This is a true story written by an adult whose childhood was dominated by a PAS mother:-
Introduction to "Violence by proxies"
To understand how women manipulate in a violent manner, I will use the ugliest of their manipulation techniques to demonstrate it. I believe one has to understand the principles - the stepstones - in a typical feminine building process of a violent context, to really get a sense of impact. It is worth noting, that these are the same powers we also fall in love with, when used positively. Oh my, oh my.
I’m going to try and clarify what I mean by "the violent context", with a long explanation of my mothers long term manipulation, as a counterweight to "quick" manly violent reaction to it, by using my own reality as a witness, to my mom’s use of violence, as a pretext to launch a regular campaign of Parental Alienation Syndrome (hereafter PAS) against my dad, and myself for that matter. To those of you, for whom PAS is unknown, here is an overview. To make a long story short, PAS is a term for brainwashing children into hating a parent.:
http://www.coeffic.demon.co.uk/pas.htm
I chose to name the concept “violence by proxy”, because it consisted of both the use of regular violence, police - and at times - social workers against my dad. By appealing to an army of “proxies”, she could make him suffer the greatest consequences. I’ve not only seen her “doing” from the inside, over la long period of time, I’ve also witnessed other episodes like this, ignite in my childhood friends families, in mostly the same way, and under largely similar circumstances. Maybe this is a good time to let you know, that I’m from Denmark, just to get the cultural perspective right. Anyway; troubled kids tend to play with other troubled kids. I therefore believe I know a little bit about those troubles.
“Laying the Foundation”
My mom had a great desire to be in the center of things. You could say, she had a great desire to be both fully accepted and entertained by a man, but had a kind of sick way to deal with it.
She seeked conflict, if she couldn’t get my dad’s attention in any other normal fashion. She had some penis envy to deal with, because my dad had no problems getting attention. So he tend to get a bit tired of her boring games at times. On top of that, she couldn’t communicate her needs, because she perceived the expression of needs, as a sign of weakness. But when all her unsatisfied “attention-needs”, turned themselves into a pile of bitching, you wouldn’t want to be around. Because the final result was always the same, but I’ll get to that a little bit later.
My dad had a rather stupid way of dealing with it. He either simply ignored the tension in the air, or simply did not realize which way the wind blew in time. Anyway; those attempts to ‘ventilate’ her FAILED. As they are in general guarantied to fail…still.
The ‘silence-trick’. It expresses a subtle loss of love, which women, in general, will not let go by unnoticed. When he pulled that kind of trick, she went crazy. She played the ball back, by not talking to him for a while. Playing insulted, thereby laying a curtain of tension over the entire family. This is why I named this part of her concept “Laying the Foundation”.
“Increamental bitching”
Then, as time passed by, little by little, she began bitching about something – usually something about cleaning, which was either not clean enough, or needed cleaning according to her neurotic standards. Later it turned into long series of swearing about what a pig he was, and how lazy the man was. But the more she build up the tension, while he tried to ‘ignore it’ away, the more she projected unfairness, both in her own, and our eyes. This, of course, made her even angrier. One tends to get angry, when perceived as unreasonable, but our home was also staggeringly clean at all times! Why? She tried to sort out internal chaos, by cleaning up outer space.
“The crucial Switch from aggressor to victim”
So, in order to switch the role as”monster” around, she could throw an ashtray in his head. Or smash a table lighter in his face. Or how about getting your ass kicked with a chair in your sleep!?
Then what happened? Well…she got the beating back. Of course! And then the situation suddenly became my problem too, because when he ‘triggered’ after a while of harassment, he usually gave her all of his build-up-tension back, wrapped in some bitchslapping, and I therefore had to intervene at some point in time. Parents don’t rise out of control quite the same way, when their children are running around screaming.
But because he reacted on the harassment, the way he did, he stood to blame for the bruises, and she became victim. And it was simply inevitable. Because she would have kept on coming, until he took part in her anger, by making him defend himself, towards her own. I believe that’s how situations like these usually evolve to begin with.
“First strike - Pulling Police”
Then what? Then the police usually were called upon. Because she could just not see, that her attitude HAD to be responded violently. Her anger was imposed on him that way! Nevertheless the police never saw anything else, but an innocent, crying woman, when they arrived. Because the police never witnessed the context, in which everything took place. I can also describe a potato for you, but not the taste. Besides - my mom had a talent for playing “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, when her saviors came to her rescue, and husbands just can’t compete with that. But I KNOW…I KNOW she went from the provocative, abusing being, the one moment - into the role of “attention-and-caring-needing” the next moment, because children easily recognize childish reactions in the adult, and so did I. Second, there were the aftermath of “attention on the victim” awaiting her right?
So my dad became the bad guy, because he was a fool, who let himself fall into a trap of her bullshit, and had to leave the house one way or another. And this would repeat itself many times, because she always wanted him back at some point in time, and he CAME back, before he left for good, around my seventh year of age. I guess he finally got smart, too late.
Resetting
But in between, an aftermath awaited. She periodically lost both her sense of responsibility, and got emotionally even more unstable. She could easily stay away from home for several days, if she met another man in town, which she often did. When she finally got home, I also had to deal with her guilty feelings from BEING away from home, for such long periods of time. It was a mess. Especially coming home from school, became more or less a trial, because she was only seldom the same person when I came home, as the one I left in the morning. This may seem like a minor detail to others, but I felt somehow responsible for her moody nature. I leaned to pay attention to them. I guarantee you all, that being around her emotional peaks for 18 years, makes you pretty aware of other peoples feelings and state of mind. My life got pretty centered about my ability to adapt to her emotions, and comfort her, to prevent an otherwise hysterical outbreak. It's like crossing the depths of chaos, walking on a thin line of psychological adaptation. To always foresee her change of mood, and at the same time, trying to stay in touch with my own ‘self’, was not all that easy.
“Second strike - PAS”
Because of both my psychological adaptations to her, and the fact that we were now alone, and the fact that I still depended upon her, in time made me sympathy-hate my father, WITH my mother. Not because I really believed it myself, but because it paid off, sort of speak. I believe I was afraid of loosing her, if I didn’t sympathize with her. In this very sophisticated way, I sort of programmed myself to hate him, and to say it out loud, because my mom always rewarded me with compliments for being so “clear-sighted”, and “clever” etc. when I did that, and simply ignored me, or looked angry down on me, if I expressed any signs of morning over my loss of him. So obviously, I told the stories which”worked”. That paid of some attention, or just to get some confirmation of her love. Year, I lied. What else was I supposed to do?
Both the tone in her voice, and her gestures when bitching about him, spoke in each case, their own, clear language. And because of this reward/punish-technique, and my ability to tune in on her feelings, I quickly became her new “man in the house” and her Shrink, or her ‘shoulder-to-cry-out-by’ if you will. At times, I’ve felt more like her boyfriend, mentally, than her son. She was always so proud of her ability to talk with her son about everything. She said: “We don’t hold anything back. Right. It SHOULD have said: “I don’t hold anything back”. But what is worse? To be ignored by your own mother, or to get attention, as her therapist? I must have felt the first worse, ‘cause I chose second.
This new mother-&-son relationship became especially annoying, when she seeked comfort by her allies, her woman-friends, who obviously sympathize-ranted about their own lost husbands, who also smartened up, to late. On top of that, put the sympathy from different social workers, who projected some degree of authority, working there in a big office, and carrying a “professional” name tag, and being able to extract whatever explanation from my mind, that my mom had pre-installed, and encouraged as correct explanations beforehand, because I simply just told the usual “working stories”…
But one thing they were never able to hear, because I wasn’t able to speak of it, was my moms manipulative nature. In other words; the whole truth. For example, every child is able to tell whether daddy hit mom, or not, but never able to tell very much about WHY. When I ask the question “Why”, I’m looking for a description, of the context of feelings in which everything happened, which no average child is able to grasp within their vocabulary. Nor am I – as a grown man. Therefore every preinstalled explanation I told, could indeed deliver the wrong result, in relation to my own wishes, without even knowing it myself. What I WANTED, was my dad back, because he could stabilize the entire familiy, but I told otherwise in order to satisfy my mothers needs. You see?
“Third strike – turning reality on its head”
Then imagine this; imagine how twisted reality becomes, when you can clearly see, who is the troublemaker in the house, but on the other hand, also too dependant on the troublemaker, to speak of the truth.
In comparison, it must be very frustrating to be dumb, witnessing a pyromaniac setting a house on fire, which flees afterwards, and later watch the same person return as a fireman-hero, without being able to yell the truth out loud. It triggers a phenomenon known as “cognitive dissonance”, which will happen, when you are presented with to opposite impressions, which can not co-exist in your awareness. Like both laughing and crying, about something both tragic and hilarious, at the same time.
But however odd it may seem, I never truly realized how manipulating she had been, until the beginning of my twenties. Until then, I firmly believed my mom was a misunderstood angel, who deserved the “medal of honor”. I had simply been subjected to so many endless stories about my dad’s failures, that I couldn’t see pass it all, until some time after I moved away from home. Because the end result was always something about him, being removed by the mother-fuc*** police, how could then feel so wrong, when it was supposed to BE right?
Because false realities are created by the supreme set of injustice, and lies, and tyranny of silence - against better knowing - that continues on and on, not ever spoken of in plain words, and therefore get hidden from public reality, to the point, where this false construction of reality, can even fool your senses, and make yourself regard them, as the result of insanity, or simply archived as “political incorrect feelings”.
My mom operated like most newsmedia, on a smaller scale, but with the same internal mechanics – with lies, and ‘staged feelings’! When I finally woke up from the rush of ’LIE’ around my twentieth year of age, I felt like I’ve just been told that the world is round, being the only one, who always thought it was flat.
A lot of women plays with a matrix of feelings, in effect heavy manipulation, which can feel very very nice, but also be very very ugly – and is always hard to capture in words.
Edited 09/04/2004 20:58:34 |
