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- Barriers in the mind keep us from learning new information, putting it to good use, and shedding old, outdated behaviors.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’m just trying to accept that this is a very dangerour man who doesnt think he is dangerous. He thinks he is loving and a victim of his father and his wives who didn’t love him sufficiently in his view. That blankness haunts me. Like noone was there. Time to pray and get into my pjs. I am safe thankfully you’re right thanks truthspeak x
TeaLight, you wrote: “this is a very dangerour man who doesnt think he is dangerous.” It’s not that he “doesn’t think he is dangerous,” so much as he doesn’t CARE whether he is, or he isn’t.
I identify with what you’re experiencing – it’s a lot of information that is sad, frightening, and dismal. “Normal” people don’t do these things to one another, and if they DO harm someone else, they have the ability to feel regret and remorse. Spath behaviors, actions, and choices don’t FIT into our systems of beliefs – WE wouldn’t set someone up to tear them down, so anyone that WE love or care about should live within those same rules.
So, as we’re emerging, we want answers. We want to know WHY they did the things that they chose to do. We want to know what was wrong with US that they did those things. We want to know what their motivations were. We want (and, need) so much input that, as it comes down, it’s like this avalanche of information that is just too fantastic, too painful, too hurtful, too sad, and too infuriating to process, all at once.
Every day that passes with “No Contact” is another day of recovery and healing, even though it may not “feel” like it is. It’s one more day for us to process some of this information – to sort it out and accept it as factual.
One of the valuable truths that my counselor taught me to consider when this avalanche of information threatened to bury me alive was that “Feelings are NOT facts.” That is not to suggest that our “feelings” are invalid – indeed, they are real and visceral! But, with spath entanglements, the “feelings” are based upon illusions and lies and, therefore, not upon facts.
One day at a time, TeaLight. Sometimes, it’s going to be one minute at a time. In a soothing tone and out loud (if it helps), tell yourself, “I can get through next sixty seconds. After that, I’ll work on the next sixty seconds, but I’m not going to worry about that until this minute passes.”
Brightest blessings
That’s actually it truthspeak, he doesn’t care if he harms he doesn’t engage enough to care. It is overwhelming having to sift all the information as you say. The mindset is so utterly destructive and utterly stupid from a non psychopathic perspective. This man is a reckless risk taker. He is risking his second marriage second child criminal charges his job, by his actions. But there is no shame, no fear. He just gambles on me protecting him from shame, fear of his revenge, or because he wants to believe I love him rather than despise him as I now do.
I read somewhere that gambling is an attempt to pre-empt destiny. Maybe his high stakes risk taking shows unconscious or semi conscious awareness of where he’ll end up. He’s a derailing train of a human being.
I was thinking today about how 8 years ago I gave up smoking after 13 years. I was utterly sick of the smell the headaches the amount of wasted time and money. The cough, the constant worry about cancer. Alan Carr’s book said if you approach not smoking as self punishment or self denial you’ll never make it. The trick was to know you are free to smoke yourself to death if you chose. So you just chose. With that I stopped entirely in 2 days, because I saw stopping as wholly my free choice and liberating. That will be my attitude if I struggle with no contact. I can pick up the phone now to the abuser if I chose. But I chose not to, it’s just poison.
TeaLight,
great analogy between smoking and relationshit. Isn’t it just like that. We can choose to return to the spath knowing we are doomed or we can choose life. Life is for living TeaLight
Tea light, GREAT analogy between that and smoking. I too quit smoking after a life time of smoking…everyone in my family did, and I had “tried” several times to quit, KNOWING I WOULD GO BACK TO SMOKING…and of course I did go back. This time I made up my mind, like you did and I QUIT. I sometimes still want one but I tell myself, NOT NOW.
Once I ALMOST picked up a pack a friend had left at my work shop, and the thought went through my head, “they will never know” and I actually touched the pack, but then put it back down as I said “yes, but I will know.” I think that is as close as I came to going back, but I intend to stay smoke free the rest of my life. Because THAT IS MY CHOICE. And you can stay P-FREE because that is your choice.
Thanks to everyone re: comments about being strong and yes to Truthspeak. I will give the counselor another go. I start on the medication for depression tomorrow so we will see how the journey continues. I’ve taken to writing down 3 things that I am grateful for daily to strengthen my “attitude of gratitude” It does help I also am saying a mantra every morning when I wake….”something wonderful is going to happen today”. It actually has been happening. Small wonderful things in my day that I can connect to having claimed that at the start of my day. I feel hope that someday I am going to be free of the memory of the love I thought I had in this man. I know this……he is not going to kill me and my spirit will survive. I know that much pain or no pain.
Revelation, it sounds like you have a PLAN, and are working that PLAN and that is a very good thing.
A positive attitude and an attitude of GRATITUDE are very important. NOTICING those small things that are good is very important in helping us realize we do have blessings in our lives, however small they may be.
The medication will take a while to kick in and you may not even realize it is helping, but one day you will just realize you feel BETTER…
The same with the counseling. It is a painful process to learn and probe inside yourself, but one day it clicks and starts to feel right.
Making up a “tool chest” to use to “fix” yourself is a process and then USING those tools takes time and work, so give yourself a BIG TOWANDA for getting off to a good start! God bless.
Revelation, best of luck with ther medication. I started on 20mg of citalopram a month ago, dropped down to 10mg after a few days of intense headaches and nausea, and there are pockets of more bearable periods in the day now, say an hour or 30 mins 2 or 3 times a day where I feel like I’m actually alive rather than the walking / slumping dead!
Dear OxD; Truthspeak and all of my other friends here at LF. One thing I know for sure. I would not be this far along the path if I had not found this forum. I didn’t know that I even had to do all of this stuff. Some things are divine in nature indeed. Thanks to all of you for your compassion and for your humanity.
With a grateful heart;
Revelation
I LOVE the analogy that Tea Light used to illustrate the choice we make in whether to contact spath or not!I’ve never been a smoker,but can still understand to some extent,ex:dieting or other life choices.
And,like Revelation and everyone else here,I really do appreciate the support here at LF!My computer was down for about a week and I couldn’t come here for that time to read or post;and I’ve got to admit that since I’m alone most of the time,I felt jittery!