I M Perfect lady

I'm perfect – it's impossible not to be.

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about – A Fiber Artist -passionate about women empowering.

  • The Mic is Open.

    "Art is both therapy and tragedy. Somewhere in the mix lies hope for humanity. That is the foundation of our work … the intangible hope that pulls us toward some horizon we spend every day trying to explain, knowing that the landscape will change when we wake. Everything else occupies the space of comfortable distractions. We hope to never be comfortable."

    ~LoLa Visuals and 5th Estate Films

    I found this on David Cowardin's business page….Lola Visuals.  No wonder he is the one to take my story.

    Being uncomfortable is something hard to get used to.  Putting myself in new situations; like being filmed.

    Well, being filmed would not be bad… it is discerning. 

    Most worry about what they look like…hair, size and overall physical presentation.

    Instead my concern is how I sound.  

    Not my voices tone, but its content.

    And it isn't the value of the message or its worth, but how it will be received.

    I know I have a unique story; my art stems from therapy in tragedy.

    It has been the balm that re-balances my life.

    Soothing my rattled nerves.

    I only had about a 3 day window from being asked to be part of this project "Call Me Mental", to sitting in a chair…facing the camera, and sharing Me.

    My body has been clanging inside…the mixture of wild exhilaration of sharing my story, my art and my hope…only to be bracing for the onslought of redicule from my family of origin.

    I am out of my comfort zone again.

    The zone where you don't make waves.

    When I am asked to be part of something that will help others, I say yes. 

    My Lady leads the way; I follow.

    I follow knowing the cost to my personal life and its affect upon my body.

    Inside of me are two extreme opposite energies or emotions.  Love and Fear.

    Love of sharing hope and encouragement in breaking the silence and to stand in the truth of who you are…and the fear of doing so.

    I feel such great kindness and care, honor and respect from David as we film.

    I feel a mixture of trepidation and excitement to see my story and art on film.

    And I am bracing for the haters…while excited to see if my story can help others.

    I have to withstand the negative in order to help even one person feel less alone, less mental and more hopeful.

    My family has not supported any of what I have done; for in order to share my message, the family's secrets are laid bare.

    I get it.

    I just don't know how we can break the stigma of being sexual abused and to flip the role of the victim carrying the responsibility, unless one of us stands up.

    I stand up in front of the camera, knowing I will be blasted from behind.

    While I am seen by strangers and new friends, as a hero, someone who "kicks ass"…"an incredible woman"…I am also seen as one who wrecks our family.

    Who 'enjoys' the trashing the family in public.

    One who doesn't care about family…for I willingly throw ours under the bus.

    I willingly offer our dysfunction to be dissected by the public.

    Is there any other way to break the silence without breaking the silence?

    I also will second my brother's invite, "Speak now or forever hold your peace!"

    Challenge me.

    Correct me where I am wrong.

    Step forth and show the public how mental I am!

    Sit where I have sat and bear your soul.

    Share what you have to teach, your message of hope and healing…your experience of being a child of a pedophile; the mic is open.

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    It is Open Mic on "Call Me Mental".

     

     

     

  • Recovering My Mental Health

    Self diagnosed as "Abused"...back in December 2004…wasn't the real kingpin that flipped my world upside down, but the fact that it had been denied.  

    I have to read the definition of denied. 

    "State that one refuses to admit the truth or existence of "They deny any responsibility for the tragedy"."

     

    Being sexually abused is the root or starting point where my mental illness began.  

    However, it was the mistreatment I received, AFTER being abused, where my mental illness was formed.  

    You can't just blame the sexual act that my father subjected me to, you have to also consider how this event was handled.

    How was I treated?  

    What changed in my childhood home, after I was mistreated? 

    Or maybe more importantly, "How was my father treated?"  

    Was he treated like a pedophile, and I a victim of abuse?

    Who orchestrated the treatment after the abuse?

    Who had the power of this step, after the abuse?

    I believe as my mother and his wife… my mother carried a huge responsibility in the trajectory of our lives. 

    The way in which she responded, set in motion my wellness or my illness.

    She determined my path by either facing the truth or denying it.

    I also looked up the word denial.  

    "The action of declaring something to be untrue."

    The actions my mother made was to bless away his sins, declaring them untrue.

    What was once there, was now wiped clean.

    His sins were forgiven.

    His truth changed.

    This left me with nowhere to go with my abuse; for IT no longer existed.

    What made my mental health worse is that my mind failed to record my abuse.  I was left with a body in terror and a mind that is blank and a home that returned to normal like no abuse had ever occurred.

    A few days after declaring myself Abused, I found a Beanie Baby Ostrich and knew it represented my mother; her head in the sand.

    Her refusal to treat my father like a pedophile; cast me into the sea of mental illness.

    The void of pretending all was well with thee…when all had tragically changed.

    A father was no longer safe.

    And a mother who didn't see the monster I lived with.

    In order to survive; I had to pretend to pretend this wasn't the truth of our home.

    I felt so free in December when I could declare my truth….I am just like my niece. I am abused.  And, my body matches this truth. My terrors are not make-belief.  My night terrors have a source.  My lack of feeling warm and fuzzy towards my parents has a reason…I felt normal for the first time in my life; when I knew I had a pedophile for a father and an ostrich for a mother…I made sense.

    My mental illness was denial.

    When I no longer denied my truth I was recovering my mental health.

  • All of You!

    Day two of filming "Call Me Mental" 

    It is hard to articulate the process for it is Art in the making…and you are just a piece of a bigger picture…and yet how you present yourself will add or take away from the project.  It truly is an audition and bringing the right and perfect content that is needed to inform, inspire and push the envelope…to start a social change as this documentary explores the stigma of mental illness.

    Can you explain and share your mental illness clearly?  Will it leave the viewer more hopeful and normal in their illness?  

    For I see myself as being a normal person who was put in abnormal situations and the effect that had on my life.  And, then the process of recovering my self from the affects…if you will.

    David Cowardin is simply the perfect person for letting us share our stories.

    These are not typical stories. They are our wounds and greatest pains.  He handles them and us, with the open space of gentle kindness while doing Art.

    He adjusts lights and cameras while we are pouring out our souls.

    He asks questions with kind eyes and a soul willing to hear.

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     What is so weird and surreal we are creating wonderful art from tragedy; if you will. Look at our smiling faces…you can feel our bond of good energy. 

    He and his partner are going into our darkness with bright lights.  

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    We are bringing Light to an segment of society that has been kept in the dark….our secrets and the places to seek help.  

    I simple love that my quilts are in Copper Country Mental Health, and we are doing a film, "Call Me Mental" and bringing brightness….into what wounds us.

    Willing to display your wounds on camera, as well as what was helpful in healing them…will help others find their way.  Or so is my hope.1616479_10153800331130594_333677315_n

    Last night was a bit easier for me, for it was explaining the quilts.  To re-visit each one and feel what they saying…what part of my journey did they capture.

    I once again felt the awe of what came forth in each quilt.  I feel the magic of the story and how my subconsciousness was revealed.  I am viewing my art like I wasn't there making it!

    And to top the evening off, my brother and I were connected via Skype.

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    Bringing him into my episode…for we have shared a very unique experience…as siblings, friends and partners in recovering after abuse.

    There are not enough words to express the delicate place we were both in…him trusting me and me having the courage to use truth and reality…

    Using all I had to offer…freedom and reality.

    He gave me the books and authors that I used to help me help him.

    The yoga too he shared with me.

    He was my first and is my most ardent cheerleader.

    Thank you Carl for giving me all of you!  

     

  • How I came to be…

    First day of filming done….and actually David was here for the morning.  He was wonderful wonderful!  Kind, curious, attentive and very creative, quiet, responsive, and open.  The perfect photojournalist for me!  Thanks Chad Johnson for connecting us!

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    He wanted a quilt to be my backdrop, and this is the only one that was completed enough to do the trick.  This photo is blurry, but you get the idea of the stage he created!

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    There were three very bright lights focused on me.  Once I seen all the equipment, it almost had me nervous…like this is real, we are going "live".  Lights, Camera…and action!  I was the object…how will my story land.  

    David was very good at keeping the flow going, or so it seemed.  Neither of us worked from a script or scripted notes, just me being me and David intently listening capturing the gist of my story.

    He took one hour of video in the "interview" type setting…then the Sunshine came into the livingroom and played with the lighting…too distracting but a great invite for us to go outside!

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    I choose to dress like I usually do on my Sundays at home. I felt relaxed and myself and it assisted with calming me. I was Me being Me!

    He took video of me walking outside…for this was a very important part of my recovery; to be with nature.

    We then took footage of my quilting space and of me quilting.  He is as creative with his camera…just like an Artist.  Paying attention to details…to weave the story together.

    He asked if I had a white piece of fabric that we could write the words "Call Me Mental"….and that inspired me to create a quilt that will be in my episode.  I choose one of my hand-dye fabrics as the background and then used the white and black fabrics for the words….and I added My Lady!

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    What a fun way to honor the documentary…with a quilt!

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    I love the word play of Call Me Mental, if you must… and I will call me whatever I feel!  

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    The uneven border is because the handstitching isn't done…but I wanted to put this on the blog…celebrating the first day of filming my episode for "Call Me Mental".

    Thanks again Dave for being you…and for taking such good care of me and my story and for treating it as it is….a wound of childhood that reverberated out for years…creating a survival self. And, my journey to find the real me!  Call Me Mental, but I am just revealing all of who I am and how I came to be…

    More to come…at 5pm tomorrow Dave will be back behind the camera and My Lady will be in front!

  • Breaking the Silence of Denial.

    The good news about having such a short time to 'prepare' for the filming, is that there is no time to prepare….so you don't have to.  

    The normal response is how do I look and how does my home look and then….the realness sets in, when I know that is not what people will tune in to experience, but rather the content of how it feels to be labeled and treated like you are mental…and to learn more about mental illness and disorders.

    Who in their right mind would volunteer for such a documentary to disclose and expose your inner darkness?

    Me.

    However, I believe my story is backwards or society is and I guess the viewer will be left to answer that on their own.

    As I thought about this "interview" I recalled the interview with the detective who came to take the statement from me to help create a case against my father.

    These encounters are not your typical conversations, for they want to know what you usually keep silent about.

    They are here to go into the darkness and bring you there too.

    When the Detective came into my home, it was just a few weeks out of my denial…and today I am 10 years out.

    The me who sat in the chair 10 years ago, bravely trying to wrap my brain around me being abused, is so not who I am today.

    I have had 10 years of writing and doing art…of endless talking with my brother, to reading books about abuse.  I have done yoga to express the emotions trapped in my body.  Read books from authors who are brilliant in recounting their stories and share what is helpful.  I have been out and about in our local town, doing social services on the topic of being sexually abuse.

    This interview will be different…but so am I.

    I am not in the throes of trauma…shell shocked from living for 46 years in denial to be smacked into reality, digging into a darkness that was so wide and deep and terrifying…and me so small.  Not in size, but in inner self, of knowing who I was.

    I am ten years strong today.

    This interview will host a woman who is wise in the ways of being a victim and what is needed to move beyond.

    The detective's interview was of a new victim, 40 years after the crime.

    She had a mind who failed to record the sexual abuse, so she lived in denial.

    And what came to me yesterday, is that when the mind fails to record, "it didn't happen" and that is how I lived…denying its existence.

    Denial.

    Most would not think that denial is a mental illness.

    And, I think it is one of the most common, and widely accepted as being 'normal', and not an illness at all.

    It wasn't the actual act of being sexually molested, (raped by my father), but the fact that it wasn't recorded.

    For I then lived my life like it didn't happen…that my father wasn't a pedophile.

    To live with a pedophile like he was just a normal dad, is what was mental.

    Not the 10 years that I have now lived in reality…this I call being of sound mind.

    My left brain as Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor says "Took the least amount of information and weaved the most plausible story…" creating a normal family…it denied all references to abuse.

    Denial is manufactured in the left brain.

    How incredible to learn that the left brain doesn't need facts or reality checks.

    And, yet how devastating to learn that the life you lived for 46 years has very few anchors in reality.

    Giving up denial is quite shocking to the system…to all at once know you have been duped by your own mind.

    I would not have been able to live so long in denial, unless the rest of my family lived there too.  If there had been anyone in reality at the time of my abuse, I would not have entered into denial. 

    But denial is the land my mother resides in….and she brought us all there.

    And once you are aware, you lose your ability to deny.

    To me, the greatest tragedy of abuse in a childhood home isn't the abuse, but the lack of bringing it into reality to be dealt with. What we are taught by our need for silence, to deny.

    Deny and not speak of it. This very small and quite large application that is required to remain at peace and have love of family, it is what sends us to live one step out of reality.

    Abuse doesn't mess with your mind.  The aftermath does.  

    How does your mother respond?

    Do the adults see the children in danger?

    Who is there that you can speak to and be heard.

    A few days after my flop into reality, I said…all it would have taken for us to be rescued is one eye that saw us or one ear that heard us…one hand reaching in to save the child.

    The filming today is for me to try and articulate the act of denial that followed my sexual abuse and how it was more damaging than the sexual act itself.  The body heals, but the mind goes untreated.

    What my untreated mind needed the most was reality.  Even if reality was terrifying and disgraceful to know.  Knowing what I had denied was the key to recovery. Recovering the truth of me.

    "Call Me Mental"…I hope, will help dispell the shroud of what creates mental illnesses…and how we all participate in the dance.  

    My father didn't act alone.  He acted, and many many of us denied it. When you deny realty once, it becomes a way of life, going on "forgiving and forgetting".

    This morning, I will once again, act against the family legacy; breaking the silence of denial. 

     

     

  • My Lady is going on Film!

    The "Roots of Rescue" is a documentary on rescuing animals in the south, or perhaps the treatment of animals or even the separation of seeing even the animal and its needs. http://rootsofrescue.com  (you can "Like" Roots of Rescue on facebook and there is a link to their documentary.

    The same guys who made that, are now working on one titled "Call Me Mental".  

    And, I am going to participate in this film…or let's say try out for a part.

    They will film my story.  They will record my words and my film my quilts…trying to encapsulate me and discern the mental part of my journey.

    Sunday at 9am, filming begins…in my home.

    I feel the anxious excitement of having new ears and the unknowing if I will be heard and/or believed, and the secondary of Telling my story again, which opens me up to more disbelief and redicule from those who would prefer I be silent.  

    And the bigger part of me is thrilled to have this platform.

    To be the voice…for so many who remain silent.

    The weight of being able to articulate, and again encapsulate, with dignity and grace the walk of the victim of being sexually abused by a family member and how we are treated…and more importantly how we can rise above it.

    I am relaxed in knowing I know me and understand and feel confident in my walk.

    I am going to welcome them in….and there needs to prep.

    Nothing to get ready…or no script to be learned.

    I just will be as I am.

    Where I am.

    And share.

    They will meet me in my life as it is.

    I am excited they are doing this project to de-stigmatize how we see the mentally challenged….and to give a louder voice in breaking the silence.

    I will support and be part of this mission in any form I can.  It is to take my voice out of the local area and to join with others like me.  

    But I do feel the nerves shaking…for I am not being silent and I am willing to do a full disclosure…and I know it adds more fuel to the fire of how I am seen.

    It will be a victory for the ones who see me as mental, for I fit the role these photojournalists are looking for….a person who is labeled mental.

    It is my hope, that I can break a bit of the stereotype and raise the awareness of how it feels to be one of the disenfranchised due to the treatment we experienced in childhood.

    The organic way this occurred has me believing it is the next step for My Lady.

    My Lady is going on film!  

     

  • “I am Mental”

    And, Alice Miller again!  

    "If I succeed in making even a few people aware of how the victimization of children is concealed by placing the blame on them, then all the misunderstandings and reproaches for being one-sided that I anticipate would be a very small price to pay, compared to the importance to me of what I shall have achieved."

    "Those who have read the first chapter of my book "For Your Own Good" will understand why Freud's first theory, his trauma theory, and my own findings that support it inevitably encounter much greater resistance than the theory of the Oedipus complex.  I see this resistance as a social phenomena and am prepared for the misinterpretations and reproaches it engenders.  If there were none, it would have been superfluous for me to write this book.  The heritage of millennia cannot suddenly cast aside.  As analysts we must be understanding of this, but we cannot be expected, on the other hand, to shut our eyes tighter than ever after analyzing patients all these many years and making discoveries no one wants to know about.  People don't want to listen because they are not ready to bear what they will hear. That is justifiable, for to achieve genuine insight is a slow process in which intellectual knowledge plays only a small role.  What is decisive is no doubt the willingness to remain open, open to what "the patients" and the poets tell us, to what our children have to reveal to us, and, finally to the discoveries we can make about our own selves once we are able to take our feelings and our fantasies seriously and see them as messages about earlier situations in our lives." 

    "As soon as opposition to the truth about the damage done to young children under the cloak of silence becomes less widespread and unyielding than it is now, these messages will not need much coding. Mariella Mehr's moving book, "Steinzeit (Stone Age), is an indication of this. At age thirty-two this woman succeeded in uncovering the most inconceivable martyrdom of her childhood and youth as well as a whole long and hidden chain of persecution and assault; she did this by experiencing her pain and other accompanying feelings in their full intensity, and in the process found her true self. The change from petrified, dehumanized creature to a vital, feeling, and suffering human being took place of primal therapy, apparently in its best possible form. In any case, we sense here the presence of a trustworthy nonpedagogical, empathic support figure, who is never placating, never conceals the truth with theories, ideologies, or mystification.  The only concession Mehr makes to the reader's resistance is her designation of the book as a "novel" thereby giving her reader the opportunity to take a psychiatric approach and call the whole thing the product of a "diseased imagination." But even the most horrible imaginings seldom approach the horror of reality. Mehr's book is an exceptional peice of work, both for its conviction as well as for the significance of its findings.  This work illustrates and indirectly confirms several of my premises."

    1. it is the depth, intensity, and authenticity of experience that gives a literary work its force and not the psychological naivete (or lack of awareness of the unconscious) of the author; therefore, a writer's familiarity with his or her unconscious does not diminish literary power.

    2. The source of creativity lies in the creative person's capacity for suffering, not in his or her neurosis.

    3. Liberation and the ability to love are attained by experiencing traumatic childhood situations and articulating the resulting hatred and despair, not by acting them out.  Only if these emotions are dissociated from their cause will they lead to destructive and self-destructive behavior.

    4. Change in society is brought about by uncovering and recognizing the truth in its entirety, not by manipulative methods based on acceptance of social taboos.

    5. Old wounds will heal over if feelings find full acceptance and if emotional access to childhood traumas is provided, not if drive conflicts are intellectually resolved or if improved control and mastery over drive desires are achieved.

    6. Access to these traumas will be facilitated by a trustworthy, sincere support figure, not by complicated theories.

    "Once this access has been won, then the numbness that was needed to survive gives way, even in the case of a woman whose schizophrenic mother twice attempted to murder her as a little girl, a woman who was repeatedly raped and was forced to undergo electric shock treatments and disciplinary measures of unbelievable brutality.  No "mere" imagination could have invented all this, could ever have described it in such a consistant way. There are simply some horrendous things in this world tha the philosophers (the fortunate ones) have not yet dreamed of. But at the same time there are an increasing number of people who are able to see these things because at some point along the way they have found an aware and sensitive support figure. To be sure, the truth that individuals discover through their pain can be crushed over and over again by the tomes of pedagogical, pyschriatric, and theological wisdom, but it cannot be destroyed, for every newborn child has the capacity to discover the truth anew."  Alice Miller

    Alice Miller's brilliance is that she truly gets that the truth is there for everyone…and that you can't love until you first feel the trauma of childhood, and that it also takes someone who is willing to listen; be supportive to our truths.

    At anytime, if the listener leans away from the child to defend the adult, they have withdrawn their support.  It doesn't take much, and the trustworthiness is broken.

    What I also love about her writings and discoveries is that they match head to head with my own.  

    While I get lost in her famous Analysists and their theories, I am one with her on what works, and that is in direct opposition to these famous theories.

    I know what they were saying and why, but I also know how it would never support the child and their truths.  

    Just as I know the mission behind the FALC and their forgiveness of sins and how it doesn't take into the equation the wounded child. 

    When we don't see the child's needs, we are never going to fix if you will the plight of what most call the mentally ill.  What I know to be true, the only real mental are the ones who are not in reality. 

    Most of society live one or two or even three steps away from reality…and they call those of us who refuse to abide outside of reality Mental.

    I see the mental as living in the space outside of reality.  Believing that the forgiveness of sins can literally change the reality of what happened in childhood.

    And what society has labeled as mental…are those who can't live in the pretend world, but are locked into reality.  

    Our failure to fit back into a pretend space has us labeled as mental….when in fact we should come up with a new term, Reality Dwellers; those refusing to not see what isn't there.

    Byron Katie is a lover of reality…perhaps the "mental" folks are just that….Lovers of Reality. 

    And, their refusal to pretend has them labeled as mental.  If you could just picture the insanity of this concept, you would find that the majority of folks are truly mental and those who have carried the label as "Mentally Challenged" are not. 

    What they are being chastised for is their inability to pretend reality different.

    I have experienced this phenomena…when I failed to flip my father back to dad after knowing he was a pedophile.  My refusal to see him any other way gave me my label, "I am Mental".

     

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    This is the quilt that came forth after being with my estranged family….as they seen me, "not even humane" for standing by my truth.

  • Comfortable being you!

    In the past few days, from a variety of people and experiences, I have witnessed the word "Worry" in action.  I had to see what the true meaning of the word is.

    "Worry"

    - give way to anxiety or unease; allow one's mind to dwell on difficulty or troubles….

    -(of a dog or other carnivorous animal) tear at, gnaw on, or drag around with the teeth.

    -a state of anxiety and uncertainty over actual or potential problems.

    What I didn't know was that it was to be with one's anxiety, but I somehow felt that worry was constructive in that it showed feelings about the other person; like the more you worried, the more you cared.  

    I lost my worry skills…once I began to truly understand the power of the Universe AND the Free Will of others, and just how much of what I worried about wasn't within my power to change.  My anxiety used to be that I believed I was in control and it was up to me to change…life. Reality. Things I didn't like, or want to experience.  I worried.

    What I didn't know is that swam in anxiety…believing I was caring.

    I have come to learn, as Byron Katie says, "It is not my time to suffer"…and it is not helpful to bring anxiety to a stressful situation, but positive constructive attention.  

    I don't know what is coming.

    Who I will watch suffer or how much I will suffer….but it is my intention to not give way to anxiety, but to seek ways in which to learn how to manage myself in different situations and remain present AND accepting to what is.

    I believe, that the greatest source of anxiety is wanting things to be different.

    In doing my latest quilt, I was feeling that I wanted a lady to be relaxed and comfortable in love.

    When she wouldn't do this, I then realized that real love is to be standing strong and doing things that are not comfortable.  To grow as a person and in relationships you will be asked to do many things that are not comfortable.

    Even to stand up for your feelings, your goals and dreams, to stand in integrity, you will not be comfortable, for many will try and knock you off the stand of you.

    What I have been learning these last many years is that being unique, speaking your truth and standing up for the love of self, is one of the most uncomfortable things to do….especially if you have been living an inauthentic life.  If you have been saying and doing things that are not the truth for you.  

    My worries have literally fallen to zero…the more authentic I have been living and the more I realized that we are all individuals on our own human journey with the Free Will of the Universe…that each of us have our own worlds to live in.

    When I gave myself the freedom to be me…I gave the others to the freedom to be them.

    I can't want someone to be healthier than they want to be. I can't step in front of the Universe and change reality.  I can only manage my world in this present moment doing my authentic truths.

    Worry isn't love….it is anxiety.

    Love is uncomfortable until you are comfortable being you.

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  • Behind the Art.

    "It may still be decades or even centuries before humankind stops regarding the knowledge stored up in the unconscious as immaterial, as pathological fantasies of the insane or of eccentric poets, and comes to see it for what it really is: a perception of reality, stemming from the period of early childhood, which had to be relegated to the unconscious, where it becomes an inexhaustible source of artistic creativity of the imagination per se, of fairy tales and dreams…"  Alice Miller

    Many see me as writing pathological fantasies of the insane…when I am honoring the unconsciousness within me.  And my quilts are created from there as well.

     

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    "The term "fairy tale" refers to something that isn't true.  On the other hand, it is generally acknowledged that fairy tales convey deep insights into life, that they communicate truth in the form of vivd parables. A similar ambivalance can be observed in our attitude towards dreams. We often reassure ourselves with remarks like "It was only a dream" or even "Dreams don't mean anything": yet anyone who works with the unconscious knows what an amazing amount of information dreams can provide about a person's life. This ambivalence is a reflection of our attitude toward truth per se: we want to know it and at the same time we don't because it hurts, can frighten us, places excessive demands on us, and robs us of the security of our cherished illusions."  Alice Miller

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    I threaten the cherished illusions…

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    For the art of truth is behind the art!

  • Allow me to see mine.

    More of Alice Miller…

    "Many professionals respond to the new information available about child abuse with insensitivity and indifference, which I assume are primarily a reflection of their loyalty to theory and not of their own heartlessness.  This reaction is a particularly clear indication of the dangers of the theory in question. These dangers stem from the simple fact that psychoanalysts are forced back into the framework of "poisonous pedagogy," from which they had hoped to free themselves with the help of their psychoanalytic training, and that they force their patients back with them. For when Freudian theory prescribes that patients' reports about their childhood are to be regarded as fantasies originating in drive conflicts and not in real experiences, the analyst continues to be insensitive to childhood suffering. This has the following consequences."

    1. Analysts will have to make light of their own childhood suffering and will be unable to help the patient become sensitive to his or her suffering but will, on the contrary, minimize it the same way they did their own case and the same way all well-raised children do. Then the emotional grounds for minimizing it can be legitimized and shrouded in mystery in conjunction with the drive theory.

    2. When patients make uncertain and anxious attempts to portray the atmosphere of humiliation, mistreatment, or psychological rape they were once subjected to, their perceptions will be interpreted as drive fantasies or projections of their own desires. This will make patients (a) stop expressing their grievances; (b) feel ashamed for having them; (c) dwell on guilt feelings; and (d) repress their traumatization again, this time more deeply than before. Such a process will add greatly to their self-alienation.  Autonomy cannot develop, and as a result, patients will often respond obediently to the analyst's pedagogic efforts without even noticing them. With this method of psychoanalysis, the patients' own truth will be buried, which can, to be sure, temporarily reinforce their resistance to their traumas, usually by means of intellectualizing; yet in the long run this approach will increase the likelihood of the incidence of new depression.

    3. If patients are not given the opportunity to air their grievances against their parents and educators – which is more often the case than not – then of course they don't have to be talked out of their "negative attitudes" at all; the analyst can simply build upon their "good upbringing" and teach them very quickly how they "can learn to understand their parents better and forgive them." The religious notion that a "gesture of forgiveness" will make you a better person has also found its way into psychoanalytic treatment.  As if this gesture could do away with something slumbering deep within a person since childhood that can be articulated only in neurosis. Who know this better than psychoanalysts, had they not reached an agreement that the true nature of childhood should not be the subject of their investigations?

    "The drive theory, then, entails denial of reality, insensitivity to childhood suffering, refusal to give credence to the patient's grievances – which ultimately means refusal to take him or her seriously – and, above all, misunderstanding and denial of the roots of neurosis. As I have already emphasized more than once, it is my belief that these roots lie in the enforced repression not of the child's so-called instinctual drives but of his or her awareness of having been traumatized and in the prohibition against articulating this, which was internalized at a very early age.  Freudian drive theory reinforces this prohibition to the fullest because it is still caught in the system of assigning blame and thinks the parents must be protected from their children's recriminations. Since guilt must be assigned in this system, it is the child's drives and , just as in "poisonous pedagogy", ultimately the child himself who is found guilty. Presumably, his aggressions and the sexual desires he blames his parents for not fulfilling are what often make his parents (by projection) "appear" cruel to him. Thus, cruelty on the part of parents is always interpreted as the product of the child's drive fantasies, generated by the child's own cruelty. For this cruelty is always real and present for the psychoanalyst (as it is for the pedagogue/educator). Significantly, in classical psychoanalytic literature I have never encountered the question of what actually becomes of the children's cruelty later when they grow up and have children of their own. As if, when children attain the power accompanying adulthood, such questions would automatically disappear…   "

    She goes on to write about the consequences of when we go to seek help from those who have not addressed their own childhood with clarity…and rely upon theories that are not useful to children of abuse.

    "We might not begrudge them the peace of mind their theories provide if it were not disquieting to think that they are the ones so many people turn to in their attempt to be rescued from neurosis, people who were narcissistically and often sexually mistreated, violated, and abused as children and who need help in interpreting the information revealed in their symptoms and in regaining their original vitality. Tragically, they cannot receive the help they need from the drive theory; the most they can achieve is to reinforce their defense mechanisms against what they know to be the truth and make their adaptation to society more rigid, thereby cutting themselves off from access to their own self. This self is like a prisoner in a cell: no one believes in his innocence, and as a result, rather than remain alone and isolated with the truth, he too finally loses all knowledge of it.(cf. The Drama of the Gifted Child, pp. 10-14). Only by sacrificing his true self does he reestablish ties to other people."

    "The advice regularly given in the old pedagogical manuals was to "break" the child's will at as early an age as possible, to combat his "obstinacy," and always to  impart to him the feeling that he is guilty and bad; they stressed that one should never allow the impression to arise that an adult might be wrong or make a mistake, should never give the child an opportunity to discover adult limitations, but that the adult should, on the contrary, conceal his or her weaknesses from the child and pretend to divine authority. Later, if this child becomes a patient, it might be that during analysis he will realize for the first time that something essential is being "taken away" from him, i.e., his own way of expressing himself, and that his analyst is treating him just as his parents did earlier when he was still too little to be conscious of it.  This is a form of psychological castration, which unfortunately may be repeated in analysis if the analyst assumes a didactic attitude. Even if he does not, it is still possible for the patient to experience him as the "castrating father" if he indeed had that kind of father. Only by granting the patient the right to do this and not regarding his fears as paranoid delusions but as a long overdue breakthrough of repressed perceptions can the analyst avoid taking the parent's castrating attitude and instead enable the patient to make "new discoveries." Alice Miller.

    I am not certain you can fully appreciate and bring in, the consequences we face in seeking help for our childhood mistreatment….when the therapy world is so backwards and hell-bent on theories that support the parent and discount the child's childhood as its root cause in our dysfunctional life. Not to mention the therapist themselves and their viewpoint upon their own childhood and HOW that alone will aid or prohibit us from finding our way back to our vital self.

    What Alice Miller shows me is the expansive view of where our troubles began and why and also how it is near impossible to find our way back to vitality IF the therapists are unable to reconcile their own lives with truth.

    It is like seeking the key to the cage from those in the cage with us.  Blind leading the blind, but with some who have more intellectual theories that are actually stopping us from finding the key.

    A very tricky landscape for sure.

    She confirms my suspicions in how someone could lead you out, if they themselves have not begun this journey.  I recognize and appreciate the book learned, but Alice also knows what I suspected…that the wrong leader/facilitator could lead you further away from your self.

    It appears it all boils down to the truth.

    If you can see yours, you will allow me to see mine.