Does this tender portrait pluck the strings of your heart? Well, I hate to break it to people, but teaching your daughter to play music doesn't look like that! I wanted my six-year-old daughter to learn piano. After two or three months, she
didn't want to play the piano. Mustering motherly patience, we sat on the piano bench together, she and I. She turned her face towards mine, merged both brows in a single battalion and hovered her hands over the keyboard,
refusing to move her fingers for half an hour. Paint that Lord Leighton.
So before reading further, set aside idealized notions of motherhood because women won't measure up and putting us down is easy-peasy in a
mother-idealizing/
mother-demonizing culture. Please know this article does not invalidate strong feelings about narcissistic and abusive mothers. Those feelings are valid. ACoNs might even hate their mother for the abuse she inflicted on them as a child and that's not only normal, it's part of healing. This essay is about anonymous people's intense emotions after the media spotlight focused on the mother of a child with a mental illness. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about a woman they did not know and never would. Their explosive reactions were startling, belying pretenses of rationality and I wondered if their opinions stemmed from unresolved internal conflicts having everything to do with themselves and nothing to do with Lisa Long.
"Intense and volatile feelings are a sign that splitting is at work." ~Joseph Burgo
If you've been learning about narcissism along with me, then you know people with narcissistic disorders are susceptible to
splitting defenses.
When splitting has occurred,
partners become adversaries; friends morph into enemies over the mere hint of a criticism or slight. Narcissists split people into good or bad objects believing they're privy to the truth about that person, even when other people disagree, even in the face of contradictory evidence. They trust their distorted perceptions so thoroughly that attempting to reason with them is a querulous and often futile task. People who split reality
are unaware of their self-deception, selectively collecting evidence to support a simplified black-or-white perception that allows them to feel better about themselves.
"Black-and-white thinking reflects the psychological defense mechanism known as splitting. When we feel unable to tolerate the tension and confusion aroused by complexity, we resolve that complexity by splitting it into two simplified and opposing parts, usually aligning ourselves with one of them and rejecting the other."~Joseph Burgo
 |
| Holy Grail by Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
According to psychological theory, everyone splits reality into right/wrong, good/evil, black/white from time-to-time. An either/or polarization might occur when the complexity of a situation leads to ambiguous, uncertain answers; i.e.: the gray areas. When our normal coping mechanisms are unable to reduce our stress, we're more vulnerable to splitting. But it's not like we tell our psyche to resolve dissonance with a self-deceptive maneuver!
Splitting is an unconscious process. You won't know you're doing it. If we're psychologically resilient however, we'll catch ourselves in the act.
I'll cop to occasional lapses during political discussions when it's puh-lain to see that my opponent is an idiot. Which in the black-and-white world infers
I'm not an idiot and therefore my reasoning is right. I feel better. I win. No more insecurity or doubt. My lapse into childish certitude only lasts a brief time thank goddess, and then a higher-evolved ego defense kicks in: I laugh at my behavior and write a post about it hoping my republican family members won't read it. Splitting, to me, is like falling in a Wonderland rabbit hole and you can't come out the other side until admitting you're on a rabbit hunt, not a Grail Quest.
Sometimes people
split because they can't tolerate feelings or thoughts they've been taught were wrong or bad. Instead of saying, "I hate your guts!", they split off hatred (which they believe is
bad) in order to feel good about themselves. They believe feelings of hatred define them as a bad person. The behavior of someone who has
split off so-called bad feelings to make themselves feel good, makes other people feel...well...insane. That's because the THINGS they are DOING are undeniably aggressive AND hateful, yet they insist they love you, they don't hate a soul, and would never hurt a fly lemme stick a FAT PINE TREE in their eye! (Not that I have any residual bitterness or anything).
Splitting. It's not for grown-ups.
Splitting can also be a pathological defense resulting in painful consequences for themselves and others. Probably worse for others. At least the 'splitter' feels
great about him or herself. But splitting isn't just for Cluster Bs, and that's a smart thing to remember when you're flooded with intense feelings having more to do with yourself than the other person. Don't overhear me though. The whole world isn't pathological, unless our
whole world is kindergarten when splitting
is age-appropriate. Psychological maturity eventually integrates the
ors with the
ands for most of us. So like it
or not, mothers are both right
and wrong, both good
and bad. And, despite the best of her intentions, mothers can make bad decisions without being bad people whose children should be placed in foster care for GOD'S SAKES PEOPLE!
 |
| Albert Anker |
After the Newtown tragedy, I read an article by Liza Long about her son with a mental illness. It was titled,
"I am Adam Lanza's Mother". You've probably read it unless you've been hibernating in a cave and who could blame you? I believe her article was originally titled
Thinking the Unthinkable on
her mommy-ish
blog before a publisher picked it up. I could be wrong about that and even if I am, it wouldn't make me a bad mother---just a lousy fact-checker. Her blog went crazy-town viral inflaming a frenzy of polarized supporters and detractors idealizing or demonizing a mother they did not know and never would. Liza's situation is my Worst Nightmare since my blog discusses family members too, as most narcissism blogs do. She's like many of us: anonymous, divorced, primary care giver to her children, one of whom deals with mental illness. She isn't a daily blogger like most of us aren't either. She blogs about her family a few times a year (yes,
a few times a year). Her sincere angst after the
Newtown shootings, inspired her to write an article about her troubled son attracting enough animosity
for me to hover
my forefinger over the "Remove All Traces of My Blog" key. YIKES
Despite traumatic flashbacks and anxiety, I was glued to my monitor. People pointed accusatory fingers at her mothering calling her abusive, a PSYCHO, the cause of her son's mental illness. Some people said she was a LIAR, they didn't TRUST her. Some said there was nothing wrong with her son even though her son's school employs a safety plan protecting students during his rages. Liza's other children have their own Family Protection Plan from their brother: run to the car and lock the doors. I'm willing to take a wild stance here and say this kid has issues beyond temper tantrums. What do people say about Liza's willingness to talk about her personal life? Well, this is a common example:
"She shouldn't TALK about her son's problems! What goes on in the home needs to stay in the home!!!"
I think the
No Talk Rule applies even in this situation because we're discussing social negligence. A blogging friend describes
The No Talk Rule this way: "[The No Talk Rule] is simple and brilliant. Whatever most needs to be discussed, whatever problem is most urgent, pressing and real, is placed under conversational interdict. We Will Not Speak Of This."
Breaking the Silence makes other people uncomfortable because they'd rather not know the truth. Instead of dealing with the feelings her story triggers, people blame the mother for speaking up. They'd also blame her if she remained silent and her son eventually hurt someone---herself, most likely. Like Adam Lanza's mother. She didn't leave a cyber-trail and people are frustrated by that. Talk. Don't talk. Either way, she's a bad mother.
Liza broke the silence and her family's isolation by writing an article bringing mental healthcare to public attention. She wrote about her son the way women typically write about their reality, revealing the nitty-gritty of daily life. The unsettling truth is that anyone can have a child with a mental illness and it doesn't mean that child was abused or neglected.
In fact, that child may have been better taken care of than children who do not have mental illnesses. So it was maddening reading parenting advice from neanderthal idiots insisting "the chastening rod" would fix that boy's psychological problems like corporal punishment fixed their kids. (I'll integrate my either/ors tomorrow folks. For today, these folks are i-d-i-o-t-s.)
"Liza Long is unethical and I'm calling her on it!" a guy with the sword of truth boasted, fueled by the two feelings in his emotional repertoire: righteous indignation and contempt. (Woopee. I feel safer knowing he's keeping that mother in line!)
"She's an attention whoring opportunist who is latching onto this tragedy for attention and notoriety." (Like we've never heard that before. The Madonna/Whore split?)
"These children could be in real danger," an academic scholar named Kendzior wrote, "if her goal was to capitalize on the Newtown tragedy by creating a media campaign designed to give her sympathy."
It's beyond ironic that
an academic scholar, would piggyback her journalistic acumen on "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother's" back. Seriously? A professional journalist takes down a mommy blogger in Boise, Idaho? We've all encountered the sleuthing personality concocting willfully misleading passages from a blogger's archives, cherry-picking excerpts
out of context in proof of a judgement
preconceived. Every blogger is an easy target when someone WANTS to hate them. Clip a portion here, copy a passage there, start building the gallows. 4 Shame.
As a woman, it was embarrassing witnessing malicious attacks on an overwhelmed mother who was asking for help. Thank heavens that cyber-split ended quickly. This is a link to a
joint statement bringing Kendzior's Inquisition to a halt. Frankly, a head-hanging apology would have been appropriate, but I'm a woman who's a mother who blogs about family who loves a child with a mental illness and sometimes I'm overwhelmed, too.
I would hate for Kendzior's website to have
a chilling effect on women's freedom to talk openly about their lives.
Even when the truth of their lives makes other people uncomfortable. Maybe
especially when it does.
Blog On, my friends! Keep talking!
Liza's recent PBS interview explains why she revealed her identity and her purpose in talking about her son. She's resolute in her role as a spokesperson representing thousands of families in situations like hers. "It’s not easy to be an advocate," she writes, "but sometimes our causes find us, even when we don’t expect them. I’m grateful for the opportunity to change a national conversation. Maybe it’s not about guns: maybe it’s about mental health."
