About Not Love

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

About not love …

When children grow up in a psychologically unsafe environment, where parents often broadcast double messages to the child, then children have to split within themselves in order to survive.

When such children become adults, they learn to masterfully deny part of reality.

Stop feeling a number of your uncomfortable emotions, needs and not even see what you absolutely do not want to see.

Imagine this situation, a child watches as his mother sobs loudly, buried in the pillow. The child anxiously runs up to his mother and asks why she is crying. At this moment, the mother, right in front of the child, wipes the tears from her face and says in a trembling voice "I am not crying, it seemed to you." At this moment, the child feels doubt, who to trust, mom or his eyes and sensations? An awkward pause, a moment of choice. Trust whoever I'm dependent on or trust myself. As you can imagine, children choose to believe whoever they are dependent on. Because if you choose another option, when you try to tell your mom “but I saw you crying,” there is a possibility of getting a slap on the head or losing your pocket money. And this gives a clear understanding, when I do not believe the one on whom I depend, I will be punished. I don't deserve love like that.

Therefore, it is better to trust an adult, not yourself.

This is a small example of a double bind. It is not so obvious. For example. Mom, can do lessons with the child for 4 hours "because she is not indifferent to what grades he will have at school," but at the same time give the child a slap on the head for every mistake. What do you think is safer for a child to think? Mom just loves me very much and will worry about how I study or about the fact that my mother is now engaged in domestic violence and humiliation of the dignity of the individual. Can you imagine what the risk for a child to understand the second option? Where to go, feeling complete dependence on mom. To the guardianship authorities? Hire a lawyer? Require deprivation of parental rights? The child does not have such experience and the ability to do all this. The child does not know his rights. The child knows only his responsibilities to his parents, fulfilling which he will be loved, fed and shod.

Each parent has their own requirements. And every child is forced to agree with them, no matter how cruel these requirements are.

Sometimes they are so cruel, as, for example, in the family of the Khachaturian sisters, that for bad behavior you need to spread your legs in front of your dad, endure beatings and humiliation.

Often, children who grew up in such unfavorable conditions experience many problems in life. They agree that many things need to be “turned over” inside themselves, something “not to notice”, something “to devalue”, in order to be close to those on whom they are dependent. For example, from a husband, or a boss. Such people can live for years in conditions of emotional and physical abuse, believing that they deserve this treatment by their behavior. Go to work to work for ten people, believing that this is the only thing that they really deserve.

Such people often confuse fear with love, resentment and guilt with anger, shame with excitement, etc.

Their world is inverted, where "black" is explained to itself as "white" and vice versa. Such people are used to calling anything love - material security, control and jealousy, emotional and physical abuse and anything but love.

Because the experience of love, unfortunately, never happened once. And in order not to mourn this pain, it is better to “let through your veins” a surrogate of this reality, so as not to face the horror that can open when realizing that what I have always called love is anything but her.

And then you will have to learn to walk again, to see this world again, to learn to call things by their proper names.

Learning to live with a huge hole in the heart, throwing out all the filth with which he has been trying to fill it all this time.

Learning to live so empty and hungry. And as a small, slender, shaking kitten, finally begin to notice those who reach out to really warm and feed, and not drag them by the scruff of the neck.

Hurt. Hard. For a long time.

But this is a chance to get out of a dirty, dark and smelly basement into a world full of love, joy, care and warmth.

Come, let's go together.