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When, in my adulthood, I first heard people using versions of a saying, “The table was turned,” I envisioned in my mind someone being angry and turning a table upside down so that its legs stuck up in the air.  It took me a long time before I overcame my embarrassment enough to ask someone what they meant when they said this.

“Oh,” this person said to me.  “It’s like four people are sitting playing cards.  Each of them has their hand laying on the table top and someone turns the table so that everyone has someone else’s hand and THAT hand, rather than their original one, is what each plays the game through with.”

I mention this today because as I described what I have been thinking about pampered versus not pampered people to someone I am very close to yesterday that person responded to me with, “But the word pampered has such negative connotations!”

In other words, they were expressing a sentiment that would probably be common among those people I would say were raised from birth in a ‘benevolent’ world that I am now calling a pampered one.

I can see where this sentiment could come from.  Looking at Webster’s online dictionary for this word I found:

Definition of PAMPER

transitive verb

1 archaic : to cram with rich food : glut

2 a : to treat with extreme or excessive care and attention <pampered their guests> b : gratify, humor <enabled him to pamper his wanderlust — New Yorker>

— pam·per·er\-pər-ər\ noun

Examples of PAMPER

1. They really pamper their guests at that hotel.
2. She pampered herself with a day at the spa.
3. He was pampered all his life and doesn’t know how to function in the real world.

Origin of PAMPER

Middle English, probably of Dutch origin; akin to Dutch dialect pamperen to pamper

First Known Use: 14th century

Related to PAMPER

Synonyms: cocker, coddle, cosset, dandle, indulge, mollycoddle, nurse, baby, spoil, wet-nurse

Antonyms: abuse, ill-treat, ill-use, maltreat, manhandle, mishandle, mistreat, misuse

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Well, how about that?  I have my sense of the contrast between being pampered and NOT being pampered just about right for what I am intending to describe!  Look at the antonyms!

We are not commonly used to using one word to describe in contrast its opposite, but in this case my meaning is extremely clear when I use it to describe how severe infant-abuse survivors experienced their world — yes, when they NEEDED to and SHOULD have been treated exactly the opposite from the way that they actually were.

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How many people among ‘the masses’, however, ever bristle and become concerned and defensive when someone calls someone else ‘mentally ill’, for example?

In contrast, how many of the pampered people are going to bristle and become concerned and defensive when someone calls them pampered?

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We are very comfortable in our society in using definitive explanations for things that rely on a linear black-and-white, either-or pattern of thinking.  It’s EASIER than making sure we understand the full meaning of what we are talking about.

It is EASIER to simply say, “I was abused when I was little,” or “I was not abused when I was little” than it is to say “I was not pampered” versus “I was pampered.”

I could continue to accept this simplistic thinking if there weren’t so many drastic and terrible lifelong consequences for survivors of severe infant-child abuse that society THEN feels completely comfortable in blaming and shaming the survivors for.

It is THEN that I want to ‘turn the tables’ so that the pampered would need to play THEIR entire lifetime out living in the reality that severe abuse survivors know with their every breath.

And the survivors?  What would we survivors know of living the truly, from-birth pampered life even if someone were to suddenly give us one?

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My case in point if ye be of those who can make this gigantic leap!  Nature has mirrored the experience of those whose body was built in ONE kind of world ONE way — and not the other way — permanently.

Pampered-from-birth (‘good enough’) people have a body that knows that reality.  Not pampered-from-birth people have a body that knows that reality.

Nature and its ways cares nothing for the individual personal comfort zone of anyone.  Nature only TRULY cares that a species does what it needs to do to ‘continue on being’.  This entire array of possible body building options that happens in direct response to either the pampered world that raised us or to the not pampered one is — and I am going to the Bigger Picture here — meant to accomplish this ‘continue on being’ by creating bodies that THEMSELVES signal-convey the kind of world that built the person who lives in it.

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So we could turn another table of laid-out card hands here so that Nature received the personalized individual’s perspective on the experience of being alive and the individual people received the hands that clearly expresses what Nature cares about, intends and accomplishes.

How I am  in the world, having been raised in a not pampered infant-childhood directly signals to others (who could detect and understand these signals) exactly what the condition of my early world was like — because those conditions built me to be the way that I am.

Jump to the peacock’s tail.  A brilliant, resplendent, gorgeous and healthy peacock tail is simply a signal and a sign that the experiences of that bird happened in an environment rich in resources.  The tail has nothing PERSONAL to do with the peacock at all!

Another peacock with a pitifully shabby, dull and sickly looking tail is simply signaling to its hoped-for mates that this bird was not pampered in a world of plenty.

Which peacock’s tail is going to attract which kind of mating partner?

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Well, as the ‘superior species’ we don’t like to be pared down to our actual size so that we can not only recognize but also accept that HOW we are in the world (based on the conditions of the world that formed us) does exactly the same thing.  HOW we is a signal that expresses the NOT personal reality of THE CONDITIONS OF THE WORLD and actually, as Nature intends, doesn’t have much to do at all with our personal wishes or concerns as individuals.

So again I will say when you read particularly the last paragraphs of Dr. Martin and Fellow’s paper here *SYMTPOMS: 120909 Scan of Teicher’s Research – Trauma Altered Development Paper you are reading a description of the MISMATCH that happens when not pampered people are born into a not pampered world and at the end of their earliest years are hatched out into a pampered one!

The problem is this mismatch.  The problems we endure as individual severe early abuse survivors IS THIS MISMATCH.

If pampered people were the only ones who lived in a pampered world — OK.  If not pampered people were the only ones who lived in a not pampered world — OK.

How can I say OK to a resource-scarce and traumatizing world?  Think about what our species had to go through so that we could be here asking that question.  Our species was able to experience pampering ONLY under conditions of plentiful resources.  When times were really, really tough, we were able to use an INNER resource that nature has NEVER let us lose:  We contain within our very young body the ability to ADAPTIVELY AND FLEXIBLY adjust to the conditions of the world we are born into.

Then we are able to move forward in time in a not pampered body — surviving — continuing on as individual representatives of our species — into a future where resources were better.  THEN the future generations could adaptively and flexibly adjust to these more pampered conditions — and babies could grow a body that reflected those improved conditions.

In other words, as I write this, I understand that ‘the tables’ are DESIGNED to turn.  Without that ability to adjust and adapt flexibly we would not have had the resilience we needed to survive — not as a species, not as individuals.

We need to understand the bigger picture so that we can depersonalize the facts.  Pampered people do not need to take offense when someone points out the truth of the benefits they received from a resource-rich environment from the time they were born.

AND not pampered people need to be FREE to be people who are not condemned and judged for the fact that our body did EXACTLY THE SAME THING that pampered people’s did:  Adjusted in development to the conditions of OUR environment — which happened to be a resource-scarce one.

If our proverbial turning table were laden on one side with rich and nutritious food an on the other side tree bark and bugs — and THEN this table were to be turned so that pampered and not pampered people had to consume a diet they were not familiar with — my points here in this post might be a little easier — or tougher — to swallow.

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(Of course, I suppose ALL the female peacocks would go for the prettier tale, and in this example of female selection, who wins?  I don’t know……  What I do know is that this version of a mate selection process is about finding who came from the richest world that had the best resources — and who got them.)

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