On something unpleasant

Today I want to discuss something really unpleasant. I want to discuss it because I believe everyone, especially those who have children, have to at least intellectually contemplate this so they may never have to deal with this personally.

One of the most ignorant things I ever heard when I was a kid was a family friend of ours saying that a child from our neighbourhood had lied about being sexually abused. I guess what I found so ignorant about it was the spite (towards the child not the abuser) that she said it with. The story was that a child from our neighbourhood had confessed to her family that years before a male family friend/relative had sexually abused her. The abuser was well-known in the community as a “nice, normal guy”. He had many adult friends, one of which was this woman that said the child was lying, and there was nothing on the surface abnormal about him. The reason this woman said the child must have been lying was because she did not believe that the person named as the abuser looked like a “bad guy”, or that a child could hold a secret for that long, or that no child was “stupid” enough to allow sexual abuse to occur. Those ignorant things are what really stirred in me the need to better educate people on childhood sexual abuse. I can’t imagine anything more damaging than allowing people to believe that children are sexually abused because of the child’s own fault.

I wasn’t able to completely put my thoughts together on what exactly about childhood sexual abuse was not properly understood, and I guess I never should have expected to because the information was hard to come by and the topic is generally avoided. Then as a medical student some years ago when I was doing my mental health rotation, one of our supervisors suggested I read an article about the childhood sexual abuse accommodation syndrome. We were on a ward where the majority of patients were women with personality disorders, and almost invariably, a childhood history of sexual abuse so he thought it beneficial to understand a little of their background. The article was written in 1983 by Ronald Summit and I’ll briefly summarise what it talks about.

The childhood sexual abuse accommodation syndrome describes in a sort of timeline how the sexual abuse of children comes about and then the social and family-dynamic consequences of it. The process is generally broken down in five steps: 1) Secrecy, 2) Helplessness, 3) Entrapment and accommodation, 4) Delayed, conflicted and unconvincing disclosure, 5) Retraction.

1) Secrecy.
Who most commonly abuses children? Parents, stepparents, uncles, siblings, close family friends, teachers, religious ministers, etc. – essentially people in positions of trust to a family. Why they do it is a completely different discussion which I won’t go into here. The general belief is that it’s not a sexual-gratification motive, but rather one of establishing control. I believe it is probably both because generally these “nice people” who wouldn’t hurt a fly (hence their trusted roles in communities) have sexual feelings that for whatever reason are deflected onto children. Maybe they lack self-esteem in approaching other adults for sexual intimacy, maybe they see themselves as children themselves because of their own stunted emotional development, maybe they find the prepubescent physical characteristics of children more arousing than the adult physique, etc. Whatever the reason may be, the factor that unfortunately completes this equation to allow sexual abuse to happen is that children more than just been vulnerable, are also usually actively seeking of affection and from adults – and it is this that paedophiles take advantage of. The child is sworn to secrecy while the abuse goes on, and in return (at least initially) he receives very special and personal attention from their abuser. The secrecy of it all is perpetuated by the fact that the abuser either directly threatens harm to the child or family, or it is understood that if he/she discloses the abuse that he/she will generally face negative consequences of the likes of separating a family unit, admitting “wrong-doing”, facing shame in revealing the details of the abuse, etc.

2) Helplessness.
As a consequence of the sworn secrecy, the child is then locked into a helpless situation where he/she can’t tell anyone of the abuse and is also too physically and/or psychologically immature to fight off the abuser. A child may not like being hurt or sexually humiliated, but he also has a sense of not wanting to hurt the parent/friend/sibling, etc. that is abusing them. Children are way more self-sacrificial than we realize. On the other hand, it’s also possible the child is either precociously or physiologically passing through puberty where the sexual stimulation that the abuser procures for his advantage is also exciting to the child. This is an absolutely normal physical response, but one that the abuser will use to try to justify the abuse and may also extend the period of time the abuse occurs for. The child will eventually experience guilt but finds himself in a position where confessing the abuse also feels like admitting wrongdoing, and experiencing shame as a result of this. In this helpless situation the abuse is able to persist.

3) Entrapment and accommodation.
A person caught in a situation that they can’t physically escape from or stop, naturally develops psychological defences that allow them to distance themselves from the abuse. Children, even very young children, can learn to disassociate from unpleasant realities by psychologically separating their external/physical experience from their internal world. These defence mechanism are what allows the child to survive, but they often will then extend into other aspects of the child’s life, and will often stick with them through to adulthood. A child can eventually become an adult that is difficult to engage emotionally, that flees from emotionally-confronting situations like romantic relationships. Also, the abuse itself can become the punishment the child feels they deserve because they internalize their involvement in a “bad” situation as being a result of themselves being bad. People can go on for years perpetually recreating their childhoods in order to punish themselves, to attempt to “fix” a previous pattern (and inevitably instead repeating it), and also recreating the situations they know they can survive even though these situations were never pleasant. As an example of this, consider the fact that most people that were abused in childhood were often abused by more than one aggressor. Were they asking for it? No, of course not! But behaviourally they had come to know techniques (perhaps sexually-arousing techniques) that they had from personal experience known to please certain adults with paedophilic tendencies. We’ve all known of a precocious child and yet understood that they are a child and their behaviour was not something to take advantage of. Imagine a similar child who is only recreating what a previous abuser had “taught” them, and incidentally in their community encounters another abuser. A child may enter one after another child-abuser relationship. The child’s behaviour becomes both shaped by and perpetuates a life of abuse.

4) Delayed, conflicted and unconvincing disclosure.
Eventually a child, or more commonly an adult, will confess past sexual abuse. This is usually the first step in the healing process, which is why it is such a shame that most people don’t get past this step. The reason most people do eventually confess is not to seek punishment for the abuser but rather as a cathartic experience to free themselves from internal conflict. This is one thing that the adult parent or caretaker often misunderstands and for that reason many children are thought to be “making up stories” about a stepparent/sibling/teacher, etc. People also question the person’s confession because they don’t believe the abuser, such a trusted community member, would be capable of taking advantage of a child for sexual gratification; or they don’t understand why a child would delay this confession. This last reason is so hurtful because it is such a self-centered reason. The adult caretaker to whom the confession is made has certain concepts of themselves, as we all do. They believe themselves to be approachable, trustworthy, caring, protective of the child, and also with good judgement in the people they associate with and allow near their child. For this person to believe the child’s story is also to question their own integrity in their child-rearing abilities, to allow themselves to share in the blame. Of course, this is not the case! The true fact is that the abuser abuses the child AND the caretakers’ trust. A caretaker may seek to know exact details of acts committed and will interrogate the already ashamed and frightened child for this embarrassing information. The child, in turn, as a result of previous disassociation techniques that allowed them to survive the abuse, may not even be able to recall exact details, and so the child’s testimony is considered unreliable by questioning adults. In all, at a time of such crisis, blame is what is thrown around rather than proceeding from them on to soothe the child who is facing all sorts of new conflicts now too.

5) Retraction.
The family and/or the community is thrown into turmoil. People side with either the child or the abuser and seek to punish one or the other. Others disagree in the disclosure altogether because it may tarnish a respected member of society’s reputation. The child, as he has learnt before that he is ‘bad’ and brings about ‘bad’ things, believes the whole turmoil is his sole fault for disclosing what he could have continued to keep quite. As I mentioned before, children can be way more self-sacrificial than we realise, and as such a large proportion of the children who once admitted childhood sexual abuse, will then go on to retract their confession in order to return order, trust, and harmony to a family or community. It’s sad because the story people come to conclude is that there was a child who accused someone of sexually abusing them, but then he confessed he was lying about it all. That to me, is the sad thing about how misunderstood this issue is.

Thanks for reading. And, please, keep this in mind if you’re ever in a position to help a child or someone who has gone through this hell.

On integrity

The floods in Queensland... What can I possibly tell you that you wouldn’t have already seen in a news broadcast somewhere or maybe even experienced personally? Well, the thing most people have been commenting on is about the great assistance that is being provided not just monetarily but also in physical labour. People have been impressed with the overwhelming assistance absolute strangers are lending each other following the devastation from the floods. These aren’t just emergency personnel or paid workers, but just random other people from everywhere and anywhere who have been moved to lend a hand. Why is this such a newsworthy observation? Why is it that to share human compassion, to empathise, to feel compelled to “do good” such a novel thing?

It’s a novel thing because it is not a common occurrence in this world. It’s not a common occurrence in this or any other nation or town. I guess you could say it should be because it seems like such a logically human thing to do, but the truth is that as a humanity we rarely allow ourselves the opportunity to act humanely. In an earlier post I’ve already discussed how things like consumerism and the personalisation of everything have contributed to our drift away from behaving traditionally human, i.e. the things that impress us now when we observe it: selflessness, compassion, personal sacrifice, etc.

I remember reading in Mark DeMoss’ book ‘The Little Red Book of Wisdom’ about this thing called integrity. It says, “Integrity is not what we do when it serves us. It is who we are in the dark and how we treat people who we cannot benefit from”. It’s most probably a reworking of another quote, but the idea is the same. James D. Miles, for example, said “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him”. So what is it about this thing called integrity, this human character? Well, the thing is during many natural disasters, during war-time devastation, and during political or social unrest there have been acts worse than the initial assaults observed: people looting, stealing, taking advantage of the lawless state and taking advantage of their peers’ vulnerability. It doesn’t just happen sometimes, it happens all the time without a doubt, and it’s always sad to see.

I think big congratulations should go out to ALL the people who lent their assistance in the post-flood clean up, both paid and unpaid workers. Money could not compensate enough even those who received salaried payments for their bit in the rebuilding. I know the council road workers, those working for the electricity companies, cleaners, retailers and many more people who are at times described as having “menial” jobs have really put an incredible effort in, beyond description, often working around the clock when they could have just as easily gone home to their families to be comforted. To me, that is integrity; that is a great character trait. Don’t get me wrong, though, those that did go home to their families to provide for them, to comfort them, to assist them personally are equally virtuous because I can’t imagine any of them having gone home in cowardice when they had their children and families to tend to. A big thank you and big congratulations to all those that assisted in one way or another.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great...” – Luke 6:32-36.

On modern society... (not the Unabomber’s Manifesto, I promise)

Barry Schwartz, an American psychologist, has a theory that the increased choice in our current society has spurred on our current state of general dissatisfaction, negativity - our modern “great depression”, if you will. When he speaks of increased choices he usually means the increased choice in commercial product varieties. For example, there are now more than a dozen water varieties; some from this or that spring, some in this or another bottle, etc. In the movie (or book) ‘Fight Club’ one of the characters discusses this society's problems this way: “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off”.

There was a time when only one company made tissue paper – and people embraced it. Tissue paper had a use, it did its job, and people were satisfied that they could clean up their spills or wipe their nose, etc. Then a variation was made to the tissue paper, now you could get it in 2-ply, 3-ply, scented, non-scented, big pack, pocket-sized pack, in white, in blue, etc. etc. People started noticing that this brand or this particular size pack was “better” than the other, the new designs better than the old, that this one was more economical, that that one was sturdier. All of a sudden it became easier to be dissatisfied with the product even though it was still fulfilling its same purpose: cleaning up spills, soaking up snot, or whatever one may use a tissue for. Now, this isn’t a discussion about technological progress – which is essential – and was probably better dealt by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who’s vision to return society to a better place was to destroy all current technologies, political and commercial systems. His reasoning was to start back from scratch, from somewhere near pastoral times where small self-sufficient communities produced and traded fairly, before the demise into our current commercial system. He had a point, but I think technology has its place and it’s not that that I’m discussing.

I think the "problem" that increased choice, increased variety, has created has more to do with the general idea that is used to promote new and variant products. We are told things are better with this product, our lives happier with this one, this one will make us more attractive, that one is better for the environment, this one is faster, etc. While promoting these products we are made to believe that what we have currently, or what we are lacking, is a bad thing, an old and outdated thing, a thing that must be disliked (in preference of the new product). What is inadvertently also been promoted is dissatisfaction with our current situation or state of being. In my opinion the decline in human morale is more related to the fact that we stopped being satisfied. And we stopped being satisfied not only with our consumer products but also with ourselves for not being able to afford them, for not looking like the TV personalities that use that amazing (and expensive) hair product or plastic surgeon, for not feeling like the person on TV who drinks that soft-drink feels, etc. We are sold dissatisfaction and so we take on new and uncharacteristically human pursuits. No longer are we satisfied with health, food, and shelter, but now we feel motivated to want to earn more money, work longer hours, make other social sacrifices in order to be able to afford “happiness”.

Another thing that has happened in the process of the industrial/commercial progress in our society is we’ve become more self-centered, and maybe even more selfish. One thing some of us older ones may remember is the way things, especially electronics such as computers, used to come in a version of ‘one-size-fits-all’. And all did buy the same product and it had to fit, it had to because there wasn’t another version, you made do. Then progressively more things became customizable. You could adjust or modify things so they could suit your particular abilities or needs better. Small and larger/wider patterns of clothing became available, different fonts could be used, etc. And then more varieties of things became available that could vary not just to suit your needs, but also to accommodate your preferences. You could buy things in the colours you prefer, with the sound you like, etc. The ability of products to be customized, to be able to be “personalized” was promoted not just as a desirable feature, but an essential one. It was essential that the customer be right, that they be made to feel all-important, that they be made to believe that all their desires must be met – and that this particular product was just the one to do that. The thing is that, again, this message got so hammered into us, that we are all-important and our desires must be met, that we came to regard ourselves (individually) as our number one priority, setting aside things that for a long time held the members of our society connected: friendship, family, camaraderie, and sharing.

Barry Schwartz proposes that the excessive amount of choices in our society has overwhelmed us so much, raised our expectations to levels so high, that nothing will ever meet them and that this, in turn, has lead to such generalized dissatisfaction and hopelessness in our society that it spreads even to the way we interact with each other. Unlike Ted Kaczynski, though, I don’t think the solution to this problem lies in destroying our current industrial/commercial system, but rather in a return to realizing that we are still human beings with human needs and human emotions, and not just consumers.

On love and fear

I'm heartbroken again this week so there's only one thing on my mind: porn... No, I mean love ! :)

...And the way that fear can really screw up lives. Below are a few stories that come to mind when I think about this topic. You may think of these as examples.

1.
The first story starts like this: This guy and girl fall in love. That happens the usual way it normally does, according to the same standard sequence: exposure, proximity, knowledge, understanding, affection, intimacy, and, eventually, love. Nothing new there. But there’s a key point in the ‘knowledge’ stage that the girl missed in the boy’s story: he can’t biologically father children, and what she wants more than anything in the world is to be a mother. But they’ve fallen in love, they love each other and love can conquer anything, right? Right? Wrong. Love sometimes can’t overcome fear. The guy starts freaking out about the girl constantly speaking about their future, their children, their life together as a family, etc. He sees the girl’s eyes beam with excitement and hope and expectation – expectations he can’t meet. So one day he tells her the part they skipped, that he can’t biologically father her children. Now, the girl having fallen absolutely in love with this guy, loving every part about him, loving him in the way only real love can be truly accepting, she tells him it doesn’t matter. Either they will find a way around his “problem” medically, they will adopt a child, or she will accept her life’s gift as loving that man she so whole-heartedly wants to share her life with. Happy endings seem in favour, right? Not once this horrible thing called fear sets in. The boy has his doubts. He loves this girl, he thinks he does, he would do almost anything for her, but he’s unsure about ending his singledom at such a young age. Of course, he doesn’t even understand this himself. He believes he truly loves her. He believes he is giving his all to this girl. He believes it will never work out. Eventually he tells this girl everything that is in his heart, everything except that truth he doesn’t even yet understand: he is scared of changing his life for a new one, even if that new life includes the person who loves him most in the universe. So when the boy tells the girl that he has to leave her, to end this once-great thing, he tells her that he loves her and that it is for that reason that he can’t be with her. Yes, fear does make us believe words like these are true. He tells her he wants her to be happy, to have her children like she previously planned, to have all she wants. He wants her happiness so much he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness in exchange for her fulfilling all her dreams. He doesn’t hear her say that it doesn’t matter, that the dream has changed, that he has now become an essential priority in her life without which the rest of it doesn’t make sense - with or without the children she (before meeting him) so badly wanted. He continues to tell her that it is LOVE that is forcing him make this decision, he tells himself this so often too that it feels like the truth. And that’s what fear can do to you; it’s like the devil disguising himself as an angel of light. It can make you believe that your actions are actually motivated by love and not that soul-sucking fear that ruins so many wonderful opportunities in this life.

2.
The second story is a little different. Here we have a woman of 27 years old. She is a girl who got used to always being the winner. She had the job she wanted, the apartment she wanted, the money she wanted, etc. She had everything except that thing she always wanted: to be loved by someone. Of course she didn’t like this because she wasn’t used to not having what she wanted and because life can be pretty lonely all by yourself. So one day she meets this guy who agrees to go out with her. They have a good time, he’s a nice person, and they share a lot of similar interests. She convinces herself that this guy is “the one” and so she does everything she can to secure him. She pleases him in every way he needs and wants. He doesn’t take advantage of her; no, he’s actually a nice guy, but she becomes too focused on convincing him that he must be the one that she starts scaring him away. Now, his fear isn’t so irrational because she’s quickly changing from the girl he was initially attracted to into this desperate girl he had no idea existed under that same skin. She starts smothering him with affection, wanting constant attention, feeling rejected and lashing out against him when she doesn’t get it, and basically overwhelming him in her “love”. Eventually he, of course, gets so scared of what she’s become and will become later on that he leaves her. That’s not irrational, the fear that killed the love in this situation was not that. The girl’s fear of being alone, of continuing lonely, of dying alone and without anyone was what killed it. She let this fear overwhelm her so much that it caused her to destroy her chances at having the very same thing she desired most: love, unconditional and undying love.

3.
Did you ever read that story ‘Oranges are Not the Only Fruit’ by Jeannette Winterson? The third story is about this – and this book was based on a true story so let me orientate you a little if you haven’t read it yet. It’s about this girl, a nice little white girl with freckles who come from a small village in England and who has a father that is a preacher. The whole family is quite religious – no, actually, VERY religious. They go to meetings several times a week, they sing hymns together, and every family has the aim that the boys of the family will become ministers and all the girls will grow up to be missionaries. The rule book says they have to marry another person from their faith, and, of course, this is so ingrained into everyone at such a early age that everyone wants this too. Anyhow, the thing with this girl is she meets another girl at a church meeting but this other girl is a little more risqué. Naturally, she develops an attraction towards this girl because she’s everything the good little church girl isn’t: confident, self-assured, brave, and daring. The friendly attraction develops into a crush and, slowly, into love. And basically that’s the premise of the book: two devoutly Christian girls having a love for each other that the rulebook condemns. So initially the girls embrace the challenge, they believe love isn’t wrong despite gender or religious creed, they believe THEY can make it. And, of course, it isn’t easy because it’s a small rural town, it’s the 1970s or so, there’s the “God will punish me; I’m going to go hell for this” thing, there’s the “my family will hate me for it” thing, there’s the “this isn’t normal (aka common)” thing. But they give it a go, and things aren’t easy but the girls truly are in love -or at least one of them is- and it’s worth it! Now, let me return to that statement of ‘at least one of them is’. What I mean to say is that perhaps they were both truly in love or maybe the good-girl fell in love but the other didn’t or vice versa, the result either way is the same: they (or at least one of them) allowed themselves to be defeated by fear. The end of the story is that the two girls separate, the ‘bad-girl’ to a life with a man and a kid, etc. The other girl moves on because what else can you do? You either fight to defend your team, your unit, or there is nothing there worth fighting for. At one point one of the girls let her fear of rejection from her family or her religious affiliates or God or society overshadow this thing she once claimed to feel: love. Or maybe it was even her own fear of letting another being into her world, her own need for control and self-sufficiency that scared her into cowardice. Either way, again, fear has kept two perfectly deserving human beings from experiencing this great blessing from God that is love.

4.
The last story is a rather common one. Basically, this boy falls in love with this girl and the girl, because she is bored in her life, decides to go along with this ‘love story’. They start dating, sleeping together, hanging out for extendedly longer and longer periods of time, etc. Eventually he reaches the stage when he is sure he is in love with her so he tells her so. He says the first “I love you”. She doesn’t know yet that they’re more than just words, she doesn’t yet know what love in any form means at all, so she says it back to him too. He believes it! So they go on as if ‘in love’. Now, while the guy has gone on in his head planning his and this girl’s lives together, she hasn’t stopped living hers the way she was before. She is still sexually-involved with other acquaintances, she still uses drugs to numb the pain of her troubled childhood, she still plans to move away overseas (with or without the boy in question). Of course, he doesn’t know this. So eventually it all falls apart when the boy naturally finds out. It falls apart because the girl let it. This girl had never known a loyal love, never experienced real love from someone who wasn’t trying to just take advantage of her, and she hadn’t yet learnt to love herself. One thing she did know very well was fear, to run from that which seems frightful and with potential to leave you vulnerable and hurt, to have a back-up or escape plan to avoid this, to not allow yourself to not be in control in the situation. This thing her boyfriend spoke about, this “love”, required self-sacrifice not just survival. It required trust, which she had taken from her from a very early age. It required a little courage to just allow things to evolve, but she had a desperate need for control if she was to avoid her childhood repeating itself. Underneath it all she did one day hope that she would either learn to be purely self-reliant with no actual need for other human beings in her life, or that she would meet someone who wasn’t like all the people that had betrayed her trust in the past. But the possibility of both those things was scary and so she ran. The boy got over it – because, seriously, no-one ever really dies from heartbreak.

Why am I telling you these stories? Because I’m heartbroken.
Some people when they leave you will tell you that they will never love again. They tell you this as if it mattered. It doesn’t. As long as you’re alive, there’s always the possibility of falling in love again. And it doesn’t matter! Who you love only matters to the person you love and there’s no shame in loving again, the same way there is no honour in not loving again. There’s the possibility of anything in this world, why not love? It’s great!

Thanks for reading.