That's why I live alone. Some people are overtly toxic and some are covertly toxic refusing to deal with their painful truths by resorting to a world of fantasy pretending all is rose. I am free from all the BS. I'm getting too old to take risks and live in the same house with other people. I love my solitude where I'm free to feel all my feelings without interference from others.
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2018/02/better-alone-than-in-bad-company.html
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2023/02/happy-valentines-day.html
Sad
Yes, they want you destroyed on the side of the road begging.
Yes, they have the illusion that if they are in control of everyone and everything around them they will be safe from having to face the fears of resolving childhood repression. Face your fears or they will keep biting you in the a$$. Eventually, sooner or later in one form or another, all will come crashing down. External power is always temporary. Real power comes from understanding and knowing ourselves. Once we know ourselves and understand ourselves completely we also see others clearly and understand where they coming from and we no longer can be manipulated and used by others unless we allow them.
Are Women Less Aggressive than Men?
Yes, I'm free and I'm staying free.
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 were not allowed to defend themselves. So later, they 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 with 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 it 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
They are very dangerous indeed.
"...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
Hurting and destroying others' lives is their painkilling drug. It's an addiction that keeps their own childhood repression intact.
“…Dictators and the Dynamics of Cruelty Every dictator torments his people in the same way he was tormented as a child. The humiliations inflicted on these dictators in adult life had nothing like the same influence on their actions as the emotional experiences they went through in their early years. Those years are "formative" in the truest sense: in this period the brain records or "encodes" emotions without (usually) being able to recall them at will. As almost every dictator denies his sufferings (his former total helplessness in the face of brutality) there is no way that he can truly come to terms with them. Instead, he will have a limitless craving for scapegoats on whom he can avenge himself for the fears and anxieties of childhood without having to re-experience those fears.” Alice Miller
"New psychology research links childhood betrayal trauma to secondary psychopathy in adulthood. A new study has found that people who reported suffering betrayal trauma in childhood were more likely to exhibit psychopathic and callous traits in adulthood. Dissociative experiences were found to mediate this association.
A new study has found that people who reported suffering betrayal trauma in childhood were more likely to exhibit psychopathic and callous traits in adulthood. Dissociative experiences were found to mediate this association. The study was published in the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.
Psychopathy consists of a set of behavioral traits that are often observed together in individuals. These are serious, chronic antisocial behavior, lack of empathy, bold, and disinhibited behavior that is paired with charming, but exploitative behavior. Scientific studies of psychopathy have, so far, mostly focused on antisocial behavior that is characteristic of psychopathy. It was typically studied in samples of convicts and individuals registered or processed by the criminal justice system. However, psychopathic personality traits exist to a different degree throughout the population. Recently, research focus has shifted to successful individuals displaying psychopathic traits, the so-called “successful psychopaths.” Researchers have proposed that individuals with psychopathic traits who are able to effectively adapt to social norms and can better control their antisocial impulses and overall behavior can avoid incarceration and be highly successful in their careers."
https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2023/04/new-psychology-research-links-childhood.html
Many therapists cause more harm and are just big enablers
Yep!
Yes, they can't bear it. They would rather destroy you and discredit you so that no one will believe you, so they can continue as usual with their manipulative tactics
When they know that you know that's when you get a target on your back.
Very true
Yes, don't let yourself be driven by the unresolved repressed emotions of the child you once were to do something you might regret later. Learn to be still and consciously feel the emotions within the context of your own childhood. Just like I wrote in my book A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions pages 163, 164, 165, 166, 167 and 168
I’ll be honest with you, some of the feelings at times were so intense that I probably shouldn’t have been alone with them. But thanks to Alice Miller’s books I was able to understand and move through them. Frankly, I didn’t have a choice.
Before I discovered Alice Miller I was close to the breaking point, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to go on much longer without her writings.
You may not have a choice, either. Regrettably, true enlightened witnesses are hard to come by. To this day I haven’t met a therapist I can recommend. All I can really suggest is that you get as much as you can out of this book, and out of all the writings of Alice Miller you can get your hands on.
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 culprits who 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.
Before Marty and I broke up in the year 2000, I was planning an extended trip to Portugal to take care of some family business. But the triggering of my repressed emotions put an end to that plan right away. I knew my family couldn’t help me explore and understand my feelings, since they couldn’t handle their own.
They use every technique available to them to repress their own feelings, and I was afraid — knowing that I was in a vulnerable emotional state — that they’d once again make me their scapegoat, projecting their own repression into me like they did when I was younger.
Sometimes you have to let go of some money or time to free yourself from certain people, like I did with that Mormon guy Justin, but that’s nothing compared to your freedom and peace.
Other times it may not be practical to show people in your life the exit door, but do the best you can given your specific circumstances. The real key is to be patient with yourself. Keep trying to focus on your intense feelings and eventually, you’ll begin to understand them. Once you do, they’ll start to subside and you’ll start to feel liberated from your old wounds, roles, and patterns. You’ll begin to realize that any intense, excruciating emotions you feel today are the repressed emotions of the child you once were and have very little to do with your present situation.
When a current event or person triggers a strong emotion, you’ll be able to take a step back from it. You’ll be able to tell yourself that the intense feelings of powerlessness, fear, or anger are from the child you once were, and that the present event or person is just a substitute that reminds you of a time when you were really vulnerable.
In the future, you’ll no longer be blinded by your repressed emotions. You’ll be able to clearly recognize red flags and avoid getting too intimate with people who’ll reenact your childhood drama and have you relive old pains over and over again.
You’ll be able to better deal with present-day triggers. As a child you were powerless, but as an adult, you can obtain the power and the freedom to take care of yourself and get yourself out of abusive situations.
While the child you once were was unable to feel intense fear or anger, it’s safe for you to feel these emotions as an adult today. Eventually, you’ll no longer feel scared and angry. Just don’t give up! You must let your honest feelings show you the true story of what you had to go through as a child.
The thing that really kept me going was the fact that I knew I’d be incapable of loving anybody — especially myself — unless I faced and resolved my repression. I was tired of false starts and sustained failures. The promise of real change gave me the courage to soldier on against the odds If you can do the same, then you too will have this incredibly liberating experience, and you’ll be truly amazed at how much the quality of your life will improve.
By 2003, I was feeling stronger. Every day, the excruciating feelings started to diminish and I found that I could enjoy being around other people again.
I was energized, yet relaxed; confident, without being arrogant. In a word, balanced. Not being trapped inside an emotional prison of my own making I was able to deal with day-to-day problems without connecting them subconsciously to my repressed childhood traumas and blowing them out of proportion.
For the first time in my life, I was able to keep things in perspective, and was finally free from repeating the drama of my childhood every time something went wrong.
I even felt strong enough to return to Portugal. I had come a long way from the 22-year-old who had left her family behind for a new life in London.
My visit lasted a year and a half, and I was able to see my family members for who they were — without being triggered by their projections.
In fact, I had a quiet calm about me that everyone noticed. My family could tell that I was a different person and they all had a strange kind of respect for me. They still tried to bring me into their dramas, but I politely refused to get involved.
I finally understood that they, too, were victims of their upbringing. When I was young I allowed them all to convince me that they were superior, that they knew what was better. But when I went back to see them after feeling the true emotions of my childhood, I knew that we were all equals — and that nobody knew what was best for me except me.
While I never expected to get my siblings to change their ways, I was heartened by the fact that some of the younger members of my family were interested in what I had to say. Some of them would take a step forward and then retreat when some repressed childhood feeling got triggered by what I had to say, but they were making an effort and that was a step in the right direction. I tried to explain what was happening to them in a gentle, loving way. Sometimes they understood, and other times they’d freak out and stay away from me for a while. But usually, I wasn’t alone for very long because lots of people in my extended family were curious about my newfound freedom.
One of my nephews and his wife, for example, were having a hard time handling their two-year-old son’s temper tantrums. They both tried to dismiss the child’s behavior as the “terrible twos,” but I could see that this little boy was in a lot of emotional pain. His father buried himself in his work, and his mother had no idea what her son needed.
When I saw this cute little guy for the first time, both of his parents were trying to force him to stop crying and come give his Great Aunt Sylvie a kiss. I told them it was okay to let him cry and express his unhappiness, and that it’s never a good idea to force a child to kiss anyone.
I certainly wasn’t taking it personally! The boy had never seen me before, so I thought he should at least get to know me first before giving me any kisses. My nephew and his wife backed off, and sure enough, the little boy stopped crying.
The next day my niece-in-law said that she had never heard anyone talk about children like I had. From then on she pretty much came to see me every day or asked me to be with her and her child. She didn’t want to abuse her son anymore. She wanted to help him and become a better mother.
We spent many hours talking about the pain her son was feeling because his father worked so much, and because for two years he was left in the care of a nanny who, they found out later, was taking psychiatric drugs. When I finally had to return to Arizona, I felt so bad leaving my niece-in-law. I continued to help her via phone and Skype, but one day I wasn’t available and she went to her doctor and told him she felt suicidal.
Instead of helping her process and understand the roots of her despair, this doctor put her in the hospital. They gave her strong drugs and kept her there — and away from her son — for an entire month. My nephew was working, of course, so the child was shipped off to his maternal grandparents. When I tried to call him, the grandparents kept me away. They blamed me for their daughter’s problems. It was easier to make me their scapegoat than to take responsibility for what they did to their daughter.
Also from my book pages 61, 62 and 63
"Alice Miller often talks about the “life-saving function of
repression.”27 As defenseless little children we have no choice
but to subconsciously repress our negative feelings for two
reasons. First of all, we need support from others. And second,
we just don’t have the ability to understand how the people we
must rely on could actually be cruel to us.
In the short-term,
repression can have a positive effect in traumatic circumstances.
But the subconscious actions that we think are saving our
lives as children are what really keep us down as adults.
In fact,
Alice Miller believed that it wasn’t so much the traumas we
experience that harm us, but “the unconscious, repressed,
hopeless despair over not being allowed to give expression to
what one has suffered and the fact that one is not allowed to show and is unable to experience feelings of rage, anger,
humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness.”28
Abused and otherwise traumatized children are forced
to repress their true feelings unless they’re lucky enough to
find someone to comfort them. But because enlightened
witnesses (and even helping witnesses) aren’t always readily
available, most of us develop what Alice Miller calls a false
self — usually for the sake of our parents — only to pay for it
later in life.
In an article entitled “The Essential Role of an Enlightened Witness in Society,” Alice Miller writes that “it seems clear to
me that information about abuse inflicted during childhood is
recorded in our body cells as a sort of memory, linked to
repressed anxiety.
If lacking the aid of an enlightened witness,
these memories fail to break through to consciousness, they
often compel the person to violent acts that reproduce the
abuse suffered in childhood, which was repressed in order to
survive. The aim is to avoid the fear of powerlessness before a
cruel adult. This fear can be eluded momentarily by creating
situations in which one plays the active role, the role of the
powerful, towards a powerless person.”29
This is how the vicious cycle of parental abuse continues
for generations. And in extreme cases, the repetition
compulsion can lead to violent atrocities against humanity.
“To his dying day, Hitler was convinced that only the death
of every single Jew could shield him from the fearful and
daily memory of his brutal father,” Alice Miller writes.
“Since his father was half Jewish, the whole Jewish people
had to be exterminated. I know how easy it is to dismiss this
interpretation of the Holocaust, but I honestly haven’t yet found a better one.
Besides, the case of Hitler shows that
hatred and fear cannot be resolved through power, even
absolute power, as long as the hatred is transferred to
scapegoats. On the contrary, if the true cause of the hatred
is identified, and is experienced with the feelings that
accompany this recognition, blind hatred of innocent
victims can be dispelled. … Old wounds can be healed if
exposed to the light of day. But they cannot be repudiated
by revenge.”30
In milder cases, which cover the majority of human
beings on this planet, our repression tricks us into believing
in the false self until we die with our lies or until something
like depression, psychoses or physical illness jars us out of our
illusion. The tragedy of our existence is that most of us aren’t
even aware of the fact — or find out too late — that we’ve lost
all love and respect for who we really are.
Repression is an
evil that prevents many people from even giving Alice
Miller’s theories a second look, because they seem so radical
to someone who’s totally repressed.
The fact that repression hides our truth is why writing this
book is so important to me. Because I know how great it feels
to be free from lies and illusions, I want to make the experience
possible for as many people as I can.
Great forces were at work
against me, but I’m here to tell you that they can all be
overcome. It may take a lot of courage, and it may force you to
see your childhood with new eyes, but the personal liberation is
worth any pain you need to go through to get there."
Once your emotions are understood and consciously felt in the right context, they start to subside and released from your body and you liberate yourself from the emotional prison of your childhood. You will no longer be blinded by them to fall victim again to people in the present moment standing in symbolizing your parents or childhood caregivers triggering your emotions to manipulate you to play the part in their twisted dramas.
I'm always amazed at how doctors articulate very well half disconnected truths and no one ever mentioned the root cause of people's dysfunctions is the repressed emotions that drive people into the state of compulsion repetition. As I wrote in my book A Dance to Freedom pages 129, 130, 131 and 132
I’ve touched on this a lot in this chapter and elsewhere in
this book, particularly in the section about Dr. Julio MachadoVaz — the psychologist who used me for sex — but 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.
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.
The people who write self-help books and lead 12-step
groups and otherwise claim to heal people are for the most
part little children themselves, afraid to speak the naked truth
that could actually lead to true liberation. “I don’t see the path
to growing but rather the repetition and continuation of the
child’s dependency on illusions,” Alice Miller writes of
traditional healing methods. “Growing and healing begin
when former victims of mistreatment start to confront themselves with the cruelty of their upbringing, without
illusions about the “love” of a higher power and without
blaming themselves for projections.
They allow themselves
to feel their authentic emotions without moral restrictions
and in this way become eventually true to themselves. But
the 12 steps continue to keep the ACA [Adult Children of
Alcoholics] in the former dependency of the child: fear, self-blame, and permanent overstrain.
A person who has
eventually painfully realized that she was never loved, can,
based on this truth, learn to love herself and her children. But
someone who lives with the illusion that she was indeed
loved by the Higher Power, though she has missed to feel this
love, will probably blame herself in the old manner for
her lack of gratitude and will tend to demand the love from
her children.
By so doing, she will pass on the blame to her
children if they don’t behave in the way she wishes them to
do; she will pass on the blame, together with the lie that she
learned in her so-called recovery.”67
It is the major flaw in most human therapies that they are
themselves grounded in the fear of the parents and the
repressed emotions of traumatic experiences. It’s why therapy
so often doesn’t work, and it frustrated Alice Miller and
encouraged her to find a new way. “Sometimes for decades
on end, clients and analysts remain bogged down in a maze of
half-baked concepts,”68 she writes. Whether or not a
therapist has been freed of his or her own repression is what
will determine the success or failure of a given therapy."
Yes, when you are secure in your self no matter what others say about you it doesn't matter. Only insecure people need validation from the external world and care what others say about them.
I don’t give a shit what others say and think about me. People made fun of me all of my life and I never paid attention to it. I remember when I was growing up in Portugal my name used to be Imelda Fernandes and the other kids used to call me Imerda! Merda means shit in English, so they used to call me Ishit. I just ignored it and never gave it any attention.
If they really wanted my attention, they would have to call me Imelda! I never gave a shit what was said about me. I just detached from everyone around me and focused on finding a path to being an autonomous and free person. Freedom has always been my number one priority
My older sisters cast themselves as mother figures in my life and because I didn’t behave to their liking and didn't do what they wanted me to do, they used to tell everyone how problematic I was.
Now 5 decades later the daughter of one of my older sisters did exactly the same thing . I didn't behave to her liking because I refused to go along with her in humiliating and shaming her aunt and cousin in the family group, she got mad at me and did exactly the something her mother did by going around talking bad about me to everyone who listened to her. To the people she poisoned against me I wish them good riddance.
As I wrote in my book A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions pages 45 and 46 "Guilt protects her from feeling the
raw pain of her own childhood and keeps her — and those
around her — trapped in a vicious circle of compulsive
repetition. “Every patient clings to fantasies in which he sees
himself in the active role so as to escape the pain of being
defenseless and helpless,” Alice Miller writes. “To achieve this he will accept guilt feelings, although they bind him to
neurosis.”24
"Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation."
Yes, you have to get away from the narcissist to heal, clear your mind, and discern what feelings belong to whom. Take responsibility only for our own feelings and do not take in the feelings that belong to others. Don't allow yourself to be a scapegoat or poison container.
How you react and process your feelings is the key.
Exactly!
These words 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 unconsciously use 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 get free from the accumulated rage.”
Going Nuclear
Narcissists are generally not adept at containing their strongest impulses or feelings. They feel free to throw tantrums, call names, or make a scene. Their larger-than-life feelings and reactions make them feel powerful and discharge uncomfortable feelings or thoughts. Once again, it puts others on the defensive.
Shaming
Narcissists carry enormous shame, though this shame is generally outside their awareness. As a result, they tend to discharge their unpleasant feelings on those around them.
They may question others’ legitimacy. They may chide others for a less-than-perfect performance or rub a failure in another’s face. They have a knack for knocking others down a peg. The result: They feel one-up. In addition, the recipients of their shaming may feel they have to defend or explain themselves, which often gives narcissists additional ammunition for more shaming.
To read all 8 Insidious Ways Narcissists Try to Control You click on the link below:
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