This Friday, after work, I went to do my side jobs as usual. While I was checking on a resident’s house, one of my nieces, now 25 years old, who lives in complete denial of what happened to her as a small child, called me on the phone. I was surprised, because she had never called me. Still, all she wanted to talk about was theories and rationalizations.
After a long day at work, I had no patience for it. Later, when I got home, I wrote an email to her to apologize for my lack of patience. It’s so sad, but my niece is suffering and there's nothing I can do for her. I think she was calling me because she would like to come to the States. She does not understand that I would not ever let anyone live with me who idealizes their abusive parents and lives in denial of what happened to them as a small child, because that is putting myself on the line of fire of someone’s repression. No one will come to my house again and make me their scapegoat or poisonous container, family or not family.
Dear D,
I am sorry I was too tired and did not have much patience to listen to you. Plus, our call got dropped. Anyway, it would be best if you wrote your thoughts down and sent them to me by email. I will be more than happy to answer you, because talking on the phone, I have a hard time following you and understanding what you are saying, and after a long day of work, I am too tired to try to figure out what you are saying. And plus it's expensive to talk on the phone.
I wish you courage and strength to face and feel your painful truth, and I hope one day you are able to free yourself from the emotional prison you were born into.
Sylvie
P.S. Please read Alice Miller’s books that I left in Portugal, and visit her website to help you understand yourself, because if you don’t understand yourself, you will never find anyone who will. When we understand ourselves, it does not matter if others do or don’t.
Sylvie,
On the 14th of April, I was to send you the following e-mail:
"At some point, we must examine ourselves. We are not all alike or have similar backgrounds; assuming that our responses serve others is a pure tyranny. It would be easier to say it is the fault of others, it is based on the premise that fetches childhood each and every problem. But if it did not know why, it no longer applies to things that are not bad.
Honestly, being a victim at one point or another is a choice; it is to transfer our problems to others. Not agreeing with the choices of others does not mean they are sick. The result of this statement is to convey the idea that should never have been born, for allegedly, you feel that people should not have kids. The option to not follow this path was yours, but you can not covet what you think is right to become the tyranny of saying such a thing.
Do not know if somewhere then we say that you should not have been born if someone told you you'd be likely to hurt. After using this rule blindly, one could say that.
I'm not in denial of anything; I was building a mechanism to have the ability to put up with everyone's theories. The vision is that you will always be conditioned. The difference is that I'm not saying you're sick, and I will not use this argument blindly, but by the way, I will not hurt you.
It also confuses me when speaking in truth, the dogmatic truth, the truly universal. Because when we defend the truth, whatever it is, so close, we could run the risk of not seeing anything beyond that. There is a subtle difference between not agreeing but respecting and defending our truth to others blindly. This is called intolerance.
I do not define people by who may have had problems, but by how they reacted to them. The issues and obstacles that we face are often that we see the true character and strength. Sincerely walking around, blaming childhood for everything, is a phenomenon of transfer. Because somewhere the question arises, what then? Who do you hear someone still thinks that was the victim of domestic violence or sexual abuse, do not know. These were clearly injured; they must be protected, but you do not know if you will ever question the goodness of the limits you make. But all other parents, the majority, do what they can and know and want their children to be happy. There are no perfect parents and families, much less perfect, but there are no perfect children.
I do not know if you ever asked what the true effects could have been if my mother had sent me to the USA at 4 or 5 years old. You chose to be childless. Imagine it was you, the mother, how would you react? Imagine it was you who sent you away. It is substantially different for you to go away, rather than sending you away. But it is always easier to educate the children of others.
It's easy to say who the others are who are sick; it is easy to blame childhood, but this is not what defines me. I do not want to sell any theory, nor do I have to instill some interest. I know that the limit is when we cause harm to others, and honestly, it does not matter the good intentions of anyone.
I hope you are happy with that vision. I can not stand those long theories, see the examples that people are or are not, and try to be one. I hear what they say. See what critics and their concerns are. I see how they react to adversity. I will not blame others or circumstances for my decisions or actions if I make a mistake. Calls to this responsibility, for freedom without responsibility, only to the indictment.
Finally, I only reply now, for consideration, because in normal cases, they even gave me the job, but I close this issue here because it's like arguing with a Communist or a cleric. They like to instill truth, but do not like to talk about the gulags or the inquisition. The basis of the latter two has always been a universal truth: that any dogma was for the good of mankind. "
Maybe I would rather have sent the e-mail because today it is the same,
If you want people to respect your opinion, you have to be able to accept others. It is a basic principle.
It is not a matter of right or wrong, truth or lie, reality or illusion.
It is easy to judge miles away. It is easy to say what people should do when it isn’t you that has to face the consequences of their options.
You aren’t really listening; somehow, you are trying to use your perception of things in other people's lives. Your perception may be wrong, just as mine could be wrong. But I don’t impose my perception on others. I don’t have that need.
You may be in a cognitive prison that stops you from thinking outside the box you built.
At the end of the day, I respected you more because I respect your way of thinking without imposing mine. I don’t have the need to convince others.
You just didn’t get that people may love you and yet cannot be in accordance with your ideas. It’s easy to love the ones who are in agreement with you.
Love, D
D,
Thanks for writing. It’s obvious you are in pain, and you are not ready to see the roots of your pain and live with your own reality that your parents were not capable of real love.
I never said you should not have been born, but the truth is: most of us are here because our parents were unconscious and, despite my parents not being conscious, they had me without thinking about what kind of life they were giving me. I am living with the reality that my family is not capable of real love, and I let go of their illusion of the family and their illusion of love. After facing and feeling my sad reality, I no longer feel pain, I feel free, and I am enjoying my life. I will not let any members of my family come into my life and take away the joy I feel today.
Maybe, one day you will gather the courage and strength to stop idealizing your father and see him as he really was, UNCONSCIOUS, and live with your own reality, because the truth is we are all alone. Each of us has to find our own way to ourselves and save ourselves, because no one else can. I can’t walk your path with you, just like no one could have walked my path with me.
I wish courage,
Sylvie
I am going to be honest and straight:
You don’t really get it. You haven’t learn yet that different approaches can be both right.
The true pain is trying to talk to you, and besides really listening, you show more interest in projecting your ideas.
I didn’t judge your choices, but you, at some level, are trying to judge everyone else. Who is the one who always settles the presence with absence? You have to do better than that.
It is easy to speak, as always. Even, I never found a shelter in you, always a storm that was not related directly to me, but a derivative one from your unfinished matters.
You don’t really know me because you never listen. You speak with your image of me, not me as an individual.
Finally, I will not attack you because I respect and love you. Unfortunately, you are not able to do the same, because you are so closed in your little box that you can’t see further.
Love,
D
D,
You are talking with your head and not with your heart. I tried to help you when you were little, when I really could have made a difference, but your mother did not allow it and I was powerless to take you away from the nightmare you were born into, now, not me or anyone else in this world can give you what you needed as a small child. Now you are an adult and only you can help yourself, and for that, you have to stop idealizing your parents and see them as they really were, mourn the loss of your childhood, and have compassion for the child you once were, who lived in so much terror from her parents. I wish you the courage to face the nightmare of the child you once were, and I hope one day you can liberate yourself. Courage, sylvie
Can you do better than that?
When are you going to respect me as a human being? If I were using my head, I suggest you check your arguments, because they are weak. You have too many weaknesses in your reasoning... Perhaps because you only read what was in accordance with what you wanted. It´s a typical Heisenberg effect...
My parents love me more than you ever loved your cats, and imagine... even they taught me to love you like you are (with all odds...)...
But as I said, could you switch down the doctrine button?
It is you who is in pain because it is you who is trying to prove something...
Love, D
D,
I don’t know what to tell you, but you are unconsciously reenacting your childhood drama with me, talking with me, exactly the same way your father talked with you. If you respect yourself is all that matters, if others do or don’t it does not matter, when I don’t feel respected by someone, I just walk away, as a child we could not walk away from abusive people, but the beauty of being an independent adult, I can walk away from anyone that I consider abusive to me. I can’t make you open your eyes and see, just like I was not able to open your mother's eyes and make her see. I have learned to walk away from people, family or not, who refuse to open their eyes to see. If you ever find the courage to open your eyes to see, we can talk; until then, we don’t have anything else to discuss. I live my life my way, and you live your life your way. Live and let live.
Sylvie
D. B.: Wow, a tough situation, Sylvie. I commend you on your integrity & you handled this very well.
J. C.: Ditto
Sylvie: Thank you, DB and J, it’s very sad to see people, family or not family, say they had a wonderful childhood and loving parents, and they don’t realize that they tell their true story by unconsciously and compulsively reenacting their childhood drama everywhere they go and whoever they interact with. I hope she does not have children, but I could tell in her emails that she desires to have children. The words below by Alice Miller to one of her readers are sooooo true “AM: Thank you so much for your brave and insightful statement. You are right, unwanted children are usually mistreated. But there exist as a rule also a huge amount of people who were "wanted" indeed, but only for playing the role of the victims that their parents needed to be able to take revenge on. They were wanted to give their parents what the parents never had gotten from their own parents: love, adoration, attention, and so many other things. Otherwise, why would so many people have five or more children when they have no time for them? Why do they adopt children if their body refuses to give them what they apparently "want?”
The never acknowledged, never felt pain of their childhood calls for being avenged. They go to church, they pray, they honor their parents, forgive them everything – and they mistreat their children at home, often in a very cruel way, AS IF THIS WERE THE MOST NATURAL THING, because they learned this so early. Their children learn this perverted behavior, also very early, and will later do the same; and so this perverse behavior continues for millennia. Unless people are willing to SEE the perversion of their parents and are ready to consciously refuse to imitate it.
You are not being "sickeningly sarcastic," you only dared to speak out the truth that most people are afraid of seeing or talking about.’
http://www.alice-miller.com/readersmail_en.php?lang=en&nid=1838&grp=0308
J. R.:
Until I opened my eyes, I treated men the way my father treated me -- you know nothing, you're naive, you're worthless, do as I say don't ask why, etc., and I treated women the way my mother treated me -- by avoiding them, never getting close to them, not caring about them, etc. When I opened my eyes, I was able to separate other men from my father's abuse and other women from my mother's abuse. Until I was able to see what was done to me, I could not change.
Sylvie: My niece keeps wanting to make me her scapegoat. Her last e-mail is below.
“You have a lot of issues to work out. You have an obscene need to prove something, with an alarming lack of knowledge or even experience, and little wisdom in the end, by not questioning your own assumptions.
Honestly, your lack of logic, reasoning, and grounds is a huge handicap if you aim to be taken seriously. You should start to read the classics, and only after, try to understand others. Your ideas are like a house with no foundations. You built ideas that can’t be sustained.
Start by reading and understanding Plato, Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche, and Stuart Mill… Try to read Dostoevsky, Zola, Balzac, Shakespeare, Goethe…. Maybe, in the end, your mind can be opened, because you just see what you want (“No worse blind than the one who does not want to see”), you don’t have abstract reasoning yet. If you aim to be in disagreement, you have, at first, to study and understand the basics. Disagreement is not synonymous with the absence of the capability to understand.
Any definitions that you may have to exist, thankfully to those men who settled ideas as freedom, metaphysical being, and love as you understand them today. You are just unable to understand men and individuals without knowing where they come from, which means knowing history, philosophy, and art.
I am not directing anything; I am just amazed at your lack of respect towards others. If you want to be better than others, you must learn to be humble and open to the idea that you may not know everything.
“I only know that I know nothing”. You just don´t let yourself be in this position. But without it, you will never be able to expand your intellect. Tolerance of others' ideas and perspectives is actually a great accomplishment that only great people can achieve. Little people tend to shape the world as it is more comfortable for them.
You can always walk away and waste the opportunity to improve yourself. The courage it is all about being aware of our own ignorance; it is a form of nihilism, a spirit’s renewal.
One of the best law professors said at some point, “We don’t accept advice from the ones that didn’t do better”. And that’s the point, you didn’t, you just judge and haven’t yet learned to listen before speaking.
Even the small task you failed. You can’t listen.
Learn to listen first… You speak too much with little wisdom, which only shows your insecurities and lack of reasoning.
If you were honest with yourself, you would assume your incapacity to be anyone’s godmother. Unfortunately, you are mine, and the only thing you have is the idea that I shouldn’t be born. Well done!
Love,
D
Sylvie: Dear D, Like I said in my last e-mail, I don’t know what to tell you. Your e-mails are pure projections of yourself onto me. You are the one calling me and writing to me with the need to argue, so who has the need to convince?
I am not calling or writing to you to force you to see what I see. You are angry, and your anger is justified because you were hurt, but I was not the person who hurt you. Directing your justified anger at scapegoats does not get resolved and keeps you trapped; your anger will only start to diminish and get resolved when it’s felt in the right context. You keep saying that I told you: you should not have been born, but you are twisting my words, but like I said before, most of us are here, because our parents were unconscious and now it’s in our hands to choose to wake up, stop idealizing our parents and childhood, face and feel our sad reality or continue the insanity of our parents.
You are using your intellect to avoid looking at the facts and seeing these fundamental psychological mechanisms. It takes courage to see these psychological mechanisms; intelligence alone is not enough, but it rather helps create seductive illusions and lies. You are in your last year of law school. Now, because you think you have “higher education,” you have the illusion that the States are hiring people with higher education. The United States has a lot of unemployed lawyers, and the United States does not need more emotionally blind lawyers; we've got enough of those here already, now, because I am not willing to do what you want me to do, which triggered your anger. Like I said, I am not the cause of your anger; I am only the trigger, because I am not willing to let you use me the way you want to use me. In all these years of school, you come out with a lot of abstract knowledge and what I call empty knowledge that only serves to impress others and deceive yourself and other emotionally blind people. Education alone does not save people; it did not save your mother, and it is not going to save you either. Education alone is nothing but an illusion.
I did not choose to be you your godmother, your mother chose it for me, because she was smelling money in me, otherwise she would never have picked me to be your godmother, but the best godmother I can be is, to tell the truth as I see it even at the risk at triggering your justified repressed anger caused by the hurt of your parents when you were a defenseless little girl. I have read about the classics you talk about, and I suggest you read the book below if you really want to understand the writings of these authors. Wishing you courage, Sylvie
The Untouched Key
Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness
As in her former books, Alice Miller again focuses on facts. She is as determined as ever to cut through the veil that, for thousands of years now, has been so meticulously woven to shroud the truth. And when she lifts that veil and brushes it aside, the results are astonishing, as is amply demonstrated by her analyses of the works of Nietzsche, Picasso, Kollwitz, Keaton, and others. With the key shunned by so many for so long - childhood - she opens rusty locks and offers her readers a wealth of unexpected perspectives. What did Picasso express in "Guernica"? Why did Buster Keaton never smile? Why did Nietzsche heap so much opprobrium on women and religion, and lose his mind for eleven years? Why did Hitler and Stalin become tyrannical mass murderers? Alice Miller investigates these and other questions thoroughly in this book. She draws from her discoveries the conclusion that human beings are not "innately" destructive, that they are made that way by ignorance, abuse, and neglect, particularly if no sympathetic witness comes to their aid. She also shows why some mistreated children do not become criminals but instead bear witness as artists to the truth about their childhoods, even though in purely intuitive and unconscious ways.
It is Dr. Miller's goal to encourage these sympathetic witnesses, to lend them support, and to inform them about the worldwide and ignored plight of children, for she thinks that only by confronting the truth that has been avoided from time immemorial can human beings be saved from blind destruction and self-destruction. This discovery is eloquently illustrated in the last section of "The Untouched Key", wherein the story of Abraham and Isaac and the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" are retold to reveal their profound meaning.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009N989PM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Also, read
The Betrayal You Carry: On Parents, Scapegoats, and Unearned Anger
Congratulations for your courage,
Sylvie
Sure, Sylvie. I was horrified when I woke up this morning and saw those two just being hateful all over the place, but this is something you and I are used to dealing with on the Net. I figured there wasn't any point in joining the fray if, as you mentioned, L is not going to ditch those people.
I feel sorry for L and hope he finds a way out someday.
Talk to you later,
J
Hi J,
I did not read L’s full comments this morning and I just read most of it right now, but I did not finish reading it, because he is just making me his scapegoat or poisonous container! It just shows how lost he still is unconsciously and compulsively making innocent people that have nothing to do with his anger and pain, but I was just the trigger of it and by making me the scapegoat or poisonous container he loses a great opportunity to resolve this hate and free himself. Sadly I see him dependent on his real abusers and on the disability check from the government for his whole life and therefore will not be able to feel his hate in the right context and endless needing scapegoats to relieve his pent up anger, very sad.
These words Alice wrote to me became very true once again.
AM: I have learned over the years of my work on the internet that there are readers who SEEM to understand SOME of what I have written, at least intellectually, but they are still so afraid of their very cruel parents and of their repressed FEELINGS of rage towards them that they are constantly looking for scapegoats. They thus live in a continual confusion pretending that they are healed and even offering help and empathy to others. But eventually, they use unconsciously other people (even the ones who are quite friendly to them) as a poisonous container like their parents did to them, and if the offended people begin to defend themselves they can become very mean. I can only urge you to trust your feelings and to NOT offer your empathy and interest to everybody just because they say they read and understood everything I have written. In most of the cases, it is a lie. To understand my books means to overcome the fear of one’s parents, to honestly feel the justified rage TOWARD THEM and to no longer use others to getting free from the accumulated rage.
Again thanks for your support
Sylvie
What Alice says, it is very true. Especially the part about them understanding just enough of this stuff intellectually. An advanced ego defense is intellectualization, which I find people doing a lot after years of the older, less sophisticated defense mechanism can no longer shield them from the facts about their abusive history.
Stef also talks a lot about how people will try to make the enlightened witness/philosopher so angry and fed up with humanity that they become withdrawn and stop trying to help the world. I want to avoid stepping into that trap. I will help people regardless of how many adult victims wish to project on me.
Thank you very much, Sylvie.
J
I think I read it and I too did not bother saying anything either, because I could feel L is not open for real feedback and I could tell if we express our true perceptions and he did not agree with it he would come out swinging viciously the same way his childhood abusers intimidate him. And now that I expressed to him how I truthful saw his situation he came out viciously with personal attacks toward me and Alice Miller. He still among my friends on Facebook, but he has been restricted and cannot see everything I post. Me too I want to avoid stepping into that trap and keep on trying exposing abusers and give support to people that really want to help themselves to break free from their emotional prison.
Congratulations on liberating yourself and not letting other people’s projections stopping you.
I wish much success in this very important work you are doing and again thank you for your support,
Sylvie
I just remember now having the chat below with D when L made Stefan Molyneux his scapegoat. D wrote to me asking for my thoughts on what L had written. I thought you might like to read the words I wrote at the bottom.
August 22Sen...t from Chat
D
can you chat by chance?
August 22Sent from Chat
Sylvie Imelda Shene
I am not too busy right now, but I am at work and things can change.
August 22Sent from Chat
D
sure, I understand 9same here). could we maybe schedule a time for a skype convo? I wanted to get your thoughts/feedback on what L has written
August 22Sent from Chat
Sylvie Imelda Shene
I am reading L notes too!
August 22Sent from Chat
D
ok
I'd like to know your thoughts on how (or even if) to respond
August 22
Sylvie Imelda Shene
I am thinking about to respond if I can find the right words. He has some valid points, and maybe the words Stefan picked are not the best ones like if we were rejected as a child we will desire rejection, of course at the conscious level we don’t desire rejection, but unconsciously and compulsively we will be attracted to people that will reenact our childhood drama because unconsciously we still have the illusion that we can change our childhood abuser now in the substitute figures standing in symbolizing our parents or childhood caretakers and finally get the love we been longing for all of our lives, but it will never happen and we only get better after we let go of that illusion and face the fact that no one can ever make up for the love that we needed as a child and now only us can learn to love and care for ourselves. I see L stuck in his story and not able to get out looking for someone with a miracle to save him like he has the illusion that if he could afford primal therapy with Arthur Janov, he would get better, but regression therapy can be very dangerous because it can make people addictive to pain and keep people stuck in the state of the helpless child. I am free to talk for a little bit at 2:45PM my time, Let me know if you are available at that time. Sylvie