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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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.
I also grew up with a lot of authoritarian discipline. It makes it difficult to sort out when behaviors from a “loved one” are intentionally abusive and not to be tolerated. I know it certainly set me up — both in me running away from my family by marrying at 18, and in who I ran to — the guy who first pointed a loaded gun to my head when we’d been only married a month. I stayed married to him for six more years.
Rune – ever notice how they expected us to love them or we would have hell to pay if we didnt?
rune and henry: woah. exactly! an authoritarianism family environment is just plain toxic. when my dad would get home and we’d hear his car door slam, we all ran in different directions. never knew if he would love us or slam us up against a wall (mom included).
‘hell to pay’ was my ex’s middle name.
how effin’ sick.
Let me make a comment or two here if I may. I disagree with some of the ways that “authoritarian” is used here. It seems to me that you are using it to mean ARBRITRARY and UNPREDICTABLE.
TO ME, I am authoritarian with the dogs I train, but I am NEVER unpredictable. The dogs are not anxious because they know what the rules are, and they know what the consequences of breaking the rules are. They never have to worry when I approach their pens if I will pet them or beat them. (first off I don’t “beat” them ever, I growl at them for minor infractions, sake their ruff AND growl for more important ones, and if I am defied (seldom) I will shake the ruff, growl really low and bite them on the ear, just as their mother would have done when they were pups. They understand that and don’t resent it, they don’t understand beating) I have had to bite a dog only 3 or four times in my life.
In my authoritarian training of my dogs I expect obedience, and not defiance, and very seldom get defiance. With my children I expected them to obey me on certain things that were very important to preserving their lives and their safety. Don’t mess with guns without adult supervision. But I let them explore guns under supervision so they were not curious about something that was “forbidden.”
Spankings were reserved for serious infractions that were safety connected or outright defiance of a rule that they knew well. But some rules were NEVER TO BE VIOLATED. The rules never changed. Consideration was taken to the age of the child and how “tempting” the rule was to violate, etc.
The kids were encouraged to express their desires, wishes, feelings, and even anger toward me or any rule or request. As they attained more responsible behavior they were given more freedom to make decisions for themselves.
When they got to an age where they would occasionally try to “fake” a stomach ache to stay home from school, I used “natural consequences”—if you are too sick to go to school, then you need to lie in bed all day and eat tomato soup and crackers (not their favorite) keep the light out (no reading or games) and stay in bed all day. So they didn’t get a “reward” for faking illness to stay home and play. By the time they were in 4th or 5th grade though, as long as their grades were good, I would occasionally let them have a “mental health” day out of school and go with me or do something fun. All they had to do to get this was request (not too frequently) a “mental health day” and I would grant it if possible. If I couldn’t grant it that day, we would negotiate for another day that week.
There was no doubt who was the alpha leader of the pack(when I was a single parent) it was me, but the kids knew the rules, didn’t show any anxiety about making me mad, didn’t show any fear of me, or disrespect of my position. They were included in “family” events (this included extended family of friends with kids their ages) and we camped and swam and explored frequently. They had male role models deliberately included in the mix since their father was NC with us (his choice) and they frequently spent time with them when I wasn’t around.
I guess in a way I “trained” my children to respect authority, but not to fear it, to know what the rules are, and know what the consequences of breaking the rules, but not to fear arbitrary violence (physical or verbal).
I think that no matter how harsh the rules are, if you KNOW what they are and they are not forever CHANGING we (humans) can learn to adapt and be pretty much anxiety free, it is when the rules are ever changing that we become anxious and scared. The psychopaths and disordered people CONSTANTLY CHANGE THE RULES and the anxiety of not knowing what today’s rules are is horrible.
Consistency in child rearing or dog training, I think is the most important, not what the rules are so much, as how often they change without warning. Just MHO
Hmmmm….
Just a thought, but do you think the S/P/N’s go for partners who only went part way down the same road they paved and followed to the end (and built houses there – LOL)?
I mean, it seems as if we were all abused to some degree as children, including the S/P/N’s, but where we were able to develop skills to survive (not always good ones, admittedly) and come through as more compassionate adults; they weren’t able to find any other coping skills but to withdraw into themselves and out of reality.
I don’t know about you guys, but while I may not have known what normal was as a child; I sure as heck knew that what I was living wasn’t it.
I’m actually thankful, in a twisted way, that my mom told people I was handicapped, just because I wasn’t going to open my mouth and give her another reason to rant for days – she said I was autistic.
Well, I got angry enough to prove her wrong. My way of surviving her was to keep my head down and take care of business. I was out the first time at 13 and gone for good at 15.
Now, decades later, I’m the only child in my family who lives anywhere close to reality. My little sister is dead, my other sister is schizophrenic, my brother is a drug dealer with two legs in the grave, and my oldest brother is a complete stranger who is a baby-diddler (I used to watch him torture animals as a child. He’s always scared me). Both my brothers had sex with my little sister, a prostitute.
All told, I’m actually doing well!
So, my theory is that they can sense or recognize a person who is/was on that very same road of self-doubt, insecurities, and having to find ways to cope…that we have worn that coat before.
Mind you, the assumption here is that we were all abused…like I said, it’s just a thought.
My N was asked out by his surgeon shortly before we began dating. In telling me the story he said, “What am I going to say to an intelligent woman?” and laughed.
I looked over at him and gave him a second to think about what he’d just said, and said, “You’re lucky I like you!”
Even then, it didn’t really seem to register…apparently with either of us!
Oxy: I assumed your parenting style was firm and fair. Sounds like you maintained a good balance.
I’ve read that out of 10 children, 2 will thrive in our current school structure, 6 will manage to learn in spite of the defects, and 2 will have no ability to learn from the lecture-and-test approach that is embedded in our school system. Those numbers also suggest that 20% of kids just don’t “get it,” even with orderly, predictable rules around them. I’ve kept a rough mental tally of those ratios, and when I meet families, I notice. Typically out of 4 children, 1 is “unusual” — defiant, eccentric, needs a different sort of parenting style to maintain any sort of sanity in the house. Y’know — the kid who is “hell on wheels.” I’m not saying that that kid is necessarily “bad,” either, but the kid doesn’t respond to the same parenting in the same way as the other kids.
I don’t have answers, just observations. I’m guessing that some portion of those “unusual” children may have a greater tendency toward becoming S/Ps. This, of course, is where Dr. Leedom’s work is so promising.
Regarding dog training, I love your discipline hierarchy! With my “assertive” boy dog, I finally taught him his very own trick: “Chill!” That means he rolls over on his back, feet in the air, in full submission. He’s my house pet, and it doesn’t put him at risk in a pack, so I think it’s OK that it is his favorite “trick.” It was the one thing I came up with that would interrupt his bossy “herding” of me and get us back to our proper roles. I’ve used the growling in his ruff and putting him on his back, but never nipped his ear. If I’d only known . . .
I’m with you O…I didn’t have a problem with rules, either as a child at home, or living with the N.
But when the rules keep changing, it’s as if the ground beneath your feet is constantly in motion. It becomes a breeding ground of apprehension, fear, tension, and never having a point of reference.
PB: I’ve wondered if in our unpredictable “authoritarian” families, we were always “breaking rules,” whether we meant to or not. Because of the unpredictability, the rules actually didn’t matter, we were just always at risk for punishment, so the rules meant less and less. Even survival might mean that we break rules, so we got trained to “defy authority,” if you will. Except those of us who came out non-S/P retained our inner “moral compass” which is also balanced by our empathy. (That’s from Dr. Leedom’s “Inner Triangle.”) Does this make sense from your observations?
(Wow. You’ve survived a harrowing start. What do you think about my “2 out of 10” statistics above?)
I wasn’t a defiant child as such, and I suppose with the N I was what he considered defiant…I was simply not going to be told it was me or my fault that he was always upset or unable to control his anger. I’d had enough of that from my mother. I don’t think she was authoritarian, just completely unpredictable. I did recognize that the rest of the world had rules and they needed to be observed to some degree. I actually envied the stability.
While my N may have recognized that I’ve had plenty of experience with craziness, he didn’t realize that I’d had enough of it.
It’s true that I hadn’t experienced his particular brand of insanity, and as a “fixer” I got sucked in, but when it came down to him blaming me – no way!
2 out of 10 is probably close, I’d say.
Right up to the last week we were together, I thought the N was merely an alcoholic…I thought that that was what I was dealing with (as if that weren’t bad enough).
Then I found you guys, and pulled out my journals…it was incredible!