Jess, you have just written what has been floating around in my mind for months. The self blame is the bit I’ve really struggled with (from my recent abusive experiences) and when I spoke to others about this, and what happened, especially with the work that I do (mindset and emotional agility) they were incredulous that I ‘fell for it’.
It’s the conditioning that is all around us, and as I was brought up in the environment of severe scale of neglect and abuse, it’s all id known, and also behaved like this on a much lesser scale. I didn’t harm people like they had done to me but I was still operating at a manipulative level in order to be loved/keep people/perceived safety.
Then I woke up when I had these adult sexual abuse experiences.
Now I have 3 children and I’m constantly telling them to question everything and build personal agency which is so hard because as you’ve perfectly described we are constantly told what to do, ridiculous rules and everything is cloaked in a persuasive fog.
My kids say to me, when I say speak up, ‘we can’t, we get detention, in trouble, labelled, shamed, stopped’ and it angers me, it’s like sending them to prison. I remember my time at school, in a job etc and I know how much courage I had to find to do this as an adult! Kids have no power in this and it is my mission now to help them. I now work for myself and spend time coaching them and explain how the mind works, emotions etc, all trying to encourage them to speak up, follow their dreams and ‘be themselves’ and how to build real relationships. With the online world and phones making everything even more superficial and fake - and adults even more stressed and distracted in this sheep society it - how can we help ourselves break free and educate/protect our kids?
Thank you so much for writing this - you are the first voice that I’ve ever heard make any sense on the matter
Jess - I agree with nearly everything you say here, with one caveat, intent to harm or dominate. Yes. We are groomed every day by everyone around us. I would call it influence rather than grooming, but the concept is basically the same. However, IMHO, there is a distinction between influence and undue influence that can assist us in seeing the difference between social grooming for the purposes of maintaining order and abuse of power, coercive control or "undue influence". That distinction is intent. And, to your point, grooming, or influence, whichever you call it, is hard to identify, because it is the water in which we swim. And, as you mentioned, abusers of power, or coercive controllers as I would call them, use these same tactics of influence (grooming) to manipulate, deceive and harm others. What sets influence apart from undue influence, and what sets normal social grooming apart from what abusers do, IMHO are two things: intent and harm. So... to your point, expecting people, especially children, to be able to identify the tactics of abuse is unreasonable and unrealistic. Intent is hard to see and can be easily faked... at least for a while. However, we CAN teach them how to identify intent and harm. If a person who is influencing us is doing so in order to dominate and exploit us, that is undue influence. That is abuse, and if there is a pattern of these behaviors, it's also coercive control. What we really need to teach children is how to recognize when something or somebody is harming them, to stand up for themselves against that harm in a safe way, how to trust themselves, and how to walk away from influence that is harming them, if the person harming them refuses to stop. Just my two cents. Thanks for your article. I found it very interesting and informative.
Jess, you have just written what has been floating around in my mind for months. The self blame is the bit I’ve really struggled with (from my recent abusive experiences) and when I spoke to others about this, and what happened, especially with the work that I do (mindset and emotional agility) they were incredulous that I ‘fell for it’.
It’s the conditioning that is all around us, and as I was brought up in the environment of severe scale of neglect and abuse, it’s all id known, and also behaved like this on a much lesser scale. I didn’t harm people like they had done to me but I was still operating at a manipulative level in order to be loved/keep people/perceived safety.
Then I woke up when I had these adult sexual abuse experiences.
Now I have 3 children and I’m constantly telling them to question everything and build personal agency which is so hard because as you’ve perfectly described we are constantly told what to do, ridiculous rules and everything is cloaked in a persuasive fog.
My kids say to me, when I say speak up, ‘we can’t, we get detention, in trouble, labelled, shamed, stopped’ and it angers me, it’s like sending them to prison. I remember my time at school, in a job etc and I know how much courage I had to find to do this as an adult! Kids have no power in this and it is my mission now to help them. I now work for myself and spend time coaching them and explain how the mind works, emotions etc, all trying to encourage them to speak up, follow their dreams and ‘be themselves’ and how to build real relationships. With the online world and phones making everything even more superficial and fake - and adults even more stressed and distracted in this sheep society it - how can we help ourselves break free and educate/protect our kids?
Thank you so much for writing this - you are the first voice that I’ve ever heard make any sense on the matter
Jess - I agree with nearly everything you say here, with one caveat, intent to harm or dominate. Yes. We are groomed every day by everyone around us. I would call it influence rather than grooming, but the concept is basically the same. However, IMHO, there is a distinction between influence and undue influence that can assist us in seeing the difference between social grooming for the purposes of maintaining order and abuse of power, coercive control or "undue influence". That distinction is intent. And, to your point, grooming, or influence, whichever you call it, is hard to identify, because it is the water in which we swim. And, as you mentioned, abusers of power, or coercive controllers as I would call them, use these same tactics of influence (grooming) to manipulate, deceive and harm others. What sets influence apart from undue influence, and what sets normal social grooming apart from what abusers do, IMHO are two things: intent and harm. So... to your point, expecting people, especially children, to be able to identify the tactics of abuse is unreasonable and unrealistic. Intent is hard to see and can be easily faked... at least for a while. However, we CAN teach them how to identify intent and harm. If a person who is influencing us is doing so in order to dominate and exploit us, that is undue influence. That is abuse, and if there is a pattern of these behaviors, it's also coercive control. What we really need to teach children is how to recognize when something or somebody is harming them, to stand up for themselves against that harm in a safe way, how to trust themselves, and how to walk away from influence that is harming them, if the person harming them refuses to stop. Just my two cents. Thanks for your article. I found it very interesting and informative.