Sylvie's place
This blog is about learning to understand all of our feelings and learning to consciously face, feel and experience all of our feelings within the context of our own childhood. Everything we become and happens to us is connected to childhood. Not every victim becomes an abuser, but every abuser was once a victim of abuse, these are facts, Violence is not genetic, it’s learned. https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-dance-to-freedom-book-reviews.html
Friday, April 26, 2024
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Salazar's Dictatorship
"Just as in the symbiosis of the "diaper stage," there is no separation here of subject and object. If the child learns to view corporal punishment as "a necessary measure" against "wrongdoers," then as an adult he will attempt to protect himself from punishment by being obedient and will not hesitate to cooperate with the penal system. In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His "will" is completely identical to that of the government.
Now that we have seen how easy it is for intellectuals in a dictatorship to be corrupted, it would be a vestige of aristocratic snobbery to think that only "the uneducated masses" are susceptible to propaganda.
From the book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence pages 42 and 43
Poisonous pedagogy is a phrase I use to refer to the kind of parenting and education aimed at breaking a child’s will and making that child into an obedient subject by means of overt or covert coercion, manipulation, and emotional blackmail.— Alice Miller, The Truth Will Set You Free
There is a good deal else that would not exist without “poisonous pedagogy.” It would be inconceivable, for example, for politicians mouthing empty cliches to attain the highest positions of power by democratic means. But since voters, who as children would normally have been capable of seeing through these cliches with the aid of their feelings, were specifically forbidden to do so in their early years, they lose this ability as adults. The capacity to experience the strong feelings of childhood and puberty (which are so often stifled by child-rearing methods, beatings, or even drugs) could provide the individual with an important means of orientation with which he or she could easily determine whether politicians are speaking from genuine experience or are merely parroting time-worn platitudes for the sake of manipulating voters. Our whole system of raising and educating children provides the power-hungry with a ready-made railway network they can use to reach the destination of their choice. They need only push the buttons that parents and educators have already installed.— Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Being Truthful and Authentic Will NOT Get You Many Fans
Being truthful and authentic will not get you many fans. I speak from experience, and I can testify to that.
Yes, when our goal is to control and manipulate others perceptions we lose what is important and what really matters in life.
“…I really want to reinforce the idea that so-called therapists and gurus only substitute one dangerous illusion for another. As Alice Miller writes, “What can happen when a doctor doesn’t stop at self-deception in his flight from pain, but deceives his patients, even founding dogmatic institutions in which further ‘helpers’ are recruited to a faith advertised as scientific truth,’ can be catastrophic.”64
The key to effective therapy is learning how to use your present triggers productively. They can help us clarify, understand and consciously feel our intense emotions within the context of our own childhoods without losing our adult consciousness.
A good therapist can help us regain our adult consciousness if we lose it and encourage our autonomy, so we can deal with present issues from an adult perspective.
But when a therapist regresses us to the state of the desperate child we once were and keeps us feeling old pain over and over again, that just reinforces our dependency, keeps us vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations, and makes our addiction to pain harder to shake.
Why do people keep punishing themselves? As Alice Miller writes, “… the awareness was borne in upon me that in a state of regression, it is not possible to judge the competence and integrity of the person one has turned to for such guidance.
This opens up all kinds of opportunities for abuse. The intensive phase with which primal therapy begins is an immediate obstacle to the formation of a balanced, critical, independent assessment of the therapist’s abilities by the client.
The fact that the attendant uncritical and irrational expectations of healing and ‘salvation’ can lead to the establishment of totalitarian sects is borne out by the crass example of mass abuse at the hands of the exponents of ‘feeling therapy’ as described in detail by Carol Lynn Mithers in her book Therapy Gone Mad: The True Story of Hundreds of Patients and a Generation Betrayed (1994). But this study was possible only after the community she describes had disbanded, something that frequently takes decades.
Today we know that such groups exist and that members of sects are done irremediable harm before they become aware of the fact.”65
In another book, she goes on to say, “The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulations that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care without anyone involved actually realizing it.
At first glance, it may seem as if what goes on in cults and cultlike therapy groups takes place on a different level from the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents. We assume that in the former instance, we are in the presence of an intentional, carefully planned, and organized form of manipulation aimed at exploiting the specific predicament of individuals. … First, they had learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of the helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims.
From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the childrearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhood.”66
Most people who search for answers never actually find them, because people suffering with their own repression are the ones who practice traditional therapies. Since the beginning of human history, priests, teachers, gurus, psychics, doctors, philosophers, and psychologists have all duped people into thinking they could provide real assistance, when it was never possible because the healers were also victims of their own childhoods.”
From the book: A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions, pages 129, 130 and 131
Monday, April 22, 2024
What Happens To The Children Of Extreme Narcissists?
I know of a narcissist who once told me she wanted to have a child to have an heir for her money because she didn't want some of her family members to get her money.
She's misplacing or transferring all of her unresolved repressed hatred into some of her aunts and cousins. That's sad to have a child to take revenge on her aunts and cousins.
Some of her aunts and mother, whom she hates so much never had access to enlightened information when they were young to help them break the vicious circle. She on the other hand has been introduced to enlightened information and still can't break free from the chains of compulsion repetition. She is taking the same footsteps as the people she judges and hates so much.
As long as people's childhood repression goes unresolved they will be driven by the repressed emotions of the child they once were into the state of repetition compulsion sooner or later in one form or another. There is no escape.
The easiest way to guarantee to always have a scapegoat or a poison container at your disposal to constantly use to alleviate your unresolved childhood repression is to give birth to them.
The narcissistic parent, by contrast, sees their child as an extension of their own ego and as their “property.” The child is a reflection of the parent and belongs to the parent. Either the child is seen by this parent as conferring some advantage in life, or the child is seen as a burden and a nuisance; often both.
The child of extreme narcissists is never seen for who he or she is, and is never appreciated just for him or herself. The extremely narcissistic parent can only enjoy and exploit their child for what the child does for them or how the child makes them look to others.
The “love” the extreme narcissist gives to their child is a pseudo-love that’s shallow and conditional and doesn’t come close to meeting the child’s real needs. As a result, the child grows up with an empty space inside them that was supposed to have been filled with parental love and validation.
As they’re growing up, the child of the extreme narcissist can go in one of two directions. They can channel their low self-esteem and need for love and approval into people-pleasing, trying to get others to accept and validate them. Or, they can compensate for their deep feelings of inadequacy by inflating their fragile ego and becoming grandiose. They can become as narcissistic as their parent was.
The children who grow up to be people-pleasers seem, on the surface, to struggle a lot more in their lives, as they look to others to make them feel good about themselves. They are insecure and they go to great lengths to obtain approval from those around them. They focus on making other people happy, rather than on taking care of themselves.
The children who grow up to be narcissists might achieve some measure of success, in that their inflated self-worth can lead them to attain certain goals, but they can never be truly happy. The emptiness within them will never be filled by following in their narcissistic parent’s footsteps. They will never have real love in their lives and all their accomplishments will ultimately feel meaningless.
The paradox is that the children who grow up to be narcissists don’t see that they have a problem. Their inflated ego denies the deep wound within them. They’re unable to recognize the empty hole where self-love should be, so they can’t conceive of real ways to fill this void. They’re doomed to remain narcissists, pursuing external gratification and seeing others merely as a source of this gratification or an obstacle to it.
The children who grow up to be people-pleasers, on the other hand, have the capacity for insight into their own behavior. They’re able to look at their choices and take responsibility for their behaviors. These people-pleasers can use counseling or therapy to build their self-esteem and fill that emptiness within them. They can learn to love themselves and receive love from others, without having to earn it through pleasing.
The child of the extreme narcissist who grows up to be a narcissist themselves is doomed, in the same way as their parent is, to a life of empty, exploitative relationships and the compulsive pursuit of external solutions – money, fame, power, influence – for their real inner needs for closeness, happiness, and meaning.
The child of a narcissist who grows up to be a narcissist themselves might look like they’re doing better, but they’ll never live a good life. The child of the narcissist who grows up to be a people-pleaser is the much luckier one, as they have a real chance to change and to live a full and satisfying life with real love and real meaning."
Read more in the link below:
https://marciasirotamd.com/
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Just Walk Away
Cut your losses and walk away.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Boeing whistleblower John Barnett found dead in US
What John Barnett did that's what the corrupted people at my job of nine and a half years were hoping I would do too! When exposing corruption, you have to be able to stand alone on your own two feet and be flexible enough to bend when punched hard by the bullies so you can get back up stronger! Corrupted people only care about money and power over others and don't care about anyone's safety and well-being. Sadly, John Barnett didn't find the strength to stand alone.
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/search?q=psychological+lynching++
John Barnett worked for Boeing for more than 30 years before retiring in 2017.
In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.
Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett's passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.
It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
Mr Barnett had worked for the US plane giant for three decades, until his retirement in 2017 on health grounds.
From 2010, he was employed as a quality manager at the North Charleston plant. The facility builds the 787 Dreamliner, a state-of-the-art airliner used mainly on long-haul routes.
In 2019, Mr Barnett told the BBC that under-pressure workers had been deliberately fitting sub-standard parts to aircraft on the production line.
He also said he had uncovered serious problems with oxygen systems, which could mean one in four breathing masks would not work in an emergency.
He said soon after starting work in South Carolina he had become concerned that the push to get new aircraft built meant the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised, something the company denied."
Read more in the link below: