Who are we? What are we?

[Missmia]

Recent insights showed me that the person I actually am has almost never been recognised, but when it was, it was regarded as unacceptable. My existence is not acceptable to my birth mother. My talents were not approved of by my adoptive parents. They refused to acknowledge anything I achieved. My school refused to see my undeniable scars from domestic physical violence.

This insight has deepened my understanding of the extent of the damage done to abused children. People are quick to condemn a perpetrator when he/she is finally outed. But in my view it is society itself that commits the greatest evil, by failing to protect its children from mental and physical violence, including sexual abuse. For this reason, I have concluded that our society is, at heart, a barbaric and hypocritical culture sheltering under a thin veneer of civilisation.

And it has the result that many of us (not only the physically abused) at some point subconsciously detect that there is an enormous invisible gap between the illusion provided by our social conditioning, and the actual reality which we experience. Few want to recognise the reality that mental or physical cruelty is perpetrated every single minute on the small, the young, the elderly, the non-conforming and the vulnerable.

In my view, it is the unacknowledged existence of this gap, between the story we are supposed to believe and the reality we experience, which is the cause of many symptoms which are generally labeled as signs of mental illness. 

If you tell someone (especially subliminally) that their bruises and scars don't exist, isn't that a good way to demonstrate that you think they insane, delusional or lying?

And if a child/person is told enough times that their perceptions are wrong and their wounds are non-existent, what effect will that have on the person? They will doubt their own sanity, won't they?

And then they will worry, and deep anxiety will follow, with depression inevitably following on.

If our society would just stop lying about its own "wholesome" nature, and take a long hard look at itself, perhaps we could come up with a more realistic description of who we really are. And who we, as a society, want to be. And start making the changes.

Maybe then the gap would shrink. Until then, the outlook for the pharmaceutical companies seems to be rosy.

[white knight]

Hi Missmia,

This happened to me during a 10 year long relationship. I was the 125 kgms vulnerable easily led male and she was the 60 kgm petite controller.

For years I took her comments as honest when criticising my daughter, one of which lived with us. Yet all along it was a step mother from hell crusade by her. But there was worse to come.

Every argument led her to ring my psychiatrist. One argument was about our landscaping. We disagreed about the sprinklers. I said to my shrink "so I should alter my med dose because I disagree with her about using a certain type of sprinkler. This is a classic example of the mentally ill being screwed by narcissistic partners.

Unfortunately the vulnerable will remain just that. If they are lucky enough to find another partner (as I did and remarried) that doesn't take advantage of ones good nature then all well and good. But it is the nature of some that seize opportunities and run with then....at our cost.

Tony WK

[BKYTH]

This is a post that resonates with me. Lies can generally be better faced than the truth. Civilization as you rightly observe in my opinion is more an intellectual indulgence than a reality. Many people go to their grave without ever actually having been seen nor heard.                                                                                                                                         Many people are more interested in the football score or the lotto numbers than in the fact that a child dies every five seconds from malnutrition while research is underway to develop a means of producing artificial blood because enough donors don't exist to keep supplies at a necessary level.                                                                          Such a list is potentially endless and one is left to question the macabre utterance that one hears about the 'preciousness of human life'. Perhaps it to hopeful to expect people in general or society at large to expose the myths that underpin the actual nature of the human condition.                                                                                                             The profits of the pharmaceutical industry as any other industry that constructs itself around human misery are to be expected as 'survival of the fittest' becomes 'exploitation of the vulnerable'. Society at heart is itself barbaric and hypocritical and cannot bring about the changes required to make itself a better world for those who inhabit it.                                                                                                                                                                              While what I have said seems grim I can only console myself in the thought that I must accept reality as it is and not as I would want it. And further, demand of myself that I represent that 'better world' as best I can while not failing to recognize any malignancy of spirit within myself which is symptomatic of that which I condemn.              Philip.

[fearlessfly777]

Hello Missmia

You've been through a hell of a lot and I am so very sorry that you have experienced such horror.

I wish I could have been there to protect you, to encourage you and to acknowledge you. 

Much lovexx

[BKYTH]

MY post was meant for Missmia. Philip.