On ‘abuse’...

One of the most important books that I’ve read since beginning with regression therapy was Jean Jenson’s ‘Reclaiming Your Life: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Regression Therapy to Overcome the Effectsof Childhood Abuse’.

Jean eloquently enumerates the various types of abuse that people may experience during early life. These include:

•  Psychological abuse
• Emotional abuse (including neglect)
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Verbal abuse

As I read through the definitions and did the self-assessment exercises, I began too see how much I’d been abused as a child: neglect in the form of a mother who tended to internalise her feelings; psychological abuse in terms of being subtly pushed down a particular career route; physical abuse in terms of occasional ‘spankings’ (being hit).

Others might assess my childhood and say ‘well if you were abused, then so were most people I know’ and they would be right.

In Thomas Stone’s rip-roaring ‘Cure by Crying’, he estimates that 70% of people are neurotic, 20% of people are nearly healthy (i.e. some neuroticism) and 10% are healthy. If we accept that all neuroticism is the result of early trauma, then according to Thomas Stone’s estimation, 90% of us experience at least one abusive parent.

To me, that feels about right. I would guess around 90% of children are abused by a parent to at least some extent. Whatever the correct figure, it is certain that far more parents abuse their children than is generally accepted. Society, and especially the press, likes to create monsters. We like to remain in denial about our own abusive natures, by mythologizing the ‘abuser’ as something other. By defining abuse in very narrow terms that can only apply to an easily demonized few, we get ourselves off the hook.

As a society, we need to accept that abuse is more prevalent than we allow ourselves to believe. I don’t have children, but if I were to produce offspring, I can say without absolute certainty that I would abuse them. I can easily envisage having a bad day at work and snapping at my child, maybe even hitting them in a moment of weakness. Maybe at some point I’ll become depressed and withdrawn and neglect them emotionally. All abusive, all damaging. However, I also flatter myself that I would, at some point afterwards, be able to recognise that I had abused them and help them heal. I would ask them how they felt about my behaviour, let them get angry with me, let them cry and heal.

As a society, let’s grow up and accept that we all abuse each other at least to a minor extent. Let’s also accept that that abuse, especially when visited on infants and children, however ‘mild’ it may be, is permanently damaging, and let’s help each other to heal from that damage.