I agree with orodo, Jan.Scorpio you sound depressed to me also. when my daughters were young I was going through a major depression, and I was very paralized by it, I barely functioned. Actually for a period of time I ceased to function at all. If it werent for my wifes reasonable stability, I dont know what would have happened to my children. I flunked out of college because of the depression .
Recently, antidepressants helped me get my ducks in a row well enough to finish my undergrad as well as my grad programs.
My oldest once said of my emotional unavailability ( at 4 yrs old), I dont like sad. Today ( at 30 yrs old )she is a trained actress that shines in improvisational comedy. When we are gathered as a family we sometimes have to litterally say, through our belly laughs at her antics, OK, you can stop entertaining now. I think her wonderful sense of humor has its roots in the pained 4 year olds I dont like sad.
When they were little I was very, very wrapped up in my own agonizing pain.
Once when I worked on a hospital psych unit , a therapist who worked on the unit used an analogy that explained some of the dynamics of trauma and its effects on self esteem.
He said imagine going to a local hospitals newborn nursery. After looking at each of the infants, your task is to pick out the newborn that was not born precious.
Anyone who had any remnant of a heart would find this an impossible task to be burdened with. And yet within a few days or weeks, some of those infants will already have learned that he or she is not precious.
One of the qualities of self esteem is that it cant be taught by declaration, you need to have self esteem, it can only be taught by example. We show them how to love themselves by loving ourselves.
I believe my daughters were born precious. I believed I was born a shit, at best.
There is a problem .
There is a saying they use in AA, Fake till you make it. I had to learn to at least act as if I mattered. It sure didnt fit my beliefs about myself but I had to say it anyway. Gradually, with more therapy and self help readings and a heavy dose of patience and self tolerance, self love began to fit and now , most of the time, I no longer have to fake it.
In disciplining my daughters I would ask myself will they still feel precious when Im through punishing them? They were allowed to express their displeasure at being sent to their rooms. When they declared I hate you, I also understood they also loved me even more.
I highly recommend a parenting book, Between Parent And Child, by Hiam Gonot (? spelling.) I have not read his other book, Between Parent And Teenager, but Ive heard it is very good. He helped me understand the meaning behind childrens statements and questions.
Other books that focus on the inner child are listed in the public forum, books for survivors. As has alredy been mentioned, there are some earlier posts that explore the notion of the child within.
My children taught me many things about the child within me. For example how eager a child is to please. All I had to say was I dont like it when you climb on the furniture and my daughter wou;d say, OK, daddy-man!. Im not saying they were always angels, but they were always precious, even during the so called terrible twos when they begin to assert their autonomy as human beings. ( The secret was to not ask questions or make demands that could be responded to with a NO.)
The little boy in me learned early on that my own needs were ignorable. When my mother needed to be consoled for what was inconsolable in her, I was a well groomed
to try to please her. She took me to bed with her through most of my adolescence.
The ongoing struggle is to forgive him for being so naively vulnerable. We are all biologically programmed to be so vulnerable, it is in our nature as human beings.
What happened to me taught me to despise and reject the little boy in me and the vulnerability that is part of his nature.
To be so vulberable means we can again experience that searing pain that no one should ever have to endure. It is no wonder that we adopt the defenses that we do.
The problem comes when we are trying to live our adult life. Not letting people in close defeats our adult relationships. It helped us to survive our childhood, but is very destructive when we are emotionally absent with our children and our adult relationships. However even as adults there are times when it is a good skill to be self protective when we are around adults that are emotionally caustic. As adults it is about the selective use of this defensive tool. It is not about throwing away old tools as if they are no good (which is what I wanted to do), it is about the selective use of these tools.
My kids were definately responding to the healing work I was doing while they were growing. By doing my own recovery work I am showing them how to be a survivor, even if they dont know the reasons behind the therapy and other recovery work I am involved in.
It helps me to remind myself that my inner child is a very wounded and needy inner child. It is important that I have my own support system that allows me to not use my kids to fulfill my unmet needs of my own childhood.
