Ch 15 - SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS – PART 2, Processing out Victimization

CHAPTER 15
SURVIVAL, ABUSE AND HOPELESSNESS – PART 2
Processing out Victimization

In the root experiences for all issues, we find death or threat of death, fear, physical tension, survival problems, hopelessness and the control issue of abuse. Victim-Victimizer roles played by people are the method by which this pattern is set up and carried forward into other, less violent experiences.

In past lives it's some organized or disorganized individual or group. In early childhood it is mother, father or someone else playing the victimizer and the child playing the victim. Later on the siblings or peers may play the victimizer role. At birth it is often the thoughts of doctor and nurse combined with the feelings of Mother. In the prenatal it is Mommy and Daddy or Mommy and some other adult accosting her. Sometimes it is Mommy and the doctor who isn't acknowledging her.

To process out victimization, we release the words of the victimizer as well as the words of the victim. Almost always, the person who comes for therapy is experiencing a part of life as the victim. We can release this role by processing our own side of past encounters. In the same sessions, we can release the victimizer part by processing out what mother, father or someone else did in this life, along with what others did to us in other lives.

The victimizer role stays alive in the victims and 'surrounds' what they feel is their own role. Many 'nice' people are totally unaware that it still resides in their unconscious minds. It then becomes transferred onto other people who play the victimizer to us. You may now be seeing that this is all like a stage play. When we clear enough of the two roles, we are no longer pulled into playing out the abusive dramas. We don't gravitate toward abusers; we aren't 'hooked' into playing their games.

As I said, these are control issues. Even though they involve getting our needs met, we are controlled out of it. Mother gets into a fight for control of the infant being 'good' and quiet, etc. Because she is unable to handle the situation in a capable manner, 'upset control' becomes the 'theme' of the episode.
There are three significant components of victim/victimizer dramas that are not so obvious. They form a large part of all issues.

The first has to do with the 'trips' laid upon the child, or the adult in past life, and even in this one. In my experiences with clients, as well as myself, a mother abuses her child when she is overworked and/or overwhelmed. Most of the time, part of her is also feeling upset about father, while another part recognizes his overwork and overwhelm. Yet she loses her control, does something physically traumatic to the child, and outwardly blames the child for being the extra burden.

Thus, we become the victims for someone else's difficulties; and we are improperly told we are the cause. This is a major link in what we call a guilt complex. In addition, mother also blames the child for screaming and causing her to hit or shake it. The innocent little infant is then 'imprinted' with 'blame.' Blame and guilt are part of every abusive pattern.

Typically it goes like this. A person is hit, or yelled at. Having self esteem they fight back. The abuser hits or yells harder. The person fights back even more, until he or she is physically overwhelmed, or even killed. Sometimes during the fight, and often when the person is defeated, the abuser adds verbal words of repression and hopelessness.

A second part of the issue lies deeper. It involves all of mother's feelings of frustration, guilt and inadequacy; and these are built into the layers received by the child. When the scenarios come out in processing, we find the child's terror and physical pain are interwoven with all of mother's words directed at the kid and all of mother's inner feelings of inadequacy. What mother is feeling inwardly at the time has a lot to do with what we feel later on in life. Our underlying feeling will be the fear we had in infancy, but we may not in touch with it. The pattern of what we do in the situation will be a copy of what mother felt and did at the time.

These 'control issue losing battles' also include a number of other kinds of situations that occur later on in childhood that need to be released. There are also some later on when people were involved in abusive relationships. However, I have always found the cornerstones of the pattern to be the episodes of forced physical blockages, combined with the words of blame and guilt that occurred at very early times. Release them and not only are the later episodes easier to process, but the person quite quickly gets in touch with his or her own power to stand up for themselves.

In infancy, we were totally overpowered, and we had no conceptual ideas of the circumstances nor ways to analytically discuss the matter with our adversary. As children, we often do understand the situation, but we are still unable to overcome what is happening to us, simply because of the situation we are in. But part of us does know we've been wronged. After the earlier blockage is undone, these later episodes can be worked with to bring a person's self esteem and power to the surface.

Structural Integration Bodywork and some dramatic expression coaching can help tremendously here. It has the ability to remove embedded past experiences from the muscular tissues. It is especially effective, all by itself, at erasing episodes that happened later in life. I once did Bodywork only on a woman who had been raped, who was also doing some good psychotherapy. During the session in which we talked about what had happened, I was able to do deep Bodywork in her pelvis and legs. This seemed to clear that experience out of her. But this specialized Bodywork does not clear the patterns from early life. That requires a combination with Netherton, Reichian or some other kind of release work.

As I said, infancy abuse episodes are more common than we think. Even good mothers lose their cool. And many of us don't think too much of it if we slap our own kid and it does no real physical harm. Sometimes it was the only way some mothers had of handling the situation. If it was a terrible experience, good mothers do pick up the kid, kiss and hold it, and make it feel better. But many episodes end instead with the mother leaving either to get away and relax, or to get back to the rest of her responsibilities. Some leave in disgust and upset, just like we do in adult-to-adult situations. All these patterns are imprinted on the children. I have seen them come out from many people. And if you believe in reincarnation, you might understand it's because of karma.

As I described, infancy episodes relate directly to those in past life, where we were repressed. And while those of infancy involved only mother and her feelings about us and her own difficulties, the past lives involved much heavier things like capture, imprisonment, torture and death. The words of blame and guilt are imbedded there, too. And it is almost always a straightforward matter to process these either before or after the infancy experiences, using one to link to the other.

The second not so obvious feature of abusive episodes involves a third party who watches what happens. In past lives, there is always some good-hearted person who feels sadness and caring about the victim, but is unable to do anything to help because the controlling powers are too strong. There is just no way they can help, especially once the person is dying in front of them. In earlier episodes, perhaps during the imprisonment or torture, they may be afraid of being harmed themselves.

But hopelessness combined with pity or sadness is the strongest force I've seen come up regularly. The person doing the processing can actually see these people standing off to the side in their mind's eye as they are clearing out the material.
In cases of childhood abuse by the father, the mother may have to stand by and be unable to help because of real fear of reprisal toward her.

In cases of mother's abuse, father may both be available or not believe the child's plea for help when it is old enough to speak. In infancy, the words of these third parties are usually thought and felt by mother herself when it is only she and the baby who are present.
The third issue regarding abuse and control I want to mention requires looking a little deeper at our own behavior as adults, especially if and when we carry revengeful grudges. Understanding the victim/victimizer 'entity' is very helpful so I will digress a little here, from my main theme.

A lot of people who were regularly abused find it hard to want to release their feelings of hateful revenge. Much is there to be processed out from scenarios in late childhood and the teens. Some of it actually resides in the tissues our livers, as well as in the structural muscles.

Somehow, we need to see that having and replaying the tapes of this anger is bad for us. Literally, it causes physiological damage and creates negative patterns in our energy fields which then sets up further situations we don't want to have happen. But the power of revenge is very strong. So sometimes we need to release the times in other lives when we felt so good with a lot of that evil, controlling power. We have to release a life where our own prominent role was the victimizer. Some people might have trouble doing this if they are still very identified with their own trauma. But if it is a link to releasing material in this lifetime, it can help a lot, and may be easier to handle than what they specifically identify with.

Here is a very important point. You see, from one lifetime to the next, the roles have lives of their own. They re-create themselves by getting the programmed input from mother and others, starting right from conception. This is true even if you want to consider a soul having direction over the process, as Netherton and others espouse. Remember that in our bodies, they are located in specific physical locations of our brains, structures, organs and energy fields. They are not always who we are.

There's a victimizer and a victim inside each person simply because the old scenarios include the words and actions of both. In certain situations, the victimizer comes out of us. In others, the victim comes out.

Here's an example. You may know some people who criticize others and put them down. This role lives inside those people. Their mothers might have treated them that way. And instead of it being directed at this person, inside themselves, the energy goes out, toward other people. They are like those of us who react to the pressure situations I described regarding the birth process. These people, too, are unconsciously acting out both sides of a scenario involving fear.

When the fear is triggered by some outside event that is considered 'bad,' or 'gone wrong,' an attempt at control comes out lightening quick. This controller points itself at whatever triggers it; whomever made the statement or did the thing that resonates with its fears. The criticizer is a totally different 'person' than the man or woman we know otherwise. When he or she becomes aware of this information, can help them release this pattern.

Energically, both fear and control are issues associated with what is called the third chakra, or measurable energy center in the body, located in the area of the solar plexus. They are, as we see psychologically, two sides of the same coin. By neutralizing both roles during the processing of a scenario, the entire drama is lessened. The person who yells and criticizes is actually trying to help stop what is, to that part of them, a very dangerous situation. This is how that part of them was programmed to do it. And we all have issues in the third chakra.

Another kind of controlling personality involves demands. Processing a past life where we are the all-controlling victimizer is also appropriate when a person is unconsciously stuck to being demanding. This kind of lifetime might be different from that of the pattern just described. In regular verbal therapy a demanding part of a person might respond with hostility when first approached. This is a place where it helps when people meditate. It develops a part of them that is deeper than the issue, and this gives the person that 'state' from which he or she can observe the demanding behavior. From a spiritual and energetic sense, demand is just a stuck place of inner dissatisfaction. For those interested in the technicalities, it often involves blockages and dissatisfaction in the first chakra, and a big hole in the second. It also includes hardened frustration around the heart. For the rest of us, this all means that the person just isn't fulfilled.

So, for all of us, seeing the kinds of ways we acted in past lives can help bring us to greater self-awareness. This will also help us process out similar patterns in this life. If we can look at our own negative behavior that was not previously seen, we can then do some spiritual work and behavioral modification to change the way we deal with other people.

Now, that you see these issues a bit more, I'll return to my central theme of processing out the material. Past lives go back way in time. Whether they really happened or not, people have processed out experiences in ancient Atlantis and even on spaceships from other worlds. Psychotherapists can tell us that people may adapt a controlling behavior to compensate for being controlled. And that can happen lifetime to lifetime as well as in the space of only one lifetime. So the victim/victimizer pattern can switch back and forth any number of times.

Chronologically, we have to start somewhere, so we can postulate that at first we were the victimizer, and others were the victims. In order to correct that behavior, among other things, we then become the victim. The way this sometimes happens is that people rise up and defeat us, and when we are then imprisoned and when we are dying, people around us make statements like, "He should know what it feels like," "He should suffer for all he did," and so forth. In the earliest victim scenario we died. In other episodes, others died under our care and we felt responsible. We might even have been blamed by others for circumstances we had no control over. So here, again, are the words and situations involving guilt, blame and a feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness to stop the inevitable from happening.

Now, in this adult life, the patterns are set in place. The problems we have to work through are not necessarily life threatening, but have life limiting emotional and physical blocks. Some psychologists label the life and death issue as a metaphor for what is occurring with their adult clients.

In a way, they are right; there is no life and death situation currently happening. But they are unaware of body-mind linkups I am explaining here. So, while it is not exactly the same situation, the energy blocks to the person's ability to function in a certain way are affected by these old experiences. In fact, it is in these old experiences that the energy blocks were created. This is a very clear explanation why the Structural Integration Bodywork is so helpful; it removes the physical block.

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