I feel Enlightened

[Sally]

This weekend I spent about 20 hours watching various John Bradshaw video tapes.  These tapes really helped me understand myself by understanding the nature of a dysfunctional family.

I watched Bradshaw On - The Family, which is a 10 hr 10 video tape (Thank goodness I still have a VHS player) series of lectures Bradshaw did in 1985.  Although the material is over 20 years old, I found it very relevant.

I also watched Bradshaw on Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families and John Bradshaw On Family Secrets.

I thought all of these tapes were excellent and I recommend them.

I did not take notes as I watched (didn’t want to be distracted by note taking), but plan to when I view them again.  Although I didn’t take notes, here are some things that stick in my mind:

One of Bradshaw’s main themes is as follows:  A healthy Family is democratic and all members (parents & kids) are allowed to have their own feelings and to feel these feelings. In an unhealthy family, there is authoritarian rule by a parent who dictates what feelings children should or should not feel.

When kids are not allowed to feel their feelings, they never develop a self or a sense of self.

Bradshaw is very influenced by psychologist Murray Bowen’s “family Systems”, which talks about the family being a “system”. So, if one member of the family has an “addiction” (like addiction to alcohol, or worry, or rage or work), the other family members must adapt to the sick family member. 

According to Bradshaw, shame is the feeling that "I'm no good", while guilt is the feeling that "I've done a bad thing, but I can fix it".  Bradshaw says that shame is the root feeling of a child raised in a disfunctional family. 

Also, Bradshaw talks about how the lives we live may not be of our own choosing because our "script" may have been written generations ago.  So, we may be carrying the sadness of our grandparents and parents and we may not even realize it. 

Bradshaw says the worse thing is to live your entire life and then die not knowing who you really were.

It was all very interesting and enlightening.

John Bradshaw’s web site is http://johnbradshaw.com.

Love,
Sally

[isittoolate]

When kids are not allowed to feel their feelings, they never develop a self or a sense of self.--

--the worse thing is to live your entire life and then die not knowing who you really were.

This is the Basic premise of why I am here, as time passes quickly at my age! When the time comes I want to know why I have been here!

Thanks
Izzy

[sally]

Hi Izzy,

As I watched the tapes, I thought of the people on this board and how helpful these tapes could be to everyone.

The best thing I can tell you is to order (or have your library order) these tapes.

I think Bradshaw should get a Nobel Prize.

The thing about dying and never knowing one's self really hit home.  Bradshaw says that the last line in "death of a Salemen" was spoke by Willy Lowmen's son who said, after Willy's funeral,  "He never knew who he was". 

We do not have to be Willy Lowmens.  If there's a will, there's a way.  If we want to KNOW who we are, we can find out, we can become CONSCIOUS of our family of origin's system and see how we took on our parent's/grandparent's baggage.  But, our ancestor's baggage is not WHO WE ARE.  We are the individuals that we were when we were born, we are not out ancestor's baggage.

Bradshaw likens this work to being an archeologist:  We look at the past so that we can understand the present.  It's not about blaming our parents because they were also victimized. So, I saw which elements of myself were my parent's/grandparents baggae and I have now tossed those bags.

I geuss the baggage are all the "should" messages playing in my head.  The "should" messages are not me, so out they go.  buh-bye.

I spent a small fortune on buying these tapes, but, hey, this is my life and it ain't no dress rehearsal.  Definitely money well spent.

Love,
Sally

[Stormchild]

Thanks Sally, this is great information. I love Bradshaw. He really, really 'gets it'.

((((((((( )))))))))

[Sally]

Thanks CB and Stormchild.

The idea of looking at our parents and grandparents, seeing their foilbles and then seeing that their foibles manifest in us was really amazing.  Now, I am not as hard on myself for my shortcomings (although I still take responsibility for my actions).  But Bradshaw's idea that the lives we are currently living may have been written for us generations ago (and therefore, we are not totally the drivers of our own lives) is really amazing. 

Example:  My mother once told me an incident in which my mother was around 10 years old and she was being "fresh" to her grandmother (my great-grand mother).  In response, my great-grand mother said the my mom (who at the time was 10 yrs old)  "I have a small nose and you have a big nose". 

Now, that's a really hurtful thing to say, especially to a child.  I know that my mother did not get along with her mother (my grandmother).  I know that my grandmother did not like my father when my parents got married and I beleive (but am not sure) that my grandmother boycotted my parent's wedding.  There were/are no photos of my parent's wedding!!!  My grandmother's initial (and possibly everlasting) disdain of my father was kind of a family secret.

Anyway, here's the point:  when I, as an adult,  used to argue with my mother, she would often say mean things to me which had no relation to the topic we were arguing about.  I used to think/say "what has that got to do with the subject we're arguing about?"  When she would do that, my mother was not 'fighting fair' (she would go off topic) and she would throw in a zinger just to hurt me.

Now, after seeing  Bradshaw (and his discussion of genograms), I have made a connection between the nasty thing my my great-grand mother said to my mother at age 10 and I'm concluding that saying nasty off topic things during an argument just to hurt the other person was a learned behavior handed down thru the generations.

As I do this archeology work, I can see that a lot of the hurtful things my parents did to me were not completely 'personal' to me in that they (my parents) were living out a script (ie Eric Berns).  I guess the really sad part is not or never becoming conscious of the scrpits that run our lives.  Like Willy Loman: dying without ever knowing who you were. 

Undertsanding the ancestoral scripts and the baggage has brought me a feeling of inner peace and has allowed me to detach emotionally because I know I am neither that script or that baggage.

Next, I will watch more Bradshaw tapes:  Healing The Shame That Binds You and Homecoming, Reclaiming Your Inner Child.

Love,
Sally

[isittoolate]

Hi Sally

I read his book on Shame and I found it so interesting, and finally understood that I have lived a shame-based life--hand-me-down issues.

As you said, these understandings help us to not accept the whole load of baggage that we think we are carrying, to put them in the proper perspective.

((((((((((())))))))))))
Izzy

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[Stormchild]

Hi Sally

YES! Watch what each generation hands down to the next. It's absolutely amazing how these things become part of each person and move through time that way.

In my mother's family, there was a Favored Child. It was not my mother. In my father's family, there was a Favored Child. It was not my father. Both of the Favored Children turned out to be total foul-ups. So, in my own family, there was a Favored Child, who turned out to be a total foul-up.

I've seen another family in which, for three generations, the daughter has become estranged from the mother. I grew up with Generation 3, the granddaughter was my friend in junior high and high school. From what I saw then, thinking about it now, each mother repeated the EXACT same behavior that estranged her, when dealing with the daughter... then wondered how this could have happened to HER.

The problem in that family, from what I observed, was basically envy of the daughter by the mother... this was denied, because there was also a huge amount of 'Look At Me, Aren't I A WONDERFUL Mother?' being broadcast to the rest of the world. Hand made dresses, Brownie troop mother stuff, etc., but while all that was going on, so were all sorts of covertly hostile little zings and picks; undermining; snide, mean comments about the girl's 'best feature'; punishments that didn't fit the crime, etc.

I saw my friend's mother say things to her - in front of me, sometimes in front of adults too, like at school recitals - that made my jaw drop, and I was maybe fourteen. Plenty old enough to recognize hostility when I heard it. And then when Grandma came to visit, I saw the exact same drama play out... Gramma would slam Momma in front of the kids, in front of the menfolks, in church, anywhere she felt like it. Zing, zing, pick, pick, zing, zing, zing, then she'd produce a lemon pie, and oh my, "did you ever see anyone do more for her child, aren't I just the most LOVING creature on the planet".

Bleahhhhh......

I lost touch with my friend halfway through college. She dropped out to marry a young man who drank, heavily. I remember how my heart sank when she wrote to tell me this... and never wrote again.

I wonder if she managed to see and break the cycle, or if she, too, is wondering why her own daughter - if she had one - generation 4, this would be - 'blows up at her over nothing', the way she did with her mother, the way her mother did with grandma. Of course, it wasn't 'over nothing'. It was over a lifetime of petty humiliations and small nasty snipes, buried under the pretense of love.

So watch the family heirlooms. There can be a huge amount of baggage in them. As you are seeing, as you too are saying, right here right now...

One bit of cautious advice re 'scripts' and 'not taking things personally'. I agree 1000% about scripts, I think many families program their members to follow scripts. My school chum was following a script, and so was her mother, in one sense.

But that business about not taking it personally: be careful with that. It is true, in the sense that anyone else in your position, if they met the basic requirements, would get the same nonsense you have gotten / are getting [I wonder what would have happened to my high school chum if she'd been a boy, for instance]. But it is also not true, in the sense that - whether or not it is aimed at you personally, it does damage You.

You as a person.

You, personally, ARE harmed by this nonsense; not some 'concept' out somewhere beyond the end of your arm. YOU are experiencing abuse, and it hurts.

So there's a balance to be struck between realizing that they'd do this to anyone in your place, because they are abusers and that is what they do, and also realizing that this fact does NOT cancel out the destructive effect of what they are doing, to the person they are doing it to, which just happens to be you.

Hmm. I think I actually managed to explain that in a way that makes sense .

(((((Sally)))))

Edit in: oh wow. You know what? I was ambivalent about having children all my life, until the option was permanently closed off a decade ago... and it was because I could see just what a mess my parents were making, I could see just what a mess some of my aunts and uncles were making, I saw how unhappy my school friend was, I saw how even more unhappy another one of my friends was [she was the child of a shotgun wedding and her mother treated her like dirt, while fawning all over the children who were born after she was]... and I just never saw a good family, I never really saw a good set of parents!* I was worried sick that I'd either repeat my own family's mistakes or do worse by trying to do better.

What a sad way to break the cycle of abuse. But at least it is broken. It ended here, with me.

*Edit in, again: my God, I really didn't. I'm thinking about the well-to-do kids I met in high school and college... every one of them had parents who drank, or didn't think a girl should have an education, or ran around on one another so obviously that it was a neighborhood joke. My God. 

[Ami]

Dear Sally,
   You sound really, really good. I am so happy for you. I think that ,right now, I could say that I have not "lived.' I want to live and to live the particular 'brand of person" that God made me. That is my desire after I let go of all this 'garbage.
    I missed you. I am really glad that you are back. You have so much to offer                Love   Ami