You
Carry The Cure In Your Own Heart
This article by Andrew Vachss is a must read for Adult Children of Narcissists. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the most important articles for those of us that endured severe emotional abuse at the hands of our parents, siblings and extended family.
As an adult child of a cruel narcissist family, I sometimes feel universally abandoned (even with a blog about narcissistic abuse). And it's this article - You Carry the Cure in Your Own Heart - that I go back to time and again for validation. The article is a reminder that there are people out there that truly get it. That don't need explaining. That don't need convincing. They don't require a check list and a rating system to quantify and qualify the severity of our abuse. They just know. Emotional abuse is the cruelest and longest-lasting abuse of all. They understand that any abuse that diminishes an individual's sense of self is devastating and comes at a great cost.
They also know that any form of "healing" or "cure" for emotional abuse is not available to purchase. The cure is carried within the survivor's own heart and soul. And only we know how to tap into our healing source. And we are free to do it in our own way and in our own time. Our hearts, our souls, our recovery, our terms. We hold the power to help ourselves.
You Carry The Cure In Your Own Heart
I'm a lawyer with an unusual specialty. My clients are all
children—damaged, hurting children who have been sexually assaulted, physically
abused, starved, ignored, abandoned and every other lousy thing one human can
do to another. People who know what I do always ask: "What is the worst
case you ever handled?" When you're in a business where a baby who dies
early may be the luckiest child in the family, there's no easy answer. But I
have thought about it—I think about it every day. My answer is that, of all the
many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and
longest–lasting of all.
Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may
be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct,
not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self–concept to the
point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy
of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and
protection.
Emotional abuse can be as deliberate as a gunshot: "You're
fat. You're stupid. You're ugly."
Emotional abuse can be as random as the fallout from a nuclear
explosion. In matrimonial battles, for example, the children all too often
become the battlefield. I remember a young boy, barely into his teens, absently
rubbing the fresh scars on his wrists. "It was the only way to make them
all happy," he said. His mother and father were locked in a bitter divorce
battle, and each was demanding total loyalty and commitment from the child.
Emotional abuse can be active. Vicious belittling: "You'll
never be the success your brother was." Deliberate humiliation:
"You're so stupid. I'm ashamed you're my son."
It also can be passive, the emotional equivalent of child
neglect—a sin of omission, true, but one no less destructive.
And it may be a combination of the two, which increases the
negative effects geometrically.
Emotional abuse can be verbal or behavioral, active or passive,
frequent or occasional. Regardless, it is often as painful as physical assault.
And, with rare exceptions, the pain lasts much longer. A parent's love is so
important to a child that withholding it can cause a "failure to
thrive" condition similar to that of children who have been denied adequate
nutrition.
Even the natural solace of siblings is denied to those victims of
emotional abuse who have been designated as the family's "target
child." The other children are quick to imitate their parents. Instead of
learning the qualities every child will need as an adult—empathy, nurturing and
protectiveness—they learn the viciousness of a pecking order. And so the cycle
continues.
But whether as a deliberate target or an innocent bystander, the
emotionally abused child inevitably struggles to "explain" the
conduct of his abusers—and ends up struggling for survival in a quicksand of
self–blame.
Emotional abuse is both the most pervasive and the least
understood form of child maltreatment. Its victims are often dismissed simply
because their wounds are not visible. In an era in which fresh disclosures of
unspeakable child abuse are everyday fare, the pain and torment of those who
experience "only" emotional abuse is often trivialized. We understand
and accept that victims of physical or sexual abuse need both time and
specialized treatment to heal. But when it comes to emotional abuse, we are
more likely to believe the victims will "just get over it" when they
become adults.
That assumption is dangerously wrong. Emotional abuse scars the
heart and damages the soul. Like cancer, it does its most deadly work
internally. And, like cancer, it can metastasize if untreated.
When it comes to damage, there is no real difference between
physical, sexual and emotional abuse. All that distinguishes one from the other
is the abuser's choice of weapons. I remember a woman, a grandmother whose
abusers had long since died, telling me that time had not conquered her pain.
"It wasn't just the incest," she said quietly. "It was that he
didn't love me. If he loved me, he couldn't have done that to me."
But emotional abuse is unique because it is designed to make the
victim feel guilty. Emotional abuse is repetitive and eventually cumulative
behavior—very easy to imitate—and some victims later perpetuate the cycle with
their own children. Although most victims courageously reject that response,
their lives often are marked by a deep, pervasive sadness, a severely damaged
self-concept and an inability to truly engage and bond with others.
We must renounce the lie that emotional abuse is good for children
because it prepares them for a hard life in a tough world. I've met some
individuals who were prepared for a hard life that way—I met them while they
were doing life.
Emotionally abused children grow up with significantly altered
perceptions so that they "see" behaviors—their own and
others'—through a filter of distortion. Many emotionally abused children engage
in a lifelong drive for the approval (which they translate as "love")
of others. So eager are they for love—and so convinced that they don't deserve
it—that they are prime candidates for abuse within intimate relationships.
The emotionally abused child can be heard inside every battered
woman who insists: "It was my fault, really. I just seem to provoke him
somehow."
And the almost–inevitable failure of adult relationships
reinforces that sense of unworthiness, compounding the felony, reverberating
throughout the victim's life.
Emotional abuse conditions the child to expect abuse in later
life. Emotional abuse is a time bomb, but its effects are rarely visible,
because the emotionally abused tend to implode, turning the anger against
themselves. And when someone is outwardly successful in most areas of life, who
looks within to see the hidden wounds?
Members of a therapy group may range widely in age, social class,
ethnicity and occupation, but all display some form of self–destructive
conduct: obesity, drug addiction, anorexia, bulimia, domestic violence, child
abuse, attempted suicide, self–mutilation, depression and fits of rage. What
brought them into treatment was their symptoms. But until they address the one
thing that they have in common—a childhood of emotional abuse—true recovery is
impossible.
One of the goals of any child–protective effort is to "break
the cycle" of abuse. We should not delude ourselves that we are winning
this battle simply because so few victims of emotional abuse become abusers
themselves. Some emotionally abused children are programmed to fail so effectively
that a part of their own personality "self-parents" by belittling and
humiliating themselves.
The pain does not stop with adulthood. Indeed, for some, it
worsens. I remember a young woman, an accomplished professional, charming and
friendly, well–liked by all who knew her. She told me she would never have
children. "I'd always be afraid I would act like them," she said.
Unlike other forms of child abuse, emotional abuse is rarely
denied by those who practice it. In fact, many actively defend their psychological
brutality, asserting that a childhood of emotional abuse helped their children
to "toughen up." It is not enough for us to renounce the perverted
notion that beating children produces good citizens—we must also renounce the
lie that emotional abuse is good for children because it prepares them for a
hard life in a tough world. I've met some individuals who were prepared for a
hard life that way—I met them while they were doing life.
The primary weapons of emotional abusers is the deliberate infliction
of guilt. They use guilt the same way a loan shark uses money: They don't want
the "debt" paid off, because they live quite happily on the
"interest."
When your self'concept has been shredded, when you have been
deeply injured and made to feel the injury was all your fault, when you look
for approval to those who can not or will not provide it—you play the role
assigned to you by your abusers. It's time to stop playing that role.
Because emotional abuse comes in so many forms (and so many
disguises), recognition is the key to effective response. For example, when
allegations of child sexual abuse surface, it is a particularly hideous form of
emotional abuse to pressure the victim to recant, saying he or she is
"hurting the family" by telling the truth. And precisely the same
holds true when a child is pressured to sustain a lie by a "loving"
parent.
Emotional abuse requires no physical conduct whatsoever. In one
extraordinary case, a jury in Florida recognized the lethal potential of
emotional abuse by finding a mother guilty of child abuse in connection with
the suicide of her 17–year–old daughter, whom she had forced to work as a nude
dancer (and had lived off her earnings).
Another rarely understood form of emotional abuse makes victims
responsible for their own abuse by demanding that they "understand"
the perpetrator. Telling a 12–year–old girl that she was an —enabler— of her
own incest is emotional abuse at its most repulsive.
A particularly pernicious myth is that "healing requires
forgiveness" of the abuser. For the victim of emotional abuse, the most
viable form of help is self–help—and a victim handicapped by the need to
"forgive" the abuser is a handicapped helper indeed. The most
damaging mistake an emotional–abuse victim can make is to invest in the
"rehabilitation" of the abuser. Too often this becomes still another
wish that didn't come true—and emotionally abused children will conclude that
they deserve no better result.
The costs of emotional abuse cannot be measured by visible scars,
but each victim loses some percentage of capacity. And that capacity remains
lost so long as the victim is stuck in the cycle of "understanding"
and "forgiveness." The abuser has no "right" to
forgiveness—such blessings can only be earned. And although the damage was done
with words, true forgiveness can only be earned with deeds.
For those with an idealized notion of "family," the task
of refusing to accept the blame for their own victimization is even more
difficult. For such searchers, the key to freedom is always truth—the real
truth, not the distorted, self–serving version served by the abuser.
Emotional abuse threatens to become a national illness. The
popularity of nasty, mean–spirited, personal–attack cruelty that passes for
"entertainment" is but one example. If society is in the midst of
moral and spiritual erosion, a "family" bedrocked on the emotional
abuse of its children will not hold the line. And the tide shows no immediate
signs of turning.
Effective treatment of emotional abusers depends on the motivation
for the original conduct, insight into the roots of such conduct and the
genuine desire to alter that conduct. For some abusers, seeing what they are
doing to their child—or, better yet, feeling what they forced their child to
feel—is enough to make them halt. Other abusers need help with strategies to
deal with their own stress so that it doesn't overload onto their children.
But for some emotional abusers, rehabilitation is not possible.
For such people, manipulation is a way of life. They coldly and deliberately
set up a "family" system in which the child can never manage to
"earn" the parent's love. In such situations, any emphasis on
"healing the whole family" is doomed to failure.
If you are a victim of emotional abuse, there can be no self–help
until you learn to self–reference. That means developing your own standards,
deciding for yourself what "goodness" really is. Adopting the
abuser's calculated labels—"You're crazy. You're ungrateful. It didn't
happen the way you say"—only continues the cycle.
Adult survivors of emotional child abuse have only two life–choices:
learn to self–reference or remain a victim. When your self–concept has been
shredded, when you have been deeply injured and made to feel the injury was all
your fault, when you look for approval to those who can not or will not provide
it—you play the role assigned to you by your abusers.
It's time to stop playing that role, time to write your own
script. Victims of emotional abuse carry the cure in their own hearts and
souls. Salvation means learning self–respect, earning the respect of others and
making that respect the absolutely irreducible minimum requirement for all
intimate relationships. For the emotionally abused child, healing does come
down to "forgiveness"—forgiveness of yourself.
How you forgive yourself is as individual as you are. But knowing
you deserve to be loved and respected and empowering yourself with a commitment
to try is more than half the battle. Much more.
And it is never too soon—or too late—to start.
