Betrayal, Part 2.

Betrayal & Shame

“Shame, similar to unawareness, and other aspects of Betrayal Blindness, helps preserve necessary relationships. Children need secure and trusting relationships to grow and thrive. Their very sense of self, and emotional stability, depends on it. Betrayal damages that web of relationships on which we all depend. Imagine for a moment the free-fall feeling of betrayal with no comprehension of its source… The confusion & disorientation can’t be understood by young children, so they go into a kind of internal whirling and feeling of craziness. As adults, we can give a name to the events that caused our free fall. Children only whirl, attempting to hold onto anything stable in their world. If there are no other trusting relationships and the betrayal is widespread, children can only find stability only by locating within themselves the badness that happened.” - Jennifer Freyd, Blind to Betrayal

“A woman who has denied her childhood reality, in order not to feel the pain, is perpetually fleeing her past with help of men, alcohol, drugs, or achievement. She needs a constant thrill to keep boredom at bay; not even one moment of quiet can be permitted during which the burning loneliness of her childhood experience might be felt, for she fears that feeling more than death. She will continue in her flight unless she learns that the awareness of her old feelings is not deadly but liberating. What often does kill is the rejection of those feelings, the conscious experience of which could reveal the truth.”- Alice Miller, The Drama of The Gifted Child

Lilith in the 4th House

This placement can indicate transgenerational traumas in the family.

Mother’s behaviors - The Shadow Part of Lilith in Cancer and the 4th House

Negative Mother Complex/ Devouring Mother Archetype

“Demeter symbolizes the Great Mother, with characteristics that many of us venerate, but also, behind her own exalted attitudes, she keeps an extreme side and an overprotection that masks an ability to allow her daughter to create her own individuality and flourish in other gardens, finally gaining freedom.” Demeter expresses exacerbated “love” and overprotection masked by the person’s fear of gaining individuality, freedom and becoming a woman she doesn’t want her daughter to become. Demeter, in mythology, acts as if she has a real property right over the daughter. She sees herself primarily as a mother and not as an individual separate from that role, however, she also has an unconscious attitude as a personal relationship. She acts by exercising power and control over her daughter Persephone, and seems to be always sacrificing herself when in reality she is unable to make a real sacrifice: to give freedom to her daughter. Her maternal instinct imposes itself brutally until she succeeds in annihilating her own personality and that of her children.” - crystalsenergy.tumblr.com/post/643530037255077888/lilith-in-cancer-4th-house-negative-mother:

This is one of my favorite articles I’ve ever come across on the Negative Mother Archetype. Astrology is so validating! I love it. Thank you, Astrologers. I’ve always felt a strong connection with Persephone and when I read the article I was like THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. I feel the Demeter and Persephone situation portrayed above is the exact dynamic between my own mother and myself. I know that one of the reasons my mother had such a difficult time with me was because I embodied aspects of herSelf that she had shamed and hidden away. My mother hated pretty much everything in her life; her husband, her job (she was an elementary school teacher), her body… all she had to cling to was this idea of being a mother. Even her teaching role was motherly. Outside of being a mother I feel like she felt she was nothing. It’s really sad. When she witnessed me beginning to express my individuality as a little girl, she felt rejected. My extremely independent nature (Aquarius Sun & Moon, Aries Rising) made my mother feel like I didn’t need her. It brought up her own rejection and abandonment wounds from when she was a little girl. It was triggering for her to see me express my creativity because she had repressed hers. My mother's unhealed trauma (Negative Ego) caused her system to see me as a threat. She didn’t have the knowledge we do now nor the tools to face the very difficult and painful emotional memories of deep childhood pain.

I like how in Jennifer Freyd’s incredible book, Blind to Betrayal, she describes the disorientation that occurs when betrayal happens at such a young age as an internal “falling” and/or “whirling”, and that the one thing you have to hold on to is that it’s your fault. I feel like that’s very accurate, and something, even as adults, we still gravitate toward, this idea of being desperate for something to hold on to.

The Betrayal Bond: Forced to bond with the Dangerous Ones

Kelly McDaniel also talks about betrayal in her incredible book, Mother Hunger. She calls what happens when you’re forced to bond with a mother who hurts you The Betrayal Bond.

“Since a mother's love is your primary defense from adversity, when she is the threat, her care is a profound relational betrayal. To bond with an unkind mother, our merciful imagination works overtime to create a different mother from the one we have. We create one who loves us, one who is taking care of us, one who isn't betraying our vulnerability. Our brain designs a different mother to help us cope with constant fear. Sadly, in service to bonding, these necessary brain changes create long-term personality problems. Surviving Third-Degree Mother Hunger may have left you with automatic dissociative patterns, chronic shame, and the propensity to land in relationships with others who betray you." - Kelly McDaniel

“The child learns to minimize the abuse to themselves.” - Mary Toolen

As a little girl, I felt like my mother despised me. I didn’t understand why she felt so much hatred toward me all the time. I was really scared of her. At the very same time, I needed her.

Disorganized Attachment Style - when the source of safety is the source of fear.

“Disorganized/disoriented attachment, also referred to as fearful-avoidant attachment, stems from intense fear, often as a result of childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse. Adults with this style of insecure attachment tend to feel they don't deserve love or closeness in a relationship.”

“A disorganized / fearful-avoidant attachment style develops when the child's caregivers – the only source of safety – become a source of fear.”

“One way that children may manage betrayal at the hands of their parents or caregivers, is to turn the blame inward. Similar to being blind to the betrayal or forgetting about it later, such shame could protect the relationship by allowing the child to maintain an attachment to the abusive caregiver by blaming him or her self instead of the true perpetrator. It is a strategy to maintain family ties in the face of betrayal. With repeated betrayal, the shame becomes chronic.” - Jennifer Freyd, Blind to Betrayal

“One of the greatest fears for a child is abandonment. Abandonment can occur in purely physical ways, like leaving children when they are helpless, & it can also occur in emotional ways, through rejection and withdrawal of love. The free fall and disorientation for these children may result in the lack of a coherent sense of self. What is wrong? They can’t know about the betrayal or name it that way. So children will disassociate into parts, develop strange fears, or experience a myriad of other reactions to hide from themselves and others the deep betrayal.” - Jennifer Freyd, Blind to Betrayal

When loving yourself feels like betraying your mother.

When you learn that to receive love you must abandon yourself.

When being yourself is tied with punishment & loss.

FRAGMENTATION

Because my authentic expression was shamed and punished, and my talents were devalued and/or ignored, and I wanted/needed to keep a bond with my mother … I was forced to fragment myself. I created a part of myself who was blind to my mother's betrayal (a part who pretended it wasn’t happening), a part who took on the negative projections being thrown at me (a part who believed I was inherently “bad”), a part who was (rightfully) very angry & rebelled, AND a part that mimicked my mother, an Inner Abuser. My power (creative energy) felt threatening to my survival (my mother), but instead of cutting myself off completely, I learned how to funnel my creative energy into men, which was fully accepted and encouraged in my family (coming back to the whole Ancestral Healing thing, the shame & fear around Feminine Expression & Power goes way back. Yet another Global Issue). So unconsciously, I learned how to put all of my sexual (creative) energy into men.

Early Attachment Wounding

“One way betrayal is so toxic is the way it sets up victims to be re-victimized.” - Jennifer Freyd

“The romantic partnership mimics the initial experience that one needs to have with their parent. If this initial experience was lacking in some way, the romantic partnership is the one we think will heal us from what was lacking and provide those needs that we are starving for.”- Teal Swan

“The ancients well knew the experience of being in love recapitulates the mother-child relationship in its intimate physical attachment, trust, and dependence. Recognition of one particular other as a love object surely evolved from the instinctive mechanism that binds together individual mothers and offspring. It has been shown even in the animal realm that adequate sexual functioning in adulthood depends on satisfactory relations with the mother in infancy.” -Unfinished Business: Pressure Points in the Lives of Women by Maggie Scarf

Subconsciously I was trying to find this motherly, all-consuming, early bonding years kind of love through my romantic relationships. I was trying to get all my needs met through one person. Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie & Clyde vibes. This was a total projection, too, by the way. I was just projecting what I thought I wanted onto these guys. It wasn’t real. They didn’t know they were characters in my fantasy. One of the many problems in this dynamic is that I kept choosing the same toxic energy dynamics I experienced as a child.

“Beware the familiar when you come from a dangerous home.”

“The first experiences do not always lead to freedom but quite often lead instead to a repetition of the person’s childhood situation, in which she will experience feelings of agonizing shame and painful nakedness as an accompaniment to her genuine expressions of her true self. She will seek out those who, like her parents (though for different reasons), certainly cannot understand her. Because of her blindness caused by repression, she will try to make herself understandable to precisely these people- trying to make possible what cannot be.” - Alice Miller, The Drama of The Gifted Child

I was searching for protection & guidance and The Patriarchal Male felt safe, like he would be able to take care of me, like he knew how to make it in the world. I did not feel like I was capable of making it in this world on my own. I was still a child inside and at this point in my life, I was mainly concerned with physical needs like food and housing. A hurdle I am still working on overcoming. Because I never received any emotional support as a child I created the belief that emotional support wasn’t something I needed and instead I was attracted to men who I felt could “take care of me” financially. I also really liked the idea of us rescuing each other. Along with the attraction to financial capability, I was attracted to wounded men.

“It wasn’t the money, exactly. It was just that the money made everything seem all right. It was the opposite of chaos, the opposite of everything I had known up until then. I wanted to be sheltered at last.” - The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

“All she wanted was to be a little girl, to be efficiently taken care of by some yielding yet superior power, stupider and steadier than herself. It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful & The Damned

“All I wanted was a little bit of love to take the pain away” - Spiritualized

The wounding I received from a narcissistic mother who felt threatened by me taught my system it wasn’t safe to shine, it wasn’t safe to excel. I learned I was safest when I pretended like I wasn’t good at anything, when I made everyone else better than me, when I acted like I was undeserving (false humility). I learned that my safest role was “helpless, worthless girl who needed to be saved”. Notice the theme of *safety*…

“Contrary to what many would say, true humility is not negative, but positive. It is not born from a feeling of smallness or helplessness or unworthiness, but, first, from fascination. God is so great, life is so beautiful, love is so precious, that it surpasses me. It is therefore less a question of lowering yourself than of opening up. It is necessary to avoid false humility like the plague. There is a way of devaluing oneself, of lamenting one’s real or feigned misery, of putting yourself down with a thousand reproaches, which is the opposite of true humility.” - https://aleteia.org/cp1/2020/11/09/is-humility-the-virtue-of-knowing-how-to-remain-in-the-shadows/

As you might have already picked up on, Religious Programming comes into play here. The whole Selfish vs Selflessness conversation, True Humility vs False Humility, Good vs Bad. In my personal experience what I’ve learned is “selflessness” and False Humility lead to resentment and the use of unconscious, manipulative ways to get your needs met.

So, I developed in a way where whenever I was trying something new or doing something I loved… this intense fear & shame would rise up… and I mean, it was really intense because I was so young when this original wounding happened. I didn’t know what to do with these intense feelings so I just avoided doing things that brought them up. I avoided doing things that brought me joy and pleasure, things that made me feel powerful and alive. No wonder I thought love was in the drugs, right?