Childhood Injuries That Affect Our Adult Life

I’ll start with denial, although this is considered bad form to start a story, but it is not easy to understand that you are not loved by the main person in your life – yourself.

It is not easy to accept your childhood traumas, to acknowledge the right to experience negative emotions, including in relation to your parents. It is not easy, because in our patriarchal world there is still an unspoken ban on negative emotions.

As a psychologist, I am 100% sure that this self-dislike was carried as a banner by every specialist in the helping profession, because initially we all came to it for this very reason.

And if clients who are disliked in all respects still come to you for consultations, it is because you already know how to help them, or you are still at the stage of self-healing.

So, I insist that self-love is the key that will open many doors in your life, whether you understand psychology or not. And do you know what the difficulty is? Many of us do not understand what it means from the word “absolutely”.

What does it mean to love yourself? What is this recommendation? Get a manicure? Buy a new dress? Eat some yummy? Relax in the Maldives?

Let’s go in the solution of this question from the opposite: what will happen if you still cannot love yourself? How to diagnose this dislike?

Practical example

Natalia, 42 years old. Late single mom. Son Artemy, 2 years old.

Problem: intolerance to the negative emotions of the son.

How does it manage: switches attention through cartoons and sweets, tries to run away to work so as not to break down, hired a nanny as a last resort, so as to collide with the child less.

Consequences: the child moves away, a guilt complex has appeared, the child has become aggressive, the mother is in despair.

What is really going on in Natalia’s life?

Like all girls, Natalya wanted to be happy and for this she worked a lot and hard. After all, since childhood, she learned this truth: “You can’t pull a fish out of a pond without difficulty.”

When the girl did not succeed in something, her parents were angry and reproached her for being incompetent. This is the very trauma that led to the very complex “I myself”.

Natalia does not remember exactly when she grew up and whether she was a child at all. After all, all her life she was taught that she should:

• learn to do everything myself;
• do not ask unnecessary questions;
• do not bother adults over trifles;
• to be an ideal child in all respects – diligent and obedient.

If not for her parents and teachers, perhaps Natalya would never have become an excellent student, a medalist, a promising lawyer in a large company.

I’ll end here, because when people become aware of their childhood trauma, their first reaction is to blame the whole world for it, starting with mom and dad.

So at the first consultations on mother therapy (the author’s method of working out the maternal trauma of Olga Fatum), Natalia blamed her parents for the fact that it was their upbringing that made her lonely and unhappy. Not a single man was worthy of her hand and heart. Motherhood is disappointing. Loneliness multiplies.

Here again our trauma opens up like an abscess “You can’t love me”, “I am unworthy”…

If what you’ve read resonates with you, then your first step to healing the trauma is to accept it. Yes, your parents may not have been able to give you the love you needed. This will need to be wept out or expressed differently, through the emotions of anger and anger. This must be done with a specialist, as this process requires third-party support.

The second step is to remember and write in detail what exactly you lacked in childhood from your parents. This is a piece of jewelry that takes time.

If the subpersonality of the inner child is persecuted within you, it may not appear so quickly. Resentment against yourself is the most insidious: you can chase an active, successful and fulfilling life for years, but not get pleasure from it, which is precisely why: your inner child is crushed.

Give him time to move away, come to his senses, return to you. Allow him to manifest, surround him with the care and love that he lacked so much. This is not always a topic about expensive beauty salons, exhausting fitness and brands. Most often, these are simple things that are accessible to everyone.

When Natalia and I unpacked her inner child, it turned out that he always dreamed of learning how to skate, but the parents did not have the money and time for this. Perestroika times were hard for them, they survived, were divorced and lack of money.

And here Natalia sits at my reception, recalls all these events, tears in her eyes, and then suddenly declares: “Yes, but this is their life and their choice of how to cope with difficulties. I have a little money now in connection with the birth of a child, but I can quite afford a couple of lessons with a coach and rent skates “…

And when we ourselves allow ourselves what was forbidden to us in childhood, we grow up, which means that we are healed, we understand that, as adults, we choose our own path.

At the end of the story about Natalia, I will note that her priority from a child Artemia switched to another, more important – her inner child. It is impossible to build harmonious relationships with loved ones and the world without building them by yourself.