Today I want to share a personal battle that I have been dealing with over the last four decades. The belief that I was unloved as a child. Feeling unloved can have long reaching and detrimental effects on both children and adults.I know now, that this was just my perception at the time. That as a young child, I wasn’t seeing the full picture. But the beliefs that we set up as young children, can continue with us throughout our lives unless we address them.
Here are three examples of ways that children can grow up feeling unloved. And what the ongoing ramifications can be once they enter into adult life. Some of it is based on my own personal experience and some of it is based on the experiences of my clients. Who have given me permission to share their stories.
Before you continue reading, I just want to point out a couple of things:
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This article aimed at adults and what they might have gone through 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. Because the majority of our parents didn’t have the awareness or the insights that we have now in relation to the psychology and importance of childhood love
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My concern is that you still might be carrying around with you negative beliefs in relation to being unlovable or that love is not safe. That you might have picked up as a child. And that you are carrying these beliefs through to your current relationships
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So it is not my intention to point fingers or lay blame. If you are currently going through a similar experience right now, then I hope that this article may give you some ideas in ways to help either yourself or your children
The Emotionally Distant Parent
Growing up with an emotionally distant parent can be very confusing for a child. Even more so, if both parents are emotionally distant.
My parents were very affectionate with each other, but they weren’t really affectionate with us children. As an adult, I now understand how their own childhood upbringings had affected their behaviour as parents. However, as a young child, I had no awareness of this. I just felt unloved and that I was unlovable.
My ‘perceived’ lack of fatherly love – led to the following belief – that “male attention = male love”. Which led me into some hairy situations (a story for another day). Basically, the thought process was “Oh he just paid attention to me – that must mean he loves me”. Which as you can imagine, wasn’t the case at all, especially with teenage boys and young male adults.
One of my client’s father used to have to work away from home for months at a time. And when he did come home, he was more interested in getting drunk with his mates then he was spending time at home with his children.
This set up a belief for my client (from the age of five) that if only she was perfect, then her father would love her and want to spend time with her. This need to be perfect to gain love continued throughout her teenage years and well into her 30’s, causing her a tremendous amount of anxiety and stress.
The impacts of divorce
Thankfully in our post-modern times, we have the ability to end a marriage when need be. In these instances, you really are doing what’s best for you. If you have children in the mix, it does, however, tend to complicate things.
This is why it is so so important to keep loving communication open with your children. At all times, let your children know how much you love them and that’s what’s going on between mum and dad has nothing to do with them.
I had a client come in presenting with anxiety and the belief that she was being punished just for being herself. And that people could only “put up” with so much of her before they left her. During the session, her body indicated that it related to when she was one year old.
She said that she knew exactly what it related to. Her parents had split up when she was one, and she stated that she wished that she had never been born because then her parents would have never had have gotten together, and it would have saved a lot of pain and suffering. She grew up with the belief “It’s my fault, I deserve to suffer”. At which point, my heart broke for her.
When you feel abandoned
Being adopted out or being looked after by relatives, or being put into foster care, can lead to feelings of abandonment and the belief that you are not good enough to be loved.
As was the case for one of my clients. When she was 7 years old, her mother died. Her father couldn’t cope with raising a daughter, so he gave her to his sisters to look after. However, the sisters kept on passing her around. None of them wanted to look after her for too long. This led to my client having feelings of rejection and unworthiness in regards to love. Which has been affecting her love life and friendships ever since.
If any of these situations sound familiar, rest assured that there is a way out. Kinesiology has helped me resolved my issues around feeling worthy of love, as it has helped my clients.
If you want to know more, then check out the rest of my website. If you want to know how Kinesiology can change your life then check out my landing page. If you are wondering how Kinesiology works and why it’s so awesome, visit the what is Kinesiology page. My what I specialise in page details the areas that I love to work on. If you would like to know a bit more about me, then this is the page for you
Want to ditch all of that and go straight to booking a session, send me a message or call me 0419 271 394
xXx Liesl
