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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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 high drama and the expectation that emotions would be suppressed. It resulted in me not having a vocabulary to express particular emotions, and it is only now in my thirties that I am learning to question myself and ask ‘what is it I am feeling right now about this?’
Like you Kathleen I have taken a couple of yrs out from dating to sort through all the memories and calm down from all this. I now want a drama free life. And I won’t settle for any less than this – I won’t take someone just to be with someone. I have actively distanced from family dramas and have worked through many of my feelings and memories about abusive incidents in childhood. I am getting to peace with it all now and for the first time in my life actually feel like an adult. It’s a good place to be.
I used to tell my ex N/S that he was a drama king. It’s amusing to me in hindsight.
I too have gotten to the point that I just don’t like the emotional noise inherent in living with non-sense and high drama.
Figured out my previous patterns of attraction to drama were due to upbringing/home training as a young caretaker in a family situation where alcoholics/irresponsible adults induced chaos and drama (walking on eggshells, fighting rather than healthy conflict-resolution skills, sadness and confusion due to mother’s abuse by stepfather, a high-tension household with kids living in shame, unnamed fear/unresolved anguish, etc.).
There was always an unspoken undercurrent, potential threat at any moment, that required being on high alert, survival mode. And no adult ever explained to me and my siblings that it was not normal or good for mental health, nor assured us we could feel safe and would be protected in this environment. Nothing felt safe/at ease even when normalcy happened in between outbursts.
So much was unspoken, and made my young child/teen life’s perspective and imagination overactive, always considering the worst possibilities. Always internalizing what was wrong as something internal, rather than external. Great way to set a young person up for being taken advantage of and having no boundaries.
Fast forward. With 20 years on and off of active de-programming and relearning, recovery through education, self-exploration, emotional healing. Reading, thinking, therapy and feeling my way through hidden and unresolved issues.
The last relationship with the N/S was another turning point — in major ways. A blessing in disguise after sorting through everything, because it ushered me into a new place of true autonomy/detachment. Not responsible for other people’s issues. Clarity about need for self-protection, enhanced personal responsibility. A better inner world of boundaries and also being able to co-exist with all kinds of people whether difficult due to personality disorders or challenging in other ways.
Yet can maintain my sanity and serenity. It’s within my power, to the degree that I have control over anything. I owe it to myself because I am worthy. I know I don’t need to jump through hoops anymore to be loved. Love starts within, and if someone else also wants to love me, I don’t need their love like I need oxygen. There is an element of choice — whether a relationship is good for me too, not just the other person.
Now…Just not interested in people and relationships with high drama. No tolerance anymore, or can only deal with very little doses of drama. I feel an automatic rejection, like being allergic to drama these days — it depletes my energy in ways that it’s an automatic turn-off, a repulsion rather than attraction.
Have found I can do quite well for long periods of time without any drama, and not feel empty or in need of some induced excitement or the stimulation of fixing a situaion or anyone, to make me feel alive.
Now in touch with depth/substance within, how to feel alive from simply living, simple pleasures — breathing, sitting, reading, laughing, not always thinking.
Embracing my inner lolligagger so much fun and freedom after life-time spent feeling I had to earn love, earn a right to exist. Just being is legitimate enough. Don’t have to always do or achieve something to prove my worth or right to respect from myself. Once upon a time had to be a doer and giver to extremes to feel valid, important, worthy. No longer.
Thank God — more layers of healing. Humbling and so very empowering. Lovely. I feel such gratitude. I feel so blessed.
recovering – Awesome.
one_step_at_a_time: I have appreciation for your unfolding journey of awareness and personal growth as well, learning much from what you’ve shared in posts. Thank you.
Lovefraud provides a safe place to help reinforce our personal lessons as we integrate new knowledge. Though our stories are unique, we share common experiences and challenges. The opportunity to be part of a community that honors and supports those who are, and strive to remain, decent human beings is inspiring.
For that, I am very grateful — to Donna for providing this site, and to you and many others who get it and want to make a difference in the lives of others.
Dear One-step, thanks for bringing back this very thought provoking thread, and Recovering, I can so relate to what you wrote.
About the drama. I also got with the “gentle help” of X to the conclusion that I want to get rid of dramas, i.e. not get sucked in, panicking and embarrassed by them but be a mere observer from a secure distance, like what I am practicing professionally accompanying patients calmly through their own dramas. Why is it so hard to apply the professional conduct into the private life??
Maybe the “Drama tolerance” is also a blessing we get from our upbringing as we do not break while having to listen to those dramas in our professions? (Lawyer, RN, MD, military, consultant, therapist). But frankly enjoy the diversity and the unpredictability of the EXACT scedule/time table?
I often think that my life is so full and rich and wonderful by being so diverse, and that I just have to find a “Drama-dimmer” for the right amount of being “in the flow” but not bored nor exhausted by it.
I remember when I was young other children liked to stay at our place because it was “never boring”, and also my nieces like it being at my parent’s place because there always “something is happening”, and even going out is BIG DRAMA because there is always the rush to find a key, we are ALWAYS late, dog leash is missing, car key is lost, Mum can’t find her favourite coat etc.
I often thought of charging my friends an entrance fee! Even telling other people about things like that is funny at times; after the happening of course 😉 !
Last summer my sister had to break into her own house after midnight crashing a window because she had locked in the key, as we were late for my brother’s wedding; and my little nieces found it “like in the movies”! The alarm was going off, and my sister had cut her arm oozing blood all over her.
They (8 and 10 years old) forgot about being dumped by their stepmother and their father and not being allowed to stay in the hotel after the wedding of their father, with them and their half sister (2 year old child of my brother and the said stepmother, in my eyes also a very cold N/S/P), but had to sleep in my sister’s house , but they had a hell of a time with my sister and me, and we had a wonderful big sleep in afterwards!
I always felt responsible for the whole bunch: responsible for the keys, the moods, the time tables, the embarrassment feelings the others would have to wait for MY family, I owned the shame and the guilt and the humiliation my family definitely did NOT feel; they enjoyed every part of it! The attention, the drama, they could enjoy the color they surely brought in other’s boring lives, that’s what they went for and were invited for after all.
I talked to different people last year, to understand better my “blind spot”, and I found out that they ALL EXACTLY know who my family is, so I must not feel embarrassed or ashamed instead of! Inviting my family is kind of like ordering the Japanese Fugu fish platter from the menu. Enjoy but not sure of the outcome but hope for the best!
I found out just in the wake of X (last year, tender age of 47!!) that I must not feel responsible for them as they are known for what they are, and are appreciated and valued for these special qualities, and that I have my own special qualities I can appreciate for myself.
Maybe the drama is/was within me? My perception of it?
Not really, the humiliations towards others my family does on a “one sentence on- one sentence off”-basis (father S, mother N) ARE embarrassing, but it is not MY responsibility to defend either my family by explaining the unexplainable to friends nor to defend the helpless victims of my family’s “Cons” by being illoyal to either friends or family.
Just stay NC as much as possible is the solution!
So I can let go of these feelings too, being resposible for my inner tranquility only, very relaxing indeed!
As Polyanna said: “I am getting to peace with it all now and for the first time in my life actually feel like an adult. It’s a good place to be.”
Have you all a wonderful Weekend!
Libelle – what a way to get there though! I’d rather not have anymore ‘lessons’ thankyou very much! Enough pain for several lifetimes. Like you say it’s funny in retrospect. It’s not funny at the time though – the definition of making comedy is to take a character and make their life a living nightmare. In comedy everything goes wrong and we laugh at it. In our own lives when everything goes wrong eventually we hit rock bottom.
Dear Pollyanna, you are so right. It is gruesome, and often I wished I had other parents and another fate. I even had suicidal thoughts when I was 10 years old.
I think though by having found out about this “family secret” that has been passed for generations, by connecting all the dots, I can make a difference by offering my nieces drama free time with auntie Libelle, breaking the evil spell. At least that is my hope.
Really good comedy, not just “showtime”, comes from deepest despair, I think, the laughter “despite”, laughter in the face of death, horror. The dance of the breads by Charlie Chaplin where he is hallucinating while very hungry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_YciCB1uCg
or “always look on the bright side of life by Monty Python
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1loyjm4SOa0
comes to my mind: the second video contains blasphemy!!! Very British though.
Humor is the ultimate weapon, and in the third Reich people got killed for telling jokes!
Rock bottom: for me it is the imagine of hitting the bottom of the pool while drowning, so I can vigurously leap to reach for the surface again to breath and swim.
When I come to read here and think of my own injuries and then I read about the really very horrible, unimaginable, unbearable that others here have endured and are still standing and healing and getting along very well with their lives I feel ashamed of telling my own “minor narcissistic insults”. I am deeply humbled and very proud at the same time of being part of LF. Thanks Donna for putting up this site!
libelle:
Good to see you posting.
I can relate to so much of what you write having grown up with an S father and malignant N mother myself. Like you, I”ve learned to observe my family’s “dynamics” from a distance. I’ve gotten detached enough that I can actually see the humor in the lunacy. I also have neices and nephews whose father (my brother is a conman). My objective with those kids is to try to be there for them and show them that there is someone in their life who cares about them but isn’t a cluster-B. Hopefully my influence will give them some kind of island in the crazy storm they have found themselves.
Libelle thanks for that – yes we can swim up but man oh man it is hard after lots and lots of hits. I pulled myself up significantly in the relationship so I eventually had the strength to leave though I had not a friend in the world at the time.
So what is hard now? Well it;s hard to see him talk me down around town – people I bang into lower their eyes in embarrassment and give themselves away. And it’s hard to see him present this marvellous persona of how wonderful he is to others – they can’t see the inner snake. They can’t see the torture he abused me with for years. I feel bitter today – it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I couldn’t articulate it for so long. And now that I can – who do I tell? Who will believe me? I have to try to do something with all this pent up anger – I don’t think there is anything I can do against him. He has covered his tracks too well. I will probably feel better tomorrow but today it is hard. Very hard.
I remember my dad pulling me out of bed, I don’t know what time it was but I was fully asleep and whipping the tar out of me. I was probably about 6 years old. I am now 53 and to this day do not know what the spanking was for. That about the time my parents were having difficulties in their marriage and they got a divorce when I was 7. I still wish I knew what the punishment was about?