Analysis of Love: Childhood Abuse

Dad looms over his young son, poking his index finger close to his son’s face, sometimes pushing the index finger into the obediently still child’s face. Dad’s voice is loud as he belittles and berates his son for some wrong doing. During his lecture, dad slaps his son’s face, and when his son bends with the blow of dad’s slap, dad hits the back of his head sending his son to his knees. His son’s crying and painful pleas to stop are met with indifference and harsh warnings to be still and take his “medicine” like a man or he will receive more …

         Innately, the child knows his world is different, not right. Interaction with peers and their families reinforces those hunches.

         Lacking important social skills such as cooperation, compromise, problem solving, the son teases peers for attention and extends dad’s bullying onto the playground. He has learned that being vulnerable and helpless is bad and power over others is good and the only way to survive. The son exchanges social skills for survival skills.

         Relationships are difficult for the son as he must control and has difficulty showing respect. But, he has learned to do what is necessary to survive and slip into the control seat.

         While the child’s brain is growing and learning at such a fast rate, abuse and all the factors that fall into place because of abuse causes the brain’s chemical make up to mutate and deviate from the norm. Extraordinary highs and lows are now hardwired into the brain and the body. The highs give the child feelings of power and justification for power over others. The lows berate the child for his sins. A continuation of the abusive cycle of feelings that began at birth will proceed throughout the child’s lifetime with semi predictable highs and lows.

The scars from childhood abuse warp relationship abilities. While he is able to woo thanks to his well-tuned observation skills, his sense of trust is greatly dwarfed, leading to feelings of paranoia and an inability to believe and trust his partner’s words and actions. Further complicating his relationship world is low self esteem caused by a lack of nurturing and positive parental support, coupled with constant violation of personal boundaries. He is doomed to pick at the flaws of his relationship and rebuke positive acts of love and respect. When feelings of love and caring, compassion and empathy creep into his being, he feels vulnerable and again, under the control of someone who will hurt him.  He pushes vulnerability to the background by gaining power over the object of his affection, by focusing on that which will prove his vulnerability is not valid, shifting his feelings to indifference and powerful. The stronger the feelings of love, the stronger he must push until he accomplishes the sense of power and he can justify the abuse of others by negating the care he has been given. 

When the object of his affection leaves, he is at peace again, quietly satisfied that life is as it should be with love being too painful to endure and proof positive that he is not vulnerable to the lies and deceit brought about by those who say they love him. Thus he is protected by the very abuse he had to endure during childhood. 

The discomfort he feels when life is happy signals immediate response to balance and return to homeostasis, status quo, by creating lies out of love and deceit out of acts of love. Thus, he spends his life seeking acceptance and proving he can never trust those that provide acceptance. And his life works … as he is always alone and lonely.