Healing Your Emotional Self (18 page)

Hunger—Give yourself healthy food to eat.

Thirst—Give yourself plenty of water, not diet colas or sweet drinks.

Sleep—Go to bed at a reasonable time; don’t eat before bed or take any stimulants.

Companionship—Don’t allow yourself to stay isolated; reach out when you are lonely.

Sex—Provide yourself with healthy outlets for sex, neither depriving nor indulging yourself.

Stimulation—Get involved in activities that stimulate your mind, body, and spirit.

Spiritual connection—Satisfy your need for contemplation, gratitude, prayer, ritual, or any other type of spiritual expression you need.

The Connection between Needs and Feelings

One way of discovering what your needs are at any given time is to check in with your feelings. They will tell you what you need if you pay close attention. The following exercise, based on a process by Laurel Mellin in her Solutions Program, will help you make this important connection (see the appendix at the back of this book).

Exercise: Feelings and Needs

1. Check in with yourself several times a day by going inside and asking yourself what you are feeling.
   

2. When you find a feeling, look for the corresponding need. Ask yourself, “What do I need?” Often the answer will be
   

   “feel my feeling and let it fade.” Answer in the simplest way instead of confusing the issue with too many details or complexities. For example, if you are hungry, you need food. When you feel guilty, you need to apologize.
   

3. It may take trying on several needs before you find the one that is true for you. You may also have many needs attached to one feeling. For example, you may feel
   lonely
   and your
   need
   may be to call a friend, to get a hug from your partner, or to connect with yourself.
   

4. Be on the alert for answers that are not truly responsive to you. For example, “I feel sad”; “I need some candy”; “I feel angry”; “I need to hit him.” Tap into your inherent wisdom and relax into a more logical, self-nurturing answer. Ask yourself, “Okay, what do I really need?” For example, “to express myself (write, sing),” “to get physical (walk, stomp),” “to develop a plan,” “to learn from it (next time I will . . . ).”
   

   A Self-Care Assessment
   

   The following questions refer to your ability to
   self-nurture
   and
   set limits
   . Write “true” or “false” next to each item:
   

   1. I am aware of what I am feeling at any given time.
      

   2. I am numb to my feelings a great deal of the time.
      

   3. I am able to recognize and meet my needs.
      

   4. I am not able to recognize my needs so I cannot meet them.
      

   5. I am able to ask for help from others.
      

   6. I remain isolated from others and cannot ask for help.
      

   7. I am able to set reasonable expectations (neither too harsh nor too easy).
      

   8. The expectations I set for myself are often either too harsh or too easy.
      

   9. I am aware of a safe place inside me.
      

   10. I feel empty, numb, or lost a great deal of the time.
       

   11. My inner voice is nurturing and warm.
       

   12. My inner voice is critical and demanding.
       

   13. When life is hard, I soothe myself from within.
       

   14. When life is hard, I soothe myself with food, alcohol, drugs, or other external solutions.
       

   15. I can feel the pain of the past and let it go.
       

   16. I shut out my bad feelings about the past.
       

   17. I am physically active.
       

   18. I am not physically active.
       

   19. I eat a healthy diet.
       

   20. I do not eat a healthy diet.
       

   21. I take time to restore my body, mind, and spirit.
       

   22. I continue to push myself to do, do, do.
       

If your answers were mostly “false” to the odd-numbered ques- tions and mostly “true” to the even-numbered questions, you are not able to self-nurture or set limits very well. Because survivors of emo- tional abuse or neglect are often disconnected or numb to their feel- ings, you probably do not know what your needs actually are at any given time. You may not feed yourself when your body needs fuel, because you are numb to the feelings of hunger. You may not allow yourself to cry or to seek out someone to talk to, because you do not know when you are feeling sad or lonely.

If your basic need for nurturing, limits, protection, and support were not met by neglectful or self-absorbed parents, you will have a difficult time knowing how to meet those needs now. It is as if there is a disconnect inside you between what you need and providing it for yourself. A child needs to receive love in order to be able to feel love. This includes love for oneself. If we do not love ourselves, we will not be motivated to take care of ourselves. Those of us who were neg- lected or emotionally abused often look with wonder at others who are motivated to take care of themselves. “Where do they get the motiva- tion?” we ask ourselves. “Why do they care so much about their health or the way they look?” We are poignantly aware that there is some- thing missing in us, something that creates the kind of motivation that would cause someone to say no to a piece of cake, the kind of motiva- tion to get up at six o’clock in the morning in order to get to the gym

before going to work, the kind of motivation that would help someone leave an abusive partner. The something that is missing is self-love.

Others care for their bodies but do not care for their emotions or their souls. They can spend hours working out at the gym but not even five minutes checking in with how they feel. They can spend the weekend running, biking, or climbing and not spend a moment alone connecting to their soul. Or they devote so much time to worrying about how they look on the outside that they lose track of who they are on the inside.

Some adults who were neglected or emotionally abused do not take care of themselves because they do not feel they deserve it. Children tend to blame the neglect and abuse they experience on themselves, in essence saying to themselves, “My mother is treating me like this because I’ve been bad” or “I am being neglected because I am unlovable.” Adult survivors tend to continue this kind of ration- alization, believing that they are to blame for their own deprivation and abuse as a child. As adults they put up with poor treatment by friends, relatives, and romantic partners because they believe they brought it on themselves. When good things happen to them, they may actually become uncomfortable. They feel so unworthy that they cannot take the good in.

Exercise: Why Do You Not Take Better Care of Yourself?

Write down the reasons why you believe you do not take care of yourself better.

List all the ways that you deprive yourself of nurturing, support, protection, and so forth.

Learning How to Soothe Yourself in Healthy Ways

Another aspect of self-care is the ability to soothe yourself. A respon- sive mother reacts quickly to her child’s cries. She picks up her baby and soothes her with a gentle voice and touch. She ascertains what her

baby needs, whether it is food, a diaper change, or simply to be held and comforted. This is considered an empathetic response, which makes the baby feel safe and reassured. From experiences like this, infants learn in a deeply unconscious way that they can get what they need, when they need it, and that all will be okay. This unconscious experi- ence of knowing that they will be responded to adequately and that everything will be taken care of translates into an ability to
self-soothe
. Now let’s imagine another infant and another mother. This time the mother is distracted and impatient. Her baby’s helplessness and the immediacy of his needs trigger her own fears and fragile sense of self. Instead of responding calmly and confidently, she acts anxious and impatient, and she communicates (nonverbally) to her baby that things are not safe. Instead of experiencing the relief of a soothing response, the baby feels even more anxious. The more distressed he becomes, the more distressed his mother becomes. Even food or a clean diaper cannot soothe him, because he is too overwhelmed by

the quality of his mother’s care.

If this mother consistently treats her child this way or in other less- than-nurturing ways (such as being left alone for long periods of time or receiving unpredictable responses), he is likely to grow into an adult who is unable to soothe himself effectively. He may feel off balance and distressed whenever he is in a situation that is challenging or uncertain. From these early experiences he will likely develop the expectation that things will
not
be okay, that he cannot get his needs met, and that the world is an unsafe place. Of course, some children are inherently more sensitive and more vulnerable to nonempathetic responses.

You may have noticed that when life presents challenges, you often experience an intensity of distress that feels excessive and out of control. Or you may experience a depth of hopelessness and futility that seems overwhelmingly powerful. If this is true for you, it may be because your needs were not responded to in a soothing, nurturing way when you were an infant. It may also mean that as an infant you experienced a great deal of interpersonal chaos (such as often hearing your parents fighting), parental neglect, or rage.

Even with these early experiences, you can learn to self-soothe, to calm yourself even when you aren’t consciously aware that you need it. You can also learn to listen to your needs and honor them. By devel-

oping the ability to self-soothe, you also learn to love yourself even when you make mistakes and to stop ignoring your body’s signals for rest and nutrition.

This ability to self-soothe begins with creating a nurturing inner voice. When you find yourself in a distressful situation, instead of allowing yourself to become overly fearful or to obsess anxiously over what could or could not happen, talk to yourself in a calm, nurturing way (you can do this silently, inside your head, or, if you are alone, you can talk out loud). Say things like “You’re okay” or “You’re going to get through this just fine.” When you feel criticized, or when your inner critic starts to go on a tirade, soothe yourself by telling yourself that it is okay not to be perfect, that you are okay just the way you are, imper- fections and all.

You can also learn to self-soothe by connecting with the child inside. Refer to chapter 11 for instructions on how to do this. Once you’ve learned how to connect with your inner child, you can practice listening to her needs, paying attention to her, holding her, and talking to her. By doing this on a consistent basis, you will learn how to calm yourself when you are in a distressful or insecure situation.

Treating Ourselves the Way Our Parents Treated Us

Many survivors of neglect and emotional abuse end up treating them- selves exactly the way their depriving, abandoning, controlling, sham- ing, or self-absorbed parents treated them. You may be so used to being deprived that you continue to deprive yourself. You may be so used to being abandoned that you abandon yourself.

Exercise: How You Neglect and Deprive Yourself the Way Your Parents Did

An important aspect of self-care is discovering all the ways you treat yourself the way your parents treated you as a child.

1. Make a list of the ways you neglect or deprive yourself of what you need.
   

2. Write down every example you can think of regarding how your parents neglected to take care of you. Include ways they deprived you physically as well as emotionally. Also include the ways they indulged you. Here is my list:
   

   • My mother didn’t take care of my personal hygiene and didn’t teach me how to do so (brush my teeth, wash and comb my hair).
     

   • She dressed me funny when I was small and didn’t teach me how to coordinate my clothes after I was old enough to dress myself.
     

   • She had a barber cut my hair too short—it made me look like a boy.
     

   • She didn’t have fresh fruits and vegetables in the home and didn’t cook vegetables.
     

   • She didn’t provide any limits regarding how much I could eat.
     

   • She didn’t get up in the morning to prepare my breakfast before I went to school and didn’t have breakfast food available.
     

   • She allowed me to stay up too late at night.
     

   • She didn’t play games with me or provide any stimulation.
     

   • She left me alone a great deal of the time.
     

3. Take a close look at your list and see if there is a connection between the way you treat yourself today and the way you were treated by your parents. Now write a list of all the ways you neglect or indulge yourself. Here are my responses:
   

• I have a difficult time spending money on fruits and veg- etables. I tell myself it is too much money and then end up buying sweets instead.
  

• I have a tendency to eat too much—partly out of a feel- ing of deprivation, a fear of not getting enough, and partly out of habit.
  

  • I stay up too late at night.
    

  • I have a difficult time getting up in the morning and I seldom eat breakfast.
    

  • I tend to lead a sedentary life (read, watch TV) like my mother, and only recently got involved in swimming and biking.
    

  • I tend to isolate myself from others (I don’t call my friends or make arrangements to go places with them very often).
    

    You do not have to stay trapped in repeating the depriving and indulging patterns you learned from your parents. Although it is tempting to indulge yourself in order to make up for what you did not receive as a child, this will not make up for the deprivation you expe- rienced. The only thing that will begin to make up for what you did not receive as a child is for you to become the responsive, nurturing parent to yourself that you deserved all along.
    

    Psychological Truths of the Week
    

Starting in infancy, children need positive, empathetic mirror- ing from their parents in order to know they have worth.