Did your dad behave this way at work or with his friends? He did not behave like this at work or with his friends. I worked as a teacher at the school he taught at and I never saw this kind of behavior. When we were at work he treated me respectfully.
What was your dad's R with his parents? It seem normal to to me. My mother told me a story that my paternal grandfather told her. My father would not walk down the same side of the street as my grandfather because he did not want to be seen with my grandfather. My grandfather was a cement mason. I don't the reason why but my grandfather told my mother that my father was no good. My father would brag that he was a college educated man.
Did your dad protect his daughters in preference to you and your mum? No, he was harder on me and my mother because we challenged him. My sisters were more complainant so it was easier but he still nagged them.
How was your family home, was it isolated? Suburban ranch style home in a neighborhood 25 miles outside NYC.
We're there close neighbours? The neighborhood homes were on 1 acre lots.
Was it large? 2500 square feet new construction.
In the countryside or town? Neither country or urban, suburbia.
When children are not allowed to blame their parents’ bad behavior, they typically turn their blame against others and/ or themselves. When we cannot put our blame where it belongs, we are often unconsciously impelled to blame and hurt someone else. Dr. George R. Bach and Dr. Herb Goldberg describe the consequences of this: Many of the common forms of displaced aggression such as scapegoating, bullying, prejudice, and cruelty are by-products of aggressive feelings first felt within the family but suppressed. To inflict pain at least proves that I can affect somebody. If I cannot affect or touch anybody, I can at least shock you into some passion through wounds and pain. I shall at least make sure we both feel something .
Whether or not we unconsciously act out our blame through scapegoating, most of us unfairly blame ourselves for the deficits we suffer from poor parenting. We scapegoat ourselves rather than consider that our parents might have seriously injured us, especially since complaining about bad parenting is one of our culture’s ultimate taboos. Renowned psychologist Erik Eriksen points out that blame becomes shame when it is turned against the self, and many of us suffer unending bouts of toxic shame because our inverted blame continuously generates self-loathing. Until we understand the degree to which our current pain derives from unresolved childhood losses, we are susceptible to blaming the wrong person( s) for our troubles. We can have an approach to blame that does away with the need for scapegoating and witch-hunting, and that allows us to feel and express our blame in ways that do not hurt us, our parents, or innocent bystanders. If you would like to assess whether you have been poisoned by your own blame, close your eyes and notice your inner experience as you try to remember challenging your parents. Perhaps you don’t have any recollections of resisting them. Maybe your complete “humbling” took place before you can even remember. Nonetheless, you may still tense up inside, feel guilty, or even scold yourself at the thought or image of questioning your parents about anything at all. Or perhaps you remember traumas that occurred when you disagreed with them. If you feel any loss or distress doing this exercise, I hope it will motivate you to more thoroughly explore your relationship to blame.
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Mu this exercise spoke to me a great deal, it is in the Tao of Fully Feeling. I am a practical lady, and I am looking for ways to release. There is deep meaningful work going on in my soul and I am unblocking although it's stirring up things that I thought i should leave settled. I was mistaken.
Like you I have FOO issues. These are holding me back. They aren't the same kinds of FOO issues as yours.
I compared your reaction to FOO to Ghosts and thought hard and deep about it. There is much to see, as yet I have to explore sexual abuse and my next learning module is on that.
I am starting to look beyond ACES, although as a measure it is excellent. There has been much research based on ACE findings and some is relevant and some not so much so.
I truly had not understood that the poor parenting I had was abuse, neglect of a child is abuse. I was never hit or verbally attacked, I was loved after a fashion I suppose. It is referred to as benign neglect and it counts. As a result I became a fawn.
Your reactions to your FOO are fascinating and I want to analyse them with you as they contrast to mine. I see all the cycles clearly in the stages of your life as I do in mine although in a different order and exhibiting in different ways.
I went back and reread all of your threads a couple of times and have considered my thinking. I have lost track if I owe any other posters on the board assistance and if that is the case then I am happy to be reminded by them on the other threads.
There is still much work to do and thinking to undertake.
I believe we have established the acts of your life and arrived at a point where the abuse by your dad was a trigger. I also think you carry blocked shame which has spilled into your R. I see some mimic behaviour, suppression and pivots where change occurred because of the underlying shame. Each pivot changed your direction and stimulated another reaction from you based on your thinking pushed by shame. Shame is about who we are, blame turned inwards. The shame arose because healthy guilt wasn't expressed. Guilt when healthy is our moral compass it gets us back on track. We atone, guilt is assuage, we grow and then move on.
Blame and shame of ourselves lies hidden and leads us to be inauthentic. Unable to properly connect and have intimacy with another.
We are now seeing the authentic Mu emerging. Your world is still at the moment so I think it's a good time to move forward. As always Mu, you can say stop enough. I will not be offended.
Please know this is a new area of growth to me and my thinking is still in faux as I acquire book smarts. I also have less experience than adult abuse sitches. My own abuse by WH was deeply buried until I came here.
My next post examines my view on your father and mother and frankly isn't too kind.
V
Until we can mourn the past we are doomed to repeat it
So firstly from your description of your father he is a classic dominator. A weak man whose poor life choices and status reflected outside the home were brought to bear on his wife and children.
He has enormous anger and control issues with a low frustration level and rage outbursts.
This isn't organic brain disease or physiological as it exhibits only in his home with those dependent on him. He abuses animals and his wife.
It's criminal behaviour, battery and completely out of order. I think it's very clear to you, me and the evaluators that your dad was a deeply unhappy and weak man. I can tell that you have no qualms about understanding that his behaviour was not your fault. That doesn't resolve the FOO although it clearly marks it as taking place. It's more easily acknowledged. And you see the roots of some of your behaviour there, it shocks you and you understand you were a child and not in any way shape or form to blame for his choices.
There is more to know though in this and my reading and lecturers have led me to understand the intertwining complexity of adult parent interactions. There is a hidden Facit which is harder to address.
I sense your mother is co-dependent. Most abused wives have strong co-dependency issues. She made attempts to defend her children and I think this made the whole situation worse.
The co-dependent by staying in an abusive R is as much a contributor to the FOO issue as the abuser. They enable. Having said that times weren't as easy on the abused spouse as they are now. There was less support. None the less she had four children with a man she knew was abusive.
This man is not MLC. He is a dominator, he didn't favour his girls they were less challenging to him so he abused them less overtly. He deflected to you and his W plus the dog when she ran away.
In addition he chose territory around his home which gave him the privacy within his means to dominate whilst not being overlooked by other homes. He was thus less likely to be overlooked and called to account. A method referred to as isolation dominance. He feared loss of the illusion of status whilst thinking he had none.
You challenged that abuse (response is rebellion or defiance) and created an alliance with your mother. This is of itself the best of the childhood responses to physical and mental abuse and is rooted in anger as an emotion. It motivates and doesn't feel good to us as children to live angrily. It slows brain development and create strong fight responses, it creates resilience on the plus side.
It's stressful and teenagers especially boys haven't the full prefrontal cortex development to contain anger. Eventually the over developed pathways will trigger anger directed inwards.
This covert anger and your management is at the root of all future pivots in your life I think adding to the internal shame.
Act 2 was suppression of desire and anger, drift doing jobs that didn't fit, working for FIL. Seeing FIL as a revised father figure. The underlying anger is still present of course but deflected, the abuse stress is released although the FOO is not dealt with. Suppressing real need for understanding and resolution. It was not addressed.
Change of sitch, and anger emerges again plus shame, so we move to suppression. Your choice was alcohol, a sort of drug suppression. Alcohol works temporarily although it's a poor drug of choice for anger and shame. I think so and it's addictive.
You described in great detail your awakening, your vision the mirror reflecting back. Insisting on your drink and going where that was. You had insight and stopped. Another pivot. Again based on anger and shame and this time turned inward. You went stone cold turkey sober.
I am unsure about why at that stage you didn't seek help and at minimum look for support from AA. The shame turned to depression and Fawn style behaviour. You lost you into shame and just went along with life. You buried that which had attracted W into the shame. The energy invested in the anger went and your behaviours were unsteady. Your core was the anger and without it you were lost. This doesn't define you Mu. I think it just is this in your life sitch.
Your W decided to walk and that brought you here.
You have had schema therapy and like it.
I sense you have not yet dealt with your FOO. I can sense you have a clear understanding of your father's role and openly condemn his behaviour. You broke the pattern with your S for which I greatly admire you.
I think you hold your mother almost blameless in it, and yet she is a contributing factor. The me and you against dad isn't helpful Mu. It is the set up for your current shame. Plus boys are not supposed to have that connection and role with their mother. It's not their job and it's confusing to a young boy. That was not your role and it's inappropriate.
Just as it was not my role to become the parent in my family.
I am interested in your take on my thinking and would like you to break it down more fully if you can.
It is interesting that the most insightful discussions we had were on Vidya thread, and since then until now we hadn't progressed much. I think though from that thread onwards the knowledge was beginning to become an open wound. A wound exposed to air and healing.
Truly Mu, you have come a long way thank you for sharing this very difficult path with me.
I do want to discuss healing FOO strategies with you and to try some physiological healing of the axis in the brain, damaged or blocked in adolescents by anger. There are some food adjustments that can be made plus some rebuilding and new connections in the axis. There is good news on this too.
Big hugs
V
Until we can mourn the past we are doomed to repeat it
I am learning a great deal about the physiology of memory and how we remember.
Children who are abused in any way are dominated. They are trapped unable to escape except in their minds. The almost constant stress of pleasing an adult who abuses them and avoiding further abuse leads to structural changes in the brain.
Alcohol drugs and trauma do the same. The ultimate loss between short term and long term memory. Structurally leaving a black hole, it isn't that the memories are there to recover in every case. They are gone permanently not lost because they were never there in the first place.
Structurally adults end up with ADD or ADHD.
We can change this, we can reverse some of the damage although the memories can't return if they were absent.
This Swiss Cheese effect is designed to protect us from damage and it can affect our ability to recover. When ghost described his inability to remember his childhood, I assumed he had suppressed it, now I realise this was a limiting view, the memories may not exist to be recovered.
Children often remember the most emotional times, they can experience abuse as love. Confusing emotional connection with attention. This inhibits their ability to recover.
Mu this isn't the case with you or I we remember a great deal and this aids healing. Our journey to spiritual health can be sharp and clean.
That may not repair an R, at this stage mine is accepted as beyond repair. You have your children and as you grow and learn so those Rs will improve. As you learn compassion for little Mu so you will grow in your capacity to provide intimate safety for your precious children.
I read this in your posts already.
V
Until we can mourn the past we are doomed to repeat it
Good Morning V, I would like to thank you again for your kindness and compassion in trying to help me come to terms with my parental experiences. I am glad you said "Your reactions to your FOO are fascinating and I want to analyse them with you as they contrast to mine. I see all the cycles clearly in the stages of your life as I do in mine although in a different order and exhibiting in different ways.". I happy you are getting something out of it also.
"As always Mu, you can say stop enough. I will not be offended." Please continue I am also fascinated by the process. There is something humbling about this experience. I am human, with predictable reactions to stimuli but shows me I am not as unique as my ego would have me believe. Now, I would like to provide you with some feedback from your insightful analysis.
"So firstly from your description of your father he is a classic dominator. A weak man whose poor life choices and status reflected outside the home were brought to bear on his wife and children. He has enormous anger and control issues with a low frustration level and rage outbursts." Amen sister, you nailed it.
"I sense your mother is co-dependent. Most abused wives have strong co-dependency issues. She made attempts to defend her children and I think this made the whole situation worse." The moment I read those words I had an "aha" moment. Yes she was. I used to think she soldiered through it. This is what I learned, this is what I always thought I must do, throughout my life. It is what I am doing right now. My way of coping in my life is based on a misunderstanding of my mothers behavior. This is a powerful revelation to me.
"In addition he chose territory around his home which gave him the privacy within his means to dominate whilst not being overlooked by other homes. He was thus less likely to be overlooked and called to account. A method referred to as isolation dominance. He feared loss of the illusion of status whilst thinking he had none. You challenged that abuse (response is rebellion or defiance) and created an alliance with your mother." Again, your right on target. I would like to add that I drifted away from mother when I was 16. I got my drivers license. Then I would go out with my friends, drink beer and get out of the house. I began to self medicate and escape the disappointment of his behavior.
"This covert anger and your management is at the root of all future pivots in your life I think adding to the internal shame." This seems logical and correct.
"The shame turned to depression and Fawn style behaviour. You lost you into shame and just went along with life. You buried that which had attracted W into the shame. The energy invested in the anger went and your behaviours were unsteady. Your core was the anger and without it you were lost. This doesn't define you Mu. I think it just is this in your life sitch." Wow, You nailed me and my behavior. I kept marching forward like a good soldier with guilt and shame.
"I think you hold your mother almost blameless in it, and yet she is a contributing factor." Not any more. Whats funny is since my BD I have spoken very little to her. I have not much to say, so of that is embarrassment of my marriage. Another part is I don't have any interest in hearing her platitude about my marriage. Maybe I don't want to discuss it with her because it reminds me of her marriage failing.
"It is interesting that the most insightful discussions we had were on Vidya thread" It seems like a one hundred years ago.
"I do want to discuss healing FOO strategies with you and to try some physiological healing of the axis in the brain, damaged or blocked in adolescents by anger. There are some food adjustments that can be made plus some rebuilding and new connections in the axis." I would love to continue this journey with you. We will walk this path together and see where it takes us.
I have resigned myself to the fact that my wife feels her life would be better without me then with me. I will continue to be the man I want to be. This has nothing to do with winning her over. I accept my fate and want to give them joy and beauty these last few years together as a family. Peace
So.... I think we have identified the shame and probably nailed it's cause.
The neglect of self W and family and side tracking with alcohol put a scar over the shame. We seem to have also to track the behaviour of soldiering on. It's not inappropriate sometimes, I am a great believer in the stiff upper lip.
I think it's correct to feel guilt too, some of the behaviours were inappropriate. Guilt is for that which we do and of course shame is for who we are.
Guilt can be atoned and so it should be. Beyond atoning for the harms we have done then we can go no further. Part of this is reviewing the harms and ensuring that with true repentance we do not repeat the damage. Then we move on to build ourselves into better versions of us.
Shame is very different. I am ashamed of who I was, as a chilD I parented my sisters. My youngest sister was 8 when I left home to go to University and she is deeply affected by what she perceives as her parent leaving. She is angry still with V. I have always felt shame and abandoning her.
I was also an ungainly skinny and acned teenager, with little grace but lots of wiry speed. The body shame I still carry with me. I do not love V's physicality nor do I look after her image.
I could choose to forgive V for her choices at 17.
You left at 16 and I sense the dynamic for you as an oldest child. Your shame went with you despite you leaving
This is what I see -shame that your father abused the things you loved, your mum, dog and family -shame that your father did this publicly (in front of friends) he saw as an extension of you -shame that you could not stop it -shame that your father was unloving and uncaring -shame that your father's public persona hid his real self -shame your mother was abused and soldiered on
There are more that you can identify?
You felt shame for his behaviour and set yourself up to feel it. You were a child. I put my shame (at my parents poor parenting) in a box as a letter and I wrapped it up as a package and I posted it. The address was my mum and dad
The letter inside said "please have this back". I presume the post office no doubt destroyed it.
That's a lot of toxicity for a child in your position, there is no doubt your mother loved and wanted you, probably applies to all her children. And as a carer was good enough. She bonded with you.
To a certain extent a clever dominator has the upper hand, playing on the need of the co-dependent for structure and finance. Your father's behaviour towards you isn't fair at the age of two and unwell, a child needs comfort and compassion.
------------------------ The period of anger say 13 to 16 was important too. The anger leads to imbalance in the development of the brain. Particularly in the amygdala.
Studies have been done with children in war zones, in particullar when young men fight in armies from a young age certain parts of the brain don't develop as they should. It appears that the two parts of the amygdala don't develop evenly. And it's different for refugee children and soldiers. Refugees have learned helplessness and the whole system shrinks. Soldiers are better fed but end up with uncontrolled rage issues that last their short life times. Soldiers of 14 to 18 have almost no compassion when fighting. The effects of nutrient deprivation is not distinguished.
However from my studies of trauma we learn this occurs also in war vets. Relating childhood trauma to war vets is truly mind boggling.
Can the brain repair, the answer is it can. A bigger question is can the brain develop later in life too? It appears that it can. The brain has enormous capacity to develop. Quite extraordinary in fact.
What I have been researching is how does shame and trauma release? I believe this happens from the physiology up. We heal from the body to the mind as much as visa versa.
So the first thing to accept about our shame is that to expose it to the daylight express it to another makes it quite ordinary. So las it out in graphic detail, identify the body sensations and the triggers that bring it forward. This heals the shame, there is a remarkable TV program called Embarrassing Bodies, people live with extraordinary conditions often for years some of which are easily healed.
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The more I learn about FOO the more I understand how every day it is. Physical and sexual abuse is ironically easier to dissolve. This is because once we accept it's wrong then we can put the cause where it belongs on the abuser. The emotional damage is much harder to unravel and we can blame ourchildhood selves for it.
There is denial, not in the sense of addiction denial but in the sense of putting shame of the actions done to the child onto the child. Thus I sense it's easier for you to heal your father abuse of you than the lack of protection of your mother. The latter is harder to spot. It's easier to adopt her coping strategy as a life choice, there is no way you would want your fathers. I like your discovery of the insight there. I think it's important in shifting the shame.
I would suspect your mother felt the same shame too about your father, although that doesn't make her co-dependency ok. She is to be congratulated in breaking away eventually. I see nothing to be shamed about in her M breaking down. In fact the problem was not walking away with her child.
The anger is tougher particularly developmentally damaged by alcohol as a mendicant. There may well be some 'growing' up to do physiologically. I have some ideas on this.
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I have been doing my initial research using the Internet site Big think. I also recommend the get Gg website (a charity website from Guernsey).
I have been using myself as my own experimental guinea pig to help me heal and see what works.
Here is what I learned about shame from my own experiments:
-we need to separate the experience of the emotion from the memory of it -shame is a bodily sensation which loops -triggers (noise, movement, cues, sights, smells) set off the body sensations -the sensations come without the base emotion - then there is fear (in your case anger followed by sadness) - there can be quite a gap between the two
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I have been working to get the emotion to tie to the sensation so I can feel the pain to release it.
I will give you an example, when my PTSD trips in I see WH in my mind ranting, screaming and threatening, like a hologram about 5 feet away, life sized and tangible. There are no words from his mouth, I hear his voice from behind me. The words are word salad although some of the things I hear are poisonous, vindictive and deeply traumatic to hear.
Then for three days or more after I am in dread and anxious, very afraid. The two are not together.
So I have worked to put the anxiety and fear with the visions. I know these aren't real that I am just traumatised. It's just here we go again.
By doing this I have released the shame of it, although not the trauma. I am getting close to busting the image and thoughts. I suspect when I do it will be like a balloon popping. Gone.
So when WH is there ranting, I have made him into the Disney cartoon baby, squeaked his voice. That helped a lot.
My bestie suggests I get a gun (water pistol) and shoot him with it, like Indiana Jones did in the movie.
------------------------- This tactic has worked well for me and I read that challenging your dad or Mum in this way works for FOO. I was going to ask you if your experience of Schema has done any release work?
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I have tried EMDR and I can't say I had a great deal of benefit from it. As a result when trying Havening I wasn't expecting any results.
I was doing the techniques incorrectly. I have learned with experimenting that with hypnosis, EMDR and Havening I have to be very specific. I have to have identified both the specific trigger and the exact traumatising memory to shift the trauma.
It's like magic and it never comes back if I get it right. Very slow though to go through each memory to shift it. Can take me several tries.
I first tried it on WH APPLE juice rant as the trauma was prevented from going into supermarkets and walking down the cold aisles without have a full blown panic attack. Now that's gone, I can go where I like.
I am having to pick these off one by one. And it's slow process so very very slow. NC is mandatory. Not an issue with your father!
If you would like to try I can give you instructions.
This is slow and perhaps a little rambling. I think this is groundbreaking.
V
Until we can mourn the past we are doomed to repeat it
WH was insistent I had one at the gym. I disn't realise why and I now know that it's because he didn't want me turning up at the office or house unexpectedly to collect gym clothes or water etc. Also he was then able to say V you are never here and I want to eat at 6 pm. If I went home I could cook for him then go to a gym session for 6 30 session. I didn't think I needed a locker.
I haven't used my locker, and I am panicked about it.
It's in the ladies changing room so no surprises. I just don't know what is in there.
In fact I haven't been into the ladies changing rooms. I used to take WH granddaughters swimming and we changed there. WH started accusing me of being miserable and the girls didn't want to go swimming. I paid for their membership and WH. He can celled the membership and took the cash.
The ladies change is busy and I am afraid of a panic too. It's Sunday so later it will be quiet. I am going to explain to my favourite in the restaurant and ask her to accompany me and if I seem panicked guide me to a private area to have my panic attack.
Then I can use my go away tricks to the PTSD.
So my strategy is to do my concentrated breathing, and visualisation. See myself calmly opening the locker, sorting the stuff then closing it in advance. I could wear headphones, people do in gyms all the time that would not be unusual.
I am going to do havening with my eyes, go into the disabled loo to do it and afterwards into the disabled loo and do it again.
Convert the vision in my head to a cartoon, shrink it AND SWISH AWAY. (NLP technique)
Then I am going to the sauna with my stuff and I will return to put it in the locker.
I shall repeat this every day this week and then four times a week until I am desensitised.
V
Until we can mourn the past we are doomed to repeat it
It seems like a one hundred years ago.