ACON Blogs And The Streisand Effect

Have you heard of the “Streisand Effect”?  Essentially, it’s about a shit ton of attention being drawn to information that’s in the process of being repressed. 

It’s interesting how narcissist “family” members and flying monkeys somehow find anonymous ACON blogs. By identifying with what is written and reacting so strongly to the content, they only admit their guilt. But they don’t see it that way. They don’t think their violent and abusive behavior is disgusting and despicable. They believe writing about it is. That, right there, is brain on narc.

In the Malignant narcissist's warped and twisted mind they feel entitled to abuse the living shit out of us. They see it as their right. We – the victims – have no right to object to the abuse. Being denied a defense is all part and parcel of the narcissistic abuse bundle. Doesn’t that sound like a human rights violation? When you look at it this way, you can see that narcissistic abuse is the most insidious violation of human rights. Everything under the umbrella of narcissistic abuse is virtually allowed under our justice system. I’m referring to such crimes as character assassination, psychological violence, diminishing anothers' self-worth, blaming, shaming, ostracizing, shunning, mobbing, scapegoating and worst of all, the malignant narcissist’s ability to usurp the will of another and replace it with their own. Vandalizing a person’s car is a serious crime, but vandalizing a person's mind is nothing? A human being’s most precious possession – their mind – is considered by our society to hold less value than an inanimate object. Trashing property is something, but trashing a person's reputation is nothing? A damaged life is irrelevant, but a dented vehicle is important?!

A human being's most scared personal qualities, the very assets that make-up our nature and that no one but ourselves has a right to stake a claim to - OUR MINDS, OUR CHARACTER, OUR HUMANITY - are precisely what the malignant narcissist feels entitled to get their grubby paws on and destroy. Why? Because they see human beings as nothing but objects. These freak truly believe they own us. That means they believe they own our indentity. The malignant narcissist feels entitled to steal, trash, vandalize, destroy, neutralize, and if all else fails, erase the very qualities that make us who we are as an individual, and replace them with a piece of fiction created to support their own self-serving narrative. By dirtying you up by fraud, the seedy narcissist gets to look clean by comparison - which is also fraud. And, in extreme case, the malignant narcissist doesn't just replace a person's true identity with a fake one, they actually replace a person with themselves. It's no exagerration that the malignant narcissist wants to control and dominate others - her ultimate goal is to literally possess them. Malignant narcissists deliberately set-out to usurp a person's free-will and replace it with their own will.  That, is the biggest power rush a malignant narcissist will ever receive: to drain you hollow and fill you with themselves. That, is the very definition of evil.

Malignant narcissists have zero respect for human life.  

Things need to change!

Everything that falls under the umbrella of narcissistic abuse needs to fall under the jurisdiction of crimes against humanity and these crimes need to be punishable by law. We all know that the worst offenders of these crimes – malignant narcissists – have established a “pattern” of destroying people. Patterns don’t lie. Patterns prove malice of intent. Patterns permit legal action. Patterns are quite prosecutable if you write sensible laws and enforce them.

Speaking of patterns, every malignant narcissist I’ve had the misfortune of knowing has demonstrated a pattern of obsessive stalking behavior. Stalking is currently a punishable offense. Perhaps these narcissists should consider that when they are hurling threats and accusations about what they find while they stalk, spy and monitor us on the internet.

I’m sure I speak for most ACONs when I say I wish I had nothing to write about. I truly wish the narcissists would magically transform into loving, caring human beings that genuinely regret what they have done and are willing to pay-off the debt they owe me with good deeds. Unfortunately, I know that will never happen. Not only will the narcissists never admit their wrong doing, there simply isn’t enough time left for them to right their wrongs.  I used to read comments on my blog and think to myself; thank god my family isn’t THAT crazy. Little did I know THAT crazy was coming down the pike. The narcissists continue to ramp-up their abuse of me and continue to give me tons of material to write about. I have volumes of content stored in my mental hard drive. If the narcissists want me to stop writing about their crimes, they should stop committing them.

Narcissistic abuse is a crime in progress. For adult children of narcissists the abuse occurs every day in real-time. It lives in our bodies, it lives in our minds, and it lives in our souls. The narcissists don’t need to launch an attack to hurt us. Don’t they know they have already done permanent damage? They should see that as winning. But don’t mistake this declaration as defeat on my part. I’m simply stating facts.

You narcissists should think about that while you’re strutting around on stage putting on a melodramatic performance of suffering victim.

You narcissists should also consider the Streisand Effect when you are trying to silence the true victim. It’s likely to produce the opposite result and draw attention to the thing you hate more than your target – Exposure. 

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According to Wikipedia: The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware something is being kept from them, their motivation to access the information is increased.

It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters to suppress numbers, files, and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

Mike Masnick of techdirt coined the term in 2005 in relation to a holiday resort issuing a takedown notice to urinal.net (a site dedicated to photographs of urinals) over use of the resort's name.

How long is it going to take before lawyers realize that the simple act of trying to repress something they don't like online is likely to make it so that something that most people would never, ever see (like a photo of a urinal in some random beach resort) is now seen by many more people? Let's call it the Streisand Effect.   — Mike Masnick,

The term invoked Barbra Streisand who had unsuccessfully sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for violation of privacy. The US $50 million lawsuit endeavored to remove an aerial photograph of Streisand's mansion from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs. Adelman photographed the beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project, which was intended to influence government policymakers. Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, "Image 3850" had been downloaded from Adelman's website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand's attorneys. As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month.

Malignant Narcissist Sister Strangling Me Through Triangulation

The first time malignant narcissist sister tried to strangle me to death I was about 8 years old and she used a skipping rope. Her plan was foiled by an oncoming car that came to a screeching halt. Just as the man got out of his car, she dropped the rope, stuck her nose up in the air, and with an indignant “humph” quickly marched into our cousin’s house. She fled the scene of the crime without an ounce of regret or guilt. I was left gasping for air and struggling to untangle the rope she had tied around my throat. The driver angrily lectured me for playing in the street.

The fact that malignant narcissist sister didn’t express any remorse for trying to murder me wasn’t the worst part. Even her crazy glazed-over eyes that were getting a noticeable drug rush from choking me to death wasn't the worst part. Even the fact that she was visibly enraged that her plan to kill me was foiled wasn’t the worst part. The worst part and the most glaring sign that she was extremely dangerous was what happened next.

I nearly died, and not only was I distressed, I was truly frightened. I needed to tell someone what she had done to me - an adult, a parent, any authority figure. I needed someone to believe me and protect me. Malignant narcissist sister needed to be taught a lesson or she would try to kill me again. I knew telling malignant narcissist mother what happened would be useless. She didn’t care if I was dead or alive. She screamed at me every day “You have no right to live!” and “I’m going to annihilate you!” So she certainly wasn’t going to punish malignant narcissist sister for trying to end me. Malignant narcissist mother would have blamed me for my sister’s violence and punished me for complaining. The only adult that might listen to me and believe me and maybe even punish my psychotic sibling would be my dad. He was the only parent that expressed a modicum of affection toward me and malignant sister knew it.  

What I witnessed when I walked into my cousin’s house, where a family get together was in progress, stopped me dead in my tracks. At the age of eight, I watched a sociopath in the making continue on her quest to strangle me, this time through triangulation.

Malignant narcissist sister almost never paid my dad any attention. In fact, she never had much respect for him. She was always her mother’s minion, so she held him in the same contempt malignant narcissist mother did. He was MN mother’s scapegoat - the bad guy, the one she could blame for everything. But this day was different. He was useful to her.

I stood in the entrance of the living room and witnessed an over-the-top display of malignant narcissist sister’s manufactured love and adoration for her daddy. She was hugging him, joking around with him, fawning over him, holding both his hands and swinging them back and forth. In short, this 10 year old master manipulator was flirting with him and seducing the hell out of him with a whirlwind of narcissistic supply. He was beaming. Never before had the daughter who demonstrated nothing but cold indifference toward him shown him so much attention.

At 8 years old I knew the end result even before it was confirmed: She got to him first. Beat me to the punch. Blocked the kick. Framed me and set me up to take the fall for her crime.

As soon as malignant narcissist sister had finished her performance, I walked up to my dad and before I could explain how she tried to (strangle me) he cut me off and said, “Yeah, your sister told me you got in trouble for playing in the road and the guy driving the car really gave it to you.” Then as a sadistic smirk curled across his lips he said, “You need to be more careful.” And just like that he brushed past me and walked away smiling. 

Absolutely nothing has changed. Malignant narcissist sister is still playing the innocent victim while behind closed doors she is trying to drive me to an early grave or a hospital bed. She is totally capable of physical murder and there's nothing stopping her from using my dad's money to hire a "professional" to take a hit out on me. Maybe she already did. It wouldn't surprise me if her and her seedy thug accomplice dabble in the dark web. What's frightening is malignant narcissist sister sees her attempts to kill me using covert psychological violence as her right. Hell, I'm the only person who knows her game well enough to expose her as the dangerous psychotic she really is. Her psychological violence landed me in a hospital 8 years ago, and she seems to be obsessed with finishing me off by strangulation by triangulation. 

Triangulation can occur in any relationship but it is very common in a relationship with a Malignant Narcissist. It may happen at home, at work, with friends, or within a family of origin. An abuser/narcissist will pit you against any other person she can get to engage in her "victim-playing," who is willing to serve the role she assigns.

She may also temporarily adopt the role of Persecutor to assign blame or Rescuer to maintain control of her image. In the end, this travel around the triangle is how she dumps shame and finds someone to blame for her misery. If there is always a role to play there is always a way to escape responsibility by shifting the position on the triangle. 

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Control by Triangulation:

If all else fails, the abuser recruits friends, colleagues, family members, the authorities, institutions, neighbors, any third party – to do her bidding. She uses them to cajole, coerce, threaten, stalk, intimidate, offer retreat, tempt, convince, harass, communicate and otherwise manipulate her target. She controls these unaware instruments exactly as she plans to control her ultimate victim. She employs the same mechanisms and devices, and she always dumps her props unceremoniously when the job is done.

Another form of control by triangulation is to engineer situations in which abuse is inflicted upon her target. Such carefully crafted scenarios of embarrassment and humiliation provoke social sanctions (condemnation, opprobrium, social exclusion and shame) against the victim. In this instance, society becomes the instrument of the abuser. By clever seduction, through words and posturing, she entices her pawns to do her dirty work for her. Unaware... and being persuaded by the narcissist's rendition of truth, they take up her cause and her right and align themselves against the one she controls.

The malignant narcissist creates perpetual triangles around the one she desires to systematically destroy. She sees through these eyes with no empathy - that perpetuate constant, residual torment, for her victim. Claiming that she is being tormented by her victim, she creates rescuers who then torment her victim, thinking they are protecting her from the "bully." Doing this through her family members, associates and whoever she can entice, she remotely views her operation like a director of a movie. In other words, she will frame a picture and put her secondary narcissistic supply in that frame - the borders always being the shape of a triangle and the picture within being a distorted truth she propagates.

Usually, the claims she makes of her victim are the truth about herself and while hiding behind her victim, she will spin, doctor, and gaslight until she gets her desired result. Defamation of character and destroying the credibility of her victim is her goal. She convinces her pawns that the true victim is the persecutor and she is the victim. The naked eye cannot see this game of illusions and that is why she is able to engage others in her web. They do for her what she orchestrates in secret.

Both the Persecutor and Rescuer are on the upper end of the triangle. These roles assume a “one-up” position over others, meaning they relate as though they are better, stronger, smarter, or more-together than the victim. Sooner or later the victim, who is in the one-down position at the bottom of the triangle, develops a metaphorical "crick in the neck" from always looking up. Feeling “looked down upon” or “worth-less than” the others, the Victim usually rebels.

Starting Gate Persecutors (SGP's), on the other hand, delude themselves into believing they are victims in need of protection. This is how they can so easily justify their vengeful behavior: “They asked for it and they got what they deserved for questioning me," is the way they see it. Their core belief might go something like this: “She/he is on to me so I need to get her before she exposes me.”

This attitude sets-up the malignant narcissist to think that she must strike out in order to defend against inevitable attack, even when there is no attack.  Self-defense against the malignant narcissist’s psychological violence is, in her self-absorbed eyes, a threat.  She sees the victim as a threat to herself, and believes that the victim will possibly expose her hidden true self to her rescuers. The victim may or may not have threatened the SGP, but the chance of being 'found out,' by those looking from the outside...the picture projected is the SGP's denial ploy. She is afraid that the real picture will be seen by all. She cannot face exposure or the reality of what she is doing and must project what she perpetrates. Ultimately there is no regard for anyone here, for all player's involved are her pawns.

Therefore, the victim stands no chance of recovering in this triangulation. Convincing her rescuer(s) that her victim is persecuting her, the narcissist is able to trap the rescuer(s) in her web. And the rescuers all become persecutors for her...while believing they are rescuing her.  

The rescuer(s), unaware of the narcissist scheme, become persecutors of the [true] victim. Believing the perpetrator's deception, they do her bidding and become an extension of her. Without regard for the true victim, they have become her right hand, and very likely, the hand(s) that strangulate her victim. The smugness of the narcissist becomes more intoxicating to herself, in her superiority to manipulate all. How brilliant she feels in the evil she has masterminded. Feeling disdain, for even her rescuers, she is loyal to none. She feeds on her own view of being above all those she puppeteers.

Inevitably, the victim will do one or more of the following:

1. Strike back, in defense and self-preservation.

2. Further submit to the abuse, thinking it must be their fault.

3. Try to negotiate and convince the rescuer(s) that the narcissist is the persecutor.

4. Flee the triangle(s) and leave the relationship.

Another Term for Triangulation is Proxy Recruitment:

Proxy Recruitment is a way of controlling or abusing another person or establishment by manipulating other people into unwittingly 'backing up,' the abuser or "doing their dirty work" for them.

Description: The goal in proxy recruitment is to gain the upper hand in a relationship or in a conflict by getting other people involved. This often takes the form of the perpetrator engaging others to" help" through innuendos, false accusations, smear campaigns or distortion campaigns in which the victim is portrayed as an abuser.

Proxy recruitment can be an extremely powerful way of establishing control over another person. It forces the victim into a defensive posture - justifying or denying their own behaviors to friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances and authority figures. It often attempts to reverse roles in the eyes of others - casting the abuser as the victim and portraying the victim as the abuser. It deflects attention away from the real abuser and provides cover or justification for further abuse to occur.

Proxy Recruitment is much easier if the abuser assumes a position of authority. The infamous narcissist will project herself as an authority figure, speaking as though the victim is incompetent or inferior in judgement. 

Proxy recruitment isn't just the domain of people with personality disorders. It is a universal reaction to recruit allies when engaged in a conflict situation. However, it becomes abusive when the truth is misrepresented or the recipient is being hurt.

Those recruited will partake of the abuser's plan, thinking they are doing the right thing. The narcissist abuser undermines the recruited to demise the one she objectifies. Objectification is when the narcissist reduces the one she controls to an object, having no feeling or empathy for the one she degrades. She influences those around her to objectify the victim as well. Presenting herself as though she is the one whose perception is the only credible one, she masterminds the demise of her victim by using whoever she constitutes will execute her purpose.

Proxy recruitment or triangulation is a form of gas-lighting, otherwise known as covert abuse. It is so covert that unless your eye is trained to recognize this mode of operation it can go unnoticed. This is extreme malignant narcissism - the kind of narcissism that has the ambiance of a murderer per say. I call it "the narcissist web of triangulation by strangulation." She strangles the victim through the hands of her rescuer(s).

The narcissist's denial is what makes her the monster...The victim may be screaming out in pain, yet somehow these persecutors twist a whole series of events to flatter themselves in the eyes of their rescuers. The victim being left no defense and no one who understands what literally is transpiring is murdered, hypothetically speaking. There is a slow killing of the mind and soul in progress. Picking up the pieces of their lives is difficult after this conditioning and most times, in these cases, the persecutor will have taken away all their credibility.

If they cannot paint them as a liar because the victim's character does not lie, then the narcissist will paint their victims as unstable, lacking in judgement, mentally delusional or "damaged goods." The unseen goal, even many times to the narcissist is death to the victim's individualization.

Hence, no matter what the victim does to be heard or believed, the very people who could have intervened don't simply because they have become persecutor(s) themselves. The reality here is that the outsiders join in the narcissist's parade of neutralization/traumatization of her chosen sufferer.

The Sociopath Takes What Doesn't Belong to Her

I write you this letter to explain something to you. You have a serious personality disorder whose very symptoms, paradoxically, may leave you unaware that you have it.

Or, you may be “aware” of your disorder in an “intellectual” sense but consequent to your disorder, you lack appropriate alarm and shame over its expression.

People who do not have your disorder, if they were told they had it (and of its nature), would feel extremely unnerved and shamed to hear this feedback.

You, on the other hand, neither feel nor react with expected levels of uneasiness to learn of your disorder. Your reactions, expressing either calm indifference, an attitude of smug superiority or, alternatively, extreme irritation and indignation, add credence to the diagnosis.

You were probably not “born” with this disorder, but it’s also probable that you brought a biological tendency to it whose eventual emergence your upbringing probably encouraged or elicited.

Your disorder is called a number of different names that can be confusing, among them sociopath, psychopath, antisocial personality disorder, malignant narcissist, and more informal names. Although there may be some useful distinctions between these terms, the confusion they produce probably exceeds the usefulness of these distinctions.

More important are the common elements between them which describe a similar phenomenon – a human being like yourself who, while intellectually aware of common standards and laws of “right and wrong,” nonetheless grossly, chronically violates the boundaries and integrity of others with deficient remorse, deficient empathy, a deficient sense of accountability and, typically, with an attitude of contempt, or indifference towards the experiences and suffering of those you’ve violated.

You might recognize yourself in this description, but you may not. If you do, as I’ve suggested, your recognition of yourself as having this disorder will not produce an appropriate response.

But if you don’t recognize yourself from this description it’s likely to be a function of more than just your denial. Rather, your failure to see yourself, truly, as a sociopath probably reflects to an extent, an aforementioned feature of your disorder: I refer again to your deficient empathy as a consequence of which you are actually incapable of feeling more than superficial, transient concerns about, and remorse for your hurtful impact on others.

It is possible that hurting others is a primary goal but it’s also likely hurting others is a byproduct of your primary aim (and lifelong pattern) of taking something from others that doesn’t belong to you.

In other words, you may or may not intentionally seek to hurt others, but in either case your condition leaves you depleted of normal, inhibiting levels of compassion, sympathy and empathy towards others.

Your disorder has other essential features. The reason you can take from people, steal from them – their property, possessions, money, their dignity, sometimes their lives – and suffer so negligibly, if at all from your abuse of them, is that you do not respect them.

Your condition fundamentally leaves you with a characterological disrespect of others.

You view the world as a competition ground for gratification. People around you are thus players in this metaphorical drama; players from whom your principle inclination is to take, cajole, exploit and manipulate whatever it is that will leave you, not them, in a more comfortable, satiated condition.

You feel that your gratification – your present security, status, satisfaction and entertainment – takes precedence over everyone else’s. Your gratification is simply more important than anything else.

In your mind, you are entitled to the gratification you seek – in whatever forms you presently seek it – even when it costs others a great deal of pain towards which, as we’ve established, you bring a disordered lack of empathy and concern. This is a very twisted notion – specifically, the conviction that your gratification and its pursuit are virtually your inalienable right – a notion that supports the rationalizing of the chronic expression of your abusive, exploitative attitudes and behaviors towards others.

Finally, this makes you, your organized Crime Ring, and any accomplice who carries-out your “assaults” a remorseless violator of innocent people.

In an effort to put a stop to your destructive acts and mitigate injury to others, I am willing to get you help for your severe mental problems.

I have booked you an appointment at the department of criminal psychology at UBC for a formal “diagnosis”, but as you may or may not know, your disorder is notoriously unamenable to known “treatments." 

A more viable option to protect others from your criminal behavior and escalating psychological violence is for you, and your partners in crime, to live out the rest of your miserable days in a cage.  

I will continue to pursue every opportunity available to make sure this happens. 

Source: Steve Becker

Lurkers

In many communities lurkers are still seen as free-riders. They are perceived as a drain on the public goods since they “take without giving back.”

Lurker Costs

Lurkers can negatively influence other community members. If community members can see that someone is lurking rather than participating, they may feel that they are being spied upon. Lurkers might also take pieces of content featured in communities without seeking consent, violating the rules of the community.  As a result, while individuals in online communities may feel that they are experiencing private interactions, a lurker may see it as a public space for observation due to their reduced feelings of belonging.

Free-riding

Lurking is just one form of free-riding that can happen within an internet community, and is similar to asking questions without responding or gathering information without distributing it. Lurking is seen as undesirable to communities because of the risk free-riding can have on the community if every member does it. A public good is something that is impossible to exclude someone from and has a joint supply within the community. An internet community is seen as a public good because it is a pool of data to which people may, if they choose, separately contribute information. The survival of the community is then dependent on the contributions of the members. Since it is impossible to exclude members from sharing in the benefit of the public good, people are more motivated to free-ride on the work of the other members and not contribute themselves.  

The Malignant Narcissist And Her Silent Partners

THE SILENT PARTNER AND THE SILENT MAJORITY

luke173ministries

"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented"......Elie Weisel

The Silent Partner is any relative who stands by silently while you are victimized, or who takes the abuser's side against the victim.  She, or he, is usually the other parent, who abdicates his parental responsibility to protect his children, or, worse yet, sacrifices his children to the abuser(s) in order to make his own life easier.

In most cases of birth-family abuse, there is usually not just one single Silent Partner.  Several, if not many, family members collude with, protect, and cooperate with the abuser, and participate in scape-goating, pressuring, ostracizing, or trying to silence the victim.  I will refer to these evil participants in our abuse as the Silent Majority, although that term requires a bit of clarification.  In many instances they are far from silent.  Although they might be silent about the actual abuse inflicted upon us, they can be quite vehement in insisting that the victim is wrong for not continuing to accept it.

While encouraging an abuser to operate freely in their midst, they will not be silent when it comes to criticizing the victim.  They will look the other way when the victim is being mistreated, never validating her or defending her, and then attack her when she defends herself.  The one that they gossip about, smear to others, judge, and condemn will invariably be the victim rather than the abuser.  In their sick, evil, twisted minds, it is the long-suffering victim who is the family “trouble-maker”, never the abuser herself.   They don’t ever believe there’s anything wrong with her.  They don’t see a problem with her behavior.  Why?  It’s simple. Because birds of a feather stick together.

In our Lord-Of-The-Flies birth-families, the Silent Partner and The Silent Majority don’t bat an eye at betraying an innocent family member who loves them, and serving her up on a silver platter to be sacrificed to vicious, lifelong abuse.  They specialize in re-victimizing the victim.  Although not as open and obvious about it as the “Alpha Dog” abuser, they are every bit as guilty as she is.  By either their silence, or their speaking up against the wrong person, they allow and encourage the abuse to continue. They are PARTNERS with the abuser.  They are abusers, too, and it’s time we give them the credit for it.

Adult Children of Narcissists: You Carry The Cure In Your Own Heart

                                               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  

                                             by Andrew Vachss      www.vachss.com

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.