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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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 am hug deprived. My parent’s never showed us any love or affection. I am very nurturing by nature, my son’s always get a big ole bear hug and they hug me back. When X was here I always held him and comforted him , he never held me or touched me in a caring way. I crave to be held and comforted, not in a sexual sense, but just someone that would hold and comfort me and not expect something out of it. I feel like i have cheated myself out of true affection because I have always been the hugger, not the huggee. I have three dacshunds that are great hugger’s….
Henry–I’m glad you have your three dacshunds now as part of your family. Dogs are wonderful!
I never told you this, but I live in North TX, so I am sort of close to OK.
I know what you mean about being the hugger–I’m going to have to work on receiving instead of always giving.
Henry, you dog! Isn’t it great to have fellow creatures who also know how to love unconditionally? My two dogs think I’m pretty handicapped for a dog–slow at picking up on their obvious telepathy, bad at Frisbee, and terrible at sniffing the air — but they love me anyway. (And they’re good huggers, too.)
Kathleen, I’m jumping in on your post sort of late: You said:
“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. ”
Reminds me of an experience with my step-dad when I was 15 yrs old. My mom was out grocery shopping and I was home alone with step-dad, I was talking on the phone with my boyfriend (who was my hero) when step-dad told me he wanted to make a phone call (he really didn’t – he just wanted to control) so I told my friend I had to get off the phone and did PDQ.
Next thing I knew, step-dad got right in my face and slapped me hard across the face! Said I was disrespectful when I told my friend I had to get off the phone. This was just a repeat performance of so many other times when whatever I did in order to abide by what I was told to do backfired on me.
I broke into tears – I just lost control of my emotions because that slap was completely out of the blue and there was no way I could have expected it. I was in a happy mood just before; was happily complying with his request.
I tried to go to my room, but step-dad blocked my exit, grabbed me and tried to spank me! He hit me hard a few times, not on my buttocks, but my lower back, causing a lot of pain, and, needless to say, confusion on my part.
I was a fighter. It took all I had, but I pushed him away and cried out “Leave me alone, or I’ll kill you!” I just wanted to get away from him because he was acting cruel and crazy. I was just getting over pnemonia and had been stuck inside the house for 3 weeks while recovering, not allowed to see anyone, let alone my boyfriend who I had been on the phone with.
Step-dad was a cop, and on this Saturday, like all other Saturdays when he took off for downtown Los Angeles for his haircut and visits with his cronies, he wore a gun in a shoulder harness.
Step-dad had a death grip on my arm, and with his other hand pulled back his suit coat, revealing his weapon, and said, “Here’s my gun, go ahead and kill me if you want”. If I had tried for the weapon, that would have given him license to then shoot me, and I knew that was exactly what he was doing. He was setting me up like he had done so many ways so many times before (Once when I was 7 yrs old we were in a paint store, and he walked behind me and kept “zapping” the back of my shoe. I told him to stop it and he wouldn’t, he had that shit-eating-grin on his face because he knew I would soon do something to get myself in trouble and he was right – after about the 7th or 8th time he did that to me I turned around and stomped on his insole! and he cried out in pain to get my mom’s attention and he administered a severe spanking in the store).
I kneed him in the groin and ran out of the house. I was hysterical and I ran next door to my best friends house. Her parents let me in. I couldn’t even talk; All I could do was cry and make slobbering noises. I must have looked like a crazy girl, and I was crazy – my world was making less sense to me at that moment than it ever had. I had run next door for safety and security.
I hadn’t been in their house for 2 minutes when stepdad arrived at the neighbors door. He told the neighbors I was out of control, that I had threatened his life and that I must come home immediately. My poor neighbors! I felt bad I had implicated them in my dirty laundry episode and I felt embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I must have stopped crying and slobbering; I followed him back to the house, but stayed outside, waiting for my mother to arrive home, because I knew it wasn’t safe to go inside with him.
Shortly thereafter my mother got back from the store, step-dad parlayed his version of the incident. My mother’s reaction was to get me away from there – not because I was in danger, but because she didn’t want to deal with any of it. I was shipped over to my grandmother’s house, and my mom and step-dad took off for Santa Barbara, which was a 2 hour drive from our house, and somewhere my mother always wanted to go but my step-dad always found some excuse not to take her there. But here he was now, ditching me and taking her to Santa Barbara (manipulative, huh?) When they returtned the next day mom called the church we went to and they found a family that belonged to our church who took in kids that were runaways. I stayed with that family for a week. They had a ski boat, and their college aged kids were going to go water skiing in Long Beach; they allowed to invite my boyfriend go to with us and we had a wonderful time. I remember being afraid that the wind would make me sicker (remember, I had pnemonia and wasn’t allowed to move off the couch for 3 weeks while at home – more control) and I kept bundled up, worried that I would surely die of illness because of the wind and cool air.
After a week I returned home. My mother said she was going to place me in a foster home because I was incorrigible. My boyfriend told me to do or say whatever I had to in order for that not to happen, because he said once I got placed in foster care it would be horrible for me and that we probably would never see each other again. So I kissed butt, really sucking up to my mom with tears and promises that I would be good.
It was made out to be all my fault. It was my word against my step-dad’s word, and he was a cop and never lied (ha ha ha!). When I swore I hadn’t been disrespectful or deserving of that slap, or the bizarreness that followed, my mother said “Well, he probably was fed up with all your sassyness for a long time and that’s why he slapped you” WTF!?
I’m now 51 years old. I’ll never forget that day. It could have turned out different; I truly believe he was baiting me to reach for his weapon so he could shoot me and be justified.
My mother wasn’t deaf, or blind. She witnessed all the interrogations that occurred night after night at the dinner table, starting when I was 6 years old, how I was baited into an argument everynight by my stepdad (“wash your hands”….then he’d go in the bathroom and come out stating I got water on the bathroom mirror which I would deny and then it just went on and on and on all throughout the entire dinner. I spilled my milk once and heard about it every night at dinner for a week, etc. etc. ad naseum) I remember my mom, once, in tears, sticking up for me and my step-dad verbally abused her. She didnt’ stick up for me again after that. I wet my bed that entire year, and step-dad didn’t know about it. My mother would coerce me into “behaving” by threatening to tell step-dad that I wore diapers to bed at 6 years old. While she would be putting diapers on me, he’d be on the other side of my closed bedroom door jiggling the door handle, threatening to come in. I was totally traumatized by that. I had hairy arms and legs for a little girl, and step-dad thought it was a lot of fun to tease and humiliate me about it when we were visiting the neighbors next door (they had 3 kids close to my age). He called the next door neighbor girl 3 years older than me “Princess”, and would ask why I couldn’t be more like her. My mom never protected me from this treatment. Step-dad always had on that wide-eyed-grin, and if I cried he would say to me “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it”. Dish what out?! Again WTF?!
I’ve been married 4 times. The last two were S’s, and physically and emotionally abusive – all 4 were alcoholic.
I saw a therapist for a year after my 3rd marriage ended up in divorce. She (my therapist) told me outright that my mother didn’t protect me like she should have. I certainly never had a male protector, besides that first boyfriend, and I discarded him for a different boyfriend that was a real idiot, without realizing what I was doing. After that, I always choose the wrong guy for me, because something about them felt familiar. I’ve also had two other significant relationships with alcoholics.
I’m now in a relationship with a wonderful man who isn’t alcoholic, who is a protector and not an arguer. There isn’t drama in our relationship and sometimes it feels stale; this is perhaps the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in (and I recognize it) and I’m learning how to understand boundaries (mostly his cuz I’m still not good with boundaries) and that boundaries don’t mean he doesn’t care deeply for me. He’s taking things slower than I ever have and I thank G-d for him in my life, that I’ve got another chance at a meaningful relationship with a male who isn’t going to F me over. I’m trying to act/think/be healthy in this relationship. I haven’t shared all this with him, because I don’t like to ever play the victim card. And I’m also afraid a little that he may run!
Anybody outside of this forum would say “Aw, for christs’ sake, get over it!” You all know that there isn’t any getting over it; and that what I experienced from step-dad, from abusive husbands and an unprotective mother has played a huge part in who I am today. I never really know if I am over-reacting or under-reacting to how others act towards me or mine.
My children ( 2 daughters) are now grown. I gave them two crappy step-dad’s, left both those guys due to the treatment they bestowed on my daughters after awhile, because at first they were seemingly good people, but alcoholic, as to re-enact my life experience and have it turn out different – I did something to protect my kids whereas my mother didn’t. But both my daughters have problems; one drug addiction and the other is in a relationship with someone who I suspect is a sociopath – nothing is ever his fault and he is a money grubbing welfare case. I feel guilt and remorse and regret that my bad parenting had a huge part in how they turned out and every so often I cry over what has happened here. Hopefully there will be a good in-between and ending to this saga.
Emotional blindness is what I am daily trying to cure.
egirl, thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing that down. I feel like we grew up in the same family. I can’t talk about it. I can hardly remember most of it.
But reading this, I felt for you and me, and all the other kids who somehow manage to survive and get out of these places with anything at all intact. Calling us “survivors” doesn’t begin to communicate what we survived.
Doesn’t it sometimes seem like a miracle you have any sanity at all? The fact that you chose the wrong partners or have any sort of difficulties in relationships pales beside the fact that you are here now, after those years, to talk about it. And to talk about it so well.
But that story, that day, is almost than I can bear to read about it. Imagining you living through it, any living through it without doing something awful in return, is almost impossible. Do you realize the superhuman psychic muscles you had to develop, the tolerance for pain, the ability to analyze the situation so you wouldn’t kill your future? Of course, you do.
I don’t know if it would be helpful, but you might read the second part of “After the Sociopath: How We Heal” that I posted on Sunday. A lot of the thinking comes from John Bradshaw, who’s written some really helpful books on getting over these backgrounds. I’m glad you’re working with a therapist who seems to understand these issues.
And I wish you and your partner well in your young relationship. Your writing gave a real sense of how you both are finding your way to be together, and it sounds like a good thing.
I have my own relationship history which is partly encounters with sociopathic types, but shaped more by my huge needs and ideas that submitting to super-strong personalities would somehow keep me safe. (Replaying the Daddy thing and hoping it comes out better.)
Not all of my partners met that criteria, but I did everything in my power to make the relationship work that way. I think turned a few people into abusers who didn’t start out that way.
One of the things that comes out of this kind of background, I think, goes beyond the unnaturally high pain tolerance. And that’s the idea that constant high drama is normal, and life is boring without it. If someone isn’t hurting us, if we’re not struggling with out-of-control feelings, if we’re not madly in love or plotting to run away, then it seems like nothing interesting is going on. I think it’s one of those big psychic muscles we developed in the abusive hothouse of our family homes. Our drama-meters are whacked out too.
The time I spent in self-enforced solitude through the first couple of years of recovery was the first time in my life there was no relationship drama to keep me busy, except sorting out the memories. It took me a long time to calm down. Maybe a couple of years into it, I started becoming more aware of the environment and realizing that I truly loved this place in the country I’d found after I fled the city and him.
It was tainted a bit by memories of him, because he followed me here for a couple more rounds. But there were earth to garden, woods to walk, birds to watch, deer and squirrels, bright stars in the dark sky, the whole cycle of the year happening outside my office window. My herb and vegetable garden expands a little each year. I started a rose garden that gets a few new bushes each spring. I have bird feeders bringing all the winter birds to my windows. It’s still part of the healing process, but I feel like this place and I are doing it together.
It’s not a relationship with a person, but I have a few tentative things developing, friendships and dating. I’m trying to feel my way along to doing it right. My son has come home to live with me, and I’m learning how to be different with him too.
It’s a good adventure. I sometimes wish I were younger, or that I’d gotten this far sooner. But it’s better than not getting this far at all.
Namaste, egirl.
Kathy
Kathy,
I know what you mean about the high drama. S and I separated in Dec. 06, and I moved 800 miles away from him back to where I lived 3 years previously, where my friends and family are. I noticed that although the drama with my marriage was dead for the most part, I gravitated toward people who had a lot of drama in their lives.
I actually moved in with my mother who needed help with my step-dad who now had alzheimers/dementia and needed someone’s constant watchful eye – he would wander away if my mother left the house for any reason, he was compelled to “go find her” (if they were controlling before the onset of alzheimers, they only become more “themselves” with the disease = more controlling). He is now in a nursing home and I don’t go to see him because, well, why should I? He’s not my problem. Also, I noticed that the friends I chose to hang out with had lots of drama. Avoiding high drama people has become a high priority for me, not because I’m un-empathetic, but because the drama doesn’t help me in healing.
When I came to realize that I was replacing the drama that wasn’t in my life with “borrowed” drama, that’s when it all added up to the conclusion that my entire life had so much drama in it, from the time I was an infant to the now. (my mother had separated from my bio dad when I was 3 months old, never allowed him or his family to have anything to do with me, and refered to him as Mr. _________, wouldn’t let me play in the front yard because Mr. __________ might kidnap me, etc.) Very sad and very sick, but my mom thought she was doing right by me. She still stands by what she believed then pretty much; I have a grandson that my daughter lost custody of and is being raised by his bio dad and bio-dad’s adoptive parents who will not allow me to see my grandson because they don’t trust me, but they will allow some contact with my mother. My mother won’t even try talk any sense to these people to allow me to see my own grandson, because that might jeopardize her being able to see him! Selfish? ya think?! So I’ve been effectively cut off from family on two ends; my bio dad’s family (who in later years I met) and my own grandson. It really sucks and I don’t know why this happened in my life.
I wasn’t expecting to get into a relationship with anyone, and my guy popped into my life after my aunt died suddenly and I needed a contractor to take care of something at her house. I knew him from about 15 years ago when he was one of my vendors when I was the facilities maintenance administrator where I worked. Funny thing is, I prayed to G-d to send a good man to me, and he literally ended up on my doorstep a couple of months later. I wasn’t planning on being in any relationship prior to that, but he has been a wonderful part of my life now for a year and a half.
Your garden sounds wonderful. I have roses and hydrangeas and camillias in my yard. And I’m planning herbs and veggies as soon as I get some major landscaping taken care of for a water run-off problem.
Thank you for your kind words and for sharing this with all of us. It makes it all easier.
egirl
egirl,
That’s a great insight about getting involved with high-drama people. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’s exactly what I’ve done.
When I was in my angry phase in my healing, I started getting rid of them, but they kept showing up again, and I kept getting involved in their dramas. Partly it made me feel good to be helpful, but they just ate up my time in such huge chunks.
I’ve gotten to the point that I just hate the emotional noise now. And I just don’t want to do these relationships anymore.
It never occurred to me that that drama itself was the attractor. Thanks!!!
egirl–
my heart goes out to you. You had a horrible experience growing up. Like Kathleen said to her younger self in her upthread comment, ” “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.” I hope you say something similar to your younger self that is healing for you.
…and the rest of that post goes:
I don’t have a lot of time right now – have to GO SQUARE DANCING! But i want to get back to this article later.
‘punishment’ not meeting the deed and the loosing of rage on young ones….sigh.
i used to think my parents were not emotioanl…years later i relaized that they are completely emotional, had NO emotional vocabulary, and no awareness of their emotions.
okay—-later! gotta go start my new ‘exorcise’ program 😉
oh crap – now i lost he first part of the post!