Child abuse...

Things I threw down in my diary after starting to read about a child's experiences:

"Pushed into a corner. Siblings with alloted roles. A parent exercising power. Acting her/his things out? Things that had nothing to do with the child/ren.

Breaking the child's will?

Jenson wrote in her book about abuse of a more subtle sort and thus more difficult to see or grasp [as she seems to see it. Now I see in the Introduction that she writes that because her experiences of growing up in a dysfunctional family * weren't so apparent - she wasn't beaten and usually not shouted at either - it took a long time for her to understand how her childhood had affected her. Not until she had been in traditional therapies for years she discovered how you can uncover experiences that had been unconscious. Then she understood why and how childhood experiences still affected (disrupted, disturbed, interrupted, spoiled, marred) her life].

Reacting at scapegoats only give temporary relief..."

I had a father coming home and acting his irritation, anger, frustration out... Incapable of being present really... He was never really there. Impatient. Have I adopted parts of this? Though in a female way? (But I have been admired for my enormous patience in many circumstances, for instance in my work...)

Was he ever aware of this or even wondering over this? Did he ever question this side of his? Did he understand the roots for this ever? Did he want to understand? Did he have to understand?

Are other people forced to understand because their alternatives/options are none? And other people have the possibility to come home and pour things out and thus stay "healthy" and sane?

He died in malign melanoma when he was almost 83, 5 years. He was never a sunbather. Stress research has shown connections between depression and skin cancer... Searched on this on the net and found this.

Links between diabetes and depression see here for instance.

Also see the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (the ACE-study) on almost 18, 000 people.

* Jenson has written in her book about the results of just changing dysfunctional behavior to a functional; that it too often doesn't change so much (however a method that is most often used, i.e. you just understand these things with your brain). The feelings are often the same or even worse after this sort of therapy... You need to understand these things on a deeper level, get help understanding them on a deeper level. If you have to do this work on your own it will take a lot of time...

But physicians like Vincent Felitti, Anna Luise Kirkengen and Eli Berg for instance have shown that just giving a patient the opportunity to speak up, break silence can lead to tremendous relief and recovery.

Corporal punishment and more about the Wall of Silence…

Primula Veris or gullviva.

Miller writes about a new law passed by the German parliament in July 2000 prohibiting (förbjudande) corporal punishment, as another decisive (avgörande) step toward the humanization of our personal relations and the removal of barriers in the mind at page 131-132 in her book “The Truth Will Set You Free…”:

“Significantly, it [the law prohibiting corporal punishment] owes its existence to politicians and lawyers, most of them women. Psychotherapists and psychologists (male and female) have been notably less committed in this respect, although they are confronted every day with the consequences of childhood traumas. Twenty years ago Sweden’s therapists actually campaigned against such an initiative, contending that a ban would so antagonize parents that they would take it out on their children in other ways. As I demonstrated in The Drama of the Gifted Child, the career of a psychologist begins in childhood with the desperate attempt to understand the parents without judging them. We should not remain bogged down in the fears of our childhood. As adults we must summon up the courage to judge, to call evil by its name and not tolerate it.

The much-needed change in our mentality will take place in stages. Children today who are never beaten will think and feel differently in twenty years from the way we think and feel today. This is my firm conviction. They will have eyes and ears for the suffering of their own children, and this will do more to effect change than statistical surveys ever could. My optimism is based on the principle of prevention, of forestalling violence in childhood by means of legislation and parent education.

I am often asked what we can do to help those people already seriously harmed by the processes I have been describing. Do they all have to undergo lengthy courses of therapy? The quality of therapy has nothing to do with the time it takes. I know people who have spent decades going to psychoanalysts and are still ignorant of what went on in their childhood because the analysts themselves are reluctant to venture onto that terrain in search of their own childhood realities.”

A friend mentioned another expression of surrounding a person with the Wall of Silence, namely something called “shunning”:

“Shunning is the act of deliberately avoiding association with, and habitually keeping away from an individual or group. It is a sanction against association often associated with religious groups and other tightly-knit organisations and communities. Targets of shunning can include, but are not limited to apostates, whistleblowers, dissidents, people classified as ‘sinners’ or ‘traitors’ and other people who defy or who fail to comply with the standards established by the shunning group(s). Shunning has a long history as a means of organisational influence and control.”

Translated to Swedish it would be (my amateur translation):

“Undvikande/hålla sig undan är den handling för att avsiktligt undvika sammankoppling med och att vanemässigt hålla sig undan en individ eller grupp. Det är en sanktion för att undvika sammanlänkning/sammankoppling ofta associerad med religiösa grupper och andra tätt sammanslutna organisationer och gemenskaper. Föremålen för undvikande kan inkludera, men är inte begränsade till avfällingar, visselblåsare, dissidenter, människor klassificerade som ’syndare’ och ’förrädare’ och andra människor som trotsar/utmanar eller som misslyckas med att åtlyda etablerade normer hos den grupp (de grupper) som undviker. Undvikande har en lång historia som ett sätt att organiserat påverka och kontrollera.”

This is what occur in many families to make a child comply, become obedient?

Jenson writes about how this may feel in the child, being isolated, lonely, having nobody in the world.

At pages 61-62 in the Swedish edition of her book, she writes that the child feels (and shall feel) that her/his family doesn’t want to have with it to do, thus the child feels that no one else will have with it to do, isolated, lonely and that it will remain so the rest of its life, unless... A state that will last for ever.

If her/family doesn’t like her/him, no one will like her/him ever.

If her/his family doesn’t want to know of the child, no one will want to know of it ever, not outside the family either. The child will not be wished by anyone ever.

If its family is critical towards it, it isn’t just so that ‘all’ dislike you but they will always do.

So this way of punishing (manipulating) a child is extremely effective.

If one has these experiences with oneself up into adulthood one will probably be vulnerable to similar treatment later. Vulnerable in relation to how one was treated early, and to what degree one got the opportunity and help processing it.

And to survive mistreatment the first way of protecting oneself as a (small) child is to blame oneself, use a defence Bosch calls the Primary Defence, which lies under all other defences she says.

I think I will blog more about "The Truth Will Set You Free -Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self" later.

See earlier posting on "Seeing, speaking or hearing no evil..."

Also see the article “You Carry the Cure in Your Heart” by Andrew Vachss, where it stands in the beginning of this article:

“Emotional abuse of children can lead, in adulthood, to addiction, rage, a severely damaged sense of self and an inability to truly bond with others. But—if it happened to you—there is a way out.”

On children with Astrid Seriese...

On children
your children
are not your children
they are sons and daughters
of life longing for itself

they come trough you
but they are not from you
and though they are with you
they belong not to you

you can give them your love
but not your thoughts
they have their own thoughts
they have their own thoughts

you can house their bodies
but not their souls
for their souls dwell
in a place of tomorrow

which you cannot visit
not even in your dreams
you can try to be like them
but you cannot make them just like you

Fragile with Sting...

Fragile
If blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrows rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetimes argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are

Sting’s home site and about him in Swedish.