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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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.
one/joy_step_at_a_time
farwronged – you have to give it time. first we have to go through some healing to feel comfortable to take that risk again.
spaths effect almost everything – our values, our beliefs, our ideas, hopes and dreams; that’s a lot of rebuilding to do. we have to give it time, and we have to work at it. since we have no experience to pull on, no transferable skills so to speak, in recovering from the experience of spathy, it takes time to figure it out and forge our own paths.
one/joy_step_at_a_time
farwronged – please take a look at Kathy Hawk’s articles about trust (the list of her articles are accessed through the list of authors on the left).
skylar
Far,
I can love. I just can’t trust anymore. You can love someone and not trust them.
Ox Drover
Dear Far wronged,
You speak of “finding some new to make you happy”—-I think our happiness must come from inside ourselves, not from someone else. I was fortunate to have a good marriage for 20 years, and he died….unfortunately, too much of my happiness depended on him, and when he was gone, I was devastated to the point that I became vulnerable to a psychopath who swooped in to “make me happy”—but I realized eventually that WE must make ourselves happy, then SHARE that happiness with someone else, but not let all our happiness, our security depend on someone else or someTHING else either….ultimately whether we are happy or unhappy, satisfied or unsatisfied, content or discontent, depends on what is within ourselves.
lesson learned
Far,
I completely understand how you feel. I’m out just five months and I’m still deeply grieving, still quite isolated and my recovery is taking longer than I want it too. I don’t have a man and I’m far from jumping my ass right out into the world with a WEEE HAAAAWWW attitude and think it’s all good now. Because it’s not. ANd there ain’t ONE man that’s gonna fix what I need to fix for myself. You’re exactly where you need to be for where you’ve been. You will love again, it will just take time and this is actually a GOOD time for you, because then you can fine tune your radar, get to know yourself a lot better, feel better…it will come. I promise. Just be as patient with yourself as you can. This is a VERY painful experience. Give yourself the grace and mercy you are due for what you’ve been through, and do it at YOUR OWN PACE.
LL
I_survived_The_Bastard
Far – I agree totally with LL. This is what I learned, that we can’t seek happiness through another person. We have to take responsibility for our lives and ourselves, learn more about ourselves and learn to love ourselves, be happy with our selves etc. 8 years out I’m still working on and learning this. Only you can make you happy.
As LL says it has been an awful experience for you and you need to take it one day at a time, treat yourself well, praise yourself, work out who exactly you are, as having been with an spath, your sense of identity has probably disappeared. Start rebuilding your life, as you want it. You have a fantastic chance to become what you’ve always wanted to be. Without my spath I wouldn’t be the person I am now and in some ways I’m grateful for it. I’m much happier with myself. But it takes time, love yourself and praise yourself for every little step you take to the new you.
Recovering
I know…some days are better than others. This week has been rough for me. Im so unhappy, all I want to do is sleep. Ive been feeling so used. Eventhough thats exactly what spath did and intended to do from the beginning sometimes I still find myself trying to understand these people. A normal guy would feel a little guilty or think of me from time to time at least, even if he is a real jerk. I hate that I cant wire my brain to forget him as his forgot me the moment I said it eas over. Spath doesnt deserve to live amongst good people. He doesnt deserve to be on earth at all. Ox says as happy as he may seem hes really not but as long as hes duping the next victim and conning he is happy for the moment anyway. Ive never had this hard a time processing a break up. Even the love of my life split wasnt this hard. I just want to forget I ever met him. Sure this experience has been a blessing in disguise but the pain seems to last forever.
Anger
Pain
Resentment
Disappointment
Hoplessness
Depression
And anger again….this has been my mood this week its like a cycle.
The bastard is probabky using my words ir expressions of love with the new vuctims thats just how unoriginal they are. I read a letter he wrote to somone and he used some dualouge from a tyler perry film. Ha! What a corn ball. Its been almost 3 months and no progression. Ive only duscovered more secrets and perverted characterustics.
I shoukdnt feel a thing for him now that I know what he is. Hes actually pathetuc.
Louise
farwronged:
I hear you. It seems I take about five steps forward and two back. I have good days and then it hits me again out of nowhere. I think that is part of the normal healing process. My first emotion is also anger. Can’t seem to shake that one and sometimes I am afraid it’s going to ruin other parts of my life.
You will be OK, it is just going to take time. I know sometimes it seems like it is taking way too long, but you will get there. Hugs.
I_survived_The_Bastard
farwronged – I posted a few days ago about anger (can’t remember which thread) and finding an outlet to express it. Donna says that she ended up punching her pillow on several occasions. I took a hammer to the ‘martial bed” & found that a very good release. If you can find a legal, safe, way to express your anger you will feel so much better. Put his picture on a dart board, get a punch bag, take a hammer to anything he’s left behind. For me it had to be a really physical release. You have lived under stress for so long it has probably built up in your body and there will be toxcins that needs to be eliminated.
candy
Farwronged – Unlike spath we cannot switch our emotions off like a light switch. So we still ‘feel’, even though it’s ‘all over’.
Once we are out of the relationshit (and what we thought was real starts to unravel) we are left in a state of limbo.
It just takes some t-i-m-e, and that could be 3 months, 3 years, 30 years……who knows? But it DOES get easier eventually. We need to process it in our own time. I still get aha and WTF moments 7 months on. So cut yourself some slack, deal with it a day at a time.