Sylvie's place Saturday, July 13, 2013 Most People's Love is Nothing But a Farce, a Sham, and a FaadeWe cannot really love if we are forbidden to know our truth, the truthabout our parents and caregivers as well as about ourselves. We can onlytry to behave as if we were loving, but this hypocritical behavior isthe opposite of love. It is confusing and deceptive, and it producesmuch helpless rage in the deceived person. This rage must be repressedin the presence of the pretended love, especially if one is dependent,as a child is, on the person who is masquerading in this illusion oflove. Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child: The search for theTrue Self) Page 23 MY MAIN CONCERN in this present book is with the effects the denial ofour true and strong emotions have on our bodies. Such denial is demandedof us not least by morality and religion. On the basis of what I knowabout psychotherapy, both from personal experience and from accounts Ihave been given by very many people*, I have come to the conclusion thatindividuals abused in childhood can attempt to obey the ForthCommandment* only by recourse to a massive repression and detachment oftheir true emotions. They cannot love and honor their parents becauseunconsciously they still fear them.* However much they want to, theycannot build up a relaxed and trusting relationship.*Instead, what usually materializes is a pathological attachment, amixture of fear and dutiful obedience that hardly deserves the name oflove in the genuine sense of the word. I call this a sham, a faade.* Inaddition, people abused in childhood frequently hope all their livesthat someday they will experience the love they have been denied. Theseexpectations reinforce their attachment to their parents, *an attachmentthat religion creeds refer to as love and praise as a virtue.**Unfortunately, the same thing happens in most therapies, as most peopleare still dominated by traditional morality. There is a price to be paidfor this morality, a price paid by the body. *Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel andconstantly do their best not to feel what they forbid themselves to feelwill ultimately fall ill---*unless, that is, they leave it to theirchildren to pick up the check by projections onto them the emotions theycannot admit to themselves. *From the Preface the Body Nerve Lies, page 14, 15 *In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it isnot there in the first place.* *On the other hand, I learned that afeeling of love will establish itself automatically *(for example, lovefor my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that Ifeel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions imposed on me.*Butsuch a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open andreceptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones.**The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can deludeneither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation.*Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (likeme) literally almost kill themselves in the attempt to obey the ForthCommandment, without any consideration of the price this exacts bothfrom their own bodies and from their children. As long as the childrenallow themselves to be used in this way, it is entirely possible to liveto be one hundred without any awareness of one's personal truth andwithout any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception.*A mother who is forced to realize that the deprivations imposed on herin her youth make it impossible for her to love a child of her own,however hard she may try, can certainly expect to be accused ofimmorality if she has the courage to put that truth into words*, But Ibelieve that is precisely this explicit acceptance of her true feelings,independent of claims of morality*, that will enable her to give bothherself and her children the honest and sincere kind of support theymost, and at the same time will allow her to free herself from theshackles of self-deception. *When children are born, what they need most from their parents is love,by which I mean affection, attention, care, protection, kindness, andthe willingness to communicate. If these needs are gratified, the bodiesof those children will retain the good memory of such caring affectionall their lives, and later, as adults, they will be able to pass on thesame kind of love to their children. But if this is not the case, thechildren will be left with a lifelong yarning for the fulfilment oftheir initial (and vital) needs. In later life, this yarning will bedirected at other people. In comparison, the more implacably childrenhave been deprived of love and negated or maltreated in the name ofupbringing, *the more those children, on reaching adulthood, will lookto their parents (or other people substituting for them) to supply allthe things that those same parents failed to provide when they wereneeded most.* This is a normal response on the part of the body. Itknows precisely what it needs, it cannot forget the deprivations. Thedeprivation or hole is there, waiting to be filled.The older we get, the more difficult it is to find people who can giveus the love our parents denied us. *But the body's expectations do notslacken with age---quite the contrary! They are merely directed atothers, usually our own children and grandchildren. The only way out ofthis dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify thereality of our own childhood by counteracting the process of repressionand denial.* *In this way we can create in ourselves a person who cansatisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfilmentsince birth, if not earlier.* Then we can give ourselves the attention,the respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely neededprotection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us.*To make this happen, we need one special experience: the experience oflove for the child we once were. Without it, we have no way of knowingwhat love consist of. **once that energy is no longer required for the repression of one's owntruth. *The point is that the fatigue characteristic of such depressionreasserts itself every time we repress strong emotions, play down thememories stored in the body, and refuses them the attention they clamorfor.*But many people prefer to seek aid from medication, drugs, or alcohol,which can only block off the path to the understanding of the truth evenmore completely. Why? Because recognizing the truth is painful? This iscertainly the case, But that pain is temporary.* With the right kind oftherapeutic care it can be endured. I believe that the main problem hereis that there are not enough such professionals' companions to be had.Almost all the representatives of what I'll call the caringprofessions appear to be prevented by our morality system from sidingwith the children we once were and recognizing the consequences of theearly injuries we have sustained. They are entirely under the influenceof the Fourth Commandment, which tells us to honor our parents, thatthy days may be long upon the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.'It is patently obvious that this commandment is bound to thwart thehealing of early injuries. It is equally obvious why this fact has neverbeen publicly recognized and though about. *The scope and power of thecommandment is immeasurable, since it is nurtured by the infant'snatural attachment to its parents.* The greatest philosophers andwriters have shied away from attacking it. Even Friedrich Nietzsche, whowas notable for his virulent attacks on Christian morality, never wentso far to extend that criticism to his own family. In every adult whohas suffered abuse as a child lies dormant that small child's fear ofpunishment at the hands of the parents if he or she should dare to rebelagainst their behavior. But it will lie dormant only as long that fearremains unconscious. Once consciously experienced, it will dissolve inthe course of time.The morality behind the Fourth Commandment, coupled with theexpectations of the children we once were, creates a situation in whichthe large majority of therapists will offer patients precisely the sameprinciples they were confronted with during their upbringing. *Many ofthe therapists are still bound up with their own parents by countlessthreads. They call this inextricable entanglement love, and offer thiskind of love to others as a solution.* *They preach forgiveness as apath to recovery and appear not know that this path is a trap by whichthey themselves are caught*. Forgiveness has never had a healingeffect. It is highly significant, perplexing to say the least, that wehave been bound for thousands of years to a commandment that hardlyanyone has questioned, simply because it underscores the physicalreality that all children, whether abused or not, always love theirparents. *Only as adults do we have a choice. But we often behave as ifwe were still children who never had the right to question thecommandments laid down to them by their parents. As conscious adults wehave the right to pose questions, even though we know how much thosequestions would have shocked our parents when we were children*From the introduction The Body Never Lies, page 20,21, 22, 23, 24,25

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