All the wars - psychological violence or physical violence, we witness in this world and in the stage of the world are all between sociopaths.
I try to distance myself and stay in my safe little corner, and I just hope not to become collateral damage in the sociopaths' wars. I want to enjoy living in freedom for as long as I can.
I have been saying for a very long time that most people are insane or have a very dangerous childhood repression, and with the aid of technology, they are going to destroy themselves much faster.
I have compassion for the children they once were, but I have very little compassion for the monsters adults they have become. As adults, we have choices to look for answers and the truth that can set us free to remove the shackles from the chains of repetitive compulsion.
I'm going to share the excerpt below from my book from the chapter Repression, where all malignant narcissists, bad actors, bad players, psychopaths, assholes, or whatever you like to call these now-evil people are endlessly stuck. They think they are smarter, but like the old saying goes, "too smart for their own good".
Now, it just came to mind the words a person who became a sociopath too, said to me the last time we talked on the phone: "EU SOU PODEROSA"! in English means "I AM POWERFUL," and I thought to myself after she hung up: No, you are not powerful. Power is a very dangerous illusion that, in the end, will destroy you... true power comes from refusing to become like our childhood abusers and refusing to play the dangerous games sociopaths play, cutting our losses, and walking away to do our own emotional work, the most important work in our lives...
"I wonder how the high colleges managed to produce so many high asses." Paracelsus
As long as people's childhood repression goes unresolved -- they will be shackled into the chains of compulsive repetition -- and it doesn't matter how well anyone articulates very nice ideas... The problem is not a lack of knowledge and educated people; there are plenty of educated people with intellectual knowledge. The problem is an emotional blockage: the so-called “professionals” or “educated people” hide behind their rationalizations, seductive theories, and lies to protect themselves from facing and feeling their own emotional pain. It takes courage to see, face, and feel our painful truths; intelligence alone is not enough, but it rather helps create seductive rationalizations, theories, illusions, and lies.
3. Repression
"When people threw bachelor parties at Bourbon
Street, the guys who were getting married would
usually go up on stage and make complete fools of
themselves. The dancers would make the guys walk on
all fours like dogs and spank them on their butts —
sometimes really hard and with a belt. Some girls enjoyed
taking advantage of the situation and showed no mercy! I
always refused to get involved. I never understood why
any man would ever subject himself to this kind of
treatment. After reading Alice Miller, I came to understand
that people who were spanked as children on a regular
basis repeated their childhood trauma by acting out with
rough sex — and getting beat up by topless dancers.
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
life 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 for 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.
...I
had just turned 17 and my sisters thought they had
finally found someone who could tame me. His name was Dr.
Julio Machado Vaz. At the time he was young and unknown,
but today he’s Portugal’s most famous sexologist. He has
several best-selling books and a TV show that’s a lot like Dr.
Phil’s.
To get so popular all Julio talked about was sex. Sex was
his obsession, and he got all of Portugal to enable his
addiction. He became a high-profile celebrity advisor.
But
before he hit the big time, his methods were unprofessional, to say the least. From my personal experience, he was
extremely abusive.
My sister Laura worked at the public clinic where Julio
was building his reputation. Back then he was a dashing
27-year-old doctor. His mother, Maria Clara, was a famous
singer, and his father, Julio Machado Vaz de Sousa, was a
respected faculty member at the University of Porto’s medical
school.
Given Laura’s connections, it was easy for me to get
an appointment to see this rising young star. And he was
more than willing to take me on as a patient.
When we met, the first question he asked me was
whether or not I had a boyfriend. When I said no, he asked if
I’d ever had one. Once again, I said no. Then he told me that my sister brought me to see him because she was afraid that I
was sexually active. He explained to me that sex is normal,
that most people are sexually repressed, and that what I
needed was a boyfriend.
After just one visit in the clinic, he moved our sessions to
his private office. He pressed his advantage and manipulated
me into having oral sex with him. I knew he was just using
me and that he didn’t have a clue about how to really help
me, but I kept seeing him to spite Laura and the others. Our
little arrangement went on for months, and the whole time I
was thinking, “What would my sisters think of their
charming doctor now, the one man they thought could solve
all my problems?”
Looking back I almost can’t believe how despicable this
so-called doctor was. One time, he took me to his house
while his wife was at the hospital having his second baby.
Obviously, part of me was aware that what we were doing
was wrong, but I was so focused on somehow harming my
sisters that I let him get away with it.
When he was tired of his latest conquest, Julio ended our
sessions. I imagine that he found another patient to fool
around with. In an interview many years later a reporter
asked him, “Is a psychiatrist also a seducer?”
“Maybe the reverse is more true,” was my doctor’s smug
response.
31
Such a reply should have exposed him. But people in
Portugal, and everywhere else in the world for that matter,
are too emotionally blind to recognize even the most obvious
red flags. Julio revealed just how sick he really was, but by
then he was all but glorified for being an outlet for the whole
country’s sexual repression. The people of Portugal still live
vicariously through the escapades of this bold doctor who
talks so openly about sex. And no doubt he continues to take
full advantage of the collective repression for his own
pleasure.
In my opinion, it’s absolutely disgraceful.
Interestingly, Alice Miller has a few words to say about
the seduction dramas that are reenacted by men like Julio
who are compelled to use women. “The seducer is loved,
admired, and sought after by many women because his
attitude awakens their hopes and expectations,” she writes.
“They hope that their need for mirroring, echoing, respect,
attention, and mutual understanding, which has been stored
up inside them since early childhood, will finally be fulfilled
by this man. But these women not only love the seducer, they
also hate him, for he turns out to … be unable to fulfill their
needs and soon abandons them. They feel hurt by the
demeaning way he treats them because they cannot
understand him. Indeed, he does not understand himself.”32
All I really knew at the time was that I was more
confused than ever. Dr. Julio Machado Vaz’s “treatment”
made me a lot worse off. And my sexual encounters with him
opened the door to exactly what my sisters feared most.
What’s more, the abuse I suffered at the hands of this doctor
was harmful to my sister Isabel. If he had given me the help I
really needed, I would have given better advice to my sister
five years later.
When Isabel broke up with her boyfriend of 10 years and
started feeling some of her own repressed childhood feelings,
I did exactly what Julio did to me. Instead of giving her
emotional support and helping her use her pain to set herself
free, I encouraged her to sleep around. I “treated” my sister
with sex by introducing her to other guys, hoping she would
forget about her boyfriend. This only made her repress her
true self once again, and I believe it contributed to her
ultimate downfall.
The chain of harm done by doctors, therapists, and gurus
under the guise of help is endless.
Alice Miller believed that
most people with a “Dr.” in front of their name or a “Ph.D.” at
the end of it weren’t in any kind of position to help or guide
anyone, especially if they were repressing their own traumas
and creating their own illusions. For many years, I blamed
myself for what happened with Dr. Julio Machado Vaz. It
took me more than two decades to see the truth and speak
about the fact that this doctor had exploited my anger at my
family to feed his sexual perversions and abuse me sexually,
instead of helping me work through and resolve my anger.
In the book Boundaries: Where You End And I Begin, Anne
Katherine states, “A therapist is entrusted with his or her
clients’ deepest secrets. A minister bestows sanctions from
the highest power in the universe. The potential for harm is
overwhelming. For a person in such a role, essentially that of
a guardian, to cross sexual boundaries is a grave violation. A
child, a client, a patient, a follower, or a worshiper are
vulnerable and usually approach authority out of need. A
sexual action by a guardian is very confusing, even to a very
strong and healthy individual. For someone vulnerable and
in need, such an action can be devastating. When a parent is
sexual toward a child, the violation reverberates for decades.
Trust is broken, the child takes on responsibility for the act,
sexuality is affected, and the bond is damaged. When a
therapist, physician, attorney or clergy person is sexual with a
client or worshiper, it is also incest. A trust is broken, a bond
is perverted. The person who sought care was used to meet
the needs of the caregiver.
I didn’t need sex or a boyfriend when I saw Dr. Julio
Machado Vaz. What I needed was an enlightened witness to
help me feel my repressed pain and give me a better way to
deal with my self-righteous, overbearing, domineering,
invasive, and authoritarian sisters and brothers.
After going for “counseling,” my repressed anger — at
my sisters for thinking the worst; at Dr. Julio Machado Vaz
for sexualizing me before the time was right and for not
teaching me how to protect myself against pregnancy by
giving me birth control pills; and even at my parents for
bringing me into this world when they were in no position
to protect me —
At the time, Portugal was a deeply Catholic country, and
church leaders mesmerized the majority of the Portuguese
people. I was never swayed by religious morality because it
always seemed to be a tool of repression. I was repressing
enough on my own to need extra help from a priest or a nun!
Alice Miller’s thoughts on religion rang true to me when
I read them years later. “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,”
she writes. “Is it a desire to prove that an unlived life is more
important and more valuable than a lived life? [The priests]
are acting against life, by misusing the weakness and trust of
the faithful and dangerously confusing them.
The injunction
against abortion goes even further: Consciously or
unconsciously, it represents support for cruelty against
children and active complicity in the creation of unwanted
existences, existences that can easily become a liability for the
community at large.”34
Alice Miller writes about how restricting abortion caused
incredible suffering in Romania, ruled by the oppressive
dictator, Nicolae CeauΘescu. This incredibly cruel man was
penned up in a single room with 10 siblings and was
neglected by his parents. And when he rose to power, he took
his vengeance on the entire nation by forcing women to do
what his mother did: “To have more children than they
wanted or were able to care for. As a result, Romanian
orphanages were full to bursting with youngsters displaying
severe behavioral disorders and disabilities caused by extreme
neglect. Who needed all those children? No one. Only the
dictator himself, whose unconscious memories spurred him
to commit atrocities and whose mental barriers prevented
him from recognizing them as atrocities.”35
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