Contempt for the not so perfect or rising like a Phoenix from the Ashes…

The Swedish journalist Dan Josefsson writes in the article "’Debatt’ ska inte bygga på verbalt underhållningsvåld” or ”Debate shall not be built on verbal warnography” about:

“The knotty problem is how you make as many people as possible interested in watching a [TV-] programme not built on verbal warnography or populist contempt for knowledge and where the guests are treated with respect even if they aren’t communicating with cogent one-liners.”

This triggered other thoughts on a more personal level (as a one that works a lot and thus have limited time polishing my expressions up and am one who studied English a long time ago, but want to express things and share it with friends over the world who aren't Swedish speaking):

Yes, people have the right to express themselves with the language and the words they have - even if it isn’t perfect! Or even if they don't express themselves as well as a Nobel prize winner.

How many people haven’t become silenced when it comes to expressing themselves in both written and spoken words? Maybe in a similar manner as many have become stunted when it comes to music, something I as music teacher and my colleagues have heard many times! Quite ironically.

Something quite horrible especially when it has been shown how important narrating can be!

Maybe people need to become encouraged instead, as I and my colleagues are trying to (I hope) with our students!?

And if you don't get the opportunity to train how can you, or are you supposed to, develop skills in any area, respect?

Is it the belief that you just rise like a Phoenix from the Ashes, from nothing, in a similar way (with the underlying, maybe not conscious belief) as many of us were treated by an impatient parent? With demands on perfection and that the child should manage everything at once? Perfectly and like a grown up (or even better!). Even in cases when the child managed things (way) above average!?

PS. Josefsson also writes about "Black-and-white pictures in the media about the tsunami."

Language and talents…

More loud thinking (quite ironical): emotional language is put lower than intellectual. Emotions are put lower than intelligence. The intellectual (and not least intelligent) is put higher than the emotional! Many musicians though have the language too, to a high degree and a lot of other talents. But many of us don’t really have the words; use the music-language instead to express things. And artistic expressions is needed, and have always been through history even back to ancient times, to express things we don’t have words for really? Especially emotional things?

And once again see the phenomenon alexithymia, a phenomenon researchers think is increasing in this world. And one can wonder: why is that? Why do more and more people lack emotional language? Is it only a question of that we become more and more people in the world? Or what is it about? An inherent trait/gene? (I don't think so though! I think this is something we have been taught early in life effectively. But it is possible doing something about. Probably with a lot of struggles and efforts though, which wouldn't have been needed if we had been allowed to express our feelings/emotions from the first beginning).

I came to think that this means that "children’s and women’s language" is put lower? Because in general they use a more emotional language? But there are exceptions of course!!! In both directions.

Is this a question of being taken seriously (i.e., being met with real, genuine respect)… Something that isn’t given to everybody.

You shall have your feelings, emotions under control, or at least have these under control to a certain degree? You shall express yourself in a balanced way, and preferably with the best language possible! Otherwise you can keep quiet or you get corrected or not even listened to or read!

And you know the grammar syntax, vocabulary are important! You don’t get a second chance to explain yourself better, by being asked what you really mean!!

Isn’t there a contempt involved here? A contempt for children (or the child)? A contempt for weakness in fact?

“Don’t be so childish!!”

People get embarrassed on behalf of you!? This we (I) have to avoid!!!

And these things aren’t only expressed in spoken words, but by other means: silence (the wall of silence), you aren’t taken any notice of, disregarded etc.

You can withdraw in a lot of manners, not only emotionally but also physically. But a grown up has choices here, choices a child didn’t have! A grown up can deal with this, if she/he isn’t so (too) paralysed by her/his passed.

We have had to repress HOW painful these things were, many of us can’t even slightly recall HOW painful? We are made insensitive to different degrees to these things. Which is no excuse but only an explanation.

Once again I noticed the phenomenon “talking above ones head” I think… But it didn’t bother me so much as it did. I hope! I just noticed it with a slight smile, a bit ironical smile… Talking in riddles here? Never mind. I allow myself that.

I have been taught that men are better (in general), because they have their emotions in check and don’t get carried away with their emotions (as they are born like this)! Thus they are more reliable. At the same time I am learned/taught to being sensitive, caring, thinking on.

Or they (not least mom I guess) have at least tried to teach me!!! I don’t think she consider her trials there especially successful!! I will never become that sensitive or caring or thinking on never ever! Not in her eyes at least. I will remain that selfish, egoistic, only thinking on myself. In contrast to maybe ALL my siblings?? To be honest.

This with sensitivity is one of probably many contradictions! On one occasion being insensitive is acknowledged and praised, in another NOT. Depending on who is insensitive/sensitive?? Depending on the glasses you see through? (how they are colored).

And that about getting carried away with uncontrolled emotions: on other occasions this isn’t/wasn’t even noticed!! Namely when the father (and later brothers) came home from work and poured all his (their) frustrations out on the family, and not least the kids (relatives; siblings, and not least sisters). But it was worse for the wife; because she was more sensitive than the kids, who were less sensitive?? And the kids was spared compared to the wife!!! (observe the irony!!!)

To be continued… I am going to take a shower now. Have a lot more on my mind (wrote a lot down in my note-book this morning before I sat down at the computer).

What parents are actually capable of doing…?

the serial killer Thomas Quick with twin-sister at 2 years.

as grown up.

The fourth part in a series, where you can find the other three here, here and here. It's another extremely warm day here. But now a bike-ride to pick the last lilies-of-the-valley!

Pincus writes at page 212-214:

”For example, one person who had just said he had never been abused told me he was once severely punished or running away to avoid discipline for having broken a window when he was six [did he deliberately break this window? And this boy was ONLY SIX YEARS OLD!! From where came this “urge” to break that window one can wonder too? That need to abreaction?]. His sister and father immobilized him and burned the soles of his feet with a lighted candle to prevent him from running away again. In his opinion, this punishment fit the crime. He considered it to be reasonable and not abusive.

Another telling indicator of abuse is bed-wetting. Many abused children continue to wet their beds at night until adolescence. The physiological reason for this is not clear, but bed-wetting is one manifestation of stress. The response of parents to this behaviour can open a line of very informative discussion about abuse. Some children are beaten daily for wetting the bed [how un-stressing??] or are humiliated by such disciplines as being forced to wear stinking, urine-soaked clothes to school, being tied to a post at home like a dog, or recording bed-wetting on a calendar so the whole family and visitors can see whether the child wet his bed the night before.

Other childhood behaviors are also hallmarks of abuse, like fire-setting and cruelty to animals. When there was a fire in the house, who was thought to have set it? This is important because virtually every child who sets a fire to his bed or that of his parents has been sexually abused [but all sexually abused children don’t set fires to their own or their parents’ beds??]. Victimizing helpless animals is also a way a child can direct his feelings of hatred and his desire to be in control without fear for retaliation./…/ …the association of this behavior with abuse has been empirically proven.

‘Who was the main disciplinarian?’ and ‘What were you beaten with when you were spanked?’ are very useful questions. Even violent inmates who have forgotten severe abuse may remember what they consider to have been good parental practices. Some of these practices are clearly abusive by my definition, like the use of a belt or wooden instrument directed elsewhere than their buttocks, spanking with the buckle of the belt, breaking of the skin, and punches to the face [but ALL spanking is harmful! Both physical, literal, and emotional! And spanking always leaves bigger or smaller damages in the brain recent brain-research has proven!].

Being locked in a closet for an hour or more or in a room for a week can be quite terrifying to a child. Uncovering these extreme punishments raises other questions, like ‘What was the punishment for leaving the closet or the room before you were given permission? What happened if you tried to run away during a beating?”

When I am sitting writing this I come to think of what Ingmar Bergman has written about his childhood. Bed-wetting children had to wear a dress when they had wet their beds. And children were locked into wardrobes, dark wardrobes. Their father (the Lutheran priest) also beat his sons, Dag and Ingmar, so they bled. And their mother washed them afterwards with cotton-wool (she was nurse). That she didn’t intervene? Noone of these children became criminals though. Dag, four years older (and the oldest) became diplomat I think, and Ingmar director. Dag died at 74 I think, in a disease that suffocated him. And Ingmar used his creativity to survive.

Their sister Margaretha (four years younger than Ingmar) married an Englishman and moved to England and got four sons. She suffered from severe depressions. She was held VERY hard by her mother and was her father's good little girl? Her creativity was suffocated. She wanted to write, and also tried with this, but Ingmar dismissed her writing (felt shame – and contempt - over how she wrote), thought it was too superficial, no wonder? Something he regretted later. Thought he should have supported her instead and help her develop her writing, and thus also help her develop personally, and survive better than she did. I think she made a suicide attempt (to free herself? She saw no other way out?).

He later thought he had silenced her and stifled her voice instead of the opposite. And it wasn’t because she revealed horrible things about their family (because it had nothing with that to do is the impression I have gotten), but because of how she wrote, the way she wrote and what she wrote about. See Jenson on the roots for shame-feelings. Even for shame-feelings on behalf of other people!!!! (very, very ironically!).

Pincus writes further:

“I always ask about the worst punishment the person ever received for misbehaving. Some patients have told me very disturbing stories. Some children are forced to kneel on dry rice and salt for an hour; the more the child moves to try to relieve his pain, the more grains dig into his raw, bleeding skin, leaving permanent and verifiable scars. Abusive parents use electric wiring, broom handles, and other cruel ad inappropriate tools to beat their children. Some parents even use lighted cigarettes to burn their children or hold their hands over an open flame as punishment.

The circumstances in which physical scars were sustained provide a window into the world of the violent individual. Linear scars and round scars on the back are usually caused by whips and cigarettes and cannot be self-inflicted. Almost every normal person remembers the incidents that have caused scarring on the portions of the body visible to him and can proudly tell the stories of how the scars were sustained. But frequently, violent people cannot identify the causes of many of their scars which are clearly the result of burns, knife wounds, bullet wounds, and other trauma.

Such memory lapses suggest that the person may be engaging the kind of psychological mechanism for forgetfulness that is used in dissociation and that bespeaks severe abuse. This is particularly telling when the cause of scarring is stated in the medical records.

When I ask about sexual abuse, I try to make it sound as if many people are sexually abused and that it is no big deal. I often start by saying we know from watching television programs like Oprah that a lot of children are asked to d sexual things for grown-ups. Then I ask, ‘Who did that to you?’

Because the anal penetration of children damages the rectum and colon, common symptoms in victims include lower abdominal pains of unknown cause, painful bowel movements, bloody movements, and constipation. Asking if the person has ever had these symptoms is accepted as the ordinary questioning of a family doctor. A similar approach is taken to determine whether sexual abuse of bys was inflicted by putting objects into their penises. As the memory of such experiences maybe repressed, it is often more revealing to ask, ‘Did you ever have blood come out of your penis? Did you ever have bladder infections?’ These questions are interspersed with benign questions about nose-bleeds, earaches, rashes, and so on.

The family may provide [???] convincing details of abuse that the patient has forgotten. For example, one convicted rapist-murderer on death row, who did not remember his crime, denied ever being sexually abused as a child. However, his older sister testified that she had seen him being repeatedly anally penetrated when he was eight by their uncle, in whose home their family was living. She described her brother crying and screaming while he tried to escape from his uncle. Although the rapist-murderer recalled that he did not like his uncle, he did not remember being raped by him.”

Reflections...

I should do other things than writing!! Practice piano (I have a lot to work on, but not least my fingers need to be "in good form" now with a concert soon), go to the grocery store, fix up here, and not least relax… Read a god book, take a walk or just do nothing?

Thoughts that got triggered (a lot stored up through experiences the last years, in circumstances and with people one should expect would be enlightened and maybe “better” than people out in real life?)!!! But I wonder if there isn't people in real life that are worth being liked and loved, despite their lack of enlightenment, as much!?? Or even more?? With risking to be unfair here. I wonder if I have become badder treated in the first mentioned circumstances than I have been by people in real life!?? Just something I am tasting and now by articulating it am trying to explore if that's true? Wouldn't it be the opposite?? Shouldn't it be otherwise? I don't know if I am unfair now...

I also came to think of what Jenson has written about shame and from where feelings of shame comes according to her. Shame both for yourself and on behalf of others… I also came to think of the Wall of Silence, experiencing that, being surrounded by that.

Also thought, once again, over contempt (for weakness, but not only for weakness) in different shapes, expressed in different ways…And how people have reacted when one have asked for help and posed questions… How some just pull their shoulders (??): "well, I can’t (doesn’t want) to help you! (I simply don't know where to start, because what you are asking for is..., how shall I express it? There's SO much to change, so...?) You have to figure it out yourself!?" Isn’t this exactly as the father once: "I don’t know! You have to figure this out yourself/sort this out yourself!"

Contempt over people striving and struggling on their own, the best they can?

There was a girl I think, striving from early childhood to manage all and everything on her own, to figure everything out on her own. Afraid of overloading an exhausted, occupied mother and an occupied father… The consequences and results of this am I thinking of…

As a grown up with a grown ups eyes (or??? What do I know?? What have I understood?): isn’t it incredible that she managed what she did on this journey? That she managed things to the degree that she did, on her own?

With little help or support. Maybe not being truly seen (or seen for what?)?

Ashamed of "all she had"... Had to be ashamed over it. To excuse it.

I must have an enormous need to express and articulate things? A need that is bigger than concerns about being “perfect” or doing things perfectly?

In the middle of this I came to think of music-lessons I joined as auscultator some years ago in classes with children with Downs Syndrome. Their directness to feelings and emotions…To expressions and to joy!! :-) And they also showed when they didn’t like something!! With little censorship? That about controlling yourself… What the brain – and intellect can do… And what can this lead to in the worse cases? If you control yourself too much? Yes, the less you have contact with the “homo ludens”??!! When you are unable (more or less) to laugh and play? For which there can certainly be reasons… So one shall not moralize over this either? Unless you aren’t in a power-position where you have means to kill it for others…

And I have also recalled the last time what my piano-teacher at the Conservatory (after the high-school or gymnasium at the nature-science program) said to me once… That there was something (self)destructive in me. When I dared to express things in my playing something struck me down?? As if I was forbidden to show who I really was? Become visible?? Show hat I had to come with? How much I had to come with? How lovable, colorful, interesting, I don’t know? That I had something to come with and express? With this not said that I am angel, with no faults, someone that is perfect…

I don’t want to be loved for my achievements… Was that my problem?

We (me and my three oldest siblings) moved five times during our childhood (till I was 18 years old), so we had to change schools, friends, class-mates, environments, teachers of all kinds, including piano-teachers (in my case)…

I was no go-getter? Didn’t have to be best?? Or then (at least as a little older) I wasn’t as ambitious and diligent as I have later become!? And I was interested in a lot: reading books, music (but didn’t think of working with this), rode horses, tried a lot (even practically),very active, fantasizing… And, yes, I had it fairly easy at school? “Oh yeah, you shall not complain over anything!! With all opportunities to do all those things!!! You ought to be ashamed! You should be grateful! You should be ashamed!”

Silently: how loving is such an attitude? Is this an expression of empathy? Of understand? I don’t know who deserves empathy or understanding? (but I can’t help wondering who gets it both here and there and on different levels in society! And who doesn’t get it?).

A feeling of having to apologize for my whole existence… For who and what I am I think…

But what have I actually done to others? Just by existing?? Or? What am I actually guilty for? What can I be accused for? What is MY fault? What am I actually responsible for? How hard that even would be for me to realize… What crimes have I actually committed? No, I don't want to hurt or cause damage...

Am I entitled to be proud and glad for some things? Or can I allow myself that?

I think Miller is right: if we direct things at scapegoats instead of at the ones that did harm to you you will never get liberated. Jenson expresses this in another way, in the style: “if you rewrite your history the failure is inevitable.”

I think she is right… Directing things at scapegoats or reacting at symbols doesn’t solve things… Directing things at relatively safe targets or at safer targets, more allowed targets maybe too (i.e. not ones parents).

But the tricky thing is to know what is what, yes…

Yes, children can become scapegoats in families!!! Be garbage cans for everything that can’t be expressed in other manners!! And they easily land in similar conditions later in life?

There was a family once with a lot of cute children... Almost like Pip-Larssons. But this family had a higher position though than Pip-Larssons... With more educated parents, with a higher material standard... Belonging to the middle-class. Where the environment saw up to these parents... People sighed when they saw all these cute, well mannered children!!! Suddenly dentists discovered that the two oldest had a lot of "supernumerary" tooth-germs ((?)of all things)! So here started a history of surgeries for more tan five years, where over ten teeth-germs was taken away for the oldest sibling (who had a fontanel over the whole scull, down on the forehead, making her mother scared she had got a damaged child), less for the one year younger. A third sibling also had a variation of this syndrome (he also had that enormous fontanel, but no extra tooth-germs (?)).

The dentists laid this family last on the day, because they were so very interested in this very nice family!!!

I wonder how many of these operations were necessary? Did they cause anything?
Did they make things worse? Even? But it is as it is...

Time for lunch, now!!! A late!!

PS. But articulating things has been good, in the long run??? And the road has not been lying there straight ever!!?? Despite "all I have got"... Not for what I have, what I have achieved, where I am... Not for who I am either??

And the sacrifices, losses on this road... Things that are lost for ever... Things I will never get.

PPS. On a walk now in rain, when it had become dark I thought further on for instance silencing factors here and there... Came to think of:

"Use what talent you possess - the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best" (Henry van Dyke).

And also found this (but this isn't what I strive for I think):

“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).

And who is the snobbish one? The one that is supposed to be?

"Bully" is "översittare" in Swedish.