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Hello Freedomain Radio community! Do you know Alice Miller? Her books and the reader’s mail helped me a lot to understand my own past and free myself from trauma. This made me a much happier and carefree person. Now I want to share them with you! Check out my podcast, where I read Alice Miller's articles and reader's mail: http://howihelpmyself.com/alice-miller-audio-english/ Please follow the Alice Miller Bot on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AliceMillerBot

I hope this will be useful to you, it’s an example of applying the principles I'm learning from Nathaniel Branden and Alice Miller and Marshall Rosenberg: I bought a used phone last week and after fixing some parts I realized it was locked and I didn't know how to get past that. The next day while preparing lunch and thinking about this problem I felt like a flushing inside my whole body, intense fear, I almost fainted, I guess from blood getting sucked into the spleen in anticipation for a life-threatening blow. Facing the thought that I had made “a mistake" in not thinking ahead enough when making this purchase was overwhelming. Using Alice Miller's idea that this exaggerated fear is likely a reaction to events in my childhood, I thought of how I grew up being very careful not to get caught doing anything I might get in trouble for, and the link became clear. If as a child I had spent money on a useless locked phone my dad would have been very angry with me because I wouldn’t have been a son he could have been proud of, which I guess unconsciously triggered in him the fear he felt from his childhood when he needed to be a perfect son otherwise his dad would be angry, etc. in a repetition going back from parent to child possibly many generations. As a child I wasn't aware of being afraid, probably because allowing myself to feel this intense fear would have hampered me in doing whatever I needed to do to not get caught. As a result I learned to repress this fear along with most of the events associated with it. Until I read Alice Miller's books and articles (alice-miller.com) and until I tried to imagine myself as a child whenever I experienced one of these strong and puzzling reactions, I was surprised to not be able to remember how afraid I felt in the few instances I did remember being threathened or hit. Now the repression is lifting and the fear is gradually coming back. The next step was to do something about the fear. Realizing that the adult I am now wasn’t in immediate danger standing there in the kitchen brought some relief, but not enough. The fear had been replaced by feeling helpless and lonely, I still didn’t know how to get the phone to work and stop the thoughts of “I am no good”. I longed for comforting arms, someone to understand what I was feeling, who would support me through it. Again this brought me back to my first years, how I didn’t get this comfort and support, and how my reaction had been to put all of it out of my mind because these experiences of abandonment had been too painful (mostly my father getting angry at me and yelling and hitting, whereas I looked up to him for protection and guidance, and my mother who could barely protect us children from him and found it difficult to comfort me when I needed it). This next realization, that once more it was unmet needs from the past that were affecting the present and causing these feelings, brought some more relief and I was able to go through the rest of the day without being so hard on myself when thinking of what to do with this telephone. Looking online for information on the effects of abandonment and how to recover from them, I found http://abandonment.net/articles where I read that fear of abandonment is really the primal fear and it is part of being human, and so the problem isn’t so much having this fear, as how we handle it (although people who live through extreme abandonment such as losing a parent during early childhood can be affected much more than most and it can be much more difficult for them to train to reassure themselves). Laying sleepless at 5am the next night thinking through all this, things then fell into place (most of these past 3 years I've spent doing self-work, this didn't come to me easily). Here was the idea I had been missing in order to better understand Nathaniel Branden’s statement “Nobody is coming to save you” and Marshall Rosenberg’s “It’s our responsibility to meet our own needs”. I had been thinking that I needed someone else to get reassurance from, as a child I had expected this from my mother and because she hadn’t been able to give me this past my first year I think, from around 7 I turned to looking for reassurance from girlfriends. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be able to comfort and reassure myself. I am now training to give myself the security I need and so far it seems to be working, I am feeling more energy and more calm, less worrying and less confusion. So this is an example of how this process has been progressing for me, making sense of my past and understanding my needs and beginning to take steps to meet them. If you have any suggestions or comments I’m interested in hearing them. I want to express my gratitude to Nathaniel Branden and Alice Miller and Carl Rogers and Marshall Rosenberg, whose work helped me understand the importance of feelings and emotions (otherwise I wouldn’t have recognized it was fear and helpessness and loneliness that I felt, as I couldn’t recognize or admit to these feelings in myself, before), and how to think in terms of meeting universal human needs instead of thinking in terms of morally right and morally wrong, and to learn what self-esteem is and how to develop it. I am also grateful to Wes Bertrand for introducing me to this body of knowledge and for helping me make sense of it. And I also have immense gratitude for the friend who showed interest in helping me explore my childhood and reconnect with my feelings, instead of only having an intellectual understanding of them, and thus to unlock my empathy. (That’s why I had and I think most people today have very little empathy, because of this unconscious repression defense and not because we are “sociopaths” who have no capacity for empathy). Other friends have helped me as well, such as LovePrevails and Lens here on FDR. And recently I’ve been lucky to be able to trade with a student therapist who trains on me as a test client while I get an hour of support each week for free, which I’m very happy for because I would have trouble paying for that much therapy right now. A big Thank You to all! To give you an idea of how big a change this has been for me: before having children I spent a decade reading psychology and self-help books, and the best I could find were Virgina Satir’s books, which helped me some but didn’t help me understand the mechanisms at play. I did go to therapy as well, but the 2 therapists I saw apparently didn’t understand this either. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to come across all these important ideas and these high-empathy people in recent years, which in pre-internet times were even more difficult to chance upon, I would have kept on repressing all these feelings and memories, and upon seeing that the phone was blocked I would likely have found someone else to blame and got angry at them, such as my ex-wife, thinking it was her fault for having burdened me with trivialities that had thrown off my concentration and brought about this “mistake”. Or I would have gotten angry at my children. I used to go to any length to escape recognizing my part in any mishap, because I had this overwhelming fear that I was trying hard to not become aware of.

Over a year ago I read this letter at my therapist office and I cried my guts out. I realized what I missed all my life, what my parents didn't give me: Love. This letter helped me to realize that good parents and happy (normal) childhood do exist even if they possibly are 1% of the population but knowing that their numbers will increase in the future brings me joy. With a forum like this one, Stefan Molyneux and many authors who encourage people to know their histories and take their childhood dramas seriously so each one of us can stop the cycle of violence on the self and on others and especially stop violating kids. The letter is in French titled "Une belle enfance" I translated it and tried to keep its essence. Enjoy! The letter hello mrs alice MILLER, I'm very happy to write to you, now I finished reading your book "open your eyes to our own history" The Truth Will Se You Free, that I was advised by my neighbor, who read you and at one of our great discussions on children he insisted that I read your book. I am a facilitator in prevention in the field of addiction, legal or illegal drugs, this is the first time I read a book of my life and have no regrets because you encouraged me to continue to read what you write is so true. I am fortunate to have had an uncommon education , my parents raised me like you advise in your writings and I recognized myself in the history of President Gorbachev, I am very happy I did never experienced violence and yet I guess with the stupid things I was doing, other parents would have been extremely violent, I have the proof around me, you're right we must communicate to educate children, never hit them. I'll give you a concrete example. when I was 6 years old my parents one day went to a family party which was 6 km from our suburban neighborhood (Paris) seine saint denis 93, I knew where my parents were gone and knew the way because we often went to this family with my parents, I recorded in my head the way out of habit, so I proposed to my eldest sister of two years to reach both my parents at the party by foot. My sister told me okay, we took the path and went through the main streets, many cars driving fast, a very dangerous road, we arrived safely. Our parents watching us stunned believing that we had arrived to them through someone in my family who have accompanied us. my mother asked us very quietly not to traumatize us and with a smile, how did you come? we answered her by walking! my parents looked at each other and told us you are very smart! I felt myself at that moment, a big boy and they never blamed me or my sister, now I know their heart was pounding for fear of losing us, I can tell you hundreds of stories like this, or the times they feared for me, they had a patient behavior and full of love even in unspoken words, when in the street I was attracted to bad things it always came to my mind a oral agreement unconsciously my parents and I had taken, I would have never broken that oral agreement for anything in the world., I should write a book in tribute to my parents. All my life I've wanted to work in an office near doctors, I like the atmosphere of waiting rooms, I love the humankind because my parents gave me a lot of love, I say easily I LOVE YOU I know what love is I have always received it since my birth July 21, 1969 the day Neil Amstrong put his foot on the moon planet, my parents taught me to wish well to the other person and not the contrary to teach us to not to be racist, my parents told us when you meet a black person know that you have met luck. today in my humanitarian work I everyday meet stakeholders, psychiatrists, or social workers and can even tell you mrs Miller, what you are talking about in your book is true I see it with my own eyes and I detected for a very long time, you have reassured me I felt alone in the world realizing this, stakeholders are sometimes very sick, they only think of their name at the top of the poster or to have the largest lineup to have additional money from specialized agencies they want to make patients addicted to their institution, it is too easy to play with people who have problems and manipulate them stakeholders do not want to care for them and prefer to stay in power. I have no degree and got out of school after two years of training in mechanics at 16, I got a passion for music, at 15 I was attracted by the dj mixes, I trained myself to become dj alone by myself, fortunately for me because my friends at the same time were plunging their noses into heroin, I am 39 years old I'm happy in my own skin. in my work as a facilitator of prevention I bring my knowledge that is not found in the books of Freud and Lacan, autodidact I drew from great thinkers of psychiatry, with time and thinking I created a another form of approach, gentleness, patience, empathy and listening allows me for over 20 years as a professional humanitarian, to help people in trouble, and have never known except if amnesia, any violence from the people that I meet every day. My school is the street because the school of the republic (France) I tried to forget it since the kindergarten after a spanking pants down in public, I did not do anything I was calm and respectful Fortunately I met helping witnesses throughout my life the first ones were my parents. I thank you and support you until the last breath in your fight ... fraternally MRS MILLER. alice Source http://www.alice-miller.com/courrier_fr.php?lang=fr&nid=2362&grp=1108 I hope you enjoyed this beautiful letter Lens