Emotional manipulation, emotional incest...

[Updated July 10]. Emotional incest is more common than we believe Pia Mellody thinks.

I have just read ”The Confrontation” from the book ”The Way of All Flesh” by Samuel Butler and got some spontaneous thoughts.

This text is about a mother being spokesman for her husband to their child.

I can recognize this I think:

“He loves you anyway!”

Which means the mother thinks (knows) that even if he is screaming and yelling, has problems showing his love, he loves his kids. For the first: why can't he say this to his kids directly himself (shouldnt' he be able as a grown up, and if he isn't; why isn't he)? Is it the mother's (wife's) duty to talk for her husband, the children's father?

“He doesn't think you love him!”

What does a statement like this cause in the child? Deep guilt feelings maybe?

I also came to think about passing confidences on... About absolutely having to know the child's inmost; that he child isn't allowed to hide anything to its mother. And what does Miller say about this? What this means and causes for this person not least later in his/her grownup life? For instance that you have to hide things for yourself!?

And I think all this is expressions of violation of boundaries. Not respecting boundaries or integrity in another person. And this sort of boundary and integrity violations are even worse when a child is exposed to it, than when an adult is exposed to them, even though a grown up can have big difficulties handling them. The child has no escape or alternative than to stay in the relation. An adult usually have even I it doesn't feel so (depending on her/his early and successive history).

And the child would most likely not get support for complaints about such things, and got even fewer when this book was written more than hundred years ago. Because you shall honor your father and mother.

Today it's more possible to refuse to answer questions than it was back then (and when later generations grew up). But still children opposing and refusing their parents things feel a lot of guilt and badness. It's easier to submit.

And all those demands from the mother (and father) are about fulfilling the mother's (parents') unfulfilled and denied needs.

But – a grown up has alternatives, unless she/he isn't entirely paralyzed by help and powerlessness (feelings) stemming from her/his childhood. And - you can't blame that grown up for those feelings and inabilities (contempt for weakness).

Miller writes:

"She can’t make fun of (or scorn) other people’s feelings, of whatever sort they are, if she can take her own feelings seriously. She will not let the vicious circle of contempt continue." (in my amateur translation from Swedish).

See also what Kirkengen for instance has written about revictimization.

To deal with this you ought to get help with the underlying, early things... But too often you don't get this help (from so called helpers). Maybe the sort of help that is offered usually can last short term... But not long term!??

But I also think that you shall be really careful with Primal and regression therapy. In wrong hands it can be dangerous...

Addition July 10: Read about "Butler's unhappy youth" by a person in modern time critisiszing what Butler did, a person who in general seem to be quite moralizing!!! Surprisingly moralizing. And neocomservative. Ideal for neoliberal currents and their propaganda!?

Witches and other monsters...

examination of a witch.

Working here at home after lunch. Now a break on the balcony with something to eat. I happened to throw a glance at the local newspaper lying here on the foot-stool at the TV, and read the title to an article, written with big letters. The heading was "Witches and other monsters." I couldn't help smiling, with a lot of feelings bubbling up... Of quite deep irony, sadness, anger... The title felt as a thought.

Are there modern "witches" too? Women need to be held on distance? What do the witches stand for? Are they symbols for something? What? And what is the brave knight about? See below.

The extremely dangerous woman? And now I saw that I had written a posting earlier on witch-hunt, "Silence makes the violence possible..."

Having a slight headache...two versions of the knight on the white horse killing the monster (dragon).

In the evening (slightly updated August 14): found a letter from a reader to Miller on Miller's web. Want to quote from it.

“I've often been astonished by the intensity of my hatred (I some times honestly feel that I could kill my mother for what she has done to me), but now I do understand that it comes from my early experience of being helplessly intertwined with her serious emotional disturbances leaving me to feel responsible for her feelings and needs, basically speaking; her life. She made me feel this way with STRONG means such as serious threats and manipulations. And this has effectively stopped me from living my own life because every time I try to do so I'm subconsciently being dragged into HER needs

[fulfilling HER needs, the mother's childhood needs? Giving the mother the attention and love she should have gotten from HER parents once but actually didn’t get then (the child had no other choice but to help her mother keeping the denial in place), a hole the child will never be able to fill how cleverly she even tries/tried her whole life? And this mother didn’t want to recognize/realize how she actually had had it, what she had missed, and how her parents actually were and/or had been? No rebellion, indignation, questioning or anger against this, Instead she directed her anger at the child/children. Sacrificing not only herself and her own life, but also her child’s/children’s].

This is really difficult and I have literally felt sometimes that I couldn't leave the house or engage in my own interests, and even my education was affected by this depression and horrible anger I felt

[not allowed to be happy, to have genuinely, really fun, enjoying the life and a real, genuine contact/communication with other people (for instance with a partner), maybe even being truly loved, because her mother didn’t have any of this? The child had to sympathise, by living a miserable life too? And preferably an worse life than her mother!! So there was no risk her mother's view would be challenge and she had to question her own life?]./…/

…still I 'm struggling to live my own life

[even though she hasn’t had contact with her mother for ten years!!! Talk of being tied up!!].

These feelings of being responsible are so strong and so difficult to set aside that I do not know what to do. Intellectually I know a lot of things but still emotionally I feel like I'm a child, fearing whatever might happen if I take the stand and say to the world: ‘I do not support my mother anymore. She has to do without me destroying myself for her. She has to deal with her own feelings and lies.’

HELP… I feel that I'm an awful person

[The child was made and forced to feel like that; that she was an awful person/child, selfish, only thinking on herself, made feeling this with different means, with threats and manipulations of other kinds?? Made feeling guilt for abandoning and failing (svikande) her mother (but who had abandoned and failed the mother actually?), by not living her mother’s life, on her mother’s conditions! And for this she was going to be horribly punished? A horrible punishment must just come! And this was probably what happened? The ‘love’ was withheld/withdrawn from the child, maybe by freezing the child out, thrown out into the cold or threatened of being pushed away? Yes, she was emotionally and maybe also literally pushed away?]

And I can remember myself thinking these kinds of thoughts as a child, wanting her to get lost, leave us, explode, whatever...for me just being able to breathe and live without her invading me all the time. And I remember that I felt an incredible anger and then… GUILT.”

Miller answers:

"Everything in your letter makes sense to me.

Above all you understand that your mother made you RESPONSIBLE FOR HER FEELINGS. Not many people recognize this and suffer thus for decades of feelings of guilt.

Why do you also suffer in the same way though you already succeeded to understand? Can it be that you came to understand this mechanism thanks to my books, rather intellectually, but that emotionally you still can't BELIEVE that your mother used you as a container?

I imagine that you always tried to understand her so she would eventually liberate you from this role and care herself for her feelings?

But she doesn't. She prefers not to look at the mirror and [but] to blame you for her chaotic state of emotions.

Can it be that you still feel responsible for her chaos, her lies, and her contradictions and that you actually can't believe that she ALWAYS tried to live at your cost?

[yes, it is probably so?? And liberating oneself from a person from earliest in life is one of the most difficult things? Nobody want to think that anyone can do what is in fact done to small children, and SO small children or realize HOW common these things in fact are! Or we minimize or belittle what happened, both on our own, children's and other peoples' behalf: it didn't hurt or damage! This won't last a whole lifetime! Etc. Even therapists do this!]

I think that if you succeed to really BELIEVE what you know you will liberate yourself from your dependency and then also from your hatred."

Addition just before lunch August 14: A picture, or an expression that came for me this morning: maliciously smiling (försmädligt, nedlåtande leende). Something the child was exposed to?

In the car I thought further... On blackmail (utpressning), emotional blackmail not least. How the child probably was exposed to this too. And this sort of blackmail is different than the one a grown up usually is exposed to? Even if it maybe can feel horrible even for a grown up? But it was probably even more painful for a child, so painful it had to suppress it even before it reached the consciousness? And even for a grown up it can be difficult to deal with, especially if she/he is still paralyzed by early things...