Feelings of help/powerlessness...

I ought to do other things than writing... I am going to be at work the whole afternoon. Need to practice myself... Too.

But have thought about the topic help/powerlessness...

What are those feelings about? Are they the child's feelings once? From a state when the adult WAS power/helpless?? And she (he) takes this with her/him into adult life... And this feeling (reaction) is expressed (especially) in certain circumstances?

I am thinking both about grown ups feeling incapable of doing anything! Paralyzed (mentally) and totally helpless. I can't do anything... etc. And thinking that

"It's my character! (I can't do anything)"

But from where do these feelings (maybe or most probably) origin from? From the small child, who was badly treated, maybe even very badly treated?? Laughed at, scorned, shouted at, treated "violently", maybe even sexually abused (or "at least" improperly touched) etc. etc. etc.

Truths one don't want to admit to? Truths about ones own parents!?? How they actually were, how it actually was!!??

These things are also shown on a societal level? People thinking it's no idea at all to try to influence!! For instance by voting in elections!! Mistrusting politicians. But this is horrible!!

Where do this lead?

A certain sort of people goes on voting, and the ones still voting are to a high degree those voting on extreme parties (nationalist, "xenophobic" parties)???

So where has this child abuse led?? People paralyzed? Thinking they have no power?? Not capable of intervening? On any level maybe? Not even on a familial, by protecting weaker for instance? Incapable of leaving abusive relations? etc. etc. etc.

But were we born this way? So incapable of doing something, of acting, reacting??

Yes, the parents were complete, perfect?? In difference to ones children? Even to ones now grown up children struggling to deal with their own!!!?? They are much less complete than the old and dead parents were or ever became? They were angels, or??? And what they did one can belittle and minimize in comparison to how one treats and handle ones grown up children's misses, and imperfection!?? Because the difference is enormous?? Ones own children are shit compared to ones parents?? Sacrificing ones own children on the altar of -what? (but of course these children are now grown up, and thus they have responsibility for their own stuff).

Some (maybe not so few?) in power uses this (both unconsciously and consciously, and also deliberately)?? For instance in politics! Playing on this? Relying on this? Even using this with no scruples??

Yes, Naomi Klein is right: Information (and a greater and greater awareness of these facts, about the roots to those things, the simple answers??) are shock resistance?? And hopefully also a protection against abuse, even abuse on a political level??

And have a long way to go still myself... I don't say I handle this good... I struggle with these things myself...

Addition: and it is always possible to find people who have had it worse, so when am I entitled to complain??

And I am also very critical to the help that is offered; you are (only) learned to cope and/or to change a dysfunctional behavior to a functional... Because it is still forbidden to question ones parents?? And I came to think about what Jenson wrote about Dan... He wasn't capable of stopping from following a woman (compulsively) that had abused him when he saw her until he got access to things in his early history thanks to a good therapy? After that he had no problems at all when he met this woman!

And I know of a woman aware that her mother pulled her kids hair, and that she got severely spanked, but these memories hasn't changed anything? She can talk about this, but with few emotions connected!?? No rebellion or real questioning what her mother did. And probably no realization how this felt actually?? The rage (etc.) that would have been adequate?? (and did the father protect his kids against this???).

Because it isn't only about remembering?? You have to be helped to see it as wrong and to question it!!?? Yes, maybe even get permission doing this?? By a helper, expert!?? Realizing it wasn't your fault, you didn't deserve it. And question what this actually was supposed to teach one? And what one learned from this actually and what t has led to, all the possible consequences?? But this is probably extremely painful...

And I also know of man reacting at his own father who humiliated his children in front of other on one (or a few) occasions, but this realization didn't protect this father from doing the same thins with his own kids later!!??

So pure memories aren't enough?

Today the knowledge exists that perhaps didn't exist then... And all has those options! Even (old) parents...

"But it happened so long ago! I have went on with my life!!"

To avoid the feelings of vulnerability one can use anger or deny ones needs... And thus get a sense of power. A power one maybe don't need to exercise or demonstrate today!? Because today one has the power one didn't have then. Knowing what is what: what my anger is about... That's the problem... So it is used more productively... Because of course there are reasons today to get angry - too!! But if I am acting on something pas it's risk I behave destructively or self-destructively!?? And in a way that gains noone and even can become harmful??

Denying ones needs is also so sad and maybe even tragic many times? Trying to fill ones childhood needs instead of ones grown up needs!?? How much hasn't that costed? And still costs?

Help/powerlessness is about the past usually?? Except for extreme circumstances??

Horowitz playing...

Sonata in C major and Rondo in D-major (I think). Played by Vladimir Horowitz. He was silent for many years… Couldn’t play. A great pianist really...

The Swedish pianist Käbi Laretei couldn't play either during a period of her life, when she had just passed 50 (she was round 52 or older?), a period when her parents died (a year between)... Her first book has the title "Who am I playing for?" Yes, who was she playing for and whom did she go on playing for later? To earn her parents love?

She also seemed to have had a relatively extensive love and sexual life. Her first love was a much older man. And she got her first child, Linda when she had passed 30, in her first marriage with a Swedish conductor... And I wonder if some of these experiences have marked her? Or she hasn't been able to process them and what's maybe underneath?

She has written quite openly about all those things, so they are no big secrets!? Yes, she has (and is) a bit diva-like, but at the same time she sat at a fire-place where we lived and drank tea in cups of all shapes and sizes and forms... She was quite self-centered, but could also show interest in us!? So there was and is both/and in her?

We, young women (over 30 years younger), admired her a lot, when she, a middle-age woman (56 years or something?), came in a sari a warm summer's day to the classes. Colorful and beautiful still in her middle-age. She looked better by the years (but was good-looking as young too).

But I guess she wasn't easy to live with!?? I don't think I should have wanted to live with her, even as a woman, and even if I am not drawn to women...

In her last book she is mentioning Alice Miller, but I don't think she has understood Miller really... Maybe it's some of her kids that have introduced Miller to her? Daniel or Linda? Käbi was no good mother, least to her oldest child, a daughter. She abandoned her for Ingmar Bergman. Bergman wanted to have Käbi for himself (needed a mother?) and no kids around really!! Not even his own?? And Käbi found herself in this!! I am not sure I would have...

Helga - part 6...

Helga wrote that she believes that many who have been injured (in therapies, sects, cults etc.) are ashamed they have let themselves be exploited. And this unmotivated shame is holding them in the victim’s role. This is the reason why defectors (avhoppare) from sects are prevented from clearly and in detail relating/telling how and with what means the wool was pulled over their eyes (hur och med vilka medel de blev förda bakom ljuset). And Michelle and Helga thought Helga had been in a form of sect or cult even in her therapy.

Because of this shame-feeling in the injured the perpetrators can, unpunished, continue with their destructive activities. This is the reason why I have tried not to forget what happened to me and to understand it in all important aspects Helga writes.

I can’t change facts. That I was exploited as a child and misled by people whom I trusted on and now also by my therapist – that can’t be undone. But the remaining results of these violations I knew about. They consisted of disregard of the person I am and of my achievements. All I did for others was valueless in my eyes, and later I struggled like a slave (people in Feeling therapy worked themselves exhausted and thus even less capable of being critical and questioning things than they maybe were from the beginning) and let myself be exploited Helga writes.

When we make this clear to us; that the psychological results of a tragic childhood contains of a weak self-confidence we can get over its results as grown ups.

When we have made this clear to ourselves we have already weakened the compulsion to re-enact. We realize that we were oppressed children, patients, sect-followers, but with this insight we take the liberty not being that any more she thinks.

Gurus and leaders can’t take those steps she thinks. They have to remain at the top, no matter what it costs. Therefore they are steadfastly denying the fact that they were victims earlier (in their childhood and maybe also later as adults) and flee into the power, into promises about cure, into roles, poses, dissimulation and not seldom into frauds. And this is also true in family-systems, where a parent (usually a father) has to remain on top? Denying they were harmed once?

A human being whom has survived the childhood’s oppression will hardly flee to a power-position. If he has integrated his experiences he can liberate himself from compulsions and meet his partner and friends in an open communication.

Tragically there have been women stuck in this ‘sect’ for years without realising this Helga thought with shivers. But she only just (med nöd och näppe) got out of its claws and she shivers realizing what could have happened. There were other women, who had become bodily ill (paralyzed or at least bodily handicapped) and stuck in their homes, and Helga visited those, while the therapist got the fees. When Helga realized this she felt like a fool.

Helga writes to Michelle that thanks to her presence and her letters she has got help showing her feelings, and to no longer hide in solitude, but entrust herself to people whom want her best. Thus being able to break walls of silence; both those in therapy as those in her childhood. Maybe not all, but enough to free her from the worst?

Yes, to handle those things the best and bring these topics out “into the world” most effectively, how do we make this? How do we deal with those things and act in a way that is as little destructive or self-destructive, but constructive – and more effective and productive?

Why haven’t we been able to change so much in our own lives (haven’t we) although we have read Miller for maybe twenty years??

And why does this take such a long time? Does it?

Is it because we have to do most of the work on our own, and thus in a much slower pace?

And would our strivings be better and more efficient (effective) if we had solved our own problems to a higher degree? So we saw clearer and don’t bring so much of our unsolved stuff into things, especially into those that are most important?

So we don’t harm others or ourselves… No, people don’t consciously and deliberately try and find abusive people to be around.

Addition: To what degree is it possible to change dysfunctional behavior to a functional, and can we be cured by symbolically doing things? And if so, to what degree? But with this not said we don't have responsibility for what we do, say, how we behave... It's no excuse, but only an explanation. Because we have responsibility, no matter how harmed we have been? And are we allowed to meet abuse with abuse? Is it constructive to meet the one with contempt that can't handle her/his life better, that someone is weak etc.?

And if things haven't changed so much in our lives; why haven't they?

Are people deliberately and consciously trying to find abusive people to be around? Destructive drives we have to learn to control? Didn't learn to control early?? As Freud thought?? Ideas many therapists still are working after, without being aware of it maybe, or are even denying they are working after? Is this the Primary defense; the child blaming itself for being so lousy in handling things? In others this can be about blaming others (but this doesn't exclude questioning things if it is needed, but the difficulty is to know the difference!?)? Or struggling in a false hope of being able to change a situation, person etc.? etc. Postings under the label Primary defence.

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My youngest brother is skiing the Vasaloppet today. He skied 90 km in 05:37 hours! We saw him coming to Mora now on the web!!! He turns 49 in June. The conditions were fairly tough it sounds...

Morning-tea in cups from Nittsjö keramik (lying in Rättvik, Dalarna).

Ave Maria...

Some more thoughts on therapy abuse…

Easter 2007 at the country-side, chocolate-cake with whipped cream and fruit.

In the shower: my relatives in the working-class (which I have had most contact with and have had further contact with, and where we played very freely when we grew up, as we did at home, but not at my paternal grandparent's home really) would never think of entering a therapist’s office…That is out of question. And earlier it was even more out of question. defenses (and denial) can take different expressions?

Not least was it so in my parents’ generation and earlier. Reading books could give one a lot of strange ideas, and working with creative things was no real occupation! And you shouldn’t think “too much”.

My youngest uncle is born 1935 and his wife is one year younger…

Helga was educated social worker, and she got her mom’s house in Santa Monica when her mother died, and thus she was seen as the rich and wealthy house-owner, who could afford paying expensive fees.

Michelle wrote that the sect-members she referred to (what Carol L. Mithers has written about in “Therapy Gone Mad…”) belonged to the middle-class; they were intelligent people, of whom many had Academic exams and was used to thinking.

How was this enslaving possible Michelle wondered? She thought that the patients through regression to childish helplessness obviously lost their ability for critical thinking or that they entirely directed the critics at themselves.

The people whom had come to the therapy-center to learn to perceive their feelings had been held away from exactly these true actual feelings instead, because their therapists had no use for those.

The members at the center had been exhorted to strict critics of their parents and at the same time been hindered refinedly seeing their contemporary extortionists through.

When the truths were revealed they became aware of that they had told the most intimate details about their childhoods and sexual lives in the “therapy-groups”, but that they had buried their true feelings and thoughts about the therapists behaviors inside instead. They had never really spoken with the other sect-members either. The patients’ lives were strictly controlled, day and night.

And they got a lot of perverse commands; couples who loved each others too much was ordered to have sex every day, so they should get enough of each others. People who didn’t’ really like each others were forced to intimate relations etc.

Michelle thought that regressive therapy-forms offer a certain favorable soil for these things. A human being suddenly thrown back to childish dependency can’t integrate her childhood. Only grown ups can do this with the help of a therapist who follows his patients and supports their independence, and who are not holding them in a childish dependency.

This dependency is the soil in which the illusion that the therapist can give a grown up human being all she lacked with her mother (and father) when she was a (small) child: being mirrored, understood, unconditionally loved (and given true, genuine respect, which is something a client has all rights to demand and expect!?).

If the mother is capable of this she has protected her child from being exploited later.

But expecting that shortages are possible to be taken back with a guru is self-delusion. It only leads to dependency on promises which can never be fulfilled, because the sect-follower isn’t a child any more and the guru isn’t his/her mother (or father) from the beginning of life. In spite of this this illusion is kept alive in many sects and religions.

Michelle writes that knowing this maybe can be of help to Helga; that she isn’t the only one who have done this experience (or been such a fool!) and succeeded to free herself from the confusion.

And I thought on the article I linked and quoted from yesterday (about the woman who was exposed to incest from she was 7, or earlier, till she was 14, and how her life had turned out later): how can it be to read this for the one that hasn’t been able to deal in the same way as this woman? How do newspapers nuance what they write? Are they “nuancing” things rather?? The Societal Denial again? Because I wonder if not more people have been exposed to things than we want to believe? Many more? Maybe almost all of us, but to different degrees. Some are less harmed, others more??

And - can a sexual abuser come to believe that what he (she) does isn't so harmful??

"See how she dealt with it!!!"

Minimizing and belittling the damage?? Which is absolutely intolerable and wrong!!! I guess most of those who have succeeded in their recovery would agree that the damage could have been undone, and the struggle to recover has taken so much of their time and life...

Also see the article "Compassion Gone Mad" by Heather Mac Donald.

And it was someone who wrote:

“I’m wondering why after many adult children finally say:

“Ok that’s enough! I’m done!”

and then they walk away and have little or nothing to do with the abusive parent after that, but they continue to or begin abusive relationships with others.

I know a woman who refused to speak with her dad because he molested her, but then started dating a man who was very mean to her and treated her like she was nothing.

He used her for sex just like her father did and abandoned her and then would come back just to hurt her.

After I stopped seeing my mother I became very friendly with a very mean woman who screamed at me when she got drunk I also dated a man who was mean and acted pretty much like my mother.”

Is it because they haven't actually worked things through (and this is certainly not easy or easy made)? And recovery isn't about solving things on a symbolic level??

Helga - part 5...

...My experiences the last years have also taught me that one can (only) master the results from childhood traumas if one can remove the actual trauma. As you have proved, these consequences consist of blockading due to fear, dumbness, and dispiritedness.

I agree with you, that if the grown up human being gets over this fear she will not have to go back to the old helplessness, despair and dumbness. The child’s impotent anger probably only arises if the grown up voluntarily puts herself into such a dependency as the one she was forced to live in in childhood. As in your childhood this path was barred for you. Regressed to a small child’s state you couldn’t possibly see that your tears were made an affair of and profited on.

It has been proved since long that one best gets over a shock if one doesn’t try to forget it, which one thought earlier, but instead that one feels what has been done to one and that one talk about this till the shock at last loses its meaning. Silence is exposed people’s biggest enemy.

It was no coincidence that Freud experienced his first hysteric patients’ paralysis symptoms as expressions for this forced silence. Women often express their states through bodily symptoms, through paralysis’s and language disturbances.

“I have to keep quiet, I have no permission showing my anger, not even to knowing what and whom it is about, must believe what I am told, mustn’t betray anybody, must remain immovable till the anger kills me.”

I know of women who have become bodily ill because they didn’t have the power to work themselves up to an accusation for sexual abuse in therapies

The fear of talking is so stubborn because its roots lies in childhood. But you can’t get over it there, but only in the here and now. If you have been exposed to abuse in the here and now, in therapy or in other circumstances, you can’t solve it there and then (i.e. in your childhood) and only blame your parents and not the perpetrators/abusers here and now. This is to cover the present reality up.

To break the silence was in fact life-threatening for many children. For grown ups this is true only in totalitarian regimes, and to them many sects belong. They are built on the old educational system, which people enlisted to them are all too well acquainted with from their childhoods.

Even many therapies are leaning on this system. The therapist (and other gurus) interprets critics from his patients as transference and in this way he disconnects them (this critic) from the first beginning. The patients’ perceptions becomes manipulated to that degree that they don’t dare to believe in their own senses any more, but develop real agony for them.

These mental manipulations can get a devastating effect on the psyche, but doesn’t necessarily have to affect the body at once.

However, there are other tools, the emotional manipulation, which unlike the mental rapidly affects the body.

In my view many healing movements are grounded on this. There are people with a so called charisma; to them many shamans belong, who have a talent for emotional manipulations.

Many of them uses this for others best, many on others misfortune, all due to their own ethical principles and interests. They chose a destructive career if the charisma is combined with a strong need for self-assertion and a psychopathic character. Both these things seem to be true for your therapist. And unfortunately not only for him.

Of course there are serious therapists who now as earlier carefully are revealing the sore points and by this make integration possible for their clients.

But there are more and more charlatans trying to earn money on regression. But the initial euphoria from the wizard’s apprentices seldom remains a longer time. With time troublesome transferences and co-transferences occur, which the self-proclaimed therapist has never learned to deal with.

Then he can rule over his clients with the help of indoctrination and manipulation, which can be successful for a while, and the sexual exploitation can help him to sweep undesired crisis’s and serious distress-situations under the rug.

What you have learned through your personal experiences I have learned through books and from my work with defectors from sects. Our conclusions seem to be pretty alike. We will probably have much to say about this when we meet. I am so glad for that and am looking forward to it.

I wish you all the best, Helga, enjoy the freedom you have fought (and struggled) yourself to.

Helga – part 4…

Michelle to Helga:

What you have told me made me very thoughtful. I have become aware of that we often stop at the economic sucking out, and easily get upset about this. Because this form of sucking out is easy to prove. But what you are describing goes much further.

You have looked into the question what this exploitation has meant in your emotional life and in this (entirely) personal way you have come across something that probably is true for many survivors and children: the humiliation and depreciation, which often led the child to overlook its own value later, that she simply can’t perceive it.

This leads to that this grown up human being tries to get the value she (I write she in this whole text, but she can also be a he) thinks she is lacking, either at the expense of her fellow human being or through achievements, which she increases more and more, because she can’t appreciate her own value. Why one chooses the destructive solution and the other the self-destructive I don’t know.

But first through accepting the fact that we have been victims we get the opportunity to leave the play between victim and perpetrator and abandon both roles.

If your therapist had been capable of understanding what he did and been capable of admitting this to his victims, the path to a new life would have laid open for him too. But his complicated relationships with his victims seem to have a very long history, and already through the slightest acknowledgment he would probably risk a storm of accusations from people who suddenly got permission to see him through. One can understand that he doesn’t take that risk.

Consequently he will continue his geschäft and try to ‘psychiatrize’ his critics, and maybe he will even increase his economic successes, so long as the need for gurus remains.

And this need will probably remain, because there are so many human beings whom have never experienced love and therefore are lacking the ability to see their gurus through.

That you could do this was maybe because you had experienced love from your aunt (father’s sister) and your father after all. Human beings whom lacked every form of warmth in their childhoods are probably lacking all possibilities to get this sort of insights as you have made.

Your spiritual suffering made you seek contact with an extortionist, but there was something in your prehistory which maybe also gave you the chance to liberate yourself at last. There are probably many who didn’t’ get that chance in their childhoods. These can hardly liberate themselves from the sect’s claws just like that.

Your story also strengthens me in my conviction in the priceless value for a therapy-damaged person to know a person who can confirm her perceptions.

This helps her to get over the worst. If this occurs in therapy, among friends or at a counseling-bureau doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that one gets the opportunity to openly tell someone who is capable of listening to what has happened to one, and that one isn’t encouraged (or forced) to seek the causes to the disturbance(s) only in ones relation to ones parents. Because it is only here and know one can sort the situation out and clear the situation up.

A child can’t do this.
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