Hi sozobe!
Boom, that must be quite the challenge, especially since he is such a little guy. You've got my support, however I can give it .
I've never personally worked with kids - by the time I come around they are usually teens or adults. I would say you are at an advantage that way: he is so young, he will be more able to 'soak up' a change.
Teach him to do tonglen. To breath in pain (developing the will to encounter the aspects in him he resists) and exhale pleasure, (not to say to remove his sensation of pleasure, but to allow him to let go of it)
psychologists perhaps would frown on using the direct aproach, and instead allow the individual to go to him for years recieving "psychoanalysis" and improve only slowly.
The only way for him to let go of his pain and be happy and trusting again, is to get to know the parts of him he is supressing, resisting, attacking. This does not mean you give him theories on why he feels the way he does. It is a non verbal understanding, and in order for it to be effective, he must understand these things for himself.
it fully. once he begins to practice tonglen, this pain will reapear. It is important that he understands that it will be harder to suppress pain once he begins this practice.
if it does not, that pain will stay with him for as long as he does not acknowledge it. it will make the world seem like a very dark and frightening place.
A child may or may never recover from childhood experiences depending on their explanatory style of the events they endure during their tentative years. This is a world where people are narrowly defined into two categories, those of which are optimists and pessimists. The lucky ones who are optimistic can see the damage done to them as being temporary, as being caused by specific events, and those kids dont blame themselves for the external things that go wrong with their lives. Thus they recover from defeat and failure relatively quick and do not get depressed for long. However those who are not so lucky are those of a pessimistic nature. They blame themselves when things go wrong, when other kids around them are living lives with more material goods, when other kids tease them, and those who have a permanent view about bad occurences and pain that fill their world, those who feel there is no hope in the future and these bad occurences will continue well into the distant future, and those who feel a single setback will affect everything they do. These poor kids are very unlikely to recover from childhood trauma, quite oppositely, it lives with them everyday of their lives, eating away at their soul, generating hatred and self pity, and wishing for a better and normal past, causing them to despise every single person about, knowing that nobody understands them. These kids cannot be blamed for their actions in their adulthood and they are the ones who end up committing antisocial acts of violence. It is their own internal hatred of this unfair world and how it has treated them over time that makes them do such things as adults, and if only they had been more lucky and like the other kids when they were young, if only they had been more accepted and more liked by others around them, then they would not be the criminals they are today.
Very well put, Boomerang and thanks for an intriguing, interesting, sincere, thought provoking topic for conversation. It is very easy to blame things on the past. And... it is also much too easy to say well he/she 'should have' overcome, gotten over, grown past, gotten professional help for .... all these old issues by now. But it is never so simple as we wish. Nothing ever is. **Just because I'm a 55 year old woman doesn't alter the fact that I am and I have been (for as long as I can remember) a chronic insomniac who wakes at the drop of a pin.. AND IF I am awakened by someone's touch; this will most often startle me so badly --- you'd likely think I was about to jump out of my skin. Utter horror and terror. I tend to get a little angry when this happens, because a fright like this always cranks the old adrenaline pump to high gear - unavoidable -- that's the purely instinctive, lovely "fight or flight reaction" which starts going on in the human body whether we need it or not. When adrenaline gets going, for sure - it will be many hours before I can become relaxed enough to be able to rest. It appears, from your post, that you've placed yourself in a position of caring. Caring for a little person with his/her own demons. Personally, I wouldn't know how to communicate with a child who was a picture of perfect emotional health with no demons. Those affected the most severely by their demons - I believe are those whose demons found them when they were very, very young. If a child was mature enough to understand what was going on around him/her while it was happening .... or was able to actually SEE the reality of a situation with the eyes of an adult, well then ... that would change many, many things, wouldn't it?? The younger the child IS at the occassion of 'the trauma' or "the demon-causing sequence of events' -- the more acutely & deeply felt AND also the least well understood by the child. MY personal demon (with which I still wrestle to this day) comes from such an early age and continues well into the now. I don't EVER question my :failure to successfully master such a thing. One thing which I must do is stand by me; all the time & every time. There is no such thing as success or failure in this arena. There are comfort levels. There are rare people such as yourself who are willing and able to reach out in an effort to come to the aid of this little person. That will make all the difference in the world; just having someone around who is available to talk to - even though he/she may not be used to having an adult available for them ... so I imagine it might take awhile. I know if it were me, I would already have crossed you off my list of people to expect help from, just based on past experience. My insomnia is not something I was born with although my mother believed in a school of thought where parents put babies on very rigid schedules and tried to never, ever deviate from the schedule. Whether I cried, screamed, or whatever, the pediatrician ( or so she claimed ) always insisted that rigid schedules were the way to do things. From my earliest memory I had an impression of their presence there; but a presence that was not available for me. In later years, my mom's drinking got much, much worse, by the time I was 10 - 12 years of age I was being habitually deprived of sleep....and so was the rest of the family. I'm sure that my mother never intended the ill effects that her staying awake all night long drunk had on everyone. We children had to go to school. My father to work. While my mother slept all day, often never getting out of bed until we children got home from school. They used sleep deprivation as a means of torture during WWII. If you take a perfectly normal person & then deprive them of sleep for over 36 hours ..... the subject begins having physical symptoms directly, and then the inevitable psychological symptoms ... leading up to a psychological mental breakdown. IF I had been older perhaps I would have understood that my parents staying up all night long arguing was just a matter between the two of them. But I was a very young child, and as so, I believed that most everything had something to do with me. That in some way it was my fault.
Babsatamelia, welcome back to a2k, glad to see you.
I am of course sorry about the continuing stuff you are dealing with.
Demons - There ARE ways to fight them....with help.
Well, hey there Osso, so nice to see you
again also, and it's nice to be seen. This summer; will no
doubt go down in history as the summer when I spent the most
time in & out of hospitals. Please let me give you a tiny
gem of experience gleaned from my hospital time LOL
(it's like prison time) : HOSPITALS ARE VERY, VERY
DANGEROUS PLACES TO BE IN. You probably
increase your death risk by about 50% just for walking
into the ER (LOL).
As for this question of childhood demons; I know a few
people with childhoods as ugly, scary, terrifying & utterly
alone as my own. Now, I have never felt compelled to
commit any act of violence; but that can't be confused
with actions totally lacking in maturity. Back 20 years ago,
I drank and drove my car under the influence of alcohol.
I never even gave it a second thought. We ALL did. I
COULD have been a murderer. All I had to do was fall
asleep at the wheel of my car, coast over into the
oncoming lane and hit another car head on ... and OOPS;
I would be a criminal.
I've seen lots of hate, violence, mental illness and
alcohol/drug abuse. I've been the survivor of a brutal attack
by a former Vietnam veteran - who decided, on his own - that
if I was not going to live with him, then I no longer deserved
to live at all. I AM fortunate to be alive today.
I occassionally do some outreach work in jails. It is uncanny
how every single woman in jail.... is in there because of some
act or behavior related to their involvement with drugs & alcohol.
I strongly believe that drugs & alcohol appear to be "THE WAY"
that most "damaged people" try to deal with pain, fear,
loneliness, and the feeling that you are the only one like you.
Good grief!!! If only one such person could understand how
NOT ALONE they really are in these efforts to deal with a painful
past. So many, many people have gone the route of drugs/booze.
It leads to jail, hospitals and death. But.......the theory that
drugs & booze cures what ails you AILS YOU THEORY" is so
widepread.... it's a way so many people have tried ( very
unsuccessfully) to deal with their life issues, and some are
actually people we admired. Like Elvis Presley. Janis Joplin.
Jimi Hendrix. I don't have a good memory or the list would
go on and on. But, every morning, when we arise, we
always see the same face in that mirror. This method is
not successful. But no one wants to hear that. We're stubborn.
We MUST learn from our own bitter experience for it to have
real MEANING for us. Maybe that is how it is meant to be.
At any rate, taking on the kind of responsibility that you've
obviously done, being there for a young person who probably
has no one else to count on; now THIS is an act that
I wish could be seen & emulated and witnessed all over the
world. It isn't as if the job requirements are impossible. Open
heart, open ears. Listen, listen, listen and hear well. What does
a kid that age really need at this point in life. Someone who is
dependable ..... in a world full of undependable, crazy, and
immature people. Once the kid gets past grade school, the
parents can't be of much use because emotionally the kid may
have already passed the emotional maturity level of his own
natural parents. The parent can't share what he/she doesn't
have... so we can't blame them. We can only be grateful for
someone like you - who CARES and hope that each child in
need is met with someone in their life who appears at exactly
the right time when they are needed the very most.
**YOUR ACTION IS SUCH A COMMITTED AND LOVING ACT**.
I LOVE AND I THANK YOU FOR CARING FOR ANOTHER ONE OF
GOD'S CHILDREN.
babsatamelia--
Welcome home. Hold your dominion.
Thank you most sincerely, Noddy, for the welcome home.
Because it FEELS like home. SO happy to see that you are
still here as well
Babsatamelia--
Thank you.
