Alice Miller wrote:
“As long as they are loved, children can recover from abuse and even the horror of war.”
Humiliation is a form of severe child abuse when the child experiences it on a repeated or ongoing basis beginning in their childhood. The path to recovery from humiliation is through love. Love starts from the ability to accept love, from oneself as well as from others. However, it is extremely difficult to practice self-love in the absence of love from others.
The characteristics an individual displays depends upon whether a person is given love, protection, tenderness and understanding or experiences rejection, coldness, indifference and cruelty in the early formative years. These characteristics are not innate but rather are dependent on what stimulus a child experience. For example, the stimulus indispensable for developing the capacity for empathy is the experience of loving care.
When a child is forced to grow up neglected, emotionally starved and subjected to physical abuse, this innate capacity will fail to develop or its development will be stunted. It is important to appreciate that while the negative experiences of children from infancy to early childhood explain their later behaviour, subsequent positive influences can be effective agent for change.
Alice Miller also wrote that if a traumatized or neglected child can later come to know what she calls an “enlightened or knowing witness,” he or she can process the effects of childhood trauma with positive results.
While remaining open to the opportunity to experience love, or positive influence, one should continue to pay attention to one’s boundaries and protectors. At the same time, pay attention to the following in sequence:
[1] Become aware of the connective link between your styles of engaging with others and your childhood experiences of humiliation.
Repeatedly noticing, and paying attention to the causal connections, is the beginning of making changes. The more you pay attention to this, the more you come to realize that you are not alone. You will see that such experience (of humiliation) is a human drama played out unfortunately and repeatedly every day in so many situations for so many people. Looking at it this way, one begins to transcend the isolating aspect of humiliation’s personal pain and hurt – you are not alone. Eliminating that isolation is another foundation of healing.
One can to cultivate this through cognitive re-structuring. Reminding yourself of this in a daily quiet time. You can set up a regular time to do this, such as going out for a walk in the morning on a definite consistent schedule.
And again, remember, you are not alone.
[2] Learn to distinguish the past from the present. If you are standing on the bank of the mighty Amazon river and take two pictures a minute apart, each photo shows different water. The water in the first picture has already moved on towards the Atlantic, replaced by entirely different water – even if it looks pretty much the same. In just that way, we are not exactly the same person as we were a minute ago.
This shows that the future is not exactly the same as the past. Use that truth to healthily correct the hangover of feeling humiliated in the past. You can do this by training to focus on the present moment. As Tolstoy wrote, “Remember that there is only one important time and it is Now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.”
By recognizing the impact of one’s difficult personal history and bringing one’s awareness to focus on the now, we can begin to wipe out the negative influences of the past.
[3] Protect others from humiliation, particularly children. Should you come across a child being humiliated, or perhaps on the edge of being humiliated, step in and say exactly what you would have wanted to hear so many years ago. At the same time, be protective of yourself as well and, if necessary, call the police or child protective services to the situation. For just that moment, be the protector for a child in the present that you needed in the past.
Learning that you can protect a child from humiliation is a path to healing for yourself. While you cannot travel back in time to when you were humiliated to undo the impact of the humiliation, you don’t have to. If you see a child being humiliated or abused, you can help that child right then and there. You will be letting that child know they are not alone, that there is protection in the world. You will also be giving that very same message to the child you were years ago.
