Dear Oprah,
I use to be a big fan of yours, but after I read Alice Miller's books and I realized that your show was a big illusion. That you and your viewers are running, avoiding from facing the true personal truth and feeling the repressed painful emotions of the little girl/boy inside. And I stopped distracting myself with TV shows that don't give the full story and the whole truth, but in fact give mislead information; most people on TV are very articulate and say very seductive words that are just like drugs that keep us numb, distracted from facing our painful truth and from feeling our painful emotions that still are repressed inside us.
Have you read the book the "The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting" By Alice Miller. Your body is telling your truth through symptoms. The reason you keep coming back to the weight issue is because you are not taking the time to listen, pay attention and feeling the repressed painful emotions of the little wounded girl still inside of you.
Please visit Alice Miller website.
The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown
I wish you much courage,
Sylvie Shene
Second letter to Oprah
Dear Oprah,
Last week I sent you a letter. I like to add to that letter the need to connect the dots in our lives. You shared on TV that you feel ashamed for gaining the weight back; the weight gain is just the trigger of the repressed feelings of the little girl still inside of you that is still in pain and feeling very ashamed. What is unconscious always win, no matter how hard we work to keep it repressed with distractions and illusions. Nothing in the external world, no religion, not political party, not a perfect body, not a job, not a relationship and not any amount of money can save us from the pain of our past. Until we walk through our pain, we will keep repeating, recreating our past in the present moment. Dr. Alice Miller in her book, The Truth Will Set You Free; Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self says: "the past always catches up with us, in our relationships with other people and especially with our children." The only way to release the pain is to face it, articulate it and feel all the repressed emotions, until they are gone.
I like to share with you these words from the book: "The Drama of the gifted child, page 94: the search for the true self" by Dr. Alice Miller: --- "… The humiliation, self-disgust, and self-contempt trigger the past situation and, trough the compulsion to repeat, produce the same tragic conditions for pleasure. Seen in this way, the compulsion to repeat is a great opportunity. It can be resolved when feelings in the present situation can be felt and clarified. If no use is made of this opportunity, if the message is ignored, the compulsion to repeat will continue without abating for the person's entire lifetime, although its form may change.
What is unconscious cannot be abolished by proclamation or prohibition. One can, however, develop sensitivity toward recognizing it and begin to experience it consciously, and thus eventually gain control over it…"
Please read this letter written to Dr. Alice Miller. It's an eye opener
I hope you find the courage to see and feel your repressed feelings of the child you once were and help the world see these psychological mechanisms, so people can stop passing the psychological virus to the next generation. If we want to save ourselves and the planet it never has been a bigger emergency for us to face these psychological facts.
Sincerely,
Sylvie Shene
Third letter to Oprah
Dear Oprah,
In this Interview "The feeling child" with Alice Miller by Diane Connors for OMNI Publications International March 1987 --- Dr. Alice Miller says:
"Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than to think, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis.
I try to reach the child in the readers, allow them to feel. I see my style as ranking keys. Everybody can take one so that they can go open their own door to find something. Or they can say no, I don't want to go through this door; I will return the key. I try to evoke feelings, images. In this way I offer keys to your own experience. You can then go look at your children and learn from them, not from me. Because only from your own experience can you really learn.
In my first studies I was very abstract; I wanted to understand the most abstract ideas -- of Kant, Hegel, or Marx. My dissertation in philosophy was very abstract. Now I see that each philosopher had to build a big, big building in order not to feel his pain. Even Freud.
If a child has been molested and the therapist doesn't deny this fact, many things can open up in the patient. The therapist must not preach forgiveness, or the patient will repress the pain. He won't change, and the repressed rage will look for a scapegoat."
Please read the full interview HERE.
It’s an eye opener. I hope you find the courage to read it and feel your true feelings and help your viewers see and feel these fundamental truths.
Wish you much courage and best wishes, Sylvie
Schiavonne: ""Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than to think, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis."
This passage sounded like me before I had courage to condemn my mother of her treatment of me. I never liked how she hit me as a small child and yelled at me when I was older, but I felt that I had to stay loyal to her anyway. These conflicting feelings bothered me so much that I decided to ask Alice Miller for some advice. I wrote the following e-mail early last year:
Dear Ms. Miller,
I read some of your articles stating that sometimes it is best to distance yourself from an unrepentant parent since depending on him/her for love and security is childish, and that an adult is free to engage in relationships elsewhere. I feel that doing this would make me feel better and free, but I have a problem.
On one hand, I am still angry at my mother for the harsh discipline she brought me up with and that she lectures me as if I'm a naive child. (I'm planning on living in an apartment within a few months.) I'm going on twenty-one for crying out loud, and she acts as if I live in a bubble. (Examples include "there are people that you can trust and people that you can't trust") Well, duh! I don't easily trust people anyway. And if I have any issues during my time living on my own, I should come straight to her. (As if I'm not supposed to seek out any other options.)
On the other hand, though, she said that she would help me with expenses for the apartment, since I'm still in college and I'm saving money. She is pretty ill, (she has to take her blood pressure every day, medication, etc.) She also wants me to help her with her schooling because she is planning to go back to school and I agreed.
While distancing myself from her would be better for me, I fear that telling her that she abused me would make her sicker. I appreciate the good things she did for me, yet the bad things she did still burn in my memory, and I won't forgive her as long as she feels justified for what she did to me. I also fear that my older siblings would hold a grudge against me and say that I didn't appreciate her and that our father is the real abuser. (My dad abused my mother, brother, and to a lesser extent my sister. I was told that I was his favorite. My parents separated when I was three years old, and divorced when I was eleven. Even after they separated, I visited Dad every now and then until I was eight. I didn't see him again until last year. He told my siblings and I that he was sorry for what he did in the past and is working on improving himself. He stopped drinking excessively and is working on getting back into our lives. My siblings and I still talk to him on the phone. I still don't feel ready to have a close relationship with him, but I'm giving him a chance. I'm not sure how my sister feels about him, but my brother and Mom still have a grudge against him since they knew him the longest. I find this odd because at least he's trying to change, and they know what abuse is like, yet they both support corporal punishment.)
My mom was raised by her grandmother because her mother died when she was ten years old. My mom told me that her grandmother was very strict such as locking up the fridge until it was mealtime, and making her and her siblings iron sheets. I assume that my great-grandmother also used corporal punishment on her. Yet, my mom doesn't seem ashamed of her upbringing and hails her as a goddess. Maybe that's why she's so sick now. (I'm relating to your phrase, "The Body Never Lies"; I couldn't agree more.)
Anyway, should I tell her the painful truth and risk worsening her sickness and having my siblings mad at me or is there another option?
SR
Here was her response:
AM: Your dilemma is absolutely understandable in your age. If you read The Body Never Lies you know that dependency increases the hatred. But maybe you need more time to make your decisions. Try to listen to your feelings and to take them seriously.
I was disappointed with her answer at first because it wasn't what I wanted to hear. After doing some thinking though, I realized that it did me no good to stay close to her while having mixed feelings about her, too. A week after seeking advice from Ms. Miller, I had the courage to write and send a letter to Mom to tell her my true feelings about her. The letter can be found HERE
I am now thankful that Ms. Miller didn't tell me what I wanted to hear because the truth is better than wishful thinking.
I think that you mentioned sending Oprah these letters back when you were in that anti-corporal punishment group before you left. (By the way, I left, too, back in March. It's sad that even noble groups like that one holds on to illusions.) You stated that Oprah either ignored the letters, or deleted them or both. This is more evidence that she wants to deny her pain and it's dangerous that she encourages her followers to do the same.
I'm sorry if this is a bit long-winded, but I couldn't limit my response to your post to a few sentences like I usually do. Anyway, keep up the good work. I feel that you are picking up where Ms. Miller left off.
Posted by Schiavonne on Thursday, July 01, 2010 - 7:35 AM
Schiavonne
Note about link to my letter: For some odd reason, there is an error when you click on it. I found out that copying and pasting the link to a different browser works.
Posted by Schiavonne on Thursday, July 01, 2010 - 10:08 AM
Dear Schiavonne, Thank you so much for writing and sharing your letters to Alice Miller and your Mother. I enjoy reading very much, they brought tears to my eyes, it’s a joy to see a young person like you with so much courage to see and feel. You said: “ Anyway, keep up the good work. I feel that you are picking up where Ms. Miller left off.” This is the biggest compliment anyone could ever give me. Thank you. I will never be able to fill the shoes of Dr. Alice Miller, I am dyslexic and I drop out of school in the seven grade, so expressing myself does not come easy, I will never be able to articulate the knowledge I feel and shared with Dr. Alice Miller, like she did, but you can be a sure that I will try to carry her torch every where I go and as far I can go. Some people get annoyed that I quote and mention Alice Miller’s work a lot, but she is the only person I know that articulates what I see and feel so well, the only reason they get annoyed is because the truth we are putting in front of them is too much for them to bear. I read a lot self-help books before I read Dr. Alice Miller’s books and after reading all those books I always felt there was not quite right and I needed to search farther. Not until I read and digested Dr. Alice Millers’ books I felt I was hearing the whole truth at last and no longer needed to keep searching, finally I had found all the answers to my questions and I no longer felt alone with my perceptions, it was liberating. I am amazed at these so called “educated” smart people, especially on TV, but are not able to see these psychological mechanisms and me that I was consider to be stupid, mental challenged while I was growing up and I drop out of school in the seven grade can see so clear. Now looking back I think everyone try so hard to make me feel stupid was because they felt threatened by my courage. Congratulations on your courage to see and feel our world is in desperate need of more courageous young people like you.
Also read Oprah is more concerned about her image than the truth and facts.
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