Childhood Love/sexuality Adaptive Types

[PreciousChild]

I'm reading Healing Developmental Trauma, and I feel that I have every adaptive survival type, but I'm realizing that the one that gives me the greatest heartache is the pride identifications and their attendant shame identifications of the love/sexuality adaptive type. Is there anyone else with this survival style?

When I look back at my history and even now, the most painful memories and experiences are the ones surrounding my search for love/recognition through looks/performance. I feel that if I only look a certain way or perform some great deed, I will be totally loved and in control of the situation. But A. inevitably that bubble bursts, and I feel absolutely humiliated and threatened at the same time since only by identifying with the performance do I feel safe. B. I end up hating myself for seeming braggy and false, which I don't appreciate at all in others. C. I am finally realizing that it is a desperate grasp for love. But since I don't feel I deserve it, I can only get it conditionally by primping and jumping through hoops.

Yet, I can't seem to detect it when I'm doing it. Even if I could, I hardly know what it means to be loved for no reason. How is someone supposed to get love without even having earned it or being able to do something for it? I'm aware that the question is steeped in this survival style.

By the way, I'm still working through the book, so I hope to hit upon more insights about my problem soon.

 

[Chava]

I don't relate much to that adaptive style but just wanted to say I really, really liked that book (related freakishly to almost everything he described of the "connection" survival style).

 

[PreciousChild]

I don't relate much to that adaptive style but just wanted to say I really, really liked that book (relate...

I like the book too. It helped me to make sense of a lot of my behaviors and feelings, which was a relief. Knowing there are patterns makes me feel that I'm not alone in the struggle.

I was meditating on how it felt like to be loved unconditionally. I imagined my dad telling me that he loved me, and I felt how it would have felt to feel special and important to someone who was very important to me. I felt something that seemed really primal - maybe a deep acceptance of my existence.

 

[Chava]

a deep acceptance of my existence.

think I've been missing that too...sounds like a very good feeling to experience

 

[PreciousChild]

think I've been missing that too...sounds like a very good feeling to experience

I actually cried for hours. Heller talks about creating new neural pathways, and I did somehow feel that feeling in my brain. All I know is that after that experience, I'm on a mission to make sure that my son feels absolute, untainted, immovable love from me for all of eternity.

 

[DogwoodTree]

I was meditating on how it felt like to be loved unconditionally. I imagined my dad telling me that he loved me, and I felt how it would have felt to feel special and important to someone who was very important to me. I felt something that seemed really primal - maybe a deep acceptance of my existence.

Every now and then, I get a brief glimpse of this feeling, like when seeing a dad and daughter on a billboard advertisement, or seeing something in a father's face at church when he's playing with his kids, or seeing my DH have those feelings toward our own kids (especially when my girls were little). But it doesn't last. Like you, I don't feel like I deserve it, either.

And I canNOT imagine my own father telling me he loves me unconditionally...he says he loves me, but it has ALWAYS been steeped in self-pity, as if loving me is such a hardship on him.

 

[PreciousChild]

And I canNOT imagine my own father telling me he loves me unconditionally...he says he loves me, but it has ALWAYS been steeped in self-pity, as if loving me is such a hardship on him.

If loving you was such a hardship, then how unloveable were you, right? I'm sure that lack of unconditional love took a toll on you. Your husband sounds GREAT though, so congratulations on at least getting to the point that you found love as an adult.

I've been thinking more on this, and am realizing more and more what unconditional love means. My son has special needs, so I do have to try and address some of his characteristics to "normalize" them to some extent. But I'm realizing more and more how much I can still absolutely love him to the core without reservations. I think focusing on his atypical characteristics have almost excused putting conditions on my approval. Since that moment of meditation on unconditional love, knowing how that might feel like, I somehow seem to know better what it would mean to my child. I think he's noticed too. I realize that everything else is secondary to his utter sense of self-worth, and I can help that by just loving him to death, which with even more clarity I realize I do!

 

[Brenton]

I'm reading Healing Developmental Trauma, and I feel that I have every adaptive survival ty...

I go to the gym and spend $100 on jeans only to avoid rejection, not because I care. I spend a lot of time and money on my appearance, but I'm a wreck inside. I learned early that sex means love, so I believe that if I'm not attractive everyone will reject me, including my wife. I'm one of those who look good on the outside, but falling apart inside.

 

[PreciousChild]

Hey Brenton, I've been away from this site for a while. I was happy to find someone who identifies with this adaptive style. I can't believe that I've been a member for two years. I'm not always here, usually when I'm triggered (as I am now : (. But the great news is that it's been months!

I totally get how you could even think that of your wife. If your parents could put conditions on your love, then that makes it more possible that other loved ones could. In any case, it's about the feelings inside of us that is driving it. The reason I'm triggered right now is because on the performance side of things, I've always appeased my dad by working hard. One of the only times he gave me positive attention was when I was useful to him. I could be assured of survival and peace if I was working for him and benefitting him in some way. To this day, I derive my identity from working for people even at the cost of my well-being.

What triggered me was that I got the message from another parent of a group my child is in that something I volunteered to do was not acceptable and rejected it. I'm finding it so hard to deal with that. I think usually people are fine with someone willing to do all the work, so it's not often that outside the work place, I get rejected. Most people don't want to volunteer.

I'm sitting here meditating on it. I'm feeling like right on the edge of my consciousness is the threat to my competent self. There beneath the surface is the vulnerable, incompetent, ugly thing that I feel that I am that I hate because it is why I am unacceptable. But of course it's a false dichotomy created by parents who only "loved" me when I was working for them. That ugly self is the self that actually needed something of them, and instead of being natural and nurtured, it was distorted, crippled, turned around and became hateful because it helped me survive to hate that part that was needy and got in the way of serving them.

In meditating, I saw my child self and this image was skittish and all over the place and I said to her that she was okay without having to do anything. I don't even know how that feels like, but I'm beginning to. But how could I deserve love without doing anything?? That's what my inner child is saying. She wouldn't even look at me. She was wanting to dash all around trying to get something done and keep away the horror.

Even now, I have this strong drive to make things right and to convince this other parent that the job I did was good and she is so wrong. I might be right, but the feelings are too intense to be just about a job done. I'm literally dying to be useful.

I don't even know if it's possible, but that's what my goal will be - to embrace my being, to love myself without having to earn it. I think the f*cked up thing is that of course in life, no one should just sit around wasting away. But the priorities have to be right. I have to be motivated by wanting to achieve things and be creative and productive, and not be motivated by the drive to fill a void, feeling like I have to prove my right to even exist.

This started out as a reply to you, Brenton, but became about me ranting about where I am today. Thanks for listening.

 

[Brenton]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not at the place where I can love myself, yet. So I make it look good on the outside, just so no one will reject me. Every push up, every calorie counted, every expensive article of clothing, means nothing to me. Its just to keep from being pushed away. I'm extremely insecure.