SELF-ARCHEOLOGY

The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth. — Alice Miller There are two main approaches to healing psychological and emotional trauma. Forgetting The first approach to trauma is  “ forgetting ”  it. Fundamentally, this means denying and ignoring the cause of your inner pain and the root of your fundamental problems. This is something that is frequently advocated by most people, including many professional helpers like psychotherapists, coaches, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and so on. Since trauma and its consequences are complex and complic...

The following text is from Alice Miller's book "The Untouched Key." For some years now there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and—if disseminated widely enough—should lead to fundamental changes in society, above all to a halt in the blind escalation of violence. The following points are intended to amplify my meaning: 1. All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection. 2. For their development children need the respect and protection of adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world. 3. When these vital needs are frustrated and children are instead abused for the sake of adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage of, manipulated, neglected, or deceived without the interv...

The following text is from Alice Miller's book "Banished Knowledge." As time went on it became clear to me that the idea of children inventing traumas is absurd. Anyone is free to check on the natural law that human beings will avoid pain rather than seek it. They seek pleasure, joy, reassurance. Masochism is no exception to this rule: It is a compulsion to inflict new suffering on oneself to keep former suffering repressed. The masochist who at great expense has himself whipped by a prostitute and insists on sitting on a chamber pot during the procedure is obeying a compulsion to reproduce the trauma of his toilet training and to keep the memory repressed at all costs. Another law of life is that the idealization of the parents with the aid of fantasy and repression helps the child to survive; thus to attribute bad things to one's nearest and dearest would run counter to natural defenses and the law of life. It follows that a child will never invent traumas . On ...