Post by primrose on Sept 12, 2011 6:09:16 GMT -5
I've been looking up a few things today about baby colic because it has been coming up for me recently. I had it till I was 3 months and I know my mother was totally overwhelmed by it. I just read the following and it makes SO much sense.
Perhaps your mother gave birth to you and stayed with you. Perhaps she wanted to give you her best, to be a good mother, but . . . you had colic as a baby, and whenever you cried and she couldn’t comfort you, she got triggered and became angry at you. You were terrified! And cried all the more. She got still angrier. You, more frightened. And eventually you became enraged in response to her scaring you so and to your powerlessness in the interaction and relationship. Now, without even being aware of it, you are afraid of mother and all women. And now, without being conscious of it, you are enraged at mother and all women and the power they have. What a vicious cycle has been created here . . . within each of you and between the two of you! And transferred onto other women, as well. And all because your mother, was not able to feel her fear, triggered by your pain, her powerlessness to comfort you, and instead felt and acted out on her anger in response to her fear. Perhaps her fear and anger came from a very similar place in her life experience as your fear and anger. That is, after all, how the vicious cycle moves from generation to generation.
Have you ever seen a tiny baby in a rage? You’re red all over, you flail wildly and cry uncontrollably, and nothing can stop you! Most people don’t know what to do when a baby is frightened and raging . . . so it can evoke their fears of inadequacy, their fears related to control, as well as their own early childhood feelings. The only thing that can be done for you is for a loving, wise, and un-triggered adult to hold you gently and close (but not too close) so you can feel you are being held and not flying out into black space . . . till the cycle runs its course and you fall asleep.
Even with that loving response, you still have rage and fear within you. You still have an involuntary, frightened response to being powerless. You still focus your rage, fear, and powerlessness onto mom and other women.
This is most likely all unconscious. You are not aware of it. You have buried the feelings and memories as much as possible, for they are too much for a little child to bear. But you also are not aware that you transfer all these feelings, memories, and decisions you made at the time onto women in your life later on. Later on could be later on in childhood – like onto a teacher. Later on in your adolescence – onto a girlfriend or a female friend. Later on in your adulthood – onto an employer, a female clergy person, a life partner, or even a daughter.
And it is this unconscious transfer that feeds today’s misogyny most of all. As long as you are unconscious of the root of your hatred of women . . . As long as you are unconscious of the root of your fear of women . . . As long as you are unconscious of the root of your power struggle with women . . . you can find all sorts of excuses for it. All sorts of rationalizations for it. All sorts of philosophical reasons for it. And heaven knows! In a patriarchy in which misogyny is normalized those justifications for it melt into the pot of normalized misogyny.
So . . . if we are going to heal misogyny in our society and our world . . . we – each of us – needs to discover and heal our own hatred, fear, and power struggle with women. Each of us needs to bring it into consciousness and not stop there. Each of us needs to do the very deep, very primal, very feeling work that lies beneath the mind . . . in our hearts, our cells, our early, early childhoods. That way we will not have to think our way through to a response that is not misogynous, while holding the feelings at bay. That way, misogyny will finally be absent from our response to women . . . whether that woman be our mother, our daughter, our friend, our teacher, our employer, our clergy, our senator, our president or . . . our self.
The link is here: www.goodtherapy.org/blog/misogyny/
Phew, it is such a relief to read a description of what a baby feels. It is exactly how I felt about my mother and why I took so naturally to misogyny. My hatred of women was always close to the surface though. I always felt it and felt the lack of connection with my mother. The break in our relationship has always felt so deep and it has felt as if no matter what work I do, that early rupture can't be touched, can't be felt, can't be integrated. It's amazing how the unconscious works because I can feel those feelings surfacing at the moment. I'm getting it each night and it's overwhelming and interestingly, I only got colic at night according to my mother. It was the evening feed that meant I started screaming and wouldn't stop.
Well, I'm just beginning this process but it makes me really happy to know that there are therapists who have connected colic and an unbearable hatred of women. I've been thinking about it and I always come back to how the damage to my relationship with my mother seems endless and eternal. I hope if I can release some of these feelings that will shift a bit.
Perhaps your mother gave birth to you and stayed with you. Perhaps she wanted to give you her best, to be a good mother, but . . . you had colic as a baby, and whenever you cried and she couldn’t comfort you, she got triggered and became angry at you. You were terrified! And cried all the more. She got still angrier. You, more frightened. And eventually you became enraged in response to her scaring you so and to your powerlessness in the interaction and relationship. Now, without even being aware of it, you are afraid of mother and all women. And now, without being conscious of it, you are enraged at mother and all women and the power they have. What a vicious cycle has been created here . . . within each of you and between the two of you! And transferred onto other women, as well. And all because your mother, was not able to feel her fear, triggered by your pain, her powerlessness to comfort you, and instead felt and acted out on her anger in response to her fear. Perhaps her fear and anger came from a very similar place in her life experience as your fear and anger. That is, after all, how the vicious cycle moves from generation to generation.
Have you ever seen a tiny baby in a rage? You’re red all over, you flail wildly and cry uncontrollably, and nothing can stop you! Most people don’t know what to do when a baby is frightened and raging . . . so it can evoke their fears of inadequacy, their fears related to control, as well as their own early childhood feelings. The only thing that can be done for you is for a loving, wise, and un-triggered adult to hold you gently and close (but not too close) so you can feel you are being held and not flying out into black space . . . till the cycle runs its course and you fall asleep.
Even with that loving response, you still have rage and fear within you. You still have an involuntary, frightened response to being powerless. You still focus your rage, fear, and powerlessness onto mom and other women.
This is most likely all unconscious. You are not aware of it. You have buried the feelings and memories as much as possible, for they are too much for a little child to bear. But you also are not aware that you transfer all these feelings, memories, and decisions you made at the time onto women in your life later on. Later on could be later on in childhood – like onto a teacher. Later on in your adolescence – onto a girlfriend or a female friend. Later on in your adulthood – onto an employer, a female clergy person, a life partner, or even a daughter.
And it is this unconscious transfer that feeds today’s misogyny most of all. As long as you are unconscious of the root of your hatred of women . . . As long as you are unconscious of the root of your fear of women . . . As long as you are unconscious of the root of your power struggle with women . . . you can find all sorts of excuses for it. All sorts of rationalizations for it. All sorts of philosophical reasons for it. And heaven knows! In a patriarchy in which misogyny is normalized those justifications for it melt into the pot of normalized misogyny.
So . . . if we are going to heal misogyny in our society and our world . . . we – each of us – needs to discover and heal our own hatred, fear, and power struggle with women. Each of us needs to bring it into consciousness and not stop there. Each of us needs to do the very deep, very primal, very feeling work that lies beneath the mind . . . in our hearts, our cells, our early, early childhoods. That way we will not have to think our way through to a response that is not misogynous, while holding the feelings at bay. That way, misogyny will finally be absent from our response to women . . . whether that woman be our mother, our daughter, our friend, our teacher, our employer, our clergy, our senator, our president or . . . our self.
The link is here: www.goodtherapy.org/blog/misogyny/
Phew, it is such a relief to read a description of what a baby feels. It is exactly how I felt about my mother and why I took so naturally to misogyny. My hatred of women was always close to the surface though. I always felt it and felt the lack of connection with my mother. The break in our relationship has always felt so deep and it has felt as if no matter what work I do, that early rupture can't be touched, can't be felt, can't be integrated. It's amazing how the unconscious works because I can feel those feelings surfacing at the moment. I'm getting it each night and it's overwhelming and interestingly, I only got colic at night according to my mother. It was the evening feed that meant I started screaming and wouldn't stop.
Well, I'm just beginning this process but it makes me really happy to know that there are therapists who have connected colic and an unbearable hatred of women. I've been thinking about it and I always come back to how the damage to my relationship with my mother seems endless and eternal. I hope if I can release some of these feelings that will shift a bit.
