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The Boy Who Found His Anger · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is the second story in the series of four, and it's a particularly uh poignant one.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's quite powerful because it it talks in some ways about the emergence of selfhood against a backdrop of abuse and neglect.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: In some ways, what I think is important here is that the story takes a child from this awful situation to a point eventually of righteous indignation.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's something which is perhaps in some ways an understatement, but I think it is the point of liberation.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when I work with people who have been through some pretty awful experiences, and I talk about the three stages of of recovering from that, and the first is the recognition, the actual the actual being able to identify what happened, what were the things that happened.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're true.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't make them up, you didn't misunderstand, it wasn't your fault.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is recognition.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's like realization.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Someone switched all the lights on.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The next stage is what I call the reckoning.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's where the indignation comes in because the reckoning is the power and the force of the realization and all of the feelings coming together and finding expression.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the type of expression isn't isn't particularly relevant, it's the it's the phenomenon of being being energized in some way when suppression and silence has had to be the case.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So this finds expression in in lots of ways, but it precedes the third phase, which is the recovery itself.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really about redefinition, and it's about making usable sense of the experience, but no longer carrying the the weight of that.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now I I use those terms because I've learned them.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say I've learned them, it's from my own experience that this model is created.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there are similar ones, but for me, it described beautifully the process of my own recovery, which took some time and was was caused, the damage was caused in a relational context, and it was necessary for me to face and to recognize the different components which I had worked very hard at trying to avoid.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to this, a psychotherapist who gets it wrong.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it's true, and when I began to do that, all of the pieces of the picture came together, producing something of a hideous picture, and that then moved me to the next stage, which was the reckoning.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the reckoning took place in a number of ways, and it was necessary to go through this stage, because that then made it possible for me to move on to the final stage: the recovery, the redefinition, the regaining of something which I'd abandoned.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I suppose the phrase physician heal thyself comes to mind here.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is we are, even as adults, we can still be vulnerable, we can still be manipulated, and we can be deceived, and we can remain honest and loyal to our principles, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we won't be taken advantage of, because that can happen.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: The recovery rewrites the rules.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to talk about children, and this story is about the boy who found his anger.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are some children who just they never shout, but it's not because they're peaceful, it's not because they're content, it's because somewhere in very early life they learned that silence was safer than being heard.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I once knew such a boy.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, by the time I met him, he'd almost disappeared.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: He hadn't stopped existing, he'd simply stopped expecting anyone to notice.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every morning he would wake up before his parents, and he would leave the house as quietly as possible whilst they were still asleep.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't any breakfast waiting for him, there was no conversation, no goodbye, and he walked almost four miles to school each day, often on with an empty stomach, because walking felt safer than remaining in the house.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: When school finished, he would walk home just as quietly, and he would go directly upstairs to his room.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But his room wasn't a place of comfort.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was simply the least dangerous room in the house.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: The only uncertainty was whether his father had decided that this was a day that required the boy to be punished.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the reasons really mattered.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there weren't any.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Children growing up in such homes actually develop extraordinary skills.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: They learn how to become invisible, how to anticipate moods before words are even spoken, how to listen for footsteps, how to disappear emotionally while remaining physically present.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now sometimes adults mistake this for resilience.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not resilience, it's survival.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: The school eventually recognized what the home had failed to see.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was underweight, poorly presented, withdrawn, he barely spoke.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there was considerable concern, and that became intervention.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then the intervention became protection.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually the court removed him from the family home.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: People often assume that removing a child from parents creates trauma.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it does, but not always.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's an important distinction that we draw in psychology.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: We regard the loss of something precious as deprivation.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But never having possessed it in the first place, we call privation.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: This boy hadn't lost loving parents.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: He'd never experienced them.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: What was removed when he was removed from the family home wasn't love.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: What was removed was danger.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: He arrived at the children's home exactly as he'd lived.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: He was quiet, polite, compliant.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: He answered questions and he caused no problems.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: But he said only what was necessary.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Many would have described him as settling well, but they hadn't met him yet.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because the real child remained hidden, locked behind years of fear.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: His compulsive self-reliance had become his identity.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you never need anyone, nobody can disappoint you.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you expect nothing, nothing can be taken away.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's an ingenious psychological solution until it becomes a prison.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then something remarkable began to happen, not quickly or dramatically, but kind of patiently and almost imperceptibly.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because the silence began to crack.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Words became sentences.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sentences became stories.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Stories became memories, and those memories became feelings, and among those feelings emerged something unexpected, anger, not explosive rage, not aggression, something much more significant, righteous indignation.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time in his life, he was beginning to understand that what had happened to him should never have happened.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Children rarely feel this while they remain inside dysfunctional families.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: What they do instead is assume responsibility.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: If mum is unhappy or if she's not well, it must be because of me.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: If dad is angry, I must deserve it.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: If nobody notices me, perhaps I don't matter.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is how children protect attachment.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's psychologically safer to believe I am bad than to believe the people who are supposed to protect me cannot or will not do so.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Only when genuine safety begins to exist can that illusion finally collapse.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when it does, something extraordinary often follows.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And with that comes grief, confusion, sorrow, relief, and often indignation.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: How could they?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: How could they do that to me?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why did nobody come?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why did no one stop it?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those questions are not evidence that therapy has failed necessarily or any other intervention.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're evidence that the healing and recovery has begun.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: The compliant child disappears and the authentic child arrives.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, I came to know the boy who had always been there beneath the silence.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was exceptionally intelligent.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was curious, thoughtful, creative, and articulate.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: He possessed an incredible sense of humor that only emerged after he realized it was safe to laugh.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: He had opinions, dreams, ambitions, abilities nobody had previously recognized because survival had consumed every available psychological resource.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yet recovery was never simple.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Trauma doesn't disappear because circumstances improve.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: The body remembers, the nervous system remembers.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships remain frightening long after danger has passed.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Trust is learned slowly.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Safety is tested repeatedly.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Progress rarely travels in a straight line, but it does travel.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back now, I sometimes think people misunderstand what saved him.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't simply leaving home.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was finally discovering that the responsibility had never belonged to him.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Children cannot carry the endless failures of adults forever.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually that weight has to be returned.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when it is, something really incredible becomes possible.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: The child who spent years trying not to exist discovers that he has every right to do exactly that, to exist, to speak, to feel, to be angry, and finally to become himself.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh another true story.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hopeful, but what underpinned it was truly awful.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: There are many children like him.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are many parents whose behavior, whilst explicable, is not excusable.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.