As we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.

Alice Miller:
Concerning Forgiveness: The Liberating Experience of Painful Truth

The mistreated and neglected child is completely alone in the darkness of confusion and fear.

 

Surrounded by arrogance and hatred, robbed of its rights and its speech, deceived in its love and its trust, disregarded, humiliated, mocked in its pain, such a child is blind, lost and pitilessly exposed to the power of ignorant adults.

 

It's without orientation and completely defenseless.

Its whole being would like to shout out its anger, give voice to its feeling of outrage, call for help. But that's exactly what it may not do. All its normal reactions, the reactions with which nature has endowed it to help it survive, remain blocked.

 

If no witness comes to its aid, these natural reactions would enlarge and prolong the child's sufferings. Ultimately, the child could die of them. Thus, the healthy impulse to protest against inhumanity has to be suppressed. The child attempts to extinguish and erase from memory everything that's happened to it, in order to banish from consciousness the burning outrage, fury, fear and the unbearable pain - as it hopes, forever.

 

What remains is a feeling of its own guilt, rather than outrage that it's forced to kiss the hand that beats it and beg for forgiveness - something that unfortunately happens more than one imagines.

The abused child goes on living with in those who have survived such torture, a torture that ended with total repression. They live with the darkness of fear, oppression and threats.

 

When all its attempts to move the adult to heed its story have failed, it resorts to the language of symptoms to make itself heard. Enter addiction, psychosis, criminality.

If, as adults, we nevertheless begin to have an inkling of why we're suffering and ask a specialist whether these sufferings could have a connection with our childhood, we'll usually be told that this is very unlikely to be the case.

 

And if it were, that we should learn forgiveness. It's the resentment at the past, we're told, that's making us ill.

 

In those by-now familiar groups in which addicts and their relations go into therapy together, the following belief is invariably expressed.

 

Only when you've forgiven your parents for everything they did to you can you get well. Even if both parents were alcoholics, even if they mistreated, confused, exploited, beat and totally overloaded you, you must forgive them everything.

 

Otherwise, your illness will not be cured. There are many programs going by the name of "therapy", whose basis consists of first learning to express one's feelings in order to see what happened in childhood.

 

Then, however, comes "the work of forgiveness", which is apparently necessary if one is to heal. Many young people who have AIDS or are drug-addicted die in the wake of their effort to forgive so much.

 

What they don't realize is that they're trying to keep the repression of their childhood intact. Some therapists fear this truth. They work under the influence of various interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness to the once-mistreated child.

Thereby, they create a new vicious circle for people who, from their earliest years, have been caught in the vicious circle of pedagogy.

 

This, they refer to as "therapy". In so doing, they lead them into a trap from which there's no escape, the same trap that once rendered their natural protests impossible, thus causing the illness in the first place.

 

Because such therapists, caught as they're in the pedagogic system, can't help patients to resolve the consequences of the traumatization they've suffered, they offer them traditional morality instead.

In recent years I've been sent many books from the US describing different kinds of therapeutic intervention by authors with whom I'm not familiar. Many of these authors presume that forgiveness is an indispensable condition for successful therapy.

 

This notion appears to be so widespread in therapeutic circles that it isn't always called into question - something urgently needed. For forgiveness doesn't resolve latent hatred and self-hatred but can cover them up in a very dangerous way.

 

I know of the case of one woman, whose mother was sexually abused as a child by both her father and brother. Reared in a convent, this woman learned "the blessing of forgiveness" by heart. She continued to worship her father and brother without the slightest trace of bitterness.

While her daughter was still an infant, she frequently left the child "in the care of" her 13 year-old nephew, while she went blithely off to the movies with her husband. While she was gone, the pubescent babysitter indulged his sexual desires on the body of her baby daughter.

 

When the daughter later sought help in psychoanalytic counseling, the analyst told her she should on no account blame her mother. Her intentions hadn't been bad, she was told. She'd had no idea that her babysitter was routinely abusing her child.

 

The mother, it seems, was literally clueless. When the child began to develop dietary disturbances, she anxiously consulted a number of doctors. They assured her that the disturbances in her eating habits came from "teething."

 

Thus, the gears of this forgiveness machine were functioning almost perfectly and at the expense of the truth and the lives of all concerned. Fortunately, they don't always function as well.

In her highly creative, remarkable book THE OBSIDIAN MIRROR: AN ADULT HEALING FROM INCEST (Seal Press, 1988), Louise Wisechild describes how she succeeded in deciphering her body's messages and communications and thereby her feelings, so that she was gradually able to free her childhood from repression.

 

This took place in a successful therapy involving bodywork and written accounts of her experiences. Gradually, she discovered in detail what she'd totally banished from consciousness: that she'd been sexually molested by her grandfather at the age of 4; that she was subsequently abused by an uncle and finally also by her stepfather.

 

A woman therapist was willing and brave enough to work w/her on this horrific journey of self-discovery, in spite of the manifest torture to which the patient had been subjected.

 

Nevertheless, even in this most successful therapy Louise sometimes felt that she should forgive her mother.

 

On the other hand, she strongly felt that this might be wrong.

Fortunately, the therapist didn't insist too much on this point. She gave Louise the freedom to follow her own feelings and to discover that it wasn't forgiveness that made her strong in the end.

 

Helping the patient to resolve the guilt feelings that had been imposed upon her - the ultimate purpose, presumably, of therapy - doesn't mean to burden her with an additional demand, a demand that could only serve to cement those feelings of guilt.

 

A quasi-religious act of forgiveness can never resolve patterns of self-destruction.

 

Why should this woman, after showing her concern for her mother for 30 years, forgive her crime, when that mother had never made the slightest effort to see what she'd done to her daughter?

 

On one occasion, as the child, rigid with fear and disgust, was forced to lie under the heavy, male body of her uncle, she caught sight of her mother in the mirror as she approached the door. The child hoped to be saved, but the mother turned and disappeared.

 

When Louise was an adult, she heard her mother say that she could only cope with her fear of that uncle if her children were around her.

When the daughter tried to discuss her rape at the hands of her stepfather, her mother wrote her that she never wished to see her again.

 

Even in many such blatant cases, the pressure to forgive, which effectively prevents the chance of a successful therapy, is hardly seen as the absurd demand that it is.

 

It's just this common pressure to forgive that mobilizes old fears in the patient that oblige him or her to believe such an authority. What can it possibly achieve, except a quiet conscience for the therapist?*

 

In many cases much can be destroyed with a single, fundamentally wrong, confusing sentence. That it's well anchored in tradition and has been implanted in us since our earliest childhood only makes matters worse.

 

What's involved here is an outrageous misuse of power, by which therapists are wont to ward off their powerlessness and fear. Patients, for their part, are convinced that the therapist holds this view as a result of the incontrovertible evidence of experience and so believe this "authority."

They can't know and it's almost impossible for them to discover - that what this claim in fact discloses is the therapist's own fear of the mistreatment suffered at the hands of his or her parents.

 

How are patients meant to resolve their feelings of guilt under such circumstances?

 

On the contrary , they'll simply be confirmed.

Preaching forgiveness reveals the pedagogic nature of some therapies. In addition, it exposes the powerlessness of the preachers. In a sense, it's odd that they call themselves "therapists" at all.

 

"Priests" would be more apt. What ultimately emerges is the continuation of the blindness inherited in childhood, the blindness that a real therapy could relieve. What is constantly repeated to patients - until they believe it and the therapist is mollified - is:

 

"Your hate is making you ill. You must forgive and forget. Then you'll be well."

 

But it wasn't hatred that drove patients to mute desperation in their childhood, by alienating them from their feelings and their needs. It was such morality with which they were constantly pressured.

It was my experience that it was precisely the opposite of forgiveness - namely, rebellion against mistreatment suffered, the recognition and condemnation of my parents' misleading opinions and actions and the articulation of my own needs - that ultimately freed me from the past.

 

In my childhood, these things had been ignored in the name of "a good upbringing," and I myself learned to ignore them for decades in order to be the "good" and "tolerant" child my parents wished me to be.

 

But today I know: I always needed to expose and fight against opinions and attitudes that I considered destructive of life wherever I encountered them and not to tolerate them. But I could only do this effectively once I had felt and experienced what was inflicted on me earlier.

 

By preventing me from feeling the pain, the moral religious injunction to forgive did nothing but hinder this process.

 

The demand for good behavior has nothing to do with either an effective therapy or life. For many people in search of help, it closes the path to freedom. Therapists allow themselves to be led by their own fear - the mistreated child's fear of its parents' revenge and by the hope that good behavior might one day be able to buy the love their parents denied them.

The price that patients have to pay for this illusory hope is high indeed. Given false information, they can't find the path to self-fulfillment.

 

By refusing to forgive, I give up my illusions. A mistreated child, of course, can't live without them. But a grown-up therapist must be able to manage it. His or her patients should be able to ask: "Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to?

 

I mean, my parents refuse to understand and to know what they did to me. So why should I go on trying to understand and forgive my parents and whatever happened in their childhood, with things like psychoanalysis and transactional analysis?

 

What's the use? Whom does it help?

 

It doesn't help my parents to see the truth. But it does prevent me from experiencing my feelings, the feelings that would give me access to the truth. But under the bell-jar of forgiveness, feelings can't and may not blossom freely."

 

Such reflections are, unfortunately, not common in therapeutic circles, in which forgiveness is the ultimate law. The only compromise that is made consists of differentiating between false and correct forms of forgiveness.

 

But therapy requires only the "correct" form. And this goal may never be questioned.

 

I've asked many therapists why it is that they believe their patients must forgive if they're to become well, but I've never received a halfway acceptable answer.

 

Clearly, they'd never questioned their assertion. It was, for them, as self-evident as the mistreatment with which they grew up. I can't conceive of a society in which children aren't mistreated, but respected and lovingly cared for, that would develop an ideology of forgiveness for incomprehensible cruelties.

 

This ideology is indivisible with the command "Thou shalt not be aware" and with the repetition of that cruelty on the next generation. It's our children who pay the price for our lack of awareness. Our fear of our parents' revenge is the basis of our morality.

However, by means of gradual therapeutic disclosure that dispenses with bogus morality and pedagogy , this misleading ideology can be stopped. Survivors of mistreatment need to discover their own truth if they're to free themselves of its consequences.

 

Moralizing leads them away from this truth.

An effective therapy can't be achieved if the mechanisms of pedagogy continue to operate. It requires recognition of the damage caused by our upbringing, whose consequences it should resolve. It must make patients' feelings available to them and accessible for the entirety of their lives.

 

This can help them to orientate and be at one with themselves. Moralizing appeals can result in barring access to this self-knowledge.

 

A child can excuse its parents, if they in their turn are prepared to recognize and admit to their failures. But the demand for forgiveness that I often encounter can pose a danger for therapy, even though it's an expression of our culture.

 

Mistreatment of children is the order of the day and those errors are therefore trivialized by the majority of adults. forgiving can have negative consequences, not only for the individual, but for society at large, because it can mean disguising erroneous opinions and attitudes and involves drawing a curtain across reality so that we can't see what's taking place behind it.

What would happen if they began to gain access to the causes of their symptoms! The problem with medical pedagogy is that the majority of those involved, the institutions & specialists, in no way wish to know why it is people become ill.

 

The result of this denial is that countless chronically ill people become permanent residents of our prisons & clinics, while billions are spent by the government on keeping mum about the truth. Those affected must on no account realize that they can be helped to understand the language of their childhood, thereby truly reducing their suffering or even relieving it altogether .

If we had the courage to confront the facts about the repression of childhood mistreatment & its consequences, this would be possible. One look at the specialist literature on the subject, however, shows just how lacking such courage is.

 

By contrast, the literature is full of appeals to our good intentions, all kinds of noncommittal & unverifiable advice & above all, moral preaching.

 

Everything, all cruelty endured in childhood, is to be forgiven. If that doesn't do the trick, then the state must pay for the lifelong care & treatment of invalids & the chronically ill. But with the help of the truth, they could be cured.

It's now been proved that though repression may be crucial for a child, it shouldn't necessarily be the fate of adults. A small child's dependency on its parents, its trust in them, its longing to love & be loved, are limitless.

 

To exploit this dependency, to deceive a child in its longing, confuse it & then proceed to sell this as "child rearing" is a criminal act - a criminal act committed hourly & daily out of ignorance, indifference & the refusal to give up such behavior.

 

The fact that the majority of such crimes are committed unconsciously doesn't, unfortunately, allay the calamitous consequences.

 

The abused child's body will register the truth, while its consciousness refuses to acknowledge it. By repressing the pain & the accompanying situations, the infantile organism averts death - its fate, were it to consciously experience such traumatization.

What remains is the vicious circle of repression: the true story, which has been suppressed in the body, produces symptoms so that it could at last be recognized & taken seriously.

But our consciousness refuses to comply, just as it did in childhood - because it was then that it learned the life-saving function of repression & because no one has subsequently explained that as grown-ups we aren't condemned to die of our knowledge, that, on the contrary, such knowledge would help us in our quest for health.

The dangerous teaching of "poisonous pedagogy" - "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware Of What Was Done To You " - reappears in the methods of treatment practiced by doctors, psychiatrists & therapists. With medication & mystifying theories they try to influence their patients' memories as deeply as possible, in order that they never find the cause of their illness.

 

These lie, almost without exception, in the psychic & physical mistreatment & neglect suffered in childhood.

 

Today, we know that AIDS & cancer involve a drastic collapse of the body's immune system & that this physical "resignation " precedes the sick person's loss of hope. Incredibly, hardly anyone has taken the step that these discoveries suggest: that we can regain our hope, if our distress signals are finally heard.

If our repressed, hidden story is at last perceived with full consciousness, even our immune system can regenerate itself. But who is there to help, when all the "helpers" fear their own personal history?

 

And so we play the game of blindman's bluff with each other-patients, doctors, medical authorities - because until now only a few people have experienced the fact that emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.

 

In the long run, we can only function with consciousness of the truth. This also holds for our physical well-being. Bogus traditional morality, destructive religious interpretations & confusion in our methods of child rearing all make this experience harder & hinder our initiative.

 

Without a doubt, the pharmaceutical industry also profits from our blindness & despondency. However, each of us has been given only one life & only one body. It refuses to be fooled, insisting with all means at its disposal that we don't deceive it. …

*I have slightly revised the last 2 paragraphs for this revised edition after reviewing a letter from Louise Wisechild, who provided me with more specific information about her own view of her therapy.

© Alice Miller

Anonymous

More often than not male survivors are an overlooked percentage of statistical analysis. The truth is men like myself are no longer afraid to come out of their lonely, socially phobic closets & speak for themselves. We are a part of that multitude of people, of abuse survivors coming forth w/honesty in our personal relationships, our family circles, to say, "Hey, I've been abused. I know all about manipulation, coercion & forced control."

For a long time society has catered for the needs of women in an established network of support in the area of sexual abuse groups & workshops. Now our time has come: workshops, drop-in centres & abuse groups are available for men.

Until now we tended to keep our secrets in a closed vault. Men like myself tried to speak out about the sufferings we encountered through traumatic childhoods & in the then - ignorant society we were laughed at. Our mates thought that we were less than men for having our say, or, worse, after disclosing our shameful secrets so-called friends didn't want to know us.

As women have a fair say on the way they've been treated now we too link up to that network of mutual support. We try to build up our self-esteem. We remind ourselves that we were only children, that the abuse wasn't our fault & sadly, like most abuse survivors we still blame ourselves for the power games uncle played on us when we were walking in the footsteps of infancy.

Most people don't believe that there are children out there undergoing some forms of horrible physical atrocities. Abuse in sexual form is often believed to be a light physical touching by some people in society. What about the varied types of physical torture that occur in abuse?

Some victims are put thru emotional assault, mind games & death threats. It would be a shock to the general population if it were made public knowledge exactly how many forms of physical torture were inflicted upon children.

Who wants to be concerned about the rage of a survivor who was forced to lie down w/an animal during the abuse? Or to urinate onto the private parts of the offender?

There are 3 forms of abuse: sexual, emotional & physical. Emotional abuse leaves terrible scarring in the mind of the young, impressionable child.

Some male survivors can recall the feeling of complete shame to be put down during abuse w/often demeaning, angry comments sometimes followed up by the death threat 'not to tell'. Fear is something men in society don't like to admit they have at some stage during the course of their life.

Abuse survivors can feel embarrassed, afraid of being labeled a 'whimp' when they recall the fear of being abused. The recollection of fear is the actual fear itself felt as a child who was being abused.

Society has encouraged men to repress fear & rush out into the street ready to fight lions. These surviving men need to know that their fear relates to actual memories of the abusive events. Places where men go to discuss the effects of their abuse are becoming available so men need not feel alone in the journey of survival & healing.

Statistics haven't yet proven that men abused as children will become offenders themselves later on in life. This is a myth. A small percentage of pedophiles were abused themselves as children. Generally sexual offenders haven't yet grown up in the emotional sense.

Because they can't relate to adults on a sexually compatible level, offenders prefer to abuse children in the form of power, of control. Abuse doesn't necessarily cause abuse as the media tends to speculate. Most male survivors I have known are well-adjusted people carrying a load of internal scarring rather than problems w/ sexual deviance.

Male abuse survivors have to deal w/the reality of anger about what happened w/their bodies in what should have been a secure childhood. Not often do angry survivors go about the town bashing people up. Therapy teaches the abuse survivor that anger is a healthy emotion to feel & encourages the safe expression of pent-up feelings & anxieties.

Society has pushed the issue that men are too violent, crime is on the rise. Anger can't be suppressed. Without an outlet anger only builds up to explosion point. The same situation applies that no survivor raped as a child is going to walk round the town in adulthood raping women.

Rape of boys & men is possible - rather that it carries the offensive title of 'forced sodomy'. It's devastating for a women to be penetrated sexually. For a man or child to be sodomized is a major violation. Imagine the shame of being penetrated as a boy? The scarring of one's emotional life after this awful trauma is sufficient enough to even cause frigidity in some men.

Men are becoming liberated again. The horrors of an abusive childhood will always haunt the survivor but, in time, memories do fade. After the memories cease to cause an imbalance in the survivor's emotional life come the good times.

Counseling is a worthwhile process & it takes a great deal of courage to heal. My life may not be running smooth all of the time but I'm reaching goals I set before entering therapy. I may have spent a great deal of time in psychiatric institutions but as an abuse survivor I can make it in the colourful world. I still value childhood. Maybe that's why I'm a writer of children's stories.

Liberated Us Girls Hit the Bottle

Young American women trying to keep up w/men are binge drinking w/a vengeance - & falling prey to abuse.

By Guardian Newspapers, 4/7/2002

2:30 a.m. at Hogs & Heifers bar in Manhattan's meatpacking district & the scene is much as usual: the smell of blood & beef still hangs heavy in the air after a day's business, but by night this is party town.

Tourists from the prairie states shifted gear from beers to hard liquor hours ago. The high-heeled Jersey girls have missed the last train home under the river, are emptying vodka glasses & pairing up w/ local boys; it's a fair trade - a bed for a screw - whose complaining?

The barmaids, once they've finished their routine dancing on the bar in halter tops, hot pants & cowboy hats, weave thru the crowds selling shots in test tubes, mixed drinks like 'buttery nipples' - Butterscotch & Bailey's.

But there's a notable difference between this scene & the equivalent a few years ago: most of the drinking is being done by women or - often as not - teenaged girls.

The age ID checks at the door were strict enough until about 1.30 - by now no one cares who the hell you are. It could be the binge -drinking scene from Britney Spears' movie Crossroads, or the recent episode of Fox TV's Undeclared, in which a gang of co-eds get smashed enough for one of them to start flashing her breasts.

It could be Sex & the City, only that's not Carrie Bradshaw over there, it's real-life Paula Thornton from Brooklyn devouring another shot of tequila, w/no idea how many came before it.

Paula dropped out of college last year; she waitresses 3 nights a week & makes beadwork for a living, which she sells along trendy Bedford Avenue. She is in the middle of explaining how it works, but simply stops mid-sentence & glazes over.

Paula is 18; in 3 years time she will be allowed to drink legally in Hogs & Heifers.

President George Bush's girls - Gemma & Barbara - have famously brushed w/the law for under-aged drinking & Gemma is one strike away from a mandatory prison sentence under her own father's rules in Texas. But they are mere emblems that sound a national alarm.

Alcohol has now joined drugs, smoking, dangerous driving & violent crime as the latest ingredient in the dark side of sexual equality in America. Today's 15-year-olds are 15 times more likely to use drugs than their mothers.

Fatal traffic accidents involving women are up 30%, as compared to 8% involving men. Over the past decade, the number of women arrested for assault has increased by a staggering 46%, while that for men has decreased by 10%.

But the most alarming trend of all concerns alcohol.

The Journal of American College Health published a survey last week reporting that between 1993 & 2001, all-women colleges saw an increase of 125% in 'frequent binge drinking' & that such sessions were accompanied by a 150% in 'unplanned' sexual activity.

The figures came on the heels of another report by Columbia University's National Centre on Addiction & Substance Abuse, showing that girls as young as 14 were just as likely as boys to be drinking alcohol regularly. The scientific research shows that while being drunk makes boys rowdy & boisterous, it tends to make girls depressed & open to sexual abuse.

In the poor South Side of Chicago, a Baptist church group working w/young addicts reports that alcoholism is far outrunning drugs & violence as the ghetto's curse, especially among young women.

Girls are coming for counseling having had their stomachs pumped in hospitals, others w/fractured bones after drunken fights, says the Rev. Dan Taylor; some have been sexually assaulted while incapable of resistance.

However, the worst figures come not from the deprived inner cities, but from among students, the suburbs & middle classes. Campuses across America report that the days when 'Frat Brats' pushed the pace of drinking are over. Typically, twice as many girls & women as boys & men are treated for chronic intoxication.

August 11, 2000

Why I liberated my daughter from a behavior-modification boarding school
by Patricia Wolff

In the following account, "Friendship Glen School" has been substituted for the school's true name & other minor word changes were made in order to conceal identities. Otherwise, the following is unchanged from Patricia Wolff's original letter of July 24, 2000 to PTAVE (Project NoSpank). Ms. Wolff can be contacted by writing to newwest@aol.com

I liberated my 16-year-old daughter from Friendship Glen School, a
behavior-modification boarding school, on July 20, 2000. She had been there since April 1, almost 4 months. My daughter was a typical
"troubled teen" & the reasons we sent her there were common ones.

She was rebellious, depressed & angry -- getting in trouble at school, drinking alcohol, hanging w/the wrong crowd, seemingly out of control.

My ex-husband & I were desperate, frustrated parents who just wanted to do what was best to protect her & get her back on track. It was time for "tough love," we were told.

We heard about Friendship Glen School from a so-called expert who said that it was one of the best boarding schools for "difficult teens" in the country. The school is owned & operated by a large for-profit provider of "services for at-risk youth."

Friendship Glen is remotely located in a stunningly beautiful, wild &
green place in the northwest where you'd love to vacation. But for the
children, of course, this is no vacation.

Celebrities -- like ______ ________, _______ _______, and ________ -- had sent their daughters there and since the school cost so much (over $5,000 a month!) it must really be good, right? After a quick site visit & chat w/an admissions counselor & after reading their glossy brochures & looking at their web site, we were seduced into sending our daughter away.

We hired one of school's recommended escort services, a man & a
woman, who captured our daughter while she was at school in Santa Fe & led her away crying in handcuffs. She was kept in those painful handcuffs all the way to the airport. They lied to her about where she was going & what to expect once she got there.

From the beginning, I tried to be cooperative, supportive & play along w/the school's games (designed to make the parents feel like part of a "team") but my gut instincts told me something was terribly wrong. Many staffers didn't seem to be all that qualified or professional, considering how much money we were investing in this program.

To tell the truth, it wasn't even our money. The money came from a trust fund that my ex-husband's parents had established for my daughter's college education. My ex-husband signed the checks, but in reality, my daughter was paying for her own incarceration, against her will.

Friendship Glen School's whole objective is to keep the kids there as long as possible, to maximize profits. The school will do whatever it can to convince the parents that their children are "not ready" to return home. In the case of divorced parents, they'll pit one parent against the other.

I didn't like the school's coercive behavior modification techniques or their policy of isolating children from their families. Children are allowed to talk to their parents for 15 minutes once every 2 weeks. Phone calls are monitored & if the child begs to come home or says anything negative about the school, that's grounds for punishment & prompt termination of the phone call.

Letters written by the children are read by staff first & will not be sent if the child begs to come home or reports negative things about the school. 4 times a year, parents are allowed to visit their children, but the children can't go home to visit during the first year.

The rules are not as strict for the children of celebrities, of course.

The school is very paranoid about negative messages or cries for help getting to the outside. When I went to the school to pull my daughter out, I was confronted by a male staffer who insisted on being w/us while my daughter packed her bags, to prevent other children from slipping messages to her that could be delivered "to the outside."

Nor did I like the drug-pushing philosophy of the "mental health
professionals" who oversaw my daughter's treatment & wanted to up the dosage of the antidepressant they were feeding her. Their mindset seemed to be "keep 'em on drugs & they'll be easier to control!"

They ridiculed me in front of my daughter after I expressed concern that Prozac could have harmful side effects.

I found out that being at Friendship Glen School was more like being at a labor camp or thought-control camp than a school. My daughter chopped & hauled firewood for the first 3 months she was there & was put on "work assignments" whenever she disobeyed a rule.

The classes were "a joke" she said & she only had a few short sessions w/a therapist, which we paid extra for. Then there were rap sessions during which the children screamed & were screamed at & broken down psychologically.

Sleep deprivation was used during intense sessions to break the kids down. In many ways, Friendship Glen operates like a cult that sucks you in, takes your money, screws you up & brainwashes you into believing that it's good for you.

My ex-husband certainly was brainwashed. He thought the school was great & wanted to keep my daughter there until she was 18. I wanted her out but didn't know what to do, since we have joint custody & I couldn't afford a lawyer. I prayed & cried & raged about the situation & then one day was led to my computer to research & investigate the school.

What I found was utterly shocking & disturbing. All of my worst fears were confirmed. On the Internet, I found articles in newspapers' archives about a student riot, child abuse & neglect, violations of laws & regulations, condemnations by the state of Idaho, lawsuits against the school, a suspicious suicide & even a report of an Friendship Glen School escort drugging & raping a woman employee.

I talked w/lawyers who were representing families that were suing the school & to a local law enforcement official who told me about the dark side of Friendship Glen. I was urged to do whatever it took to get her out immediately before serious psychological damage was done.

I visited www.teenliberty.org, a web site that exposes the whole
racket of teen boarding schools & boot camps & also read the eye-opening book An American Gulag: Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens by Alexia Parks. I learned that facilities like Friendship Glen School & others even more repressive systematically violate the human & legal rights of thousands of children in America every year.

Deaths in these facilities aren't uncommon. I also read the policy statement of the Association of Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nurses (ACAPN) regarding the rights of children in treatment facilities & behavior modification boarding schools & was shocked to see that Friendship Glen School was in flagrant violation of nearly every recommended standard!

Even convicted murderers in federal prisons have more rights than do the children at behavior-modification boarding schools & boot camps. I know in my heart that I did the right thing when I pulled my daughter out of Friendship Glen, even though it was against my ex-husband's wishes.

I also know that I must now face his wrath & a court battle. What I don't know is where I'll get the money to pay legal fees & court costs. I need financial help & I also need the support of former school inmates & employee whistle-blowers to provide first-hand testimony about what really goes on inside.

State agencies & organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International & the ACLU need to investigate these facilities & start pushing to protect the legal & human rights of the children who are trapped inside.

My daughter can survive teenhood w/out repressive boarding schools & boot camps. She's a good kid - intelligent, creative, compassionate & full of life. She isn't a criminal & neither are any of the other kids incarcerated at Friendship Glen School.

They didn't fail us. We as parents & as a society, have failed our children.

Liberated From Feminism:
The Personal Testimony of Carolyn McCulley   
 
Carolyn McCulley is the media & marketing specialist for Sovereign Grace Ministries, a church-planting ministry w/a publishing arm. She is also a freelance writer who writes for both Christian & mainstream publications. 

There is a certain response from men that both feminist & Christian women desire to elicit: a masculine benevolence that knows how to live w/women in an understanding way, being both considerate & respectful toward those who are co-heirs in the gracious gift of life.

Secular feminists approach this desire stridently, from a position of anger. Christian women are taught to approach it gently, from a position of trust, knowing that God's Word commands men to live up to this desired standard (1 Peter 3:7) & commands women to cultivate a gentle & quiet spirit (v. 4).

In my own generation, it has been quite evident that marginalizing men thru anger has had disastrous cultural effects. We've told men that we can't count on them & we've given them a plethora of ways to duck responsibility for the relationships they initiate & the children they create.

The cultural indices of this failure continue to climb: pornography, child abuse, public murders of estranged wives, fatherless children & sexually transmitted diseases to name a few.

What is liberating for women about this mess?!

Unforeseen Consequences

Growing up in the rebellious '70s, I didn't foresee these consequences. Even as a child, my femininity was a source of confusion for me. The oldest of 3 daughters, I felt I always had to prove something to the boys - that I could be faster, smarter & more aggressive than they were.

I didn't want any limits & I looked for every opportunity to show my independence. How I gloated & swaggered when Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a well-publicized "battle of the sexes" tennis match!

As a teenager, I was also headstrong & not submitted to my father. I didn't respect his decisions & I sought to wear him down thru constant arguing. Though my mother faithfully took my sisters & me to mass each week, I lacked any real personal spiritual compass & so I pursued whatever philosophies were currently popular.

I reached college filled to the brim w/the "wisdom" of Cosmopolitan magazine, but I was to encounter something more insidious than fashion magazines - feminism & the Women’s Studies Department. Class after class promoted perpetual victimhood, disrespect toward all men, an overt embrace of lesbianism & a broadly directed militant anger.

I became a teaching assistant in that department for a semester before graduating w/a bachelor’s degree in journalism & a certificate in women’s studies. My 20's were more of the same & then some. I remember when I was 29 that I was so confused & depressed that I entered into therapy to figure out why I was so angry ... & for that matter, why I was still single. (Not that the two could possibly be related, right?!)

Obviously, I didn't have a very positive outlook on my femininity & my therapist didn't make much headway. However, God graciously intervened just as I turned 30. I took a pleasure trip to South Africa to visit my sister who was living there at the time. I heard the gospel while I was there & during the last week of my trip, I heard an American pastor, C.J. Mahaney, preach in a church in Cape Town.

He was so passionate for Jesus & so very real! His relationship w/ Christ appealed to me, so I decided to respond to the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in my life & I gave my life to Christ. When I returned home, I called Pastor Mahaney’s church to obtain a recommendation for an evangelical church in my town.

The Culture Shock of Christianity

Though I felt God was calling me to this church, I was in for a culture shock! It was like being on another planet - the women & their viewpoints there were completely foreign to me. I remember meeting w/my pastor & his wife shortly after I started attending & making a crack about submission.

I didn't think anyone still believed that part of the Bible! My pastor wisely asked me if I liked to read & then recommended Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood to me - theological reading not typically recommended to a 2 month-old convert!

The Lord used that conversation to start retooling my concept of femininity & sexuality, overhauling my lifelong views on abortion, sexual immorality & even submission. I read God's Word, hungry to find out why my new church friends held views so different from anyone else I knew.

From Genesis, I came to understand that God is purposeful in his creation. From the Gospels, I came to understand that God is purposeful in his redemption. I saw he was quite serious about sexual purity before marriage & fidelity within marriage. I was also convicted that abortion was a terribly selfish action to avoid the consequences of sexual sin.

Just as importantly, I saw that God had made me female & that he had specific tasks & roles for women that would glorify him to an unbelieving, yet watching, world. Slowly, I was becoming more concerned w/his glory & not my own.

As I studied the Bible, I also studied the marriages of my new friends eager to see what this Christian concept of benevolent masculine leadership & joyful feminine submission actually looked like in real life. Though not perfect, what I saw was attractive. I saw men who sacrificed their own preferences & pleasures to make sure their wives & children were cultivated spiritually.

These were men who took their responsibilities to be servant leaders seriously. They didn't see marriage as a trap or children as an impediment to the pursuit of their own leisure & weekend hobbies. Instead, their families were seen as gifts worthy of their hard work.

Likewise, I saw that my married women friends sought to respect & build up their husbands. I was used to a stream of cracks from women about the uselessness & unreliability of men -- but this I didn't hear from the mature, married women in my church. Their submission seemed freeing ... dare I say, liberating?!

They certainly seemed free from much of the discord, sarcasm, and disappointment I usually encountered in modern marriages.

Slowly I began to note that the teamwork in these marriages mirrored the teamwork in the church. While married men had the responsibility of leading their families, these same men were called to submit to the spiritual leaders God had put over them.

In fact, when I was focused on the "limitations" I perceived in a wife’s submission to her husband, I showed that I'd failed to understand that submission undergirds the entire concept of Christianity. My greatest role model for submission is my Lord himself whose obedient submission guaranteed my redemption.

As Hebrews 5:7 says, "During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers & petitions with loud cries & tears to the one who could save him from death & he was heard because of his reverent submission."

Over time, as I grew to know the Lord & his Word better, I realized that the independence I had worked so hard to protect as an unbeliever was a complete charade. As a helpless, finite creature, I was completely dependent on God for my very life & breath. I hadn't been independent. Rather, I had been stiff-necked.

I came to realize that submission simply stripped me of my contentiousness, not my dignity as one created in the very image of God.

Single & Fully Feminine

Once I embraced the sweet fruit of feminine submission, I still had to figure out how to apply it to my every day life. One area in where I have struggled is what femininity should look like for a single woman.

Because the Lord made the woman to be a helper, the contours of biblical femininity are usually sculpted thru relationships w/others - as wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt. Though I'm definitely a daughter, sister & aunt, I'm not (yet) a wife or mother. But I know that God created me female in his own image & that he has given me this gift of singleness in this season of my life.

These aren't mutually exclusive concepts, but sometimes I still wrestle w/how to express them both to the glory of God.

In late 1998, I moved to take a job as part of a church-planting ministry & to serve in a local church pastured by the pastor I met in South Africa, C.J. Mahaney. A year later, I attended a series of seminars on Titus 2 taught by his wife, Carolyn Mahaney.

Thru her teaching, I realized that of the 7 qualities Paul urges Titus to have older women teach to younger women, only two are explicitly directed at married women & one to mothers. That leaves at least 4 for all women, married or single. Despite my marital status, I was to be self-controlled, pure, busy at home & kind.

That's a tall order no matter how you look at it, but it doesn't mean I can ignore the other 3 qualities. There are implications for single women in the commands to love husbands & children as well as for wives to be subject to their husbands. Based upon this passage, the following are some ways in which God has given me the grace to apply the Titus 2 virtues in my life & genuinely enjoy my femininity as a single woman.

"To love their husbands ..."

Because of all the worldly junk I had imbibed on the topics of feminism & relationships, I initially read a number of books on Christian marriage. I've continued to read widely on Christian marriage & where appropriate, I've attended seminars.

I want to have a biblical view of marriage should the Lord bring that gift. But there's a practical application for my life now. I believe I can serve my married sisters best by shoring up their marriages. In our conversations & w/my observations of their lives, I want to be able to help my married friends think biblically about their marriages & to think the best of their husbands.

To unbelievers, I want to be prepared to explain the mystery of Christ & the church in the institution of marriage. While the world tells us we have no valid knowledge to share unless we have experienced a particular aspect of life, God’s Word equips us for wise discernment regardless of our experiences - or perhaps, in spite of them!

Finally, should God bring the gift of marriage, I want to love my future husband now by developing a biblical perspective on love, marriage & a wife’s role well before our wedding. I realize that the "wife of noble character" commended in Proverbs 31 brings her husband "good, not harm, ALL the days of her life" -- days before & days after marriage.

What I'm sowing now in these days of my life is part of God’s design in blessing my husband - not to mention bringing glory to the Lord no matter my marital status.

"To love children ..."

Whether or not we actually give birth, women are called to nurture the new life around us in various ways. Before I became a Christian, I wasn't very interested in children. I assumed I might have children one day, but I was oblivious to the children around me & didn't care to spend any time w/them.

This is one area where God has made a tremendous change in my life. Over the years, I've had rich relationships w/many children. The Lord has also given me evangelism opportunities w/children. I have even created an informal Veggie Tales club w/about a half dozen young boys in my neighborhood.

They'd stop by for sodas & videos & I'd share the gospel & pray with them.

Even though I don't have children of my own, I have 3 nieces & one nephew in whom to invest. It takes planning to be involved in their lives, but it's worth it to cultivate those relationships. Because I have vicariously experienced the thrills & sacrifices of motherhood as I have helped my sisters over the years, I have a window into that aspect of femininity.

Just as importantly though, thru these times together, I've developed one-on-one friendships w/these small relatives of mine that I hope will flourish thru the changing seasons of life ahead of us. I want to be a relevant relative of theirs, not a distant aunt. That means declining vacation opportunities w/my friends to spend my vacation w/my far-away nieces.

That means declining social events on weekends to babysit my nearby niece & nephew or taking a day off during summer to plan a special day of adventure w/them. But that also means I'm the beneficiary of funny voicemail messages, elaborately drawn pictures, special "treasures" wrapped in thick layers of tissue & tape & excited hugs when I arrive at their front doors.

Somehow, it doesn't seem one bit like sacrifice. Perhaps these things contributed to a recent decision by one of my sisters & her husband to name me as guardian for their 2 daughters should they die in a mutual accident. Despite my being single, they thought I would rear their girls as close as possible to their values.

Words can't express how much that act of trust encouraged me!

"To be self-controlled ..."

My greatest challenge to self-control as a single woman is in the area of speculation about men & marriage. I don't think I'm alone in this. I know I'm called to wait & trust, but it's so easy for me to do the opposite - to either attempt to manipulate circumstances in my favor or to complain when others are blessed in courtship or marriage.

Over the years, the Lord has done much to kill the sin of self-pity in me regarding deferred hopes for marriage & one fruit of that is that I now joyfully serve many couples as a wedding planner. But contentment can seem to come & go in my life like waves lapping the shore.

Sometimes joy cascades over my soul like waves breaking on the beach. Other times joy seems to seep out of my life like the undertow of receding water. This isn't the result of anything other than changing my focus: when the joy seems to be receding, I find myself critically regarding my circumstances rather than beholding the glory of God.

One specific way I do this is by "trying on" men in my mind. Judging from the conversations I've had w/many single women, this is a common temptation. We tend to meet godly, attractive single men & immediately head down the path toward marriage, imagining what it would be like to court & wed this man.

Having convinced ourselves that this is a possibility, we then read into his every move while hashing & re-hashing each scenario w/the "girlfriend network." A good friend of mine calls this "dating in my mind" - a priceless phrase!

To exercise self-control in this area as single women is to put reasonable limits on the journaling & girlfriend conversations we have about our romantic interests. Talk has a way of making a desire an expectation, which eventually becomes a demand.

In my life, I've found that I head into trouble when I record at length in my journal every interaction I have w/a single man or when I'm discussing this man w/a broad range of friends. For me, self-control is to limit these detailed conversations to my accountability partners & to those over me in the Lord, such as my small group leader & his wife or my pastor & his wife.

They know how I'm weak & they prayerfully encourage me to keep my focus where it belongs.

"To be busy at home ..."

This one has been a challenge for me as a single woman since I work outside the home to support myself. I have to be intentional about scheduling time to actually be at home one or two evenings a week. That is hard in my busy church, but this Titus 2 virtue gives me a vision for the priority of it.

Then there are the domestic arts. In my twenties, I lived w'piles of dirty clothes & newspapers. My house was the crash pad between outside engagements. I had no vision for domesticity. My family had a nickname for my cooking in this period: Fish wads & pudding lumps.

However, after I saw a love for the home arts modeled by the women of the church, I desired to change. I practiced cooking, began hosting dinner parties, started buying home décor & even picked out my own china pattern. That was actually a big step for me because it was hard to visit china departments w/out being forced to admit you don’t have a wedding date.

Now God has blessed me w/my own house & I'm so happy to nest there that I should check for twigs in my hair before I leave for work!

Though single women aren't afforded the blessing of being busy w/ our families at home, we can be busy w/kingdom business at home. Our homes provide places where we can pray w/others, counsel others, evangelize others & serve thru hospitality. Romans 12:13 clearly says to practice hospitality & praise God, this command doesn't differentiate between married & singles!

No matter how our households are structured, our homes can be beacons of hope & hospitality in our neighborhoods. Just for this reason, I love to take pictures of those who have been in my home & display them w/that Scripture from Romans.

The Freedom of Christ

Paul urged the Galatians to remember that "it's for freedom that Christ has set us free." Prior to my conversion, I saw Christianity as being a burden, a confining religion w/many rules & regulations. I wasn't equipped to see that my own sin was the greatest yoke of slavery. As we've all done since Adam & Eve, I blamed others for the oppression of sin in my life. I thought I needed to be set free from men who belittled women, from jobs that were "stuck" in the "pink ghetto" of women’s work & from the "burdens" of traditional sexual morals. I couldn't see that my own self-righteousness, pride, anger & willfulness caused greater damage to real joy than any perceived curtailment to my freedom.

When Christ ushered in his kingdom, he surprised everyone - including his own disciples - w/the "opposite world" that he introduced. Everything was "backward" to the natural thinking of human beings. The greatest among us were servants. Our enemies were to be prayed for & even loved. What makes us unclean comes from inside of us, in our hearts, not from what we put on or in us. To have life everlasting, we must be born again.

It doesn't make sense on first reading, but the Bible promises us that God’s wisdom is foolishness to a perishing world (1 Corinthians 1:18-21). I'm just most grateful that he liberated me from my futile thinking & the bondage of sin & led me into the way everlasting.

Recipe for An Anti-Depressant Cocktail

© 1997 Michele Toomey, PhD
michele@mtoomey.com

Unfortunately, depression has become a chronic state for many & a feared state for others. Consequently, the legitimacy of feeling depressed has been eroded & trying not to be depressed has been acclaimed. To be depressed, in & of itself, isn't necessarily something to fear nor is it automatically the onset of depression as a chronic state. In fact, being depressed is only one of our legitimate emotions & as such, depression has its own role in the integrity of our inner world, but, like any other emotion, it shouldn't define or control us. It should be only one of our reactions & responses & then, in its appropriate timing, be resolved within us & yield to our next response.

Our inner world is complex & always in motion as it moves back & forth between our paradoxical needs & desires & capacities. Living w/paradox, w/contradiction & learning how to reconcile it is a very complicated & exciting challenge. No one need or desire, thought or feeling should dominate us.

We have the capacity to experience & move thru a wide range of thoughts & feelings. The depth of their intensity, the length of time they last & the form they take are all meant to flow from the integrity of our own needs & boundaries.

Depression isn't an exception, but it's exceptionally difficult in one particular aspect, it strikes at the heart of our sense of well-being & it challenges our connection to hope. Done from the wrong angle with the wrong orientation, this challenge & subsequent confrontation can lead to a sense of powerlessness & hopelessness.

Left unaddressed, this wrong orientation to helplessness & hopelessness can strike a deadly blow to our ability to touch our desire to live. Depression, therefore, as with any strong emotion that gets stuck in the wrong orientation, has a dangerous potential.

To give you a way to understand the right (liberating) & wrong (violating), orientation to depression, I've contrasted them in the following way: (I'd suggest that you read the lists by repeating the title & one phrase from the violating side & then repeat the title & contrasting phrase from the liberating side. This will help to give you the feeling of the essential differences in the two orientations.)

 

 

This recipe needs to be studied very intently, made very carefully, internalized very completely & lived out of very deliberately. It's a very powerful potion. Drink it attentively.

Preparation

• Pour 3 ozs of integrity into a tall cocktail shaker, take one long, long meditative stare at your sense of well-being, then slowly add your depressed feelings with their current intensity & amount. Shake lightly so that the integrity can mix thoroughly with the depressed feelings & permeate them with honesty. It's this integrity, this honesty, that'll keep you safe as you claim & work thru your depression.

• When you're ready, shake vigorously until the mixture begins to change from a dark brown to a distinctly lighter hue. While it's changing, blend in the 5 firm, warm embraces of the depressed feelings with a long, deep sigh of yielding to them. Add the strong grasp of courage & 2 dashes of confidence in your ability to respect the boundaries of your depressed feelings without fearing them. Stir in the cup of hope with an honest base. When the mixture becomes effervescent, stop stirring &d let it bubble & fizz.

• In a separate shaker, pour the several long searches for what's going on for you, where your depressed feelings are coming from & what they're trying to tell you, add the 2 shakes of creative imaginings about the search & the 3 ounces of intent listening to yourself & your depression. Shake steadily for as long as necessary, then pour into the original shaker, which should still be bubbling. Stir together in a strong, rhythmic manner until the mixture has a motion of its own, then sprinkle in the tablespoon of informed understanding of the legitimacy of your depressed feelings.

• Add the acute awareness of your need to be connected to your sense of well-being even when you're depressed, along with  your deep desire to be true to your depressed feelings & to your timing for moving thru them. Shout in an acknowledgement of your power & ability to deal fairly with your depression. Combine it with a strong burst of rejection of victimhood with its deception sense of powerless injured party. Add 1 tight squeeze of honesty along with 1 final warm embrace of hope in yourself that's informed by trust in your own integrity.

• Shake vigorously again for one last time & then remain standing as you pour the cocktail into a tall glass. Begin drinking immediately, taking deep, long gulps. Be attentive to every gulp & allow the tingling sensation of the cocktail to alert your system to its capacity to feel energy & to rejuvenate your spirit. Don't stop drinking until the whole glass is gone.

• When the one glass of cocktail has been drunk, go for a brisk walk & allow the potion to travel throughout your entire being, making little wake-up calls all along the way. The integrity of the energy it generates will allow you to begin to clear out the deception of hopelessness & helplessness & misdirected anger that has or may have begun to creep into your depression.

• Reflect on the recipe & its complex ingredients as you walk & connect with the intuitive feelings that are surfacing. When you're clear where you are with the integrity of your depressed feelings, yield to the truth of it & act accordingly. The relief of being depressed & still being connected to your sense of well-being will provide you with a sense of safety with yourself & with your feelings. You'll be liberated & able to experience feeling depressed without being oppressed, a truly invaluable capacity & a life-giving process.

• If you discover that you're ready & perhaps overdue to let go of your depression, then return to the shaker of anti-depressant cocktail & pour another glass & repeat the above procedure until you can feel the relief of being depressed while still being connected to your sense of well-being. Then & only then are you safe with yourself & your feelings. Movement will then occur on its own.

de·mean²   - demeaning

tr.v. de·meaned, de·mean·ing, de·means

1. To debase, as in dignity or social standing: professionals who feel demeaned by unskilled work.
2. To humble (oneself). See Synonyms at degrade.

dis·so·ci·ate   

em·pow·er

   tr.v. em·pow·ered, em·pow·er·ing, em·pow·ers

1. To invest with power, especially legal power or official authority. See Synonyms at authorize.
2. To equip or supply with an ability; enable: “Computers... empower students to become intellectual explorers” (Edward B. Fiske).

em·power·ment n.

Usage Note: Although it's a contemporary buzzword, the word empower isn't new, having arisen in the mid -17th century w/the legalistic meaning “to invest with authority, authorize.”

Shortly thereafter it began to be used w/an infinitive in a more general way meaning “to enable or permit.” Both of these uses survive today but have been overpowered by the word's use in politics & pop psychology.

Its modern use originated in the civil rights movement, which sought political empowerment for its followers. The word was then taken up by the women's movement & its appeal has not flagged. Since people of all political persuasions have a need for a word that makes their constituents feel that they are or are about to become more in control of their destinies, empower has been adopted by conservatives as well as social reformers.

It has even migrated out of the political arena into other fields. ·The Usage Panel has some misgivings about this recent broadening of usage. For the Panelists, the acceptability of the verb empower depends on the context.

80% approve of the example: We want to empower ordinary citizens. But in contexts that are not political the Panel is markedly less enthusiastic.

The sentence: Hunger & greed & then sexual zeal are felt by some to be stages of experience that empower the individual garners approval from only 33% of the Panelists. The Panel may frown on this kind of psychological empowering because it resonates of the self-help movement, which is notorious for trendy coinages.

n. pl. fu·ries

1. Violent anger; rage. See Synonyms at anger.
2. Violent, uncontrolled action; turbulence.
3. Furies Greek & Roman Mythology. The 3 terrible winged goddesses w/ serpentine hair, Alecto, Megaera & Tisiphone, who pursue & punish doers of unavenged crimes.
4. A woman regarded as angry or spiteful.

   tr.v. op·pressed, op·press·ing, op·press·es

1. To keep down by severe & unjust use of force or authority: a people who were oppressed by tyranny.
2. To weigh heavily on: Poverty oppresses the spirit.
3. Obsolete. To overwhelm or crush.

n.

A remedy for all diseases, evils, or difficulties; a cure-all.

re·press   

v. re·pressed, re·press·ing, re·press·es
v. tr.

1. To hold back by an act of volition: couldn't repress a smirk.
2. To put down by force, usually before total control has been lost; quell: repress a rebellion.
3. Psychology. To exclude (painful or disturbing memories, for example) automatically or unconsciously from the conscious mind.
4. Biology. To block (transcription of a gene) by combination of a protein to an operator gene.