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Children need to belong and feel significant in their families.Because of this need, a child longs for approval and will find creative ways to establish this need, such as pleasing people, rising to the golden child, being the good one, the scapegoat, and playing the hero, caretaker or rescuer. These traits become masks worn into adulthood, preventing the true self from manifesting.
Growing up in a dysfunctional family ensures chaos and abandonment, where any attention, even negative attention, is better than no attention. Abandonment by the parents provides intense motivation to continue the behaviour that got the most attention, even if it is negative attention such as verbal, emotional or physical abuse. This dilemma can lead to an attraction to partners who will continue the pattern of abandonment in our adult lives. We become attracted to what we know, what is familiar, which might be a partner stuck in their addictive cycles of work, alcohol, substance use, gambling, sex, internet, porn or social media. To deal with this dilemma, we continue the false self hoping to receive what little attention we can manipulate through the same behaviours that worked for our parents in our childhood.
Healing from childhood trauma is more than processing trauma. Healing the adult child is about learning to love the self the way your parents never could. Healing is about forgiving yourself for getting stuck in your false self of behaviours that you felt rewarded from by your parent’s dysfunctional reactions. Recovery is about letting go of the traits that no longer serve your present family and loved ones in your relationships today.
Loving yourself the way a loving parent would love you is breaking the cycle of trauma.
Letting go of the behaviours you used to meet your need for approval is the pathway toward the true self.
When you put down the masks of behaviours like people pleasing, rage, addictions, hero, rescuer, perfect one, scapegoat, what is left?
In that lies the discovery of your true self
