...Breaking The Chains and Ending the Cycle
 
 
 
 
0002299


On Scapegoating

 

Dysfunctional groups of all types employ scapegoating as a means of blowing off suppressed emotions. Socially sanctioned targets are selected and used by a usually non verbal, but sometimes verbal, agreement.  This is a very effective method for releasing emotional pressure, for the whole group especially since the reason for it is denied. Better still is the tautology created which keeps it all going when the scapegoating itself is denied to exist and claimed by the group to be a perception/reaction problem the scapegoat is having which justifies the treatment of the group.

Nothing keeps a dysfunctional system going like keeping it closed to external interference or examination. The scapegoat can then be 'fixed' for complaining about his/her artificially constructed and imposed social position which has now been denied to even exist. Fixing the complainer for complaining is now socially sanctioned as well.

All escape routes are then successfully blocked.

 


When Does Con-fidentiality or Privacy
 Become Secrecy?

 

When the people keeping it all Con-fidential are doing so to protect themselves, and their own interests, while allowing their victim(s) to pay the ongoing price for it.



Ontario Provincial Police
Warns Public About Website 
 March 2010
                                  

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in cooperation with the Ontario Corrections Intelligence Unit are warning the public about certain criminal websites possibly being used by thieves to break into your home when you are away. These websites used by criminals are linked to popular social networking websites. On these social networking websites (which are legitimate) you can update your profile to inform your friends as to when you are away from your residence and for how long. Certain criminal websites extracts this information and posts it on its pages and informs their users in any part of the world which houses are empty and at what times. When you consider how many millions of people use social networking websites around the world, the effects can be huge. The public is reminded that items posted on social networking websites are available to all on the web and not all persons on the web are “friends”. Please restrict what you put on your networking page(s) including photos of your residence/address, photos of vehicles including plate numbers and any up to the minute information as to your whereabouts, keep that for your local friends/people you know personally.

 



The Most Common Inappropriate Affect?

 

I believe that would be the laughter of the presumably ‘normal’ and sane folk as they treat the destruction of an individual’s life, mind and all around well being, as if it was entertainment.'

It is the favourite reality show for the mindless masses who consider themselves to be representational of mental ‘health.’

 

 
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We Regret to Announce the Death of:
Alice Miller, Psychoanalyst, Dies at 87;  

 

 

Related Many Problems to Parental Acts
Alice Miller, a psychoanalyst who repositioned the family as a locus of dysfunction with her theory that parental power and punishment lay at the root of many human problems, died at her home in Provence on April 14. She was 87.

For full article click on the link in her name

 
 

Directions for... 03/07/2010

Busting the Bully

For the full article please click on link in Title

Office bullying a widespread problem
Up to 30 percent of employees affected; stress felt throughout workplace

...The office bully has an array of weapons at his disposal, ranging from the subtle silent treatment to not-so-subtle verbal ridicule, the effects of which can ripple through the workplace....

Bust the bully

…The scientists describe this scale of bullying intensity as analogous to sunburns, in which low levels of abuse, like first-degree sunburns, can cause damage over time but are typically quick to heal. At the other end of the spectrum, the most extreme cases of bullying are similar to third-degree sunburns that often leave behind deep scars and permanent damage. Targets of extreme bullying can end up with permanent psychological damage, stress disorders, increased risk of heart disease and even thoughts of suicide…

While certain personality types could be more prone to foster bullying behavior, the scientists say the structure of American workplaces could be partially to blame for breeding bullies…

Based on prior research in which bully victims told their stories, Tracy and her colleagues put together tactics to bust an office bully. The tactics include telling a rational, linear story that’s chock full of vivid details.


For complete article click on the link embedded in the Title
© 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (? ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Cashew Commentary
I wonder when, or if, we will reach the point in time when the focus will be placed on the bullying instead of on the reactions to the bullying? I also wonder how it is that the ‘scientists’ studying this problem and making statements like; “ranging from the subtle silent treatment to the not-so-subtle verbal ridicule” can also manage to deny this group behaviour exists when it is reported to them by those they prefer to psychiatrize rather than take the time to listen. This is one of our constant complaints. The system does not listen to what we tell them is happening and instead, it invalidates our perception and experience and looks for the fault to lie in our supposedly ‘defective’ brains instead of a defective view of the sick society that promotes this denial of reality.

Here they talk about the level of damage inflicted while when talking TO the damaged in person what is most often received as ‘help’ is minimizing the damage and/or even denying it exists and is instead suggested to be the ‘weakness’ of the victim rather than the known effects of being victimized. How does the system manage to create such juxtaposition for its own self justifying perpetuation of the same old nonsense?

This is the line that really makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck: “certain personality types could be more prone to foster bullying behavior,”

Few people would even notice this switch of positions although many, many people who have been themselves victimized would hear an old and very familiar refrain in that. The first person to suggest to most of the victims that they somehow caused themselves to be targeted AS victims is the bully. Interesting isn’t it how this style of thinking is so entrenched in the collective unconscious that even those experts in the science of the mind rarely notice it? We need to make the unconscious, conscious.

That last line though it the one I agree with: the way to bust this bullying behaviour is through exposure and the more vivid the detail the better. In fact, if it were up to me, I would give all the bullies a microphone and a podium in all the town squares of the world and encourage them to show us their stuff non stop so that we could all see what little weasels they really are and there would be no doubt left in the minds of ‘scientists’ about exactly what the real world of the victims looks and sounds like

 
 
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I found this book VERY helpful and I think many of my readers will too. It is not new, but new enough that it may still be available in libraries.

A Few Words and Phrases From:

 

Emotional Blackmail

By Susan Forward, PhD.

 

 

“Why can’t I ever get my point across?...Blackmailers can skillfully mask the pressure they are applying to us, and often, we experience it in ways that make us question our perception of what’s happening…Yet, no matter how different they appear on the surface, they all have major traits in common…

…The people we are coming up against in these can’t-win situations are skilled manipulators.

 

Chapter 1:

Diagnosis: Emotional Blackmail

Sub section:  What’s the real motive?

If someone’s primary goal is ‘to win…’ There’s no balance of power…

 

Chapter 2:

The Four Faces of Blackmail:

Punishers, Self Punishers, Sufferers and Tantalizers.

 

3. Their Blind Spots—and Ours

“…They genuinely believe in the correctness of what they are doing and the rightness of what they want…They tend to fuse and enmesh themselves with those around them.

 

Chapter 4:

(My own favourite Chapter: I feel like I could also name this one “Psychiatric Blackmail: tools of the trade’, since it fits so well)

 

Tools of the Trade:

Sub headings

The Spin Doctor, Confusing Labels, Making us ‘Bad’, Pathologizing, What’s Wrong with YOU?, Dangerous secrets, Enlisting Allies, Bringing in Fresh Troops, Calling on a Hidden Authority, (God, psychiatrists etc.) Negative Comparisons (to others who are ‘better’ than you because they co-operate)

‘…The ‘spin involves applying adjectives—positive ones to the blackmailer and the compliant target; negative ones to the person who resists… The experience is disorienting…we begin to internalize the blackmailer’s questions about our perceptions, our character, our worth, our desirability, our values. We are trapped in a dense FOG…We buy into the spin because we want our friends, lovers, bosses and family members to be right and good, not mean unfeeling or oppressive…

 

Sub Heading

It’s All About Them

…‘All the blackmailers we’ve seen are focused almost totally on THEIR needs, THEIR desires; they don’t seem to be the least bit interested in OUR needs or how their pressure is affecting us. Blackmailers can be like steamrollers when we don’t satisfy them, becoming ruthless in their single minded pursuit of their goals…It is a strange kind of love that is so blind to the target’s feelings…

 

Making Mountains Out of Molehills

Sub heading

Teaching us a Lesson

 

…’Insults an infantilizing are similarly explained away with the, ‘it’s for your own good rationale… there are attractive payoffs to clinging to this erroneous idea of punishment as training. Blackmailers can live with almost anything if they can make targets seem like dunces…In this way they can avoid any introspection…’

 

 

Old Battles, New Victims

…’the blackmailer strikes out at a target who has become a stand-in for a figure from the past…’ (this is known as acting out on a surrogate)

 

The Blame- Taker

…’ In fact, they [blackmailers] demand that we buy into it. If they’re displeased, we’re the problem. And our compliance with them is the solution. Under pressure from her family to recant or face exile…She had become the family scapegoat… it is not uncommon for one person to become the repository of everything that goes wrong in the family…in order to keep everyone else in balance…It is especially tough to believe your own perceptions are valid when people you love are telling you how crazy, wrong or sick you are…

 

A Vicious Cycle

 ..”It was a totally no-win situation…Under pressure we do something that doesn’t fit with who we are…”

 

Rationalizing and Justifying

“Protecting our integrity can be frightening and lonely…She did what many blackmail targets do given a choice between being true to themselves and complying with what someone else wants: she rationalized.’

 

The Impact on Our Well Being

‘Emotional blackmail leaves us full of unexpressed smoldering feelings.’

The Impact on the Relationship

Shutting Down

Targets of emotional blackmail become so accustomed to negative judgments disapproval, pressure and overreactions that…they are reluctant to share major parts of their lives. We stop talking about… (listed)…Just below the artificial calm that surrounds a placated blackmailer and a target who has given in, is the widening chasm that is opening between them….In a blackmail tainted situation, relationships with friends , lovers and family members that once had real depth begins to get thinner as the roster of safe topics shrinks.’

A New Dance

Be prepared for even more pressure as blackmailers try to regain their position.

 



Alice Miller, child abuse and mistreatment
 
   
 
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