评论
打印
One of the strangest and saddest phenomena of psychological life is that there are parents, too many parents, who end up - while sometimes only half realizing it - bullying their own children.
心理生活中一个最怪异且悲哀的现象是，有很多父母在霸凌自己的孩子——尽管只有一半父母能够意识到。
Why do parents bully their children?
为什么父母要霸凌自己的孩子？
In short, in order to try to feel better about themselves.
简单来说，是为了让自己感觉好过一些。
Because they suffer intensely in the very same area that they are choosing to bully their child in.
他们因为一种原因霸凌自己的孩子，是为了让他们体会到自己从前因为同一个原因遭受的强烈痛苦。
Someone made them feel awful and they surmise - by twisted logic - that they will feel better through the process of making their own child feel very bad indeed; they aren't doing it personally, the child is just collateral damage to a misguided project of healing and attenuation of symptoms.
因为有人让他们感觉很糟糕，所以他们通过扭曲的逻辑推测，如果让自己的孩子也感觉很糟糕，他们可能会好过一些；这不是他们亲自造成的，孩子只是错误的疗伤和缓解方法的附带伤害。
It doesn't make any sense of course, but it may actually work for the parent, for a time.
当然，让自己的孩子感到痛苦没有任何意义，但它能在一段时间内，让父母好受一点。
Let's imagine a parent who harbors a terrible fear of being stupid; somewhere in their own past, they were belittled and made to feel hugely inadequate.
让我们想象一下，一位家长十分害怕自己的愚蠢；因为在过去的某个时候，他们受到了轻视，有人让他们觉得自己非常差劲。
Now a child comes along, their own child, full of the normal hesitations and weaknesses of early infancy.
现在，出现了一个孩子，他们自己的孩子，他处于婴儿早期阶段，犹豫不决又满是弱点。
Without really realizing what they are up to, the parent grows inflamed and incensed by this child's apparent stupidity - and starts to mock and attack in another person what they fear and hate in themselves.
父母下意识地对这个孩子表现出来的愚蠢感到愤怒——并开始嘲笑和攻击孩子身上出现的，他们憎恨又害怕自己拥有的东西。
It makes them feel a bit better.
这会让他们感觉好过一点。
The child becomes a repository of all that they fail to tolerate in themselves.
孩子开始容纳父母无法容忍的那部分自己。
They, the child, are the dumb one, so they, the parent, don't have to be; they, the child, are the stupid and ugly one, so they, the parent, don't have to be.
蠢的是孩子，所以不会是作为父母的他们自己；愚笨和丑陋的是孩子，所以不会是他们自己。
And therefore the parent is liberated to live more easily within itself.
这样，父母得到了解放，可以更轻松地凭自己的样子活下去。
The bad is contained and localized; it can't be in them, if it is all in little him or her.
坏事被控制和限制在了一个范围之内；如果一切缺点都在孩子身上，就不可能在父母身上。
It can take bullied children a very long time to realize that they even have been bullied.
被父母霸凌的孩子可能需要很长时间才能意识到他们被霸凌了。
They don't, after all, grow up thinking that someone else has actually made them feel stupid or made them feel ugly or made them feel soiled - let alone their own parent, whom they depend on and admire and long to be loved by.
毕竟，他们长大后不会认为是别人让他们觉得自己很愚蠢、很丑陋、很肮脏——更不用说这个“别人”是他们自己的父母。他们依赖、钦佩自己的父母、渴望得到他们的爱。
They simply think they are stupid, ugly and soiled.
他们只会认为自己就是愚蠢、就是丑陋、就是肮脏。
There is no call for an explanation or a cause.
没有必要寻找解释或原因。
Yet if we are those now grown up bullied children, we don't need to wonder too much more about what might have happened to us.
然而，如果我们现在是那些被父母霸凌长大的孩子，我们不需要考虑太多我们身上可能发生过什么。
We simply need to take stock of how we feel about ourselves and guess that the terrible judgements and sensations that we have about ourselves did not arise spontaneously.
我们只需要了解我们对自己的看法，并明白这些可怕的判断和感觉不是自然而然产生的。
The feelings we harbour of ourselves are legacies of real occurrences in the world.
我们对自己的看法是真实发生的事情所塑造的。
Someone, who isn't necessarily owning up to it, made us feel a certain way - and that is why now we are in such pain.
虽然有些人不会承认，但确实是其他人塑造了我们对自己的看法——这就是为什么我们现在如此痛苦。
Typically, those who have been bullied don't look backwards.
那些被霸凌的人通常不会回头看。
Their illnesses point them relentlessly to the present and the future.
他们的疾病无情地将他们指向现在和未来。
The bullied anticipate terrible things happening to them that echo events that once happened to them but they don't remember in any way.
被霸凌者预计会发生在他们身上的可怕的事情，是曾经发生在他们身上的事情的真实写照，但他们根本不记得那些事。
They are cause-less paranoiacs, self-haters and worriers.
他们无缘无故地偏执，憎恨自我，且忧心忡忡。
Catastrophe is never far away.
灾难始终近在咫尺。
A person feels they are ugly because two decades ago, a mother made them feel as much.
一个人觉得自己很丑，是因为二十年前，一位母亲让他觉得自己很丑。
A person feels they have done something very wrong because, even further back, someone did something very wrong to them.
一个人觉得自己做了非常糟糕的事情，因为在更早的时候，有人对他们做了非常糟糕的事情。
The fear contains the imprint of unconscious history.
恐惧是过去的潜在印记。
We overcome our bullying when we learn to discriminate: between what actually belongs to us and what was placed in us, between who we are and what we've been told we are, between how our caregivers like to present themselves and what they have actually done.
想要战胜霸凌，就要学会辨别：辨别我们本来的样子和别人强加在我们身上的影子，辨别我们心中的我和别人口中的我；辨别我们的父母表面上的伪装和他们真实的所作所为。
Our triggers and apprehensions lie along the faultlines of our early traumas; they can guide us back to what we were suffered through when we are ready to explore.
我们的触发点和恐惧遍布早期创伤造成的裂痕之中；每当我们准备好想要探索，它们就引导我们回到从前遭受的痛苦之中。
We're on our way to overcoming bullying when we can say, at last, I am not ugly, I was made to feel unacceptable.
我们要走上战胜霸凌的道路，明白我并不丑，是别人让我觉得自己不可接受。
I haven't done anything wrong, something wrong was done to me.
我没有做错事，是别人在我身上做了错事。
And in general: I am not awful - something awful happened to me.
并且明白，总的来说：我并不糟糕——糟糕的是那些霸凌我的人。
