The series “Captive” tells the ordeal of Clara, a young woman who enters with a deep religious vocation a cloistered convent. After fifteen years subjected to torture, corporal punishment and deprivation of liberty by the Mother Superior, she manages to escape and, together with her family, begins a process of reconstruction and pursuit of justice.
The word “cautiva” comes from the Latin captivus which means prisoner or taken in war. “Cautivada” comes from the same root; however the sense we usually attribute to it is not the same. We become captivated by certain people, fascinated and even in love with aspirations and ideas that intoxicate us and plunge us into a deep state of happiness, as if we were floating.
Now, between being captivated and becoming captive there exists a barely visible border and not an easy one to identify. That passage from fascination to psychic confinement, from infatuation to the gradual loss of identity; can take different forms in the lives of women.
The Invisible Bars
Accepting violence, self-punishment, ceasing to think because another thinks for us, distancing ourselves from others and from the outside world: scenes that can gradually install themselves in our daily life and, almost without noticing, make our identity fade away. We become prey.
These invisible bars can take on different forms; sometimes they wear the face of a partner, other times the walls of an institution, the marks of the past, the family mandates that cut through us or the ideals that harass us. We will approach some of them:
A partner: love can adopt the masked form of idealization, submission or dependence. It sometimes begins with small gestures: stop saying what we think to avoid a discussion, postpone something we desire to avoid upsetting the other, or begin to doubt our own perception because he always seems to be right.
Almost without warning, our own desire begins to be relegated to a secondary plane while we place in the partner our thoughts, judgments and decisions; thus enabling a gradual disappearance of ourselves. A silent renunciation of being who we are.
A institution: we also seek places of belonging, where to feel housed, supported. But what happens when those places that promised safety become spaces of subjugation? When power is exercised abusively the own voice is silenced along with thought and the autonomy in action. We disappear.
The past: certain experiences leave us suspended in what happened -often in the form of traumatic events- as well as in the recurring thought of what never happened and we cannot stop replaying. This prison operates with a firm sentence: to be left without present and without future possibilities.
Family mandates: there are also inherited captivities. What is expected of us takes the quietest form of mental bars: how we should be, what to do, what not to do, what to desire. Through generations, messages travel that whisper in our ear how to live, conditioning our choices and often preventing us from asking ourselves about what causes us suffering.
An ideal: when others’ expectations about us go beyond the family and become social demands, those bars seem to be made of gold: being the perfect mother, the independent and successful woman, the ideal partner, having the body always healthy and active, are some of the manifestations of becoming trapped, suffocated and erased by what becomes a carrot we never reach, making us disappear.
What Keeps Us Captive?
Not always is it about the force and power that the other can exert over us, but also about the unconscious resonance that can predispose us to this terrain: there is no universal answer to this question because each story is unique and will respond to our biography, our particular idea of love, the need for protection and shelter, the search for identifications, the maturity of our thinking, our autonomy or dependence and the experiences that left marks in the way we think, feel and relate. These are only some of the unique marks that dialogue with remaining captive, trapped by bonds and situations that are very difficult to exit.
The Way Out
The story of Clara puts us in evidence a captivity in its most brutal and evident form, but what happens when the bars are not visible? When we become trapped by ties or situations of subordination that we cannot recognize as such?
Identifying it and being able to convey it to someone you trust may be the first step to open the door toward inner freedom. They are not immediate nor easy processes; many times they require professional help and the support of family or friends; because recovering identity means starting to think for ourselves, re-listening to our own voice and reawakening the desire that was dulled, crushed and silenced so many times.
I invite you to reflect: how much are we willing to pay for the recognition of the other? Do we accept that what we fall in love with can also harm us? What keeps us in those places of suffering? Guilt, fear, insecurity, emptiness, the unattainable ideal? What can we do to get out of there?
The key to breaking the bars perhaps lies in undoing the history that led us to that prison, not to remain trapped in guilt, but to recognize what holds us back and thus be able to find a new way to position ourselves before our own story.
Source: Lorena Baena is a Licensed Psychologist M.P 1480 from the city of Santa Fe Capital. A reference in approaching relational problems and traumatic experiences. Author of the book: “Separated. Romantic breakup, grief and reconstruction,” forthcoming. @lic.lorenabaena
