As a child, did the adults in your life protect you? Did you have someone to go to for advice and guidance? Did they fight for you? Did you have an older person you could tell anything to? Did you have a positive adult role model in your life?
Or were you too afraid? Or were they not available?
In our darkest, most confusing, make-sense-of-the world moments, we all have needed someone to listen. As children, we turn to the older and wiser. Most often, these role models are our parents or caretakers.
Most parents do their absolute best to provide their child with a healthy and happy upbringing. But parents are human and make mistakes.
Perhaps you weren’t allowed to express negative feelings. Maybe your parents were overly critical. Maybe you grew up with a parent who was sick or disabled or depressed and the situation left you to fend for yourself. Maybe you didn’t have a much-needed cheerleader or a “back-patter”.
Perhaps your grew up believing that your parents were physically or emotionally abusive because you deserved it. Maybe you had to grow up too quickly. Maybe you were a latchkey kid of a single parent and out of necessity you were left alone a lot. Or maybe you had a parent that struggled with his or her own issues of self-worth or addiction.
As children, we don’t know there is anything better than the world we grow up in. To make sense of it, we blame ourselves.
Sometimes, if we look back at our younger selves, we simply needed someone to be strong, supportive, empathetic, understanding and caring. And it was difficult when we could not find that person. It left us to muddle though life alone.
So today, I ask you to strive to be the person you needed when you were younger… FOR YOURSELF. Learn how to soothe yourself when life seems too much to deal with. Educate yourself. Fill in the gap of what you never had. Be kind and gentle with yourself while you’re learning. Be the strong confident adult that is able to tell yourself that it does get better.
If all this seems like unfamiliar territory, therapy can foster change, growth and clarity.
Carrie
I agree 💯 %! What’s extremely difficult is when you find yourself facing a wake-up call in your 30’s/40’s and realizing so many dysfunctional thoughts, choices you’ve made really reflecting and figuring out and trying to reprogram your brain, and learning how to love yourself and meet your needs in healthy & productive, rather than destructive ways. It’s a long road!
Nice!