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Title: The Oppressed Identity Author: Caroline Sanders Date: 2021 Language: en Topics: Hierarchy, oppression, family, abuse, Mutual Aid
âThe hallmark of political anarchism is its opposition to the
established order of things: to the state, its institutions, the
ideologies that support and glorify these institutions. The established
order must be destroyed so that human spontaneity may come to the fore
and exercise its right of freely initiating action, of freely choosing
what it thinks is best.â
Paul Feyerabend. Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of
Knowledge.
There is a poem by Yeats, called âA Prayer For My Daughterâ. In the poem
he talks about his future daughter; that she be beautiful, but not too
beautiful; that she be clever, but not too clever. Parents have hopes
and dreams for their children, and these hopes and dreams are often
rooted in beliefs about the world, ourselves, and others. Beliefs can be
handed down through generations, and are an example of intergenerational
storytelling. Yeats wants his daughter to âfit intoâ society. We are
left curious about what he would do to ensure his daughter meets this
belief, this expectation.
The explosion in prescription medication for our emotional and mental
health underpins a current consensus shared belief that there is
something wrong with us that needs fixing, and this can be done in
isolation from the rest of our world. We need a cure, and a pill. We are
struggling within our society's mental health epidemic. An article in
âThe British Medical Journalâ stated in March 2019 that, âThe number of
prescriptions for antidepressants in England has almost doubled in the
past decade, new figures have shown. Data from NHS Digital show that
70.9 million prescriptions for antidepressants were given out in 2018,
compared with 36 million in 2008.â(1)
There are popular, and well meaning social media statements shared that
we should treat people with mental health issues as we treat someone
with a physical illness. Mental health is an invisible illness. If
someone had a broken leg we would make sure they had somewhere to sit
down and would show compassion and understanding until the leg is
healed. Similarly for these mental health invisible illnesses we should
make adjustments for the individual, until the pills cure us. This
belief is necessary for people to receive the support they so
desperately need, but it also minimises a particular quality of
emotional and mental health issues; that we are human beings with
complex emotions, and that it is normal to feel difficult feelings.
Furthermore, our feelings can communicate important information for us
to construct meanings about ourselves, our history and relationships
with others.These meanings can form part of our personal identities, of
who we are.
The belief ignores that we are social animals and that often our
emotional and mental health issues arise in our relationships with
others. We never question that our emotional and mental challenges may
have a cause within specific types of relationships with others, and
that the problem may not be, in fact, with us. Sometimes it can be
argued that our emotional responses are protective. If I get angry it
could be because you are actually threatening me, not because Iâm
faulty.
Popular psychology has also done a good job of encouraging us to focus
on ourselves and our personality for explanations of all the bad things
that happen to us; extrovert, introvert, neuroticism, openness, but it
is not alone in this. I suppose if we are born with a fixed personality,
or under a particular astrological sign that determines our fate, then
there is not much we can do about it so we just need to accept it and
surrender to our life. In a world which seems so beyond our control I
can see that there could be a consolation in those ideas. Nevertheless
philosophers like David Hume liberated us from this determinism in
telling us that âthe selfâ was, in fact, an illusion. His âbundle
theoryâ, simply put, states that the âselfâ is just a bundle of
properties, which if taken away leaves nothing at the core. Recent
research around plasticity of the brain seems to indicate that there is
a lot about âusâ that is changeable. We can escape the tyranny of
star-signs, personality types, and an essential âselfâ. I can choose who
I am in the choices I make.
During the past thirty years I have taught philosophy and politics,
worked in education, youth services, and children's services, as well as
in various roles within mental health services. In my work, people have
told me that the most important thing to them, the thing that matters
most, is family. Those loving connections are the most meaningful, and
the most profound. To feel a sense of belonging, to feel valued and
accepted gives us a source of support and identity. We need our
families. Sometimes, however, they cause us a great deal of deep
unhappiness too. An unhappiness that, as individuals and as a culture we
can be fearful to explore. Itâs sometimes easier to blame ourselves, our
star signs, our personality, than the family itself. We could, however,
like Hume, separate out the characteristics of the family and discard
some, whilst keeping others. Like Humeâs bundle theory, there may not be
an entity of âfamilyâ at the core but just a bundle of properties, some
of which, if harmful, we could discard.
We will be discussing child abuse and violence. Adverse childhood
experiences are potentially traumatic events that happen to us before
the age of eighteen. In section three we will look and discuss each
question used in the research questionnaire. I am not blaming
individuals for adverse childhood experiences. Just as I donât agree
that emotional health problems are because we are faulty, I donât agree
that adverse childhood experiences are deliberately caused by
individuals. As parents we have our own transgenerational traumas to
cope with when raising children.
I am, however, blaming the way we organise hierarchically within
families, as it creates the perfect conditions for abuse. The degree of
our hierarchical damage affects how mentally, emotionally, and
physically unwell we are as children and as adults, and impacts on our
life expectancy. I have worked with hundreds upon hundreds of families
and I have never met any person who actively wanted to hurt anyone else.
I met people who were simply trapped in a toxic system. People with whom
I have deepest respect and empathy. Our identities are created within
the familial relationship of oppression when we are children, and
determine the experiences of our lives, the way we interact with others,
and the world around us. These oppressed identities suppress the free,
liberated, spontaneous individuality that bubbles underneath. As
Rousseau said, âwe are born free, but are everywhere in chains.â
Anarchism sees the hierarchies and structures of power around as not
inevitable, but as deliberate devices of control. I see the oppression
caused by these hierarchical relationships as damaging to humans,
non-human animals and the planet. I think it could be different.
Anarchism asks us to challenge the accepted and conventional view, the
status quo, and to fight for the release of human beings from servitude.
Capitalism embeds power relationships and hierarchies of oppression
wherever it travels. It is an economic system that extracts profit, from
people in the form of surplus value, from non-human animals, and from
the planet's resources. In order for some people to âget awayâ with this
economic hoarding and oppression, this plundering, the beneficiaries of
capitalism establish hierarchies and power relationships throughout
political and civil society which normalise inequality in wealth, power,
and privilege. These hierarchies, which are distributions of power, are
replicated throughout political life, and exist in the institutions of
state and government. We accept the authority over us, and actually ask
other people to govern over us by electing them in elections, in a mass
movement of self-harm. We live within multiple social, political and
economic hierarchies, accepting them as normal, rarely questioning them
or wondering about them. Most of us live towards the bottom of those
hierarchies and are oppressed, which means other people have power over
us, and make decisions on our behalf. We are controlled, and we are
unfree.
The criticisms of anarchism include the view that humans need political
hierarchies in order to live safely. WIthout these power relationships
it would be chaos. The famous quote from Hobbes writing at the end of
the English Civil War was that life without government would be ânasty,
brutish and shortâ. Kropotkin and others have argued that it was in fact
mutual aid and co-operation that drove evolution and historical
progress, not competition, and here is no need for tyranny. Political
mutual aid has been practised within countercultural communities without
chaotic outcomes. Non-hierarchical political processes have also been
implemented successfully.
Yet it is not just the rich and powerful who perpetrate the view that we
need hierarchy, and there is something wrong with us if we feel
emotionally unwell whilst living within it. Paulo Freire said that,
âoppressed people believe deeply that they need the oppressors for their
own survivalâ? One way of explaining this phenomenon is to notice that
we are born into hierarchical families under capitalism. We experience
oppression within this first hierarchy where we absolutely do need our
parents to survive, and this is so successfully embedded in us, even
within our brain development, that we donât even question our further
experiences of oppression. Oppression does not only consist of political
oppression therefore, but also happens within social relationships such
as the family, where we experience control by our parents who have
authority and power over us. We can be put down, humiliated or denied
opportunity within these social hierarchies. The hierarchical family, as
the adverse childhood experiences research shows, can be the vehicle for
this behaviour, for this abuse. Moreover, the family lays the foundation
for our unquestioning acceptance of other informal social hierarchies
and political hierarchy
I will identify the oppressed identity as something that comes from the
hierarchy of the family. Within any relationship of oppression, the
oppressor turns the oppressed into a material object to control. We hold
sentimental beliefs that the loving family is supposed to mitigate these
effects of hierarchy. Unconditional love prevents oppression. I will
argue, however, that the adverse childhood experiences research shows us
that within the family oppression can actually be amplified. Within the
family hierarchy parents can create oppressed identities for their
children through the normal workings of the hierarchy; holding a
position of power and authority over another person, which is compounded
within the family by a particular relationship where the parent can hold
a belief that they âownâ the child, that the child is theirs. They
decide and define who the child will be, as if they are making an
object. They can reject the free, creative, authentic capacity to change
and be different, and they judge the child. The child internalises this.
A childâs oppressed identity affects their whole life, their mental,
emotional and physical health outcomes, their ability to challenge their
continuing oppression as they leave the family, and their acceptance of
other hierarchies and experiences of oppression. It is even more
profound because we experience it at a time when our brains are
developing, and in some sense this oppressed identity becomes the most
significant way of apprehending the world.
If we look at the data on mental health and prescriptions for
antidepressants, then we can see that life within hierarchies does not
seem to be working for us at all. In fact, I would argue that
hierarchical relationships of oppression cause chaos for those towards
the bottom of them, which is most of us. They cause emotional chaos and
distress. Our oppression is experienced traumatically and with enormous
consequences for us, our children, and broader society. The adverse
childhood experiences research has demonstrated not only a social cause
for mental and physical health problems, but also shocking linkages
between adverse childhood experiences and heart attacks, cancer, life
expectancy and anxiety/depression which I will detail in chapter two. I
will argue that this is because the hierarchical nature of the family
creates the conditions for abuse, violence, and neglect; for emotional
chaos which affects the quality of our future lives, and our life
expectancy.
Human beings are social and experience emotions. Emotions can be good
and bad, and can be overwhelming. As children within family
relationships, our parents help us to understand our emotions and
co-regulate to help us feel safe. If families are not good at this, or
if we experience adverse experiences during childhood, we can struggle
with what we call mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression and
suicidal ideation, because we have not been supported to cope with our
big emotions. Mental health difficulties are understood here as
unregulated, uncontrolled emotion which impacts on a person's
functioning in life. I prefer to call it emotional health as it is more
accurate and helps us to open up possibilities for a solution.
Of course, mental health can describe more than this, and there are
cases where there may be genetic, biological or other reasons for mental
health problems. Nevertheless we know that the brain and environment
work together. It is not the case of nature versus nurture. More likely
we are born with brains that change materially because of environmental
experiences. The research on the plasticity of the brain tells us that
we develop neural pathways as we learn and experience new things, good
and bad. If we are read to by our parents or other adults, we develop
strong language pathways. If we experience scary situations, we will
develop strong fear pathways, meaning we are more likely to go down this
route as adults.
So what happens to us as children affects our brain development, and how
we deal with our emotions. The family then becomes an even more
important institution because it determines how we deal with and cope
with big emotions, and how we create our identities; the qualities,
beliefs, and values we hold. Adverse childhood experiences impact
further and determine our mental, emotional, and physical health
outcomes, including our life expectancy. The more adverse childhood
experiences we experience, the worse our outcomes. The family could be
the most important institution in our lives, and we usually experience
it, within capitalist societies, as a hierarchy.
The hierarchy of the family gives us our oppressed identities; it
creates the very model of oppression that informs all of our future
relationships with people, institutions and the world. The family
creates the conditions for adverse childhood experiences to happen, and
the degree of hierarchical damage we receive from these adverse
experiences harms us emotionally and physically. The family is a
hierarchy of such huge scope that it blinds us to the possibilities of a
world without hierarchy: it posits hierarchy as necessary and
inevitable, and makes a world without it appear, at best, absurd and
impossible, and, at worst, chaotic and terrifying. However, it is the
existence of hierarchy which enables the toxic system of oppression that
is literally killing us.
I will use phenomenological methodology, which is extracting philosophy
from our experiences in the world. More simply stated, phenomenology is
the study of an individual's lived experience of the world. I have
fictionalised some of the stories I have been told over the years, but
will relate common strands, common experiences as illustrative of
adverse childhood experiences on people. I want to demonstrate the
importance of this for real people, who are living this every day, in
their physical and emotional pain. Adverse childhood experiences are
real, human events that destroy lives. A phenomenological approach can
reveal the meanings that people give to their experiences of oppression,
often internalised in what we are naming as an oppressed identity. Such
an approach can reveal the sadness and tragedy of a person accepting
something so damaging as inevitable, and furthermore believing it is
their own fault. After thirty years I feel it imperative that we hear
our âhealthâ stories as what they are, as stories of oppression. It is
not our fault. It is not our bad genes, our personality or star sign. It
is not our deficiencies. We can be free, and it can be different.
I am trying to name the problem as honestly as I am able, and point
towards the direction of a solution; there is always hope. Inevitably
the point of writing this is to effect change. I will show in the final
section that we can challenge the institution of the family as a
hierarchy, and develop non-hierarchical social solutions for the family,
for community, and for therapy: solutions that will liberate us from our
oppressed identities and enable us to live as authentic, spontaneous,
creative, and free people. Solutions that will lead to our flourishing,
experiencing good mental and physical health, and to our being happy.
Solutions that could change all social and political relationships, and
processes that could be truly liberating.
It is difficult when hierarchies and oppressive relationships are the
usual way we interact and apprehend each other. The challenge for us is
to wonder how we can do things differently and create different
experiences and models for people. In the third chapter I will draw on
the work of mutual aid to give practical examples of how we can support
change as practitioners, as parents/carers, and as free, authentic
people.
We must imagine the unimaginable
The original Adverse Childhood Experiences study was conducted in the
United States at Kaiser Permanente from 1995 to 1997. âThe study's
participants were 17,000 mostly white, middle and upper-middle class
college-educated San Diegans with good jobs and great health care - they
all belonged to the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance
organization.â(1) The ACEs questionnaire had ten yes/no questions asking
about childhood experiences of violence, abuse and neglect. âAs your
ACEs score increases [with each yes], so does your chance of disease,
social and emotional problems. With an ACE score of 4 or more, things
start getting serious. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease
increases 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression, 460 percent;
attempted suicide, 1,220 percent.â(1) The research and evidence seemed
to confirm our collective experience that there are often social causes
for mental and physical health challenges, and that what happens to us
as children has consequences on us as adults.
Adverse childhood experiences are potentially traumatic events that
occur in childhood. For example, if we experience abuse, neglect and
violence as children it will impact on our sense of safety. Safety is a
fundamental drive for all animals. It is thought that children
experience a toxic stress response to these experiences, and this toxic
stress, neuroscientists believe, alters neural networks and the
biochemistry of neuroendocrine systems.(2) Exposure to adverse childhood
experiences can change our brain development. This leads to mental and
physical health problems as children and adults.
Adults with multiple ACEâs may have difficulty forming loving
relationships, struggle with depression, anxiety, and as noted above,
links have also been found between ACEs and poor physical health
outcomes, and life expectancy.
These effects can then also be passed onto our own children, so there is
a transgenerational aspect to adverse childhood experiences. It stays as
a limiting factor in families. It is called epigenetics, where we pass
on environmental âpickupsâ. As a simplistic material example, toxic
stress created by an adverse childhood experience, experiences in a
child's mind and body can create problems for childrenâs learning,
therefore ensuring poor educational attainment (which is already
systemically embedded if you are poor), worsened job opportunities and
then poverty as adults and parents themselves. There is an increased
possibility of homelessness and family break up. So the children of
these parents who experienced adverse childhood experiences themselves
also experience their own adverse childhood experiences.There is a cycle
of deprivation.
Moreover, if we think about historical trauma, using slavery as an
example, the adverse childhood experiences that those subjegated in that
particular toxicity experienced, which when added to the ongoing
systemic racism, colonialism and white supremacist abuse that Black,
Indigenous, and People of Colour experience, then we can see how any
abuse and violence impacts not just at that specific time for that
specific incident, but affects physical and mental health outcomes for
individuals and groups for generations. âSome children may face further
exposure to toxic stress from historical and ongoing traumas due to
systemic racism or the impacts of poverty resulting from limited
educational and economic opportunities.''(3)
Although we can see that adverse childhood experiences can impact
people's economic situation, we need to remember the research was
conducted on middle-class people, and we can therefore agree that
although there may be an increased likelihood of poverty as a result, it
is not necessarily the case. It could be that economic family privileges
under capitalism, like inherited wealth, ensures some people who have
experienced adverse childhood experiences donât necessarily live in
poverty or have reduced job opportunities. They may not be able to
sustain relationships, and may live with anxiety, alcohol dependence and
heart disease, but still be a stockbroker.
Furthermore, and shockingly, âACEs are common. About 61% of adults
surveyed across 25 states in America reported that they had experienced
at least one type of ACE, and nearly 1 in 6 reported they had
experienced four or more types of ACEsâ.(3) So nearly two thirds of the
population of America have self-reported at least one traumatic
experience as a child.
So this was impactful research that provided clear evidence on how
social conditions in the family, and abuse in childhood, creates serious
mental health, emotional health, and physical health problems for
children and adults. They affect how long we will live. Furthermore it
showed how these problems are transgenerational and are handed down
through generations. It showed how these early experiences have wide
reaching effects on social issues like poverty and homelessness. It also
showed how common they are, affecting the majority of the population. It
demonstrated how any experience of violence and abuse can affect our
wellbeing and our physical health.
The evidence challenged the model of mental, and physical health that
says that there is something wrong with me and that I was born defective
in some way, or have inherited âbadâ genes. This is the model that, in
my experience, people usually carry with them. It is not to say that
this is not the case, just that it is not always the case. There is
often a social cause.
I thought about the people I had worked with and their stories, which
usually meant discussing their childhood adverse experiences, whatever
their current age. Older women and men often discussed their childhood
with me. For example, Irene was a 60 year old woman who lived alone in a
council owned property. She struggled with mental health issues, in
particular depression, and she was a frequent caller to her GP about
physical health needs. She experienced pain in her joints, and had a
stroke and heart problems. Her son had experienced the death of friends
and used heroin. He would often live with her as he would get into
conflicts with other people in his own flat. She had a lot she wanted to
change in her life. She wasnât sleeping, was not happy about her weight
and was always worried about her son. She was an outgoing person but she
said she often felt ashamed about her life and would hide away from
other people. She was taking anti-depressant medication. At 60 I
expected the conversation would talk about current difficulties and how
we could resolve them. The conversation would invariably flit back to
her childhood, however, and the neglect and physical abuse she had
suffered at the hands of her parents, her lack of trust in others and
her fear and expectation of violence. She had an ACEs score of six.
Tony was in his 50âs when he spoke to me about his mental-health issues;
anxiety and low mood, and explained that he was using alcohol to block
out thoughts. He was rich, and had fast cars, many houses and many
marriages. Things always fell apart, however. He had been the victim of
sexual abuse whilst he and his parents were living in a religious
community as a young child, and as time went on he found it harder to
forget and harder to live with. He was experiencing physical health
issues; pain, early onset dementia, liver disease, and emotional health
issues that professional services were not able to make any difference
to, although he was on medication. He wanted justice for himself and
other victims. He had an ACEs score of eight, and he sadly died a year
after we met.
If I thought about the adults and children I have worked with in my time
as an educator, and in mental health services, then the ACEs research
really corresponded with my experience. Adults often focus our
conversations on the abuses they experienced as a child which have been
determining factors in their lives. The shame they have often felt at
the hands of others in childhood has impacted on their relationships,
opportunities, mental and physical health. I listened to the conference
and felt exhilarated that finally we could start to address these issues
honestly.
It was accepted by the conference that abuse happens, but it was
concerning that it was discussed as though these experiences âjust
happenâ. The name âadverse childhood experiencesâ minimised the actual
events, as we will see when we look at the questions. Although pleased
we were moving to an understanding of emotional health difficulties as
springing from adverse childhood experiences, I wanted to question the
assumption further.
The solutions that we will discuss in the next section identify some
salient points as to possible reasons why researchers believe adverse
childhood experiences happen. They posit solutions in improving
education and developing social networks. We could deduce, therefore,
that there is a belief that as society has grown, extended families have
lost connection, and communities have been destroyed which has led to
deficits in wisdom and connection which families experience in abuse. As
such there is no need to rely on religious or bio-psychological reasons
for the existence of adverse childhood experiences. We can firmly root
them within sociological analysis. As such there can be a solution and
they are not inevitable.
There are also sociological views that poverty increases the likelihood
of adverse childhood experiences by increasing family pressures.
Certainly it feels like poverty compounds problems for families, as does
systemic oppression, and those who experience adverse childhood
experiences may find their economic security jeopardised, but we need to
remember that the original research was conducted on white middle-class
people, so it is not simply an economic problem. There is more to it.
We need to get the analysis right or we are not going to get a solution
that actually works. Worse is that our solution could be actually as
toxic as the cause and perpetrate further harm. It is our duty, as
practitioners, to explore this as broadly as possible. I wondered if we
could look at the ACEs research in a different way. It could be a
breakdown in community, lack of wisdom which led to adverse childhood
experiences, but it could also be something else within the family and
community.
I thought back to someone who had refused to join any groups because her
experiences within school and family had been so damaging that she felt
unable to go back into any social group again. She told me she
experienced critical judgement, bullying, physical violence, and lack of
empathy in her relationships within her family and at school. I wondered
what had gone so wrong and why she had experienced these oppressions? It
wasnât so much the breakdown of community and community wisdom in her
childhood that had led to her mental health problems as an adult, and it
wasnât pressures of poverty as her family were affluent. Rather it was
something about those communities, a specific characteristic.
In order to explore this, firstly we shall explore and analyse the ACEs
questions in more detail to offer a different interpretation, and
secondly use a phenomenological approach with our case studies to
extract the meaning of adverse childhood experiences.
1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often ...
Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? Or act in a
way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often âŠ
Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? Or ever hit you so hard
that you had marks or were injured?
3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever ⊠Touch
or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt
or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
We can see straight away that the first three questions are focused on
actions of verbal, physical and sexual violence and abuse perpetrated
against children by parents or adults. Abuse within a social setting. We
know that all children are vulnerable by their very nature as children.
We know that under Western society, under capitalism which is
pathologically hierarchical, children end up living in hierarchical
relationships with adults, and by virtue of the fact of them being
children they are at the bottom of those hierarchies. Adults make
decisions and choices on behalf of children. We often believe in Western
societies that adults external to the family can be a risk to children.
The loving family is supposed to mitigate against the danger of violence
from external adults, but we find that within the institution of the
loving and protective family these very dangers still exist. As the ACEs
research shows us, this protective and nurturing relationship can go
wrong and become violent and abusive, causing long term harm to the
children involved. So what goes wrong? Why do parents, who should love
their children, sometimes commit acts of violence upon them?
It is within the very nature of hierarchy that we can always see the
danger of violence, abuse, and oppression. Children are always within
these hierarchies when they are with adults in our society, even with
the adults that love them. In a hierarchy, one person or group of people
have authority and power over others derived from status, economic
resources, and characteristics such as strength, or through political
legal process. They have power to make the decisions for others,
oppress, control and change the behaviour of others, and dominate the
scope of the particular hierarchy. They can do this in a number of ways;
benignly by persuasion, rewards and reason, or malignantly through
punishment, coercion and violence for example. A government makes
decisions and controls people through law-making. A boss holds power and
decides on wage control and working conditions for the workers.
Sometimes governments will exert violence towards citizens if they do
not comply with decisions, if they break a law for example. Sometimes
bosses will sack people for complaining about work and conditions. Work
on intersectionality has shown how systemic racism, sexism and ableism
is embedded within capitalist hierarchical structures and we experience
those oppressions throughout society. What is clear is that the
oppressor fails to apprehend the oppressed as a free human being to
accord dignity, respect and choice. The oppressed are just material
objects to dominate.
The â#MeTooâ movement demonstrated the prevalence of sexual assault and
rape within workplaces by those in positions of power and authority.
This is not to say that within our own particular experiences of
hierarchies rape and violence will always be committed, but they exist
at one end of the spectrum of oppression. We know from research that
rape is usually about power, the perpetrator motivated by the need for
domination and control. âFar and away, most sexual assaults and sexual
violence are perpetrated by men, and typically arise within asymmetrical
power dynamics, where the perpetrator occupies a more powerful or
dominant position in relation to the victim.â(1) It should not surprise
us, therefore, when within a hierarchical institution which has an
asymmetrical power dynamic, like the family, violent acts are sometimes
perpetrated on children within that family as exertions of power and
control. Families are hierarchical institutions within Western
capitalism. The parents hold authority and power derived from their
existence as adults. This power is legally held within Western societies
where it is called parental responsibility, and the scope is huge and
encompasses almost the whole life of the child.
If we think back to the first chapter we can perhaps understand why love
does not always mitigate against the inherent danger of hierarchy. The
desire to objectify and possess âthe otherâ can be part of our
inauthentic carer child relationships. It amplifies the already present
hierarchical tendency to create an oppressed identity. Nowhere do we see
this more clearly than within families. Parental language is often
riddled with discussion about their children as objects in relation to
themselves, âhe has my eyes, he is lazy like you, etcâ. Parents see
themselves reflected back rather than seeing a child as a free
individual. They see them as objects. They see them as âtheirâ objectsâ,
defined, possessed and controlled. This particular relationship is
heightened because of children being created by parents and family
resemblance.
All kinds of beliefs and values are also wrapped around âourâ children,
who are unable to speak or challenge these assumptions. I have worked
with many families who shared beliefs that all children were
manipulative, that they cheated and lied, and the parents behaved
towards their children accordingly by instigating punishments for
perceived deceptions. In pieces of therapeutic work I filmed board games
which ended in disaster as the eldest child was accused of cheating by
his parents and sent to his room. I looked back on the films to see no
cheating taking place by the child, the child was simply winning, and
having fun. The parents were in competition with the child and this
determined the tone of their interactions and what they âsawâ in that
moment. The picture of the child the parents had developed, the
oppressed identity in the hierarchy was of a cheater and deceiver
towards his parents. Not to be trusted and so deserving of punishment. A
different picture could be seen when watching clips of the game back. A
picture which challenged the nature of the oppressed identity being
created.
I worked with families who believed their own families had unique
collective characteristics of not being good at maths, for example, or
conversely children were placed in competition with parents and were not
as good as them at maths, for example. In both cases parents behaved
towards their toddlers and young children accordingly by limiting
opportunities. In my therapeutic work I watched a child in a room doing
homework with their mum whilst the television was on, a video game was
being played, the curtains were closed. He struggled to stay still, his
focus moving towards the relative light of television or computer screen
and away from the maths homework. The parent became frustrated and
declared homework at an end because the child was not able to
concentrate or complete the task. That goes to the heart of self-esteem
and identity as failure when compared to others in the hierarchy.
Within all the families I worked with, encouraging parents to âseeâ the
child underneath these transgenerational beliefs, values and prejudices,
and to see them as separate, free individuals could be incredibly hard.
I created clips from short films to show them pictures of their children
doing well, having fun, not cheating, to challenge these beliefs which
often came from the parents' own childhoods and their own experiences of
abuse, and their own oppressed identities..
Love, rather than mitigating dangers of hierarchy, can sometimes
actually increase the dangers to a child, as the âobject of loveâ
refuses to comply with instructions and parental beliefs and insists on
their individual freedom. Children can react with anger and frustration,
or withdraw completely as they react to these false beliefs about them.
In an effort to control, possess, and for self-fulfilling processes to
occur, the parent can commit acts of violence upon âtheirâ child. Within
hierarchies oppressors regard the oppressed as material objects for
their use, and love can amplify that tendency even further. I am not
arguing this is always the case, and in the next chapter we will look at
how love can minimise hierarchical danger when parents are able to love
their children as authentic, free human beings, delighting in their
uniqueness. Nevertheless, hierarchical families whose children are
objectified, defined and possessed by parents can become dangerous
places.
4. Did you often or very often feel that ⊠No one in your family loved
you or thought you were important or special? Or your family didnât look
out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
5. Did you often or very often feel that ⊠You didnât have enough to
eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? Or your
parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the
doctor if you needed it?
These two questions are asking about emotional and physical neglect. The
discovery of the Romanian orphanages after CeauĆescu was overthrown
informed much of the research on neglect as it was such a profound
experience of institutional neglect. Fox, et al., write, âThey found
many profound problems among the children who had been born into
neglect. Institutionalized children had delays in cognitive function,
motor development and language. They showed deficits in socio-emotional
behaviors and experienced more psychiatric disorders. They also showed
changes in the patterns of electrical activity in their brains, as
measured by EEG.â(2) Again, the very existence of children within a
hierarchy established just by being a child opens up possibilities of
the absence of action, as a means of control; i.e., neglect.
We know that in patterns of coercive control, withdrawing of love,
stonewalling, not meeting needs, hoarding and conserving material
resources are aspects of abuse. Within hierarchical systems we see these
patterns all the time, in governments who refuse money and resources to
âundeservingâ citizens, who decide what resources are given out and to
whom. In companies the bosses decide who gets paid and how much, and who
has access to resources and information.This is abuse and oppression by
commission, to visibly exert control over those at the bottom of the
hierarchy.
These neglect patterns can also exist by omission. A person may be
emotionally and materially neglectful because they are in poverty, and
are struggling to make ends meet, for example. There is something
blocking the giving of love and material resources to their children.
Even in these cases, where there is not commissioned exertion of power
and control, the very fact of the hierarchy makes the child unsafe. The
dependence on the parent who is unable to meet needs, a parent who is
probably a victim of multiple hierarchies and systemic oppressions
themselves, means the child experiences toxic stress. They are unable to
seek responsiveness from other non-hierarchical sources as they are tied
into this particular hierarchy. In fact other hierarchies often take
over in these cases; schools and churches for example. They step into
the deficit and provide food and resources for the child. Some schools
provide nurture provision to make up for the emotional neglect the child
has experienced. We need to remember though that these provisions are
still hierarchies and as such fraught with danger for the child. We will
discuss more about these solutions in the next chapter.
6. Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
7. Was your mother or stepmother: Often or very often pushed, grabbed,
slapped, or had something thrown at her? Or sometimes, often, or very
often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? Or
ever repeatedly hit at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or
knife?
8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic or
who used street drugs?
9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household
member attempt suicide?
10. Did a household member go to prison?
In these questions we have adverse childhood experiences which are
indicative of transgenerational abuses and oppressions. Of course, all
the questions do indicate transgenerational patterns, but these seem to
identify parents who are obviously struggling and suffering from their
own adverse childhood experiences. This impacts on their own children
with whom they are in a hierarchical relationship, perhaps albeit
unwillingly. The child, again, is born into a hierarchy that has
instability built in. The rules of the hierarchy may be unclear. It may
be scary. It may be dangerous. It may be okay. The problem of
hierarchies, and of being at the bottom of the hierarchy, is that we
don't determine the conditions or outcomes. The oppressed person reacts
to the oppressorâs every mood and whim. The oppressor treats the
oppressed like a material object, not a person, and this tendency is
amplified in the carer child relationship. We know that in unsafe and
uncertain environments where toxic stress is being experienced,
fight/flight/friend survival responses can be activated in children. It
was noted by Megan Gunnar, PhD, director of the Institute of Child
Development at the University of Minnesota that the Romanian orphans
were friendly to every single adult they met, greeting them like loved
ones.
Furthermore historical trauma and toxic stress experienced by
individuals has become transgenerational, and further impacts parental
behaviour as they continue to run up against systemic oppressions. They
continue to experience toxic stress in their daily lives which further
increases the probability of adverse childhood experiences their
children are experiencing. Hierarchy and oppression creates toxic stress
which impacts mental and physical health and limits life expectancy. It
literally kills us.
Using hierarchy to look at the ACEs questionnaire, we can see that it is
not simply the case that adverse childhood experiences just happen. We
can see they occur because of the specific social relationship within
families. Families are hierarchical institutions with extraordinary
scope over a childâs life. The number of adverse childhood experiences
increases the probability of poor mental and physical health outcomes. A
more accurate description of adverse childhood experiences could be
degrees of hierarchical damage from the family. It minimises less and
identifies the cause.
Children are born as vulnerable into these hierarchies. Hierarchies are
inherently dangerous for those at the bottom, as research shows;
oppressions existing on a spectrum from rape and violence at one end to
critical judgements and limiting options at the other. If we also unpack
some of the characteristics of parental love, we can see how that can
exacerbate the dangers for children. Oppressors do not permit the
oppressed to be free human beings, and loving parents often donât permit
their children to be either. This double oppression creates oppressed
identities with far reaching consequences for children and adults.
Families can be benignly oppressive or malignantly oppressive but as the
ACEs research shows us, they are often the latter.
The ACEs research tells us that if we experience adverse childhood
experiences our bodies can have toxic stress which can lead us to
increased likelihood of emotional, mental and physical health issues as
adults. We have analysed the ACEs questions through the anarchist frame
of hierarchy and concluded that the family is a hierarchy which can be a
dangerous place for children, as danger is inherent in all hierarchies
when you live towards the bottom of them.
It is important to remember that at the heart of this are people and
itâs important to extract the meaning that people give to their own
adverse childhood experiences to fully understand this, so that we can
develop non-toxic solutions. The people I discuss are fictionalised
accounts drawn from multiple people, who often share similar
experiences. It is surprising how similar peopleâs accounts are, but I
have drawn out common themes to describe as they relate to adverse
childhood experiences.
Irene and Tony
I spoke to Irene every month for a year. She had trouble with her
anxiety and mood for which she was on medication, along with heart
problems, diabetes and rheumatism. She would start each conversation
explaining that she didnât want help for herself but for her son. She
felt so worried about her son who had experienced the loss of his
partner, and was engaging in risky substance abuse. He had a flat but no
friends and often got into conflicts with his neighbours. He also had
physical health problems which meant he was in pain and unable to work.
She carried guilt about his experiences as a child with her husband who
was physically abusive to both of them. She had empathy for him because
they mirrored her own experiences as a child and she understood his
sensitivity which matched her own. Her son lived with her at times, but
she felt oppressed and controlled by him when he was there as he did not
help with housework, cooking or financially. He was occasionally
physically abusive towards her. She always forgave him and let him back
in when he needed to stay even though it made her unhappy.
She spent a lot of time in her bed and was reluctant to go out. She told
me she felt ashamed. She would try to decorate her house and tidy it,
but then would give up and go back to bed. Irene told me stories about
when she had been younger and had loved theatre, she was gregarious as a
person, and talked in a soft tone about how she had loved dressing up
and going out. She told me she did not have real confidence though,
despite how it seemed, and described feelings of shame at her
experiences as a child. It seemed like this feeling was carried through
to her life today as she hid in her bed. Her memories of her childhood
were as clear as the day today.
Although she wanted things to be different Ireneâs main focus was that
her son would be okay. We discussed friendships, and social groups,
developing social networks, but her embarrassment was too high and she
would retreat back to her bed, despite being a person who said that she
really wanted to be with others. She said she felt judged by other
people and could not cope with the feeling. She told me she did not
blame her father for his violence or the lack of love she had felt as a
child, as she was too sensitive like her own son. She said she was a
weak person. She was always tearful and told me this was proof of her
weakness.
The adverse childhood experiences that Irene had experienced which had
led to her mental and physical health issues as an adult, and had
become, or probably always were, transgenerational, were given meaning
by her in her sense of identity. A weak, sensitive person who was
embarrassed at meeting others, felt they might âseeâ her like this, as
weak. She had been turned into this object as a child by her adverse
childhood experiences, by a hierarchical experience which defined her as
this, in relation to the person with power who was presumably strong.
Weak and sensitive was her oppressed identity from her childhood. Itâs
difficult to see how weak, as a description, makes sense without a
relationship to power, without hierarchy.
In fact, my experience of Irene was anything but weak. I thought of her
as a deeply empathic person who felt her sonâs pain. She had blue hair
and talked engagingly and with humour. She laughed and wore bright and
vivacious clothing. I felt her to be quite formidable, charming and a
delight to talk with. There was little congruity between the person in
front of me and her definition of herself.
Tony illustrates the impact of adverse childhood experiences on quality
of life and life expectancy. Tony explained to me, as soon as we met,
that he wanted to kill himself and that he had struggled his entire life
with mental health problems which he used alcohol to cope with. He told
me he had been in prison for violence, and he told me any threat to
himself would result in him exploding. Although he was rich, and had
houses and relationships, he had not found happiness. He told me very
little about his adult life but focused on his childhood experiences of
sexual abuse at the hands of the institution and physical abuse at the
hands of his parents. He told me that he had continually run away and it
was his rebelliousness and non-compliance that had let to more beatings
and more sexual abuse. He told me he was bitter and angry with his
parents who had hurt him and allowed him to be sexually abused by adults
in the community. He wanted justice. He returned to the question of why
him, over and over again, why not his siblings, but his answer was
always the same.
The meaning Tony gave to this was his rebellious nature, this was his
oppressed identity. We can only be defined as rebellious if we are
rebelling against some power or hierarchy. This view of himself as
rebellious and dangerous had led to him not leaving his bedroom and
never leaving the house unless it was night time. He was in constant
pain from arthritis, and had liver disease along with early onset
dementia.. He had no friends and his family did not talk to him. He
regarded himself as an outsider, against society, antisocial. He was
rebellious and dangerous and because of that other people in society
would try to hurt him.
My own experience of Tony was not of a dangerous person, but one who was
scared most of the time. He was kind, loved to feed the birds and wanted
a different life, a life where he could live in the Greek countryside
without fear.
So, the meaning that Irene and Tony gave to their adverse childhood
experiences I have called their oppressed identities, because they are
given to them by their oppressors within that family hierarchy. You are
too weak, sensitive, or rebellious, and that is why bad things are
happening to you. They are also attributes that can only exist within
hierarchical relationships. Being weak or being rebellious only makes
sense in a relationship to something else. In relationship to power.
Being too sensitive can be seen as a criticism of a person trying to
protest something being done to them. So this seems to support a view
that it is hierarchy that is inherently dangerous because this is where
individual meaning is located.
Irene, and Tony experienced low mood and anxiety which impacted on their
lives. They also had serious physical health issues, and Tony passed
away early in his life. They had a number of adverse childhood
experiences which we understand as a degree of hierarchical damage from
the family, and all carried with them an oppressed identity from
childhood which affected and blocked their social contact with others.
They are fictional characters but drawn from numerous real people who
have told me surprisingly similar stories over and over again.
One of the most difficult stories to hear is the type of story from
adults who were unwanted children, and were told they were unwanted.
Sometimes they become looked after children, sometimes they remain in
birth families.I think of stories where any glimpse of the childâs
happiness led to physical abuse, in beatings. Thus happiness can never
be felt as an adult because of its association with pain. The unwanted
child is a burden, lucky to even be at the bottom. These adults feel
themselves lucky to be oppressed.
In these last two sections we have looked at the Adverse Childhood
Experiences research that demonstrated that adverse childhood
experiences create toxic stress. We have acknowledged the shocking
statistics about mental and physical health outcomes for people who have
experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences. We have seen the
transgenerational nature of this, and how common adverse childhood
experiences are.
This evidence-based link between early social experiences and mental and
physical health outcomes has allowed us to apply an anarchist analysis,
in order to view the research differently. Adverse childhood experiences
occur within families which are hierarchical institutions within
capitalist society. We were able to analyse the ACEs questions using the
political frame of hierarchy. Hierarchies are inherently dangerous for
those towards the bottom and create opportunities for violence, abuse
and neglect because the oppressor regards the oppressed as an object. So
the hierarchical family provides the conditions for adverse childhood
experiences. The quantity or number of adverse childhood experiences
gives us the degree of hierarchical damage.
Parental or carer love can sometimes amplify the oppressors' tendency to
make an object of the oppressed. Parents/carers can form relationships
with their children as âthe otherâ and will define, control and possess
them. They create them in that moment of judgement, a judgement often
from values created by their own transgenerational trauma, but we are
created as âthisâ or âthatâ for all time. These relationships of
oppression; firstly through hierarchy and secondly through inauthentic
parental love, create oppressed identities for children as they become
adults. We saw, within the case studies, that we think of ourselves in
the way that our oppressors think of us; they think of ourselves in
relation to our oppressor, to our parents. This is further support that
it is the hierarchical social relationship that creates the perfect
conditions for adverse childhood experiences to happen.
We understand then: i) that the hierarchical family can create oppressed
identities for children through the quality of the oppressive
relationships, and; ii) that the quantity of adverse childhood
experiences is the degree of hierarchical damage from the family. This
damage creates physical, emotional, and mental illness, and we saw
shocking statistics about the link between adverse childhood experiences
and life expectancy. Early oppressions are deadly.
There are broader conclusions we can draw. It could be that these
experiences embed acceptance and submission to other hierarchies and
oppressions. Moreover, we may experience toxic stress every time we
experience further oppressions which could have a further impact on our
life expectancy and happiness.
Prevention measures and solutions that do not explicitly acknowledge the
hierarchical nature of families as actually creating the conditions for
adverse childhood experiences to happen, will create further problems
for children, families and adults. If we create social networks for
people, who may have experienced trauma in childhood, or are currently
experiencing adverse childhood experiences, and those social networks
are hierarchical, we run a high risk of creating further problems,
further toxic stress, further illness.
I work with people because I believe that things can be different, and
that we can make things better. We do know from psychological therapies
that we can still create new neural pathways in the brain even as
adults. Even if our oppressed identity is ingrained and we have a high
degree of hierarchical damage and an ACEs score of four or more, we can
still change the inevitable outcomes towards feeling physically better,
and emotionally happier. It is important that we can repair the damage
to us, and also prevent further damage to children.
In the next chapter we will look at preventative measures and solutions
discussed by the ACEs research, and explore consciously competent
non-hierarchical and mutual aid solutions for families, communities and
therapists to help prevent adverse childhood experiences, and to help
people heal from these early experiences. We will discuss how liberating
and transforming these can be for individuals, families, society and
communities. We can look forward to creative, authentic individuals who
are healthy and happy, and do not accept or submit that we have to
organise in a hierarchical way.
According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, preventing
adverse childhood experiences could prevent 21 million cases of
depression, 1.9 million cases of heart disease and 2.5 million cases of
obesity(1). The solutions are found in educating people about the
research, creating community support, and teaching nurturing parent
strategies. When I sat in that first conference on the research it was
said that it just takes a child to have one consistent and responsive
adult in their lives to mitigate the worst effects. The primary focus
has been to develop good social networks for families and build support.
I thought as a trauma informed practitioner with training in nurturing
and attuned parenting, I could help to reduce adverse childhood
experiences, by supporting community development and social networks for
families, and also for adults who were experiencing the outcomes of
their own ACEs.
Nurturing parenting strategies are understood primarily as following a
PLACE (Play, Love, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy) model created by
Dan Hughes. If a child is demonstrating challenging behaviours such as
anger or running away, for example, then parenting using play, love,
acceptance, curiosity, and empathy can help to change the behaviour. It
will help the child feel safe, and therefore the anxiety and toxic
stress will be reduced.
Developing social networks, it is argued, can support with social and
economic stressors, meaning that parents or adults donât feel so alone
in coping with difficulties, as well as getting practical support for
economic or relationship problems. Also abuse can be spotted, and
preventative support can be netted around behaviours such as substance
or domestic abuse. Community is also a good in itself, as we know that
isolation also causes emotional and physical health problems.
The solutions are positive but they still employ an assumption that the
systems in place are fine; itâs the faulty individuals within them that
need educating to behave differently, and need propping up. An example
can illustrate why and how these conclusions are incomplete. If we think
about a family who need to claim benefits because of parental/carer
disability, (perhaps because of adverse childhood experiences within the
carer's childhood) and are unable to afford decent housing, they are
always going to be stuck without decent housing because our economic
system gives inadequate benefits and housing solutions to the poorest.
This is a systemic problem not an individual one. The faulty individual
view, in itself, is a damaging supposition for somebody already
suffering from adverse experiences, and especially if it is determined
by someone in a position of power and authority. The judgement in the
eyes of the other is still bad. It feels shameful. It is still the
oppressed identity.
In this section I want to explore specific solutions, based on the
adverse childhood experiences, solutions of social networks and
community, along with nurture, but ones that adequately respond to the
hierarchical dimension. We will look at family, community and therapy
and explore whether mutual aid solutions can give answers that promote
human flourishing. Specifically, the solutions are practical.
The Western nuclear family is troublesome as an institution. A
parent/carer (or two) are adults, and a baby arrives, necessarily
dependent on the adults for survival. There is a necessary age and
experience hierarchy already developed. The parent/carer has a set of
values and beliefs, lives in a particular social situation, within the
external hierarchies. We experience it everywhere.
We can separate out the functions of the family into the necessary and
the contingent. Necessary means essential and required. Contingent means
accidental or by chance. When we are children we are necessarily kept
safe by adults. The family provides this necessary function. The initial
and necessary relationship of hierarchy in the family provides safety
for children, and the hierarchy exists by virtue of the fact that adults
are older and have experience. Children need adults to keep them safe,
and if they donât provide this function then we begin the cycle of toxic
stress. This is a relationship of safety and is essential.
The contingent (or accidental part), is whether these adults can provide
a nurturing environment, co-regulate emotions, and flatten hierarchy. We
cannot change the necessary conditions by definition, but we have to
mitigate against this necessary and inevitable hierarchy through the
contingent features of the social relationship. To think of the
contingent social relationship within families then is to see an
opportunity to change. If the contingent aspect of it is nurturing and
empowering, and flattening of hierarchy it can help to mitigate against
the abuse that could arise from that initial and necessary hierarchy. It
informs how the initial hierarchy works.
Sadly, the contingent (or accidental) social relationships of the
nuclear family in the West, which are organised hierarchically, can
actually destroy the necessary function of the family for practical
safety. In extreme cases, carers can threaten the life of children. The
contingent hierarchy feeds the danger implicit in the hierarchical
relationship of safety. Thus we experience degrees of hierarchical
damage and internalise an oppressed identity.
When we talk about family relationships then, we assume an initial and
necessary hierarchy based on age and experience for survival. Our
exploration for opportunities for change occurs in the contingent, which
we hope can mitigate against this hierarchical necessity.
It is argued that groups of adults raising children together could water
down the impact of individual parental transgenerational trauma or
difficulties with emotional health in parenting. This is also a more
supportive social system for the adults as well. This multiple adult
model can take the forms of communes, but also the development of social
support networks though the ACEs research reimagines this in a more
palatable way, without the âcommuneâ connotations. This social solution
fits in with our understanding of emotional health as social, that human
beings are social creatures, and so the answer lies in increasing
âsociabilityâ. This is also the findings of the Adverse Childhood
Experiences research.
The problem with these social network solutions is how we stop further
hierarchies emerging within the adults, because we have seen that it is
hierarchy that is the problem. Rather than mitigate the problems,
multiple adults could just increase the problems, by increasing the
number of hierarchies, and possibilities for inattention and collusion
to enable child and adult abuse. More people may not water things down,
but may actually intensify and overwhelm. Furthermore, multiple adults
may give rise to feelings of insecurity in children, as it is not clear
who has responsibility for the necessary safety relationship of
parenthood, and adults may become inattentive to the children.
The solution of multiple carers, or supporting social networks seems
right but is not of itself enough. There has to be a political dimension
to the social relationship. There must be understanding how hierarchy,
and power relationships provide conditions for abuse and then explicit
measures put into place to stop hierarchical abuse. The contingent
features of the social relationship needs to include some political
features. Yes, we need nurturing parental strategies and use of the
PLACE model as fundamental. We need a developed social network, and
economic measures that ensure universal income and decent housing. But
we also need political understanding and process in place.
I think mutual aid can help us. Mutual aid was first discussed by
Kropotkin who argued that co-operation, not competition, was the driving
force of evolution. Communities help each other out to survive, and
thrive. Mutual aid practice is non-hierarchical, and is organised by
members of the community. Mutual aid usually uses consensus decision
making, as well as forms of participatory democracy and it is
egalitarian. At a basic level, if my community were running short of
food we could pool our ingredients, make a meal together and share it
together to survive. It is a reciprocal relationship rather than a
charitable one. Mutual aid has been used successfully in communities
experiencing disasters and also in oppressed communities.
Families could, therefore, be part of a mutual aid community of
families. They still live in their close family groups, but are also
part of a mutual aid network with other families. The carers and
children of three or four families could gather together each week for
facilitated community meetings or perhaps more accurately termed
communities of reflection, to discuss issues arising that week. Everyone
discusses how they feel and children are given equal voice as their
carers. Issues are discussed openly using curiosity, acceptance, and
empathy, and solutions found. These mutual aid groups must be explicitly
and consciously premised on non-hierarchical principles, along with
utilising Dan Hughesâs PLACE model for interaction; playfulness, love,
acceptance, curiosity, and empathy.
The families could also support each other in mutual aid ways. For
example, I babysit for you in exchange for some emotional support on a
walk together. My son helps with maths homework and your daughter fixes
his bike in exchange. This is basic and it doesnât need to be directly
transactional but are just illustrative examples.
This solution avoids the first problem of multiple adult parenting, that
of internal hierarchies developing which cannot be challenged because of
the intimate dependence of these relationships. Within the mutual aid
community, hierarchies would not develop because of a number of
mitigating factors.
Firstly, there would need to be conscious competence about the dangers
of hierarchies; a watchfulness, education provided, and desire to create
a change. Resources could be created and shared and non-hierarchical
processes developed and used. Secondly, the individual families maintain
their autonomy and so can act as challengers, and supporters to other
adults within the community if needed. Thirdly, the children are also
given voice in the meetings. If decisions are taken the children count
as one like an adult. Nobody is an expert and everyone contributes
within equality of relationships. So the mutual aid community becomes an
active process of flourishing and thriving, engaged in producing
non-hierarchical, non-abusive relationships, not an end in itself. The
community is a social and moral good.
It also avoids the second problem of multiple parenting, which is that
the child can feel unsafe and unsure which parent or carer has
responsibility for their safety. And this avoids the related problem
that groups of adults may become inattentive to abuse as they focus on
their own relationships with each other. Children would still live in
small autonomous families, who are clearly responsible for the necessary
hierarchical relationship of safety, and the carers would be aware of
this. The contingent mitigation is produced within the community of
reflection and the mutual aid relationship with the other families.
Mutual aid is also empowering, and mitigates the judgement that we
discussed, and which we have termed as our oppressed identity. Our
social relationships are based on the underlying premise that everyone
has something to contribute. We feel empowered in the eyes of others
because we have something to give. Our carers see us in pride as they
see our capabilities, our capacity, and we therefore apprehend ourselves
with pride, as being a person of value. We are not being âdone toâ by a
team of professionals who are supporting us, or even friends supporting
us. There is inherent equality. Without money in the equation the
inequality of financial value is removed. Value is not dependent on
supply and demand, but is focused on need. Therefore my ability to fix a
bike is inherently valuable when you need your bike fixed, and is no
less valuable than your ability to grow some potatoes. Our parent/child
relationship internalised as an oppressed identity is instead a
liberated and empowered identity with something important to contribute
and with a say in decision making.
I can see how emotional health would be supported in this system.
Co-regulating each other's emotions would happen naturally and
inevitably in a safe and nurturing social environment without hierarchy,
and where everyone is valued. Children would experience themselves as of
worth, with something to say and equally able to contribute to the
community. Overwhelming emotions could be contained, empathised with,
understood and normalised within the community of families. Emotional
health would be improved and our degrees of hierarchical damage reduced
as the contingent aspects of the family social relationships mitigate
the effects of the necessary hierarchy. Abuse is less likely in this
situation as children have a voice and feel valued, and adults are
supported within a nurturing community themselves.
This seems straightforward. All I am describing is a group of friends
who have common and shared ideals in community and non-hierarchy,
respecting a degree of freedom and autonomy, whilst sharing some public
aspects of life together. Friends who communicate with each other and
wish their community, and the individuals in it to flourish. I have been
part of an international affinity group for the past few years. We meet
every week and discuss our lives and activism, our sorrows, difficulties
and successes. We have created a non-hierarchical space to share and be
open and can embrace reflection, sometimes challenging ourselves. This
has been enriching and empowering.
Of course, it should and must seem straight forward, Kroptkin discussed
mutual aid as an cooperative evolutionary process that enabled progress
to happen. It is simple, natural and sustainable, and encourages
creativity, authenticity, and flourishing. It is empowering. It is
premised on the core belief that people do not wish harm to be done to
themselves and others. This is the belief, supported through my own
experience, that adverse childhood experiences do not happen
intentionally through ill will by carers.
We can imagine mutual aid communities of three or four families
developing throughout the country, educating each other about
non-hierarchical practices, supporting each other, hearing each other,
challenging each other, and facilitating solutions to problems together.
Liberating themselves and each other from the cycles of dominance and
oppression. This feels like a giant step up for peer support. We know we
hold the answers within ourselves, and we know we want to live happy
flourishing lives, and therefore providing space for clarifying
discussion and support is life-affirming.
The community of services around the family and children, schools,
family support, social workers and mental health services, also need to
understand the non-hierarchical model if they are to help us. We all
know that parents and children often feel disempowered by public
services. I know from working within teams in schools, childrenâs
services and mental health that professionals rarely want parents and
children to feel disempowered; it is an unintentional consequence of
hierarchical work. Supportive work is often experienced by parents and
children as critical and judgemental, further embedding identities of
oppression. I have spoken with parents with children on the autistic
spectrum who are being supported by school and children's services. One
of them tells me they feel exposed and vulnerable. The social worker's
criticism reminded her of her mum's criticisms of her as a child.
Everything is her fault and nothing is good enough. She feels like
giving up and her anxiety was causing her some definite problems. She
was scared to go out and face anyone.
The school, the social workers and the counsellors could work with mum
and her children by supporting them to join with other families in an
explicitly non-hierarchical mutual aid community where she could feel
safe, supported and empowered to make choices towards flourishing and
health. They could employ democratic principles in school to reduce
further harm caused there through hierarchy; involve families in
decision making, empower children to learn through active learning,
become coaches rather than expert teachers. Social workers could
co-create assessment of risk, and really trust strength based models of
support. We already know that the evidence tells us that these ways of
working produce good outcomes, and many professionals try to work in
this way, and want to work in this way, but end up within
under-resourced teams. Without their own peer support and mutual aid
systems in place they can struggle.
I think that these already known non-hierarchical practices, if employed
consciously as non-hierarchical, can reduce further adverse childhood
experiences for parents, professionals, and children. As professionals,
we need to name hierarchy as the problem, challenge hierarchy wherever
it arises, and not default to âauthoritarianâ and âexpertâ models when
we get scared and lose trust, which happens because we are unsupported
ourselves in our teams, and feel unsafe. Rather than professionals
acting as experts and telling people how to live, we must trust that
human beings can and will flourish within mutual aid social
relationships, through actively engaging in non-hierarchical processes,
because this is natural for human beings. It is what we understand from
some evolutionary biological research, and from what the adverse
childhood experiences research is telling us. Hierarchy is the problem,
not people.
Our professional teams could be organised as mutual aid communities. We
need to engage with humility and âlet goâ of our expertise. A teacher
once told me, âwe canât teach anyone without learning ourselvesâ. As
professionals we are always engaging in mutual aid, we support others,
but in turn we benefit in our wellbeing, and our understanding. This
whole piece of work, for example, is a product of mutual aid with
everyone I have ever worked with, and I am wholly grateful to the
hundreds of people who have shared their stories with me.
The challenging hope is that the idea of professional social workers or
teachers eventually becomes redundant as mutual aid communities
flourish. As we realise that hierarchies are the problem, as they force
human beings into artificial relationships with each other as âexpertâ
or âpatientâ or âstudentâ; as objects. As we realise that we all hold
the answers within us and through collective discussion can draw out
these answers and solutions when working together in mutual aid. We are
all educators and students, social workers, counsellors, and patients.
As Hume might say, we have all these roles as properties bundled
together in what we think of as our self.
I often encourage people to take part in meaningful and purposeful
activity as part of healing from the experiences that have harmed them.
Last week someone shared with me that she had started volunteering at a
cafe. Sadly her work was met with critical response from a small group
of volunteers who had worked within the shop for some years. It was
hurtful and difficult to understand. The social relationships I had
asked her to develop were harming her. Another person also shared with
me that professionals in the support group he attended had not listened
to him, but were too busy chatting to each other to notice him. He felt
old and invisible. If hierarchies are allowed to develop through
professional status and expertise, or through how long someone has
worked somewhere, or popularity, then it has a detrimental effect on the
people we are supposed to be helping. We must not do harm. We have
already experienced harmful experiences because of family hierarchies,
which has impacted on our emotional and physical health, so letâs not
get sent into further damaging social relationships to experience
further toxic stress..
It is not enough therefore to learn about trauma informed environments.
It is not enough to develop social networks, however well intentioned.
Sometimes we can get lucky and these further experiences are therapeutic
and healing. It is, however, too much like a game of roulette at the
moment. Anyone who is working therapeutically must understand that we
have to create healing mutual aid environments which are
non-hierarchical if we want to enable healing to occur. We need to
scrutinise the systems we ask people to engage with and ensure they are
actively mitigating against hierarchies. We can actively promote peer
support groups, but again we need to establish non-hierarchical
principles for facilitation and engagement.
Social anxiety should really be regarded as damage caused from
hierarchy. We have internalised hierarchy through our first experiences
within the family, so we rarely even question it when we encounter it in
the world. We believe we fear people, when we really fear the systems we
have created that have caused us shame and humiliation because we are at
the bottom of them. Systems that continue their toxic harm and continue
to damage us physically, mentally, and emotionally. A lot of people
experience this social anxiety or hierarchy anxiety alongside other
health issues, and so any therapeutic groups need to be open about their
mutuality and acknowledge the baseline hierarchy anxiety that everyone
is challenged by. It will take time to develop trust.
Nevertheless, we should actively create mutual aid communities of
reflection, and small affinity groups gathered around a specific problem
or health issue, where people can share experience, feel accepted,
supported and challenged to find creative and authentic solutions. For
example a menopause mutual aid group where participants research
themselves, discuss and find solutions together. Steinberg's book, âThe
Mutual-Aid Approach To Working With Groupsâ is an excellent resource to
use for understanding and ideas. These mutual aid peer support groups,
or affinity groups must be explicitly and consciously premised on
non-hierarchical principles, along with utilising Dan Hughesâs PLACE
model for interaction; playfulness, love, acceptance, curiosity, and
empathy.
Of course all of these mutual aid communities, of families, of
professionals and of healing should include diverse members of the
broader community. We can imagine networks of mutual aid communities all
linked together, everyone being a member of a few communities. Those
without families could be in mutual aid affinity groups around
interests, hobbies, values, health or a variety of identities. Social
media, and connecting applications has made these groups easy to
organise globally, not just locally, and also around multiple
identities.
Our prevention and therapeutic solutions for traumas created by
hierarchies are mutual aid communities or networks, which are explicitly
and consciously non-hierarchical. There is a degree of autonomy and a
degree of collectivism, which provides checks and balances. This is
individually and collectively empowering and liberating from domination.
Freed from the abuse, shame, guilt cycle, people can feel empowered to
create themselves in the way they choose, to express their freedom in
their projects, and create meaning for themselves. To thrive.
The foundation for successful mutual aid reciprocity is a good political
understanding of how hierarchy works, and developing non-hierarchical
consciousness, by which I mean an explicit, reflective understanding of
non-hierarchy. This is because firstly, as we noted, we are born into a
family hierarchy, and it is so embedded as normal and natural that we
fail to notice, see, or question the further hierarchies we inhabit.
Secondly, not only are we blind to hierarchies, but also we have
internalised hierarchical behaviours in our relationships with others,
and so it is difficult to change without gaining insight and noticing it
in ourselves, becoming conscious of them. Thirdly, because we donât
notice hierarchy and we also exhibit hierarchical behaviours it is
really difficult to embed in non-hierarchical practice without processes
in place to protect the non-hierarchy.
We have discussed that often social anxiety, and our worry about others,
is actually a worry about oppression, and the result of someone having
power over us. Hierarchy is about power. Power can be derived from all
sorts of sources; wealth, gender, race, political process, education,
expertise, age. Hierarchies exist within the state and government and
most of us realise this. We vote in elections for people to represent
us. We are told what to do by the police and we often obey. There are
other hierarchies though that exist in social contexts in communities,
and in work. These can be based on economic differences like wages,
property ownership, and management structures. There are further
informal social hierarchies in friendship groups and families. These are
not noticed as much but often derive from age, values, prejudices,
affluence, education, gender etc.
So the first task in the mutual aid groups is to acknowledge, accept and
understand that hierarchy is related to power, that we have usually
experienced many hierarchies in our lives, and that these hierarchies
are present in most social, political and economic situations that we
inhabit within western capitalism. Discussions about power and politics
are not just limited to political parties or the state. We should keep a
journal to identify the hierarchies around us, how they work, where does
power and authority derive, where are we within the hierarchy, and how
does it make us feel.
Our oppressed identity from the family informs much of our ongoing
social behaviour within social groups. If we have experienced
hierarchical damage from adverse childhood experiences, then our
oppressed identity will make it difficult for us to develop flourishing
social relationships. Even if we have been lucky enough not to
experience adverse childhood experiences, we have probably still
internalised an oppressed identity.
We need to acknowledge that our experiences of hierarchy could be
informing the quality of our relationships. We may be wanting to be told
what to do, waiting for permission, expecting judgement, trying to
please, taking control over others, not expressing emotions, reacting,
or any number of behaviours that only really make sense if we have
internalised a view of hierarchy as being normal.
People often seek security through seeing GPs or mental health
professionals, some even wanting inpatient admissions to feel safe. They
can fear themselves and what they may do to themselves or others. Other
times they just want the expert view to rid themselves of anxieties. We
can find it difficult to rely on ourselves and others when we have been
oppressed. It is by its very nature disempowering, and if we are holding
onto beliefs about individual competence and position in social
structures, it can be very scary. For example we often think we are at
the bottom because of our own personal failings, so of course we need
people who know better to tell us what to do.
Furthermore, without an expressly political consciousness regarding
non-hierarchy, organisations can become oppressive, even without intent.
We bring all sorts of values and beliefs, internalised prejudices and
oppressed identities to everything we do. In one organisation I was part
of, a group of white men were on the committee organising the business
of the group. They regarded themselves as progressive, and worked in the
anti-racist, anti-sexist sectors of our society. Yet, women never stayed
long on the committee. Emotional burdens were placed on them,
prejudicial values were embedded in how much time and money was
allocated to activities women took part in, and volunteers looked to the
men as authority. All of this was unthinking. These white men would not
regard themselves as oppressive, but every woman who walked through the
door felt the oppression.
Hierarchical behaviours are internalised, and we need to look at them
consciously and name them as what they are. Mutual aid with the idea of
reciprocity that guides it should in itself counter these behaviours.
Through engaging in mutual aid we should encourage habits of
co-operative behaviour. The first firm nudge to this is joining in with
a mutual aid community. Then over time, smaller nudges guide our
behaviour from oppressed identity to co-operative empowerment. It is
like learning the violin. At first it is difficult and hurts, but if we
practice every day it becomes like second nature, changing the neural
pathways in our brain. It is a habit.
Further than this, though, mutual aid communities could educate
themselves about social, political and economic justice and should take
part in activism with other communities and solidarity struggles, as
this also changes the oppressed identity into an empowered identity, and
develops co-operative behaviour: thinking together about solidarity
actions with other groups and people who are experiencing oppression
within the numerous hierarchies present in the world. Activism is
transformative and empowering, but only if you embed non-hierarchical
systems into practice. We must remember that although we have oppressed
identities and have experienced toxic stress and hierarchical damage, it
is fundamentally the system that needs changing, not us. Changing our
behaviours will help us to feel happier, empowered and flourish, but it
must run alongside the fight for systemic change.
Joining a mutual aid group and consciously practicing cooperative
behaviours until they become habitual, thereby replacing the old
oppressed/oppressor behaviours, is one way of changing the old toxic
patterns. Further activism in solidarity struggles will further embed
co-operative behaviour as a habit.
The final step is to make sure the mutual aid community, as a whole,
does not slide back towards hierarchy. For this we need explicitly
non-hierarchical processes in place. Discussions need to happen in the
group about how we make decisions through consensus, how we allocate any
time or resources fairly, and how we challenge any power and privilege
that develops. Facilitation of meetings should be shared between all
members, meetings actively participated in by everyone, and agendas
should have input by everyone. Mutual aid communities should be small
enough that this is not problematic. It is vitally important that time
and thought is given to put these processes into place for the mutual
aid community, using research and the community resources available.
Practicing mutual aid is a revolutionary activity, because it is a
direct challenge to the dominant way of doing things. The hope is that
practicing the non-hierarchical processes within mutual aid communities
helps us all to learn important lessons, get better at it, along with
demonstrating an alternative to the status quo. An alternative that is
already present within the old toxic system, an alternative that can
replace the old toxic system and help to liberate human, non-human and
planet from the dangers of hierarchy.
The non-hierarchical consciousness, therefore, has three phases:
Notice hierarchies and write our experiences down.
Join a mutual aid community and practice cooperative behaviours and
activism until they become a habit that replaces the old oppressed
identity;
Spend time putting non-hierarchical processes in place within the mutual
aid community, including the ability to challenge power and privilege if
it starts to develop, to prevent systemic slips backwards.
A score of four or more adverse childhood experiences means that âthe
likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390 percent;
hepatitis, 240 percent; depression 460 percent; attempted suicide, 1,220
percent.â(1) Just think about those statistics. The result of hierarchy
on me and you is increased risk of lung disease, hepatitis, and
depression. Suddenly political philosophy has gone from discussion
around moral goods and competing values to something concrete and
material. Hierarchy is bad for our health. It literally kills us.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences research is an important piece of work
that is bringing real benefit to peopleâs lives by locating solutions to
emotional, physical and mental health in social networks and nurturing
strategies. It breaks with a model that there is something biologically
wrong with us, that we were born this way or that way. We know that
human beings are not fixed, but are dynamic and developing; even the
brain has plasticity. We are born with some propensities, but our
environment and what happens to us, especially as children, creates and
changes us biologically, emotionally, and psychologically. In the case
of adverse childhood experiences the damage can be profound and shocking
and can have life changing consequences. Equally if we get things right
for human beings, we co-regulate their emotions, nurture and develop
safe and trusting relationships, then we can flourish.
So how we live together matters, because it impacts on our life
expectancy. It impacts on concrete things, like rates of cancer, heart
disease, obesity, and depression. Through using the phenomenology of
lived experience, I have understood that what was left out of the
adverse childhood experiences research was an analysis of hierarchy
within the family. The family has a necessary hierarchy in a
relationship of safety; children need adults to survive. The contingent
relationship, if also hierarchical, can cause chaos, and drive the
relationship of necessity into something unsafe.
Hierarchy is fertile ground for adverse childhood experiences and for
abuse. It creates an oppressed identity for us, because we understand
that we have parents who âcreate usâ in their judgement, as if we are an
object for them. The oppressor always treats the oppressed as if they
were an object, denying them their right to freedom at every turn. This
oppressed identity is internalised and dictates our future sense of
ourselves, and our capacity for agency and change. Furthermore the
adverse childhood experiences can be understood as degrees of
hierarchical damage which happen to us because we are oppressed and
powerless at the bottom of this familial hierarchy. They are abuses that
are done to us because it is the danger of all hierarchy to be abusive,
and these abuses affect our health and life expectancy. We are all
victims of a toxic system.
The social and nurturing solutions that lie in the contingent realm need
to properly mitigate against the dangers implicit in the necessary
hierarchy of safety. The solution, therefore, lies in families
organising themselves into consciously political, non-hierarchical,
mutual aid relationships which are empowering and liberating, and
protect the child from the hierarchical dangers present in their need
for adults for survival. We should employ playfulness, love, acceptance,
curiosity, and empathy in our ways of relating to each other, and
flatten hierarchies if they arise. The community around families should
rid itself of âexpertâ roles, and have mutual aid structures. The
therapeutic solution lies in non-hierarchical mutual aid affinity groups
for particular health issues.
In the last thirty years I have learned that the most significant wounds
we carry are our wounds of oppression, and related abuse. These wounds
were created within social relationships, noticed and communicated to
ourselves and others through emotions that cause us toxic stress.
Healing is to be found within social relationships, not in isolation,
because human beings are social and emotions are a type of social
communication. The healing cannot happen in the same type of social
relationship that created that wound.. It must be a different type of
social relationship. We need relationships where we apprehend each other
authentically in freedom; where we apprehend our children as liberated,
capable of choices and of change, and as empowered; where we apprehend
ourselves in pride, and with agency: within mutual aid; without
hierarchy.
Adverse childhood experiences affect people who are living with these
wounds every day; who die from these wounds every day, kill themselves
every day, and struggle with the pain every day. I wonder how much
longer we are to continue with this anti-human practice of hierarchical
organisation, that privileges and upholds a few peopleâs power and
wealth. It is killing us.
In his poem âA Prayer For My Daughterâ, Yeats expressed his anxiety for
the safety and for the future happiness of his daughter. He wanted her
to be a particular way so that she could fit well into society. I say
that it is the way we organise ourselves in society together that we
must change in order to liberate ourselves, to allow us to flourish and
thrive, to express ourselves, to make choices, to decide for ourselves
who we are today, and tomorrow. To be authentic. The family is
meaningful and important for us all, but like Humeâs bundle theory, some
properties of it can be discarded. We donât need to destroy it all but
just reimagine it. Letâs focus on what we can change, and letâs create a
world where human beings and all life can flourish.
At the very least, in our families, in our communities, and in our
professional roles, letâs recognise the terrible danger that hierarchy
presents to all of us from our earliest breath, and strive to do
everything we can to change, and do things differently.
âSo that all may live this rich, overflowing life.â
Peter Kropotkin, âAnarchist Moralityâ
Introduction
(1) BMJ. (2019) NHS prescribed record number of antidepressants last
year. BMJ [online]. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.l1508
2. Adverse Childhood Experiences
(1) Stevens, J. (2017) What ACEs and PCEs do you have? Paces Connection
[online]. Available from:
https://www.acesconnection.com/blog/got-your-ace-resilience-scores
(Accessed, 6 April 2021).
(2) Anda, R. F., Felitti, V. J., Bremner, J. D., et al. (2005). The
enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood.
A convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology. European
Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 265(3), pp.174-186.
DOI: 10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4
(3) CDC. (2021) Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences. CDC Violence
Prevention [online]. Available from:
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/fastfact.html (Accessed, 8
April 2021).
3. An interpretation of the ACEs questions
(1) Yonack, L. (2017) Sexual Assault Is About Power: How the #MeToo
campaign is restoring power to victims. Psychology Today [online].
Available from:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/psychoanalysis-unplugged/201711/sexual-assault-is-about-power
(Accessed, 3 April 2021).
(2) Weir, K. (2014) The lasting impact of neglect. Monitor on
Psychology, 45(6). Available from:
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/06/neglect (Accessed, 6 April 2021).
5: Mutual Aid
(1) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for
Injury Prevention and Control. (2019) We Can Prevent Adverse Childhood
Experiences (ACEs). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [online].
Available from:
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/adverse-childhood-experiences/index.html
(Accessed, 6 April 2021).
Conclusion
(1) Stevens, J. (2017) What ACEs and PCEs do you have? Paces Connection
[online]. Available from:
https://www.acesconnection.com/blog/got-your-ace-resilience-scores
(Accessed, 6 April 2021).