29. Autonomy vs. Shame + Doubt
Developing into healthy adult emotional maturity means learning appropriate self control without losing spontaneity, confidence and joy in our own unique expressions of soul sovereignty in the world.
Adult autonomy means trusting in our natural sense of timing for action, work, rest and play.
Physical, emotional, mental and verbal abuse are also an abuse of authority and impact the child’s ability to believe in their right to act. Age inappropriate responsibility, neglect, abandonment and excessive criticism thwart the growing sense of autonomy to form into a healthy, balanced, functioning self. A child who was unable to see abuse and adult shortcomings, internalizes the abuse as their own fault. The child believes that they not only caused the harm to happen to them, they also believe they deserve it.
Alice Miller coined the term ‘poisonous pedagogy’ for the structure of abusive authority that thwarts our journey to independence and take us out of the eternal now through judgement and shame.
Poisonous pedagogy:
Adults are masters of dependent child.
Adults determine in a godlike manner what is right and wrong.
Child is held responsible for parents’ anger, feelings and actions.
Parents must always be shielded.
Child’s life-affirming feelings are a threat to the autocratic adult.
Child’s will must be broken as soon as possible.
This must happen at an early age so the child will not notice and not expose the adult.
Children who grow up in authoritarian homes tend to repeat the same poisonous pedagogy on their own children without realizing what they’re doing.
None of the responses to authoritarian abuse leads to a strong, autonomous person hood. All responses require a continued state of punishment as we deny ourselves to protect ourselves.
The child was unable to stand on their own ground and create boundaries protecting them from parental tyranny, so we developed these responses as a way to assert power. The feeling of powerless is incompatible with life and the child will find ways to express power, even when it hurts themselves.
The child’s identity and autonomy as a result, is developed around those outside us. We comply, people please, withdraw or sabotage as a way to assert sovereignty. These actions are not inner directed, they are not autonomous and nurturing. Personal power and self-worth are connected to our ability to act in the world. We equate the dominance and authoritarianism of a parent, not as the unhealed, immature actions of the parent, but as the ineffective and inadequate abilities of ourselves as children to be autonomous in the world.
A child never sees their pain as the fault of their caregiver. A child’s abuse is always internalized as their own fault and their due because of their own failings as a child.
This is not from us, but a belief handed down for generations for hundreds, if not thousands of years. A parent cannot autocratically raise a child to embrace their own power and autonomy.
Only a parent who is in touch with their own self worth and integrity can deliver the authentic message of capable autonomous identity to their child.
If this shame and doubt in the integrity of source of self is not gently dismantled, we will never fulfill our ability to act and be in our Soul Sovereignty, and effect changes in our world that bring our realities in line with our highest vision and desire for life.
The Practice