A raising method...

from the movie "Torment."

I happened to come across this text on shame and it triggered the following thoughts and reflections, loudly expressed...

A raising method is infusing guilt and shame feelings in a child to make it obedient, i.e. do as you want, or make it not behave as it does...

Just with a glance or if it is needed with tougher means, as surrounding the child with silence or even leave it and go out. Something Alice Miller was exposed to by her mom and has written about. Something that was extremely painful to recall as grown up Miller writes, and thus you need an enlightened witness to confront those memories or even to get in touch with them in the first place. Miller had forgotten how she was treated I think, but reclaimed it during therapy high up in age.

You can manipulate children and latter adults (who has unprocessed experiences of these things from childhood) by infusing shame and guilt in them. With subtle and less subtle means, openly or hidden/secretly. And this is emotional abuse. A child can't escape this, something an adult can - unless she/he isn't paralyzed by fear and shame etc. The less harmed a human being became early in life the less vulnerable to manipulation and brainwashing. So by abusing your child (physically, sexually - and emotionally/verbally) you play latter perpetrators in hand! You can really destroy your child's future by abusing it.

The writer to the linked chapter from the online book “Psychological Self-Help” (I am not sure I recommend this book as a way of healing though) writes about accepting who you really are. But the problem is to know who you actually are. And I think it isn’t enough accepting who you are. You have to understand to a certain extent why and how you became this way, not only with your head but also with your emotions. Question it and rebel against it.

If you succeed with this to a certain extent (unfortunately not easy) you won’t be at risk of forwarding it to other people whom are in your power or under you, or at people standing near you.

And the fact that this work is so difficult should be an incitement to try avoiding causing this sort of harm to small children in the first place.

And it is important to put the blame where it ought to be... Back to the first source... If you don't you will still be trapped in destructive and self destructive behavior. Who did the soul murdering in the first place?

Former postings under the label "soul murdering": "The political Consequences of Child Abuse" and "Soul murdering" (about raising children with the Schreber-concept and the different results of this upbringing).

Punishments and punishments....

a cute woodchuck trying to reach a fruit in a fruit tree
(photo: Steve Thomas).

[Updated during the day]. During my shower I came to think: we have a ban on corporal punishment in Sweden since 30 years. And I think that’s a right thing to have. Because it at least gives signals to children that spanking is forbidden.

But along with that it ought to be information about what spankings causes. Not only what they CAN cause, but what they actually cause. Because they are always damaging. Even though the damage can become softened by an enlightened witness, to the point that the beaten child as grown up doesn’t direct his anger at other people, but on her/himself? The effects ought to become investigated more…

I also came to think, when I went on drying my hair after the shower, that children not only need to get their physical needs met, such as with shelter, food, clean clothes and environment, but also - and not least – when it comes to emotional needs. They need to get their emotional needs met too! And not least, to be able to live as functionally as possible. As fulfilled and real and genuine as possible.

You can punish a child emotionally too with a lot of means, and these sorts of punishments are too belittled and minimized. And maybe they are even more important to meet, than if the child doesn’t have to starve or have clothes that aren’t clean and these sorts of things??

Some loud thinking in the midst of preparing myself for a long working day.

Thinking further on emotional abuse/punishment on the bike to work and from it to lunch: to surround a child with silence, laugh at it, belittle its feelings and reactions, what it says and expresses, how it says things and expresses things…

Miller writes about a wall of silence... And what it actually does in and to a child. That it's so extremely painful so the child has to suppress the feeling entirely, and thus have no connection with it later, and don't really understand what she/h is doing in turn, to a child or a person in her/his power.

But after all, it's different when we experience this wall of silence as children compared to as adults. In the first case we have no options, no choices. We cant leave the relation or divorce, but as adults we can usually escape the situation or react in some way. Except for in a therapy or therapy-like situation, when we maybe have landed in a childlike state, i.e. regressed to some degree (more or less).

Dependent on how harmed we were when we came to that therapy or how much we have processed early experiences or not we can handle a latter wall of silence. Condemn it if it's justified, and not stay in a bad relation. Not being incapable of leaving, and/or blaming ourselves for the bad treatment. That about an open, genuine, real communication!

And then I am back to decent treatments of people on a list for those harmed early in life, and abuse of power from a moderator and what it can cause...

Relaxation...

Taking a walk in the forest with a good companion, very cute... Nordic walking. A brother disappearing in the distance! He uses to ski very long races, as Vasaloppet and Marcia Longa. I was also walking with poles in fact. Many pine more lands here. Mixed with soft meadows with birches...

I have been writing on my other blog about our despotic, dictatorial politicians (especially our dictatorial government; the "alliance" - right oriented). People who have got our mandate, authorization - how do they use it??? Misusing it, for their own sake and benefits, silently and angrily...

Addition in the evening: On self-help therapy a reader to Miller writes:

“Today, I regard primal therapy in general as wrong and dangerous. The idea that we should make ourselves feel pain in a deliberate and systematic way reminds me of the pedagogic lie that one should deliberately create frustrations for children in order to 'prepare them to life.' Frustrations are inevitable, and similarly, pain stemming from childhood injuries is inevitable and reappears not only when we reenact our past, but also when we try to take good care of ourselves and to free ourselves from destructive relationships. There is absolutely no need to recreate this pain intentionally by failing to extricate ourselves from painful situation in the present./…/

The one thing that I do find helpful, just like you repeatedly point out, is talking my past over with enlightened witnesses.”

Yes, that about narrating with someone listening, if one has, and/or writing about those issues. But the latter method probably takes a lot more time, more than if you have an enlightened witness? But if you have no other choice...

Another reader reflected on different forms of abuse:

“I've experienced verbal abusiveness (including no response), physical abuse (corporal), and shunning (Awful). The most painful experiences for me were when I was simply ignored or shunned. It was as if my existence was instantly annihilated. The combination of corporal punishment and shunning or 'shutting-out' was a double-whammy, and I could feel the sadness creep through my very bones. Of all the punishments, the corporal may have done the least damage. You know what hits you, you feel present, you sense the pain, you know the reaction of the other party, you see the anger/rage, your outrage is instant and in reaction to something you can identify, there is "heat" and passion (emotion expressed), it is real. It hurts, and you know what/where/why (usually). You can even choose how to stand up to the blows, so there is an element of choice. It is in relationship to something and someone./…/

Much more difficult was the ongoing reflection by parents and siblings (they learn fast) of being wrong, useless, stupid, unneeded, ugly, inadequate, evil object. Yet this is still in relationship.

Completely devastating for me, as a child, was to be 'shut out' or shunned, sometimes for so long that it grows into a lifestyle (eventually I would do something to 'gain' corporal punishment, to regain a sense of self and relationship). As if I did not exist, was not there, was not. That is the pain that creeps blackly for me in soul diminishing horror. It defies logic and leaves one in the dark. It leads to such defensiveness, is so depleting, that life is diminished and toxic. I thought of suicide as a child, but realized I would not be missed, that I would simply be thought of as more defective. And all I wanted was to be accepted for being myself. To be real. I can understand violence that way. It is concrete.
It is madness, but there is method in it.”

Also read a (52-year old) daughter on her psychiatrist father, and another one on keeping in contact with ones parents.