Category Archives for "Childhood Trauma"

Root cause of narcissism: Consciousness moves cyclically from expansion to contraction in lesser and larger degrees. You can see this reflected in patterns of nature, as well as in the phases of growth and expansion, and the decay and destruction of societies and human behavior.

Looking back in history, you can see the rise and fall of empires and civilizations.

What we see unfolding before our eyes is no different. Western societies have dominated global trade and thinking for the last several hundred years or longer; now, those same western societies are feverishly involved in collective destruction, and so the pendulum swings.

The Larger Perspective & Cycles of Consciousness

It is necessary to take a step back and look at what is unfolding from a larger perspective. That larger perspective provides an overview to what may seem to be madness and senseless destruction, but is still part of nature—the natural cycle of consciousness.

That larger perspective—in which there is no choosing or judging one side or the other—can provide some sense of calm and non-duality. Having established that larger perspective, it might be interesting to explore the psychological patterns that are contributing to the current decay of western societies from a trauma perspective.

Whatever Is Unresolved Repeats Itself Over Time:

Whatever emotion is unresolved repeats itself over time, and grows in both force and complexity. When overwhelmed, you deal with that overwhelm through a fight, a flight, or a please-appease response. When none of these three responses seem to work for you, you default into a freeze-shutdown response.

When that feeling of being overwhelmed stays in your body without being addressed and resolved, you often move between periods of shutdown and being depressed, then back to being highly activated through anxiety, anger, or sadness.

Whatever emotion is unresolved repeats itself over time, and grows in both force and complexity. When overwhelmed, you deal with that overwhelm through a fight, a flight, or a please-appease response. When none of these three responses seem to work for you, you default into a freeze-shutdown response.

Your survival responses of fight, flight, and please-appease turn into hardwired behaviors that are marked by attempting to overcome or avoid that initial hurt of feeling helpless, invalidated, abused, or overwhelmed.

The Root Cause of Narcissism & The Fight-Anger Response

The behaviors demonstrated in a hardwired, fight-anger response, are a need to control, a need to subjugate others, a need to dominate to get a sense of validation, to impose a particular view of reality onto others, and to shame and gaslight in order to make others comply. When taken to an extreme, this fight-anger response, alongside the above-mentioned behaviors, makes for a psychopath or sociopath; the applied techniques fall under the banner of narcissistic abuse (possibly the root cause of narcissism).

At the opposite end of the fight-anger response is the please-appease response. Similarly, the please-appease personality acts out to minimize or avoid his or her initial core hurt of helplessness and feeling emotionally overwhelmed, but tends to subjugate, to anticipate other’s actions and behaviors to minimize abuse or to get validation, and is highly sensitive and empathic but at the cost of a loss of boundaries and sense of self.

The Please-Appease Survival Response

Those with an established please-appease response will, out of a need to survive, have great difficulty in fighting back or setting boundaries out of fear of harm or rejection. Furthermore, they often have a constant need for outside validation in order to have some sense of self and/or to minimize further abuse, and might have some form of denial or cognitive dissonance regarding the abuse or abuser that protects them from not having to act and from feeling emotionally overwhelmed again.

The please-appease response lends itself to conformity, to acceptance, and to subjugation, which in turn is the ideal personality for the narcissist, psychopath, or sociopath to take advantage of.

This brings us back to the current state of world affairs. What happens on a smaller scale is also reflected on a larger scale. These patterns of character and survival response are (intentionally) perpetrated through continuous (institutional) trauma.

Symptoms of Narcissistic Abuse & The Root Cause of Narcissism

If we look at the last few decades, there has been the war on drugs, the war on terror, and now we have the war on ‘the virus’; the war on climate is pending, and most likely after that, the war on some sort of alien invasion.

These last years have shown clearly how questioning the main narrative resulted in people and institutions being gaslighted, shamed, ostracized, silenced, or censored. Moreover, the narrative and goalposts have continually been changed in order to maintain control and impose a particular world view; there has been abuse by proxy of those who identify with the narrative, and a whole lot more control, manipulation, and attempts to subjugate.

The Dynamics Between The Fight-Anger & Please-Appease Personality

On the other hand, we have had the majority of people comply, conform, subjugate, and accept the removal of their freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and freedom of bodily autonomy.

What is unfolding right now is no different from what has happened throughout history. The dynamics between an unresolved fight-anger response (the root cause of narcissism) and the please-appease response have always been there. What might be different this time is the scale of it.

Again, there are continuous cycles of consciousness, of contraction and expansion to lesser and larger degrees. What we might be seeing right now is a contraction of consciousness to a larger degree.

Creating An Overview & Non-Dual Perspective

There isn’t space in this article to go into how to stay safe, or how to navigate the current challenges and terrain; however, an awareness of the underlying, unresolved, emotional patterns might help you to see what you need to work on personally, and might also help you to hold that larger non-dual perspective without getting lost in choosing a side and becoming part of an opposite, of conflict.

The New Course 'Healing from Narcissistic Abuse'  is now available.

This course gives you the know how and tools to work towards more independence, away from the codependency attachment to a narcissist. As a byproduct of the above, you will, in time, be able to be more financially and emotionally independent.

This course will help you give you the insights of why you please-appease, how that ties in with the need for belonging and how that creates symptoms of attachment, anxiety, and depression. Furthermore, you will be guided through the somatic meditations and techniques to rewire those survival responses and bring them to more healthy balanced-out levels.

This course will go into how to gradually set boundaries, through accessing anger constructively, and how that will help you to reduce anxiety and dependence and how thereby you will give more validation to yourself.    

Keywords: Betrayal Trauma

The hurt of betrayal and dishonored trust will be one of the deep pains you will carry with you when you have gone through and had to deal with childhood trauma.

Often, your childhood trauma relates directly to those who were close to you when you were young; your parents, siblings, close family, or friends.

When you are young, you are vulnerable and dependent on your prime caregivers for safety and emotional and physical nourishment. When that safety isn’t provided, is lacking, or even turns into physical, emotional or sexual abuse, you are left with a deep sense of betrayal which is so painful that you will very likely not be able to sustain that level of emotional pain.

You will dissociate.

Reacting Out of Dishonored Trust

When you dissociate as a survival mechanism, you create coping structures on top of your emotional wounds. You will, in effect, choose survival patterns that will best fit your situation in order to maintain some sense of integrity and sense of self.

Over time, you will likely also develop issues around trust and relationships, and get entangled in reenactment patterns that can further retraumatize.

When you feel betrayed, your mind naturally moves to its opposite.

You either have a deep longing for wanting to be loved and honored, or you will have made a resolution to yourself, when you are young and betrayal is reinforced through further experiences, that nobody can be trusted and you have to go at it on your own.

When you are young, you are vulnerable and dependent on your prime caregivers for safety and emotional and physical nourishment. When that safety isn’t provided, is lacking, or even turns into physical, emotional or sexual abuse, you are left with a deep sense of betrayal which is so painful that you will very likely not be able to sustain that level of emotional pain. 

A third option might be that you pendulate between those two states of wanting to be loved and honored and trusting too much, getting hurt in the process, and thereby going back to your belief that nobody can be trusted.

The Hurt of Betrayal and The Please-Appease Response

As the pain of betrayal and dishonored trust sits on such a deep and primal level in your consciousness when you were still developing a sense of self, its impact will be enormous.

Without a foundation of safety and security, many of the characteristics you develop later will be built on top of your initial hurt and relate directly to it.

You might default to keeping others at a distance, and have difficulty engaging, socializing, and interacting.

When the feelings of isolation and loneliness turn into depression, you might get stuck there, or move towards its opposite by trying to connect, trusting too much in the process and getting hurt again by someone who takes advantage of that trust, or who feels threatened by the weight of your expectations and withdraws from relating to you.

Both lead you to feel hurt once again.

This cycle will continue when these processes stay unconscious.

The example above outlines a flight response—isolation—followed by a please response—trusting too much and perhaps having too many expectations which comes out of your initial hurt—followed by a shutdown-freeze response when there is blowback.

The Fight Response and Repercussions

Another way of coping might be that you default to a fight response. The hurt of dishonored trust and betrayal makes you act as though nobody can be trusted.

Your sole belief is that you are in a dog-eat-dog reality, and the only way to win, and to compensate for not feeling good enough, is to gain a sense of control and dominance in each and every situation.

This might express itself in a mild way, such as having to have the last word in every discussion; perhaps you may be somewhat self-righteous; or, it can morph into something much more destructive.

If you look into the world, you can probably see how rampant narcissism and psychopathic behavior has become, especially in those who are in positions of power and influence, which might well be the outcome of and the compensation for their early life emotional pain.

How Unaddressed Pain Will Always Go Full Circle

Because the fight-response still comes out of an initial hurt, at some point there will be a point of defeat.

A breakdown.

This must happen because the fight-response comes out of an emotional wound and so it always must go full circle, back towards the fear of being hurt again, and the terror of connecting with the pain of betrayal.

The Possibilities of Post Traumatic Growth

Those breakdowns are also where the possibility of growth and breakthrough lies.

You have gone full circle through some of your emotional and hardwired nervous system patterns.

You can either reinforce the cycle of hurt by repeating similar experiences in different circumstances; or, by bringing awareness to these processes, create a variable and allow the energy that is invested in these reactionary dissociative survival patterns of fight, flight, please-appease, and freeze-shutdown responses to flow back into awareness.

As you awaken and become aware of your patterns of reenactment, you will have to start moving through the various layers through which you have been coping, surviving, dissociating, and acting.

You will have to observe the shutdown, depression, and freeze response, and realize that dissociation is a ‘safe’ place when you feel emotionally too overwhelmed.

When you take away any conflict around dissociation and depression, at some point you will have to start to address your coping emotions; your fight-anger response, your flight-please-appease response, your unrealistic expectations and how they relate directly to your past, your anxiety about being hurt again, and so forth and so on.

You will have to do this until, by working through the layers, you are able to connect with the hurt of betrayal and the lack of emotional safety; the rawness of it, the deep sadness of not being honored and protected.

Healing will take time as you will likely be reacting to your emotional pain. It will be a process of awakening.

The New Course 'Healing from Narcissistic Abuse'  is now available.

This course gives you the know how and tools to work towards more independence, away from the codependency attachment to a narcissist. As a byproduct of the above, you will, in time, be able to be more financially and emotionally independent.

This course will help you give you the insights of why you please-appease, how that ties in with the need for belonging and how that creates symptoms of attachment, anxiety, and depression. Furthermore, you will be guided through the somatic meditations and techniques to rewire those survival responses and bring them to more healthy balanced-out levels.

This course will go into how to gradually set boundaries, through accessing anger constructively, and how that will help you to reduce anxiety and dependence and how thereby you will give more validation to yourself.    

Trauma Reenactment & The Internalization of What Happened to You

Your thoughts aren’t just your thoughts. They are often the internalized representation of what was taught to you as a child.

If you were repeatedly told that you were no good and you took that on board, your adult self might continue to suffer the bombardments of guilt, shame, or self-reproach.

The trouble is that you see your internalized thought processes as part of self, and forget that, initially, they were a direct result of miseducation from, say, one of your parents.

Neglect, Abuse, and Trauma Reenactment

Furthermore, the thought patterns that you have now aren’t always the result of explicit behavior, like the psychological abuse you might have gone through. Persistent neglect and the absence of care, love, and validation, can equally create persistent thought patterns of unworthiness and self-reproach well into adulthood.

Your thoughts aren’t just your thoughts. They are often the internalized representation of what was taught to you as a child. If you were repeatedly told that you were no good and you took that on board, your adult self might continue to suffer the bombardments of guilt, shame, or self-reproach. The trouble is that you see your internalized thought processes as part of self, and forget that, initially, they were a direct result of miseducation from, say, one of your parents.

Triggers and trauma reenactment of previous abuse and neglect can further fuel your existing guilt, blame, shame, embarrassment, or self-reproach and reinforce your current reality through your continued belief and identification with those default thought patterns.

Differentiation between “Here-Now” and “Then-There”

When your Post-Traumatic Stress is activated, what happened in the past will associate to your unresolved emotions in the present.

The difficulty is that you won’t be able to differentiate between what is happening right now, and what comes rushing in as past emotional residue, which makes the situation worse.

This means that emotional residue keeps accumulating through trauma reenactment and through new experiences, interactions, and circumstances, thus further overwhelming you.

A Flight-Please Response and Trauma Reenactment

Let me illustrate this with an example and point out how you can potentially start to work through these complexities through differentiation of time-frames, and reestablishing boundaries:

When Harold was a child, his father was unsupportive, as well as verbally and sometimes physically abusive; he would often belittle Harold, and was an unstable individual overall.

Harold’s method of dealing with his father was to isolate and avoid where he could, or anticipate and adapt if he did not have another choice.

Thus, his first response would be to try to escape—or “flight”—and if that didn’t work, he tried to adapt through pleasing.

Trauma Reenactment & Suppressed Emotions

His suppressed emotions—related to his survival flight-please patterns—are anger and deep sadness. His internalization and thought patterns often go in the direction of feeling unworthy, and quickly feeling guilty or doubtful about whether or not he did the right thing in any given situation.

Doubting himself and not feeling adequate frequently come up when he has a challenge at work, or when he has a discussion with his wife; furthermore, he beats himself up over not being able to be more assertive and he tries, forcefully, to act out in order to overcome his internal thought patterns. The attempt to overcome and acting out do not address his deeper issues, and so he further defaults into guilt; this continues to be a psychological cycle for him.

Because these patterns are so internalized for him, he is not able to link how he thinks on a day-to-day basis to what he experienced in childhood.

Working Through Trauma Reenactment and Differentiation of Time-Frames

When we work together, I ask him to stay with the feeling of guilt, but to be careful not to drown in that feeling or try to escape from it by judging it further; rather, I ask him to hold it in awareness, and to track the sensation and feeling of guilt on a bodily level.

I then suggest that he look at it from a larger perspective, and not just as his own thought patterns. I do that by asking him: “When you allow yourself to go back in time, which person in your childhood would make you feel like you are feeling right now”?

  +   Read more about trauma reenactment right here.

As he has his eyes closed and he is tracking his body sensation, he is directly accessing memory that is stored in his body cells—as opposed to trying to just access the information cognitively—which gives him direct access to a part of his past.

Reestablishing Boundaries and Allowing Vulnerability to Heal Trauma Reenactment

Obviously, a memory of his father’s behavior comes flooding in, and he is aware again, on a visceral level, of the abuse he went through. Being able to relate how he feels in the here-now, and what he went through then-there, helps to both give him a wider perspective, and arrest his self-reproach and effort to overcome. It also takes away some of the edginess of feeling guilty, when he remembers where those thoughts and feelings came from.

Over the course of a number of sessions, we work on voicing his repressed anger to his dad, allowing him to be with his deep sadness of himself as a vulnerable young kid.

Expressing his anger as healthy boundaries assists him to feel more empowered, gives him a sense of self-worth, reduces his anxiety, and puts the guilt back where it belongs.

By owning his sadness and “reparenting” himself, he starts to heal his core wound by giving validation to himself—as opposed to continually looking for validation outside of himself.

It is the addressing and reestablishing of healthy boundaries and containing your core wound that paves the way towards healing.

In which way does your trauma reenactment express itself? Leave your comment below.

​Let's look into some movies showcasing child abuse. A tentative warning here that certain movies might be triggering for you.

These are some of the child abuse movies I can think of from the top of my head.

Share with me in the comments below which movies—related to child abuse or neglect—you would add to this list?

Child neglect and abuse often go hand in hand. What makes severe child neglect stand out, though, is that it hijacks the development of your identity and sense of self. With abuse, you still have a reference point as to who you are and “that” you are. Even if that is through negative attention. With severe neglect that reference is missing.

In childhood, your brain and nervous system are busy laying down neural pathways. You are dependent on your environment for a stimulus to promote that growth of the neural pathways in your brain and nervous system. When there is a lack of input and stimulus, that translates into stunted growth in those areas.

Child Development and How We Learn From Others

Through mirroring, copying, imitating, identifying, reacting, and parental affect regulation you slowly learn to find your way in life. When you have laid an emotional foundation, you can then further start to explore your likes and dislikes. What you are attracted to and what repulses you, and what will be your direction in life.

When you grow up with an absence of reference or example in your early years, that emotional foundation, on the whole, is missing. This is more so the case with neglect than abuse; with abuse, you still, through reaction, establish a sense of self. With severe child neglect, often that is missing.

What makes severe child neglect stand out, though, is that it hijacks the development of your identity and sense of self. With abuse, you still have a reference point as to who you are and “that” you are. Even if that is through negative attention.

Self-esteem reflects an individual's overall subjective emotional evaluation of their own worth. It is the decision made by an individual towards the self.

You cannot love someone else before you love yourself. I know this sounds cliché, but let’s explore this a little further.

You might have said to yourself at some point in time “If only this person was nicer to me,” or “If I had felt more supported in that particular situation, I would have been fine." "I would have been able to show a better part of myself.”

We project our inward state outward and expect a resolution to happen by the grace of someone else’s action. We often get hurt further, though, rather than find a resolution.

Self-Esteem and Why You Are Looking for Love When You Have Been Hurt

When as a child or as an adult you suffer constant and relentless abuse by being put down and belittled, that can be very disheartening. Especially when you went through that as a child and that psychological abuse persisted for a length of time.

Out of that hurt, you compensate, and you either hold on to it or move to the opposite of that pain. If you have been made to feel unworthy and useless you might have either taken that on and drowned in that feeling, or you actively attempted to reach the opposite of that feeling which is wanting to be worthy, loved, accepted, honored, and to feel adequate. Most likely you will move between those two states of collapse and activation on a rotating basis.

That search for the opposite of unworthiness, when maintained on an unconscious level, always projects itself outward. It could express itself as wanting to be right or perfect, constantly wanting to improve your body image, an obsession with how people see or perceive you, wanting prestige and recognition, being overly studious, overly pleasing or unnecessarily getting into arguments and fights.

 If you have been made to feel unworthy and useless you might have either taken that on and drowned in that feeling, or you actively attempted to reach the opposite of that feeling which is wanting to be worthy, loved, accepted, honored, and to feel adequate.

Let's look into narcissistic abuse and the challenges that go with it.

A resolved emotion is an emotion that has been able to run its full course without the interference of thought, regardless of the outcome of the circumstances.

In other words; it means that you can endure a potentially traumatic situation and go through it unscathed.

A resolved emotion is an emotion that has been able to run its full course without the interference of thought, regardless of the outcome of the circumstances.

Those that do are often people who have sufficient resilience, containment, a healthy emotional foundation and a support system that has given them an advantage, and hence can rebound quicker.

Starting with a Disadvantage: Narcissistic Abuse and Childhood Trauma

When life’s adversities begin when young, this can turn the tables on you drastically.

If your emotional foundation is shaky to start with because there never was any support or nurturing, it becomes tougher to face new challenges, and this often leads to retraumatization through recurring experiences.

What happens is that there will be emotional responses that are unfinished and that have become patterns.

It is with these emotional patterns that we deal with life, circumstances, and people, and thereby recreate some of our old situations that relate to our history.

Narcissism and Complex Trauma: When Things Don’t Go as Planned

Projection and Reenactment go hand in hand. It is a process that happens simultaneously, and there may be various layers of it at play.

Let us explore this through an example to clarify:

Anna grows up with a narcissistic mother who is more concerned about her ambitions than taking care of her children. Anna copes with her by "pleasing," as a means of getting some form of approval and a sense of identity. Her mother, however, has turned this against her, through using guilt, and oversteps Anna’s boundaries on a regular basis.

Both identities, the ‘pleasing’ type, which is Anna, and the overbearing, narcissistic mother, who uses control to cover her wounds and insecurity, keep each other in their place.

Seeking any confrontation, for Anna, regarding setting healthy boundaries for having her needs met is overshadowed by crippling anxiety. Her mother plays on that by using guilt.

The Wound of Wanting to be Loved, and How that Relates to a Lack of Boundaries

Partly, that anxiety relates to her still wanting to be validated and the looming fear of rejection; not being good enough, and being a failure.

Anxiety, depression and an inability to move forward in life, are some of her symptomatic expressions.

From the above example, you can see that Anna has difficulty with setting boundaries, and that relates directly to wanting to avoid rejection and failure, which rests on her fundamental need of wanting to be loved, nourished and validated.

Reenactment and Addressing the Complexity of Trauma to Heal Narcissistic Abuse

Besides a complicated relationship with her mother, Anna has difficulties in other areas of her life.

At work, or in her relationships, she often gives too much of herself because of a need to feel validated. In turn, people either abuse or shun her because there is that undercurrent of wanting emotional compensation.

Anna moves between giving too much of herself, followed by feeling hurt and frustrated as a result of being used, or through not feeling validated, isolating and withdrawing into herself.

Facing What Is and Acting on it Through Therapeutic Guidance

What Anna needs to address, is to learn to openly express her needs, boundaries, and possibly, even anger.

While learning to express her boundaries, anxiety, and guilt will present themselves, which relate directly to her more profound emotional hurt of wanting to be loved and validated, and the lack of which she has experienced.

Once she can allow herself to feel the hurt from childhood neglect, and total lack of love; to not descend further into her usual default position of pleasing, and steps up to assert her boundaries, and feeling empowered by it, she will start to move in the right direction and heal her childhood complex trauma.

The New Course 'Healing from Narcissistic Abuse'  is now available.

This course gives you the know how and tools to work towards more independence, away from the codependency attachment to a narcissist. As a byproduct of the above, you will, in time, be able to be more financially and emotionally independent.

This course will help you give you the insights of why you please-appease, how that ties in with the need for belonging and how that creates symptoms of attachment, anxiety, and depression. Furthermore, you will be guided through the somatic meditations and techniques to rewire those survival responses and bring them to more healthy balanced-out levels.

This course will go into how to gradually set boundaries, through accessing anger constructively, and how that will help you to reduce anxiety and dependence and how thereby you will give more validation to yourself.    

Most serious PTSD Symptoms, regardless of adult life traumas and upsets, have their roots in childhood experiences. Often these experiences span periods and are intimately related to the people you have grown up with; your parents, close family, siblings or friends of the family.

This internal decision is the splitting away from integrity, creating duality and reenactment.

During that period of time, when abuse was going on, you didn't have the capacity to stand up to the situation. You could not act successfully to reestablish your boundaries and safety hence you chose the next best thing: To survive!

What is the Pay-off and What are the Costs

You needed to either disconnect or create an opinion about the world or certain people thereby locking opposing emotions into play.

Residual emotions and reenactment later in life show up as indulgence into patterns or behavior followed by self-loathing and withdrawing, only to be followed again by further involvement of the same pattern. And this happens on different levels.

At the core of it is fear of meeting one’s own anger, based on the experiences and the emotional memory we hold onto, that keeps reenactment alive.

Child Abuse and Neglect and How Reenactment Plays Itself Out

Maria grew up with her mother often shouting and belittling her. As a child, she concealed her anger toward herself about her mistreatment for fear of repercussions and instead vented it on her little sister or acted it out as self-harm.

As an adult, she has children of her own and she notices how she acts out the same behavior as her mom; shouting to her kids when she gets stressed. From an adult perspective, she does not want to, but she finds herself impulsively doing it.

While working with her we find out that it is a repeating pattern that is kept in place by her child-self that hasn't yet faced up to the fear of her mother and the anger she has repressed. As we work with that, somatically and cognitively, her symptoms and relationship with her partner and children start to change for the better as well.

In which areas of your life do you notice you are reenacting your past? Write your comment here below.

Neglectful parenting and domestic abuse come in all shapes and sizes. What is often the case is that one parent in a relationship is more dominantly abusive and overbearing then the other. The unequal relationship between them is likely based on their past pains and unresolved issues and has formed, for better or worse, their symbiotic coexistence.

Neglect is as hurtful as abuse and is in itself a form of abuse. When you are born into a family where say, the mother is verbally and physically abusive, and the father turns a blind eye; in this case, the father is considered to be complicit through his negligent attitude towards the abuse.

Neglectful Parenting: Perspective is Key

From a child’s perspective, however, being subjected to abuse from one parent might mean that we idolize the neglectful parent. This may seem illogical from an adult perspective, but from a child’s point of view, this is a survival choice. When one parent is overly abusive, then the neglectful parent might feel as if they are the only one who understands.

Neglectful parenting and domestic abuse come in all shapes and sizes. What is often the case is that one parent in a relationship is more dominantly abusive and overbearing then the other. The unequal relationship between them is likely based on their past pains and unresolved issues and has formed, for better or worse, their symbiotic coexistence.

In the above example, the father feels just as helpless as the child to stand-up, protect and set boundaries. As a result, he perpetuates an abusive situation. He makes the child a victim of his/her shortcomings.

Accessing and Owning the Hurt of Neglect

When working through childhood abuse, the traumatic memories and emotions related to the abusive and overbearing parent will be more readily available to access and work with than those of the neglectful parent.

Once that residual emotion is owned and processed, it is necessary to work to change the child’s perspective of the neglectful parent and place it in a different light.

This is challenging and takes an enormous effort to access because of the idolization of the neglectful parent.

Attracting the Right People

The aim is to shift perception to an adult integrated perspective and to allow, feel and voice one’s emotions based on the new healthy perspective. It is to give back to each parent their responsibility and re-own healthy boundaries, self-respect, and values.

Sorting out the relationship we have with our parents is one of the most challenging tasks we have to do in our lives. Once we accomplish this, it will greatly improve all relationships and whom you attract to form those relationships.

Love and loneliness are intimately related. They either open up your heart, or completely shut it down.

Most of us will experience love at some point in our lives, and are left hurt when that love ends. You are bound to get hurt by love when you are younger, as you most likely do not have the capacity to stay and integrate the process of detachment and lost connection just yet.

Decisions You Make Out of Self-Preservation

Often you make a decision in the moment of hurt to withdraw within yourself. In the process, however, you close off parts of yourself to avoid getting hurt more deeply in the present, or later on.

You are bound to get hurt by love when you are younger, as you most likely do not have the capacity to stay and integrate the process of detachment and lost connection just yet.

When you don’t open up and allow yourself to be vulnerable and connected with others, you cannot invite love in; furthermore, the price you pay is the onset of loneliness.

The human need for connectivity is as old as mankind. When we lived in tribes, the punishment of exile from the tribe was considered worse than death. You can imagine, then, how deep your need for connection is and how profound is the pain you experience through the loss of love.

Reverting Back to Love by Moving Through Loneliness

As an exercise, observe yourself escaping into loneliness. Follow that feeling so as to really feel the pain of loneliness-- in the heart, the breathing, and the chest. Once you build up a capacity to feel through it, you will come upon the pain of the loss of love. See if you can do the same with this feeling. Feel it in its entirety without further dwelling on it as self-pity or escaping from it, but become fully aware of the depth of that pain and the sorrow of it.

Resilience is the Container, Love is the Healer

By giving attention to that loss of love and the memories and pain attached to it, you will heal the pain of loneliness.

Through connecting and loving again, now with more resilience, you will have the capacity to love more deeply, knowing that love and relationships will come and go, as with all things in life that are bound by time and space.

How is your heart area? Leave your comments here below.