Welcome my stolen life
Thursday August 21, 2008
Dear Alice Miller and team, in the last couple of days I have come to realize with my entire system the logic behind my alienation from my own feelings, hence the cause of the emotional confusion, depression and loneliness in my adult life. My parents made it a fundamental duty for me to abandon my own feelings. Through their actions they demonstrated over and over again that there was no room at all in the world for my anxiety and anger (feelings which were fully natural responses as my grandfather was a compulsive child abuser and my parents totally unable to stand up for themselves or for me). Neither was there any room for positive and spontaneous feelings like enthusiasm and happines, wich were likely to be mocked, probably because they reminded my parents of what they had lost on the way. They managed to “reprogram” me to put constant effort into hiding and burying my feelings deep inside. They spoke above my head as if my expressions of feeling, which of course grew very rare as I consequentely tried to swallow everything, were disturbed and crazy “fits” or “flings” and a burden to the “poor” busy grown-ups in their everyday life. There simply was no room at all for my true and vital responses to reality, no room for ME. It makes me feel so full of sorrow, pity and anger when I realize that my parents, as if it was their most obvious right, stole away my space and room in that way, just because they needed the illusion of having some power and control over their lives. It is so good to begin to grasp and remember how there was established a logic of “me or them”, meaning that I had to abandon myself for their sake, as it were to “save” them. They literaly lived instead of me. How could one possibly respect, treasure and believe one’s own feelings when everything around you tells you that you commit a crime against your parents and people in general by sensing your feelings and expressing them? By breathing freely? What is left for you when it is made your number one task and duty to be a good boy and “cut away” yourself for the sake of the poor, needy grown up? What aggravates me the most, the main reason for the rage I feel boiling inside, is how NATURAL the ones in power, my parents, managed to make their emotional crime appear to me, the child. As if everything was their selfevident, undisputable right, so to speak granted by reality itself. Although my father is dead and I hardly have any contact at all with my mother today, my entire body longs to scream out against the regime they, like invaders, established in my system. It is so good to begin to realize that the feelings in my body are fully just and right, essential for my whole life and existence. And that I am fully just in being a enthusiastic perpetrator against their disgusting law, the law of “never being me”. Now, it is as if I can look forward to every new breath and upcoming emotion in my body, experiencing them as a victory for freedom, tearing down their crazy, abusive and dangerous regime part after part. Being in my mid 40s, it’s like facing a new life. Thank you so much for your work, and for making me feel that I’m not alone at all in this battle. J
AM. Thank you so much for your letter, for expressing your feelings and thoughts so clearly and directly. Everything you write makes sense to me. Your destiny is not rare, I think that almost all of us were treated like you describe, feelings were forbidden, the life has been stolen from us. But it is rare that someone discovers this as you did, most people live in a total denial. You seem, however, to reclaim your stolen life and there is no dougt that you will succeed, cerrtainly not without sadness and rage. I congratulate you. Alice Miller wrote this message.