Parental Neglect. "am I Good Enough Now?"

[Born to Run]

I see what you mean. Same here, always have been disgusted by my mother, from intra-uterine on, as I have remembered that through therapy. I don't remember anything before age 5, and little before age 10. In therapy the fragmented child states present themselves in a certain sequence, and these states come with emotions for me, not cognitive memories. We then work with those emotions, and the bodily memories (I do SE) to release the stuck emotions for each child state. In fact it is not a real bond, as a real bond would imply a safely attached child which would not need to perform tricks to try to be good enough. We think that through our tricks we can still create that bond, which is the illusion part. So it is more the awareness of the bond that never was, and the awareness of the illusion that it would still be possible to create a bond by performing certain tricks to be good enough. It is only through emotional work and quite deep confronting of how it was that set me free of it. I hope this can be of help to you, and feel free to dig on.

 

[Dana1010]

So it is more the awareness of the bond that never was, and the awareness of the illusion that it would still be possible to create a bond by performing certain tricks to be good enough. It is only through emotional work and quite deep confronting of how it was that set me free of it.

I have bonds to people I call "stand-ins" for my parents. I am obsessed with someone who I knew who had certain things in common with my father (psychopathy) and treated me really bad. I don't obsess about my father but I obsess about him--doing tricks to mend the bond that never was when he's been out of the picture for years. Which bond do I work on--the original bond to my father or the bond to the stand-in? Which is likely to get me out of the renegotiation pattern?

 

[Flossy]

@Dana1010

I am also analytical and pragmatic. What worked for me in this instance was that I took on 18 months with a life coach. I did it all by email and she became the person who was the perfect mother I needed. I had spoken to her on the phone initially and her generosity with the value she gave me for the dollars I spent surprised me. I would apologise for the depth and frequency of my emails and she never once let me down in responding to them, regardless of how many I sent.

Bottom line, I trusted her implicitly eventually. She proved to me that she could be trusted and she gave me more than anyone could have ever given me.

Finally, here was an example of a woman who could help me to learn how to find out who the hell I was...and value each section of me. It was not because she was being paid ( I thought of that). She is now my friend, my only friend and we stopped using dollars four years ago.

She represented my perfect mother. She is proof that proper love and guidance exists in this shitty world.

You need someone you respect, trust and admire to guide you through. As an add-on to this I have had two other older women who seemed to want to fill this role. They were both Christians and their desire to see me become a Christian seemed to take over their desire to be a friend and guide. They are no longer in my life as they could not separate these two aspects.

It's not enough to get a need met through books or through imaginary parents. There has to be proof, living proof that someone is capable of giving what you need, therefore you are worthy of having it and there is proof it exists.

I hope some of this makes sense. I just woke up. Try a life coach. They take you back and start all over again.

 

[Dana1010]

What worked for me in this instance was that I took on 18 months with a life coach.

This is interesting. How does a life coach differ from a therapist? Don't you think the latter would benefit you more because of the real life contact? Email only seems pretty impersonal.

She represented my perfect mother....... There has to be proof, living proof that someone is capable of giving what you need, therefore you are worthy of having it and there is proof it exists.

My problem seems to lay more in the father department. Most of these messed up relationships I get into are with men who remind me of my dad (I've identified psychopathy/narcissism as the link--no wonder they don't work out.) Other times I have thought I found an older male who was interested in mentoring me and being a friend--just a friend. Hah! How could I have been so stupid? It always turned out that they were snakes who would put on any guise to try and seduce a younger woman. Very depressing and disappointing.

 

[Born to Run]

@Flossy A therapist should also be a person with whom you can develop a safe and healthy attachment, which allows for trust, respect and in a way love and care too. Living proof seems contradictory to email to me, but if it works it works and that is the most important.

@Dana1010 I am not sure, but if the stand-in is still someone you obsess over, and probably can remember better, why not try that as a focus first. It is obvious that when working on that bond it is about your father in any case. I have not been in this situation so can not tell from experience.

 

[Flossy]

@Born to Run
I have had many years of therapy and different therapists. I found that life coaching focuses on "how to live life" rather than
"how to live life after trauma" or "what traumatised me".

This was missing in my upbringing.

It took me back to basics of how to live a human life. It did more for me than 20 years of therapy did because it gave me the foundation I should have been given as a child. It gave me a foundation of who I am. Therapy did not do that. Coaching for me was like going to
"how to be a human school".

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Can you think of a substitute for unconditional parental love available to a lone adult?

I've decided to stop looking for it. I am learning to use the radical acceptance skill to simply accept that I will never feel maternal love (i.e. from my mother to me). I am not going to seek out some second-rate substitution because it will never be what I am looking for. Acceptance allows me to move through healing stages. I am able to feel sad that I didn't have a maternal sort of mother who could love me like I needed. I am not dwelling, I am not wallowing in self-pity. I am feeling legitimate emotions related to this situation and I think this is healthy for me. Otherwise, I'd be searching out something I can never have, and healing would be indefinitely delayed.

This is how I view the lack of motherly love in my life.

 

[Dana1010]

Acceptance allows me to move through healing stages. I am able to feel sad that I didn't have a maternal sort of mother who could love me like I needed.

This reminds me of this:

I think through grieving and becoming aware of the illusion, I was able to give up that mindset.

Do you think radical acceptance allows for grieving to begin? I know that for me, the reaction I'm stuck in is, "No, no, no, you can't do this to me." I don't know how to give up the fight. I feel outraged, like I'm letting them get away with something awful. I feel humiliated and degraded. I guess once you are able to halt that reaction, that is where grieving begins? Do you have any advice on getting to the grieving stage and how to get through it so that the emotions are finally exercised?

 

[Born to Run]

For me acceptance usually only follows after emotional work like grieving. I understand your reaction very well as that is what I am in at the moment too, but with another piece of trauma. Still I believe for me it always follows the same route: cognitive awareness and analysing to death, going into the emotion, release and process, acceptance. I am also outraged at the moment and don't know what to do with it. Anger is often an emotion that is the phase before grief, as in anger you still want to fight it, and it does not hold acceptance yet. Sadly there comes a point where you can only grief about what not was. Sorry, yes this is what you have written too. It is an emotional process and fully getting connected to the emotions is how I get through them, and can be released. I usually submerge in certain emotions or certain child states you could say for some time, and then they are ready to be released.
What I said before about having no bond was maybe not correct, as we do need a bond as a child, even if this is a survivors attachment bond. So better would be a bond without any love that we need to break.

 

[Born to Run]

It took me back to basics of how to live a human life. It did more for me than 20 years of therapy did because it gave me the foundation I should have been given as a child. It gave me a foundation

I understand this very well and I am very glad you found this solution. I also had 20+ years of talk therapy, which still did not free me from trauma. For me somatic experiencing has been my life saver. It is through this method that I also have understood much more about a normal human life as the therapy is so much more human than the talk therapy in which you are often not much more than an object of which notes are taken in a notebook. Through this therapy and therapist and in only 3 years I have also gained so much more than those previous 20 years. SE is the most humane therapy in the world imho :)

 

[fellowsufferer]

I like this post and the ongoing discusions very much. motherly love is the oxygen for all life! I found that if you didn't experienced this nessecary love, it has the most profound impact on your life. In that i don't have the best words to express my emotions (english is limited for me). I've only want to say i like this thread very much!

 

[Dana1010]

Still I believe for me it always follows the same route: cognitive awareness and analysing to death, going into the emotion, release and process, acceptance.

I really want to go through these steps too; I just keep being thwarted in my efforts. My last therapist had a very suspicious habit of steering the conversation away from the thing that was bothering me, so the awareness and analyzing part was stalled and driven off by her. She just seemed to want to stay on light, trivial topics for as long as possible.

For me somatic experiencing has been my life saver.

And she was supposed to be doing SE, but I feel like she was a hack who was not adequately trained in that therapy. Can you tell me what your SE therapy looks like so I can try to find someone who is doing it right?

Also, isn't SE therapy quite different than the process you mentioned above--"cognitive awareness and analyzing to death, going into the emotion, release and process, acceptance?" Those two processes seem to be contradictory in a lot of ways. Am I mistaken?