what happened. That didn’t change my behavior immediately, but it set in motion a restructuring that I’m still living through.
You can’t change history, but you can change what you think about it.
I can’t wait to see tomorrow’s post from Pearl.
unfortunately too, regardless of what an individual’s past history entails (abuse or not), when subjected to certain conditions, almost anyone of us can end up responding in the same way(dissociating/regressing) to overwhelming psychological force…
in the stanford prison experiment, all of the young men who took part in the study were first psych evaluated to rule out any predisposing factors (mental illness or disorder in subject or family, prior abuse). within less than 3 days, the men designated to be prisoners were living the role as though it were real (they had become dehumanized and regressed), several had emotional breakdowns. the men designated to act as guards were living as though they were really guards, some becoming increasingly sadistic. the research psychologist, phil zimbardo, had begun to ‘view’ himself as a prison superintendent as opposed to a researcher. the study had to be terminated early-by the 6th day. it took a an outside witness (a psychologist) walking in and seeing what was happening to call for a halt to the whole thing, as even zimbardo had lost touch with frame of reference/reality checking.
Molly:
When I read your post I felt like you were watching what went on in the macadamia ranch (nut house) I grew up in.
The beatings, the public humiliations.
And then you wrote “When I was little I always ran away when it got bad. Then when I would get caught and they were trying to decide if I would be put into a foster home (my possible chance for a real life) I would beg to go back home. Home to a place where I was insignifiant.”
Play-by-play scene from my own life. I still don’t understand why I was so desperate to stay with them. Best I can come up with is Stockholm Syndrome.
In the end, they got what they wanted — a people-pleasing puppet.
Kathy, you said “I told my ex when I threw him out that he should send my father a thank-you note for everything he got from me.” I never said it to S, but I wish I had. My parents gave S a perfectly broken in model, ready for any sociopath.
Molly, I’m reading the Betrayal Bond. I also strongly recommend “If You Had Controlling Parents” by Dan Neuharth. He breaks the book apart into different kinds of control. It finally helped me to understand how the hell my parents were able to do what they did to me.
Today, in my frustrating session with my shirnk — you can read all about it in the thread “evaluating a therapist” — he brought up my parents and my inability to disengage from them. He thinks I want their love.
I told him that he was so wrong. Once upon a time I did. I had so much love to give them. And gradually, it all went away. I can truly say that when I put them in the ground, there is only one emotion I am going to feel — relief.
I’m really glad that this thread is helping. Here are some more excerpts from the Betrayal Bond:
To cope with your own abuse, you may have minimized the impact the abuse had on your life. [understatement of the year!!!] Now is the time to recognize the abuse for what it was.
The book has several checklists to complete. One checklist is the Abuse Inventory. Here are just a few of the items from the list:
Touch deprivation
Neglect (significant persons are emotionally unavailable)
Unfair punishments
Abandonment (lack of supervision, lack of security, being left or deserted)
Having to take on adult responsibilities as a child
Having to watch/hear beating of other family members
Shoving, slapping or hitting
Whippings
Sexual abuse
After taking an inventory, we can begin to see how the abuse impacted our behavior and begin to grieve. Survivors of traumatic childhoods have not been able to acknowledge the pain that has been accumulating. When you stop using the trauma solutions like denial, the pain catches up with us and can overcome us.
As I mentioned earlier, the initial trauma may have distorted the relationship template used as an adult. The result is that survivors have a vulnerability most people do not have. They are often not able to see when someone is exploiting them. This interferes with our sense of loss, outrage and pain.
In addition, most people in grief can be public about their loss. But when the loss is covered in shame and betrayal, getting support requires incredible vulnerability. And we all know the common response—”how could you be so foolish?”
The book also includes a self-assessment on compulsive behaviors that I listed earlier in this thread.
The Betrayal Bond provides the outline for a Recovery Plan with Acceptable Bottom-line Behaviors, Boundaries, Relationship Goals, and Levels of Contact. We are asked to Finish the Story—write your story using third person pronouns “Once there was a little girl/boy— Then finish the story by describing how you would like to see the story end.
The steps to recovery include several recovery plans:
A Reactivity Recovery Plan to help us tone down our reactivity is presented because survivors of terror tend to react in extremes. Their “alarm system” is set to HYPERSENSITIVE. The result is inner turmoil, personal chaos and relationship dysfunction. By finding healthy ways to manage our reactions, we will be less vulnerable to dysfunctional coping strategies.
There is also an Arousal Recovery Plan to manage “arousal” addictions such as sexual behavior, drugs, caffeine, tobacco and gambling.
Blocking Recovery Plan—to deal with anything we use to calm, medicate or anesthetize anxiety in order to block awareness.
Splitting Recovery Plan—Survivors will split off from reality as a way to deal with the terror and pain. Dissociation (living in an unreal world) becomes a coping strategy. This plan looks at the role of living in an unreal world in relationships one is concerned about.
Deprivation Recovery Plan—Children whose parents neglected them have difficulty taking good care of themselves. This part of the recovery plan looks at those areas of your life that have gone beyond neglect of yourself and become compulsive deprivation of even compulsive self-harm. [My parents both were compulsive savers and hoarders and I adopted some of that, but have been working on releasing this behavior.] Other compulsive behaviors could be: compulsive cleaning, hair pulling or skin picking, compulsive working, or other extreme sacrifices for a relationship.
A Shame Recovery Plan and a Repetition Recovery Plan round out the recovery plans.
This book is so helpful! I’m going to read Controlling Parents next. Just think, with all we’re learning, we will be able to treat our children and other people with much more sensitivity and compassion and help break the cycle of abusive behavior.
Molly—I agree with you that you and all of us LF folks were so strong to get through our childhood. This strength will carry us through our healing as adults. We can just turn all that energy inward and shower ourselves with comfort, approval and kindness. I totally understand about the therapists—I thought they could “figure me out” if I told them my story. Of course, they didn’t have a clue! But when we, the clients, are blind to our situation, how can we name it and tell the therapist what’s wrong? Thank God, we can now and we can share with people on this site.
Kathleen Hawk—that’s a perfect example you wrote about that occurred when you were three. It might go against common belief, but I believe that we absorb “how we are treated” as young children, even babies. I love what you said to your three year old self—it’s so loving and validating!
Matt—I’ve ordered the Controlling Parents book; its looks like it will be very helpful! Maybe we’ll write about it on LF!
This may sound silly or irreverent, but I sometimes think about the Laughing Gods. They’re just a figure of speech. But I sometimes imagine them up there, three guys who crack each other up sitting on a cloud under a rainbow somewhere, thinking about how to make our lives interesting.
“Hey, I got a good idea,” one of you says to another.
And they all smile and lean in and one of you says, “Whatcha got in mind, Godhead?”
And the three of you cook up the plan to send me a handsome, charming, witty, literate, sexy sociopath to help me out with my booming business, my drunk and decompensating partner, my decompensating 18-year old son and my peri-menopausal hormones.
Great idea, guys! Let’s see if the old girl bounces. Laughing their holy asses off.
As you can tell, I wish they’d start taking naps.
But the really big thing they send us is our parents. An awful lot of us spend most of our lives getting over our parents.
The Laughing Gods, who are wise as well as jolly, hope that we figure this one out early. But whenever we do it is cause for a celebration. It changes our lives. My life. You know, I’ve spent my entire adult life being violently angry at my parents and feeling heartbreakingly sorry for them at the same time. These are okay ways to feel, but not at the volume I felt them. They tore at my heart, one way or another.
After the sociopath, when I started poking around inside my head for things I could fix, this popped right out at me. How I fixed it…
Folks, you are not my problem. I care about you, I’m grateful that you sheltered me and fed me, but I have other memories that subtract a lot from that gratitude. I don’t know how much of this problem is genetic, but to the extent that it’s your special form of nurture, I’m going to undo that, if I have to go in there with a laser. Until I’m finished with this, I don’t want to think about you. And I don’t know how I’m going to feel about it when it’s over.
So that’s it. If I think about them, I take a good hard look at how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking about. If it’s bad, I try to remember what happened, then get behind my younger self’s shoulder and reframe it for her. Mostly I just say, “You are right. He’s a total s**h head and she can’t help you. You’re a good girl and you deserve better. But don’t worry, you’re going to get out of here, and have a very interesting life.”
Or I just tell them, “Shut up. Get out of here.”
I know that sounds angry, but it doesn’t feel angry. It feels expedient, like I’m getting an important job done. Besides, they’ve actually been dead for a few years, so it’s not like I’m not showing up at Christmas dinner. There’s no one left except me and my sister, and a niece we hardly know. So no one cares if I go AWOL.
I am not what they made me. That’s like an ill-fitting coat. If I can vaporize that thing, there’s another me underneath it. Recognizably related, but somehow sleeker, denser, better connected. The wiring is optimal; she’s been learning there in the background all the time. I don’t think she even sees the wraiths of the past, probably looks right through them, doesn’t even know she’s not at the front of my mind.
That’s the kind of me she is. And as I clear the decks, I’m getting to know her better. It’s like her mind is pure light. She thinks through knowing. I don’t even know how to describe this but it’s like intuition on steroids. She sees everything without judging. Absorbing information is what she likes to do, and she has a joyful hum, like a vibration in the air. And somehow, there’s nothing she looks at that she doesn’t know. She talks in explanations and they all start with “Yes…”
Is this me? I don’t know, but it’s in the middle there. Of me. Well, the middle of my imaginary idea of what the inside of my brain looked like, as software, not as the hardware. I have lots of different ways of looking at me. But this one is like the egg. Hard shell, white filmy stuff, the yolk where life is built, and deep in the yolk another center. This is the one that isn’t quite on this plane, but is. It’s on this plane through me, and it is me. That’s what I’m here for.
Whew. There I go explaining my spiritual ideas again. Do you think I could start I church? I used to dream of having a rolling revival style church, where I could travel around with some blues singers, and talk about what I believe. It’s so cool, and I’d love to turn other people on to it.
But see, this is what I’m like when those two aren’t around. Life’s more fun. I’m more creative. I’m more relaxed about work, and get along with people better.
I thought about keeping the good memories, and I kept one from when I was around three. That was the last one I wanted. Everything else was tainted.
I am astonished at my life. I’ve done so much that I never imagined I’d do. Some of it was fabulous. Some was really high risk. I could have wound up a statistic. And here I am. Made it to 60. Turned the greatest disaster of my life, self-created as usual, into birthday cake with one candle on it. Thank you, Laughing Gods. You’re right. You win. I am your adoring student.
I don’t know. What do you think? Are they sociopaths?
Thanks Ox,
My heart goes out to you Matt.
I have always been a attention seeker and now I am starting to understand why…just a little more. I have also wanted to hear people say that they understood or related to things I had said or done. However, this is not one of thoes times. I did not feel comfort when you shared that you thought I watched your life. My stomache wrenched up to think that someone else may have had to endure similar things. I always discounted what happened to me by telling myself that so many others had it much worse. But that is when I thought what happened was normal. I did not WANT to believe it was normal, but I told myself it was anyway.
Matt it took me a long time to get to a place where I told myself that I had forgiven my parents because they only taught me what they were taught…so how could I be angry?
I let go of the wanting them to be someone they were not.
Then I felt sorry for them.
I then felt bad that I no longer wanted them to be part of my life. I was able to completly let go of my father. But my mother is now leagall blind and very hard of hearing. I somehow make myself call to ask how she is. If I am visiting my son who lives in the same town I will stop by for about 1/2 hour as that is all I can handel. She does not yell, she does not hit, she is quiet and gental and looks so helpless. I feel guilty that she is in a assisted living center and that I am not taking care of her. Part of me wishes I could hate her but I can’t. I try to remind myself that she is a child of god and that I need to “completly”forgive. So, now what do I do…I am 46 years old and have just found out that what I tried so hard NOT to believe about my life…..IS really true. My life and my choices regarding, people, places and things now makes sence. “MAYBE I AM NOT CRAZY AFTER ALL”.
MAYBE I JUST MIGHT ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO HAVE A REAL LIFE after all?
I want to give each and everyone of you who experienced these things a GREAT BIG HUG. I want to cup my hands around your head look into your eyes, kiss your forehead and gentaly wisper “were gonna be ok”, “were really gonna be ok!”
Thank you again Pearl.
The check list above was my life. I have had a problem with Each and everyone of the points. I have to soak more of this up, gather my thoughts…before I write again. My head and heart are on over load. It’s like I was told there really isen’t a santa….only that it goes like this “you really did have a bad childhood”. No more justifying or making excuses for them, no more if only I would have done this or that better, no more trying to convince myself that I was just a spoiled, selfish brat.
Jeezz…I guess I have a lot of work to do.
So where do I start?
Sweet dreams everyone….Molly
This thread is relevant to me today. I wasn’t going to mention it, but my mom died last night. No need to clutter the blog with condolences, I know everyone is sympathetic. But if I am honest on here, hard to state at this time, I did have a betrayal bond with her. I don’t know much about her childhood, but some of what she said about her father sounded N like, who knows. But she had a lot of N traits or something, literally would not speak to me for a week at a time or longer for a minor infraction. BUT she did many, many super things for me and spent a ton of time on me. As a mother of an adult, she was much better and we actually had some good times together. Partly because I had learned how to read her and treat her so well, and some emotional insulation I put in place. Her death is brining up all kinds of realizations, some regrets, but mostly my trauma is not from losing her but dealing with a malignant N or P sibling. After this I plan to never have contact with him again. But I have to get through the funeral and all that.
The P that I was involved with treated me just like my Mom, so it has kind of stirred all that up too. Plus my husband confessing his alcoholism, then me telling him the details of the P, and we have inherited my mom’s dog….so it is all just a bit much, plus I’m getting further and further behind in my new jobs.
Well, thanks for letting me vent.