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
"it was as if his words were spraying vitriol on her face"
Narcissists choose darkness because they are cowards too afraid to face and feel their own painful truths. In the dark they can carry on with their wicked mind games.
It means your Inner Being’s natural state, without trauma, limitation and “darkness”. The narcissist must work with your “shadows” [what this author calls "shadows" is the unresolved repressed emotions of the child you once were. The narcissist's projections and transferences joined together with your triggered unresolved repressed emotions is how narcissists manipulate you to act out their evil acts] to control you and have the upper hand. These are your inner emotional “gaps”, making you feel like the narcissist’s opinion and behavior are shaping your inner and outer life.
Without initially understanding this (perfectly understandable in the “fog of war”), these are the bullets you are handing the narcissist to shoot you with.
In extreme contrast, if you do the inner work to shore up these inner wounds and dependencies – if they no longer exist and you are no longer triggered. You are simply and powerfully yourself, unaffected by the narcissist’s words and antics, rather than being sucked into “darkness”.
Rather you just stand as a bright LIGHT.
Meaning a shining Truth that plays no part in the narcissist’s narrative. You have no need to argue, justify or participate anymore at all. You are just being and generating a life representing health, truth and sanity.
How Dark Is The Narcissist’s Darkness?
Your Light is the VERY opposite of the darkness that the narcissist’s False Self is.
Let’s look at just how dark and perverse the narcissistic psyche is. It contains things like ego attachments to significance, notoriety, stuff, sex, addiction to attention, promiscuity, depravity, manipulation, cruelty, exploitation of others, revenge, envy … and so much more.
If you are a “Light” against this darkness, the narcissistic garbage becomes “Not Your Reality“. You are beaming your Light and creating your life regardless of what the narcissist is or isn’t doing.
This is achieved by honouring your emotional self – your Inner Being. It is done by turning inwards to load up and release all the terrible triggered traumas accompanying narcissistic abuse.
These are things like the disbelief of such evil and maliciousness and the heartbreak that someone who is supposed to love you can treat you like the enemy with absolutely no conscience or clemency. The narcissist becoming “Not Your Reality” is achieved by releasing YOUR darkness – any negative emotion – including fear, confusion and any other internal feeling of dense energy that is NOT Light.
The narcissist loves it when you are in fear, pain, insecurity, confusion and trauma (darkness). Because then you are on the narcissist’s dark battlefield. This is “hell on earth” where the narcissist is a demon – incredibly comfortable operating and energised by negative emotions and your bleeding emotional wounds, just as sharks are when in a feeding frenzy.
Here, in this “hell”, you cannot fight back. You would literally have to sell your Soul to beat a narcissist in their “lair” and be prepared to go to every length to do so – and what would you ultimately lose by doing so?
The answer is your Soul.
(A narcissist would usually rather die than be wrong.)
The only way to save our souls and protect ourselves from these now evil people, we must not engage with them, cut our losses, and grieve our losses. Walk away and let them be to meet their own future and destiny.
Use the grey rock method
"The grey rock method is where you deliberately act unresponsive or unengaged so that an abusive person will lose interest in you.
Abusive people thrive on emotions and drama. When you act indifferent and don’t show your emotions, they may lose interest and stop bothering you. This is known as “grey rocking.”"
We only can save ourselves. Doing our emotional work to resolve childhood repression is the most important work in our adult lives. And the vaccine against narcissists, sociopaths, assholes or whatever you like to call these now evil people.
"The unconscious compulsion to revenge repressed injuries is more powerful than reason. That is the lesson that all tyrants teach us. One should not expect judiciousness from a mad person motivated by compulsive panic. One should, however, protect oneself from such a person." Alice Miller -- Breaking Down the Wall of Silence page 82
“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.
…Just remember this: If particular people or circumstances trigger excruciatingly intense feelings inside you, just keep telling yourself that these are the repressed feelings of the child you once were. Feelings don’t kill anyone no matter how intense they are. Only actions kill. So if you ride your intense feelings into shore, direct them at the real culpritswho hurt you when you were a defenseless child and avoid taking any actions you may regret later, you’ll be free and no one will get hurt. As an autonomous adult, you do have some control over the people you let into your inner circle, and you may have to make some relationship adjustments as you do your emotional work. I took a lot of extra time to be with myself in solitude because most of the people in my life just didn’t understand what I was going through. When you’re trying to resolve your repression, being around unconscious people who are doing everything they can to avoid their own truths puts you at risk of relapsing into playing your old roles.” From my book A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions pages 129, 163, and 164:
I have. It's frustrating when most of the time you are the only one to see how some people are pure evil hiding behind a mask.
EVIL WILL VERY RARELY EXPOSE ITSELF TO PUBLIC LIGHT. IT MUST HIDE. AND IT ALMOST ALWAYS HIDES UNDER THE PRETEXT OF SOMETHING VIRTUOUS.
"But chances are you won’t ever remove the narcissist mask, because he defends it at all costs with a full arsenal of preemptive controlling and abusive tactics. Whether as a young person overvalued with excessive praise and indulgence or undervalued with neglect and/or abuse (or an impossible combination of those parenting styles), the narcissist is in essence an emotionally stunted child with an adult savvy for ruthless manipulating. The narcissist mask is what he wears to assert a face of superiority and entitlement, protecting himself from intolerable feelings of invalidation, otherwise known as “narcissistic injury.”
The Narcissist Bully
Narcissists are classic bullies. They ambush, attack without cause, and prey on the most vulnerable within their grasp, usually those who love and depend on them, namely their spouse and children, who as a result carry lasting emotional and physiological trauma.
Narcissists often also abuse employees, susceptible friends, and “underlings” such as waiters and clerks. Exploiting their power over others in any way possible feeds their endless need to feel superior, and their lack of empathy gives them free range to abuse without the troubling hindrance of a conscience.
The Narcissist Coward
Many of us come out of invalidating (sometimes severely) home environments, but we do not become compassionless sadists. Narcissists are cowards who are fundamentally terrified of themselves and anyone who might see through their mask. Their driving motivation in life is to shield themselves from threatening emotions that trigger their deep-seated sense of inferiority, or narcissist injury.
Often narcissists strike and run, initiating surprise attacks and retreating before being confronted with the consequences of their rage. Narcissists also may behave passive-aggressively, cloaking their rage in self-pitying performances meant to induce guilt and blame.
Whatever hurtful tactics they use, narcissists virtually never take responsibility for their behavior. Instead, they are masterful at denying and projecting their abuse onto others, most often those they have abused, further exacerbating the harm they do.
The Narcissist Liar
The narcissist mask is a lie designed to protect her from truths she cannot bear. Again, this feels like a pity plea moment, and indeed pity for the narcissist is understandable. But pity for the narcissist is dangerous territory that often leads those already victimized into a position for further abuse.
Narcissists are liars who continuously attempt to control others’ perceptions of them and, when they can’t, resort to nasty, often violent reprisal. The narcissist may cast himself as a highly principled person, but in reality he is only concerned with his own needs and is too weak to face life’s truths, especially those that threaten his defenses. He may talk a good game, but when it comes to the truth, he stonewalls, blames and shames others, and always deflects accountability.
The narcissist may, for example, rage at her son for getting an A- grade instead of an A, because she feels threatened by her son’s academic success, she is angry about a fight she had with her spouse, or she is projecting a self-centered expectation of perfection.
The Narcissist Fraud
Narcissists are by nature frauds who lie, exaggerate, and brag about themselves and denigrate others to bolster their image. They hate themselves but hate others even more, and everything they do is in service of asserting a superior face no matter what reality exists inside themselves or within their family.
A dictionary definition of fraud is
a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.
Narcissists are classic frauds—at love, parenting, friendship, and any other important relationship in life. Because they lack the ability to recognize and empathize with others’ experiences and emotions, narcissists are incapable of authentic intimacy, kindness, or selfless giving.
Julie L. Hall’s articles on narcissism regularly appear on her blog The Narcissist Family Files and in The Huffington Post and PsychCentral.com. She is the author of the forthcoming memoir about life, and a few near deaths, in a narcissistic family (read excerpts).
Contrary to what their aggressors have others believe, victims are not, at the outset, particularly weak or mentally unhealthy individuals. Quite the opposite: harassment is often set in motion when a victim refuses to give in to a boss’s authoritarian procedures. She is targeted because of her capacity to resist authority, even under pressure. …"
Narcissists use superficial praise and personality mirroring to get jobs, partners, friends, and influence. The problem with shallow flattery is that it's not authentic, so their fairy-tale beginnings always come crashing down. With Cluster-B personality types, it's common to think that you've found the perfect employee, the most amazing partner, the nicest friend, the greatest politician... But with time, everything starts to come crumbling down. They're dishonest, disloyal, and their actions never seem to match up with those promising words they gave in the beginning. This is because that person never actually existed, they were just acting as a chameleon, saying exactly what they thought you wanted to hear.
When Keanu Reeves Said:
"If you have been brutally broken but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings, then you're a badass with the heart of an angel"
When someone sets clear boundaries with a narcissist, refusing to be manipulated or controlled, it can be frustrating and upsetting as it undermines their power dynamic.
Being seen as "lesser":
Narcissists often have a grandiose sense of self, so witnessing someone else being praised or achieving success they feel they should have can trigger envy and resentment.
Genuine indifference:
When someone shows genuine lack of interest in a narcissist's opinions or displays a casual attitude towards them, it can be disorienting and challenging to their need for validation.
Loss of control:
Narcissists often try to manipulate situations to maintain control, so when someone resists their attempts or takes charge, it can be deeply upsetting.
Being called out for their hypocrisy:
Narcissists frequently project their own flaws onto others, so when their hypocrisy is pointed out, it can be difficult for them to handle.
Ask a narcissist if they are dependable and they will say, Im the most responsible person you know, you can always count on me. And they can be. But when the rubber meets the road (an old saying about being put to the test), narcissists seem to wiggle out of accountability. Why?
Narcissists will gladly be responsible for the things they deem worthy, especially when it provides an opportunity to be the center of attention. However, when others place responsibility on the narcissist, the narcissist sees this as an attempt to control them. This violates one of their personal mantras: no one will have power over them. So they escape from all liability. How?
Intimidate/Blame. The narcissist begins by bullying the person endeavoring to hold them accountable. Frequently they resort to name calling and belittling to assert dominance over the other person. Once a subordinate position has been established, they blame the person for attempting to make the narcissist look less than superior.
Accuse/Project. To circumvent any accountability, the narcissist preempts the attack by accusing another person. Usually, they pick an overly responsible, co-dependent person who idolizes the narcissist. Then the narcissist projects the things they are answerable for onto the other person. Thus escaping before the attack.
Argue/Exhaust. This is the simplest tactic with great immediate results. When confronted, the narcissist picks one small detail and argues it to the umpteenth degree. If the other person argues back, they pick another tiny point and persistently wear down their opponent. Exhausted, frustrated, and annoyed, the other person gives upholding the narcissist liable.
Deny/Rewrite. One way of avoiding responsibility is for the narcissist to deny they have any. Even if the item is written down, the narcissist will make excuses and rewrite history. Frequently they take the victim role by saying they were forced into being held accountable when in actuality they willingly did so. This tactic often leaves the other person questioning themselves and their memory.
Divert/Attack. This method begins with an outburst over something very insignificant. Then, the narcissist exaggerates the point to incite the other person and draw their attention away from what really is happening. Whenever the narcissist is fueling a small fire, it is to keep the focus off the inferno somewhere else. The diversion is done to drain resources, energy, and time so the narcissist can attack when the other person is vulnerable.
Fear/Avoid. Narcissists have the ability to take a persons small fear and turn it into paranoia. Their charisma is put to destructive uses as they weave a believable story with an intense dreadful outcome. Once the other person is frightened, the narcissist uses the other persons terror as justification for avoiding responsibility. They often cite that the other person is reactionary and therefore any requests from the other person should be discounted.
Rescue/Retreat. This tactic is the most manipulative of the bunch. First, the narcissist rescues the other person from a dreadful situation. Having gained the other persons loyalty, the narcissist waits. Eventually, the other person confronts the narcissist about a lack of responsibility and then the narcissist retreats. The withholding of love/attention/time is so dramatic that the other person becomes horrified and assumes responsibility so that the narcissist will return. Once secured, the narcissist then accuses the other person of not appreciating the rescue. The other person feels bad and succumbs to the wishes of the narcissist even further.
Preaching forgiveness is another form of abuse that keeps us stuck in their emotional prisons. You have to allow yourself to feel all of your authentic feelings caused by the trauma we suffered from the sociopaths/narcissists. Feelings don't cause harm to ourselves or others, only actions can cause harm, but the repression of our authentic feelings will harm us and keeps us stuck in the emotional prison. Forgiveness is a lid that represses our feelings and as long as our feelings are repressed we stay stuck.
Just as Alice Miller wrote: They work under the influence of various interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness to the once-mistreated child. Thereby, they create a new vicious circle for people who, from their earliest years, have been caught in the vicious circle of pedagogy. This, they refer to as "therapy".
In so doing, they lead them into a trap from which there is no escape, the same trap that once rendered their natural protests impossible, thus causing the illness in the first place. Because such therapists, caught as they are in the pedagogic system, cannot help patients to resolve the consequences of the traumatization they have suffered, they offer them traditional morality instead. In recent years I have been sent many books from the United States of America describing different kinds of therapeutic intervention by authors with whom I am not familiar.
Many of these authors presume that forgiveness is an indispensable condition for successful therapy. This notion appears to be so widespread in therapeutic circles that it is not always called into question - something urgently needed. For forgiveness does not resolve latent hatred and self-hatred but can cover them up in a very dangerous way. “ Alice Miller Read more here
The words below by Alice Miller about forgiveness are also very true. From my experience admitting the truth is a must, but we must also feel the whole range of our repressed emotions within the context of our own childhood, otherwise, the compulsion to repeat or reenact our childhood drama will continue endlessly one way or another. “…preaching forgiveness is not only hypocritical and futile but also actively dangerous.
It masks the compulsion to repeat. The only thing that can protect us from repetition is the admission of the truth, with all its implications.
Once we know as accurately as possible what our parents did to us, we are no longer in danger of repeating their misdeeds. Otherwise, we will do so automatically, and with all the tenacity at our disposal, we will resist the idea that we can --- and indeed must --- break off our infant attachment to parents who abused us if we want to become adults and live of our own in peace.
We must give up the confusion we lived in as infants, the confusion stemming from early attempts to understand abuse and give it a meaning. As adults we can do that; we can learn to understand how morality in therapy gets in the way of the healing of the wounds we carry around inside us.” From the book “The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting” by Alice Miller page 152.
"Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality, of what really happened can break through the chain of abuse.
If I know and can feel what my parents did to me when I was totally defenseless, I no longer need victims to befog my awareness.
I no longer need to reenact what happened to me with the help of innocent people because now I KNOW what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge.
..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." -- Alice Miller
Yes, i have noticed it! They become exactly like the people they despise, hate and call toxic. They are lost in projections and transferences. And that’s why they are so dangerous.
Birds of a feather flock together is an English proverb. The meaning is that beings (typically humans) of similar type, interest, personality, character, or other distinctive attributes tend to mutually associate.
The idiom is sometimes spoken or written as an anapodoton, where only the first part ("Birds of a feather") is given and the second part ("...flock together") is implied, as, for example, "The whole lot of them are thick as thieves; well, birds of a feather, you know" (this requires the reader or listener to be familiar with the idiom).
That's why some people stay together because they have the same characteristics. As I say criminals work well together!
Many times narcissistic people put others in a position where limiting your contact and turning down the dial on the relationship isn't sufficient. They really don't like boundaries and limits and they can cause chaos and destruction even with limited contact. This is why going no contact is often the only way to protect your peace!
Narcissists are master manipulators.
They play the poor abused victim after they've emotionally devastated someone, and the real victim decides to stand up to them. If there's one thing a narcissist can't stand, it's anyone who stands up and defends themselves.
How dare you ever disagree with them, not comply, or threaten their sense of power and superiority! Calling out their rude, cruel, abusive, and disrespectful behaviors will cause them to unleash a load of hatred, rage, and aggressive bullying behaviors, and they will seek ways to threaten and punish you.
Unhealed trauma makes you hold onto people you shouldn't, and tolerate so much shit you don't deserve because you don't want to feel alone. Healing makes you realize some people don't deserve access to your life - no matter how much you love them.
PARENT - The narcissistic parent has no conscience and no feelings for others, especially their own children. The only thing that matters is their own selfish ego: coercing, manipulating, causing chaos, and damaging lives everywhere they go.
Don't make the mistake of being so understanding and nice that you overlook the fact that you're being disrespected.
Very true. Eventually, you will become their enemy, too. I sure did!
Yes, it's all my fault. I'm okay with being the villain in the narcissist's fabricated story of me
“But how are we to stand up for children in our society and improve their situation if we laugh at and tolerate cruelty, arrogance, and dangerous stupidity? …Humor saved Frank McCourt’s life and enabled him to write his book. His readers are grateful to him for it. Many of them have shared the same fate and they want nothing more dearly than to be able to laugh it off. Laughter is good for you, so they say, and it certainly helps you survive. But laughter can also entice you to be blind. You may be able to laugh at the fact that someone has forbidden you to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, but that laughter will not really wake you up from your sleep. You must learn to understand the difference between good and evil if you want to understand yourself and change anything in the world as it is. Laughter is good for you, but only when there is reason to laugh. Laughing away one’s own suffering is a form of fending off pain, a response that can prevent us from seeing and tapping the sources of understanding around us. “Alice Miller, taken from the book “The Truth Will Set You Free” pages, 101.102,103
That's very true. I'm the youngest child of ten, and I know I experienced a completely different mother than my older brothers and sisters. I had the best version of my mother. That's why I turned out to be so different from all my older brothers and sisters. My life became difficult when I started school because of my dyslexia and when my older sisters cast themselves as my mother's figures at the age of nine. I also learned from my older brothers' and sisters' mistakes. I didn't want to fall in the same traps as they did and have the same fate as them! I wanted to be free, that was always my number one priority.
Yes, get away as far as you can.
Yes, it is emotional abuse.
"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."
They are the eternal victims... As I wrote in my book on page 131 "Alice Miller saw the promise of psychotherapy to help
people understand why they behave like helpless victims as
adults and also to help them take responsibility for their
actions. But she was disillusioned when she realized that
practitioners couldn’t treat patients effectively as long as they
failed to deal with their own repression."
Also on page 82, I wrote: "Alice Miller was frustrated by the fact that the path from
being a misled victim to becoming a misleading perpetrator is
totally ignored worldwide. She concluded that it’s because
“almost ALL of us were beaten, and we had to learn very
early that these cruel acts were normal, harmless, and even
good for us. Nobody ever told us that they were crimes
against humanity. The wrong, immoral, and absurd lesson
was wired into our developing brains, and this explains the
emotional blindness governing our world.”48"
To narcissits image and what others think of them ist's very important. Yes, feeling superior to others is imperative.
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” -Lao Tzu
Yes, I know the answer. That's why I'm gone. I will not allow anyone to make me their scapegoat, family or not family.
Yes, talk is cheap! As they say, actions speak louder than words.
I'm not a victim no matter how much people try to hurt me and the hardships they make me go through.
As I wrote in my book page 174 " I want to make it clear that I’m not telling my story to get
sympathy from the world. I’m purely doing it to introduce
Alice Miller’s books to others, and to show how her books
helped me break free. I decided to go public with my story so
others wouldn’t feel alone like I once did, and to hopefully
inspire people to gather the courage and strength to achieve
their own freedom.
I constantly witness many people going public with their
sad, tragic stories in an effort to manipulate people into
feeling sorry for them and feeding their adult compulsions
and perversions.They don’t want the truth.They only wish
to avoid their own pain. These people are exploiting the
wounded children they once were, just like their parents or
parent-substitutes exploited them when they were
defenseless little children. They keep themselves and others
endlessly stuck in their childhood dramas, where they play
either the role of the victim or the perpetrator.
Alice Miller has proven that we can unlock the emotional
doors that hold us and start a glorious dance to freedom.
Knowing your own truth and living with it is the best gift
you can give to yourself and to future generations. The more
healed, or free, you become, the less dependent you’ll be. And
because people will sense that you’re not needy, the more
people will be attracted to you. It’s kind of ironic, but
autonomy is very attractive!"
Yep! Walk away from them all.
Where there's no authentic love there must be laws and rules.
"...But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name-calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.
This is the case with people who had the good fortune of being sure of their parent’s love even if they had to disappoint certain parental expectations. Or with people who, although they did not have this good fortune to begin with, learned later---for example, in analysis---to risk the loss of love in order to regain their lost self. They will not be willing to relinquish it again for any price in the world.
The artificial nature of moral laws and rules of behavior is most clearly discernible in a situation in which lies and deception are powerless, i,e., in the mother-child relationship. A sense of duty may not be fruitful soil for love but it undoubtedly is for mutual guilt feelings, and the child will forever be bound to the mother by crippling feelings of guilt and gratitude. The Swiss author Robert Walser once said: “There are mothers who choose a favorite from among their children, and it may be that they will stone this child with their kisses and threaten... its very existence.” If he had known, had known on an emotional level, that he was describing his own fate, his life might not have ended in a mental institution.
It is unlikely that strictly intellectual attempts to seek explanations and gain understanding during adulthood can be sufficient to undo early childhood conditioning. Someone who has learned at his or her peril to obey unwritten laws and renounce feelings at a tender age will obey the written laws all the more readily, lacking any inner resistance. But since no one can live entirely without feelings, such a person will join groups that sanction or even encourage the forbidden feelings, which he or she will finally be allowed to live out within a collective framework.
Every ideology offers its adherents the opportunity to discharge their pent-up effect collectively while retaining the idealized primary object, which is transferred to new leader figures or to the group in order to make up for the lack of a satisfying symbiosis with the mother. Idealization of a narcissistically cathected group guarantees collective grandiosity. Since every ideology provides a scapegoat outside the confines of its own splendid group, the weak and scorned child who is part of the total self but has been split off and never acknowledge can now be openly scorned and assailed in this scapegoat. The reference in Himmler’s speech to the “bacillus” of weakness which is to be exterminated and cauterized demonstrates very clearly the role assigned to the Jews by someone suffering from grandiosity who attempts to split off the unwelcome elements of his own psyche.
In the same way that analytic familiarity with the mechanisms of splitting off and projection can help us to understand the phenomenon of the Holocaust, a knowledge of the history of the Third Reich helps us to see the consequences of “poisonous pedagogy” more clearly. Against the backdrop of the rejection of childishness instilled by our training, it becomes easier to understand why men and women had little difficulty leading a million children, whom they regarded as the bearers of the feared portions of their own psyche, into the gas chambers. One can even imagine that by shouting at them, beating them, or photographing them, they were finally able to release the hatred going back to early childhood. From the start, it had been the aim of their upbringing to stifle childish, playful, and life-affirming side. The cruelty inflicted on them, the psychic murder of the child they once were, had to be passed on in the same way: each time they sent another Jewish child to the gas ovens, they were in essence murdering the child within themselves."
From the book: “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence” By Alice Miller
Yep! I have learned to walk away the moment someone decides to play this dirty game with me. I'm free and I'm staying free
The truth will set you free but first will make you miserable.
Yes, they are. I love it when they give up on me because they think I will not be worth much, not a good supply, and i will not be a large payoff down the road, so they move on to someone else they think is worth more, a better supply and a better chance of a large payoff down the road.
Yes, their accusations and criticisms are confessions...
This is what happened to my sister MI. As a child, it helped her get positive attention from the adults and get what she wanted from them, but as an adult, it messed up her life and she can't find the way to her authentic self. It's very sad. Childhood is a lot shorter than adulthood. She ended up getting the wrong end of the stick. They are the classic case Alice Miller describes beautifully in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child.
Very true. No, you are not lying.
My tolerance for BS and disrespect is zero. The moment someone thinks it's okay to disrespect me and feel free to show me their true colors, I will walk away, and this will be the last time this person will have access to me. Bye, bye đŸ‘‹
I'm getting too old! I don't give people second chances anymore.
Learning to care for ourselves is the key. No one in the external world can make up for the love we needed as children but never got. Only self-love can heal this childhood wound.
Work on growing your own love for yourself and find the courage and strength to face your fears of being alone and learn to stand on your own two feet.
No, it's not going to happen. Just walk away and let them be to meet their own future and destinies.
Yes, it's a bad idea!
No. it's not. Narcissists want to be on top of everyone. I want people on my side. I don’t want to be on top of anyone but I also don't want to be underneath anyone. I would rather be alone. Free at last.
Yep!
Yes, it's a bad combination.
This man says a lot of disconnected half truths truths or half-baked concepts but he is deceiving a lot of people at the same time. Weak people are dangerously repressed unconsciously, compulsively, and cowardly looking for scapegoats to temporally and superficially alleviate their own unresolved childhood repression.
This psychologist is a perfect example of the these words Alice Miller wrote and I quoted in my book on page 129 "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
Yep!
Yep! Whatever you give to a Narcissist, that be attention, time, money, or whatever, it has to be given freely, and don't have any expectations of getting any of it back... narcissists are bottomless pits, no matter how much you put into it -- all is lost.
Thank you for writing. I’m happy to read that you got a lot more by reading my book for the second time and you feel supported by it.
To be a support to others that’s why I wrote my book sharing my story.
I too used to like the trap of yoga and believe it or not I got Kripalu yoga teachers training certificate before my emotional liberation when I was still looking for help and answers.
Yoga is a very charming, alluring and seductive trap; it was another dead end or a trap.
Yoga is good practice to keep the body flexible, but like Al-Anon, kept me emotionally stuck for years.
Yoga is a great tool for strengthening the walls of repression and master the art of repression to perfection -- it helps us survive in our emotional prison, but will never help anyone resolve their childhood repression and will not liberate anyone, to the contrary will create a trap so deep and walls so thick that very few will be able to escape from it, because it creates the illusion of freedom and well-being by helping people repress their authentic painful feelings completely and falsify them with feel-good feelings they don’t have, just like a chemical drug does, yoga is a mind-altering no chemical drug, but does not help people resolve their childhood repression and they will endless continue stuck unconsciously and compulsively reenacting their childhood drama in one form or another sooner or later --- as long people's repression goes unresolved someone down the road will have to pay the price --- if not this generation -- a future generation will pay for this generation lack of courage to open their eyes to see, face and feel their own painful truths.
I agree with you, most “helpers” or “mental health professionals” working in institutions cause more harm than help by strengthening the walls of people’s emotional prisons -- making it near to impossible for people to ever liberate themselves.
I feel for people that suffered extreme brain damage in their early years and depend on mental health professionals to help them.
To this day I have not met a mental health care provider that can provide real assistance in people’s healing and liberation, if you are not able to find the strength and courage to stand on your own two feet and create for yourself the space and time to heal, I am sorry to say, but you are screwed, because most likely you will not find an institution and mental health providers that can provide real assistance.
However, I do see plenty of traditional old traps everywhere. These words by Alice Miller come to mind: “when I am looking for them on the Internet I find plenty of esoteric and religious offers, plenty of denials, commercial interests, traditional traps, but not at all what I am looking for.”
I’m sorry you felt abandoned by these people casting themselves in the role of parent figures acting as if personality pretending to know better and to be more knowledgeable with memorized half-baked concepts they never experienced themselves to fool themselves and others.
This has been my experience throughout my life too. And I felt abandoned constantly, but now that I have developed my adult self -- I will not ever abandon myself no matter if others in the external world do.
If I had not found the books and website of Alice Miller for guidance and support to stand alone on my own two feet I would still be living in an emotional prison and would never have emotionally liberated myself from all these people along the way happy to cast themselves as substitute parent’ figures standing in symbolizing my parents or childhood caregivers. Like this psychologist from the Netherlands was trying to regress me into the state of the child and cast herself as my substitute mother figure.
I wish I had suggestions of what to say to your boyfriend, but I don’t. Once a person is an adult, only he can find the courage to open his eyes to see and feel. We can't force anyone to open their eyes to see. We can only offer to be a support to them if they find the courage to open their eyes to see and feel, but we have to be careful to not be used and manipulated by people that only are looking for enablers to support their avoidance behaviors and denials.
Most people are just looking for pacifiers, like for example yoga to soothe themselves. I refuse to be used as someone’s pacifier.
Wishing you courage and strength in your path to your truth and emotional liberation,
