Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume - 4, issue 9 1 March 2020 | Page 15

We may, on some level, blame ourselves for the lack of real connection and love in our childhoods (as the inner child often does), leading us to a basic sense of unworthiness and brokenness. In an attempt to find real connection, we may become desperate people- pleasers, self-sacrificers, or codependents who attract egocentric and exploitative people who are similar to our parents in an unconscious attempt to try and resolve our childhood issues. The list goes on and on … the trauma runs deep. But we don’t need to remain victims forever. We can free ourselves from the manipulation, emotional coldness, false hope, and desperation that comes as a result of being the child of parents who lack emotional maturity. Usually, it’s important to seek some kind of professional help. (I did, and it certainly helped.) But this article will give you a place to start if you’re not quite ready to take that step yet: 1. Understand that their neglect was about them, not you It’s not your fault that you couldn’t connect with your parent/s. It’s not your fault that you were shamed, ignored, rejected, unseen, or emotionally abandoned. A parent’s job and responsibility is to care for their child on a physical, mental, and emotional level. If your parents neglected you, that’s their fault, not yours. Free yourself from the guilt and shame of feeling not good enough – your parents weren’t good enough when it came to parenting, and that’s a harsh reality to accept, but it’s the truth. Accepting this truth will free you from the toxic core belief that there’s something fundamentally “bad” or “broken” about you. As a child, you were a beautiful, joyous, divine being who deserved to be seen, held, and validated. ALL children are. If your parents couldn’t see that due to their own unresolved baggage, that’s on them NOT you. 2. Validate your emotional pain Many people struggle to heal from childhood wounds because they carry the belief that “if it wasn’t physical, it wasn’t real.” But as psychologist Gibson writes, The loneliness of feeling unseen by others is as fundamental a pain as physical injury, but it doesn’t show on the outside. Emotional loneliness is a vague and private experience, not easy to see or describe. You might call it a feeling of emptiness or being alone in the world. Some people have called