Hi Bernard, nice to see you back. I know some people come here and only argue it seems, but it’s unavoidable. But I hope some people get some more out of this place... I’m not lecturing Daniel what to feel or when to feel, I emphasize the importance of feeling. It’s up to him how and when and I tried to say that there are no limits to feeling. As you say, he knows that already, but we live in a society where almost everything is set up NOT to feel. Go to a doctor and chances are that you get pills to repress those feelings. Go to a therapist, and chances are you talk away the feelings. So even if Daniel or anyone else knows intellectually that it’s important to feel, it cannot hurt to emphasize it.
I agree that a public forum is not the best place to expose your vulnerable feelings. At first I mentioned
http://www.topica.com/lists/ourchildhood.int to Daniel because it’s a protected forum where like-minded people can be found and some of them may offer some help. I assume Daniel isn’t interested in it and I see now that he has had experiences with the Primal-Support-Group mailing list and refers to the people there being stuck in primal masturbation. I say that the majority of people there, make Primal the way of life, almost like a new religion, instead of a tool to repair their lives. I also believe that the administrator Pat doesn’t have a full grasp of what Primal Therapy should be like. But that’s another topic.
Daniel, whatever is written here, isn’t going to change 35 years of suffering. If words would do that, then surely the entire world would have been healed already. People have had different experiences in their childhoods. Some people have had enormous prenatal and post natal trauma and suffered great neglect during their first year(s). Others have had suffered terrible teen years, some even both. But here at the forum, words is all we have but it's not a replacement for life. At best it's a tool - one out of many tools hopefully - to repair your life and life in general, at worst it's a place to vent and act out.
Saying to me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, isn’t going to help anyone. You can quote the exact words that didn’t make sense to you. It’s okay if people disagree, but to disagree with every person seems to me that you re-create the struggle that you had with your parents who disagreed with everything you said and did. It’s terrible to have been stuck with parents like that, but you’re never too old to rebel. If they feel as if they are still looking over your shoulder, kick their asses. Any man who doesn’t rebel against his father, is destined to become him. Your voice belongs to you.
A woman once told me that she knew a woman who spent 15 years projecting her anger onto her enlightened witness before she was ready to project it on her own parents. To me that sounded as an awful amount of time and an incredible sacrifice for the person who helped her this way. It shows how strong repression and defense can be. What a life to be someone's toxic waste basket for 15 years. This is what happens when 2 damaged people - each in their own different way - try to heal.
Another thing I noticed is that some people take offense to ‘lecturing’ here, but reply with lecturing as well. Some people, like Mimsy – with all her good intentions – are against critique but criticize others (me in this case). These things happen but as far as I can tell, they don’t overshadow this forum. If you look at other forums, such as those about politics, or global warming, then this forum is like a walk in the park. People do make mistakes though and let’s take care not to repeat them.
Janov doesn’t describe how to do therapy or how to help yourself. But Jean Jensson and Stettbacher do, and you can use Janov's books and integrate them with the others to work on your life. And that’s why it’s important that Alice Miller got critique for the way she has spoken out against them because people do or did listen to her (that’s what every writer wants – you don’t have to deny being a guru about it).
Daniel, could you quote Janov where he says or it shows ‘being mean to a person in pain as retaliation for the same having been done to’? Have you tried seeking
bioenergetic therapists that skip the talk, if you feel that words won’t help you? Some therapists wave away their fees if you cannot afford it. It’s shocking though to read how you were tortured by a so-called pseudo primal therapist who left you alone with unprotected pain. Did you report him?
Harigata wrote:I want others to suffer to. I want other people to go through the same, to feel what it's like to be buried alive.....
If this is not re-creating a struggle, then I give up. Making others to suffer is giving in to abuse. It’s the vicious circle of violence. And you don’t have to take my word for it for a guy who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but when I was 21, I lived with my parents again, without a job and eventually without income. I had to sell anything that had value, just to buy basic necessities. I usually didn’t come out of bed before noon because I had no clue how to live on. I escaped in dreams when I was asleep. Before I came in touch with the books of Miller and Janov, I had even taped black plastic in front of my roof window, taped the digits on my clock and VCR, just because I wanted it pitch-dark at night, I was sensitive to any distraction. I didn’t know what it meant, but eventually, after some months, maybe even half a year, I could remove the plastic and feel good about the light. I also went to a therapist for a while, who kept asking me: What do you want? And I kept telling him: I don’t know what I want, I know what I DON’T want and that was much more important to me. His distraction therapy didn’t work on me as if I had a button in my head that I could just push. So at the end he told me I had to accept I had a terrible life and that I would always suffer. I told him it was my last day with him. Then he drew a coffin on his white board. That’s your future, he told me, if you going to leave. 13 years later and I can say that I’m alive and well, without the help of any therapist, but due to my belief that suffering is not self-evident. No one is doomed for life, unless you believe in the devil. And I know how you feel about smashing up your place. You see, I’ve done that as well, and it didn’t help. I needed to see the chaos around me to realize my life was chaos.
People once needed their repression in order to survive but as adults a sudden exposure to it is dangerous. I don’t think there’s a risk for that here. People here have control over it. If it gets too much, they leave or take a break. No one here is forcing anyone to take more pain then they can handle. This is not a course or a therapist session that people pay big money for so they are forced to continue coming.
All I can say is that if you haven't found what you've looking for, keep looking. You don't want the assholes in this world come out as the winners.
Dennis
Everything I write here is my opinion, not absolute truths but I don't want to start every sentence with[i] in my opinion[/i]...