The Terrified Child Within

By John Crane, MD

"The Terrified Child Within" introduces a new term in psychiatric disorders, Pathological Dependency. Emotional dependency generally refers to a condition in which an individual is strongly attached, emotionally, to another person; this may develop in several ways, and is usually not disabling, Pathological Dependency is something else entirely: "Dependency on Steroids." It is manifested most commonly by the abused (usually women) clinging to abusive men. When asked "why", the answer as usually some variant of, "I love him." The men who hold these women emotional hostages have their own reasons: they have found someone who will accept their rage and abuse and not leave them. Indeed, he is usually the one who abandons the relationship. Almost invariably, the reason for this entanglement is found in a childhood rife with abuse of all types: physical, emotional, sexual, neglect and even abandonment. These terrified children are convinced they're doing something "wrong" and if they only tried hard enough they would be loved. Many will spend their lives trying, moving from one search to another, and if they're fortunate, they may find someone who can teach them that their "love" isn't love at all.
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• Language: English
• Publisher: John Crane, MD
• Release date: Feb 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370950911

John Crane, MD

John B. Crane, MD DLFAPA is a psychiatrist who has been in private practice since 1970. He closed his office in Washington, Missouri, in July 2012 and is now seeing patients part-time in an out-patient mental health clinic in Union, Missouri. Dr. Crane attended Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, did residencies in psychiatry at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and the University of Iowa, in Iowa City. He is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is a Distinguished Life Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association.Dr. Crane and his wife live on a small farm between Washington and Union. Mrs. Crane is a Certified Master Gardener, and Dr. Crane enjoys playing on his tractor and messing about in the sundry sailboats he and his sons have stashed here and there. Dr. Crane's oldest son is an Optometrist, the middle son is a physician specializing in sports and regenerative medicine, and the youngest is a computer and robotics engineer. The Cranes have seven grandchildren.

Book preview

THE TERRIFIED CHILD WITHIN

COPING WITH A LIFETIME OF ABUSE

John B. Crane, MD, DLFAPA

Copyright 2017 John B. Crane, MD, DLFAPA

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

PART FIVE

AFTERWORD

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PART ONE

The word love is arguably the most misunderstood and misused in the English language. After 50-plus years of marriage and 50 years in psychiatry, I still can’t define it, and I’ve never met anyone who could, but we all keep trying. (This may be a situation akin to the Supreme Court justice who observed that he couldn’t define pornography, but he sure knew it when he saw it.) We often use love to describe myriad feelings, but they may well not be love. Instead, they’re more apt to be like on steroids, a misplaced perception of emotions and feelings. It may be easier to define love by considering behavior. For example, my wife and I are (usually) best friends, we (usually) enjoy each other’s company, we think the same things, and by now we can finish each other’s sentences. We could knock each other silly sometimes, but so far we haven’t. We’ve weathered some very painful times and come through them stronger. I guess, for me, that’s a lot of what love is. (Another example: I fix breakfasts for us… in bed, no less...and she makes really good dinners, waiting for me (us) when I get home from my office.)

Over the years, I’ve seen patient after patient chronically, bitterly embattled with people whom they believe, accurately, should love them: parents, children, spouses, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, but after the passage of time, some of those people turn out to be abusive, in all the inventive ways we can hurt one another, but my patients grimly hang in there. For a long time, upon hearing these sad stories, I would ask, Why in the hell don’t you just leave? Why keep torturing yourself? I thought these situations were simply other consequences of the varied psychiatric illnesses they were suffering – leaving would cause even more pain than if they hung in there – but it finally became obvious to me that most of these conflicts did not change, even with successful treatment of their illnesses. Frustration often led them to try different treatments and medications, different psychiatrists and counselors or the latest fad therapy, all to no avail. Over the years, it became apparent that I was missing something, some key piece of the puzzle. It turns out what I was missing when evaluating these miserable folks were the long-term effects of living with abusive, controlling, perhaps violent people, and I was seeing the results. What kept them in these relationships was usually a state called dependency.

The concept of dependency is so important to the heart of this book that we’ll take a moment to define it. People presenting this condition in its severest form feel literally that they cannot live without the object of their love and they cling to them, no matter how painful or abusive the relationship may be. The prospect of seeing themselves as independent individuals, able and expected to make decisions about what they want and need in their lives is so frightening that they’ll accept any connection with any other person who will make those decisions for them, to try to keep themselves safe. They’ll tell me something like, I know it’s crazy, but I just can’t help it, and they seem genuinely puzzled, but they relentlessly fall into repeated painful, dangerous or even potentially fatal situations, which we read about in the press all too often. This seemingly blind lunacy is what makes police officers dread domestic violence calls, because the drive to avoid being abandoned, already strong in these individuals, can erupt into panic and violence on the part of the abused and the abuser. This is the reason I call this condition Pathological Dependency : these folks are desperately ill, cannot recognize it, and it usually takes a long time in treatment before they’re able to understand what I’m trying to beat into their skulls, if I ever can. (That’s an exaggeration, of course. These people have been abused by so many other people that they don’t need abuse from their psychiatrist as well.)

Before we go into more detail about this condition, I need to let you know about the how and why of this book. The "how" relates to the fact that I’m what’s called a general psychiatrist, meaning that, in my relatively rural area west of St. Louis, Missouri, over the years I’ve seen anyone who comes through the door. For a lot of those years, I was almost the only psychiatrist in my area, which covers several counties in east-central Missouri and extends down into the Ozark hills. I attended Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, trained there and at the University of Iowa in psychiatry, and I’m board-certified, which means that I’ve been examined by a board of my peers and found well-trained and safe to practice. I’ve been an examiner for the boards, and the half-joking primary criterion for passing a candidate is, are they safe? Of course, they also have to know a lot about psychiatry. Several years ago, I earned fellowship in the American Psychiatric Association, which is a recognition of service to the profession and the community, and I’ve gotten old enough to merit the designation Distinguished Life Fellow of the APA. Don’t be overly impressed; it’s mainly a reward for living long enough.

The why of the book is that I think I can use what I’ve learned over the years about abused kids and adults to help them see their seemingly crazy behavior as more than just a bad habit.

I see Pathological Dependency (I coined that name, by the way – pathological means really sick) as a severe disorder unique unto itself, almost always beginning early in life, i.e., early childhood, perhaps even infancy, when these youngsters cannot recognize the abuse or ways to cope with it. Once it’s established the symptoms never, ever go away completely, because they get burned into the brain. A careful history, including as complete an assessment of early childhood and extended family of the abused individual, is essential to bring about understanding of what we’re dealing with, and to design a treatment plan which addresses all of the pertinent issues. My intent with this book is to help you recognize this disorder within yourself and maybe your Significant Other (who more than likely won’t want anything to do with that weird psychiatry stuff) and begin to recover and heal. We will do this by considering the concept of Pathological Dependency in depth, presenting several case histories, defining other serious psychiatric illnesses often encountered along with this condition, so-called co-morbid, and finally we will begin to talk about treatment.

Now, why are so many of us humans in this same leaky boat? It turns out that we can get emotionally messed-up by having certain things happen to us , or not happen, even when we’re babies with brand-new brains. With the exception of our genetic heritage, we’re pretty-much psychological blank slates when we’re born, but there are exceptions as always, which we’ll consider in a bit. The foundation, the very bottom layer of stones on which the castle of our personhood is built, and upon which most continuing emotional development rests, is awareness from Day One that we are not alone in the world. I believe that, over eons, humans and other mammals have encoded in their genetic complement the unconscious awareness that abandonment means death. The only people I’m aware of who abhor any human contact at all are likely psychotic, usually schizophrenic, or have severe bipolar disorder or perhaps profound autism.

Others have written extensively over the past 25 years or so about dependency and co-dependency. These studies have largely focused on the consequences of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise addicted family, and many of them consider the emotional fallout in adult children of alcoholics and their families. Janet Woititz was one of the first to describe this condition in her book Adult Children of Alcoholics. Others who have written about this and related issues include Claudia Black, Herbert Gravitz, Julie Bowden and Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse. Those of you who recognize yourselves as dealing with alcohol/drug related dependency or co-dependency would do well to look up their work. Although some of the writing is dated, many of the the issues described and discussed fall into the category of eternal truths.

We know that growing up in an addictive family can be a source of abuse of all sorts: physical, emotional, sexual, neglect, to name the most common. In some horrendous situations, all of those elements, and more, are present. Nowadays, a dangerous and destructive source is the mounting use and abuse of amphetamines and amphetamine-like drugs and, more recently, a resurgence of heroin and legal narcotic analgesics such as Morphine, Demerol,

Reviews for The Terrified Child Within

[lparkeryhti.net · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found the information concise and easy to understand. PD is my hell and I have a better understanding of how to separate the feelings and cognitive response to situations. I believe it will
be easier to open up to my therapist.