For Your Own Good

Abuse can be life-saving - although that may initially be hard to conceive.

It’s a matter of perspective: for one person, it is care; for the other, it is abuse. As I pointed out in my previous daily “I Was Physically Abused” , Alexander Discovered the gap between perception and conception, the place where all misconceptions arise.

“You can’t know a thing by an instrument that is wrong.” FMA

***

I am two years old. My legs are tied into a contraption high above me. I can’t move. I don’t know why I am trapped here – day after day, week after week, month after month. Was it three months? That’s what my mother told me. Maybe it was only three weeks. For a two-year-old, even three weeks is an eternity…

I evolve my coping strategies emerge during these days. A clown is born - the muddle-headed wombat who can make you laugh at him.

Simultaneous to this - my doctors and nurses are saving my little life. I have all the skin burnt off my inside thighs and massive skin drafts made over three major operations. Skin as thin as tissue paper – a two-year-old can is not allowed to run around. It’s that, or die.

By the time I am freed - I can no longer walk. I start with crawling again.

***

After Marj unravelled my puffed chest, new feelings began to emerge from within my heart. Melancholic feelings I called “depression” - but my girlfriend labelled “exquisite”. 

I was tapping into something – but what?

Then someone handed me a book by Swiss Psychologist Alice Miller “For Your Own Good”. Alice Miller used the book’s title “For Your Own Good” as a rallying cry of condemnation towards every parent who abused their children by saying it was “for your own good.” 

lies, Lies, LIES Miller claimed.

As I read her book, I felt shell-shocked – what is this?! Her words pierced me deeply, and I ticked all the boxes of childhood abuse. And yet – it made no sense. I was not abused. 

Was I?

At that time, I had no memory or recognition of what had happened to me as a two-year-old child. I only began to investigate as my coordination changed at the touch of Marj, my precious teacher. Through Marj’s use of Alexander’s Discovery, I was peeling off my layers of protection, revealing a sensitive core of emotions that started to transform my life.

I thought: this is a journey anyone can take – I started to evolve my ThinkingBody methodology. But to go on a journey like this, you need a compass – and Alexander’s story was that Compass. But how to make sense of that for others?

Then I found another compass. One that was so old, no one could define its origins except to say that it appeared thousands of years ago. 

Using this new tool, I would evolve a way to lead others in the process I was exploring in my Self. Ironically, this journey would end in a workshop in Switzerland, ending with a group of shell-shocked Alexander teachers and a grateful audience of participants.

I was emerging to become another kind of teacher, and I lost the popularity I had.

***
You can read more about the Compass on the page at the link below:

https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/store/TGFBWut4/