Articles on Primal Therapy, psychogenesis, causes of psychological traumas, brain development, psychotherapies, neuropsychology, neuropsychotherapy. Discussions about causes of anxiety, depression, psychosis, consequences of the birth trauma and life before birth.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Just Three Little Words
Should I tell you what those three little words that most parents cannot say are?
I love you. You are good. Keep it up.
Most of us learn it the hard way, waiting a lifetime for our parent to say those words. It seems as though their mouths are sealed with tape, and none of the words can escape their mouths. Not only is their mouths sealed, but also their hearts, which cannot offer the phrase they never knew they were looking for. Wonderful. Congratulations.
So a major anchor in French TV can state blithely: "I was smacked as a kid and it build my character". What a load… Can you imagine someone in this year still think that way? Why? Because papa always insists, I am doing for your good. And what good is that? Hurt is good. Pain is beneficial? The way to show love is to beat a child? Ayayay. These are the people who grow up loving to be beaten in sex. I have treated them; beating means love. What a perversion, literally. One woman I treated needed to be beaten hard. Whenever she misbehaved as a child, her father put her on his knee, pulled down her panties, and spanked her.
It was the only warmth she ever knew; that little touch. So being beaten and feeling loved became joined at the hip and had the same meaning. Not just a matter of words but the confluence of pain with love. So one way is to say at the same time, this is for your good. The other way is to inadvertently offer love, that ephemeral touch, joined with punishment. That tells us how desperate is our need for touch and love. What we remember, even when punishment, is the love.
So why is it that a parent can’t enjoy and celebrate with you when you do something well? Because they learned from their parents the same lesson. Don't get excited or show enthusiasm; and they never got compliments because the zeitgeist dictates; “It will go to their head and make them arrogant”. So we really don’t want anyone feeling good about themselves, do we? Better we criticize so they do not get a swollen head. Imagine this crime: tell someone they are pretty or accomplished. Some girls who are pretty are never told so because then the boys will be after them and they might become a “slut”: trading on their beauty and not their intellect.
My friend and I were musing about our fathers and asked each other: “How could it happen that in a whole lifetime we never ever heard a word of praise?”. Those words were sealed tight in the Primal caves of pain; they were waiting for the same thing and priorities demanded that they be praised first and only then could they maybe whisper one word of “well done”. But they need that praise not at age twenty but very early on when the child is beginning to develop a sense of self esteem and self worth; in other words, when it counts and sinks in and changes the child. Because if we wait till they are age twenty, other negative forces have sunk in to make them feel not worthy. After all, we would not want to “spoil” them “would we?
So what is this terror of arrogance? Well it is not arrogance. We don’t want our child to think he is good and better than the others. To act superior. Horrors. Imagine the crime: to think you are pretty and capable and smart and talented. So what is wrong with that? It is a throwback to the 1800s where it was "verboten". We do everything to discourage them from trying, to get ahead. We want them to feel inferior and believe they have to struggle to earn any right. Imagine if a child got up and announced to his parents in the morning: “I feel so strong and good and talented today”. Imagine how parents could rush in to stop that self delusion. The parents do not feel that way and they do not want anyone else to rip off that right. You first have to earn it. You simply cannot feel good and smart without earning it. Another sample from the zeitgeist: you have to work hard and earn what you get; IT IS NOT JUST GIVEN FREELY. Otherwise the child will be spoiled rotten. More horrors. Children feeling good about themselves? Ayayay
ReplyDeleteWhat you write Art!
I wonder if this is not a major problem around the teaching profession... to imagine themself to be talented for need of love... and not least for what demands parents place on their children to be successful. I know that many parents understand better but are silenced by the teaching profession?
What you type is the reason why many are so fanatical about what they do... they first got attention when they performed what parents and schools expected... which then became the experience of being worthy for what ever love can be.
When so our childhood passed in this hell there will be a problem for others that we may later teach... it as we know nothing more than to be "clever" to experience ourself worthy... it with the most serious consequences for others when we have the possition to decide what shall be done. This... a very simple vocabulary equation for need of love but yet so difficult to perceive for missing of feelings.
So love is what we so often express in words but without the content of it. What a sad tragedy!
Frank
This is good writing, and so sad because it occurs throughout many times, and what...they do this so as the child won't be "spoiled"... many times, the grownup child isn't spoiled but worse. After reading what Art has to say...I am once again thankful for the parents I have. My father was a teacher, and he always took the time to be with his children, talk to them, and praise them when successes happened at an early age. And it was consistent throughout growing up. He was firm with us kids, never spoiled us, but we always were treated like we "were somebody". I made a copy of what Art has written, that is how good I think it is. Maybe I will take it to the Community College and show the teachers there in the Human Services Dept. where I took a lot of psychology courses. It is very sad.
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DeleteHello beachcoast7!
I've got a big problem with what you wrote... it is just about your fathers commitment to learning! "After reading what Art has to say...I am once again thankful for the parents I have. My father was a teacher, and he always took the time to be with his children, talk to them, and praise them when successes happened at an early age". But I do not know!
We can not live tomorrow!
If I have no experience of motherly or fatherly warmth from early in life then will always praised be something for neocortex... it for me to become even better for what I do... it to be missing motherly and fatherly warmth early in life.
We live in our heads today for what will happen tomorrow if neocortex are alone to in life! I can pursue my whole life to become a better teacher in the absence of motherly and fatherly warmth... it in the belief of being loved for what I do and not who I am.
If we have the motherly and fatherly warmth with us in life... then praise for what we do while growing more satisfying those who express it than to reach its target for the child receiving it. What the child do will be to satisfy him selves and do not need so much praise. And we as parents look and enjoying... that's what a child then will experience. The proximity of parents will shine through and need no praise to reach the front.
Your Frank
Art: The tragedy is that the whole world is crazy and (with the notable exception of those of your own patients who have stayed with their own primal process) the norm is low level craziness which is able to fake sanity so everyone gets fooled. Those who are clearly delusional or otherwise have little grasp on reality are labelled "crazy" as it reinforces the delusion of sanity in the mass of low level crazies. I mean treating kids harshly, making em suffer so they bcome "good" is pretty whacko when it comes down to it, but nobody will look at this because nobody CAN. They will hit their own pain, or rather, hit their own defences, which is deterrent enough, if they try to look at it. So the whole world lives by an unwritten, unvoiced rule: I WON`T TRIGGER YOUR DEFENCES IF YOU DON`T TRIGGER MINE. Everyone acts out of fear. However, people will dump their rage if they are triggered when they can get away with it. It´s a form of self denial, ie YOU are causing me pain so it can´t be something within me already. DEFENCE DEFENCE. Children then are convenient scapegoats and it is very telling that it is only human adults - and even then there are plentiful exceptions - women, various races, homosexuals etc etc etc - who are legally protected from abuse. The others "deserve" it. The idea that trwating someone harshly to make them good is enshrined in every social institution; the church, education, the law....What is actually natural behaviour in children eg being excited, boisterous, loud, sassy, and so on is mercilessly, relentlessly suppressed. Christ i see this everywhere in Portugal where people appear so DEAD, their posture, their gait, heavy, tired, tense, their faces tense, drawn, sad, their eyes fearful, wary....and looking at the tense, hysterical control freakery of kindergarten & early school children here triggers immense sadness in me at how those people are unknowingly suppressing the LIFE out of LIVING beings because they are so terrified of feeling the life in themselves which once was crushed out of them. The sick treating the sick. Be good. Be quiet. Don´t show any feeling. Feeling is bad, wild, not to be trusted. You must always keep it controlled so as not to upset people. Be a good little robot, trained to be polite, to smile, to agree. Whatever you do, ACT. Being yourself, expressing your real feelings, is never part of the training. Just be another dead eyed, dead inside programmed machine. Don´t question. Don´t challenge. CONFORM.
ReplyDeleteSo very true Anon. The masses are in denial and closed off to their pain, especially beyond the teen-aged yrs. They feel justified in heaping harsh retaliation to those who step on or question their views and actions. By adulthood they may not be able to relate to children anymore.
DeleteBut don't you find that as you become more open that you can spot the feeling ones who do relate to children, who do see things as they really are and speak up about it? I'm thinking of primary grade teachers I've had. Also many filmmakers, authors and artists show us things as they ought to be and expose what has been perverted by pain.
I think you can take comfort and camaraderie in the minority who will always speak up about the injustices because they have no other choice but to keep saying the truth and what is right.
Not ALL parents are unloving. MINE were NOT. Sometimes the trauma may be caused by SOMETHING ELSE. (in my case a long stay in hospital at age 2. NOT fun in the 50-ies.) Also, my ma and pa were spanked by their fathers. So they took the decision not to do it to US. Good eh??(I still have my mother´s letters. Where she always says she loves me and that I´m good etc.) Also, she used to rant around in the hospital, screaming at doctors. (haha. Well done ma.) BUT couldn´t very well keep me at home, risking my health. (we both read "The Primal Scream" in 1973. And then everything by Alice Miller.) I recently found a letter by my ma, written to a psychiatrist in 1972. (about me and my panic disorder.) "Shall we really cure the SYMTOMS?? Is behaviourism the right path to follow?" (haha. For a minute there they thought she was a collegue. While in fact she was an agronomist.) :o)) Ciao from a Swedish musicologist.
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