'via Blog this'
Yes. What happened is that whenever I expressed any doubt, mild depression or any beginning of a negative emotion, this in itself was considered by my father as a sign of moral failure. After we migrated -- I was fifteen-- I became my father's captive, and this was how I was brought up, or rather how I was kept down. Because when you are growing, you need to experience a range of emotions, both positive and negative, I didn't seem to thrive. Unbenowst to myself, I kept all the negative emotions bottled up, and that is when they began to wreak havoc on my health. When I got sick with a depressed immune system, that is when I got really verbally bashed (and occasionally physically) charged with moral culpability. Anything negative I experienced was my own moral culpabiity. I could not afford to have negative experiences or to relate them, because of the punishment I had learned to expect. But that also meant I couldn't grow up properly, because I was not allowed to have messy experiences as such. It led to increasingly greater bottling up on my part, to the point that if my mind wandered in certain directions, I would feel it as a red hot poker, and be forced to stop thinking. Then everything came to a head when my health really broke down badly in my mid twenties , and I just refused to cooperate anymore, because it seemed to me I had to save my life. Since compliance and attempted cooperation had used up all my energy reserves and still led to utter failure, I tried non-cooperation, and stuck to that as if my life depended on it -- because by this time, I was sure it did. I was the only one who could come to my own rescue at this point. It was still utterly distressing, because I felt extreme shame and complete moral failure in the fact that my health had broken down so badly. I had to block off parts of my mind and simply not go there. Then I had to gradually and slowly introduce myself to concepts of negativity and try to get a tolerance for them. That was my way to healing, but it has taken me many years.
I understand now that the varying sympathy I received was like a double-edged sword. It did lead to receiving some helpful attention, but it also made me more inclined to become a helpless victim at times in hopes of acquiring sympathy if I was suffering enough. This was at odds with the stoicism/numbness I adopted to avoid garnering attention when it seemed highly likely that it would be negative. I wonder if you relate to these dynamics in a way? It sounds like the treatment you describe, if one survived it, could garner a fierce will to survive.