More Time & Changes

Though it would take me years to remember, I had been cajoled and manipulated from the earliest moments of my life, to meet my parents’ needs; to fulfill in them, for them, unmet and unsatisfied portions of their own longs and carvings – though these were not actually truly “legitimate” in terms of my needs. I was used, and used cruelly and without restraint. My father to expiate his burning hatred, pseudo-authenticated by his fervent vilification of me because of my body weight and mental prowess; my mother to utilize my most tender emotions and precocious sexual energy as well as my deeply-rooted hunger to be loved and needed. Ultimately, my body and especially my perception of it, were severely warped by these competing needs of my parents, and, of course, irrevocably and logically, showed up in my behaviors and presentation to life in general. There is a level on which I do most severely condemn both of them, and hold them co-responsible with myself for this – even though I espouse total responsibility for my manifestation and the choices I made pre-birth to take all of this on.

Body weight and body size, even more one’s perception of same, have a tremendous influence on one’s confidence and sense of healthy self-love. Negative imprinting embeds deep and vicious wounds in the heart and psyche of an individual, especially when delivered by those who would nominally be considered to be one’s caretakers. (This resonates strongly with all of the research on disorganized attachment (Blizard, 2003; Howell, 2003; Hyams, 1994; Main & Hesse, 2003). Miller (1984a) commented that a child might introject an extremely negative self-concept as proper or valid because: “Children have no previous history standing in our way, and our tolerance for our parents knows no bounds. The love a child has for his or her parents ensures that their conscious or unconscious acts of mental cruelty will go unnoticed" (p. 4). The frequency of the reinforcement signals, of course, has a direct impact on the level of severity of the conditioning of the individual (cite?).

In many ways, all of the pretensions of this so called “modern civilization” are directly related to individuals maturing physically and remaining damaged and regressed emotionally as a direct result of the pernicious effect of shame-based childrearing. It is this insidious process, accepted broadly as “normal,” that, I believe, has ultimately caused more damage than all of the wars of history, recorded and unrecorded. Of course, the bellicose orientation of humanity and the predilection for war both stem from the unmet and unexpressed emotional hungers of humanity. The desire to shun shame combined with the pervasive need for reinforcement of one’s “rightness” leads many (all?) parents to rear their children in a manner similar to their own imprinted standards – in effect forcing children to become the caretakers of their parents’ unmet needs, resulting in generation after generation of children becoming too early “adultified” by attempting to please their parents’ illicit demands for comfort and nurturance. It keeps getting passed on because very few ever examine the roots of their own socialization, the obvious conclusion of which would be the understanding that the world is insane and that one’s seemingly aberrant reactions and behaviors are perfectly same in reaction to the ways of the world that are routinely accepted as “normal.”

The early invalidation of the individual shapes that one is such a way that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ever effect a fundamental change. It locks in behavioral response patterns that are neurologically and emotionally congruent with the earliest experiences of shame, harm, and damage. As such, they can easily be perceived as “proper” and accepted as such. Thus early invalidation may be introjected by an individual in such a way that that one will act in a less than confident or assured manner, perhaps always seeking the opinions of others; or in other ways deferring to external authority because one feels intimidated or contaminated; or one may act even more extremely by becoming (at least occasionally in moments of great stress) in a regressed manner (cf. ARAS, Malecek, 2008) that reflects the age and developmental level of the earliest damage “frozen,” as it were by the pernicious impact of that “training” inflicted upon the child under the aegis of socialization; and, in fact, causing great harm that simply allows the runaway insanity of the current world system to be repopulated by the next crop of damaged individuals.

The utter shunning and degradation of early childhood experiences also adds fuel to the voracious hunger with which most people approach the acquisition of money and material goods in an attempt to feel strong and powerful; to ameliorate some of the incredible diminishment suffered when one had no other recourse than to endure, often harboring tremendous rage against authorities of all sorts, a rage that will later manifest as a revenge taking of sorts in attempting to become bigger and stronger, more wealthy, et cetera than others. It may also manifest in a self-destructive mechanism of weight gain (“Look at me, Daddy! I’m a big boy!”), in an attempt to be “seen” as valid and real when one feels otherwise shamed, unworthy of being loved, and relatively invisible. I further believe that all addictions are related to this earliest invalidation; and that all “relapses” with drugs, alcohol, and other addictions of all sorts is directly related to a quasi-flashback situation in which one’s earliest invalidation is restimulated (albeit in a less than conscious manner).