Questioning the family

Me too, like Alice Miller I am doing all I can to make it visible and enlightening parents, so the family institution becomes a safe place for children, because children need a mother and a father. No, we don’t need more nice words and books written by well intentional authors that write feel good books that are just like medications or drugs that makes us feel good temporarily, but disguise the psychological facts of childhood trauma. Like for example just came to mind the book Chicken Soup for the Soul that is a number one best seller! I could use so many other examples, they are endless! People are suckers for feel good words and a lot of people are more than willing to take advantage of this people’s weakness to get rich and make a name for themselves by recycling the same old seductive feel good traditional traps. We need books that helps us deal with the facts and reality.

Questioning the family

“You write: “In the traditional family the children belong to their parents, who have legal power over them. The children are isolated from the rest of society; they have to respect their parents, regardless of what the parents actually do, they have to obey their parents and to be loyal towards them. And the parents, often with the help of the state, can do almost everything to subdue their children; they can use the whole range of physical and mental tortures against their children.”

You certainly are right but why shouldn't we be able to change the patterns of the family instead of rejecting family altogether? And what do you suggest instead of the institution family? A child needs a mother and a father, but of course they don't need the hypocrisy, the abuse, the exploitation and the terror. We must work on enlightening parents so that families become the place of safety, truth, love and honest communication. We can't do this by writing nice words but by informing parents that they disguise the brutality they endured as children by denying it and repeating it carelessly on their children. In this way they protect their parents and produce violent people, again and again. I agree with you that families based on this system are the source of violence in our society and I do what I can to make this visible.” Alice Miller ~ From Rage to Courage, page, 75 and 76

Read more HERE

Dependency Breeds Hatred

Thank you for writing and sharing your story with me. I am sorry the child you once were lived with so much terror and has caused a painful witness in your body that is affecting your health and causing you to lose your autonomy.  I am so sorry.  I can understand your fantasy that primal therapy would liberate you from your repressed emotions and therefore heal your body and start on the road to autonomy, but I don’t think primal or any other therapy will help at the moment. Having someone who understands your situation and you can talk freely about all of your feelings with will be much more helpful. If you really like to find an enlightened witness follow the guidance of Alice Miller how to find the right therapist on her website. Your situation is very complicated and painful, because as long we remain dependent on those who were the cause of our painful plight, the latent rage of the child will not start to diminish, but actually accumulate. The words below by Alice Miller from her article “What’s Hatred?” are very true: “a person we are at the mercy of and either cannot free ourselves of, or at least believe that we cannot. As long as we are in such a state of dependency, or think we are, then hatred is the inevitable outcome. It is hardly conceivable that a person being tortured will not feel hatred for the torturer. If we deny ourselves this feeling, we will suffer from physical symptoms.”

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/what-is-hatred/
   
This is why MM is still stuck in his hatred for his mother because he is still emotionally dependent on his mother and also dependent on her money and using her to make money for himself. He is trying to make a name for himself by unconsciously in a symbolic way killing his mother with his book to free himself, but these are fantasies of a small child and we never achieve true freedom by allowing the wounded child’s fantasies dictate our present actions, but actually will keep us stuck and strengthening the walls of our emotional prison leaving very little chance of ever escaping our childhood emotional prison.
So my suggestion to you is to find someone you can talk with freely about all of your authentic feelings and help you clarify and consciously feel all of your feelings within the context of your childhood and focus on improving your physical health. Also, look for resources you might have to help you gain autonomy how slow or little might be, baby steps is better than not taking any steps at all. I wish you much luck, courage, and strength on your journey.

Sylvie

P.S. fell free to write back and let me know what kind of feelings my words above triggered in you.

Also here is one of my blogs about the risks of primal therapy.
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-risks-of-primal-therapy.html
Here is another blog about primal therapy.
Read Alice's article at the bottom.
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2013/10/neve-put-your-life-in-someone-elses.html  

The Assassination of President Kennedy

This month is the 50 years anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy and Steven Beschloss shows in his book: “The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald, and the Making of an Assassin” how dangerous can be when we bring children into the world before we are ready to really love and protect. When women have children before are ready psychologically, emotionally and physically to have children is like playing Russian roulette, just like Alice Miller says: “We never know how a child will and must react to the injustice he or she has suffered,” some become great manipulators, rapists, assassins, sadists and some psychopaths, etc. And because of this, we should do all we can to prevent bringing more traumatized children into the world in the first place, because trauma is so hard to heal, especially once a person has become a teenager or an adult and the powerful enablers in our society don’t help. Every child born needs to be planned, wanted and truly loved.
http://amzn.to/1aw5lk7

The System of Lies

I have left the system of lies! And yes as long as people continue to believe in lies, the body will continue to scream louder and louder for the truth with the help of symptoms.

 “It is rather surprising that a woman of your profession has the courage to leave, at least partially, the system of denial and open the eyes for the truth of her childhood after having read a book. There are millions of people in your position who never find the courage to do so and to question the lies they have been told early in their lives.

 You ask me how you can connect with your father. Why should you? Everybody tells you that you must forgive. But you must not - if you want to heal. You can't fool the body; it doesn't let itself be fooled. And it remembers everything, the butcher’s knife, the soup cans from the garbage, the beatings and so many other cruelties suffered by a small girl from a highly perverse man. Why do you jeopardize your health by thinking of your father's childhood? If a man raped you on the street would you speculate about his childhood or would you become furious? The last would be a healthy reaction. Why is your father an exception? Because God is on his side? Who told you this? The body didn't read the bible, it insists on the truth and the small girl would have done it also if she had been allowed to see the truth. But nobody was there to tell her: you were treated cruelly and have the right to hate him. Unfortunately, you seem to continue to betray your body, yourself, by killing your authentic feelings. In fact, it is exactly the rage that can help you now to heal.

 The method of Marshall Rosenberg is very nice and may be helpful to people who have not be severely mistreated in childhood. The latter ones however must find their pent up, LEGITIMATE rage and free themselves from the lies of our moral system. As long as they don't do this, their body will continue to scream for the truth with the help of symptoms.” Alice Miller ~ From Rage to Courage, page, 53

http://www.alice-miller.com/readersmail_en.php?lang=en&nid=720&grp=0606