In this article you can read that all power and energy is directed towards the one who is addicted. My addition: from all the other people in the family (relation). The article writes about persons standing near (sister, brother, lover etc.) wanting to help.
And about the clever (no needy) one:
“I have always been the one who has managed on my own.”
My wonder: was this the one becoming burnout? Thought of a family where the siblings (or even all family members) were allotted different roles. And whose fault was this? Who was to blame for this? he older sibling? The youngest? The one in the midst? Or ANY sibling?
Don't all children have needs? The same fundamental/basic needs? And are entitled getting those filled, irrespective of how many kids there exists in the family, if one or both parents are sick, if one child is born disabled or becomes disabled, has problems etc? (why does a child get problems? Why so many kids if there are many? Do kids come from God, with the stork?)
“I gave and gave without getting anything back, it was a one-way-communication and you can’t manage this long term.”
You break down (or become invisible) or break with the person in question.
When you can manage the situation (if you can, get the help to develop an own self to a certain degree) you at last get strength for yourself.
“When you are co-dependent you want to help, one thinks one is the one who can change the situation, but now I understood that you don’t help the addict through always standing by him/her.“
For the one used to taking care of other people and putting her/his own needs last it’s a big step doing something else then taking responsibility for a grown up person, but letting her(him take responsibility for her/him. Not fixing things for other people, letting them take responsibility for their own stuff, themselves.
The most important isn’t the addict, but that you yourself feel well, you can read in this article.
“I feel much better and have gotten a better self-esteem. I am gladder, my eyes are sparkling. I am doing things more in my own interest, as attending courses, meditate and listen to mental relaxation.”
It’s usual that the one living near an addict gives up her/his own life and focus on the other person (and his/her dependency). At the same time one is struggling with fury, disappointment and hopes. Often the addiction becomes something shameful that the close standing (feels she/he) has to hide, making the co-dependent alone, and thus making her/him having no one to talk to. But one of the most important things a co-dependent can do is finding such a person, a person to talk to.
Realizing the truth is extremely painful struck me all of a sudden when I read this article.
How many children haven’t been taught to “think of other people”…Not being egoistic.
And how many have heard:
“He (she) is so caring (about other people)!”
about a sibling, with a warm voice from a mother? As if this isn’t natural! And as if this doesn’t come naturally when time has come? If the child has been treated with respect and care.
How many haven’t heard parents (mothers) saying:
“He is… She is… and she is…”
Meaning another child isn’t this way!? Meaning this child should be a model or a deterrent example? Or what?
And I think the phenomenon trying to rescue another grown up person can occur in other circumstances too...Not always is about rescuing a person from addictions to drugs...
“The second pillar [on which the idea that we must honor our parents rests] is traditional morality, which has threatened us for thousands of years with premature death if we should dare to deny our parents the honor they deserve, regardless of what they may have done to us.
It is not difficult to understand the dreadful effect this morality of intimidation will have on individuals who were abused when they were small.”
Anja means that isn’t this typical: psychiatry is a science still working from the hypothesis that psychiatric diseases just occur from empty nothingness and everything that can become connected to the disease are consequences of this. One seems to have an immense dislike, aversion, to turn the causal relation around and see the psychiatric disease as effect of something.
I have also though of people who have come into my life again the last time showing to have different “problems,” in different degrees. We are all in good middle age now.
One has broken with her 6 year old brother of some reason.
Another is being on sick-list for being burnout, she was one of the more clever at school (till we were in the beginning of our teens, when I and my family moved to an entirely other part of the country, and I gradually lost all contact with all former mates and friends), I think she became jurist.
A third is trying to quit using snus. And I have wondered already what she was exposed to as a child.
The two first are living alone, with broken relations behind them (quite long relations? One lasted at least for 15 years, resulting in no kids).
I don’t know what I expected getting in contact with old classmates and friends… From a period I have painted rosier than it was??
The effects of sweeping things under the rug or "What's hidden in snow comes up in thaw," as we say, or "everything comes out sooner or later"...
The beliefs that if we don’t talk about it, pretend it didn’t happen or forget it, it disappears, it doesn’t exist any more and doesn’t harm. But if we talk about it it will harm.
[Slightly edited in the evening and a little February 24, seeking, searching the words]. Quickly some notes thrown down.
On my walk this morning I thought on the notion “freedom”… What is this about? What should it be about?
I also thought on the notion autonomy, and further on arrogance and cynicism.
Miller has written about autonomy, for instance in “The Drama of the Gifted Child” (in my translation from the Swedish edition):
“A patient with ‘antennas’ for the unconscious in the therapist will immediately react on this [the therapist's needs of another, weaker person’s childish dependency on him/her]. He will quickly ‘feel’ autonomous and behave in this way if he notices [on a conscious or unconscious way] that it is important for the therapist getting autonomous patients with a secure behavior quickly. But this ‘autonomy’ ends up in depression [sooner or later], because it isn’t genuine.”
I think she is right. Many (all) patients seeking help are used to filling other persons' (parents', caregivers' and their substitutes') needs. Actually the patient isn't to blame for being stuck in depression. But many patients tend to blame themselves, blaming themselves for being failures, impossible.
Miller also writes about manipulative measures concerning depressive patients, and the vicious circle of contempt showing in too many helpers too...
She also writes,about autonomy (in the same book):
“The difficulties to experience and develop own genuine feelings results in a permanent bond that makes a demarcation [liberation] impossible./…/ …the child hasn’t gotten the opportunity to develop an own security.”
And this is often met with contempt for weakness, not empathy or understanding/enlightenment about the roots to this state. Too often also from so called helpers, such as therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists. And thus the person in question is stuck in shame and becomes even more tied up, even more unfree.
Contempt for weakness and instilling shame.
I also thought about needs, bottomless needs, originating in the child’s unfulfilled early needs. And those needs can never become filled afterwards, but you can acknowledge and recognize them and maybe grieve them and then be capable of filling you adult needs… Instead of the childhood needs. Trying to fill our childhood needs always causes problems, bigger or smaller.
It’s important that you don’t belittle or minimize what happened though, or rather this is even crucial for recovery to occur.
What we see (and have seen through history) are needs (for power and wealth) need that are never fulfilled, expressed in different ways, more or less violent. Persons never getting satisfied. And this is nothing we are born with is my true conviction, but has a reason.
Miller also writes about directing our anger (and other feelings) at scapegoats (symbols, symbolically dealing with early things), something that will never liberate us. Only of we direct those feelings at the true and original causes we will become liberated. Which doesn't say that any of this is easy, unfortunately. So if we could prevent this...
Yes, it’s this with xenophobia too… See for instance the American neurologist Jonathan H. Pincus and fascism (“Hitler and Hatred”), and about societal approval… See earlier posting on Pincus on terrorism. And also see earlier postings under the label bigotry.
[Slightly edited and updated February 24]. Anja on the blog Do nothing day writes in the blogposting "Now it is here at last" about a news paper that has started (or rather an old paper that has restarted or become reconstructed; a really needed counterweight to the almost dominant liberal and bourgeois press in Sweden today), something I thought was so well said, starting her post with quoting a journalist, Petter Larsson, when he writes that (in my free translation)
"...the political democracy – that the people are governing itself – demands economical and social equality to become real."
Anja reflects on this and writes (in my free translation)
“…this sentence summarizes a non bourgeois attitude, and the ideological ground on which the socialism and the social democracy rests. The idea that democracy is the inviolable, indivisible atom the society is [or ought to be] built up by – and this democracy demands equality to be working, to be a democracy in whole [If there is no or little equality it's no real democracy]. It says itself.
Democracy is built upon that all human beings have the same possibilities to exercise their democratic rights and duties. If a human being is in the point of an economically or socially weak (disadvantageous) position one easily lands in an unavoidable power relation to the ones having the superior (advantageous) position. This is pretty simple and easy to understand.
So the problem at the bottom, when the bourgeoisie wants to re-establish the society’s inequalities from the time before the democracy’s introduction in Sweden (before 1921) [as they are doing now, also see earlier posting on ‘The Neoliberalism and the school…’], is that the bourgeoisie never has been especially fond of the democracy-concept, something they have tried to pretend, however.”
Addition February 24:Petter Larsson writes (a little freely):
”What we see now is how old, bad ideas have gotten a renaissance inan increasingly arrogant bourgeoisie./…/
When people are starting to be worn out (whacked) they are scolded for being cheaters, work shy and simulants and are chased to work [divide and rule/conquer, polarize people, play them out against each other; and that sort of leadership is unhealthy, not really sound]. And when people have fled from violence and oppression they have been sent back to countries like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Then it’s time to gainsay and formulate alternatives.”
Yes, how well said, what too many leaders and people in power positions (the ruling classes) show is arrogance, he said it! And also contempt for weakness, beating their breasts, as we say, or swaggering (blowing their own trumpets). And they don't hide it today. It's opportune showing this and saying these things out loud. And on top they pretend that what they do is "for our own good"! And play on many people's tendencies in this direction. The people doesn't now what their own good is!? As arrogant leaders know??Quite ironically.
"Don't come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis!!!"
President Barack Obama in argument against the American (and Swedish) right's idea that tax cuts can take us out of the economic crisis.
“I call the violent kind of ‘upbringing’ abuse, not only because children are thus refused the right to dignity and respect as human beings, but also because such an approach to parenting establishes a kind of totalitarian regime in which it is impossible for children to perceive the humiliations, indignities, and disrespect they have been subjected to, let alone to defend themselves against them. These patterns of childhood will inevitably then be adopted by their victims and used on their partners, and their own children, at work, in politics, wherever the fear and anxiety of the profoundly insecure child can be fended off with the aid of external power. It is in this way dictators are born, these are people with a deep-seated contempt for everyone else, people who were never respected as children and thus do their utmost to earn that respect at a later stage with the assistance of the gigantic power apparatus they have built up around them
The sphere of politics is an excellent example of the way in which the hunger for power and recognition is never stilled.”
What are the politicians, for instance the school politicians, playing out? They are convinced that what they are doing is “for our own good”?
I don’t know if I am mirroring a father (my own?) and his attitude: the ones in power thinks that what’s done in school shall be (so) “useful.”
But what do we actually have use of later in life?
What are we learning in school? About ourselves and the world and other people? What are we taught in school about not only school-things but also about those things (ourselves, the society, world, the life, living, being alive and similar things), or - not least about those things?
How are our school politicians brought up? What’s coloring their views? Yes, once again, the most psychologically defended tend to lead?
How do they use their power? A power they “need”? Why do they need it? What sort of need for power is sound, healthy? Are all needs for power unhealthy, unsound?
Are they abusing it, by forwarding suppressed things on the rising generation (when it comes to for instance school, an issue I have been blogging about recently, triggered by the last Pedagogical Magazine I got and things I have read and feel and react at)?
Are they begrudging young people to stay alive (or to recover from being emotionally killed), to develop all their human potentials? I suspect they don’t, because they were robbed from this early in life, and they deny this fact. Which is sad (even tragic) for them, but is, mildly said/expressed, problematic in the power positions they have gotten now.
And another question is why do people elect such politicians? I think it’s because so many people in the world have the same experiences!? And then they applaud all sorts of harder grips, think discipline is needed etc.
Or is it a question of money? (Being without anything else to blame!!?) There are limited amounts of money in the society/world for for instance the school? But is that the truth actually? Quite ironically.
And there are limited amounts of money for a lot of other things?? Are there?
Neoliberalism is another religion, teaching, with its gurus!!?? Is it better than other teachings, religions? What has it caused? Has it made the world better?
I read something interesting, true and worth noting and spreading, on the blog Do nothing day. Anja writes about an interview with a victim for child abuse, and winner of a prize for freedom of speech, where she especially liked the wording
“What I was exposed to as a child has been a non-issue.”
Anja thinks that traumas really are non-issues, not just in health care but in our whole culture. Of course, sufferings are paid attention to when they occur, like for instance when a tsunami happens.But we don’t really know what we shall do with the trauma when it has become “old”. And that’s exactly what’s problematic with traumas – [if] they don’t pass off as quickly as we expect, maybe they never pass off – and chronic states have very low status both in health care and in our culture in general.
And people telling about abuse (that sort of traumas) they experienced as children is really non-issues. And those sorts of traumas are the ones that becomes chronic and later easily or most often becomes added with more traumas. And is also the reason why people have difficulties recovering from later traumas.
But with proper and adequate help a traumatized can recover I think... Unfortunately I think few really get this help. Some sorts of traumas are non-themes exactly as Anja and Sigrun says/writes! Surrounded with a Wall of Silence.
And this is the reason, or an explanation, why people like for instance Jordan Riak and Paula Flowe have problems getting economical support for their work; preventing child abuse to happen!? At the same time people are more than readily prepared paying to other causes.
[Updated later during the day and February 23]. From the article "Världen över trampar nyliberalismen med stora fötter över skolan. En skarp varning för följderna utfärdas i en internationell antologi" or ”The World Over the Neoliberalism is Treading With Big Feet Over the School. A Sharp Warning for the Consequences Issued In An International Anthology”on the anthology Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers and their unions" (Palgrave MacMillan)see page 84 in the Pedagogical Magazine no 1/2009.
In this anthology you can read what happens in the education sector when the neoliberal transformation is put into practice globally. The first part of the book gives an introduction to the neoliberal attack.
“The authors think that this attack is part of a political project with three aims, developed since the beginning of 1980.
Those are
(1) Transferring wealth upwards in the social hierarchy through creating new steering mechanisms – the rich shall become even richer.
(2) Remaking national school systems so that the production of workers for the market’s needs becomes the chief goal – educate for work and not [seeing school and education] as a human right.
(3) Breaking down the public sector’s sole right in the education sector for to create extended possibilities for private profit interests – making education a part of the market via what is called free choices.”
Concepts like charter schools, city academies, and language schools are used as descriptions for what we in Sweden call free schools, a concept that rhetorically has a positive ring and therefore fits into the neoliberal ambiguousness the reviewer writes.
The Bush regime in USA used the so calledTexas-miraclein its campaign for the new conservative school politics passing under the nameNo Child Left Behind. You spontaneously come to think of the Swedish minister of education’s way of characterizing the Swedish school from what he calls scientific truths. I would want to blog about this later.
According to the review there is a mobilization over the whole world against those neoliberal currents in the school.
“In the book it is pointed out how important it is that the mobilization continues and becomes extended internationally.”
I searched on earlier postings with the label rethinking schools and found this about the school ni USA apropos the presumed lousy school in the USA according to Alan Greenspan, who accused it for being the reason for the immensely increased gaps in incomes between CEO s and workers.
Addition after lunch: Apropos our leading school politicians who are honoring knowledge: the chief editor for the Pedagogical Magazine wrote in his last leader about an investigation on a new teacher’s education in Sweden he had just read, by a Sigbrit Franke.
He started his reading with wondering what attitude Franke would adopt towards…
“…the nonchalant, yes, sometimes almost contemptuous, attitude her political employer has shown towards education-scientific research (it had been interesting to see the reactions if for instance Maud Olofsson or Göran Hägglund expressed themselves in a similar manner in their respective areas of responsibility in the government).”
The chief editor thinks Franke’s ambition has been high; wanting to present a suggestion that is “long term durable” and “that isn’t marked by the current prevailing winds in societal and pedagogical debate”.
“That’s not a bad ambition considering that it is exactly those ‘prevailing winds’ in the societal debate that has taken the discussion about education over – often in collision course with what research in the field has shown./…/
As an academic vocational education the teacher’s education shall, as you use to say, rest on scientific ground and well-tried experiences. But it shall not only, Franke maintains in her investigation, be linked up with science – it shall be based on research.”
The leader writer thinks this is a considerable accentuation.
Education and ways of working building on inner motivation will most likely become more effective seen long-term than activities principally based on outer motivation – rewards and punishments.
Addition February 23: The presumed discipline problems in school is that part of the propaganda? See earlier posting.
“Over the last couple of decades a new global consensus about reshaping economies and schools has emerged among the politicians and the powerful of the world. Whereas in the past governments -- preferably democratically elected -- have assumed the responsibility to ensure that all children are educated, schools and universities are now regarded as a potential market. In these educational markets, entrepreneurs set up schools and determine what is taught and how it is taught in order to make a profit. The assumption that schooling is a ‘public good’ is under the most severe attack it has ever endured. Teacher trade unionists are grappling with the increasing privatization of education services, the introduction of business ‘quality control’ measures into education, and the requirement that education produce the kind of minimally-trained and flexible workforce that corporations require to maximize their profits. Among scholars and global justice activists, these reforms being made to the economy and education are often called ‘neoliberal.’ They are experienced almost universally by teachers, children, and parents.
While rich northern nations spend billions of dollars prosecuting wars and have bottomless resources for the exploiting of new gas and oil reserves, the most precious reserves of all -- the world's children -- stand at the back of the line. Nor is there an opportunity to develop education systems so that they can fulfill their true purpose -- to enable people to live a full and creative life, or as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it, to ensure that education is directed ‘toward the full development of the human personality.’
There is an old saying that ‘a lie gets halfway round the world before the truth gets on its running shoes.’ The lie making the running in schooling is that private corporations and entrepreneurs are much more able to make education work for the poor than teachers, communities, and their elected representatives in government. And when one listens to politicians and reads in the media about the benefits of bringing the private market and business methodologies into education, one can often feel as if teachers have hardly begun to tie the laces on their running shoes. The voices for privatization and neoliberalism have virtually the whole of the world's media at their disposal to speed them on their way.
Rebutting the ‘private good, public bad’ propaganda is complicated by neoliberalism's hijacking of ideals and terms borrowed from those who have spent their lives campaigning for education for all and opportunities for the poor and oppressed. Hearing news reports and politicians' statements of lofty goals, one might think there is nothing closer to the hearts of the international financiers, accountants, and politicians than the needs of the poor. It is only when you look at the actual effects of the policies of world financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank on ‘developing’ countries and their education systems that you realize that nothing could be further from the truth. The World Bank's structural adjustment programs have destroyed perfectly adequate education systems in countries like Zambia and are threatening to do the same in many others. Neoliberal reports, websites, and corporate financial bulletins with titles like ‘Why school fees are good for the poor,’ show that when it serves their purpose, neoliberal gurus are quite willing to ditch the rhetoric of social justice and equality and lay bare the true face of their education policy.”
Written by LOIS WEINER is a Professor at New JerseyCityUniversity and a member of the New Politics editorial board.MARY COMPTON is Past President of the UK National Union of Teachers, the largest teacher union in Europe.
"Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world."
“This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”
In this blog I want to explore the effects of childhood experiences on individual lives, the health (not only the emotional/psychological, but also, and not least, the bodily/somatic), the society, why people seek themselves to power positions, the effect of childhood on politics.
With the ideas that imbue Alice Miller's work and writing.
And sometimes just share things I have read and come across and I agree with and couldn't have said better myself.
I work full time with young people since many years, as teacher in music (piano pedagogue), and am interested in these things, both privately/personally and professionally.
But my time is limited to write and blog, even if it probably doesn't look so.
I will devote myself to loud thinking a lot here I think. And this blog is also a way for me to collect texts, facts, links, sites I want to save for further use maybe.
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Moving Interruptus, and Why Hospitals Suck
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In the event, June turned out to be the horrible month I had expected --
but June also proved unexpectedly resourceful. It was horrible for reasons
I hadn'...
Påskuppropet mot sjukförsäkringar
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Idag var det manifestation. Mycket bra. Jag var där. Mycket bra.
Men någonting gnagde mig på vägen hem. För stämningen var mer uppgiven än
arg, och det ä...
Arbeidet med ny side er i gang!
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Nå har arbeidet med domeneregistrering og nytt design startet og jeg gleder
meg til jeg kan vise dere resultatet! Det skal bli bra å få Psykiskbloggen
over...
Click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site.
Books I am referring to on this blog:
Bosch, Ingeborg: "Rediscovering the True Self"
Freyd, Jennifer J.: "Betrayal Trauma - The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse" ISBN 0-647-06806-8
Jenson, Jean: "Reclaiming Your Life" ISBN 91-46-17409-5
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Hvordan krenkede barn blir syke voksne" ISBN 82-15-00713-9 ("How Abused Children Become Unhealthy Adults")
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Inscribed bodies - Health Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse" ISBN 0-7923-7019-8
Lewis Herman, Judith: "Trauma and Recovery - From Domestic Violence to Political Terror" ISBN 086358430-6 (svensk översättning finns: ”Trauma och tillfrisknande” ISBN10: 9197263133, ISBN13: 9789197263139, Förlag: Göteborgs Psykoterapi Institut)
Miller, Alice: "Den dolda nyckeln" ISBN 91-46-15747-6 (The Untouched Key)
Miller, Alice: "Det självutplånande barnet och sökandet efter en äkta identitet" ISBN 91-7643-559-8 (The Drama of the Gifted Child)
Miller, Alice: "Du skall icke märka - variationer över paradistemat" ISBN 91-46-14374-2 (Thou Shalt Not Be Aware)
Miller, Alice: "Riv tigandets mur - sanning byggd på fakta" ISBN 91-46-16022-1 (Breaking Down the Wall of Silence)
Miller, Alice: "The Body Never Lies - The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting" ISBN 0-393-06065-9
Miller, Alice: "The Truth Will Set You Free - Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self" ISBN 0-465-04585-5
Miller, Alice: "Vägar i livet - sju berättelser" ISBN 91-46-17414-1 (Paths of Life - Seven Scenarios)
Pincus, Jonathan H.: "Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill?" ISBN 0-393-32323-4
Children baking...
Look, the joy in the children?? Enjoying what they are doing? (illustration from one of the books by Astrid Lindgren, click on the picture to go to her site).
"...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.” "Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection." (Andrew Vachss)
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." -- "Common Sense", Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776
"Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world." (Albert Einstein)
"Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow men in the last fifty years... Given these and other conditions of contemporary civilization, how can one claim that the ‘normal’ man is sane?" (R.D. Laing, 1967)
"Organizations take on characteristics of the people running them./.../ There's always pressure within groups to conform, anyway. The top monkey exerts the most pressure." (Steve Thomas)
"Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself." (Erich Fromm in The Sane Society, 1955)
When a big kid hits a little kid, we call it bullying. When an adult hits another adult, we call it assault. When the adults in a family hit each other we call it battering or domestic violence. When an adult hits a child we call it discipline..
“Blindness and lack of connectedness whether truly needed or not, are ultimately tragic solutions to life. These adaptations keep us from knowing ourselves and others fully. We end up fragmented both internally and externally – impoverished spiritually and socially /…/ it seriously constrains our human potential /…/ Survivors of childhood sexual abuse and betrayal blindness have learned to cope by being disconnected internally so as to manage a minimal kind of external connection. But with adult freedom and responsibility come the potential to break silence, to use voice and language to promote internal integration, deeper external connection, and a social transformation, Through communication – integration within ourselves and connection between individuals – we can become whole; embodied, aware, vital, powerful”(Jennifer Freyd in the chapter “Removing Blinders, Becoming Connected” in her book “Betrayal Trauma…”).
“If you are very strong you have to be very kind” (Pippi Longstocking)
“In psychiatry, too, what a person says and writes can’t be divorced from who he is and how he lives.” (Thomas Szasz).
“The method of Marshall Rosenberg is very nice and may be helpful to people who have not be[been??] severely mistreated in childhood. The latter ones however must find their pent up, LEGITIMATE rage and free themselves from the lies of our moral system. As long as they don't do this, their body will continue to scream for the truth with the help of symptoms" (Alice Miller)
“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for" (Henry van Dyke)
“‘I have never met a man,’ said Grandma Georgina, ‘who talks so much absolute nonsense!’ ‘A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men,’ Mr Wonka said.” (Roald Dahl)
Look at his facial expression! Angrily carving… The stubborn, disobedient child... Or? How does he feel there in his joiner's workshop? (click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site).
About the ACE-study:
"It's not just water under the bridge."
ACEs are surprisingly common among people of all social strata, and have far-reaching consequences. For many people, it's not possible to "just get over it".
What's an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience i.e. "skadlig barndomserfarenhet")? Adverse Childhood Experience is growing up experiencing any of the following conditions in the household prior to age 18:
1. Recurrent physical abuse
2. Recurrent emotional abuse
3. Contact sexual abuse
4. An alcohol and/or drug abuser in the household
5. An incarcerated household member
6. Someone who is chronically depressed, mentally ill, institutionalized, or suicidal
I don't like being photographed, and don't have many photos of myself but here are some, though fairly old! Click on the picture to see two more pictures.
I was born in Umeå in Västerbotten, Sweden, and moved during childhood stepwise to Skåne in the south, and at last back to just below the middle of Sweden where I still live.
I am educated both as piano-pedagogue and church-musician and have a full time employment as piano-pedagogue. Church-music is side work.
I am interested in a lot of things and will blog about things I read, psychology, society, history, nature, my work too hopefully, and my everyday life… And both in Swedish and English.
This is a blog, with my (sometimes very) personal - and loud reflections on what I read, see, hear, react on, feel for - and not feel for and want to explore. I don't work in this field at all, but I have my reflections and thoughts nevertheless and have read fairly a lot I think, and here I reflect upon all this. I am searching myself forward. I link sites for information, if one want to know more about what I am talking/writing about and what is mentioned in the texts I am citing and referring to. And I link sites not least for my own sake. So it isn’t sure I agree with all that is linked on this blog, that's not why I link sites. I can agree with parts of what is linked, bigger or smaller, from almost everything to almost nothing.
I hope those who perhaps find my blog are reading everything here critically - including what stands in what I link.
And when it comes to therapy and all (self)help-concepts I think one shall be very careful. Maybe as a friend said it:
“Meaningful critical thinking.
Psychotherapists have been claiming that they have invented better treatment methods since Sigmund Freud in 1897. The amount of psychological distress in the world hasn’t become less. There’s money to be made from attracting more clients, whether the therapy works or not.
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