Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Labels are not Helpful

Hi E,

Reading this article Dismissing Attachment and the Search for Love describes many people we know. I loved this article because it describes many people's emotional state without calling them, sociopaths or psychopaths! It's very well written with compassion and without labels. 

Since my experience at my job of nine and half years with people incapable of love and truth  --  I have a tendency to call them sociopaths -- which they are -- but labels are not helpful and I need to try to stop calling them sociopaths. 

But then someone comes along who really cares and says, “I love you.” And now all of that suppressed yearning wants to rush back from the suppressed past. But our dismissing friend cannot tolerate being so vulnerable and needy, so he feels angry at that reaction which threatens his hard-fought security, and he needs to push it away. So he pushes away the one who offers him, love. ...If he starts to run away, tell him how much you care, but don’t run after him. Remember, a starving and scared dog may very much want to be rescued... but that doesn’t mean he won’t bite you."  Read more HERE

Soooooooooooooooo true!!! This is why Marty run! Very good article! If you have time you should read it! 


Saturday, March 10, 2018

Everyone Wants to change the World without changing themselves first

Gottmans are talking about emotional intelligence? How do we develop that as adults, skills that are leading us in life, in our relations and what we do in life? And that makes us more respectful to other people? More caring, less egotistical? How do we efficiently contribute to the diminishment of child abuse (that ralter result in other forms of abuse), if we really want to work against that? Should we start with ourselves? Dig a little bit into ourselves? This is really tricky. You are never allowed to use this as an excuse for your own bad behavior. ...
https://www.gottman.com/?s=emotional+intelligence 


Sylvie Imelda Shene Yes, I agree it starts with ourselves. Facing our own history and resolving our own repression.,.. unfortunately most people out there go out into the world preaching to others and wanting to change the world without looking in the mirror and facing themselves first -- it doesn't work -- and this is why nothing ever really changes in the long term, because no matter what we do without changing ourselves first --- the changes will just be temporary and superficial --  and this is why most people in power positions and in the health care field feel threaten by my story and book and pretend don't see me, because my book exposes the fraud that they are.

I'm so sorry you have been the scapegoat or poisonous container for T's repression. I could feel his repressed hate being transferred into all women... and that you probably are his trigger and therefore you get the biggest dose of his poison. One thing I have learned is that most people are very good with intellectual knowledge, but very few are able to understand and consciously feel their feelings within the context of their childhood without making others their scapegoat or poisonous container.

No one should feel unsafe in their own home. These words Alice Miller wrote to me come truer every day: "I have learned over the years of my work on the internet that there are readers who SEEM to understand SOME of what I have written, at least intellectually, but they are still so afraid of their very cruel parents and of their repressed FEELINGS of rage towards them that they are constantly looking for scapegoats.
They thus live in a continual confusion pretending that they are healed and even offering help and empathy to others. But eventually they use unconsciously other people (even the ones who are quite friendly to them) as a poisonous container like their parents did to them, and if the offended people begin to defend themselves they can become very mean.
I can only urge you to trust your feelings and to NOT offer your empathy and interest to everybody just because they say they read and understood everything I have written. In most of the cases it is a lie. To understand my books means to overcome the fear of one’s parents, to honestly feel the justified rage TOWARD THEM and to no longer use others to getting free from the accumulated rage." Read more HERE

I'm sorry you're going through this painful reenactment. If this person doesn't take responsibility for his own repression --- and you have come to symbolize his mother -- and blames you for everything and is using you as substitute figure to make you pay for the wrongs done to him -- by his own mother or childhood caregivers when he was a defenseless little boy and infant --- you might have to cut all your losses and walk away --- I know it's not easy -- but not any amount of money, anything or anyone is worth losing our sanity or freedom for. I'm not on my computer and it's not easy for me to write on my phone. Take good care and stay safe.



I just found this quote by Leo Tolstoy “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” This is the problem with our world. No one wants to look in the mirror and face themselves. This quote by Alice Miller that I included in my book, page 76 comes to mind: “To many people, it seems easier to take medication, to smoke, drink alcohol, preach, educate or treat others, and prepare wars than expose themselves to their own painful truth.”42

Friday, March 9, 2018

Shackled into the chains of compulsion repetition

K: Some loud thinking as a comment to the exchange earlier...
A lot of women DON’T abuse their kids even if they have been or are abused. And it can never be a good model for kids to witness parents that don’t manage to solve their problems especially well. So, there are all reasons to set about dealing with things of one’s own, to begin with. And, in the case of poor conflict resolutions skills, work to improve them, skills where you respect the other part, and where the respect goes back and forth. You can’t get respect for using force or violence though. It has never worked. And it will never work.
I don’t think that everybody that has been abused early in life, even severely, become abusers themselves. Far from. If you know how it felt to be abused, and have access to how it really felt, you can’t expose anybody else for the same thing. No adult or child. Nobody.
Earlier women were totally dependent on men. They were really stuck with an abusive man (if he was abusive). Both she and the kids were stuck. And she maybe had to protect both her kids and herself. The best she could. Not always easy. And the kids were affected in some way or another.
And the man HAD to support his family in earlier days usually. Sometimes that wasn’t easy either for him. A burden. Today man and woman can share THAT burden. That benefits everybody I think.
Thinking about this, greater equality serves everybody, in a family, in the society, and the whole world. I get more and more convinced about this.
People point out here and there that not all abused become abusers or terrorists or whatever themselves. Here is one of those (about those joining extremist groups):
“Let me be clear that I am not in any way arguing that entry into these extremist organizations is preordained by adverse family lives or social isolation in school. The number of cases of young people being abused, bullied, abandoned, or humiliated is far greater than the numbers who end up in extremist politics. There are many routes from such sad and terrible beginnings.” Page 21
And for those who enter, maybe not so different from ordinary people, at least on the outside:
“Charles Mink debriefed hundreds of accused terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2007 and 2008. He expected a bunch of ‘political outsiders, economic pariahs, and religious zealots.’ Instead, he found detainees who were ‘fairly well educated, completely uninterested in state politics, gainfully employed in one way or another, and—perhaps most surprising—they were religiously apathetic.’ They were not, by and large, ‘angry, impoverished, or especially pious.’” Page 6

Sylvie Imelda Shene I agree with everything you wrote and everything John Gottman says in his speech about Trust and Inequality -- all sounds very nice -- but as long people's childhood repression goes unresolved -- they will be shackled into the chains of compulsion  repetition -- and it doesn't matter how well anyone articulates very nice ideas... The problem is not lack of knowledge and educated people, there are plenty of educated people with intellectual knowledge, the problem is an emotional blockage with the so-called “professionals” or “educated people” hiding behind their rationalizations and seductive theories to protect themselves from having to face and feel their own emotional pain.  It takes courage to see, face and feel our painful truths, intelligence alone is not enough; but it rather helps create seductively, rationalizations, theories, illusions, and lies. Read more HERE

The words below by Alice Miller come to mind also: 

"
AM: Thank you so much for sending us the article and for having written the excellent Appendix. I hope that some of the GP will open their ears and check what they have read with their own patients. But for doing so they should overcome (at least a bit) their own fear of their childhood pain. Unfortunately, doctors like this are rare; most of them think that they have to DO something (prescribe drugs) to feel powerful and do not to listen. They don’t know that listening gives them much more knowledge, also about themselves, which means to gain true strength for themselves instead of playing the powerful one." Read more HERE
"Almost all of us have corporal punishment inflicted on us in our formative years. But the fear and anger such punishment brings with it remain unconscious for a very long time. Children have no choice but suppress their fear and anger, as otherwise, they could not sustain their love for their parents, and that love is crucially necessary for their survival. But these emotions, though suppressed, remain stored away in our bodies, and in adulthood, they can cause symptoms of varying severity. We may suffer from bouts of depression, attacks of panic fear, or violent reactions towards our children without identifying the true causes of our despair, our fear, or our rage. If we were aware of those cases, it would prevent us from falling ill, because then we would realize that our fathers and mothers no longer have any power over us and can no longer beat us.
In most cases, however, we know nothing about the causes of our sufferings because the memories of those childhood beatings have long been consigned to total oblivion. Initially, this amnesia is beneficial, acting as a protection for the child’s brain. In the long term, however, it is fateful because it then becomes chronic and has a profoundly confusing impact. Though it protects us from unpleasant memories, it cannot preserve us from severe symptoms like the unexplained fear constantly warning us of dangers that no longer exist. In childhood, these fears were entirely realistic. One example that springs to mind are the case of a six-month-old girl whose mother regularly slapped her in order to “teach her obedience.” Of course, the girl survived those slaps, and all the other physical punishments inflicted on her in youth. But at the age of 46, she suddenly developed heart problems.
For years on end, we trust to medication to alleviate our sufferings. But there is one question no one (neither patients nor their doctors) ever asks: Where is this danger that my body incessantly warns me of? The danger is hidden away in childhood. But all the doors that could afford us the right perspective on the problem appear to be hermetically closed. No one attempts to open them. On the contrary! We do everything we can to avoid facing up to our personal history and the intolerable apprehension that dogged us for so long in childhood. Such a perspective would reestablish contact with the most vulnerable and powerless years of our lives, and that is the last thing we want to think about. We have no desire to go through that feeling of desperate impotence all over again. On no account do we want to be reminded of the atmosphere that surrounded us when we were small and were helplessly exposed to the whims and excesses of power-hungry adults.
But this period is one that has an incomparably powerful impact on the rest of our lives, and it is precisely by confronting it that we can find the key to understanding our attacks of (apparently) groundless panic, our high blood pressure, our stomach ulcers, our sleepless nights, and – tragically – the seemingly inexplicable rage triggered in us by a small baby crying. The logic behind this enigma resolves itself once we set out to achieve awareness about the early stages of our lives. After all, our lives do not begin at the age of 15. Seeking that awareness is the first step toward understanding our sufferings. And when we have taken that step, the symptoms that have plagued us for so long will gradually begin to recede. Our body no longer has any need of them, because now we have assumed conscious responsibility for the suffering children we once were.
Truly attempting to understand the child within means acknowledging and recognizing its sufferings, rather than denying them. Then we can provide supportive company for that mistreated infant, an infant left entirely alone with its fears, deprived of the consolation and support that a helping witness could have provided. By offering guidance to the child we once were, we can create a new atmosphere he can respond to, helping him to see that it is not the whole world that is full of dangers, but above all the world of his family that he was doomed to fear in every moment of his existence. We never knew what bad mood might prompt our mother to expose us to the full force of her aggression. We never knew what we could do to defend ourselves. No one came to our aid; no one saw that we were in danger. And in the end, we learned not to perceive that danger ourselves.
Many people manage to protect themselves from the memories of a nightmare childhood by taking medication of some kind, frequently of an anti-depressive nature. But such medication only robs us of our true emotions, and then we are unable to find expression for the logical response to the cruelties we were exposed to as children. And this inability is precisely what triggered the illness in the first place." Read more HERE
"Time and again, I ask myself why it is so difficult to communicate this knowledge, why the perfectly normal response – horror and indignation – fails to materialize when the question at issue is cruelty to small children. Deep down I know the answer, though I keep on hoping I am mistaken. The answer I have found is: Most of us were mistreated as children and had to learn to deny this fact at a very early stage in order to survive. We were forced to believe
that we were humiliated and tormented “for our own good,”
that the beatings we received did not hurt and were harmless,
that such treatment served to protect the community (as otherwise, we would have turned into dangerous monsters).
If the brain stores this aberrant information at a very early stage, then the message it conveys will normally retain its effect throughout our lives. It causes a persistent mental bias. In therapy, such biases may be resolved. But most people are not prepared to question and abandon preconceptions of this kind. Instead, they chant this perverse litany: “My parents did their best to bring me up properly, I was a difficult child, and I needed strict discipline.” Obviously, people who have been brought up to believe this cannot conceivably feel indignation about cruelty to children. Since their own childhood, they have been dissociated from their true feelings, from the pain caused by humiliation and torment. To feel their indignation they would need to get back in touch with that childhood pain. And who will want to do that? Read more" HERE
"Am I saying that forgiveness for crimes done to a child is not only ineffective but actively harmful? Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. The body does not understand moral precepts. It fights against the denial of genuine emotions and for the admission of the truth to our conscious minds. This is something the child cannot afford to do, it has to deceive itself and turn a blind eye to the parents’ crimes in order to survive. Adults no longer need to do this, but if they do, the price they pay is high. Either they ruin their own health or they make others pay the price – their children, their patients, the people who work for them, etc.
A therapist who has forgiven his parents for the cruelty they showed him will frequently feel the urge to suggest this same course of action to his patients as a remedy for their ills. In so doing, he is exploiting their dependence and their trust. If he is no longer in touch with his own feelings, he may indeed be unaware that in this way he is doing to others what was once done to him. He is abusing others, confusing them, while rejecting any kind of responsibility for his actions because he is convinced that he is acting for their own good. Are not all religions unanimous in their conviction that forgiveness is the path to Heaven? Was not Job ultimately rewarded for the fact that he forgave God? No good can be expected of a therapist who identifies with the parents who once abused him. But adult patients have the choice. They can leave a therapist when they have seen through his deception and self-deception. They need not identify with him and repeat his acts all over again." Read more HERE

Truth is not what you want it to be

Post shared on Facebook 
S: HA ha! He said "preVAILent"! -- It's "PREValent"! Everybody knows that! Or maybe we're in a new paradigum and nobody told me. 
From the department of tautology department, here's wisdom from Myamoto Musashi, 17th-century swordsman, philosopher and rōnin (wandering, masterless samurai), author of "The Book of Five Rings" and "The Path of Aloneness":
"Truth is not what you want it to be. It is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie."
The guy who did this video is a MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), in case that's not clear. I'm not. MGTOWs call each other "brother" a lot, it seems like, which is just as cringey as when feminist women call each other "sister". What I am is a misanthrope, which, despite the fact that it contains anthropos, the Greek root for "man", means I hate everybody equally. I'm friendly, though, don't misunderstand. I don't even HAVE a samurai sword. You can ask my girlfriend.
I do have a video editor though, and I used it to chop off the last part of this video. I would have linked directly to the original but he started talking about masturbation, dildos and sex dolls. For me, that went beyond the pail. Or maybe beyond the pale, but whatever it is he went beyond it. At least I know prevailent's not a word.

Sylvie Imelda Shene "Truth is not what you want it to be. It is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie."
Totally! Most people are living a lie... And again I could not agree with you more S. Yes, women are the biggest abusers of children, but whe
n children grow up -- male and female -- will direct their repressed hate at their own mothers' -- at all women. I have been the target of people's repressed hate many times. Just like I recently was the target of this latent hate at my job of nine and half years. their own mothers are protected from their hate, but other women that have nothing to do with the injustices they suffered at the hands of their own mothers -- will have to pay the price -- and I sure did pay the price. 

So far I have not seen anyone articulate the naked truth better than Alice Miller. " In my view, women are by no means less aggressive than men. Of course, they are victimized and disadvantaged by men avenging themselves for the beating they received from their mothers. But women avenge themselves for such victimization and physical cruelty by taking it out on their little children, thus breeding new generations of Avengers who consciously love and honor their parents.

I see no real difference between the cruelty of women and that of men because both sexes have learned such sadism at the hands of their parents and caregivers at the time when their brains were still in the process of formation. As children, they were subjected to cruelty and even perversion, but they not allowed to defend themselves. So later take out their repressed anger on other defenseless people, frequently in the same way their parents treated them when they were small. Women frequently vent this acquired sadism on their children. While men also give free rein to it by victimizing employees at work or lower military ranks, or else participating in orgies of violence like genocide or terrorist attacks. The causes invariable lie in the repressed and totally denied the suffering of their childhood (though most of them will insist that they had wonderful parents). People who were not humiliated, tormented, or beaten in their early years are incapable of sadism.

Women can live out all kinds of covert perversion on their children and torment them impunity as long as they call this behavior “good parenting.” Society idealizes mothers because people have never consciously realized that their own mothers treated them cruelly when they were small. Accordingly, women normally enjoy total immunity.

I see no sex-specific differences in the suicide bombers. I understand terrorism as an attempt to compensate for the humiliations these people were subjected to , but have never consciously perceived as such, by means of a “magnificent deed” (such as sacrificing their own lives for the sake of a group).

Though it is not difficult to understand this dynamic, there are not many people who would allow themselves to give up their denial and look the truth in the face. The fear felt by the tormented children they once were can prevent this all their lives.”
From the book “Free from Lies: Discovering your true needs” By Alice Miller Page 140






Thursday, March 1, 2018

Women Are the Major Target for Everyone's Unresolved Repression

Sylvie: There are no doubts that women more than any group become targets of people’s unresolved repression. I have no doubt that if I was a man --- I would not have been the target of a mob of sociopaths --- trying to put the little woman in her place

These
 words by Alice Miller come to mind: “Are women Less Aggressive than Men?

In my view women are by no means less aggressive than men. Of course, they are victimized and disadvantaged by men avenging themselves for the beating they received from their mothers. But women avenge themselves for such victimization and physical cruelty by taking it out on their little children, thus breeding new generations of avengers who consciously love and honor their parents.

I see no real difference between the cruelty of women and that of men because both sexes have learned such sadism at the hands of their parents and caregivers at the time when their brains were still in the process of formation. As children, they were subjected to cruelty and even perversion, but they not allowed to defend themselves. So later take out their repressed anger on other defenseless people, frequently in the same way their parents treated them when they were small. Women frequently vent this acquired sadism on their children. While men also give free rein to it by victimizing employees at work or lower military ranks, or else participating in orgies of violence like genocide or terrorist attacks. The causes invariable lie in the repressed and totally denied suffering of their childhood (though most of them will insist that they had wonderful parents). People who were not humiliated, tormented, or beaten in their early years are incapable of sadism.

Women can live out all kinds of covert perversion on their children and torment them impunity as long as they call this behavior “good parenting.” Society idealizes mothers because people have never consciously realized that their own mothers treated them cruelly when they were small. Accordingly, women normally enjoy total immunity.

I see no sex-specific differences in the suicide bombers. I understand terrorism as an attempt to compensate for the humiliations these people were subjected to, but have never consciously perceived as such, by means of a “magnificent deed” (such as sacrificing their own lives for the sake of a group).

Though it is not difficult to understand this dynamic, there are not many people who would allow themselves to give up their denial and look the truth in the face. The fear felt by the tormented children they once were can prevent this all their lives.”
From the book “Free from Lies: Discovering your true needs” By Alice Miller Page 140


Also these words I wrote in a comment in response to another anti-feminist come to mind: 
“I have tried to stay out of discussions and commenting on other people’s posts because I have a tendency to trigger people’s repressed anger and then they delete me in anger, but I can’t help myself and have to make this comment. 

I don’t consider myself a feminist per se, but I am for women’s rights, children rights, and men’s rights, I am for every breathing living beings' rights.

I know a lot of feminists are too afraid to go to the roots why some men and women try so hard to repress them, but I am grateful for a lot of the accomplishments some feminists were able to do before me and I have come to enjoy thanks to their hard work. 

Even though I wished the feminists had the courage to go deeper, because as long we refuse to go to the roots causes, will always going to be oppressors trying to repress us. 

I totally understand their fears. Laurie accuses the feminists being a hate group, but I see Laurie’s anger very clear being transferred at the feminists' groups also. 

Until people really consciously feel the fears and anger of the child they once were within the context of their own childhood, they will unconsciously and compulsively look for a scapegoat to relieve pen up anger and it seems the feminists have come to be the perfect scapegoat for Laurie. 

These words below Alice Miller wrote to me before she passed come truer every day: “AM: I have learned over the years of my work on the internet that there are readers who SEEM to understand SOME of what I have written, at least intellectually, but they are still so afraid of their very cruel parents and of their repressed FEELINGS of rage towards them that they are constantly looking for scapegoats. They thus live in a continual confusion pretending that they are healed and even offering help and empathy to others. But eventually they use unconsciously other people (even the ones who are quite friendly to them) as a poisonous container like their parents did to them, and if the offended people begin to defend themselves they can become very mean. I can only urge you to trust your feelings and to NOT offer your empathy and interest to everybody just because they say they read and understood everything I have written. In most of the cases, it is a lie. To understand my books means to overcome the fear of one’s parents, to honestly feel the justified rage TOWARD THEM and to no longer use others to getting free from the accumulated rage.”



Steve: That's actually good, Sylvie. What I mean is, I appreciate it. I went WHOA when I first saw the block of text, but then I saw what it was and it turned out that reading it was a pleasure. 

I've seen that last part, what Miller wrote to you, before. It 
impressed me pretty good the first time. I don't think she wrote to many people that way. It's like somehow she'd gotten the idea that you grokked - you 'got it' - probably more than most. I never had direct contact with her. I never tried. I was only hanging around to see what I could learn. So that eventually I might be able to effectively do something about it. Cause I was (still am) pissed about how people are. Have no idea what she would have made of me.

I can't put words in her mouth, but I bet she'd agree with me that if people took even half the interest in children's rights as they do their own - I mean either men's or women's - that before long there'd be no need for what either group is shouting about. But it's hard to persuade people. Thanks for adding!


And with some people of course, all the exhortatiousivityness in the world gets you nowhere. A little pat on the head, maybe, but big deal. That's not at all what you are going for. 

I had only been trying to find out if anybody had half-way figured ou
t yet what the deal is with people who shake babies, or throw them up against bathroom walls where they suffer massive brain concussions, sliding lifelessly into the bathtub, or who otherwise just torture them mercilessly, months on end, until they die. The local paper had been full of that for years. I was sick of it and finally snapped. You just get tired of waking up in the morning to read The Unbelievably Mindblowingly Moronic Strike Stupidly Yet Again. 

So that's just the paper and not even counting the crap these idiots pull in Walmarts and places like that, stuff that never makes the news. 

I mean, I could full well easily understand how Democrats would hate Republicans, and how Republicans would hate Democrats. Any idiot could. It just takes a few functioning brain cells. Not cerebrum ones either, just a couple in the amygdalas or somewhere like that. And except for reporting on potholes and fires and basketball games, broadcasting how much everybody hates each other is what newspapers are FOR, for crying out loud. 

So my motive all along has been selfish. Purely. There's some shit I just don't want to have to read. I don't want to *not* know about it if it happens, I just don't want it to be there in the goddam first place. 

So I went out looking to see what there was to see. Couldn't imagine there weren't people who'd put a lot more time and effort into this garbage than I had, maybe somebody had figured something out. 

You can't look for long before you run into Miller. Thing is, though everything you read and hear about her - including the name of her site - that she's about "child abuse and mistreatment", it's not really true. 

The question that had been driving me was (and still is, really) "Why do idiots treat kids bad and what can be done about it?" Her question though, the one she'd had to start with - and she says this clearly I think in several places, maybe once in For Your Own Good - had been "Where does evil (itself) come from?" 

Big difference. In my case, since I wasn't looking for anything at all even close to that, it was hair-raising. Not what I'd been interested in or expecting, and more than I could deal with. If the answer she'd come up with had been "Democrats" or "french fries", that's what her work would have focused on. 

And naturally she's pooh-poohed a lot. She's pooh-poohed way more than she's taken seriously. People look at her for a second and then say "Oh yeah, that's a problem, no doubt, but it's nowhere near as bad as the fact that there are Republicans, or guns, or capitalism, or socialism, or the Patriarchy or how women are such a bunch of immature, self-centered, emotional two-year-olds that they wouldn't know 'equality' if it jumped up and bit them on the butt." 

I think they're wrong. I used to think child mistreatment was, same as they're saying, just one problem among many. I still have no real idea what to do about it, and thinking about that can make me nuts if I let it, but I do believe now that there's nothing more important than finding some solution.



Sylvie: I’m glad I could add to the discussion. 

Also, let’s make it clear that if mass shootings were mostly committed by women! I have no doubt men in power positions would have already passed laws banning women from owning guns. Just like the mob of sociopaths at my job of nine and half years tried every trick in the book to get the little woman to lose her mind, so they could declare her mentally unstable in order to discredit me and my book. But when a year later one of them lost his mind and killed himself in a police standoff after robbing a bank – NOW IS A BIG COVER UP --- and everyone is staying silent. What he did that's what they were hoping I would do and never forget for one second that -- if it was me --- the little woman – to lose her mind – the little woman's face would have been splashed all over the news stations. And all of them would be talking on TV how Fxxked up the little woman was and in this way, their crimes would be a guaranty to stay in the dark for eternity. But because was one of them to lose their mind -- a middle age white man -- and an ex-sheriff – now there is a big wall of silence. But sooner or later their crimes will be known. 

Yes, it’s very frustrating to see everyone shouting about their rights, but no one wants to face and look at the root causes of why some groups work so hard to repress other groups. 

There will never be a real long term solution to the world’s problems -- unless the majority of people -- especially those in power positions -- finds the courage to face their own personal history and consciously feel and understand all their emotions within the context of their own childhood -- otherwise everything else people do will just be a temporary and superficial fix --- as long the emotions of the child they once were, remain repressed and misunderstood -- they will be driven by them endless -- into a state of repetition compulsion -- of doing to others what once was done to them -- especially with their own children, if they have children. 

The media only pays attention to the very extreme cases of child abuse, but ignore the plight of almost every child in our society that is subjected to ordinary abuse every day under the disguise of “upbringing” and “discipline”. For the media to recognize this ordinary abuse and stop child abuse before escalates to an extreme, like we witness all the time being reported in the media, they would have to face their own childhood repression and question their own parents. But this is the last thing they want to do. The repressed fears of the child they once were at their parents can stay with a person for the rest of their lives. This is why it’s so hard to demolish the media’s wall of silence. This is why a producer at Fox news was intimidated by me and sent me the BS letter in the link below --- he is driven by the repressed fears of the child he once was at his parents to close the eyes to this very important story -- that could be life-saving for many people. Just like Alice Miller wrote: “… Rather than take the risk, they prefer to forgo information that might be of life-death importance for coming generations."

Steve: Yeah the 'anything else' you mention is definitely tough. I worry that there could be plenty of 'anything else' happening these days, that since corporal punishment has been in decline in western countries that the non-physical 'anything else' that people do to each other is a good part of the reason so many are still so berserk so much of the time. 

I hate to say anything is 'good' about beating kids, but at least it can be seen. 'Anything else' can't. So for that reason I remain skeptical about programs designed to 'improve' parenting. Not that I couldn't be convinced, just that most of what I've seen so far has just been a shift from 'bad cop' to 'good cop'. 

There seem to me to be way too many adults out there now who may *not* have been beaten, but still seem to have been denied the natural right to just have been a kid, as kids. And they end up 'projecting' that, as you say.

I think schools, and parents, should much as they're able stay out of the business of 'shaping young minds'. Leave them kids alone, in other words. Social engineering sucks and people really need to just stay away from it. Kids can tell when they're being manipulated, for one thing, and so it eventually backfires. 

But you're right that it's important not to sink into pessimism.

 Sylvie, I wish I knew what to tell you. It's a tough one.

Sylvie: 
 Steve, "I can't put words in her mouth, but I bet she'd agree with me that if people took even half the interest in children's rights as they do their own - I mean either men's or women's - that before long there'd be no need for what either group is shouting about. But it's hard to persuade people."

I have no doubt Alice Miller would agree with you too! I agree completely with every word you wrote above. 

The only march I will ever join and leave my house for -- would be a March for children's rights.



“I hate to say anything is 'good' about beating kids, but at least it can be seen. 'Anything else' can't. So for that reason I remain skeptical about programs designed to 'improve' parenting. Not that I couldn't be convinced, just that most of what I've seen so far has just been a shift from 'bad cop' to 'good cop'.”

I could not agree more with you, Steve!
This is why Alice Miller focused mostly on corporal punishment because it could not be denied. But emotional abuse can be even more damaging because there is no evidence and therefore hard to prove and to heal from. Just like I wrote in my book page 118: “Alice Miller writes that “non-physical abuse can be as harmful as beatings. But it is often less visible.”60 I knew I was feeling hurt with Marty, but it took me a long time to recognize what was going on.” 

And like Marie France Hirigoyen wrote in her book Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity: “"Physical violence can be testified to be outside evidence: eyewitness, police and medical reports. With emotional abuse, there is no proof. It's a clean violence. Nobody sees anything.”  Read more HERE

Steve Thomas Sylvie, "The abuser tries to make the victim act against him so he can denounce her as “evil.” ". I know.

Sylvie Imelda Shene If I truly had not resolved my repression I would not have seen clearly the evil game the sociopaths at my job of nine and half years were playing -- trying to get me to self-destruct -- very few people will ever know what feels like having a mob of sociopaths conspiring together to try to get you to act against yourself! They literally wanted me dead, in Jail or mental hospital. After this experience, I will never again look at another human being in the same way. 
I danced with the Lucifer! Not once, but twice! The first time was just one, but this last time was a mob of evil people. If I had not truly resolved my repression -- I probably be dead right now. Read more HERE