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 everything that 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, November 4, 2011
L's Letter
Only children need to repress and deny their plight in order to survive, but as an adult what once was a lifesaving mechanism will keep us unconscious and compulsively repeating or reenacting our childhood drama over and over again keeping us eternally trapped in an emotional prison. As an adult, if we gather the courage to see and feel we will not die to the contrary we will save our lives and the future of our children and be free to really live.
I understand your fears and anxiety and you went around in your head tip-toeing using your intellect, creating a smokescreen that is confusing you and others that are still emotionally blind so you did not have to see the truth and feel your fears and anxiety and took the side of a person that is too threating just like your abusive uncle was because the little boy you once were still trapped in that bathroom, I hope one day the adult in you, now, finds the courage and strength to face the internalized intimidating uncle and you rescue the little boy you once were out of that bathroom and liberate yourself so when in the present moment you are in the presence of intimidating person you can stand up to him/her and not let the fear of the child you once were from exposing the truth and facts.
Your friend gave me more evidence that in most cases people desire to have children comes from their unconscious need to have an available object to project themselves because at the moment I stated that she lashed out at me with personal attacks, I understand these projections and now that I have freed myself I can handle them without losing my balance, but a child has no way of understanding these projections and this is why I would never carry a pregnancy to term and give birth to a new life I could not take care of and protect and would never give the baby up for adoption because the chance of ending up with a person that will use the baby unconsciously and compulsively to satisfy her needs and to project herself into is very high and I would never take that risk.
Of course, that can be exceptions to the rule, but those exceptions are very rare making it a very costly risk -- it's playing Russian Roulette with the lives of defenseless little babies -- for example, I now sometimes think about adopting a child, but not because I have a need to be a mother, but because I now know, without a doubt, I am in place of being a conscious mother and there are so many children unfortunately out there in need of a mother because so many women were not conscious of the risks of carrying a pregnancy to term and given birth to a new life they can’t take care of emotionally and financially.
When a person cannot have children should feel fortunate of the clue their bodies are given them and not force it, because I know without a doubt when we force things is never a good outcome and to this day I have not seen a happy child that the parents went to extreme lengths to conceive him/her. I wish I had saved the letter of a girl that wrote to me from England that was the product of first test-tube babies in the seventies and how she hated her mother because her mother only thought of what she wanted and never thought once about her child’s feelings and how she felt used by her mother all her life.
And yes a lot of people are not as fortunate to have their body giving them the clue that they are not in position of being conscious parents and if they became aware of their reality they have to take steps to prevent from bringing new life into the world they cannot really love and nurture, so I know without a doubt from my experiences Alice Miller’s words in most cases are facts and very true and Alice Miller herself never said that are no exceptions to the rule.
“(Daryl, you're a genius) I am neither pro-choice nor pro-life. I am pro-education.”
Education alone does nothing because unless people are able to face and feel the repressed feelings of the child they once were in the right context their compulsion to repeat will continue endless no matter how much education they get. The more educated people are the more they use their intellect and rationalizations and pass their psychological virus silently and covertly under the disguise of help with very seductive lies coated with disconnected truths deceiving themselves and the masses.
Sylvie Imelda Shene:
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Parents Lay the Ground
Friday, October 7, 2011
This explains a lot about Charlie Sheen’s problems.
Having a long marriage does not mean anything. Most people are together in fear and insanity and not in love.
Martin Sheen in an interview also said: “She even found out later that her mother really thought about dumping her in the Ohio River” after she was born. Instead she took her back to Kentucky where she was raised by two aunts, until she was six.”
This explains a lot! Charlie sheen is expressing the hate and pain of his grandmother passed on to his mother that started right in the womb and then passed to Charlie Sheen and his brothers and sisters, but Charlie is the one persuasively expressing it in a symbolic language that society and he himself does not understand. I can only imagine the pain and hate would make me feel if I had to carry a pregnancy to term caused by rape. It probably would have made me lose my mind completely. Martin Sheen is completely selfish just thinking of himself that if his wife had not been born he would not had have his wife as his companion, but have he stopped for a brief moment to think about the life that had to be destroyed in order for his wife to be born, didn’t the life that was already here had the right to life or the unborn life had more rights than lived life? Ignorance like this makes my blood boil. Just as Alice Miller wrote in her article PROTECTING LIFE AFTER BIRTH: “When I see the passion with which Catholic priests - men childless by choice - fight against abortion, I can’t help asking what it is that motivates them. Is it a desire to prove that unlived life, as perhaps their own destinies suggest, is more important and more valuable than lived life? Was that, perhaps, how the parents of those passionately committed to stopping abortion thought, though they expressed it in different ways? Or is it a case of seeing to it that others share the same fate as oneself? Both are possible. Both are dangerous, when people are driven to blind and destructive actions by the dead hand of their own repression.”
Friday, August 19, 2011
Gurus and Cults Leaders How They Function
Monday, July 4, 2011
The Betrayal You Carry: On Parents, Scapegoats, and Unearned Anger
Dear D,
You’ve lingered in my thoughts since your last letter. Writing back felt heavy—not just from my own busyness, but from carrying your repressed anger. I know facing truth is agony. But as Alice Miller writes:
"Pain is the way to truth. Deny you were unloved as a child, and you spare yourself pain—but lose your truth. You’ll spend life begging for love. Therapy stalls when we avoid pain. Yet confronting neglect or hatred brings guilt: ‘My mother’s cruelty is my fault. What must I do to earn her love?’ This guilt shields you from a devastating truth: you were fated to have a mother who couldn’t love. Believing ‘I’m the problem’ lets you keep trying. But love isn’t earned. Guilt for what was done to you? It feeds your blindness. Your neurosis."
You feel I betrayed you. But the real betrayal came decades ago—from your parents. I tried to make your mother see. To protect you. She lacked the courage to shield you from a father who exploited you to feed his emotional hunger. On those Portugal summers, I watched it: you, a child, forced to be your father’s partner—not his daughter.
Your rage at me? Justified—but misdirected. It belongs to them. Scapegoating me lets that wound fester. Truth is the only scalpel: feel your repressed fury in its rightful context—childhood—and it dissolves. You free yourself.
I bought these books for you. They name what was done to you:
"Silently Seduced" (Kenneth Adams) — On covert incest.
"The Emotional Incest Syndrome" (Patricia Love) — When a parent’s love suffocates.
"Toxic Parents" (Susan Forward) — Reclaiming your life.
I left them with your mother. She refused to see. No excuses—she speaks English fluently. What good is language if not to seek self-knowledge? What good are degrees if they license emotional blindness? Miller was right:
"Universities churn out experts blind to child abuse. Why? Because cruelty masquerades as ‘parenting.’"
Your last email? Déjà vu. Growing up in Portugal, I was blamed whenever I refused to perform expected roles. My crime? Not soothing others’ unresolved pain. Now I know: their anger wasn’t about me. Yours isn’t either. I’m just the trigger. The scapegoat. Read more on transference here.
Sponsoring your move from Portugal was an illusion. I don’t feed those anymore. Geography doesn’t heal trauma. You can’t outrun yourself. I learned this in America: liberation came through facing my truth—not crossing an ocean. Now I offer that knowledge on a silver platter. Take it.
I can’t feel your pain for you. If I could, I would—you’re my niece, my goddaughter. Your freedom would be my joy. But this battle is yours alone. When you’re ready to fight it, I’ll stand with you. Until then? I won’t polish illusions.
Courage, D. Feel your truth. It’s the only path out.
Sylvie
(For context, see my earlier post: I Will Not Be Your Scapegoat)
Original letter below
Dear D,
Since your last letter, you have been on my mind constantly, and I have wanted to write to you, but because I am so busy these days, and plus writing to someone who is directing their repressed anger at me, it makes it even harder to sit down and write.
I know the truths I talk about are very hard to face and feel, but for you to free yourself, you need your truth, like 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."
You were betrayed by your parents, not me, but now because I did not say what you wanted to hear. I did not behave the way you like to; it triggers your justified anger, but that anger was caused by the betrayal of your parents, and as long as you direct your anger at scapegoats, you will stay trapped, and it never gets resolved.
Only when we feel our repressed feelings in the right context do they start to diminish and get resolved, and we free ourselves.
On my summer vacations to Portugal, I would witness that instead of you relying on your father for emotional support, it was your father relying on you to get his emotional needs met, and this is very damaging to a child; you were more to your father a partner than his daughter.
I bought the books below, thinking of you. They describe what happened to you as a small child to a T. I tried to share these books with your mother. Still, she too did not have the courage to open her eyes and see, she can’t use the excuse that she did not know English, because she like you had no problems learning the English language in school, me in the other hand, because of my learning disability I was not able to learn in school. If I had not left Portugal, I would never have learned the English language, and I would not have been exposed to this essential knowledge to help me liberate myself. I felt that she learning English was a total waste, because if what we learned is not used to help ourselves, why go through the trouble of learning it? What a waste, I left the books in Portugal. If you gather the courage to read them, you will see yourself in them:
http://www.alice-miller.com/readersmail_en.php?lang=en&nid=682&grp=0506
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
I will not be a scapegoat or a poisonous container to anyone, family or not family
After a long day at work, I had no patience for it. Later, when I got home, I wrote an email to her to apologize for my lack of patience. It’s so sad, but my niece is suffering and there's nothing I can do for her. I think she was calling me because she would like to come to the States. She does not understand that I would not ever let anyone live with me who idealizes their abusive parents and lives in denial of what happened to them as a small child, because that is putting myself on the line of fire of someone’s repression. No one will come to my house again and make me their scapegoat or poisonous container, family or not family.
I never said you should not have been born, but the truth is: most of us are here because our parents were unconscious and, despite my parents not being conscious, they had me without thinking about what kind of life they were giving me. I am living with the reality that my family is not capable of real love, and I let go of their illusion of the family and their illusion of love. After facing and feeling my sad reality, I no longer feel pain, I feel free, and I am enjoying my life. I will not let any members of my family come into my life and take away the joy I feel today.
Maybe, one day you will gather the courage and strength to stop idealizing your father and see him as he really was, UNCONSCIOUS, and live with your own reality, because the truth is we are all alone. Each of us has to find our own way to ourselves and save ourselves, because no one else can. I can’t walk your path with you, just like no one could have walked my path with me.
You are not being "sickeningly sarcastic," you only dared to speak out the truth that most people are afraid of seeing or talking about.’
http://www.alice-miller.co
Honestly, your lack of logic, reasoning, and grounds is a huge handicap if you aim to be taken seriously. You should start to read the classics, and only after, try to understand others. Your ideas are like a house with no foundations. You built ideas that can’t be sustained.
Start by reading and understanding Plato, Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche, and Stuart Mill… Try to read Dostoevsky, Zola, Balzac, Shakespeare, Goethe…. Maybe, in the end, your mind can be opened, because you just see what you want (“No worse blind than the one who does not want to see”), you don’t have abstract reasoning yet. If you aim to be in disagreement, you have, at first, to study and understand the basics. Disagreement is not synonymous with the absence of the capability to understand.
Any definitions that you may have to exist, thankfully to those men who settled ideas as freedom, metaphysical being, and love as you understand them today. You are just unable to understand men and individuals without knowing where they come from, which means knowing history, philosophy, and art.
I am not directing anything; I am just amazed at your lack of respect towards others. If you want to be better than others, you must learn to be humble and open to the idea that you may not know everything.
“I only know that I know nothing”. You just don´t let yourself be in this position. But without it, you will never be able to expand your intellect. Tolerance of others' ideas and perspectives is actually a great accomplishment that only great people can achieve. Little people tend to shape the world as it is more comfortable for them.
You can always walk away and waste the opportunity to improve yourself. The courage it is all about being aware of our own ignorance; it is a form of nihilism, a spirit’s renewal.
One of the best law professors said at some point, “We don’t accept advice from the ones that didn’t do better”. And that’s the point, you didn’t, you just judge and haven’t yet learned to listen before speaking.
Even the small task you failed. You can’t listen.
Learn to listen first… You speak too much with little wisdom, which only shows your insecurities and lack of reasoning.
If you were honest with yourself, you would assume your incapacity to be anyone’s godmother. Unfortunately, you are mine, and the only thing you have is the idea that I shouldn’t be born. Well done!
Love,
D
I am not calling or writing to you to force you to see what I see. You are angry, and your anger is justified because you were hurt, but I was not the person who hurt you. Directing your justified anger at scapegoats does not get resolved and keeps you trapped; your anger will only start to diminish and get resolved when it’s felt in the right context. You keep saying that I told you: you should not have been born, but you are twisting my words, but like I said before, most of us are here, because our parents were unconscious and now it’s in our hands to choose to wake up, stop idealizing our parents and childhood, face and feel our sad reality or continue the insanity of our parents.
You are using your intellect to avoid looking at the facts and seeing these fundamental psychological mechanisms. It takes courage to see these psychological mechanisms; intelligence alone is not enough, but it rather helps create seductive illusions and lies. You are in your last year of law school. Now, because you think you have “higher education,” you have the illusion that the States are hiring people with higher education. The United States has a lot of unemployed lawyers, and the United States does not need more emotionally blind lawyers; we've got enough of those here already, now, because I am not willing to do what you want me to do, which triggered your anger. Like I said, I am not the cause of your anger; I am only the trigger, because I am not willing to let you use me the way you want to use me. In all these years of school, you come out with a lot of abstract knowledge and what I call empty knowledge that only serves to impress others and deceive yourself and other emotionally blind people. Education alone does not save people; it did not save your mother, and it is not going to save you either. Education alone is nothing but an illusion.
Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness
As in her former books, Alice Miller again focuses on facts. She is as determined as ever to cut through the veil that, for thousands of years now, has been so meticulously woven to shroud the truth. And when she lifts that veil and brushes it aside, the results are astonishing, as is amply demonstrated by her analyses of the works of Nietzsche, Picasso, Kollwitz, Keaton, and others. With the key shunned by so many for so long - childhood - she opens rusty locks and offers her readers a wealth of unexpected perspectives. What did Picasso express in "Guernica"? Why did Buster Keaton never smile? Why did Nietzsche heap so much opprobrium on women and religion, and lose his mind for eleven years? Why did Hitler and Stalin become tyrannical mass murderers? Alice Miller investigates these and other questions thoroughly in this book. She draws from her discoveries the conclusion that human beings are not "innately" destructive, that they are made that way by ignorance, abuse, and neglect, particularly if no sympathetic witness comes to their aid. She also shows why some mistreated children do not become criminals but instead bear witness as artists to the truth about their childhoods, even though in purely intuitive and unconscious ways.
It is Dr. Miller's goal to encourage these sympathetic witnesses, to lend them support, and to inform them about the worldwide and ignored plight of children, for she thinks that only by confronting the truth that has been avoided from time immemorial can human beings be saved from blind destruction and self-destruction. This discovery is eloquently illustrated in the last section of "The Untouched Key", wherein the story of Abraham and Isaac and the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" are retold to reveal their profound meaning.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009N989PM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Also, read The Betrayal You Carry: On Parents, Scapegoats, and Unearned Anger
Congratulations for your courage,
Sylvie
Sure, Sylvie. I was horrified when I woke up this morning and saw those two just being hateful all over the place, but this is something you and I are used to dealing with on the Net. I figured there wasn't any point in joining the fray if, as you mentioned, L is not going to ditch those people.
I feel sorry for L and hope he finds a way out someday.
Talk to you later,
J
Hi J,
I did not read L’s full comments this morning and I just read most of it right now, but I did not finish reading it, because he is just making me his scapegoat or poisonous container! It just shows how lost he still is unconsciously and compulsively making innocent people that have nothing to do with his anger and pain, but I was just the trigger of it and by making me the scapegoat or poisonous container he loses a great opportunity to resolve this hate and free himself. Sadly I see him dependent on his real abusers and on the disability check from the government for his whole life and therefore will not be able to feel his hate in the right context and endless needing scapegoats to relieve his pent up anger, very sad.
These words Alice wrote to me became very true once again.
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.
Again thanks for your support
Sylvie
What Alice says, it is very true. Especially the part about them understanding just enough of this stuff intellectually. An advanced ego defense is intellectualization, which I find people doing a lot after years of the older, less sophisticated defense mechanism can no longer shield them from the facts about their abusive history.
Stef also talks a lot about how people will try to make the enlightened witness/philosopher so angry and fed up with humanity that they become withdrawn and stop trying to help the world. I want to avoid stepping into that trap. I will help people regardless of how many adult victims wish to project on me.
Thank you very much, Sylvie.
J
I think I read it and I too did not bother saying anything either, because I could feel L is not open for real feedback and I could tell if we express our true perceptions and he did not agree with it he would come out swinging viciously the same way his childhood abusers intimidate him. And now that I expressed to him how I truthful saw his situation he came out viciously with personal attacks toward me and Alice Miller. He still among my friends on Facebook, but he has been restricted and cannot see everything I post. Me too I want to avoid stepping into that trap and keep on trying exposing abusers and give support to people that really want to help themselves to break free from their emotional prison.
Congratulations on liberating yourself and not letting other people’s projections stopping you.
I wish much success in this very important work you are doing and again thank you for your support,
Sylvie
I just remember now having the chat below with D when L made Stefan Molyneux his scapegoat. D wrote to me asking for my thoughts on what L had written. I thought you might like to read the words I wrote at the bottom.
August 22Sen...t from Chat
D
can you chat by chance?
August 22Sent from Chat
Sylvie Imelda Shene
I am not too busy right now, but I am at work and things can change.
August 22Sent from Chat
D
sure, I understand 9same here). could we maybe schedule a time for a skype convo? I wanted to get your thoughts/feedback on what L has written
August 22Sent from Chat
Sylvie Imelda Shene
I am reading L notes too!
August 22Sent from Chat
D
ok
I'd like to know your thoughts on how (or even if) to respond
August 22
Sylvie Imelda Shene
I am thinking about to respond if I can find the right words. He has some valid points, and maybe the words Stefan picked are not the best ones like if we were rejected as a child we will desire rejection, of course at the conscious level we don’t desire rejection, but unconsciously and compulsively we will be attracted to people that will reenact our childhood drama because unconsciously we still have the illusion that we can change our childhood abuser now in the substitute figures standing in symbolizing our parents or childhood caretakers and finally get the love we been longing for all of our lives, but it will never happen and we only get better after we let go of that illusion and face the fact that no one can ever make up for the love that we needed as a child and now only us can learn to love and care for ourselves. I see L stuck in his story and not able to get out looking for someone with a miracle to save him like he has the illusion that if he could afford primal therapy with Arthur Janov, he would get better, but regression therapy can be very dangerous because it can make people addictive to pain and keep people stuck in the state of the helpless child. I am free to talk for a little bit at 2:45PM my time, Let me know if you are available at that time. Sylvie