The impact of childhood denial or adult relationships

A child brought up by a stressed single mother who is critical and does not allow the child to have fun, or spend time with others for fear of being judged , learns to ignore her feelings to please her mother.

Mother teaches her children through words and actions that men are cruel and heartless. Or that they will leave with your friend, if that was her experience.

Due to shame, her mother might keep up appearances , to look like a happy family on the outside. Although this child does well at school and dresses well, deep down she does not feel good enough and feels like a fraud.

Nobody in the family talks about the lack of love and affection. The mother might resent her children because the father left. In essence, some mothers may not even want the the children , but for a sense of duty. The children can feel it through the way they are parented..

This child grows up to deny her feelings. She decides to look for a partner who will never leave, to avoid what her dad did. And to get the love and affection she did not get in childhood.

She gravitates towards partners who have a need for her. She attaches to partner who she needs to understand, encourage and improve.

She might help a partner to set up business, to change his lifestyle, to dress well, to be good parents. She might even teach a partner how to communicate with his family if he has problems with his family.

While her life is falling apart, she might even look for self-help tools to improve him. Or like some, she studies psychology to help him change and to take care of everyone else. She believes her happiness comes from changes a partner or others make.

The partner gradually becomes rebellious, resentful and critical of her instead of being grateful and loyal. To maintain autonomy and self-respect,  this man or partner has to be his own source of solutions and see this woman as the source of his problems.

Due to unhappiness, sometimes such a woman can get into an affair. Like her mother, she is not paying attention to her needs and that of her children. An affair or her self-hatred affects her children. Just as our parents are responsible for how we turned out, we are responsible for how our children will turn out

When the relationship fails or the marriage collapses, the woman feels gutted. This is because she believed that this man was broken and could not function without her help. If she cannot keep a broken man, she does not believe there is hope for her with a healthy man.

She therefore feels worthless. Unless she gets help, she might give up on relationships or condemn all men or romance.

To change her patterns, she needs to look into her self-hatred.

To recognise the unmet needs that drive her behaviour.

Identify that she needs the resources she is trying to give others first. To take care of herself.

She needs to change herself not others.

Even when she has become a helper, therapist or counsellor, the most fulfillment in such a role is obtained when one is content in their personal life and relationships. Otherwise helping people becomes a coping or control strategy.

She needs help and support. To be teachable.

By the very act of paying attention to how she feels, she begins to validate her existence in order to improve the quality of her life.

Work to do

She needs to parent the inner child who is owed.

She can start self-care and to sit with her emotions and acknowledge how she feels. Regulate emotions and reframe the inner critic.

To self-parent and create solutions in her best interest.

To heal and parent the child in her. To acknowledge her neglect and abandonment.

To give herself the attention that she did not get as a child.

Through words of affirmations validate the inner child.

Rather than help others, create a learning environment where she heals and helps both herself and others.

To create a healthy space for herself in the world.

To create a safe haven to get back to, by learning to be safe in her body through practices of emotional regulation and cognitive restructuring.

To build a a secure base through repeated best interest acts, leading to self-trust and belief in herself.