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Toxic Vicariosity: Part 1 — Leaving Neverland and the Rape of Innocence
Toxic Vicariosity: When parents live so completely through and become so invested in their children’s accomplishments that their children, who so want their parents’ love and approval, sacrifice their selves, sell their souls and ruin their lives.
For more than twenty years I was a “boots on the ground” psychiatrist specializing in suicide prevention and am the co-creator and moderator of the recent program, Stay Alive: An Intimate Conversation about Suicide Prevention (#stayalivenow).
Like many of you if you watched Leaving Neverland, I intently listened to and looked into the eyes of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who both came forth to talk about being sexually abused by Michael Jackson. I recognized something similar to what I have seen in the eyes of many of the adults I have had as patients who had been sexually abused as children.
In Wade’s, James’ and my former patients’ eyes, I saw the same thing.
With my patients, over time I understood that they were looking and listening unconditional emotional and psychological safety. Because if they could experience that through and through, they might feel a primal level of safety, begin to cry and drain the pus from the deepest wound in their psyche and begin to heal from their inside out.
