I am currently taking a Nonviolent Communication class based on the teachings of Marshall Rosenberg. My teacher Joe emphasizes a crippling and unnecessary quality of our culture: that beginning in very early childhood, we are taught that our own needs do not matter.

When you are still a completely helpless baby, caregivers pay attention to your needs, such as food and diaper changing and hugs, but after you’ve been alive for a year or so, you are on your own. Your caregivers are oblivious to your needs and not interested in them; rather than listen to your needs, they yell at you, “Go to your room!” and otherwise boss you around. As a small child looking up at looming tall adults, you assume they’re the experts and consequently internalize the message that you are not good enough and that in order to try being loved and appreciated, you have to wear a mask. In this cultural climate, we all suffer from some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder.

For me, at least, the strategy of wearing a mask never worked; I continued to be consistently treated as if everything I do is wrong just because I’m the one doing it, and my verbally abusive relatives continue to treat me this way. Generation after generation passes down this obliviousness toward needs, despite the writings of Abraham Maslow on the topic of needs. Generation after generation is traumatized by this early childhood suppression, and I am not only referring to my family.

When in my twenties I began to open up about my verbally abusive childhood, people cut me off by saying things like, “Well, we all got through our childhood, and that’s all over with,” and, “That was a long time ago. You’re holding a grudge! Get over it.” Now, as a truth seeker, I realize that people who have that attitude are clearly in denial about their own childhood trauma. Furthermore, most people don’t even realize that verbal abuse is abuse; if I had been talking about sexual abuse or beatings, my friends and coworkers would have taken me seriously. However, at the time, I internalized these additional attacks, crawled back into my shell, and remained in denial about childhood trauma until I was well into my thirties. Most people go through their entire lives without ever realizing that they are still traumatized by early childhood.

My mother’s side of the family, in addition to being completely oblivious to me as an individual with needs, emotions, and a point of view, brainwashed me from early childhood into believing that my mother’s side of the family is the good side of the family and my father’s side of the family is the bad side of the family. Despite everything I witnessed firsthand, and despite my emotions, I was successfully conditioned to believe that my worst enemies are the most important people in my life and that I must be completely loyal to them. As a child, and into my teen years, I didn’t realize that the behavior of my mother, aunts, and uncles was bizarre and inappropriate.

I was very confused about relatives until 2004, when two of my aunts ganged up on me in an incredibly immature and outrageous manner, and I stopped being in denial about how I feel about relatives. Because of the brainwashing and my subsequent denial, I was in a state of confusion toward these relatives: they would attack me and I would be hurt, but I couldn’t admit even to myself that I was hurt. I could not admit that their poisonous behavior was indeed inappropriate and that I didn’t deserve their attacks; or at least I couldn’t admit that it affected me emotionally, since I was so brainwashed into suppressing any anger or hostility that I feel toward these relatives. I had a wall between my consciousness and the resentful, aversive, hurt emotions that any normal person would have felt toward them. In short, society’s typical suppression of our needs and emotions took such an extreme form that I was, in effect, brought up to be a victim and a sort of sleepwalker.

This upbringing is, I now realize, tied in with the “I have no right to have emotions” mentality with which I grew up. From early childhood, the message was drummed into me that everyone assumed I had no needs, no emotions, and no perspective of my own. I had to set aside my own emotions and needs and perspective because these things were “inconvenient” for my parents, aunts, uncles, and teachers. My own emotions, needs, and perspective were a nuisance and had to be beaten out of me, or more accurately suppressed, hidden away behind a cloak of denial. Although I suffered from a great deal more verbal abuse than average, it is typical in our society to have our needs and emotions completely dismissed beginning in early childhood.

Now when I look back on my college years, I realize that I had so thoroughly internalized the message that my worst enemies are sacred, that they are the most important people in my life and should not be questioned or disliked, that when a friend asked me about someone who was in fact very contemptuous toward me, I claimed that she seemed alright. During my theater years, I was on a scene painting crew led by Tracy, a student who treated me with scathing contempt; I felt rejected and miserable and inadequate because of her treatment, and I had been brought up to assume that when people are attacking me it’s because I’m inadequate. However, when I learned that Tracy also treated the scene designer with contempt, something began to shift in my consciousness; it was a shock to learn that Tracy was treating the scene designer, who seemed to me like a really nice guy, the same way she treated me. After that, I began to be more able to open up about how I felt toward people who treated me and others badly.

No doubt my attitude toward Tracy and other bullies was because as a small child I’d been so thoroughly brainwashed into believing I have no right to have needs, emotions, or my own perspective, combined with how I was taught to believe that my worst enemies are the most important and admirable people in my life. I had subconsciously extended it to include other bullies, which was a great way to set me up for an indescribably abusive and crippled life. Fortunately, I have since woken up and become a truth seeker; unfortunately, this is unlike the vast majority.

Given that in our culture it’s normal to, starting in early childhood, get the message that your needs are not important and you have to wear a mask all the time, it’s surprising that this bizarre attitude I used to have, of assuming that people are mean to me because I deserve such treatment and therefore being in denial about how I feel, isn’t more common. On the other hand, maybe it’s more common than I realize; maybe it’s the norm for women especially, the more patriarchal and oppressive the culture.

That would explain the attitude of women in Afghanistan, how so many of them have internalized the extreme misogyny in their culture. According to Ann Jones, author of Kabul in Winter, there are Afghani women who are so smart that they say, “I don’t want to get married, because men are abusive,” whether or not they take that a step further and realize that men are socialized to be abusive rather than act that way naturally.

It’s at least as common for Afghani women to believe that women are inferior. That is, they have internalized the bigotry and oppression rather than looking outward and questioning the behavior of the abusers. If this message is drummed into you from an early age, that you’re supposed to admire certain enemies, then you’ll buy into the message and it will be all the more difficult for you to wake up and seek healing and truth. I think this is a great tragedy of not only Afghanistan but of society as we know it.

Our society does not have to be this way. One major way we can move from what Riane Eisler calls Dominator Culture to Partnership Culture is by raising children to be aware of their needs and emotions. People who want to have, raise, or teach children should first be required to take a free course on child psychology and on compassionate communication. If it were normal to be brought up in a commune, with about ten people raising us instead of one or two, then we would receive a sufficient amount of attention. This cannot happen as long as we wallow in ignorance, insanely ignoring the ever-important needs of compassion, love, respect, acceptance, self-expression, and understanding. We furthermore need revolution through education: if compassion and nonviolent communication skills were taught from kindergarten through twelfth grade, students would awaken to their needs and emotions thanks to this education, even if they were born into a family that is completely oblivious to their needs. This could break the cycle of a traumatized and dysfunctional Dominator Culture and bring about true, positive change.

You can visit the Center for Partnership Studies at http://www.partnershipway.org/.

Information on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hiearchy_of_needs

Bibliography

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. HarperSanFrancisco: 1995.

Jones, Ann. Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan. Metropolitan Books, NY: 2006.

Maslow, Abraham. Toward a Psychology of Being. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.: 1999.

Miller, Alice. The Drama of the Gifted Child: the Search for the True Self. Basic Books, NY: 1997.

Psaris, Jett, and Marlena S. Lyons. Undefended Love. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., Oakland, CA: 2000.

Rosenberg, Marshall. Nonviolent Communication: a Language of Life. Puddledancer Press, Encinitas, CA: 2003.