It didn't happen very often...

picture taken from here.

Wondering loudly: The old woman on a mother pulling her and her siblings hairs and giving slight blows in the face:

“It didn’t happen very often!”

Amazed: was it so harmless really? Didn’t it lead to anything? Were there no consequences?

After how many blows is the limit passed to when it becomes harmful?

What about questioning oneself? Ones fear for making things wrong? Wondering why about things? Ones bad self esteem and confidence? Not attributing (tillskriva) everything ones character (i.e. blaming oneself)? And doesn’t this denial have consequences – which, not only for the person who experienced this abuse first, but later for that person’s children? This is guaranteed not passed further in any manner?

The reaction:

“It didn’t happen very often”

came so quickly, as a reflex almost, and with a very sure voice.

This old woman now suffers from a lot of diseases, for instance muscle rheumatism. What is this rheumatism about? If you have gone a whole life with keeping things suppressed, in check and control, don’t you see effects sooner or later? A pressure and tension on the body day after day, year after year. Her two youngest siblings suffered and suffers from shaky hands, you can (could) see it when they wrote. And this old woman also has a scoliosis, but a milder form? Has had ache in her back, and had it when the kids were small (psycho-somatic?). She also ate very little, thinking of her kids, the totally sacrificing mother... I wonder if she suffer from a mild form of anorexia too, always saying: "I am not hungry!", with an excusing smile however. But as child this is not fun hearing. Of many different reasons probably.

I know of a man (an acquaintance of mine) who got rheumatoid arthritis when he was round 75 years. I think he too got beaten as a child, by his mom…

Both the woman and the man above know about these things, but they don’t rebel or question it really or at all, but belittle and minimize it. To the factual memories no real feelings are connected? Are these feelings so extremely painful and so extremely scary still, so bringing them up is too much, they have to keep them down and sacrifice their well-being and their true, real seeing and perceiving of the world?

So how little harmful are such things? Even though they “didn’t happen very often”? Because already the first blow was so painful and thus damaging because already the feelings from that first blow had to become suppressed? And that fact is the sign of HOW damaging it is, even this first little blow?

This is what for instance Jenson calls denial. As minimizing (bagatellisera eller förminska): you know what happened but you see it as having less of an impact than it did. You can say things like

"Other people had it much worse than I did."

"I know he (or she or they)...but it only happened sometimes (see above)."

And this sort of denial can be added with Resisting (göra motstånd): you know what happened but you believe it is irrelevant to your adult life. You can say things like:

"It was a long time ago."

"That was then, this is now."

"That's just how it was (back then)."

Balancing (uppväga/balansera): you know what happened but you think that the "good" balanced it out. One can say things like

"We got everything we needed."

"But they were good people."

Excusing/justifying (rättfärdiga, rättfärdiggöra, försvara): you admit to the past but find rationales for what hapened. You might say:

"I (or we) deserved it."

"Everyone did it in those days."

"It was all he (or she or they) knew."

"We knew they loved us, they just couldn't show it."

"They did the nest they could."

And your denial has no other consequences than for yourself? Especially if you have children and even grandchildren??? Wouldn't this person be even more eager and interested in breaking the chain, breaking the vicious circle?? Why shall a person with no own children do this work? I wonder quite ironically.