Head Knowledge

I am working on gaining the head knowledge I need to be able to objectively look at my past and know it was not my fault.  Here's some notes from what I read today:::

I got a new book about healing your emotional self. It talks about the different ways that parents affect their children’s self-esteem / self-worth. It’s pretty validating to read because, honestly, for SO LONG I was convinced my issues were in my head and not real. Oh they are definitely real. And they were definitely brought on by crappy parenting and not a reflection of my self-worth.


(Since I am directly quoting the book with the quotation marks, the book is “Healing Your Emotional Self” by Beverly Engel.)

• “Children learn they are loved by the way their parents look at them, by how much their parents want to hug and hold them, and by how they discipline them. When a child is not looked at with loving eyes, he comes to believe he is not loved. When his parents don’t seem to want to hug him, he comes to believe he must not be loveable. When a parent’s affection is taken away when the child does something they disapprove of, he comes to believe that his loveability is contingent upon his actions or deeds. As children tend to blame themselves for their parents’ neglect and mistreatment, the only logical conclusion is that the child must be unloveable.”

o My reasonable explanation for this is that my mother was too overwhelmed with her own unmet needs and problems. She was not happy in her marriage. She could not focus on her children. When the divorce started, she looked to me for her emotional support. I felt like she needed me to encourage her, protect her, and boost her ego. She often made comments about not being a good mother, which was her fishing for compliments and reassurance from me.

o I’ve been told daily for my entire life that I was a colicky baby. I cried and cried. Swaddling me tightly and putting me in the swing supposedly comforted me. I believe that not being held and comforted as a child led to an inability to form an emotional bond with my parents. Babies need physical touch. Emotional deprivation in babies has been proven to result in children who are anxious, insecure, and have low self-esteem. This is probably why I developed into a child who was emotionally needy. And being emotionally needy and still not getting my needs met, only furthered the situation.

o When Candy moved in at my dad’s house, she made it clear that she was not interested in doing motherly things, like laundry, caring for her 3 year old, and grocery shopping. As a teenager, I took those things on because I wanted her to stay. I thought if I could be in charge of those things so she didn’t have to, then she’d stay. As soon as I could drive I was the only person buying the groceries weekly for the whole house.

• My dad was never home. He came home from work, walked into his room to change his clothes, and then left. He either went out to take care of things outside at our house or over to the barn we had. He would come inside and eat dinner with us, and then leave again. I literally rarely saw him when I was growing up. He would come to church with us on Sundays, but that was honestly about it. He felt like a stranger to me. And when he was around, he was the disciplinarian. My only interactions with him when I was young were for him to spank me.

“Children who are physically abandoned are particularly wounded because they often feel as if they have no value. Emotional abandonment is also real. It can be extremely painful to be around an emotionally unavailable parent because the child feels empty and alone in their presence. They don’t take an interest in anything the child does or listen to anything the child says. Children who are routinely abandoned or rejected tend to suffer from extreme insecurity and feelings of worthlessness. This insecurity often continues into adulthood with insecure adults being clingy with their partners and afraid to be alone. Abandonment creates insecurity, self-obsession, and the tendency to turn anger against oneself and to idealize others. These feelings fester beneath the surface, where they interfere with self-image and the forming of healthy relationships. Adults who were abandoned as children often lack the confidence to reach their potential. They also have difficulty delaying gratification, and their low self-worth causes them to go for the quick fix. “

o Applicable rationale: “Some parents find parenting too demanding or difficult. They resolve their dilemma by abandoning the burden of parenting. A great deal of parental abandonment is unintentional or a result of inadequacies or selfishness on their part.” I never felt like my parents enjoyed being with me. They just seemed to tolerate me. I didn’t feel listened to or valued.

• I didn’t feel like either of my parents liked me very much. My home was a cold place. Especially after my mom’s problems with my dad became public knowledge. She often reminded me how I looked like and acted like him, I knew she didn’t like that. No matter how hard I tried, I was not able to be good enough around my dad to avoid being punished. I was always in trouble for something. I felt like who I was wasn’t acceptable. I still often don’t know why anyone would want to be around me, because I feel like I’m not good. I’ve tried very hard to push my husband away because I don’t feel worthy of him and I figured I’d lose him sooner or later. I felt constantly subjected to shame as a child. “Overly critical parents can destroy their child’s confidence and self-esteem and devastate their self-image. A child who is shamed by rejection, mockery, or expressions of disgust or contempt will often shrink from contact with others. He may seek invisibility to feel safe. He grows up feeling unloveable because he was taught that it was his fault that his parents did not love him or that his acceptance was conditional-depending on whether he performed to his parents’ satisfaction. Instead of believing something bad “just happened” these children tend to believe that they somehow caused or contributed to the events and they are therefore responsible.”

• After the divorce, my parents became egocentric. Their needs, wants, and beliefs were more important than mine. I’m sure they had no sense that their disregard for me was teaching me that I wasn’t worth much. I didn’t feel like I could do anything to validate my existence. Sometimes if I got some positive attention, it would get their attention. If I was told that I was smart or if I earned good grades, they beamed and took pride in that. My parents were only interested in what reflected positively on them. I was good for getting them admiration from others for my brains. They, my mother especially, would use her power as a parent to build her own fragile ego. This example from the book struck a chord with me. “A typical narcissistic mother can be both cold and overprotective. She invades her child’s autonomy and manipulates him to conform to her wishes. She rejects all about him that she finds objectionable, putting him in the anxiety-ridden position of losing her affection if he expresses dissatisfaction. “ “Psychological health comes from the experience, starting in infancy, of parental acceptance. It comes from learning that although you are not perfect, you are still worthy of love. Children need to know that all that they are – both good and bad, naughty and nice, smart and stupid – is acceptable to their parents. But children of narcissistic parents do not experience this kind of acceptance. Instead, a narcissistic parent rejects everything about her child that she finds imperfect or objectionable. She has extremely high expectations of her child and continuously works on improving him. These parents believe their children should be as happy or as miserable as they are. When a child does not share their emotional moods, it is taken as a sign of disloyalty or insensitivity. Children of narcissistic parents are trained to distrust the reality of their own thoughts and to allow others to think for them. Parents tell the child what they are feeling or thinking, often creating great confusion in the child’s mind.

The child of a narcissist becomes the carrier of both his parents’ rejected imperfections and his parents’ grandiose fantasies. This creates a self-image that is extremely contradictory – he is a miserable failure who will never accomplish anything and at the same time he is capable of total perfection and admiration. The child cannot be objective about what he does and cannot utilize criticism effectively. It hurts too much to take in. “

“One terrible defensive outcome is to settle into an emotionally robotic existence in which they feel neither the pain of childhood nor the realization of life’s pleasures.” This definitely describes me.

o “Because a narcissistic parent unconsciously despises himself (due to his parent’s rejection of him) he cannot accept his children. The narcissistic parent is most demanding and deforming of the child he identifies with most strongly.” This somewhat explains my parents behavior. Although it does not excuse it. I’m not ready to let them excuse their behavior or offer forgiveness to them. I’m still mad about them screwing me up so bad.