The Family as an R-rated Institution(70 slides)

Creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

Sometimes it seems silly to spend so much time on the outward appearances and values of things.

As we learn to ignore the inward pain and dysfunction of

people which make family life an R-rated experience for all concerned.

“It takes two to tell the truth: one to speak and one to listen.”

Thoreau

Ponder

• We should not be willing to sacrifice children to physical, emotional abuse/neglect so the institution of the family can remain unsullied and respectful.

• How does my the act of ignoring, personally or professionally, contribute to the family dysfunction and violence rampant in our society.

Moralizing Social Evils…

• The obsessive preoccupation some have with the sexual and violent content on T.V., drugs, crime, etc. found in our society is often a projection technique of covering one’s own problems and shame.

• This self-righteous moralizing often leads to arrogance, grandiosity and judgmental pride.

• It often occurs with rigid religious folks.

A reaction formation…

• Is a defense mechanism that is often characterized by extreme behavior in the opposite way of what one is actually feeling inside.

• • Example: a person is scared and acts as if they are

courageous and brave. A person is insecure and acts loud and obnoxious. An angry person rails against violence in public and acts in violent mean spirited ways at home. A person castigates pornography and sexual immorality in public and acts out sexually when attending out of town conferences, protecting his secret.

The reaction formation paradox continues…

• World War II veterans went abroad to fight for democracy in the world and came home to become little Hitler's in their own homes and families.

• Where they became the unquestioned power brokers with other peoples lives.

• Where they acted out upon their children their own childhood beatings and frustrations.

How many human rights violations occur within supposedly loving family relationships?

The one-two punch of dysfunctional families…

• 1. Corporeal punishment• 2. Shaming

Prisoner of war…what is it like for a child?

• The capture is complete…• The control is absolute…• The hope of rescue is minimal…

Alice Miller writes…

“The abused inmates of a concentration camp are inwardly free to hate their persecutors.

The opportunity to experience their feelings, even to share them with other inmates, prevents them from having to surrender their self.

This opportunity does not exist for children.

They must not hate their father… they cannot hate their father.

Thus children, unlike concentration camp inmates, are confronted by a tormentor they love.”

Read carefully…I’m going to see if I can trick you.

• “On the matter of discipline, there was apparently a difference of philosophy as between parents and the children that was reflected in their respective usages of the term. To us, the issue was that we were being asked to do something contrary to our will and conscience. When we refused to obey, we were coerced by physical pain and punishment until we gave in and did what we had originally refused to do. By all definitions we knew of usage and history in the English language, the methods and purposes of the coercion taken together were properly described as discipline.”

Continuing…

• The parents, on the other hand, used the word discipline only when denying that they had disciplined us. Their philosophical position, if I understand it all right was:

• 1. They had set up home regulation. • 2. Any child who broke a regulation deserved and would receive

punishment. • 3. One regulation was that the children are to obey every order of

the parents. • 4. A child who refused to a particular request when ordered to,

was disobeying an order and thus breaking a home regulation.

• Thus when a child refused to do as directed, he was punished until he repented.”

The preceding excerpt was taken from page 57, of Capt. Larry Chesley’s,

Seven Years in Hanoi: A POW Tells His Story.

Here are the words I switched:

• Children………….for• Discipline………..for• Parents…………..for• Home……………for

• Prisoners• Torture• Guards• Camp

Interesting, huh?

What would it be like?

• What would it be like to live in a country where you had the political life and rights of a child growing up in the typical American home?

Learning about families…

• Learning about families will bring us face to face with our own defendedness and slumber.

• It is often painful to awaken to the dynamics of family life that may be referred to as the dark side or under belly of the family.

• If we choose to remain defended and asleep we then become part of the problem and not the solution.

• And even though the younger generation is much healthier than the preceding ones much of the dysfunction still exist.

Safe places…

• The home is typically not a safe place to be… accidents, abuse, shame, neglect, yelling, hostile conflict, teasing, etc. can make the home a wounding place.

• The home should be a haven, a sanctuary, a harbor from the storms of life.

• The tension between what is and what should be is the nemesis of much of our existence.

How does a child process the incongruence?

• The one place of security, safety and sanctuary becomes the source of hurt, pain, abuse and confusion!

• What sense can a child make of the hostility that exists at home among people that should be the ones who are protecting them from the very violence that is being inflicted upon them.

The source or genesis of much of our culture’s dysfunction…

• The family is the source and genesis of much of our culture’s dysfunction.

• When one considers the issues of: relationship violence, sexual dysfunction, neglect, abuse, addictions, language, obscenities, emotional abuse, shaming, physical abuse, domestic violence, divorce, abandonment and the like, it’s pretty overwhelming!

We live in a violent society but we have such a high tolerance for it that it seems pretty normal.

What is the source of the violence?

Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice miller, P.69

• “Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult, which is tolerated by society.”

The fountainhead of contempt…

• The fountainhead and genesis of contempt begins in the home with parents who were once victims of well meaning but wounded, immature parents.

• This victimization is transmitted from one generation to the other by people who remain asleep to their own pain and discomfort by idealizing their own childhoods.

Murray Bowen has written…

• “Parents aren’t bad-they’re immature.” And it is this immaturity that needs to be acknowledged

so that something can be done about it.

Trivialization of childhood pain:

• This trivialization of childhood pain and abuse is the seed bed for the development of later self contempt.

• Those that despise and discount themselves are primed to not take themselves seriously.

• This lack of compassion and suffering for their own experience is what hardens and closes off their hearts to others, but it starts with themselves.

The nature of self contempt…

• To have contempt for the self is a spiritually destructive process.

• What happens to the soul of a human when it regards itself as unimportant (or worse yet, the enemy), and hides its self- contempt by being cruel and mean spirited to others?

• • How do they become insensitive to their own suffering

and consider it trivial?

It starts in the family…

The destructive nature of pretence…

• If we stopped pretending about how wonderful the family was and started dealing with its profound dysfunction and violence (physical, emotional and psychological) then we would at least be started on the path of healing.

• The defended state of idealizing the family keeps us in denial and thus not able to act.

Idealization as defense…

• Idealization is the process of making something special so as to not deal with it directly.

• Idealization is a self protective mechanism that keeps us safe and allows us to remain in ignorance (i.e. ignore).

• Idealization is dishonest and does not directly serve the individual but rather an institution of society.

The family paradox…

• What sense does it make to protect the family if it is the family that is the source of much of our wounding?

• Why does the culture protect parents at the expense of the children?

• Why does it make some people mad to be critical of the family… as if it were above reproach?

• Does the institution of family need protecting more than its members?

What hope is there…

• We don’t have much hope in changing the violence that is perpetrated within families if we remain defended and in denial.

• The nature of our denial systems is powerful and deeply ingrained.

• We can’t engage in dishonesty without it victimizing us.

Trauma and abuse…

• Post traumatic stress syndrome is a well known condition resulting from event or process trauma that overwhelms the organism with reoccurring energies.

• The effects of trauma can hold on for years and years as the person engages in denial, fragmenting, minimizing, compartmentalizing and forgetting.

• The changes induced by trauma are debilitating and destructive.

Trauma symptoms…

• Energy swings• Depression• Addictive behaviors• Self-destructive thoughts and behaviors• Relationship withdrawal• Anxiety, paranoia and disinterest• Intimacy problems and disorders

Trauma resolution…

• 1. Realization, awakening, coming out of the trance, etc.

• 2. Linking, making connections, making sense of what happened, learning about the trauma.

• 3. Debriefing, grieving the wounds and energies, processing the emotions and feelings in a safe place.

Getting pushed off the path…

• Some people need to hear:

There is nothing wrong with you.

There is something wrong with what happened to you.

Grieving as the energies of healing…

• Have you ever felt crazy, like you were starting to loose it?

• Have you ever been fearful of never being able to change?

• Have you ever wondered what’s wrong with you?

• Many of the energies we are carrying around are the results of being wounded and traumatized as children.

• Grieving is the normal process of letting go and is filled with fear, anger and sadness.

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”

Carl Jung

Grieving is suffering…

• The process of grieving is the letting go of the pain, fear, anger and hurt of the past.

• Grieving is the healing process.

• Suffering the energies of what happened to you is the essence of courage and eventual healing and forgiveness.

• • Compassion is the suffering with others and finds its

genesis with compassion with yourself suffering the energies of your own life.

If you choose not to suffer…

• If you choose not to suffer then you will remain hard hearted and will simply pass on the pain to others most notably your own children and spouse.

• You will engage in addictive, controlling and hurtful behaviors.

• • You will be enveloped by the compulsive repetition of

past wounding, to self and others.

Psychological bankruptcy…

• Being violated and traumatized leads to spiritual disconnect and bankruptcy.

• The void and emptiness that comes from being spiritually disconnected creates an insatiable hunger for something to fill the hole inside.

• Naïve but well intended attempts at resolving the spiritual trauma lead to addiction and dysfunction.

“ Our love proceeds more from trying to fill the hole than by allowing the whole to fill us.”

Or as Sam Keen has put it…

The Hunger we call Love…

• Too many people have fused their concept of hunger to love.

• They feel if they are truly needy and desperate for someone or thing then it must be love.

• Hunger is not love. Never has been and never will be.

• Hunger is an addictive state based upon filling the void and emptiness of their lives.

• It starts by the confiscation of sanctuary.

In this defended/addicted state- immature people marry, have children and then

• Re-enact the energies of their own childhoods with their spouse and children, playing out the redundant patterns of communication rules and styles they picked up in their own homes.

• Feeling all the while that what happened to them was justified and good.

• And their job is to simply repeat it within their own family relationships.

Stop to consider…

• That 80-90% of sexual abuse occurs within the boundaries of home, family, relatives and neighbors.

• That virtually all physical abuse and neglect occur with in the family settings: nuclear, extended, foster and step.

• An act of domestic violence occurs approximately every 20 seconds in the U.S.

• The process trauma of growing up with shaming, threats, yelling, teasing, ignoring, etc.

Statistics won’t change your heart…

• Awakening your spirit to the demeaning and destructive nature of normal families in this culture will be a gradual process.

• The awakening can only occur if you are brave enough to face your own history of inner demons and defended stances.

• It is a spiritual journey and as such you will need the spiritual courage to follow the promptings of the inner kingdom.

The Ultimate Irony…

• “In the developing brain, (i.e. infancy and childhood)

neurotransmitters and hormones play key roles in neuronal migration, differentiation, synaptic proliferation and overall brain development.”

(J. Lauder, Progress in Brain Research 73, 1988.)

• The very time when humans are most vulnerable to the effects of trauma and stress (i.e. infancy and childhood) most adults assume the most resilience and minimize the process.

The most sensitive and sophisticated sensing miracle of the CNS

• The central nervous system of a human being is a wonder of neural, chemical, hormonal communication and feedback.

• What gall/ignorance we possess to think that children are basically unaffected (not to worry) by early trauma and stress experiences.

• • These events, when of sufficient duration, intensity and

frequency can change brain function and brain mediated responses!

Some definitions…

• Offend: create anger, annoyance• Despise: have contempt or disdain for

Alice miller begins her book, THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD with...

• We live in a culture that encourages us not to take our own suffering seriously, but rather to make light of it or even to laugh about it many are proud of their lack of sensitivity toward their own fate and particularly toward their fate as a child.

What is needed...

• “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.”

MARCEL PROUST

The nature of paradigms...

• “We are like flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. We cannot see what angles and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality: we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions we share through culture we call reality.”

William Irwin Thompson

Entrance into this paradigm will come via the heart.

The mind may find it of interest but only through the heart, may one actually enter.

An offender-oriented culture:

• We live in a culture that is based upon the worship of power and control, and those that have a lot of it fare quite well.

• For those that have no power or control (such as

children, women, minorities, etc.) It can be an offending, hurtful and wounding place.

Our own defended stance...

• Many of us find that talking about child abuse makes us uncomfortable and uneasy.

• It is painful to awaken to the nature and degree of physical, emotional and sexual abuse that is present in our culture today.

• Granted, staying asleep is much more comfortable.

Let’s keep protecting ourselves by not talking...

• But our own unwillingness to experience this discomfort is what our defendedness is all about.

• We would rather not be bothered by the offending of children because of feeling our own powerlessness and pain.

• But it is exactly this attitude and stance that keeps the endangering and the wounding of our children alive.

The conspiracy of silence

• The conspiracy of silence started to be broken in the 1960s and 70s when the physical discipline of children was labeled as abusive.

• Then came emotional abuse and finally sexual abuse.

• Even though some holes have been punched through the conspiracy it remains strong and resilient.

The true violence and wounding:

• It is not even the abuse of the children per se which is so destructive but the cultural and family system of interaction and norms which allows the abuse and its secrecy (and non- support and non-rescuing of the victim) to continue.

• Therein lies the true hurt and wounding!

Alice Miller has said...

• “Until we become sensitized to the small child’s suffering, this wielding of power by adults will continue to be a normal aspect of the human condition, for no one pays attention to or takes seriously what is regarded as trivial, since the victims are only children.”

A PARADIGM SHIFT:

• I would not want to diminish for a moment the extreme and violent nature of our culture’s stance toward children and the subsequent abusive behavior of them, but I do want to introduce a paradigm shift.

A paradigm shift…

• Because of our interwoven natures, there are really only two kinds of abuse: spiritual/emotional (having to do

with our spirits) and sexual/physical (having to do with our bodies)

• Our spirituality (our spirit) is housed in our sexuality ( our body). It is called our soul.

• A rip in one fabric requires a repair in the other. They are a compound and are not to be treated as if they were separate from the other.

Sexual/physical abuse:

• Sexual/physical abuse is any behavior which violates the sacred purpose of the body by turning the person against their own inner nature.

• Pain, embarrassment, fear, disgust, hurt, shame, hitting, touching, violating, controlling, using, are all abuses with varying degrees of impact.

• We have a moral obligation to help protect the children from abusive behavior often perpetrated by the adults in their lives.

Sanctuary Trauma…

• The issue of parental domineering, controlling and enmeshment is what spiritual abuse (sanctuary trauma) is all about.

• We are on sacred ground when we are interacting with children.

“As soon as the child is regarded as a possession for which one has a particular goal, as soon as one

exerts control over him or her, their vital growth will be violently interrupted.”

Alice miller, the drama of the gifted child

The courage to heal:

• It takes courage to live life honestly and to suffer the energies.

• It comes naturally to idealize our own childhoods and then spend our adulthoods in defended slumber as we wound and spiritually abuse the younger generation, all the time believing it is for their own good.

Grieving is healing...

• To experience the woundedness of growing up in a culture that has such a profound contempt for weakness (of which feelings and children are a part) takes not only courage but a willingness to grieve.

• The attempted suppression of feelings is a hallmark of a society that enthrones logical, rational thought as the ultimate.

Society and culture will not change...

• But you and I have an obligation to take a stand in the defense of children.

• But we may first have to awaken to the hurt and wounding in our own lives before we can do anything.

My invitation...

• You and I need to open our hearts to the suffering of children and with compassion, be willing to intervene when violence and wounding, in whatever forms, threaten to demean and rob them (or your self) of the inner heritage of Life.

• Especially in the context of the home and family where much of the abuse and hurt originate.

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein

• Said the little boy, “Sometimes I drop my spoon.”• Said the little old man, “I do that too.”• The little boy whispered, “I wet my pants.”• “I do that too,” laughed the old man.• Said the little boy, “I often cry.”• The old man nodded. “So do I.”• “But worst of all,” said the boy, “it seems grown-

ups don’t pay attention to me.”• And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand. “I

know what you mean,” said the little old man.

the end