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You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart
Emotional abuse of children can lead, in adulthood, to addiction,
rage, a severely damaged sense of self and an inability to truly bond
with others. Butif it happened to youthere is a way out.
by Andrew Vachss
Originally published in Parade Magazine, August 28, 1994
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The attorney and author Andrew Vachss has devoted his life to
protecting children. We asked Vachss, an expert on the subject of
child abuse, to examine perhaps one of its most complex and
widespread formsemotional abuse: What it is, what it does to
children, what can be done about it. Vachss' latest novel, "Down in
the Zero," just published by Knopf, depicts emotional abuse at its
most monstrous.
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I'm a lawyer with an unusual specialty. My clients are all children
damaged, hurting children who have been sexually assaulted,
physically abused, starved, ignored, abandoned and every other lousy
thing one human can do to another. People who know what I do always
ask: "What is the worst case you ever handled?" When you're in a
business where a baby who dies early may be the luckiest child in the
family, there's no easy answer. But I have thought about itI think
about it every day. My answer is that, of all the many forms of child
abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.
Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be
intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of
conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-
concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy
unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural
birthright of all children: love and protection.
Emotional abuse can be as deliberate as a gunshot: "You're fat.
You're stupid. You're ugly."
Emotional abuse can be as random as the fallout from a nuclear
explosion. In matrimonial battles, for example, the children all too
often become the battlefield. I remember a young boy, barely into his
teens, absently rubbing the fresh scars on his wrists. "It was the
only way to make them all happy," he said. His mother and father were
locked in a bitter divorce battle, and each was demanding total
loyalty and commitment from the child.
Emotional abuse can be active. Vicious belittling: "You'll never be
the success your brother was." Deliberate humiliation: "You're so
stupid. I'm ashamed you're my son."
It also can be passive, the emotional equivalent of child neglecta
sin of omission, true, but one no less destructive.
And it may be a combination of the two, which increases the negative
effects geometrically.
Emotional abuse can be verbal or behavioral, active or passive,
frequent or occasional. Regardless, it is often as painful as
physical assault. And, with rare exceptions, the pain lasts much
longer. A parent's love is so important to a child that withholding
it can cause a "failure to thrive" condition similar to that of
children who have been denied adequate nutrition.
Even the natural solace of siblings is denied to those victims of
emotional abuse who have been designated as the family's "target
child." The other children are quick to imitate their parents.
Instead of learning the qualities every child will need as an adult
empathy, nurturing and protectivenessthey learn the viciousness of a
pecking order. And so the cycle continues.
But whether as a deliberate target or an innocent bystander, the
emotionally abused child inevitably struggles to "explain" the
conduct of his abusersand ends up struggling for survival in a
quicksand of self-blame.
Emotional abuse is both the most pervasive and the least understood
form of child maltreatment. Its victims are often dismissed simply
because their wounds are not visible. In an era in which fresh
disclosures of unspeakable child abuse are everyday fare, the pain
and torment of those who experience "only" emotional abuse is often
trivialized. We understand and accept that victims of physical or
sexual abuse need both time and specialized treatment to heal. But
when it comes to emotional abuse, we are more likely to believe the
victims will "just get over it" when they become adults.
That assumption is dangerously wrong. Emotional abuse scars the heart
and damages the soul. Like cancer, it does its most deadly work
internally. And, like cancer, it can metastasize if untreated.
When it comes to damage, there is no real difference between
physical, sexual and emotional abuse. All that distinguishes one from
the other is the abuser's choice of weapons. I remember a woman, a
grandmother whose abusers had long since died, telling me that time
had not conquered her pain. "It wasn't just the incest," she said
quietly. "It was that he didn't love me. If he loved me, he couldn't
have done that to me."
But emotional abuse is unique because it is designed to make the
victim feel guilty. Emotional abuse is repetitive and eventually
cumulative behaviorvery easy to imitateand some victims later
perpetuate the cycle with their own children. Although most victims
courageously reject that response, their lives often are marked by a
deep, pervasive sadness, a severely damaged self-concept and an
inability to truly engage and bond with others.
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We must renounce the lie that emotional abuse is good for children
because it prepares them for a hard life in a tough world. I've met
some individuals who were prepared for a hard life that wayI met
them while they were doing life.
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Emotionally abused children grow up with significantly altered
perceptions so that they "see" behaviorstheir own and others'
through a filter of distortion. Many emotionally abused children
engage in a lifelong drive for the approval (which they translate
as "love") of others. So eager are they for loveand so convinced
that they don't deserve itthat they are prime candidates for abuse
within intimate relationships.
The emotionally abused child can be heard inside every battered woman
who insists: "It was my fault, really. I just seem to provoke him
somehow."
And the almost-inevitable failure of adult relationships reinforces
that sense of unworthiness, compounding the felony, reverberating
throughout the victim's life.
Emotional abuse conditions the child to expect abuse in later life.
Emotional abuse is a time bomb, but its effects are rarely visible,
because the emotionally abused tend to implode, turning the anger
against themselves. And when someone is outwardly successful in most
areas of life, who looks within to see the hidden wounds?
Members of a therapy group may range widely in age, social class,
ethnicity and occupation, but all display some form of self-
destructive conduct: obesity, drug addiction, anorexia, bulimia,
domestic violence, child abuse, attempted suicide, self-mutilation,
depression and fits of rage. What brought them into treatment was
their symptoms. But until they address the one thing that they have
in commona childhood of emotional abusetrue recovery is impossible.
One of the goals of any child-protective effort is to "break the
cycle" of abuse. We should not delude ourselves that we are winning
this battle simply because so few victims of emotional abuse become
abusers themselves. Some emotionally abused children are programmed
to fail so effectively that a part of their own personality "self-
parents" by belittling and humiliating themselves.
The pain does not stop with adulthood. Indeed, for some, it worsens.
I remember a young woman, an accomplished professional, charming and
friendly, well-liked by all who knew her. She told me she would never
have children. "I'd always be afraid I would act like them," she said.
Unlike other forms of child abuse, emotional abuse is rarely denied
by those who practice it. In fact, many actively defend their
psychological brutality, asserting that a childhood of emotional
abuse helped their children to "toughen up." It is not enough for us
to renounce the perverted notion that beating children produces good
citizenswe must also renounce the lie that emotional abuse is good
for children because it prepares them for a hard life in a tough
world. I've met some individuals who were prepared for a hard life
that wayI met them while they were doing life.
The primary weapons of emotional abusers is the deliberate infliction
of guilt. They use guilt the same way a loan shark uses money: They
don't want the "debt" paid off, because they live quite happily on
the "interest."
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When your self-concept has been shredded, when you have been deeply
injured and made to feel the injury was all your fault, when you look
for approval to those who can not or will not provide ityou play the
role assigned to you by your abusers. It's time to stop playing that
role.
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Because emotional abuse comes in so many forms (and so many
disguises), recognition is the key to effective response. For
example, when allegations of child sexual abuse surface, it is a
particularly hideous form of emotional abuse to pressure the victim
to recant, saying he or she is "hurting the family" by telling the
truth. And precisely the same holds true when a child is pressured to
sustain a lie by a "loving" parent.
Emotional abuse requires no physical conduct whatsoever. In one
extraordinary case, a jury in Florida recognized the lethal potential
of emotional abuse by finding a mother guilty of child abuse in
connection with the suicide of her 17-year-old daughter, whom she had
forced to work as a nude dancer (and had lived off her earnings).
Another rarely understood form of emotional abuse makes victims
responsible for their own abuse by demanding that they "understand"
the perpetrator. Telling a 12-year-old girl that she was an "enabler"
of her own incest is emotional abuse at its most repulsive.
A particularly pernicious myth is that "healing requires forgiveness"
of the abuser. For the victim of emotional abuse, the most viable
form of help is self-helpand a victim handicapped by the need
to "forgive" the abuser is a handicapped helper indeed. The most
damaging mistake an emotional-abuse victim can make is to invest in
the "rehabilitation" of the abuser. Too often this becomes still
another wish that didn't come trueand emotionally abused children
will conclude that they deserve no better result.
The costs of emotional abuse cannot be measured by visible scars, but
each victim loses some percentage of capacity. And that capacity
remains lost so long as the victim is stuck in the cycle
of "understanding" and "forgiveness." The abuser has no "right" to
forgivenesssuch blessings can only be earned. And although the
damage was done with words, true forgiveness can only be earned with
deeds.
For those with an idealized notion of "family," the task of refusing
to accept the blame for their own victimization is even more
difficult. For such searchers, the key to freedom is always truththe
real truth, not the distorted, self-serving version served by the
abuser.
Emotional abuse threatens to become a national illness. The
popularity of nasty, mean-spirited, personal-attack cruelty that
passes for "entertainment" is but one example. If society is in the
midst of moral and spiritual erosion, a "family" bedrocked on the
emotional abuse of its children will not hold the line. And the tide
shows no immediate signs of turning.
Effective treatment of emotional abusers depends on the motivation
for the original conduct, insight into the roots of such conduct and
the genuine desire to alter that conduct. For some abusers, seeing
what they are doing to their childor, better yet, feeling what they
forced their child to feelis enough to make them halt. Other abusers
need help with strategies to deal with their own stress so that it
doesn't overload onto their children.
But for some emotional abusers, rehabilitation is not possible. For
such people, manipulation is a way of life. They coldly and
deliberately set up a "family" system in which the child can never
manage to "earn" the parent's love. In such situations, any emphasis
on "healing the whole family" is doomed to failure.
If you are a victim of emotional abuse, there can be no self-help
until you learn to self-reference. That means developing your own
standards, deciding for yourself what "goodness" really is. Adopting
the abuser's calculated labels"You're crazy. You're ungrateful. It
didn't happen the way you say"only continues the cycle.
Adult survivors of emotional child abuse have only two life-choices:
learn to self-reference or remain a victim. When your self-concept
has been shredded, when you have been deeply injured and made to feel
the injury was all your fault, when you look for approval to those
who can not or will not provide ityou play the role assigned to you
by your abusers.
It's time to stop playing that role, time to write your own script.
Victims of emotional abuse carry the cure in their own hearts and
souls. Salvation means learning self-respect, earning the respect of
others and making that respect the absolutely irreducible minimum
requirement for all intimate relationships. For the emotionally
abused child, healing does come down to "forgiveness"forgiveness of
yourself.
How you forgive yourself is as individual as you are. But knowing you
deserve to be loved and respected and empowering yourself with a
commitment to try is more than half the battle. Much more.
And it is never too soonor too lateto start.
© 2000 Andrew Vachss. All rights reserved.
