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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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.
Hopeforjoy, thank you so very much. This, too, shall pass.
OxD, this is something that needs to be taken into account when addressing the definition (or, REdefinition) of sociopathy. It’s not just the immediate family/friends that are damaged, but literally hundreds, depending upon their sins against mankind. The “ripple” effect, I think it’s called.
OMG, it was the beatings and humiliation from my childhood? Wow! That makes sense. I find my mind goes ‘blank’ when I’m dealing with a bully. I stand there like a ‘deer in the headlights’.
My mom used to beat me over the head cause I didn’t move fast enough. She played ‘beat the clock’ to get us to church on time, or get me to school on time. So I got beat. One time she slammed the car door on my friend’s thumb fracturing it. Why? Cause mom was ‘beating the clock’ to get in church on time. My poor friend sat through the church service with a broken finger.
My dad always told me that every word out of my mouth is bullshit. He was never on my side. He would always side with the person who wronged me. One time the obnoxious neighbor boy wrote stuff on the sidewalk about me. He wrote it in chalk on sidewalk in front of our house. My dad grounded me. This same kid cranked phone called my dad to claim he was sleeping with me. My dad was ready to hang me by my toes. I found out who called. It was this same obnoxious kid I hated. This kid would burp and fart in front of girls. I got the kid’s phone number and gave it to my dad to call the parents. My dad grounded me anyway. I remember I was stunned speechless by this.
My third grade teacher hated me after she was questioned by the school principal. My teacher didn’t watch the class entering the classroom after recess cause she was always 10 steps behind the class and she was always linked arm-in-arm with her favorite students. Some unruly boys took advantage of her lack-of and shoved me head-first into a desk. I passed out, and had to get 14 stitches on my head. The teacher hated me after that. And, she picked on me every chance she got. I told my dad. He asked me what did I do to her? Cause I must have done something to her! My mind went blank. I couldn’t think of one word to say in my defense.
My mom would humiliate me in public. One time she said it was time for me to get a trainer bra. I was a tomboy and was embarrassed at the idea of girly stuff like bra’s, but ok I guess… She also filled the shopping cart with things for herself. At the check-out counter she found she didn’t have enough money. She threw the bras at me in anger saying I don’t need them anyway, and that I don’t have anything. People were staring and I took it personally like they looked badly at me. And I felt like there was a neon sign flashing on my forehead “flat chested, flat chested’. Again I was stunned speechless.
@kerisee04
My dad too lead leading questions during his lectures.
He didn’t want honest answers. He wanted the answers he wanted to hear.
I told him the truth. He yelled ‘don’t give me that bullshit!’ while his middle finger thumped repeatedly on the kitchen table.
He said I did it cause I was out to get him.
I explained that I didn’t do it for that reason. I did it cause I knew I could get away with it.
He would not let me leave that ‘interrogation’ until I said I was out to get him. He started to smile but wasn’t done with me. He then wanted me to say his boss was out to get him. I said that too. Yes, your boss is OUT to get you. My dad was happy and he smiled and let me leave to go to my room.
Dear Jeannie,
I’m sorry that you endured that humiliation as a child rather than having nurturing parents–even good parents sometimes humiliate their children, but to have to endure soul wrecking deliberate humiliation and not feel that you had a parent to protect you is extremely hurtful.
Recognizing that being raised with that kind of dismissive or devaluation can make you think you deserve to be treated that way. It soul rapes you and destroys your sense of worth.
We can’t go back and have a “do over” of our childhood, but we can as our “adult selves” nurture and console our inner “child self” and make decisions based on logic as well as emotion that we will not ever accept that kind of denigrating behavior again.
Sure, your boss may be a jerk, and you let a few snide remarks slide over your back rather than get fired, but you DO NOT HAVE TO LET THOSE SNIDE REMARKS PENETRATE YOUR SOUL. He is after all, just your boss, not your lover.
Or the clerk at the bank or the store may be a jerkk wad, but if they act like it we don’t have to let it “hurt our feelings” we can let it “slide off our backs like water off a duck’s back” and go on with our lives. In the big scheme of things it isn’t even important.
In our personal lives, though, we do not have to sit still and allow anyone to abuse us, to denigrate us, to be a parasite in our lives and to emotionally or physically abuse us. We can set reasonable boundaries and enforce them,, and not feel that we deserve less than HONESTY and RESPECT because we do not deserve less than the best!
Keep on the road to healing Jeannie, it is rough at times, and we fall into some pits we didn’t see once in a while, but over all, it just gets better the farther we go and the more we learn. God bless ((((Hugs))))
jeannie812
there is no relationship with people like that..they just just want to be surrounded by yes people…no disagreeing with them because they are right…total bullshit…there’s no space for your own thoughts or opinions..it’s a form of bullying. Don”t stand for it….but when it’s your father!!!! and your mother!!!!! very hard…very hard.
Separate yourself out from them…the hardest most essential task of teenage life….and yes I’m only addressing it now in my 50’s!! I rebelled so hard I din’t realise I was still reacting to the biotch…but no more internal critical voice of my mother telling me I’m this and that…no more…enough is enough…peace at last x
I can so relate to this article and everyone’s posts.
justaboutealed said “a lover who hooks into your childhood drama (for me, being love bombed and dumped repeatedly by a N mom) will always be more compelling than a healthy love”
You put into words what I experienced with the P, love bombed with attention and gifts then to the devalue part of how I didn’t deserve or appreciate the attention or gifts. This was the exact dynamics with the N mom. I guess it is not too bizarre I ended up with P who was the perfect actor to play the role of the characters of my dysfunctional past.
I need and want to get past this pattern and stop trying to fix childhood hurts.
I was spanked with a leather belt into my early teens and yes humiliating but I would have rather had that than the spirit crushing, self esteem busting lectures (that I was a hard person to love) given by my mother…and these dreadful lectures were always after she had given me a gift or something I had wanted or needed.
The standard comment/instructions from the N mom for folks taking care of me or if I went to stay with cousins or anyone when I was younger was they had permission to “beat my ass” if I did anything wrong. I can’t imagine saying that as a mother and would never allow anyone to lay a hand on my children. Then again this was the 60’s early 70’s and I guess the beating of children’s butts regardless if they are your own children or someone else’s was a shared and accepted community project…nice.
I never once spanked my kids and they turned out just fine.
The saying “it takes a village to raise a child” well that whole village had permission to spank me. Being a shy, small for my age girl I was in constant fear of displeasing one of the “angry villagers” so to speak. I lost myself back then and the pattern to “always please”, “walk on eggshells” and to take the blame for any wrong doing regardless if it was my fault or not is so deeply ingrained I am not sure if I can ever fully be a healthy person and in a healthy relationship.
bulletproof-very good advice in your last post btw.
Anyway my emotional maturity is stunted…what I figure the P and I had in common. yuck
My response to Pearl’s post: Yes, the “love” target (woman) may have suffered abuse or humiliation or emotional neglect in early childhood, but I later found out from the sociopath himself, by phone, he was physically assaulted by his father at age 5. It wasn’t a pity ploy, either, because he said he had already seen a psychologist about it. The insight being HIS emotional nonempathy or inability to express affection or engage in pair bonding were distorted defense mechanisms in his brain…the blocks you speak of in reference to the abused.
In other words, he had a wounded soul, and also exhibited some traits of dissociative identity disorder as well as those of the sociopaths. I think the wounds in my soul were attracted to his – a fatal hand in a potential romance. I thank that it is plausible [(for the sociopathic male who willing to get intense counselling and help to break down his blocks (hypnosis, even) ], that he could learn to love and be in touch with his inner child who he is protecting from being wounded again. Women burn themselves over and over by thinking their guidance or tough love will help a sociopath..it won’t and you’ll end up playing the punitive parent he hates in the firstplace. The man has to have had enough failures to want to change and in my guy’s case I hope he has a close encounter with God and that his soul be healed. “He restoreth my soul.” (Psalm 23)
How do you trust again after this nightmare? 🙁
Far, you don’t. at least I don’t. it sucks, but in a good way, because we can’t be blindsided anymore.
Do you ever love again? I feel I will recover but I know I will never be the same. After every other break up I have slways fully moved on once I found someone new to make me happy. But now, after I have danced with the devil, I dont think I even want to attend the party any longer. I feel hopeless….