Friday, March 26, 2010

Patty Hearst

I was thinking about Patty Hearst just now, trying to get a handle on how she became indoctrinated by her captors and bought in to their agenda, something which is called Stockholm Syndrome.

You would think, after ten years of living here, that Rocky might have bought into something. Yes, yes, I know--the first two years of his life were trauma and neglect, and then when he should have been bonding to us, he was terrified and fighting for what he thought was his survival. Plus, the prenatal exposures, coupled with the trauma, have affected his ability to use cause and effect thinking. No matter how much effort we make, how much work with do, how much therapy we provide, he still lies and steals and makes really really stupid choices.

We have a life which no one wants and few understand. My house has become like a prison or boot camp, and I have become the warden, drilling and supervising and sounding like Tommy Lee Jones with PMS. No offense to Mr. Jones--he is a fine actor, and I enjoy his work. But I am tired. Tired of chaos, tired of never believing what I am told. Tired of the fight, fight, fight, of not ever getting anywhere.

Maybe I'm the one getting Stockholm Syndrome.

3 comments:

debinca said...

sigh, I was just thinking similar thoughts, my dd is 19, Minister MOm's dd is 23 today... no changes in either girl. I have sent my hubby posts about rocky and he thinks its my dd........ sigh.

If only they would 'come over to our side' what a relief it would be.

TobyBo said...

do you remember the old Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror" where the crew is in the transporter and gets swapped with an evil crew - the same guys in a parallel universe?

Anyhow, the good Kirk, Scotty McCoy, and Uhura fake their way through being evil and are worried about what things will be like on their own ship with the evil crew in charge. They are relieved when Scotty gets them back where they belong and they find the evil crew was locked up the whole time

Anyhow... I think it's easier to go over into dysfunctionality than to make the trip the other way.

Munchkin Mom said...

I agree. Unfortunately, most of the people in this house get sucked into the dysfunctionality, and I'm trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

I find the easiest thing to do is to require silence--somehow the chaos is the first step into the sub-levels of dysfunction.