Guest Post The Good Enough Parent How Children from Abusive Families Sometimes Do Not Seem To See Their Own Abusiveness

Today's guest post is by Sara Dawkins. This is the second post in which a writer recounts his or her own experience in a family with a problematic history. She addresses the confusion a child can feel when parents who have themselves been abused by their own parents do unto others what had been done to them. ~ D.A.

This is a topic that is very close to my heart so it is difficult for me to write about. Let me start with something that is a little easier. First of all, I will talk about my partner. His father, to be precise. My partner’s father was abused as a child. As was his father. I am sure the cycle continued for many generations. However what got me to really recognize this idea in my own life was something my partner said to me the other day:

“My father is proud of the fact that he is a better father than his father was, but that’s not very hard to do.”

Wow. He was so right. Just because the father came from an abusive home, that did not mean that his own abusive behavior was better in some way. As a matter of fact, my partner’s father can’t even see how abusive he is, as a father and as a spouse.

That brought me around to thinking about my own family. Both my mother and grandmother were from abusive homes, as was my father.

My father was practically abandoned for most of his life and when his parents were around they were verbally and physically fighting with one another. Although he was not hurting in material things, he did not get any instruction about how to behave, and was left to his own devices. He turned into a very selfish individual. Instead of trying to avoid repeating his history of abuse with his children he simply gave up. He stayed home for much of my young life, yes, but withdrew to his bedroom as soon as he got home and only left it to go to work. He did not interact much with my brother and I;  when he did it was only the minimum required so that he could feel as if he had “done his duty.” 

Eventually the stress of even that much involvement got to be too much for him and he left. He never did seem to see that he was falling into the same cycle of abuse that he had suffered through. After all, he could tell himself, he didn’t leave… for a while.

Likewise, my grandmother came from a difficult home. Her father was an alcoholic and the family lived in basements and with relatives because he would drink away his paycheck or simply not go to work at all. From this lifestyle my grandmother learned to work hard and try to keep everything as perfect as possible so that she, hopefully, would not have him get angry at him when he got home. 

She later married a man who was much like her father, and as her children grew up under his verbally and physically abusive hand, she cleaned and kept everyone looking good. To this day she defends her father and is in denial about the abuse she lived through. By keeping everything whitewashed in her mind, she was simply repeating the process of enabling abusers and was keeping the process going.

Needless to say my mother grew up feeling abandoned by her mother and abused by her father. Shockingly, she chose to fight the trend. Although she could not fight off the effects completely, she did not give into the same habits that had plagued the generations before her. Don’t get me wrong. She still had many issues. She was prone to rage and verbal abuse. However, she decided that her children were not going to suffer like she had. 

She was determined to break the cycle. I have to admit, she works really hard to do so. She is not perfect by any means, but when she does fall into those bad habits she always makes sure to apologize for them and tell us what she should have done instead. By thusly changing the pattern, she has been successful at breaking most of the bad habits that plagued our family. Although we are not completely unaffected, my brother and I are moderately well adjusted. I believe that the most important thing she taught us is to be mindful of our actions.

Sometimes people that have been abused do not seem to see the abuse that carries on in their lives. They have many of those same habits and ways of thinking. Sometimes they just assume that they are better parents because they do not do exactlythe same thing or do not do everythingtheir parents did. Being a ‘better’ parent does not make you a good parent or even a non-abusive one.

It really hurts me to see that my uncles are not as cognizant of this as my mother is. They have many of the same abusive behaviors in their homes and yet they act as if they can’t understand why their children are acting out, being rebellious, running away, or just giving up. They don’t see that they are just continuing a cycle of abuse.

I know how difficult it is to break habits that you have grown up with and I am thankful that my mother was able to give me some understanding and insight into her mind. This has helped me to break the cycle within my own relationships and live a healthier, more balanced life.

Author Bio

Sara is an active nanny as well as an active freelance writer. She is a frequent contributor of http://www.nannypro.com/.  Learn more about her at http://www.nannypro.com/blog/sara-dawkins/.

How to Disarm a Borderline Part IX Listen to the Lyrics Not the Tune

Before reading this post, particularly if you are going to try this at home with a real adult family member with borderline personality disorder (BPD) (which is not recommended without the help of a therapist), please read my previous posts Part I (October 6), Part II (October 29), Part III (November 24), Part IV (December 8), and Part V (January 12), Part VI (March 2), Part VII (April 30) and Part VIII (June 5). The countermeasures described in this post do not work in isolation but must be part of a complex, consistent, and ongoing strategy.

This post will continue describing specific countermeasures to the usual strategies in the BPD bag of tricks used by them to distance and/or invalidate you, as well as to induce you to feel anxiously helpless, anxiously guilty, or hostile.

Today I discuss statements made by individuals which sound hostile or critical but which may or may not actually be as critical or hostile as they sound.  A lot of psychotherapists recommend responding to an individual's tone of voice and body language over responding to the content of what that person actually says. 

We all have a tendency to do that anyway - most likely because tone and body language preceded verbal language in the evolutionary development of the brains of primates like ourselves.  Chimps, for example, know whether another chimp is coming to fight with them or mate with them throught the approaching chimp's posturing and the noises it makes. (And if you injure a certain part of their brains called the amygdala, they completely lose the ability to make this call).

Nonetheless, I recommend precisely the opposite: listen to the words (the lexical content) and ignore the tone and posturing, as well as any seeming insinuations implied by what is said that are not stated clearly and overtly.

If you respond only to the words, the individual with BPD will usually change to a friendlier tone.

For example, a client with panic disorder responded to my recommendation for anti-depressant medication for her panic attacks with the sarcastic-sounding remark, "Oh, so you want to mess with my brain chemistry?" It sounded as though she was accusing me of being a devious, malicious mad scientist. Some anti-psychiatry types might agree with that interpretation of my recommendation, but I digress.

I nonchalantly responded, "Yes, anti-depressants do alter brain chemistry, although we don't know exactly how they work," and went on to describe their possible mechanism of action just as one might do with any other patient. She agreed to the drug trial.  (Of course she went off the meds the very next day, but that's another issue altogether).

The structure of all human language is such that ambiguity is extremely easy to generate. Any sentence in any language can refer to a multiple of unclear attributes or objects, or can be interpreted in exactly opposite (antithetical) ways. Negative judgments can come out sounding positive and vice versa through changes in body language, tone of voice, or even choice of synonym.

For example, almost any adjective with a positive or a negative connotation has a synonym with precisely the opposite valence. An optimist, for instance, can be called a Pollyanna. People can be described as stubborn or tenacious, loyal or as being lap dogs, and so forth. A complete discussion of the antithetical nature of language is beyond the scope of this post, but can be found in my book, Deciphering Motivation in Psychotherapy.

Another trick that people with BPD are especially adept at employing is to create ambiguity through the use of unvoiced implications, as I alluded to earlier. Individuals imply something without stating it explicitly, thusly creating opportunities for plausible deniability of having made those implications at a later date.

For example, a mother may admire her daughter in some way, but make it sound as if she were critical about the very behavior that she really admires.

A good illustration of this process occurred in a conversation between a nurse and her mother. The mother was discussing the daughter’s rather assertive (some might say even aggressive) stance towards the mostly male physicians with whom the daughter worked. The mother said, “I can’t believe you talk to doctors that way!”

The patient took this to mean that the mother believed that she should not engage in this behavior. In one sense this was an accurate assessment of the mother’s view, but it was only part of the whole truth. The mother indeed was worried that the daughter might get fired. Such would have been the case during earlier times, when the mother was younger.

As it turned out, however, the mother was also expressing covert admiration for the nurse’s bravery, assertiveness, and feminist leanings. What Mom had difficulty "believing" was that the patient had the audacious nerve that the mother lacked.

Her critical tone of voice obscured the admiration. The actual lexical content of the comment has no positive or negative valence at all.  She was merely expressing surprise. The nurse perhaps should have responded, "Well, is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Depression and Reasons not to Self harm

Some depression sufferers resort to what is known as ‘self-harm.’ This may involve the person hitting or otherwise deliberately injuring themselves. While suffering from depression back in 1990, I too struggled with this issue.

The purpose of this post is to encourage anyone struggling with this issue that they can be set free from it, as I was.

‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.’ Galatians 5:1

Why do some people suffering from depression resort to hurting themselves? My diary entries from 1990 reveal some of the common reasons, which can be summarised as follows:

Reasons for Self-harm:

Stemming from despair, hopeless and unbearable frustration:
1. Self-harm can be an attempt to fight depression’s symptoms and make them go away.
2. Self-harm may be an attempt to punish our body & mind for seemingly ruining our lives and refusing to recover.
3. Self-harm can be a cry for help.
4. Self-harm can be an attempt to use the physical pain to distract us from unbearable inner pain.

Self-harm is typically accompanied with crushing waves of guilt and sorrow, in the aftermath of seeing the injuries we may have inflicted upon ourselves.


Changing our Attitude Towards Self-harm:

In order to break the habit of harming ourselves, we need to change our attitude towards it.

1. Self-harm may feel like a relevant outlet for our rage and anger – a way to fight depression’s symptoms in an attempt to make them go away. Self-harm may seem to give us some form of temporary relief, however, we must remind ourselves that this is a lie, another of Satan’s deceptions. The fact is that if we self-harm, the anger, injuries, pain and guilt make the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle worse by causing more fear-related adrenalin to flow. This makes depression’s symptoms worse.

2. As self-harm stems from bewilderment, despair, hopeless and unbearable frustration, it is imperative that we understand what depression is and how the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle works. Please read this post to understand that cycle, and let knowledge replace the confusion. Once we learn the technique on how to break that cycle, hope replaces hopelessness and the frustration fades away.

3. We need to teach ourselves to hesitate if about to self-harm. If we raise our hand or reach for something with which to harm ourselves, we need to pause and remind ourselves that this will make depression worse by causing more negative adrenalin to flow. Ask Jesus for the strength to resist the urge and then let time pass - the urge will lose its urgency and fade away.

4. As a Christian, we need to remind ourselves that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit – God lives in us. We need to be responsible and look after and respect God’s temple, rather than harming it. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

5. One thing that helps people to stop hurting themselves is to reflect upon the effect such behaviour has on their family and friends. Caring family members and friends grieve if they see us hurting ourselves. We need to change our focus from ourselves and focus on our desire to stop hurting them through our actions.

6. One thing that helped me immensely was this: if I felt tempted to hurt myself, I would picture Jesus standing before me, telling me that He accepted and loved me, that He wanted to take me into His arms and comfort me (He understood what I was going through), and that I did not need to react in such a manner. (This is what He showed me during a counselling session.)


If We Fail:

Keeping the above things in mind can help us break the self-harm habit, but we may still fail on the odd occasion. If we do, we must not let guilt have its way with us. Go to God, confess the sin, thank Him for His forgiveness and ask Him to help us resist the urge to self-harm next time, and then put the lapse behind us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. I John 1:9

However, if we find that the issue is not improving or getting worse, please see a doctor and/or a Christian therapist or counsellor, and get professional help. Do not struggle alone.


Other Things that may help:

Other things that may help us overcome a self-harm habit include keeping ourselves occupied with constructive activities, regular exercise, and spending as much time as possible with others who care for us, especially family or close friends.

We must not listen to the negative thoughts and voices (and memories of others) telling us that we are pathetic, useless and worthless. We must not hate our body for ‘putting us through this,’ as our body is not responsible, but the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle. We must ignore any feelings of self-hatred and loathing.

Instead, we need to fix our eyes upon Jesus, and upon the love that He has for us.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19.

Regardless of how we may view ourselves, Jesus does not reject us or despise us - He loves us so much that while we were still sinners He died for us so we can be restored to fellowship with God. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." John 6:37-40

Jesus treasures each of us so dearly that He wants us to share our lives with Him for all eternity. He died for us so that, whether we are awake (on earth) or asleep (in heaven), we may live together with him. 1 Thessalonians 5:10

Only by focusing upon God’s Word will we see our true worth - we are precious in His sight!

"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17

All verses from the NIV.

Seeing coloured numbers not a mental illness

A vignette

Letters and Numbers as a synesthete sees

Ms. N. is thirteen now. She is sure that she is not mentally ill. But she is afraid that she will become a mental patient sooner or later if things are going on like this. She just started her plus one class after the 10^th standard in an English medium higher secondary school. She was just 11 when she came to know that she is different from other girls in her school. She wanted to know whether this difference is due to a kind of illness or madness. One day Ms. N. confided to her best friend Ms. S. that she was seeing coloured numbers on the black board when the teacher wrote them with white chalk, and as well as in the printed texts and written notes. Some lines are also seen coloured. After disclosing her odd experiences, Ms. N. asked her best friend: “S., my best friend, please tell me the truth; am I mad?” Ms. S. thought for a moment and replied: “No, my dear; you are not mad. But I think it is better to consult a doctor. Tell it to your father.”

Her father, an officer in the service of the state government, took her to a physician in the city. After detailed clinical examination the physician advised to do some investigations including laboratory examination of blood to find out whether there was any abnormalities in the blood contents such as electrolytes such as sodium, potassium, calcium etc., glucose, lipids and hormones. She was also advised to undergo a computed tomography (CT) scan of the brain. After perusing the results of all laboratory examinations and the report on the CT scan, the physician assured her that she was physically normal. To test for psychological abnormalities she was referred to me.

A case of synaesthesia

The mental status examination showed that Ms. N. was case of synaesthesia. A detailed mental status examination revealed no psychological abnormality except the anxiety caused by her odd experiences of seeing coloured numbers and letters in black and white texts. There is no cure for the condition called synaesthesia. To alleviate her anxiety I gave her psycho education on the subject of synaesthesia which was completed in three psychotherapeutic sessions.

Arises from cross wiring in the brain

Structure of a Neuron

Synaesthesia is a brain condition in which stimulation of one sensory modality or cognitive pathway leads to automatic experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. The word synaesthesia was coined by conjoining two Greek words “syn” meaning togetherness and “aesthesis” meaning sensation. Synaesthesia means togetherness of different sensations which are normally perceived through distinct sensory modalities. In one common form of synesthesia, known as colour-graphemic synaesthesia, letters and numbers are perceived as coloured. People who have such experiences are known as synaesthetes. The cause of synaesthesia is cross wiring in the brain circuitry. Human brain is the most complexly organized structure in the universe. The central nervous system comprising of brain and spinal cord is composed of one trillion (10¹²) neurons. Every neurons is connected to other neurons through dendrites and axons which are the connecting organs extending from the cell body. The dendrites of a single neuron may receive as many as 10,000 connections from other neurons. The connection junctions are called synapses. Through synaptic connections the neurons in the brain form neural networks. A neural network is composed of a group or groups of functionally associated neurons. These complex formations of neural networks are called neural circuitry.  

Connections of Neurons

Different regions of the brain are specialized for given functions. Increased cross-connection between regions specialized for different functions may account for the many types of synesthesia. For example, the additive experience of seeing color when looking at numbers and words might be due to cross-activation of the word recognition area and the color area called V4 of the visual cortex of the brain. One line of thinking is that a failure to prune synapses that are normally formed in great excess during the first few years of life may cause such cross-activation.

“Visions of the sane persons”: First scientific article on synaesthesia

Francis Galton

Francis Galton was the first scientist to give a description of synaesthesia in his article titled “Visions of the Sane Persons”. The article was published in the FortnightlyReview  

 (29: 729–40) which was one of the most important and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England.

Not a disease

Although described as a neurological condition synaesthesia is not included in the disease classification manuals such as DSM  and ICD. 

How to identify synaesthesia?

American neurologist Richard Cytowic in his book The Man Who Tasted Shapes (2003) identified the following criteria of synesthesia to identify the real synaesthesia:

1. Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic.
2. Synesthetic percepts are consistent.
3. Synesthesia is highly memorable.
4. Synesthesia is laden with emotions.

Vilayanur S Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, “devised a simple computer display, a number of black 5s scattered on a white background. Embedded among those 5s there were a number of 2s forming a hidden shape. Since these are computer generated, 2s are just mirror images of the 5s.  Most people looking at this pattern see only a random jumble of numbers, but a synesthete sees the 5s as green and 2s as forming a red shape conspicuously visible against a forest of green.” (The Emerging Mind Page 21)

Experiences

Synesthetes often report that they were unaware their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them, while others report feeling as if they had been keeping a secret their entire lives, as has been documented in interviews with synesthetes on how they discovered synesthesia in their childhood. The automatic and odd nature of a synesthetic experience means that the pairing may not seem out of the ordinary. This involuntary and consistent nature helps define synesthesia as a real experience. Most synesthetes report that their experiences are pleasant or neutral, although, in rare cases, synesthetes report that their experiences are embarrassing.

Different forms of synaesthesia

Synesthesia can occur by cross connection between any two sensory modalities. Researchers have adopted a convention of indicating the type of synesthesia by using the following notation x à y, where x is the "inducer" or trigger experience, and y is the "concurrent" or additional experience. For example, perceiving letters and numbers (collectively called graphemes) as colored would be indicated as grapheme à color synesthesia. Similarly, when synesthetes see colours or movement as a result of hearing musical tones, it would be indicated as tone à color or tone à movement synesthesia.

Grapheme à colour synaesthesia

This is the most common form of synesthesia. Here individual letters of the alphabet and numbers are "shaded" or "tinged" with a colour. While different individuals usually do not report the same colours for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g., A is likely to be red).

Patricia Lynne Duffy, author of the book Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color their Worlds is a synesthete. As a child, Pat Duffy told her father, "I realized that to make an R all I had to do was first write a P and draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line."   

Sound à colour synesthesia

According to Richard Cytowic, sound à color synesthesia is "something like fireworks": voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and firework shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound ends.  For some, the stimulus type is limited (e.g., music only, or even just a specific musical key); for others, a wide variety of sounds triggers synesthesia.

Number form synesthesia

A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers. Number forms were first documented and named by Francis Galton in "The Visions of Sane Persons."  It has been suggested that number-forms are a result of "cross-activation" between regions of the parietal lobe of brain that are involved in numerical cognition and spatial cognition.

Ordinal-linguistic personification 

In linguistics, ordinal numbers are the words representing the rank of a number with respect to some order, in particular order or position (i.e. first, second, third, etc.). Its use may refer to size, importance, chronology, etc. They are different from the cardinal numbers (one, two, three, etc.) referring to the quantity. Ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP, or personification for short) is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, days, months and letters are associated with personalities.  For example, one synesthete says, "T’s are generally crabbed, ungenerous creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is honest, but… 3 I cannot trust… 9 is dark, a gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under his suavity." (Calkins MW (1893). "A Statistical Study of Pseudo-Chromesthesia and of Mental-Forms". The American Journal of Psychology  (University of Illinois Press) 5 (4): 439–64.)

Lexical à gustatory synaesthesia

In the rare lexical à gustatory synesthesia, individual words and the phonemes of spoken language evoke taste sensations in the mouth. James Wannerton, president of the UK Synaesthesia Association says: "Whenever I hear, read, or articulate (inner speech) words or word sounds, I experience an immediate and involuntary taste sensation on my tongue. These very specific taste associations never change and have remained the same for as long as I can remember." Wannerton laments: “Synaesthesia can be difficult to live with. I can't really read books, as each word sets off a new taste; and I have to really concentrate when I'm driving, as road signs do the same.”