Another point of view on Shunning. And shunning vs. no contact

[Copabanana]

When we grow up that way, we think that is how the world works.

Yes. That there is not commitment or loyalty or fidelity or fealty. There is no constancy of caring or protection. No promise that means anything at all. No clarity of meaning or intention. Confusion and emotion and vendetta, whether conscious or not.

We don't understand how to respond to disagreement. We think it is the beginning of shunning.

Yes. And we may leave first, before it is done to us. Because our understanding of relationship is disappointment and vulnerability.

That the reward for the shunner is to see the hurt and confusion.

I agree with your latter point. That the win for the abuser is power and control. It is a way to defend against their own pain and confusion. To make the child responsible in the abuser's mind but most damaging in the child's own mind for the bad thing that happened. Particularly if the abuser is responsible. It is to deflect responsibility and culpability. Is to avoid the psychological effects of the abuser's own errant conduct and emotions.. To hold the child responsible.

But the child could never allow herself to understand the mental trickery in this maneuver. Because look at the abandonment that it conceals. The child is a sacrificial lamb. And then the child sacrifices herself. And learns to do it over and over again, in response to myriad other situations throughout her life.

Especially damaging is when a situation becomes precarious or even unknowable or tense. The adult child will sacrifice herself in an attempt to restore equilibrium or security. It becomes the worst sort of survival technique. To sacrifice yourself in order to live.

That is alot of power for an abusive parent to wield. Maybe it becomes the abuser's primary power, once we are grown and on our own. That power to divide and ally against.

I think it was always the primary power. More damaging and effective than isolation or corporal punishment or ridicule. All damaging in themselves. But banishing is the worst of punishments, next to death. Banishing from the social group is social death. We were as if killed hundreds and hundreds of times. By our mothers. At home. We had nowhere to go. Nobody else.

Hatred, isolation, the preferred response instead of the feeling other families are raised to know in the core of their beings: We've got your back.

Can you imagine?

We have not had someone who had our backs. We have had divisiveness and outright hatred.

And stilettos in the back, most typically.

I still don't get the win in it for them.

Cedar, you have just described it. The most exquisite of powers.

When I made the decision that my mother should leave my house and go to an assisted living or board and care, it was only reasonable. I had already not worked for 4 months, and 3 months I lived at my mother's home far away from my own. I had devoted my life to my mother and her interests during that time. I only came to the decision because I was being eaten alive by her with my mom in my house. As her servant 24 hours a day. And her caretaker.

When she began screaming and raging at the board and care part of it was desperation and helplessness, and a sense of being abandoned. I know that. But she was using a ploy to which I responded in a devastating way (against myself.) She was doing to me what she had done thousands of times before. Holding me fully responsible for her feelings. Sacrificing me. Attacking me. Rejecting me. Blaming me. Abandoning me. Punishing me. Better it be me, than her.

I forgive her and I forgave her. I knew she was trying to live, and I was her lifeline.

But there was a time she was my lifeline.

And it did not matter to her. Then. I forgive her for that too. She would have done better if she could have. I believe she loved me.

But the thing is, I cannot forgive myself. For almost anything.

You guys. I am going to try to take a timeout from posting. It may be a day or two. It may be longer. I am going to try to focus on getting better. I will be back as soon as I am in a better space. Thank you all.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

You guys. I am going to try to take a timeout from posting. It may be a day or two. It may be longer. I am going to try to focus on getting better. I will be back as soon as I am in a better space. Thank you all.

I will miss you a whole lot, Copa,
but you take as much time as you need.
I hope you feel better real soon.
(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have been researching the mix of feelings attending shunning or being shunned. Shunning, in any of its manifestations, is about power-over. Shunning, in any of its manifestations, is about bullying and ostracizing to establish and stabilize the superiority of the "in group".

That is the "why" behind shunning.

The same "why" we found behind all other forms of abuse.

Rage is something we feel when we are powerless to stop repeated cycles of hurt. When we are victimized, and can neither leave nor take vengeance nor accept what is happening over and over again. The danger in shunning, in any of its manifestations (racism is shunning; politics, as we know it today, is powered by a shunning dynamic; medical care has taken on a hectoring, judgmental tone, as has education), is that the victim will begin to believe he is intrinsically wrong in some way he can no longer name or defend against. In fact, it is those who shun who are, in choosing to foster pain, evil.

Blatantly evil people fomenting hatred, whether in the family unit, or in the complex fabric that comprises social interaction.

Listen to the news. You will see and hear it, the dynamic of shunning. Watch commercials for makeup or clothing or medicines...there it is, again, from a different perspective.

***

In one of the articles I read yesterday, the government having required Jewish people to wear the Star of David was noted as an example of shunning with the authority of the government to legitimize it. This helped establish and solidify the fledgling authoritarian government. That is why it was done. This is an important piece for us all to remember. Once begun, these decisions to exclude and to ridicule take on terrible lives of their own. During that same time in Germany, homosexuals were forced to wear pink triangle armbands. The greater harm done these groups was that, required to wear highly visible signs that their communities had judged them undesirable, they identified themselves as undesirable.

For people of color, the "badge" can be their own skin.

As this dynamic matured in the society, those symbols alone became incendiary things, stoking hatred and divisiveness even in relationships which had been friendly, before. The person wearing the armband was hated on sight. The armband dehumanized the person required to wear it, leaving him vulnerable to every kind of victimization.

And that was its purpose.

The dynamic in our societies makes no more sense than it does, in our families of origin.

But how to fight it?

***

Over time, rage and the continued hurt our families of origin seem determined to inflict through their stalking behaviors especially, can become, for us, deepest depression. The way to take our senses of efficacy back is to begin with small steps. Give ourselves the gift of the way the sun looks. Or the way a song we love sounds. That we love our pets or our children or our mates. (This is a piece of the reason our families of origin lie about and condemn our mates. This is a piece of why they attack when we are vulnerable over the pain we are in when our children are endangered. They operate through the coward's dynamic, victimizing the fallen. They can be seen like jackals in that way.) According to the research I read, this is not going to change.

Therefore, we will need to save ourselves.

This is where Copa's Sleeping Beauty kiss comes in. Copa was very right: We save ourselves through the love we give, through the good we do.

Again, according to the research I read yesterday, this dynamic that works so well for our families of origin is not going to change.

We need to let them go.

Here is a quote from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross:

The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not "get over" the loss. You will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole, again. You will not be the same. Nor would you want to be.

Every day I get up and I don't have my family is a day I am being subjected to abuse.

Yes.

It isn't only the elephant in the room that leaves us feeling exposed when we tell someone that we are not seeing, or are not being seen by, our families. It isn't only the positives that we miss that make us feel badly, it is the good, strengthening, life-affirming things that happen from one minute to the next in healthy families. Catching the eye of someone we love, seeing them smile, bringing them food they like to eat, creating a network of support. The familiar routine of the holidays, of tradition and cherishment over time matters very much ~ even though everyone complains about family and they even make movies about love and frustration and being glad the holidays are over and at the same time, looking forward to next year's holiday.

We don't have that. We are lonely in a peculiarly piercing way almost always, and especially, at the holidays.

I hear what you are saying Serenity about being strong enough within ourselves to acknowledge the dynamic fueling the engines grinding away at the hearts of our families of origin, but it seems very hard for me to admit that it is what it is.

That is where the grieving piece comes in, maybe.

There is some comfort for me in acknowledging the sincerity of what I feel, instead of trying to sidestep it.

Here is a partial quote from memory:

I am ashamed of these tears and yet, at the extreme of my misfortune, I am ashamed not to shed them.

We are alone in some vital, essential way, without our families of origin.

Those dirty rats.

I think it is healthy to define these feelings well enough to funnel anger and rejection through the proper channels. Remember that we will have formed emotional channels that will leave us berating ourselves for our loneliness through the holidays.

That is why it is crucial to come through these times consciously.

A resolution to be kinder to ourselves ~ not kind, but only kinder ~ helped me very much.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

We are lonely in a peculiarly piercing way almost always, and especially, at the holidays.

If we can envision this place, this pain at the heart of us, we can envision it healing. We can envision it strong and coursing with cleansing, oxygen-rich blood.

We can hear the thunder of it; hear the thunder of the good, strong musculature of our hearts.

We are healing. Just like it says in the Kubler-Ross quote, we will most likely be healing all of our lives. Our grief is real. Our losses are real, palpable things. It will make a difference for us to envision these lonely feelings, that pierced to the heart feeling, as what it feels like to heal.

This imagery will make us strong.

Cedar

It is probable that before we recognized these pierced-heart feelings, we funneled them back to hurt ourselves in our self concepts.

Let's not do that, this year.

I was thinking about the way I suffered through all of Thanksgiving. It was the strangest, most hurtful thing, because I did not have words to name it. I had no way to define it.

I had no imagery to heal it.

Now, we do.