Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Before You Switch Your Child
Please consider what the long-term effects might be. Consider your responsibility to their success and health before you begin. Success is not the ability to obey you at all times.
In my opinion, as a parent my job was to help my son become a capable and happy adult, and to help him find the good stuff. In turn, he showed me the new things, it was a wonderful experience. It's not easy. You find all you do is keep them from jumping off cliffs, for the most part.
Hey, I've seen that one, careful... slow down, have a good look first.
The world we were all born into can be strange and difficult, and we as adults don't always know our own way around things, so it's hard to give good directions to success to your children.
A beating won't help. A beating is not a swat on the butt, "stop that, go to your room. I'll deal with you in a minute," because you needed immediate control of the situation.
Beating of children from my experience is a long-lasting, regular and/or ritualized process. (meaning there are specific tools, repeated phrases, and tested techniques that are repeatedly used and quantified for results). They do suggest you use it regularly, not as a response to a specific case of misbehavior.
One good way to tell if it was the folks I knew: Does the child look like they were attacked with a Cuisinart? That's probably them.
Abuse like this has strange aftershock-like ramifications from the child's point of view, in mind and body. It is not possible to make them a better person by abusing them.
Before I explain what it's like, let me say I love my mother. She taught me patience, love, empathy, understanding, yoga, and how to inquire rather than fear. When you do that the ball is in your own court. I knew she wanted me to be happy in life; she made sure I knew it. She was paralyzed and in the hospital when this was happening. When she got out it got fixed.
They begin with a very sharp, shocking set of blows. You tense your muscles as a natural reaction. You expect the entire whipping to be that tough, but after a few strong smacks you become numb in the area they're hitting.
I was expected not to cry, complain, or speak of the process at all. If you cry, they cover your mouth or push your face into a pillow, which makes it difficult to breathe. I had seen this done to others and expected it if I cried out.
You will absolutely learn not to express your pain to them. It's useless to cry out, nobody will help you in any way. The truth is, expression of pain encourages them to hit you harder.
Twenty to thirty minutes into the session the world turns to red and shadow. Sounds in general become terribly distorted, and a hollow roaring begins in your head.
They said that the roaring was the devil was speaking to me. So, mentally I tried to ignore the noise at first and asked god for help. Then I started to feel detached. There was nothing I could do to stop the process. Even if you wear one out, they'll pass you to the next one.
The new caner's arm is always fresh, and they will usually pick a new spot, as the various areas become numb. The front above the waist was off limits. So, only the back, legs, butt and feet (tops and bottoms) were the acceptable targets.
After a while you forget what the world was like without pain. You forget who you are, who they are, everything but the searing in your body and the terrible roaring in your head like a wind tunnel.
You're not sure where the lash is. It's everywhere at once. It's the air on your skin. It's like the Balrog is attacking you.
When the cold comes you black out. I don't know if they continue to beat you after that.
The world is blurry red and shadow for days afterward, literally it looks like red and various shades of brown-gray and black there are no other colors. The sky is brown-gray. You body is full of spiky sensations like knives stuck in you.
You DO NOT SQUIRM. You barely sit, unless they got your feet. In which case, you have to decide between the feet and the butt as to what pain you can tolerate better. The roaring in your head comes and goes. You move carefully, but not so carefully that it shows.
After a week, five days maybe, the world starts to sharpen up, but now it's just black and white or brown and yellow. It's not like TV there are not that many shades of gray. The roaring is much less frequent. The pain is more like bone pain than superficial or muscular.
Over the next few days the nerve endings start coming back to life, so you get the sensation of little electric shocks and springs popping in various muscles that used to be numb on the surface. In 10 days or so you can see color again, but the world is progressively darker each time they beat you.
The bruises go from blue to purple, then they turn yellow in the middle. It was scary when they turned green. You fear gangrene if you know what it is.
Your view of the world changes over time, visually and mentally. It's blurry, out of frame, as if you're not really in it for years after it stops. You don't get this way the first time, at least I didn't. It's a cumulative effect.
You begin to want to destroy things, just to get them away from you so you can have a moment's peace (if i could just get rid of this whatever it is I'd be fine). It's not like a childish fit of anger, it's a cold gnawing sensation.
You don't cry. You don't laugh. You fear. You only feel empowered by your ability not to feel anything, physical or emotional, pain or pleasure. You need to become a blank slate for them. That is the demand.
Years later, if you're not like them, you're likely to think destroying yourself might be the answer. We did, but you're not supposed to hurt your family like that - besides, you could have just let them kill you back then.
The process instills a very strong soldier-like response and stiff self-control, but like you are barely hanging on to your aggression. You need the self-control, so you don't do to anyone else what they did to you. You feel you are removing your links to humanity to escape transgression.
It forces a kind of "resistance is futile" point of view on you, as if they've stolen something from you that you can't retrieve. This is particularly true if you see them in public and they are doing well. Depending on the cult, they will probably have minders come and go to check on you if they had you as a young one.
After you've been beaten enough times the sensation of pain itself starts to change shape. You get used to it and you change your reaction to it. It's a sharp knife, that you think you might also like to use for yourself, even if you're not sure how to use it yet, because you really know nothing else.
Later they would have introduced me to proper emotional responses by the book, whatever they meant by that. I don't remember what the name of the book was, thought I'm pretty sure they meant literally by the book.
They didn't get that far. My mother removed them as much as she could and allowed me to find my own way back to natural emotional responses.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment