Healing Your Emotional Self (20 page)

• Loving Yourself
  

  Loving yourself will do more for your appearance than anything else you can do. No cream, no form of exercise, no diet will do what loving yourself will do. The more you love your body, just the way it is, the better you will take care of it, the straighter you will sit and stand, the broader you will smile.
  

  Loving your body is a courageous act. It can cause us to feel as if we are being selfish, self-absorbed, even decadent. Listening to your body’s wisdom can feel alien and a little too “new age” for some. Yet these are the things we need to do in order to help our bodies and souls to heal.
  

  1. Begin to focus on taking better care of your physical health. Become more aware of your body and take good care of your physical needs.
     

  2. Just the way a loving parent checks in on a sleeping baby, begin to check in on your body throughout the day. Notice signs of stress, tension, or tiredness; pay attention to whether you are hungry; and ask yourself whether you are feeling sick or healthy.
     

  3. If you notice that you are tense or stressed, find ways to relax your body (stretching, meditation, a nap). If you find that you are hungry, eat a nutritious snack or meal. If you are feeling sick, take some extra vitamins, an herbal remedy or an aspirin, or lie down for a rest.
     

  4. Periodically take an inventory of your body. Notice your pos- ture; are you sitting all slumped over or sitting up nice and straight? Are you holding your muscles or parts of your body tight or are you relaxed? How is your breathing? Full and relaxed or short and labored?
     

  5. Determine that you are going to attend to your body’s needs for nourishing food, physical activity, and sleep.
     

  6. Check in periodically with your emotional needs. If you are lonely, make a connection with someone. If you are angry, give yourself permission to express it in constructive ways and to take action to change the situation. If you feel guilty, apologize or make amends to the ones you have hurt or offended.
     

  You cannot expect yourself to love yourself if you don’t love your body. Your body is the most precious gift you have. Don’t continue to treat it the way your parents or other caretakers did. Don’t continue to ignore its needs. Listen to your body. It will tell you what it needs. Show gratitude for all your body provides for you. Honor your body, and it will continue to serve you.
  

  Psychological Truths of the Week
  

• People who were emotionally abused or neglected tend to be disconnected from their emotions and their bodies. Through body-image and feelings exercises, survivors can reconnect with these important aspects of themselves.
  

• Children mirror what they see in life, especially what their par- ents do. Parents who behave in inappropriate ways become unhealthy role models for their children.
  

Mirror Therapy Assignment #10:

Looking at the Mirror with New Eyes

1. Stand in front of a full-length mirror. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Pretend, just for a moment, that you love yourself just the way you are, especially your body. Inhale and really take in how this would feel, the sense of well- being that comes from total acceptance.
   

2. Exhale and with it let go of all the shame you’ve experi- enced all your life. Let go of all the criticisms, put-downs, and “shoulds” you’ve heard.
   

3. Repeat this cycle—inhaling self-acceptance, exhaling shame, criticism, and shoulds.
   

4. Allow your body to rearrange itself; feel proud, free, strong, and loved with each exhalation and inhalation. Repeat as many times as you need in order to expel the shame and take in the love.
   

5. Open your eyes and look at yourself. How do you look now?
   

P a r t F o u r

Specialized Help

11

If You Were Neglected, Rejected, or Abandoned

Healing the “I Am Unlovable” and “I Am Worthless” Mirrors

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

—M
OTHER
T
ERESA

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

—G
EORGE
E
LIOT

I
N THIS CHAPTER I OFFER
specific healing strategies for those of you who were neglected, rejected, or abandoned as children. Unfortunately, most victims of childhood neglect and abandonment tend to continue to neglect and abandon themselves as adults. Many survivors don’t even know what their needs are, much less how to ful- fill them. This is especially true for those who did not receive adequate nurturing from their mothers. If this is your situation, you will need to become your own good mother by providing yourself today with the things you did not receive as a child.

A nurturing mother pays attention to the emotional and physical needs of her children. She makes sure they eat nutritious meals, that

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they get enough rest and exercise, and most important, that they receive enough hugs and are listened to.

If your need for attention, touch, body acceptance, good nutrition, and exercise were ignored by your mother, or if you did not have a mother in the home, you have likely grown up longing for these things. You may have tried to find mother substitutes in your friends and lovers, and to some degree this may have worked for you. But friends and lovers soon tire of trying to make up for what your mother did not give you. The ones who do not tire of caring for you may take advantage of the situation by being overly controlling or even abusive. The truth is, you are the only one who can give to yourself what you missed out on as a child. Begin by focusing on providing the mother- ing you need by paying attention to your needs and your body the way a loving mother would care for her child.

Pay Attention to Yourself

If you were hungry or your diapers were wet, your parents probably considered those
real
needs and, hopefully, they fulfilled them. But if what you wanted was attention, that may not have been considered a real need. Today you may treat yourself in the same way. Do you dis- credit your needs by saying to yourself, “Oh, stop it! All you want is attention,” or, “The time for getting those things is over. Grow up!”

If you were neglected or deprived of the things that children need—namely affection, acknowledgment, and protection—you can’t expect yourself just to let go of ever getting those needs met. You had to grow up without getting the things you needed, but you were left with some major holes in your development and in your soul. You need to fill up those holes now, today. You need to give to yourself what you missed as a child. In my case, because my mother spent so much time ignoring me and my needs, I needed to start paying atten- tion to my feelings and to what I was needing at any given time. I did this by checking in with myself several times a day, asking myself, “What are you feeling?” and “What do you need?”

Because I was expected to fend for myself at a very early age (four years old), including fixing myself something to eat, I learned very bad

habits when it came to food. I had no limits on how much I could eat, and there was always a sense that food was in limited supply. I felt I had better eat as much as I could when it was available in case there wouldn’t be any food the next time I was hungry. I needed to become my own good mother by making sure I had lots of healthy food in the house, by cooking myself healthy meals, and by telling myself that I didn’t need to gorge myself, because there was plenty of food when I got hungry again.

I also did not have the protection all children need in order to keep themselves safe. My mother slept late in the morning and took naps on her day off. When she wasn’t sleeping, she would sit and talk to her friends. This meant I was on my own most of the time. Each day I left my yard and went in search of someone to play with or some- one to talk to. This made me vulnerable to sexual abuse (I was molested for the first time when I was four). To make up for this lack of protection as an adult, I needed to start protecting myself better, which in my case meant that I stopped being so reckless with myself (being around people who were not nice to me, driving my car too fast, putting myself in dangerous situations).

Because my mother either ignored me or was critical of me, I needed to pay attention to myself and provide gentle nurturing for myself. I needed to encourage myself in a loving way instead of criti- cizing my efforts as my mother had. Think of the things you were deprived of as a child and begin to provide them for yourself today.

Exercise: Pay Attention to Yourself

Sit in a quiet place. Relax and take a deep breath. Ask yourself, “What sort of attention or nurturing do I need today?” Do you need to acknowledge how hard you have been working on your- self? How much progress you’ve made in healing your child- hood? How about writing yourself an acknowledgment letter? Write to yourself as if you were a loving, nurturing parent, telling her child just how proud she is of what her child has accom- plished. Do you feel isolated and alone? You may need to con- nect with a close friend or a loved one. Are you exhausted from the work week? How about lying down for a few minutes and

listening to a CD before starting dinner? How does your body feel? Does your skin need nurturing? How about treating your- self to a facial? Do your feet ache? How about a soothing foot massage? Are your shoulders tense? Fifteen minutes of stretch- ing and breathing exercises would help.

Do this exercise at least once a week in the beginning and work your way up to once a day. You deserve to have attention paid to you.

The Importance of Touch and Human Contact

As we discussed earlier, human touch and support is so vitally impor- tant that even infants who are well fed will waste away and even die if their hunger for affection is not satisfied. Feeling unloved and discon- nected from those who can provide a reassuring touch or listening ear can permeate our bodies on a cellular level. And yet you may continue to deprive yourself of loving touch and companionship by isolating yourself or pushing away people who would like to get close to you.

Allow Yourself to Feel Your Pain

This is what happened to Susan from chapter 2—the woman who took on very robotic movements due to the severe neglect she experienced from her parents. Susan was so shut down and afraid of being hurt fur- ther that she pushed away anyone who tried to get close to her, includ- ing me. But gradually, over time, she began to trust me. It took even longer before she began to give to herself the nurturing and care she had missed as a child. At my suggestion, she committed to getting a full body massage once a week by a caring and safe person. This body worker understood how physical neglect can cause a person’s body to grow rigid and how much emotional as well as physical resistance Susan would have to being touched. Even though her body and heart were crying out for nurturing, she was afraid of it. More accurately, she was afraid that if she gave in to the pleasure and caring, she would fall apart emotionally, since all the pain of never being touched would finally surface.

Susan’s fears were indeed warranted. It was highly likely that once she allowed herself to become physically and emotionally vulnerable, all her pent-up pain would come rushing forth. But with the emotional support of therapy, and the expertise of the body worker, I felt confident that Susan could survive her temporary meltdown and grow from it.

After about three months of weekly massage, Susan’s body had become increasingly receptive to touch. Her muscles began to relax and there was a softer look about her, particularly on her face, which now showed just the slightest bit of expression. One day she came in to ther- apy looking extremely soft. Her face no longer had its typical rigid expression. I asked her what had happened. She told me that during her last massage session she had begun to cry. At first it was just tears seep- ing from her eyes. But soon she was wailing like a child. She was on her back at the time—the massage therapist had been working on her stom- ach. She said she felt the sobs coming from deep within her stomach and she needed to roll on her side in order to breathe. The massage thera- pist covered her up with a blanket and started gently caressing her fore- head and head. Susan lay sobbing in the fetal position for what seemed like a long, long time, feeling as if she would never stop. But after what the massage therapist said was about fifteen minutes, she finally began to stop sobbing. The therapist then began massaging Susan’s feet, which helped Susan begin to feel more grounded. By the time she got up from the massage table, she felt weak but very relaxed and proud of herself for allowing herself to feel her pain on such a deep level.

Susan needed to feel this pain, and if you suffered in any of the ways that Susan did as a child, you need to allow yourself to feel your pain as well. Weekly massages can help provide the nurturing you and your body so desperately need, but they can also help you lower your defenses so you can allow good things in and your pain to come out.

Abandonment Wounds

Neglect, rejection, and abandonment (physical and emotional) all create severe emotional wounds in a child. These abandonment wounds can create a lifetime of feeling that there is something inher- ently wrong with oneself.

If you suffer from these deep abandonment wounds, you need to make sure you don’t continue to abandon
yourself
the way you were abandoned as a child. You abandon yourself when you put yourself in dangerous or hurtful situations, when you don’t provide proper nutri- tion and adequate rest for yourself, and when you don’t allow yourself to speak up in your own behalf. Learning that the adult part of you can actually give to the child part of you what you missed as a child can be an especially powerful way of breaking this abandonment pattern.

It can be very painful to be told that you are not likely to receive from your parents the love, attention, and validation you missed out on as a child, no matter how hard you try to please your parents today. Many who were neglected or abandoned spend their entire lives look- ing to their parents or others to give to them today what they didn’t get as a child. Some stay tied to their neglectful parents and continue to suffer from the pain of rejection, abandonment, or disappointment. Others have the expectation that others should take away their pain. This causes them constant disappointment as well as further experi- ences of rejection and abandonment. I want to save you from both of these tragedies. The best way to do this is to stress to you that you absolutely must stop expecting others to take care of you.