How is a Child to Know?

[Gabben]

that they are in a battle royal to take back a part of themselves that no one else can rightfully use or reclaim  for them,

It is a battle royal to take back that part of myself that was taken by my FOO, the real self, the self that is free. She, Lise, is slowly emerging out of her shell of darkness. Through exploring the ways that I act out dysfunction, being real with myself, or extremely honest, I am able to tell the story of what exactly that past hostile environment looked like and felt like, grieve the losses, so many such as: loss of empathy for a baby/child's needs, loss of protection, loss of acceptance of my emotional expressions including baby anger/rage, loss of freedom to be real, loss of the feeling of safety, loss of life; the spirit in me that wanted to live shut down and just started surviving in hopes that one day she would get to fully live and fully be herself without a single lie to hang onto, no self-deception, in other words, pure freedom, pure freedom to love and not hate.

As I move through the layers of grief, from time to time, I uncover terror stored in my body, real terror that got repressed along with my authentic self. I had a psychologist who told me that we can repress every emotion except love. These days I am unleashing from within my grasp of being the terror of what it was like to have my being robbed from me, to be maimed and left forsaken by my very own FOO.

[Gabben]

 You're on your way, Lise.

Thank you ((((tt)))).....it is so helpful to read this. There are still some major generalities within, but I am starting to see something more in terms of "If a person has been robbed of their sense of  uniqueness."  I feel at times that I am void of spiritual gifts, that whatever God given gifts I had had been robbed of me; disowned by FOO and then myself and taken away in adulthood by my allowing them to be taken away out of fear. I am not my talents or gifts but being able to express them and use them is a part of the uniqueness that God instills in every soul.

Peace,
Lise

[Hopalong]

Maimed?

Lise, that struck me. That represents something terrible, and I am sorry.

Whether you meant it literally or not, I am so sorry this is how you feel at times.

You're whole.

Hops

[HeartofPilgrimage]

I'm not sure I understand your fundamental explanation of the "naive stage," but I think that you might be interested in John Bowlby's writings about "knowing what you're not supposed to know and feeling what you're not supposed to feel." Look for it in his attachment trilogy (you can find it on Amazon if you're not familiar with his work). His examples that he gave were children who SAW their parents commit suicide, and yet the other parent (or grandparents) convinced them that daddy died in an accident etc. That on the conscious level these kids bought into what the parents said, but on an unconscious level always kept their fundamental knowing of what they saw. Basically, we have several levels of thought. The surface level is easy for us to recognize and report to other people, but deeper and deeper layers are harder. Therefore, a child may be convinced to "go along to get along" on the surface, but maintain a conflicting understanding of their experiences at a deeper level.

Does this address what you were asking in your previous post?

[Gabben]

 
I've don't believe it possible for a child in the naive stage to volitionally self deceive or agree to have his self-awareness switched off for someone elses'.  

tt,

I agree with this, it has been rolling around in my mind. When you say the naive stage I think of innocence in a sense that children have no knowledge or awareness of right or wrong, therefore, they are doing what they believe IS right by and through self-deception, correct?

Your title of this thread says a lot, "How Is A Child To Know?" How can they know in those first 5 years, they have not had enough exposure or self-understanding to grasp beyond survival, and, if that is threatenend then the only right thing for a child do to is to deny self awareness. ?? help, does this make sense?

I can only say that this has been my own experience.

[Sealynx]

Hi Teartracks,
I have become a big fan of the work of Dr. Bruce Perry, "The Boy Raised as a Dog" and Karen's book "Becoming Attached: First relationships and how they shape our capacity to love". My earliest memories are of hiding from my mother when I was physically or emotionally hurt. While some of this probably came from fear that she would fly into a rage, I think at least part of it was for me a failure to attach to her in infancy and this is something that few books on children of NPD go into very deeply, if at all.  For the last year I have been on a search to uncover the roots of my personality and what I have uncovered seems to have started well before I had any ability to experience the world critically.

Several things suggest that I was left alone a great deal as an infant. I know from family stories that I never crawled and that my first words were "Take Her". My mother says that she used to say "Want mother to take her?" when she would come to my crib. Since I know she has never been the type who appreciated touch, this highly suggests that I was left in my crib and removed only to be fed and changed. Combine these words with the fact that I walked without crawling and it suggests that I spent many hours without interaction.

 My father, who liked babies (but didn't do well with children once they developed their own personality) was away at sea off and on during my first two years. We lived at a naval base 1000 miles from her home. My isolation would be interrupted by the sudden perhaps frightening intrusion of my father's attention, which could be quite rough. Is it any wonder that he was so poorly bonded to me that he once left me at drive-in theater concession stand and arrived back at the car with a strange child on his hand???

Even though I was at the "terrible twos" when that happened, they found me sitting quietly under the counter.  I wasn't crying or showing any emotion. Had I already learned how futile it was to cry out??? Did I already know that no one would come or care?? Was I so used to sitting quietly with no stimulation that the event did not even stick in my memory? I only know about it because it became a joke in my mother's family.

 Perry's work suggests that this disconnect between love, touch, comfort and safety has a direct effect or lack of affect on the brain. Apparently in failing to develop these associations the brain fails to develop related needs. I can see how these early patterns may have attracted future events in my life. How did other children see this sad observer who lacked expectations of others? How did my complete lack of expectations invite boundary violations? How did my lack of boundaries invite abuse? Did I see each negative encounter as proof that I was somehow inferior?

I've also read Dr William B. Swann, who is a social psychologist responsible for the theory of "resilient identities" (we work actively to reinforce our idea of who we are-even if its negative). This grew out of his work with Self-esteem issues. He found the people with low self-esteem did in fact have good reason to feel preyed upon and could site many examples of actual abuse. I can see a trail of bad experiences that stretch all the way back to infancy. More and more I look to the effects of these early years in defining who I am today. Yes she was emotionally abusive when I was growing up, but my sister who was born four years later and surrounded by relatives, is much better at social bonding and is not the loner that I was in childhood and have never fully recovered from being.

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Teartracks, I don't know the answer to your questions, but I can refer you to more stuff to read (I'm taking from your postings that you don't mind me using that way of giving input ...). Tiffany Field and colleagues, at the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical School, study mothers who are depressed both prenatally and postpartum. They have published some stuff that suggest that newborns of depressed mothers do indeed come out of the womb depressed. Of course, we can't interview a neonate and say, "so, how do you feel about that?" so we have to extrapolate from indirect methods. Field and colleagues have done blood draws from the newborns of depressed mothers. First of all, depressed adults tend to exhibit an out-of-whack neurotransmitter profile. Cortisol (the stress hormone) is up, norepinephrine and serotonin (which contribute to happy, alert states) are down, and ... darn it, I can't remember the fourth one. Well, when they did blood draws on the newborns of depressed moms, lo and behold, the babies' neurotransmitter profiles mimicked that of their mothers.

Another way these researchers have looked at the possibility of "coming out of the womb sad" is examining their behaviors. Babies of depressed moms just act differently, both with their mothers and with other people. They don't react as much to facial expressions, they don't get in sync with the person interacting with them, and there are a lot of other social abnormalities as well.

So I think there is preliminary evidence that yes, babies can be born sad. Now, the problem is, what if the mom is not depressed? Can the baby still be born sad? That is so hard to know because we are all so individual, and nobody knows how any one baby will behave when he/she is "feeling normal" so how do you know when he/she is "feeling sad" if he/she is a neonate???

Also, there is the possibility that when rejection and heartbreak occur in the newborn period, it will always feel to the individual as if he/she was "born sad." Our memories of our own infancy are not differentiated enough for us to say, "No I was happy when I was born and THEN SHE HAPPENED (meaning a rejecting and heartbreaking mother)."

As you can probably tell, I am studying infant mental health and so your questions interest me intensely. I hope I don't sound as if "I'm the expert" 'cause I AM NOT. I just really like your questions and get very enthusiastic about trying to contribute.

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Thanks, Teartracks. I am hoping to make infant mental health my specialty but I'm still a student. Some people find working with babies and their families more stressful than working with adults, but the good thing is, if you can help a parent be more sensitive to their child early on, it has the potential for changing the child's whole life ... that is such an awesome possibility.

[sKePTiKal]

tt:

I do believe that those who have power over him can take the child's authentic self-awareness away by abuse, and that once that happens, the child operates from a state of false self awareness.

This can happen AFTER the age of naivete, tt. In the case of Twiggy: experiencing an extreme trauma, then gaslighting... and then, THIS happened to me. It is Twiggy's great good fortune that there was such a high level of neglect due to mom's mental illness, in Twiggy's earliest years, that she spent a lot of time with her grandparents, who were - in comparison to her parents - practically "saintly". In reality, they were just normal people. Kids can tell the difference, I believe... but they have to have alternate experiences in the first place, to even be able to label "good" or "bad"...

I've don't believe it possihle for a child in the naive stage to volitionally self deceive or agree to have his self-awareness switched off for someone elses'.

sigh... oh, I'm not so sure this is accurate, tt. I'm not out & out disagreeing with the statement... just that I have some doubts. Referencing the difficulty of asking for help - and the feeling of being deserving enough to ask - I remember the description of toddlers diagnosed with type-D attachment issues. Schore's description brought a stranger into a room with the child and mother. Between "a rock and a hard place", the child is fearful of the stranger and looking for "comfort" from mother... doesn't move toward her face to face; rather he/she backs up to her. Even from the first moments of life, nurturing can become associated with rough, uncaring touch... developing a classic love/hate relationship, you know?

Dissociative disorders are related to this attachment style - where the child feigns death (through the "going away" of dissociation) rather than interact with the primary caregiver who delivers "care" in an abusive style. And I suppose, it's an individual thing, whether or not this shutting down, withdrawal, going away... is a CHOICE, a preferable alternative. This state matches the volitional shutting off of self-awareness, you know? So, when we get right down to it... I'm not sure I can agree or disagree with this.

I do want to throw something else, into the discussion about the concept of a "false self". Children are naturally mimics - they mirror their environment. It is how they learn to be themselves, initially. The concept or meaning of "dog" usually is formed through learning what sound a dog makes: bark, bark! And expanded on later, by crawling on all fours, wagging tail, and barking.

You probably know where I'm going, tt... the naive child's individuality, that potential bud of "personhood", is both completely imprinted by genetics and physical makeup (even neurologically) but the expression of that - the externalization of "personhood" - is mostly a reflection of his/her environment. Even in abusive families, there is a form of positive/negative reinforcement for the child - with, I think, not sure - the exception of flat out neglect... total lack of interaction. The survival instinct, would I think, for most children then direct or influence how they develop personalities within a specific environment. And rather than being a "false self" - one that is adopteded as a defense mechanism, or through projection & transference - this is a real "self". Like one of the self-balloons, that Helen described or like a facet on the jewel of the total self. It's situational; it is a self within only a specific context... that of abusive FOO.

That gets back to your "duck" analogy... and where disorder/dysfunction crops up... is when that "duck-self" gets externalized outside of the FOO context. Am I making any sense? Is any of this relevant or helpful?

[Sealynx]

Hi Teartracks,
I think I've figured out a great deal. Healing it is another matter. When your whole physiology is geared toward simply, keeping busy, as opposed to taking pleasure in close interaction, you can't just force yourself to change what gives you pleasure. Not only are there preferences to overcome, but there are also defense mechanisms that become comfort zones over time. My father would frequently "zone out" to avoid her nasty retorts. 

Spending all that time in the crib could have resulted in "failure to thrive syndrome". Instead I was able to entertain myself in various ways. Perhaps my artistic ability stepped in. When I find myself bored and "zoning out" around people, I frequently study the "picture quality" of the world around me. I think we all know how to zone out. I'm sure I learned that in that crib. My imagination was all I had to give my world emotional texture. Today I paint, make computer music and write. I have a lot of talents that I can do on my own and can go for days without seeing anyone. I don't think I would call myself either practical or impractical. I just do what I want.  

You know it follows that you'd be confused and shocked by him, who was for all practical purposes a stranger.  Makes me wonder if the military addresses such issues in their 'training'...In other words, do they give any kind of instruction to the dad's about the best way to interact with their children upon returning home?    

I think that would be a good idea. I often watch the faces of little girls on the news as their army father picks them up. They seem confused.

My own father was a dreamer who spent most of his time either at work on in his garden. I think he was initially captivated by my mothers good looks but had no real relationship with her. Theirs was a fantasy life. I have an old photo album of his from his early military days in Mexico. I can see why he married my mother. He photographed a lot of women who looked like her and loved to dance with the locals. A handsome but not very savvy backwoods boy, he felt important around these mostly poor Mexican women who loved the attention of what probably seem to them like a rich American.My mother was a dancer in college they had that love in common...and bridge. That was it. My mother came from a family of nine and my father a family of six. In his case his father married his mother for her property and was a very cold greedy man. He had two very NPD siblings, a brother and sister. The sister ended up being murdered by her son.

The groundwork was laid for him to be compliant in allowing her to rule. The women in his family were basically servants so he had no idea how to handle the strong woman he married. As for us, girls didn't matter to him. They were just there to be married off. They never did anything fun with my sister and I and would leave us with relatives to take nice vacations together. We were stuck in Cinderella like roles at the home of his N brother while they were away. I remember there was always a "to do" list waiting for us, as if we had to "earn" our keep.

  I doubt seriously if she blatantly played him against us.  That wasn't her goal.  

My mother's only goal was to appear rich and hang with people who had money. They would play bridge with people 20 years their senior, just because they were rich. They never courted the friendship of anyone who had kids our age, nor did they pick neighborhoods where children our age existed. They really didn't seem to care about friendship or understand friendship. On top of having no early bonding, I had no example of what relating looked like.
 
 I have looked at old home movies and they are very interesting. On Christmas morning I am not even playing with my toys. At 7, I am helping my 3 year old sister climb on to a large spring horse while my mother poses with her gifts. I have placed my cowboy hat, holster and gun on her. In other words I'm taking care of her and not enjoying Christmas. To this day she sees me as her mother.

Not screaming and crying when I was left at that concession stand is pretty amazing. I had learned that protest brought no one to my side. When I was around other children who expected to have their needs met and weren't above acting on their own behalf, I would not understand them at all.  I think the powerlessness that many of us experience was carefully taught through neglect. My mother still makes fun of me for not "defending" myself. Often I am confused when I am attacked and my emotional reaction is delayed until it is too late to respond. Someone may say or do some thing to me and I won't even realize I am hurting until hours later. It is as if I have preference for accepting people as right until proven wrong. I'm sure that comes from her.
 
S

[sKePTiKal]

Dear tt:

One more idea popped into my head about self-deceit under the age of 5, I think, reading Sealynx' description of how she entertained herself - a place that I know very well, btw.

The Pretend World - fantasy, cartoons, play - is very important and comes naturally to young kids... and the lines between "reality" and the assigned meaning of something in the pretend world, can blur. A stick, very easily becomes a sword... and a child who feels a need for protection could be loathe to leave it outside... where someone could steal their sword or use it against them.

As regards parents and possible self-deception:

A child that age is a total sponge for information. These days, children are bombarded with info from all the media sources. But there have always been plenty of sources of information for "explaining" the world around a child. The bible, for instance. Children were often read bible stories... and of course, the infamous "Dick and Jane". We picked up "cues" about social standards, expectations of attitudes and roles for parents and children - good/bad behavior - almost by osmosis, the way we learned language. And yes, by mirroring the immediate environment.

One way self-deception in a child that age is possible, is if he/she substituted a "pretend version" of the parents/family/his-her role in it... for the reality of it. Perhaps the reality versus the pretend version blurred... and the child kept trying to superimpose the pretend version onto the reality. Very subjective; in that the child learns that "moms wear aprons and make jello"... but if the mom stays in bed all day and never dresses... the child either can't resolve the conflict of diametrically opposed "truths"... or pleads with the mom try to conform to that "standard"... or makes up a "pretend mom" and retreats to fantasy... and I'm sure there are other options, too. It just depends on the child and their predilections...

but it would be a form of self-deceit... or denial...or compromise... of the reality of "mom" versus the "standard definition".

Gosh, I think there's a lot more. But you catch my drift, right?

[Lucky]

I remember that as of the age of about six years old I became more and more afraid of people. And did not trust people very much. But trusting people outside your FOO can also cause problems ofcourse. If I would have been very trusting I would have possibly met with more severe trauma caused by other people?

[Gabben]

   Still on the reducing trail, I wonder if babies can indeed be sad in the womb?   If so, what is ghe genesis of the sadness/grief?   Does the baby have an inborn sense about the mother and how things will be with her once he exits the womb?  Does anyone know?

Hi tt,

Although not an expert nor have I done any research other than my own experience, once again, in my healing experience I have uncovered what I believe are womb memories, these memories of sadness and fear were so profound for me that I was moved to write a poem about the pain of what I felt was a need for rescue as far back as the womb. While in the womb my tiny beating heart was so close to my mom's heart which although she can love she was at the time emotionally disconnected from me and more out of touch with her emotional needs or at least trying to fullfill her emotional needs in a dysfunctional way, seeing her emotional needs the way that N's do: love for them is attention, recognition, honor, respect, power, so on and so forth. My mom could not address my emotional needs as an infant than she was certainly not giving me the love bonding of just pure motherly affection when I was in the womb, which made me sad, very sad.

My brain incorporated the dysfunctional reality of my mom. I took on her fears, her worries, her needs as if I was the mother for her. This happened, as I have come to discover by working to heal my dysfunctional adult behaviors, behaviors which tell the story for me of my first years, as I left the womb and came into her arms, arms which were hostile to a baby's emotional needs. I took in my mom's hostility into the core of my being. I was also hostile at the world for what seemed so unfair. Babies, in my thinking, have a sense of love, or at least a knowing in them that love is what they need, if a parent cannot love then there is a loss, a grief at what never happened as well as the anger and sense of losses, real and imagined, that the original wound of loss sets us up for later in life.

My two cents for what it is worth...

Lise

[Gabben]

Not screaming and crying when I was left at that concession stand is pretty amazing. I had learned that protest brought no one to my side. When I was around other children who expected to have their needs met and weren't above acting on their own behalf, I would not understand them at all.  I think the powerlessness that many of us experience was carefully taught through neglect. My mother still makes fun of me for not "defending" myself. Often I am confused when I am attacked and my emotional reaction is delayed until it is too late to respond. Someone may say or do some thing to me and I won't even realize I am hurting until hours later. It is as if I have preference for accepting people as right until proven wrong. I'm sure that comes from her.
 
S

Hi Sealynx,

I could relate to much of your posts. I shut down emotionally at what I feel is my first days, weeks, months into this world. I'm quite sure that I picked up on my mom's strong dislike of my strong baby needs and emotions as well as I was left alone for far too long in a crib without any social interaction or stimulation setting me up to play for my mom's affection or what scraps I could smile and giggle my way towards getting. I learned that my mom loved me when I was a "happy baby" anything less was strongly disliked by her. A happy baby affirmed her best image of herself as a "good" mom. I was there to parent her.

As a baby, In order to cope I caved in on myself; my dreams in the last few months of my current reality have shown me this, the intense fear I felt as a child or actually terror at being left alone for so long as well as the shame at the buried emotional needs such as just the intensity of emotion that babies feel and the strong need for comforting and nurturing affection.

When I was somewhere in between 3 and 4 my finger got slammed in a car door, which shut all the way, completely. Having flexible baby bones my finger didn't break but it was painful. I recall my mom being proud of me for not crying or showing too much emotion. My sister tells the story of when she was just a toddler, crying, my mother told her to stop crying or that she would give her something to really cry about...my sister to this day, recalls being confused and shutting down emotionally in order to "survive."

Now I think that this is an example of voluntary self deception in order to survive. To my sister and I, shutting down our emotions, a form a deception, is and was good behavior, at least in our family. As an adult, not being able to be in touch with my feelings, or having a delayed reaction to pain from others, such as getting my feelings hurt and later, even months later, recognizing that I was wronged comes from this form of self deception.

Also, deception, self-deceived in my emotional intelligence was a huge driving force later in my adult for life social anxiety disorders.

Sorry tt, hope I have not hijacked this topic too far.

Lise

[Lucky]

Hi Lucky,

I'm glad you brought up the age 6 stage.  To tell you the truth, it seems like I've dwelt more on the early abuse and later in life abuse than any in the middle.  Maybe now's a good time to do that.  I'd like to hear more from you on how you handled fear in your adolescent years.  

tt    

I can't really say that I did manage it very well. I used to have nervous tics in my face and other places of my body. I bit my fingernails for a while. Somehow I kept going but I always felt awful inside, never really happy or relaxed. Some horrible, dark feeling I always tried to ignore. I guess I was dissociating most of the time. I used to read a lot, draw a lot and I hardly ever showed any emotions. Normally the only emotions I was able to feel was the stressed, unhappy, very insecure feelings which I felt ashamed of. I tried to flee the house a lot or I stayed in my bedroom a lot. When I look back I really was most of the time miserable and very detached. For many years I mostly had one girlfriend and she had very narcissistic traits. She was bossy and possessive and I was afraid of her as well. I always felt trapped between her and my NM.
However I don't remember having suicidal thoughts, those came shortly after I had left my parent's home.

Edit: I only started going out when I was 22, almost 23 because before that time I was to scared to go to a bar or a disco. I had a hobby that gave me a chance to be away from home a lot but I shared the hobby with the N girlfriend. The first time I kissed a boy was also shortly before my 23rd birthday.