The 2011 post on this blog that still consistently gets the most hits is "ADULT OPPOSITIONAL DEFIANCE DISORDER". Today I got this comment: “My ex & daughter (now 25) who both have ODD. The ex mellowed in his mid-20's as far as the temper fits went but never got over the need to feel like he was rebelling against someone - and I became a substitute for a parent. That was really tough. Took me a while to understand the dynamic ; even after I stumbled on info about ODD, I couldn't live with it in the end. We've remained good friends; I have watched him struggle with close relationships. Now I'm watching my talented, super smart daughter have continual problems with jobs & bosses, relationships, etc. ODD is not just for kids, seems to easily subvert even the highest intellect; I don't think a person usually completely outgrows it.”
The rest of today’s post had been lingering on hold while I tried to decide whether some people would take it as a personal comment on our relationship -- probably half a dozen WOULD -- but maybe it’s worth it. The comment made me decide to risk it.
What ecological/evolutionary forces link sex, violence and stigma in a self-reinforcing process -- always leading back in instead of out, which is the classic definition of insanity? I myself can’t even figure out whether I was a victim of childhood abuse. It certainly wasn’t considered that at the time. (Nineteen-forties, mostly.) After his head trauma, my father when irritated would jump up and spank any kid he could grab -- this was 1948, so we were 9, 7 and 5. By the time I was more like 12, spanking began to become something sexual and my mother intervened.
So then my father went to “operant conditioning”, because he had to do SOMETHING when we took long cross-country trips by car in August. No AC or backseat vids in those days. He kept 3X5 cards on his sun visor and if we did something “good” he gave us a tally under “plus” and if we did something “bad” we got a “minus.” At the end of the day he added them up. The best score got a quarter (a lot of money in those days), then a dime and the lowest guy got a nickel. Of course, what I did that was defined as “good” differed radically from the same behavior by my little brothers. The result of this is that I am entirely impervious to operant conditioning. I taught myself not to care.
Many school principals and one husband found this out to their sorrow. I can only remember a very few people of either gender or in any relationship who would simply request the behavior they wanted and -- if I felt I couldn’t or shouldn’t provide it -- would hear me out and adapt to what I told them. When I was sosososo wanting to be compliant, and managed it up to a point, the shock of the requester when I reached limits -- either the limit of my ability or the limit of my willingness -- became a conviction that I was somehow withholding. Punishable. They evidently thought I was limitless: needed no sleep, needed no training, needed no equipment or space, needed no time to just be myself.
They seemed to believe that they had to somehow trick me or punish me into doing what they wanted. This caused me to have emotions I didn’t want: resentment, rage, defiance, despising them. And I learned to be secretive and tricky myself, which I understand to be moral defects, so I was despising myself as well. But none of this was very conscious. As a child I hardly had the terminology to describe any of it to myself, much less someone else. There were many kinds of powerlessness involved.
Managers I’ve worked for over the years have not had many -- hell, ANY -- skills along the lines of these dynamics. Maybe one, an old cop. They knew they had to have control, they figured it was a matter of power, and they understood power in that blind operant conditioning sort of way. As one woman said to me here in Valier, “You stop making mistakes or I’ll beat your butt!” The exception was when I believed in the task so completely that I needed no urging. My major reward was praise, but only if it was not false flattery. And idealism, so long as I wasn’t betrayed.
The best descriptions of these dynamics that I’ve come across so far have been those dealing with rape-and-violence-as-power. It’s another of those spectrum things that starts with with small body language like a guiding hand on your back -- escalating until you ARE on your back, trying to fend off invasion. What goes on with the other guy, the person who so needs control as to resort to violence and violation, so invested in rules and regulations as to hamstring and paralyze operations? What makes a mom who works in a small town office threaten to beat a newcomer’s butt?
I propose reasons like the need for control, the failure of anyone to provide negative consequences or effective restraint, frustration with life in general, a history of being abused and controlled by others, failure to realize that they ARE being abusers, even unreasonable drive to achieve. But there is also a small category of people -- the same as in other species -- who are just wired that way. They lose it. It’s what “berzerk” means. Domestic animals are capable of the same raging lack of control: sudden, often lethal. Normally, they are destroyed, but their aggressiveness means that their genes get passed on. Among humans, forces of society that keep them unemployed, unloved, unconstrained, even unrecognized are never addressed or reversed, but we are reluctant to just kill them.
Partly these forces are denied. Kept secret. Why? Sometimes to preserve jobs and economic respectability. Sometimes because controllers seem powerful (they are not) and that will attract people who think they can wheedle and persuade and tolerate in order to bask in the warmth of power. Not just women are co-dependent -- any more than just men are rapists and bar-fighters. Sometimes, as with drugs, criminal dynamics are in play. Sometimes, as with cops, only force will restore order. It is the business of the street cop to keep order, not supply justice. The same as for the Mafia.
I’m no innocent. I can push too hard, invade. If someone I care about says, “Back off,” I do. Because I care. But I never say “back off” to them, because too often it has proven to be an invitation to overpower me. And because I don’t feel entitled to say it. So I find other ways -- you know the fairy tales: throwing down the comb that becomes a forest, the mirror that becomes a lake. Often I just hide. The best way to hide is to invest all your riches in your mind, not in things. Because in our culture not many people will recognize an education without a piece of paper and not many people will waste time on someone they consider poor. It’s a stigma, but not a very strong one. Just a faint whiff of victim, which can be a little dangerous. But sometimes it’s worth it. If you care.
No comments:
Post a Comment