Childhood is a hostage situation, where either child has no control over the way our caregivers parent us or fail to. Some parents have a lot of light and love to give, safely nurturing and attuning to their child’s needs. Others, unfortunately, have little to give and cast a shadow over the child’s sense of being. An understated injury to the psyche is an act of “smothering”, where the overprotection does not allow their child to separate and individuate, imprisoning them in dependency. These injuries get stored in our minds and bodies as emotional and physical symptoms. Intrinsically connected. Symptoms are the language of the unconscious, where we repress our feelings, turning them inwards against ourselves or outward via projection.
The more we regress or aggress, the more we thwart authentic expression and healing. We project anger outwards onto others instead of towards the original source. We pay an enormous emotional price; we create a false, regressed self. To proceed far from the desert, one must be willing to meet the existential suffering and walk through it. As we expunge the poison of our infiltrated past, we have a new opportunity to dismantle the old. The hole in the soul is the tortuous emptiness and self-loathing buried in the depths of our beings.
The yearning and longing for connection to ourselves and others, wired deep within us, remains unquenched, leaving us feeling abandoned, stunted, and forsaken.
The result is an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and despair leading to pathology. The child needs to be able to contain feelings during the dependent phase of infancy, where they can separate and individuate without trauma. The father is normally the first experience of the outside world, outside and away from his mother. If the father can also nurture the child, the mother can remain emotionally grounded in her strength, support, and resistance. If the child faces the double dungeon of darkness ( father and mother abandonment), they create a state of distorted despair, unable to think and see clearly. Without the challenge of such darkness, there is no growth where the child can shed the victim consciousness and give up the notion of being saved by the parents. There will be frequent moments of anger, sorrow, and profound grief to work through. One must push through the self-imposed limitations and barriers to heal.
The deep-seated core belief is grafted into our blood cells, muscles, and tissue based on early experiences and parenting. A belief covertly carried around all our lives, desperately trying to hide from shame.
Types of Attachment
Secure Attachment – parents were available, present, and predictable. The child is attuned with, empathised with, and mirrored by the parents. The child’s inner reality is reflected back to them, and they can feel connected with it, where they learn to self-soothe. The child can experience distress and joy, with a sense of safety as they internalise their mother.
Dismissive /Avoidant – indifferent, distant, and neglectful parents, where the child numbs out to anything outside of their experience. The child stops seeking comfort and safety from their mother. They grow up uncomfortable with intimacy, vulnerability, and dependency. They may devalue relationships, not be very trusting, and become hostile and aggressive as a way to make contact.
Anxious /Ambivalent – inconsistent, unpredictable and preoccupied parents, where the child feels insecure about the reliability of parents. They become rescuers, focused on others and not on themself. The parents are sometimes erratic, loving, harsh, or punitive. The child fluctuates between clinging and possessiveness, being angry and defiant. They grow up vulnerable to abandonment fears, with chronic vigilance about separation and considerable anxiety. They lack coping skills, become passive, and feel victimised in life.
Disorganised – fragmented, disassociation, frightening, bizarre and abusive parents. The child becomes helpless, paralysed, and chaotic, where the child can’t soothe or focus and is unable to regulate emotions and thoughts. Narcissistic parents demean, devalue and destroy their children, bringing them up in a minefield and death trap.
The child lacks integrity and a weak ego that eventually crumbles. It takes humility, an unconventional form of self-love, and love of others to carry through with this type of egoless self-examination. The breakdown of an unsustainable and faulty psychological blueprint is created at cause and develops as a negative core belief. The haze represents releasing dysfunctional thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and habits. The aftermath of toxic poisons leads to the release of these defective core beliefs. This dismantling will be threatening and disorientating but can be the ally to open the prison doors, becoming stronger and healthier. The process is difficult, going from the false comfort of knowing to the unknown, which can be terrifying and fraught with danger.
The old little self will try to cling to its false security and beliefs.
We can’t heal individually or globally until we understand the pathology begins with the mother/child bonding gone wrong, the disconnect at the cause level. Hopefully, there will be a paradigm shift, with a new way of seeing and being, a transformation experienced as permanent.
Rosenberg, j. (2018 ) Be The Cause Healing Human Disconnect.
