
The world of estranged parents' forums - exolymph
http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/index.html
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exolymph
This section is especially fascinating:
[http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-
reas...](http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-reasons-
given.html))

> Why Do They Do It? [omit context and details in their accounts of various
> incidents]

> "So their children's words can't reflect badly on them" is the obvious
> reason. Members who have aired their children's grievances outside the
> endlessly enabling warmth of estranged parents' forums have been stung by
> people who took their children's side, and they've learned not to give their
> opponents ammunition.

> But it runs deeper than that. Many members truly can't remember what their
> children said. Anything tinged with negative emotion, anything that makes
> them feel bad about themselves, shocks them so deeply that they block it
> out. They really can't remember anything but screaming. This emotional
> amnesia shapes their entire lives, pushing them to associate only with
> people who won't criticize them, training their families to shelter them
> from blows so thoroughly that the softest protest feels like a fist to the
> face.

> But it runs even deeper than that. Posts in estranged parents' forums are
> vague. Members recount stories with the fewest possible details, the least
> possible context. They don't recreate entire scenes, repeat entire
> conversations, give entire text exchanges; they paraphrase hours of
> conversation away. The only element they describe in detail is their own
> grief or rage. Nor do the other members press them for more information.

> Compare this with the forums for adult children of abusers, where the
> members not only cut-and-paste email exchanges into their posts, they take
> photos of handwritten letters and screenshot text conversations. They
> recreate scenes in detail, and if the details don't add up, the other
> members question them about it. They get annoyed when a member's paraphrase
> changes the meaning of a sentence, or when omitted details change the
> meaning of a meeting. They care about precision, context, and history.

> The difference isn't a matter of style, it's a split between two ways of
> perceiving the world. In one worldview, emotion is king. Details exist to
> support emotion. If a member gives one set of details to describe how angry
> she is about a past event, and a few days later gives a contradictory set of
> details to describe how sad she is about the same event, both versions are
> legitimate because both emotions are legitimate.

> Context is malleable because the full picture may not support the member's
> emotion. If a member adds details that undermine her emotion, the other
> members considerately ignore them. For example, one woman posted that she
> felt wounded and betrayed because a few days beforehand, her daughter had
> agreed to let the mother and one of the mother's friends drop by her house
> to visit. On the day of the visit, the daughter said she wasn't up for a
> visit. She had gone to the doctor so the doctor could examine her incision
> for infection. She had gotten the incision two weeks earlier, when she had a
> C-section while miscarrying a near-term baby the day before Christmas. The
> mother was broken because her daughter accused her of being selfish. The
> members all agreed that the daughter was the selfish one, that she had no
> right to speak to her mother like that, and that she should be more
> supportive of her mother in her mother's grief for her lost grandchild.

> Emotion creates reality.

> In the second worldview, reality creates emotion. Members want the full
> picture so they can decide whether the poster's emotions are justified.
> Small details can change the entire tenor of a forum's response; members see
> a distinction between "She said I'm worthless" and "She said something that
> made me feel worthless." Members recognize that unjustified emotions (like
> supersensitivity due to trauma, or irritation with another person that
> colors the view of everything the person does) are real and deserve respect,
> but they also believe that unjustified emotions shouldn't be acted on. They
> show posters different ways to view the situation and give advice on how to
> handle the emotions. In short, they believe that external events create
> emotional responses, that only some responses are justified, that people's
> initial perceptions of events are often flawed, and that understanding
> external events can help people understand and manage emotions.

> The first viewpoint, "emotion creates reality," is truth for a great many
> people. Not a healthy truth, not a truth that promotes good relationships,
> but a deep, lived truth nonetheless. It's seductive. It means that whatever
> you're feeling is just and right, that you're never in the wrong unless you
> feel you're in the wrong. For people whose self-image is so battered and
> fragile that they can't bear anything but validation, often it feels like
> the only way they can face the world.

