Letters to Oprah

Check out the Christmas Message from Bill Maher  I am with Bill. Every time I see Oprah I feel like I want to throw up.

Dear Oprah,

I used to be a big fan of yours, but after I read Alice Miller's books I realized that your show was a big illusion. You and your viewers are running, avoiding facing the true personal truth and feeling the repressed painful emotions of the little girl/boy inside. I stopped distracting myself with TV shows that don't give the full story and the whole truth, but in fact, give misleading information; most people on TV are very articulate and say very seductive words that are just like drugs that keep us numb, distracted from facing our painful truth and from feeling our painful emotions that still are repressed inside us.

Have you read the book "The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting" By Alice Miller. Your body is telling your truth through symptoms. The reason you keep coming back to the weight issue is that you are not taking the time to listen, pay attention, and feel the repressed painful emotions of the little wounded girl still inside of you.

Please visit Alice Miller website.
The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown

I wish you much courage,

Sylvie Shene

Second letter to Oprah

Dear Oprah,

Last week I sent you a letter. I like to add to that letter the need to connect the dots in our lives. You shared on TV that you feel ashamed for gaining the weight back; the weight gain is just the trigger of the repressed feelings of the little girl still inside of you who is still in pain and feeling very ashamed. What is unconscious always wins, no matter how hard we work to keep it repressed with distractions and illusions. Nothing in the external world, no religion, no political party, not a perfect body, not a job, not a relationship, and not any amount of money can save us from the pain of our past. Until we walk through our pain, we will keep repeating, recreating our past in the present moment. Dr. Alice Miller in her book, The Truth Will Set You Free; Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self says: "The past always catches up with us, in our relationships with other people and especially with our children." The only way to release the pain is to face it, articulate it, and feel all the repressed emotions until they are gone.

I like to share with you these words from the book: "The Drama of the Gifted Child, page 94: The Search for the True Self" by Dr. Alice Miller: --- "… The humiliation, self-disgust, and self-contempt trigger the past situation and, through the compulsion to repeat, produce the same tragic conditions for pleasure. Seen in this way, the compulsion to repeat is a great opportunity. It can be resolved when feelings in the present situation can be felt and clarified. If no use is made of this opportunity, if the message is ignored, the compulsion to repeat will continue without abating for the person's entire lifetime, although its form may change.

What is unconscious cannot be abolished by proclamation or prohibition. One can, however, develop sensitivity toward recognizing it and begin to experience it consciously, and thus eventually gain control over it…"

Please read this letter written to Dr. Alice Miller. It's an eye opener

I hope you find the courage to see and feel your repressed feelings of the child you once were and help the world see these psychological mechanisms, so people can stop passing the psychological virus to the next generation. If we want to save ourselves and the planet it never has been a bigger emergency for us to face these psychological facts.

Sincerely,

Sylvie Shene

Third letter to Oprah

Dear Oprah,

In this Interview "The Feeling Child" with Alice Miller by Diane Connors for OMNI Publications International in March 1987 --- Dr. Alice Miller says:

"Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life, you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than thinking, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis.

I try to reach the child in the readers and allow them to feel. I see my style as ranking keys. Everybody can take one so that they can go open their own door to find something. Or they can say no, I don't want to go through this door; I will return the key. I try to evoke feelings, and images. In this way I offer keys to your own experience. You can then go look at your children and learn from them, not from me. Because only from your own experience can you really learn.

In my first studies, I was very abstract; I wanted to understand the most abstract ideas -- of Kant, Hegel, or Marx. My dissertation in philosophy was very abstract. Now I see that each philosopher had to build a big, big building in order not to feel his pain. Even Freud.

If a child has been molested and the therapist doesn't deny this fact, many things can open up in the patient. The therapist must not preach forgiveness, or the patient will repress the pain. He won't change, and the repressed rage will look for a scapegoat."

Please read the full interview HERE.

It’s an eye-opener. I hope you find the courage to read it and feel your true feelings and help your viewers see and feel these fundamental truths.

Wish you much courage and best wishes, Sylvie

Schiavonne: ""Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than thinking, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis."

This passage sounded like me before I had courage to condemn my mother of her treatment of me. I never liked how she hit me as a small child and yelled at me when I was older, but I felt that I had to stay loyal to her anyway. These conflicting feelings bothered me so much that I decided to ask Alice Miller for some advice. I wrote the following e-mail early last year:

Dear Ms. Miller,

I read some of your articles stating that sometimes it is best to distance yourself from an unrepentant parent since depending on him/her for love and security is childish, and that an adult is free to engage in relationships elsewhere. I feel that doing this would make me feel better and free, but I have a problem.

On one hand, I am still angry at my mother for the harsh discipline she brought me up with and that she lectures me as if I'm a naive child. (I'm planning on living in an apartment within a few months.) I'm going on twenty-one for crying out loud, and she acts as if I live in a bubble. (Examples include "there are people that you can trust and people that you can't trust") Well, duh! I don't easily trust people anyway. And if I have any issues during my time living on my own, I should come straight to her. (As if I'm not supposed to seek out any other options.)

On the other hand, though, she said that she would help me with expenses for the apartment, since I'm still in college and I'm saving money. She is pretty ill, (she has to take her blood pressure every day, medication, etc.) She also wants me to help her with her schooling because she is planning to go back to school and I agreed.

While distancing myself from her would be better for me, I fear that telling her that she abused me would make her sicker. I appreciate the good things she did for me, yet the bad things she did still burn in my memory, and I won't forgive her as long as she feels justified for what she did to me. I also fear that my older siblings would hold a grudge against me and say that I didn't appreciate her and that our father is the real abuser. (My dad abused my mother, brother, and to a lesser extent my sister. I was told that I was his favorite. My parents separated when I was three years old, and divorced when I was eleven. Even after they separated, I visited Dad every now and then until I was eight. I didn't see him again until last year. He told my siblings and I that he was sorry for what he did in the past and is working on improving himself. He stopped drinking excessively and is working on getting back into our lives. My siblings and I still talk to him on the phone. I still don't feel ready to have a close relationship with him, but I'm giving him a chance. I'm not sure how my sister feels about him, but my brother and Mom still have a grudge against him since they knew him the longest. I find this odd because at least he's trying to change, and they know what abuse is like, yet they both support corporal punishment.)

My mom was raised by her grandmother because her mother died when she was ten years old. My mom told me that her grandmother was very strict such as locking up the fridge until it was mealtime, and making her and her siblings iron sheets. I assume that my great-grandmother also used corporal punishment on her. Yet, my mom doesn't seem ashamed of her upbringing and hails her as a goddess. Maybe that's why she's so sick now. (I'm relating to your phrase, "The Body Never Lies"; I couldn't agree more.)

Anyway, should I tell her the painful truth and risk worsening her sickness and having my siblings mad at me or is there another option?

SR

Here was her response:

AM: Your dilemma is absolutely understandable in your age. If you read The Body Never Lies you know that dependency increases the hatred. But maybe you need more time to make your decisions. Try to listen to your feelings and to take them seriously.

I was disappointed with her answer at first because it wasn't what I wanted to hear. After doing some thinking though, I realized that it did me no good to stay close to her while having mixed feelings about her, too. A week after seeking advice from Ms. Miller, I had the courage to write and send a letter to Mom to tell her my true feelings about her. The letter can be found HERE

I am now thankful that Ms. Miller didn't tell me what I wanted to hear because the truth is better than wishful thinking.

I think that you mentioned sending Oprah these letters back when you were in that anti-corporal punishment group before you left. (By the way, I left, too, back in March. It's sad that even noble groups like that one holds on to illusions.) You stated that Oprah either ignored the letters, or deleted them or both. This is more evidence that she wants to deny her pain and it's dangerous that she encourages her followers to do the same.

I'm sorry if this is a bit long-winded, but I couldn't limit my response to your post to a few sentences like I usually do. Anyway, keep up the good work. I feel that you are picking up where Ms. Miller left off.

Posted by Schiavonne on Thursday, July 01, 2010 - 7:35 AM

Schiavonne

Note about link to my letter: For some odd reason, there is an error when you click on it. I found out that copying and pasting the link to a different browser works.

Posted by Schiavonne on Thursday, July 01, 2010 - 10:08 AM

Dear Schiavonne, Thank you so much for writing and sharing your letters to Alice Miller and your Mother. I enjoy reading very much, they brought tears to my eyes, it’s a joy to see a young person like you with so much courage to see and feel. You said: “ Anyway, keep up the good work. I feel that you are picking up where Ms. Miller left off.” This is the biggest compliment anyone could ever give me. Thank you. I will never be able to fill the shoes of Dr. Alice Miller, I am dyslexic and I dropped out of school in the seventh grade, so expressing myself does not come easy, I will never be able to articulate the knowledge I feel and share with Dr. Alice Miller like she did, but you can be sure that I will try to carry her torch everywhere I go and as far I can go. Some people get annoyed that I quote and mention Alice Miller’s work a lot, but she is the only person I know who articulates what I see and feel so well, the only reason they get annoyed is because the truth we are putting in front of them is too much for them to bear. I read a lot of self-help books before I read Dr. Alice Miller’s books and after reading all those books I always felt there was not quite right and I needed to search further. Not until I read and digested Dr. Alice Millers’ books did I feel I was hearing the whole truth at last and no longer needed to keep searching, finally, I had found all the answers to my questions and I no longer felt alone with my perceptions, it was liberating. I am amazed at these so-called “educated” smart people, especially on TV, but are not able to see these psychological mechanisms and me that I was considered to be stupid, and mentally challenged while I was growing up and I dropped out of school in the seven grade can see so clear. Now looking back I think everyone tried so hard to make me feel stupid because they felt threatened by my courage. Congratulations on your courage to see and feel our world is in desperate need of more courageous young people like you.

Also read Oprah is more concerned about her image than the truth and facts.

 

Random acts Violence

It’s very sad that the world witenessed another random extreem act of vilonce and is very frustrating to me to see well-meaning people saying very well-articulated memorized half-truths on Facebook, but because they themselves have not resolved their own repressed emotions from their own childhood, they don’t realize they are still covertly enabling to the random acts of violence, some to the extreme scale like we witness last Friday to continue in one form or another.

I see some people here preaching to people not to abuse their children, but then they also preach against abortion, and they don’t realize that being against abortion is contributing to child abuse continuing.

Preaching never worked and will never work, no matter how hard we preach.

The only way we can ever stop enabling these acts of violence against innocent beings that be children other adults or animals, is if we stop preaching and find the courage to face and feel our own repression and then we share our experiences how we liberated ourselves from our own repression and hopefully in this way helps others rather the courage to face, feel and resolve their own repression and this is the only way we stop enabling acts of violence to continue.

As Alice Miller says: “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.”

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/protecting-life-after-birth.html

Also in her book “Free from Lies,” Alice Miller says it best:

“There is still a widespread belief that children are incapable of feeling: either the things done to them will have no consequences at all, or those consequences will be different from what they would be in an adult. The simple reason advanced for the belief is that they are “still children.” Only a short while ago, it was permissible to operate on children without giving them an anesthetic. Above all, the custom of circumcising boys and girls and subjecting them to sadistic initiation ritual is still quite normal practice in many countries, blows inflicted on adults count as grievous bodily harm to torture; those inflicted on children go by the name of upbringing, Is this not in itself sufficient and incontrovertible proof that most people have suffered serious brain damage, a “lesion” or a gaping void where would expect to find empathy, particularly for children? Effectively, this observation is evidence in favor of the theory that all those beaten in childhood must have sustained subsequent damage to the brain, as almost all adults are more or less impervious to the violence done to children!

In my quest for an explanation of this fact, I decided in 2002 to find out at what age parents thought they might begin impressing the necessity of good behavior on their children by giving them “little” smacks and slaps. As there were no statistics available on this point, I instructed a survey institute to ask one hundred mothers from different strata of society how their children were when they first decided it was necessary to make them behave better by administering slaps to their hands or bottoms. The responses were extremely enlightening…

As far as I know, what infants feel when they are physically attacked and the affects that suppression of these feelings have on the life of individual adults and the whole fabric of society are issues that have never been address by philosophers, sociologists, or theologians. The lengths to which the evasion of the issues has gone struck me with full force recently when I was reading a superbly written and highly informative book on the subject of anger. The book describes with minute precision the disastrous effects of anger directed at scapegoats in the course of history. But nowhere in the four hundred pages is there any reference to the origins of such anger. At no point does the author indicate that the anger felt by every individual person stems from the primary, justified anger of the small child at the blows on it by the parents. The immediate expression of anger is suppressed, but at a later stage this suppressed fury will be direct at innocent victims with uninhibited savage.

As the torture of children and the suppression and denial of that torture are so widespread, one might assume that this protective mechanism is part of human nature, that it is designed to spare us pain and hence plays a salutary role. But there are at least two facts that militate against this interpretation:

First, the fact that suppressed abuse is passed on to the next generation so that the progression of violence cannot be halted; and second, the fact that remembrance of the abuse we have been subjected to cause the symptoms of illness to disappear.

…The unspoken injuries can heal if they are not left to fester in the unconscious. When children given this kind of information, later become parents themselves, they will no longer compulsively repeat the sometimes brutal or perverted behavior of their parents, as the suppression of their injuries will not drive them to do so. …Children who are told the truth and are not brought up to tolerate lies and cruelty can develop as freely as a plant whose roots have not been attacked by pests (in our case, lies).

 By contrast, children who have been informed about the early injuries inflicted on them will be much more critical of brutal movies or quickly lose interest in them altogether. They may even find it easier to see through the dissociated sadism of the moviemakers than do the many adults who are unwilling to face to the suffering of the maltreated children they once were. Such adults may be fascinated by scenes of violence without suspecting that they are being forced to consume the emotional trash peddled as “art” by filmmakers who are unaware that they are in fact parading their own histories.”

The words below by Alice Miller in the same book “Free from Lies” articulates my experience with people that by adolescence the defense mechanisms have been firmly cemented and once they are cemented is near to impossible to soften cement.  

“The best time for a conversation with one’s children about the injuries inflicted on them is probably between the ages of four and twelve, at all events before the onset of puberty. In adolescence the interest in this topic will probably wane. At this stage defense mechanisms militating against the remembrance of early suffering may already be firmly cemented, particularly as adolescent children will soon have children of their own and as parents can then experience position of strength enabling them to completely forget how helpless they once were. But there are exceptions, and in adult life there are also times, despite considerable success in their present-day careers, some physical illness may force people to face up to the questions posed by their childhood.”

I went to a party last night and a lady that was 48 years old had given a baby girl up for adoption when she was 17, she was so sad, everywhere I go I just see people in deep pain trying to forget, but they are somethings you can never forget, like giving a child up for adoption… and I am sure the pain of the child she given up for adoption is even much deeper and if completely repressed she will unconsciously and compulsively reenact what happened to her when she was a little baby by emotionally or physically or both abandoned her own child when she becomes a mother without having memory of what she went through as a little baby, it’s so sad these traumas continue and progressing into the next generation and these unresolved traumas is what contributes to the escalation of  extreme random acts of violence we witness in the world.

The Roots of Violence are NOT Unknown

The misled brain and the banned emotions

The Facts:

1. The development of the human brain is use-dependent. The brain develops its structure in the first four years of life, depending on the experiences the environment offers the child. The brain of a child who has mostly loving experiences will develop differently from the brain of a child who has been treated cruelly.

2. Almost all children on our planet are beaten in the first years of their lives. They learn from the start violence, and this lesson is wired into their developing brains. No child is ever born violent. Violence is NOT genetic, it exists because beaten children use, in their adult lives, the lesson that their brains have learned. 

3. As beaten children are not allowed to defend themselves, they must suppress their anger and rage against their parents who have humiliated them, killed their inborn empathy, and insulted their dignity. They will take out this rage later, as adults, on scapegoats, mostly on their own children. Deprived of empathy, some of them will direct their anger against themselves (in eating disorders, drug addiction, depression etc.), or against other adults (in wars, terrorism, delinquency etc.)

Questions and Answers:

Q: Parents beat their children without a second thought, to make them obedient. Nobody, except a very small minority, protests against this dangerous habit. Why is the logical sequence (from being a misled victim to becoming a misleading perpetrator) totally ignored world-wide? Why have even the Popes, responsible for the moral behaviour of many millions of believers, until now never informed them that beating children is a crime?

A: 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.

Q: Can we free ourselves from the emotional blindness we developed in childhood?

A: We can - at least to some degree - liberate ourselves from this blindness by daring to feel our repressed emotions, including our fear and forbidden rage against our parents who had often scared us to death for periods of many years, which should have been the most beautiful years of our lives. We can't retrieve those years. But thanks to facing our truth we can transform ourselves from the children who still live in us full of fear and denial into responsible, well informed adults who regained their empathy, so early stolen from them. By becoming feeling persons we can no longer deny that beating children is a criminal act that should be forbidden on the whole planet.

Conclusion:

Caring for the emotional needs of our children means more than giving them a happy childhood. It means to enable the brains of the future adults to function in a healthy, rational way, free from perversion and madness. Being forced to learn in childhood that hitting children is a blessing for them is a most absurd, confusing lesson, one with the most dangerous consequences: This lesson as such, together with being cut off from the true emotions, creates the roots of violence.
http://www.alice-miller.com/flyers_en.php
 

Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 3

Hi X,

Thank you for writing. You are describing what it’s like going through the emotions of the baby you once were, of being abandoned by your biological mother, with a woman who would put you through terror for so many years.

After my boyfriend left and triggered the repressed emotions of the baby, I once was of not being wanted and abandoned in my crib and playpen for hours and hours, which for a little baby felt like an eternity. While I was experiencing, feeling the emotions of the baby and like a baby would feel, I thought I would feel that way forever and I would think of suicide, but thanks to reading Alice Miller’s books the adult in me, now, would talk to myself and tell myself that this was the repressed emotions of the baby I once was and would not last forever and consciously feeling them would not kill me, but to the contrary would liberate me and really be free for the first time to live my true life and once these emotions were understood in the right context they would soon subside and at the end it felt like I just gave birth to myself.

When I said addicted to pain, it probably would be more accurate to say addicted to suffering, because people’s suffering is caused by them running or avoiding feeling the repressed raw pain of the child we once were, and this raw pain is what most people are afraid of feeling. 

This quote by Alice comes to mind: “Several mechanisms can be recognized in the defense against early feelings of abandonment. In addition to simple denial, we usually find the exhausting struggle to fulfill the old, repressed, and by now often perverted needs with the help of symbols (cults, sexual perversions, groups of all kinds, alcohol, or drugs). Intellectualization is very commonly encountered as well since it is a defense mechanism of great power.” Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self) Page 11.

Another quote by Alice just came to mind, also from The Drama Of The Gifted Child” She says: “Take, for example, the feelings of abandonment---not that of the adult, who feels lonely and therefore turns to alcohol or drugs, goes out to a movie, visits friends, or makes “unnecessary” telephone calls in order to bridge the gap somehow. No, I mean the original feelings in the small infant, who had none of these means of distraction and whose communications, verbal or preverbal, did not reach the mother because his mother was deprived. For her part, she was dependent on a specific echo from the child that was essential to her, for she herself was a child in search of a person who could be available to her.”

When I told you that the door of being adopted was a door you would have to enter and feel, experience what it felt like for the baby you once were, of being separated from your mother, the only woman you were most close to, and be left with a stranger who would torture you and scare you to death. You got mad at me, saying you were too afraid and not ready to feel, but you are stronger than you thought because you are entering that door and exploring what it was like for the baby you once were.

In a past e-mail, you mentioned that you found Alice Miller’s book by accident and then you asked your therapist if he read Alice’s books and he said yes and then you asked him why he had not suggested her books to you and he responded that he thought you were not ready for her books, but my question is: who is not ready? He or you and who is most afraid of your emotions him or you, because when a therapist tell his patients the truth transference is part of therapy and is unavoidable, just like when I told you what I was seeing, it triggered your repressed anger and you got mad at me and transferred your anger at me and I think your therapist is afraid of the transference stage, because is a risk you might get really mad at him and if you really are not ready to see transference for what it is and feel the raw pain within the context of your childhood you might leave therapy and if you are ready to feel the raw pain in the right context you will be liberated and no longer in need of a therapist, so he will lose you as a patient either way and probably he is dependent on you for his survival, just as you are dependent on him to take care of the wounded child in you, just as Alice Miller says: “In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her love me?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really a protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than to think, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis."

Why would he protect you from telling you the truth and make a decision you were not ready to deal with? If you were not ready, you would let him know, as you told me, but obviously, you are stronger and more courageous than you thought, because you are opening the door I pointed you to. I congratulate you!

Wishing you much courage and strength to get through the exploration of the feelings of the baby and the child you once were,

Sylvie

P.S. To read parts 1 and 2, click on the links below:
Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 1
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/11/facing-and-feeling-repressed-emotions.html

Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 2

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/11/facing-and-feeling-repressed-emotions_29.html

Staying trapped in the hatred toward scapegoats can't be the successful end of a therapy.

Hi X,

I don’t have time to write right now, but I just want to tell you that I am not trying to hurry you up. You face your fears and feel your pain at your speed, but as long you project your anger at me “a scapegoat” you are going to stay trapped and if seven years of therapy has not helped you feel your feelings in the right context and use the triggers effectively, I would start questioning the therapist, because you probably have spent a lot of money to still be trapped directing your anger at scapegoats after seven years of therapy. Just as Alice Miller said to me: “Thank you for your thoughtful letter I agree with you that there is a difference between the powerless, legitimate rage of a desperate child that reacts to the cruelty of their parents and the rage of the adult who is attacking others out of denial of their history by imitating the behavior of own parents from the position of "power" (even grandiosity). The first rage (of the child) should be felt and expressed in therapy, it can be then RESOLVED. The second one (of the adult), directed toward scapegoats, can NEVER be resolved (see dictators). If therapists see it as an end point of their therapies and don’t enable the patients to confront the early parents and the feelings of that time they do much HARM to them. Staying trapped in the hatred toward scapegoats can't be the successful end of a therapy. I hope that you can continue your work if you have this difference in mind and can also explain it in your forum.” You are seeing in me your mother, but I am not the mother that give birth to you and then give you up for adoption to a woman that exploited and abused you when you were a defenseless little child and now your inner child is waiting for you to finally protect him and no longer let anyone use and exploit you and my question is if your therapist might be exploiting you just like your mothers did, but you decide when you are ready to face your fears and feel your pain.

Wishing you courage and strength to face and feel your fears, anger and pain within the context of your childhood,

Sylvie

P.S. Reading the article of Alice Miller about transference might be helpfulhttp://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=116&grp=11

 

A good therapist helps us clarify our feelings

Hi X,

In my last e-mail to you I wanted to add Alice Miller’s comment below, but I got interrupted by a resident at my work and then I forgot. I don’t know if your therapist is a good one or not that is something you have to come to see and decide for yourself with the help from your own true feelings, a good therapist encourages autonomy and not addictive dependency on pain and on the therapist, should help the patient use present triggers productively and once a patient learns to use present triggers effectively there is no further need of the therapist’s presence, just like Alice says: ““As adults we don’t need unconditional love, not even from our therapist. This is a childhood need, one can never be fulfilled later in life, and we are playing with illusions if we have never mourned this lost opportunity. But there are others things we can get from good therapist: reliability, honesty, respect, trust, empathy, understanding, and an ability to clarify their emotions so that they need not bother us with them. If a therapist promises unconditional love, we must protect ourselves from him, from his hypocrisy and lack of awareness “Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child: The search for the True Self) Page 45

I see you might becoming addicted to the therapist and to pain and not moving through it, but keeping you stuck in the wounded child and a good therapist helps one move through the pain and not enable the patient addiction to pain, just as a Alice Miller’s says in her article “The Longest Journey” “Successful therapy should shorten this long journey. It should liberate us from our ingrained adaptation strategies and help us learn to trust our own feelings - something our parents have made difficult, if not impossible. Because it was prohibited, and hence feared, right from the beginning, many people find it impossible to embark on such a journey. Later, the role played initially by our parents is taken over by teachers, priests, society, and morality, all of them conspiring to cement this fear. And cement, as we know, is very difficult to soften.”

Best wishes to you,

Sylvie

 

Removing the reins of guilt

Dear S,

Thank you for writing. In order for me to get an e-mail to inform me someone left me a comment, I need to subscribe to my own posts and I keep forgetting to do that. Thank goodness I subscribe to my last post and got an email notifying me someone left me a comment and then reading your last comment I found out you had left me a comment on the post "Letter to D" also.

Your comments mean a lot to me too, it’s nice to be acknowledged, and please feel free to write me anytime, it’s no bother at all, I enjoy reading your comments. I might not answer you right away, because I have what I call a real job that takes a lot of my time, and plus writing is one of the hardest things in my life to do, but you can be assured eventually I will answer you!

I don’t like labels period, especially the label of psycho/sociopath, because is nothing more than people’s repressed emotions of the wounded child they once were driving them blindly into actions that hurt themselves, others, or both, and by reading your comments you seem to be very aware of the wounded child in you and taking responsibility for it, so I don’t think you are a psychopath/sociopath. To me, a true psychopath/sociopath are those that memorize good knowledge but they don’t use this knowledge to help themselves first and remain wolves inside wearing sheep’s clothing deceiving themselves and others, so they don’t have to face their internalized parents going on idolizing their parents and childhood so not to face and feel their fears of being alone with the painful excruciating feelings of the child they once were and Like parrots use this good knowledge to manipulate others, posing as loving caring people, but under their illusion of love, they misguide their followers into a deeper trap making it harder for true liberation to ever be possible to them and for the people blindly following them.

I too was raised at first in the cult of the catholic religion and then my older sisters became involved with a destructive cult that believes in the insane reincarnation theory. And I too went through the feelings of betraying them, but you are not betraying them, but going along with their illusion of love and seductive lies would be betraying yourself. The more you get in touch with the feelings of the child you once were and feel them in the right context the more you will be able to distinguish between genuine and pretend feelings and never again be deceived by people masquerading with the illusion of love.

Feeling afraid is normal and before you can feel the painful feelings of the child you once were you have to make it safe for you, create a safe place “ a home” where you are safe and free to feel.  Guilty feelings are the reins unconsciously our parents and society install on us to control us and to keep us chained into their emotional prison for eternity. This quote by Alice Miller explains how these guilt feelings are installed: “If we were always punished by our parents for the slightest offense, then we integrated a very different kind of knowledge: that owning up to our mistakes is dangerous because it loses us the affection of our parents. The legacy from this experience can be permanent feelings of guilt.”

We must find the courage to remove these reins and feel the pain that we were not loved because real love does not keep us chained by guilt feelings.

It took me years to give up the idea of trying to explain to my family. I wrote many letters to them before I realize that I was talking to deaf ears and let them go, but then I transferred this illusion or false hope into my boyfriend a substitute figure, and took a few more years to give up this illusion that no one in the external world could ever make up for what I need as a child, but did not get and now the only way to free myself was to feel the pain of the child I once was. Just as Alice Miller says:  "Pain is the way to the truth. By denying that you were unloved as a child, you spare yourself some pain, but you are not with your own truth. And throughout your whole life, you'll try to earn love. In therapy, avoiding pain causes blockage. Yet nobody can confront being neglected or hated without feeling guilty. "It is my fault that my mother is cruel," he thinks. "I made my mother furious; what can I do to make her loving?" So he will continue trying to make her love him. The guilt is really protection against the terrible realization that you are fated to have a mother who cannot love. This is much more painful than to think, "Oh, she is a good mother, it's only me who's bad." Because then you can try to do something to get love. But it's not true; you cannot earn love. And feeling guilty for what has been done to you only supports your blindness and your neurosis." Read more here

I wish you much luck, courage, and strength in your journey to liberation,

Sylvie

Her Body, Her Choice

I have this memory of being really proud of my mother, in Portugal there is also a tradition to pierce the ears of baby girls, I was maybe five or six years old, we were washing clothes in the little river in the village and a lady from the village surprised told my mother: senhora Isabel you don’t have your little girl’s ears pierced?! And my mother answered: if she wants her ears pierced, she can do it herself when she is older. I didn’t want my ears pierced and wearing earrings, I was a tomboy! I pierced my ears here in America when I started dancing at the club at the age of 26 years old! So I could wear earrings like the other dancers. A worse custom some countries have is to circumcise baby boys. In her book “Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries” Alice Miller, says: “As a rule, children who were once injured will later injure their own children, maintaining that their behavior does no harm because their own loving parents did the same. Historians and psychologists will long continue to ponder the reasons for this outlandish behavior because in their deliberations they overlook the only correct explanation. But in the long run this explanation cannot be avoided, and it becomes obvious the moment the question is asked: What eventually happens to the person who was mutilated as a child? When a small child is tortured by ignorant adults, won't he have to take his revenge later in life? He is bound to avenge himself unless his subsequent life allows the old wounds to heal in love, which is seldom the case. As a rule, children who were once injured will later injure their own children, maintaining that their behavior does no harm because their own loving parents did the same. Besides, in the case of circumcision it is a religious demand, and to many people it is still unthinkable that religion could demand cruelty. But what if the unthinkable is true? Are the children and children's children to be sacrificed because of the ignorance of the priests? It took three thousand years for the church to accept Galileo's proofs and admit its error. Today it is not a matter of theoretical astronomical proofs but of the practical consequences deriving from an insight that could save humanity from self-destruction, because it has already been proven that all destructive behavior has its roots in the repressed traumas of childhood. As soon as legislators become serious about the rights of the child to protection and respect as proclaimed by UNESCO, the fact will have to be acknowledged that ritual circumcisions
1.offer no advantage and are a mutilation;
2.prevent the relaxation experience and lead to over-stimulation with potentially destructive and self-destructive effects;
3.inflict a trauma on the child leading to an injury of his whole being, with the consequences of these injuries affecting not only the individual and his descendants but other human beings as well.”

Also in her book “Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth” Alice Miller speaks of the custom in some countries of female circumcision that also shows the same mechanisms perpetuating male circumcision: “Their consciousness, however, has not registered the realities of their situation. By repressing not only the pain but also their anger and desire for revenge, they have managed to banish consciousness, even idealizing the custom. Today, as a result of their repression, they can justify the procedure as harmless and necessary. They cannot recall their repressed anger and have never grieved about what happened to them. Consequently, they inflict the same ordeal on their children without wishing to acknowledge what they're doing to them.”