http://www.thisisawar.com/DepressionShame.htmNormally, an individual has sufficient self-esteem to survive most attacks, and has the ability to change or exit the situation. However, in situations where self-esteem is insufficient, persistent and severe attacks may reach the inner core of the soul, leading to the response of rage and violence.
Concomitant to such situations, is the physical and psychic pain which can be so overwhelming that the mind protects itself by automatically and unconsciously numbing itself, resulting in an individual that cannot feel.
When the assault is extreme and inescapable, as may happen in child abuse, the result can be soul murder, leaving a sociopath, a physical body inhabited by a dead soul, a living machine that can kill or maim without feeling or remorse. Nourishing the soul begins in childhood In order to thrive, children must receive love, attention (lots of it!), understanding and encouragement from others.
Love nourishes self-esteem, and builds the child 's capacity for self-love. With the ability to love, life becomes joyful and full of happiness. Without the ability to love, life becomes hell, full of suffering and pain.
Shame deadens the feelings of being human, and leads to rage.
The sources of love for the self are love from others, and one's own love for oneself. Children who fail to receive sufficient love from others, fail to build up reserves of self-love, and the capacity for self-love, which enable them to survive the inevitable rejections and humiliations which even the most fortunate of people cannot avoid.
Without feelings of love, the self feels numb, empty, and dead.
To be overwhelmed by shame and humiliation causes the destruction of self-esteem. Without a certain amount of self-esteem, the self collapses and the soul dies.
The soul needs love as vitally as the lungs need oxygen; without it, the soul dies, just as the body does without oxygen.
But a joyless life is a synonym for hell. A man who does not love and cannot love, is in effect, condemned to hell. His entire environment, from which - without love - he is cut off, is without enjoyment for him, and thus the world he "lives" in is a source of emptiness and emotional suffocation for him. Both the world and the self are experienced and perceived emotionally as being dead, inanimate, without a soul--without feelings.
...It's empathy that makes us as human as we are, while helping us to manage our most violent feelings.
We don't kill others or ourselves because we still see the human being in others,
and ourselves and feel sympathy or caring.
When our sense of connection is gone, then any kind of violence can be unleashed.
People who torture others have lost touch with their own humanity.
No longer able to care about themselves, they grow to hate others.
Desperate to have any kind of feeling, they torture feelings out of others....And I hate what causes this,child abuse,rape,bullyinmg.. Hierarchy and social death sentances, domination,poverty,have and have nots, elitism NARCISSISM,AUTHORITARIANISM..SOCIOPATHY..Conduct disorders,Somewhere the cycle of abuse of power has to be cut somewhere. Don't pity the sociopath..Don't let it be the hurting ones who suffer AGAIN to recreate the sociopaths hell.Do not seek the esteem of the powerful thugs dominating in every dysfunctional home and running the state..to be kind and love..And do not expect them to love,they can't they torture and call it love,they are a disease.