Emotional Chinese finger-trap
A lot of people have told me over the years that I'm an ingrate because I don't want to be comforted (by them, in any conventional way). I've had real trouble explaining why to them, and eventually gave up because trying was too much trouble, and they wouldn't listen and wouldn't believe it. Well, it's caused me trouble again, so once more (sigh), let me try to explain:
I've written about my adoptive mother before here. Essentially, with respect to the way she treated me, she vacillated between hatefulness and overeffusive, grabby attempts at conciliation or comfort or some other, normally positive behavior. Her hatefulness was at times terrifying -- it was never appropriate, and never explained. It varied between "mere" sarcasm, sly cruelty, vicious bullying, and behavior which for all the world might be seen in someone who was possessed. I had reason to fear her, not just for my own sake, but for that of anyone I cared about.
But her "positive" behavior was in many ways worse, because I had no idea how to respond to it -- or was afraid to show my honest feelings. For one thing, she was a child molester, and I was her favorite target, and much of the time I was so revolted by her that I wanted to die, just so I'd never have to go through it again. For another, she was a flatterer, a liar, and, when it came to children, a seducer, and I could never trust anything she had to tell me or her apparently positive behavior toward me. And just the idea of being close to her sickened me -- permanently so. From babyhood on, I had to endure her pawing and attempts to molest me, attempts disguised as affection or a compliment, and by the time I was in my teens, I had become permanently unable to stand attempts by anyone to comfort or compliment me, or try to get close to me in any way, regardless of whether their intent was benign or otherwise. People despised and loathed me for it, and hated me for my "mistreatment" of my adoptive mother and inability to stand being around her, and they despised me because of my "weird" behavior toward others, because I couldn't take compliments (flattery) or bear their attempts at affection (molestation).
While he was alive, my adoptive father loathed me because of the way I "treated" my adoptive mother, which made it even worse. I never dared go to him for help and protection from my adoptive mother. I never dared tell anyone about it -- the few times I tried always pulled hell down on my head.
Over the years, I have known too many other people who reinforced what my adoptive mother's behavior did to me. I never had even one real friend until I was almost 30, and those I have had afterward have done their share of it, too.* The only man who ever wanted to marry me was killed in a car accident three weeks before we were to have been married, and from that day on my foster parents in Ventura County, Bill and Virgene Hasting, persecuted me relentlessly, for no reason that ever made sense. I had no social life at all, and no one who would have protected me from any of it. And every single "helping professional" I went to to try to find out why I was so weird and why I had no social life, no one who really cared about it -- and I guarantee that neither my adoptive parents nor the two sets of foster parents I suffered cared about me at all; I was, like other children unfortunate enough to run afoul of them, just something to take out their mental illness on or whatever it was -- added to it and added to it and added to it, world without end, without pity, without mercy, amen, whether it was out of malice (as it was in a couple of cases) or simple incompetence, or because, in those days, you never admitted to being an abused child, because if you did, you risked being put away in some institution for life.
To this day, it's very hard for me to determine whether a compliment is what it seems, or just flattery, and my responses to attempts to comfort me are, more often than not, one or another version of panicked, revolted flight. And that is not something I generally have control over. I can't "just snap out of it" by "putting [my] mind to it," as some have ordered me.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*Such friends have lacked knowledge of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which I have had since I was a child, and didn't know what they were seeing in me until just a few years ago, when I finally knew enough about it myself to be able to explain some of it to them. As a result, much of the time, dealing with me has always been like trying to walk blindfolded through a mine-field for for my friends, because my condition can make it hard to predict when I will blow up, or over what. I can't blame them for this. Rather, society only began to open up about child-abuse in the 1960s; before then, nobody ever talked about it, and if a child became "weird" or "bad" because of what his or her parents or others were doing to it, the child was always blamed for it, often punished for such "misbehavior" by being thrown into juvenile hall or Youth Authority, thus having his or her life ruined forever for the dreadful crime of being an abused child. And even after doctors, judges, probation officers, and others with direct experience of what lies behind apparently senseless "bad behavior" in many cases began admitting child abuse is real, that it is wrong, and that children should be protected from it, the general public took a long time to do so. This parallels the experience of so many of our combat veterans, who never dared reach out for help dealing with the same syndrome in themselves before late in the 20th century, or ever had any fairly effective remedies for its symptoms other than booze until then, when psychiatrists and the pharmacological industry finally began making effective medications for treating its symptoms available to the public. And it also parallels the experience of battered wives, whose agony was not generally made public until the 1970s; even today, judges often refuse to admit as evidence in support of women whose attempts to defend themselves against vicious behavior on the part of their husbands or boyfriends end in the death of the latter and charges of murder against those women a past history of violence on the part of the deceased. Even now, huge numbers of people expect those women -- as they expect battered children and combat veterans -- to keep their chronic agony private, unexpressed in any way, and never, ever reach out to help, and will savagely punish any of them who "cross the line" and try to reach out for real, effective help. That includes many working in such service industries as child protective services, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, judges, probation officers, and others who are supposed to be there to help the helpless, but instead turn on them with a vengeance. And if we try to kill ourselves to get out from under it all, we are told we will go to hell if we ever succeed in our suicide attempts, because God hates us, too.
And because I've been through that same pitiless mill of detestation of victims, all too often, my reflexive responses to the most basic kindnesses offered by others is, are not what those others expected. This, for example, includes attempts to comfort me. Such attempts frequently misfire, with resultant hard feelings all around. So I don't reach out to get comfort. I know it would never do me any good. If one of my posts seems to be reaching out for comfort, assume it isn't. I don't mind a null response, but I can't handle attempts to comfort me, not only because I'll never be able to react to them normally, but because I know how my reactions will be taken, and also know that any explanation I offer at the time will never, ever be accepted by most people. The only ones who instinctively understand are combat veterans, survivors of vicious abuse as children, and battered wives. They do understand, because they've been through it, or because someone dear to them has, such as close friends in a combat unit. There are also those who are aware that maybe attempts to comfort aren't appropriate, even if they don't know why. But most people don't understand, and never will. Hence this post, one more attempt to explain. So if you've tried to offer me comfort and found my reactions less than what you had expected, this is why: I am not normal in that respect. I can't be. Not ever. Any more than someone who is suicidally depressed can "just snap out of it" when commanded to do so by others. If that makes me a freak, or "bad," or otherwise someone you don't want to know, cool, that's your business and your right. As being what I am is mine. And if you wonder why I'm being so "belligerent" here about it, well, chalk it up to my having been kicked out of the species as a baby, and being reminded of it all too often by people who just can't understand why I am the way I am, who are insulted by my "ungrateful" behavior and stalk off in a huff when I try to explain. This tends to ruin one's disposition, you know?
If you run across people like me and want to know how to deal with them without problems, I can't tell you how to achieve a zero-problem level of interactions with them, but there is a way to minimize problems: the same approach as one should use when trying to get out of a Chinese finger-trap. Sometimes doing the exact opposite of what you would think would be a normal response to such people is the best way to deal with them, for whom, say, comfort . . . isn't. If they want comfort, they will ask for it outright. If they don't ask, don't assume that because they are discussing something that has happened to them that anyone else would want comfort over, they want it, too. They'll ask you if they do. They -- we -- are feral creatures that have had too many bad experiences with people, and we want closeness with you only if we make it unequivocally clear that we do. Otherwise, we can usually carry on a civil conversation with you and otherwise interact with you in ways normal to social interactions of the sort seen all the time in public, among groups of people, but any attempt to get close to us when we don't know you well will drive us straight up the wall, and make us react negatively. Like feral cats, if you get too close, we'll growl, then scratch, and then bite. Okay?
I've written about my adoptive mother before here. Essentially, with respect to the way she treated me, she vacillated between hatefulness and overeffusive, grabby attempts at conciliation or comfort or some other, normally positive behavior. Her hatefulness was at times terrifying -- it was never appropriate, and never explained. It varied between "mere" sarcasm, sly cruelty, vicious bullying, and behavior which for all the world might be seen in someone who was possessed. I had reason to fear her, not just for my own sake, but for that of anyone I cared about.
But her "positive" behavior was in many ways worse, because I had no idea how to respond to it -- or was afraid to show my honest feelings. For one thing, she was a child molester, and I was her favorite target, and much of the time I was so revolted by her that I wanted to die, just so I'd never have to go through it again. For another, she was a flatterer, a liar, and, when it came to children, a seducer, and I could never trust anything she had to tell me or her apparently positive behavior toward me. And just the idea of being close to her sickened me -- permanently so. From babyhood on, I had to endure her pawing and attempts to molest me, attempts disguised as affection or a compliment, and by the time I was in my teens, I had become permanently unable to stand attempts by anyone to comfort or compliment me, or try to get close to me in any way, regardless of whether their intent was benign or otherwise. People despised and loathed me for it, and hated me for my "mistreatment" of my adoptive mother and inability to stand being around her, and they despised me because of my "weird" behavior toward others, because I couldn't take compliments (flattery) or bear their attempts at affection (molestation).
While he was alive, my adoptive father loathed me because of the way I "treated" my adoptive mother, which made it even worse. I never dared go to him for help and protection from my adoptive mother. I never dared tell anyone about it -- the few times I tried always pulled hell down on my head.
Over the years, I have known too many other people who reinforced what my adoptive mother's behavior did to me. I never had even one real friend until I was almost 30, and those I have had afterward have done their share of it, too.* The only man who ever wanted to marry me was killed in a car accident three weeks before we were to have been married, and from that day on my foster parents in Ventura County, Bill and Virgene Hasting, persecuted me relentlessly, for no reason that ever made sense. I had no social life at all, and no one who would have protected me from any of it. And every single "helping professional" I went to to try to find out why I was so weird and why I had no social life, no one who really cared about it -- and I guarantee that neither my adoptive parents nor the two sets of foster parents I suffered cared about me at all; I was, like other children unfortunate enough to run afoul of them, just something to take out their mental illness on or whatever it was -- added to it and added to it and added to it, world without end, without pity, without mercy, amen, whether it was out of malice (as it was in a couple of cases) or simple incompetence, or because, in those days, you never admitted to being an abused child, because if you did, you risked being put away in some institution for life.
To this day, it's very hard for me to determine whether a compliment is what it seems, or just flattery, and my responses to attempts to comfort me are, more often than not, one or another version of panicked, revolted flight. And that is not something I generally have control over. I can't "just snap out of it" by "putting [my] mind to it," as some have ordered me.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*Such friends have lacked knowledge of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which I have had since I was a child, and didn't know what they were seeing in me until just a few years ago, when I finally knew enough about it myself to be able to explain some of it to them. As a result, much of the time, dealing with me has always been like trying to walk blindfolded through a mine-field for for my friends, because my condition can make it hard to predict when I will blow up, or over what. I can't blame them for this. Rather, society only began to open up about child-abuse in the 1960s; before then, nobody ever talked about it, and if a child became "weird" or "bad" because of what his or her parents or others were doing to it, the child was always blamed for it, often punished for such "misbehavior" by being thrown into juvenile hall or Youth Authority, thus having his or her life ruined forever for the dreadful crime of being an abused child. And even after doctors, judges, probation officers, and others with direct experience of what lies behind apparently senseless "bad behavior" in many cases began admitting child abuse is real, that it is wrong, and that children should be protected from it, the general public took a long time to do so. This parallels the experience of so many of our combat veterans, who never dared reach out for help dealing with the same syndrome in themselves before late in the 20th century, or ever had any fairly effective remedies for its symptoms other than booze until then, when psychiatrists and the pharmacological industry finally began making effective medications for treating its symptoms available to the public. And it also parallels the experience of battered wives, whose agony was not generally made public until the 1970s; even today, judges often refuse to admit as evidence in support of women whose attempts to defend themselves against vicious behavior on the part of their husbands or boyfriends end in the death of the latter and charges of murder against those women a past history of violence on the part of the deceased. Even now, huge numbers of people expect those women -- as they expect battered children and combat veterans -- to keep their chronic agony private, unexpressed in any way, and never, ever reach out to help, and will savagely punish any of them who "cross the line" and try to reach out for real, effective help. That includes many working in such service industries as child protective services, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, judges, probation officers, and others who are supposed to be there to help the helpless, but instead turn on them with a vengeance. And if we try to kill ourselves to get out from under it all, we are told we will go to hell if we ever succeed in our suicide attempts, because God hates us, too.
And because I've been through that same pitiless mill of detestation of victims, all too often, my reflexive responses to the most basic kindnesses offered by others is, are not what those others expected. This, for example, includes attempts to comfort me. Such attempts frequently misfire, with resultant hard feelings all around. So I don't reach out to get comfort. I know it would never do me any good. If one of my posts seems to be reaching out for comfort, assume it isn't. I don't mind a null response, but I can't handle attempts to comfort me, not only because I'll never be able to react to them normally, but because I know how my reactions will be taken, and also know that any explanation I offer at the time will never, ever be accepted by most people. The only ones who instinctively understand are combat veterans, survivors of vicious abuse as children, and battered wives. They do understand, because they've been through it, or because someone dear to them has, such as close friends in a combat unit. There are also those who are aware that maybe attempts to comfort aren't appropriate, even if they don't know why. But most people don't understand, and never will. Hence this post, one more attempt to explain. So if you've tried to offer me comfort and found my reactions less than what you had expected, this is why: I am not normal in that respect. I can't be. Not ever. Any more than someone who is suicidally depressed can "just snap out of it" when commanded to do so by others. If that makes me a freak, or "bad," or otherwise someone you don't want to know, cool, that's your business and your right. As being what I am is mine. And if you wonder why I'm being so "belligerent" here about it, well, chalk it up to my having been kicked out of the species as a baby, and being reminded of it all too often by people who just can't understand why I am the way I am, who are insulted by my "ungrateful" behavior and stalk off in a huff when I try to explain. This tends to ruin one's disposition, you know?
If you run across people like me and want to know how to deal with them without problems, I can't tell you how to achieve a zero-problem level of interactions with them, but there is a way to minimize problems: the same approach as one should use when trying to get out of a Chinese finger-trap. Sometimes doing the exact opposite of what you would think would be a normal response to such people is the best way to deal with them, for whom, say, comfort . . . isn't. If they want comfort, they will ask for it outright. If they don't ask, don't assume that because they are discussing something that has happened to them that anyone else would want comfort over, they want it, too. They'll ask you if they do. They -- we -- are feral creatures that have had too many bad experiences with people, and we want closeness with you only if we make it unequivocally clear that we do. Otherwise, we can usually carry on a civil conversation with you and otherwise interact with you in ways normal to social interactions of the sort seen all the time in public, among groups of people, but any attempt to get close to us when we don't know you well will drive us straight up the wall, and make us react negatively. Like feral cats, if you get too close, we'll growl, then scratch, and then bite. Okay?