Objectification, Co-dependency and Self-Acceptance Part One

If we were objectified as children, we internalized that as love.

Both the black sheep and the golden child are objectified.

One is forced to absorb all the negative messages and the other knows that they are accepted only because they look or act in a way that affirms the parent’s narrative.

Neither child experiences unconditional regard.

So what happens when the abused enables the abuser?
In order to survive, this seems inevitable.

There was a young man called Ben.  
While in prison, he wrote about the life he had experienced.  I will try to do his voice justice.

He was brought up in a big Irish family.  He and his two sisters were adopted then his parents had biological children.  
Ben’s mother decided that he was the troublemaker.  He said that he always remembered being frightened of her.  
Things got so bad that he could not speak or even look at her for fear of being punished.  
He tried to be good, to be what she wanted, but it never worked.  She beat him every day, for things he did or did not do.

Over time, she pushed him further and further out to the periphery of the family.  
He felt different and this was compounded by his knowledge of being adopted.  
At school he hid the marks on his body and endlessly defended her.  
By the time he was twelve, he began to regularly run away from home, usually just in his school uniform.  
The police would drag him back; they’d ask him why he ran away and he’d say ‘because my mammy hates me.’  And they’d laugh.  
Then the whole cycle would begin again.

Sometimes, she would relent, just for a little while and he’d be amazed.  The other children would follow suit and treat him with tolerance.
Those moments were a source of both relief and pain.  Even within that fleeting acceptance, he was at her mercy.

One sister was the golden child; she went out of her way to get Ben into trouble.  Why would she do this?  
She too was adopted, that should have inspired a sense of camaraderie with her brother.  Instead, she had it in for him.  
Her survival depended on being her mother’s little informer.

So, Ben believed he was bad.  One dream kept him going; he longed to find his birth mother.  
He said that he didn’t care if the world thought the worst of her and called her every name for being an unwed mother.  
He had experienced a strict Catholic upbringing, his adoptive mother went to Mass every day; she attended every Novena.  
‘You’re nothing without God,’ she’d say.  

Ben knew what Irish society thought of his birth mother.  Even in prison, he held onto the dream of finding her.  
I believe that it was keeping him alive.  I hope that he has... found her.

If we have one parent who is preoccupied with always being right and who must be the centre of attention, this is stressful.  
If that same parent constructs rigid rules by which to live, it creates even more of a strain.  
Authoritarian parenting is never based in stability.  That parent does not feel complete or in control.  
He or she gains a sense of self from being right – that means that someone else must always be wrong and or not enough.

So, as children, we internalize aspects of the controlling parent and that of the enabling parent (the co-dependent).  
This is a natural response, it’s not our fault if we did this – children will automatically learn from their primary caregivers and their environment.

Perhaps, as we look back on childhood, we realize that our controlling parent offered precious little in the way of positive role modelling.  
We really don’t want to be associated with them at all, thank you very much.

And yet, shared genes or not, they were our first influence.
While we may never be able to work with the original parent as part of the healing process, we can approach the internalized representation.

But there’s no internalized mother or father in me, I hear you say!

If you’ve ever worked with small children, you’ll know of how well they can mimic their parents.  And they’ll do it in a therapeutic context too.  
A safe environment allows for such outpouring that often the best thing to do is just be present with them.  
They will re-enact arguments, cruel words and actions, they will let you know what’s happening because they have internalized it.

If we never got the chance to express ourselves in this way, it stays within.

Many of us did not have any other reality with which to measure the behaviour at home.  
If teachers and extended family members back parents up, either implicitly or explicitly, then the child starts to really believe that it is all his or her fault.

Every child looks to a parent to know how to be in this world.
What if, for whatever reason, that parent hasn’t got the child’s best interest at heart?

Trust is betrayed at primal level.

This is what we are attempting to heal from when we grapple with the idea of the narcissist.
Yet, when I look at my family history, personalities seem to defy categorization.

Intellect beyond measure, yet defined by lack, insecurity and disinterest.
Fury like plutonium burning, yet crippling pain, just under the surface.
Smashing through every boundary because I was his property, yet he grieved for all that I represented.
Authoritarian rule, relentless rigidity, nagging as a mother might, yet incomparable shyness that inspired my protectiveness.
It’s clear that my father was traumatized.

He looked up to his big brother like a father.
Uncle was the most gloriously confrontational, bombastic intellectual rebel of his generation, yet his purpose was founded within intense emotion.

Male colleagues might well have called him a narcissist!

My father never criticized him.  He secretly wished to be just like his brother.  
Every academic accomplishment was an offering of devotion to the one who had seen and loved him as a child.

They are gone now, yet I have internalized aspects of them both.
So, the healing goal becomes this: to celebrate one while having compassion for the other.