So I was sitting in the garden yesterday and I heard a rustling in the other side in the brush. I hurried there to find my cats killing a baby rabbit. With his last breath, the rabbit raised his paw to say, "I am dying, don’t hurt me anymore." At this point, I fell off my stool and had a giant Primal. It was the leitmotif of my life. I raised my hand and cried and begged, "Don’t hurt me anymore." It formed my weltanschauung, my outlook, and philosophy of living. It became my personality, but I never knew it. I was excessively sweet, kind, and gentle, acting out, "Don’t hurt me anymore," since when my dad started beating me with a fury when I was five or six.
I never even knew how it shaped who I was and I never knew I needed to scream, "Do not hurt me anymore." I never knew it because he was unrelenting and was a stone who could never understand his hurt of me, or even that he was hurting me all of the time. It was, “all of the time,” because it became an imprinted feeling that could never let me go of it. I could not get over it because that memory was embedded and part of me. I acted it out in my deep unconscious, "Don’t hurt me anymore." It was now my personality, and I was sweet and submissive so he would stop hurting me. It never happened. Because he never wanted me. I was an accident and he made me suffer for intruding into his life and creating more responsibility.
The image of the rabbit raising his paw to say, "I give up. Please don’t hurt me," led me to a feeling I never knew I had; it was same as that rabbit. My mother was psychotic and could not understand the hurt she brought on her children, and my father was a chronically angry tyrant who could not be mollified. He had no capacity for pity. No ability to empathize with the hurts of his children. They sent me to a hospital for weeks, almost never visiting and never saying that I was in line for a difficult surgery. I was shocked when I was wheeled into the operating room and had no one to explain or reassure me, to soften the blow. And still they did not visit. That is the kind of hurt that was a daily occurrence. I could not raise my hand to utter the plea, "STOP!" It was something they could never understand. Worse, it was something I could not understand. That total neglect seemed everyday to me. It was what parents do. That is how I learned: do the opposite of everything they did and said. I am the opposite of them, illiterate, never any interest in anything, no culture nor education. I often joked that I was an orphan with parents and I now learn how true that was and is.
My daily personality, as my patients and therapists tell me, was sweet and kind; it was the chronic act out, "don’t hurt me anymore," even though I never knew I was hurting. The rabbit taught me to raise my hand to stop the torture. I do it now in my Primal, but the feeling is still built in. I will never be a tyrant or mean. My father beat the meanness out of me. He taught me to give in, to cede and not fight. And clearly, never talk back. My parents' whims were my destiny. I was afraid because I saw the anger in his commands, his watery and red eyes that spelled danger. That shaped my whole life. I never felt, "Love Me," in my earliest Primals. It took first til now to speak what was so awful to speak its name; "Pity, please, Pity. Mercy, I beg you, Mercy."
So an act-out is nothing external for all to see; it is encased in behavior that speaks volumes. And it speaks the truth while my neocortex never knew that truth. My act out was unconscious. So I was perceptive and unconscious. I cried heavily for that poor baby rabbit as I now cry for me as that helpless baby. My cats were not mean; it was just play for them. But so deadly. My father was the same way, creating damage through inadvertence.
Hi Art
ReplyDeleteI understand so well. Few weeks ago I had to go for buisness trip to France, I asked my wife to take me to the airport, it was early morning and my mother come to us to take care of our son. I din't want this, but also didn't want to fight with my wife that I do not want my mother here. She started to convince me to take my father's jacket to "look good". I've told her that I have my own and I don't need this one, than she told me that she will beat me in the face so my teeth fall out. It was her goodbye to me. Whole my life she treated me like a dog, and destroyed me. I don't know how long I will live with this damage, but all of this it was to much for me. I feel my body is weak. Take care my primal friends.
We will take care and so should you. Art
DeletePiotr my friend,
DeleteI am so angry for you. People can be so stupid. I know how you feel having endured 50 or more years of my father and mothers narcissistic behaviour. They say they love you and treat you like shit.
As Alice Millar said: "It's for your own good"_. NO IT ISN'T ! ! !
Take Care Piotr and I will be in touch soon.
I am hatching a plot. There's life in this old bugger yet.
Paul G.
Piotr,
DeleteQuoting you:
Whole my life she treated me like a dog, and destroyed me. I don't know how long I will live with this damage, but all of this it was to much for me. I feel my body is weak.
End of quote.
What you said above reminds me of how politicians and so much of the general public treat (their attitude towards) the less able and disabled people living on welfare, and disability pension.
Their attitude is similar to your mother's.
They say to the less able and disabled people and homeless people(actually berate): Get to work you lazy, useless bastard! You are living off my taxes!
Such is the voice of ignorance.
In fact it is those crazy ignorant people who do treat their children (which is actually abuse) in the way we discuss here.
They are the cause of the problem.
When in fact a child is naturally ambitious from birth. Ambition, curiousity, creativity and many more traits necessary for optimum survival (success) in life, are all natural traits of every being, if they are not damaged and blocked from abuse.
In fact you cannot hold a child with a healthy (undamaged) mind down.
Because his natural desire to survive, create, thrive, succeed,....his natural desire (will power) to "be his true self", "do things" and "have things" and fulfill his full potential, is very determined and very powerful. So much so that if you restrain him, he will break out.
If you restrain him enough, so he can't break out, or beat him and damage him, you will break his "will" and he will become disabled mentally or physically or both.
It concerns me that many politicians want to "get people off" of welfare.
Yes, I know well, that there are people on welfare because there are not enough jobs.
But a large percentage of those people on welfare, are on welfare because they are psychologically damaged from abuse. Their "wills" are broken and many other parts of their minds (their faculties) and bodies are damaged.
They are unemployable.
In fact, even those people on welfare who are still employable, if there were suitable jobs for them, are still damaged to some degree.
If they were not damaged, they would be intelligent and creative enough that they would create their own jobs, ......they would invent something, they would make things happen.
That is the innate nature and potential of a human being undamaged, not abused, but properly bread, gestated, born, loved and emotionally nourished and brought up right.
It is certainly a crazy, insane, backward, barbaric world out there.
David
Isn't it amazing, yet horrifying and deeply sad, how 'they' can soak one up in their world? Until you forget who you really are, how to dance and finally how to build your own world by your talents? I feel for you.
ReplyDeleteAnd I thank you a lot. Art
DeleteDeath has more to it than we can ever imagine!
ReplyDeleteMy anxiety has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening here and now... it only shows it self not to be able to be kept in place... of physical reasons. To land feelings in to awareness without ever having been there... it's something that takes time.
Our need for love is sadly sick!
Frank
Dearest Art,
ReplyDeleteI was so transfixed to read about you and the rabbit I could not stop reading. And I just couldn't believe that someone so beautiful and feeling as you was beaten as a child, and yet it makes so much sense that you who needed to primal, would know the need for such a therapy. You are so real its almost unbelievable.
I think that what is so powerful about your writing, is that you write with so much freedom of feeling that it begs one to feel, too it's that you speak of universal feelings for those who suffer.
God bless you and France and all your staff, a thousand times.
Katherina
Well said.
DeletePaul G.
Part one:
ReplyDeleteAnother great story, Art.
It is good to hear that you dealt with another piece of the problem.
I fully connect.
This happened(s) to billions of people, past, and present.
I am acutely aware of what is going on.
There are no two cases exactly alike, but the mechanism is similar.
I have experienced similar triggers in my life.
Before I did not have the knowledge, that I do now.
I now know what is going on. But the triggers always happen in situations where I cannot stop and get into "self therapy" on the “open gate”.
They don't happen that often, once every few yrs in very different ways and in very different or varied situations.
And I can't access it on my own, in my self therapy sessions.
RE: having the meanness beat out of you:
Last fall, I was talking to my brother on the phone.
I was telling him, that I cannot handle myself in a fight. I cannot stand up for myself in an argument or when I am mistreated today, or being taken advantage of.
And he says, I have the same problem.
I asked him, you want to know why that is?
He asked; Why?
I said, because dad beat the fight out of us.
He beat us into permanent submission.
I think the adrenals shut down, or become dysfunctional to a degree, in direct ratio the type of, degree of, amount of, and intensity of the abuse.
Like you, I have developed an alternative nice sweet, good natured, will never harm anyone, afraid of ever doing anything wrong, or upsetting anyone, smiling face, personality. It is a social veneer, to hide the pain.
And when you said: You put up your hands up in defence, as if saying: "Don't hurt me any more.".
You gave me words to identify exactly the way I am, and always feel. Thank you for that.
Years ago, I was called "goody, goody two shoes, a few times. I was also called "smiley".
That was embarrassing, humiliating, and more of an insult than anything else.
What you wrote about your childhood and how your personality developed is so very similar in principle, to mine.
My family was wanted, but dad wanted to bring up the best children possible and beat us, every time we did something wrong, to make us good. And beat us to work harder and not make any mistakes.
The result was that he made mental and emotional cripples out of all 7 of us.
I developed a multitude of functional disorders. I was beat up so bad, I had a difficult time walking a straight line all my life.
I have learning disabilities. (Called retarded.) I did very poorly in school. They mostly just pushed me through.
In high school, where I did grade 10, 11, and 12, it took me 4 years to do 3 grades.
Part two:
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing about that is that I did not realize that it took me 4 yrs to do 3 grades until about 5 yrs ago. I was recounting my life and was missing a year. I could not figure out where that year was. After going over my life by writing out every year of what I recall, a few times, I realized that it took me 4 yrs to do 3 grades. That was a shock to me.
I also have ADD, and narcolepsy. I am more of a scatter brain.
Narcolepsy began in gr. 10. I automatically fell asleep in my desk for about half a class in the morning around 10:30 for all the 4 yrs. And a full class in the afternoon, at 1 pm. As soon as I sat in my desk, I fell straight to sleep and slept sound the entire class, for all the 4 yrs. Still have narcolepsy today, but it occurs relative to the degree of stress I am under.
I also would get lost every day in school, every time I had to find my class room, and when changing classes, and when going to the washroom.
To find my classroom, I developed a coping skill, by identifying another student that I knew was going to the same class I was going to, and would covertly follow them. If I missed them, I would wonder the hallway looking for the right classroom, sometimes for the entire class, half crying, and sometimes only find the right class room when the class was ending.
And it was a small town school, with only 400 students.
If I left the classroom to go to the washroom, I would always get lost and spend a half hr or more, wandering the hallway, half crying, in pain from holding it, looking for the washroom. I would walk by it many times and not see it.
I say that narcolepsy is actually unconsciousness from the pain and stress of abuse and beatings, and the stress and difficulty of dealing with life in general. It is a kind of “passing out” that is automatic, it is programmed in, like a loop circuit. For me it sort of follows the biorhythm cycle waves of the day, up and down, mediocre highs and very low lows.
I also have many kinds of dyslexia. I get lost in familiar places. I have schitzotypal personality disorder. I am afraid of people and am a lightening rod for abuse and criticism. I am a target for bullies. I can’t do much of anything right. I have nervous and anxiety disorders. I have learned to block them, and dealt with some in therapy, but when I was in my teens, twenties and thirties, it was very serious. I used to hyperventilate. I was hyper self conscious, had zero self confidence, zero self worth and self esteem.
Personality disorders occur when your natural personality is suppressed, invalidated, blocked or knocked unconscious and you are forced to develop, construct another one. I tried many different ways to construct an alternative personality, that people would like. But it is very fragile and breaks down under stress and I do and say the craziest, most foolish, most embarrassing things. I limit my time around people.
David,
DeleteI don't know whether to thank you for your post or cry for your suffering; both methinks. I was beaten and threatened with beatings as a child. Not to the degree you had been. But I so understand the following symptoms. wanting to sleep in lessons, not comprehending the content (cognitive deficits). Feeling lost, getting lost even in familiar places. Limiting my time around others (later having to pretend I am more sociable than I really am). Your words sound so familiar I almost can't believe I just read them.
Because my parents 'loved me' and sent me away to an expensive private boarding school where the education system was 'upmarket rote learning / brainwashing', I did quite well at 'passing exams and tests' but in reality my real education started ten years later when I got into wood crafts. Everything I have needed to 'integrate' (including walled off traumas) seems to happen because of (or rather 'around') my craft work. . . Yes really.
Whatever happened to REAL 'Occupational Therapy'? I hear at the Primal Center patients are encouraged to get back into work sooner, no doubt because we are beings in need of 'occupation'. Which of course makes us no different from ALL other life forms on the planet. Yes, we have a purpose, a 'need' to perform tasks and what a crying shame they never knew at our schools how to keep us 'occupied'. . .
Take Care David.
Paul G.
David: I have had similar experience in school, l learned in adulthood l have ADHD, plus Depression. I found out something interesting in my case, that high copper and low zinc, are attributed to my ADHD, and l am being treated for heavy metal toxicity. I am doing the protocol of William J. Walsh, PhD, he has a book on this topic !
DeleteSomething like this, to me, just a tragedy. I have to wonder if Art's father did act with rage on purpose or was it an act because he didn't know what he was doing to his child,either one is just plain stupidity. People do have common sense, many more so than others. Art you have many followers who love you. (We know that when you give Primal Therapy that you can't give love to your patients.
ReplyDeleteIf only the parent could see what he did to his son, just mutilating their child. The father creating a child, putting him under "utmost pressure", and putting him in "abnormal situations" (because the father acts abnormal); a child should never have to "deal" with that not until they are old enough to leave or old enough to "get a handle" on it. Something like this, the damage that was done by the parent, whether it was through inadvertence or done purposefully, is very difficult to "turn around and straighten out". People think, "oh, he'll get over it" but not for a long time, and maybe just cannot be repaired when one thinks of what he did to his son. "Inadvertence", that is not good. Sure the times were different, but common sense. The way Art was treated by his father, definitely, unfortunately, left an imprint; it just can't be shrugged at or shaken off. I have also thought about Art's father, and what the problem could have been with him to behave so poorly as a parent; sometimes I think maybe he had mental/physical problems that he just ignored repeatedly. A parent who acts like this (angry-rage alot), ought to thank God, that their son turned out so well in face of all that he has endured; seriously! By this time (now), a father might just possibly start looking at himself (why the so much "anger-rage" aimed at his son all the time) and wonder why he ever treated his son in the manner that he did. No common sense; possibly that was it.
beachcoast7 really well said.
Delete-" I have to wonder if Art's father did act with rage on purpose or was it an act because he didn't know what he was doing to his child, either one is just plain stupidity"-.
It's 'acting out' and it's uncontrollable unless the parent 'feels' hirself inflicting the pain. That is empathy and stops the act out dead in it's track. It is also the cure for stupidity, which is merely the outer manifestation of repression and denial. 'Cognitive deficits' is the scientific way of saying the same thing.
If only schools would teach this. They almost do but not quite. When will the authorities have the courage to name the devil for what it really is?
Paul G.
"I never even knew how it shaped who I was and I never knew I needed to scream, "Do not hurt me anymore."
ReplyDeleteClose behind my understanding awaiting hell mazes for me. But it is the little boy who already endured so much and he is within me and I feel my tears flowing.
It's been hard for me to let go of my thoughts while fleeing from my father's madness then and within me now.
Understanding has been of 99.9% for me... what so ever... as protection to not understand what I need to understand. It depends on what I need to understand how it was/is associated with life-threatening experiences!
How do I know that I hold against when that is what I am... far from thinking of anything else. I mean... to be total of my mission to save my own life. It has no gaps more than suffering... and that is difficult to choose voluntarily as I cant let go of my understanding as defense against life-threatening experiences. It would have been fatal.
I begin to know how to let go and follow without being disturbed by my thoughts!
This is to all of you psychiatrists who prescribe pills... electric shocks and useless therapies for us to not remember how it feels to be alive.
Frank
Art,
ReplyDelete-"I often joked I was an orphan with parents"-.
How true that is when we discover the limits of our parents 'love' for us.
The enduring insight I get from your own childhood experiences described here is precisely how naive we are 'surviving' what we didn't know we never had. . .
Paul G.
This writing is very good. Thanks Art for sharing this.
ReplyDelete