We judge ourselves, we sabotage ourselves, we think we are whatever we were told we were. This cumulative process begins in infancy. Whatever we are met with throughout our childhood is what we think we are. This is called introjection, when we internalize the characteristics of a person or object into our own psyche unconsciously. This serves a purpose for us, this defense mechanism. If we take on our parents flaws and make them our own, we can protect our image of them. It’s all our fault, they did their best, sigh, and well, we were troublesome anyway, on and on. We can reverse this, and we must! Parents remain unhealed, having an infected wound, and project outward the emotions that have become too painful for them to face about their parents. Children are the screen receiving the projection. The cycle continues. We have to break this cycle.
In my blood family, words were hurled and hurt me to my core. I was called names that suddenly and forcibly altered my view of myself. I was teased for crying, my need to cry wrenched from me. My “crimes” were minor, forgetting to put a bucket back in the proper place, not wrapping the barn hose back up perfectly. My grandfather would blow up over one of these “crimes” I had committed, yelling in my face that “I don’t like you, and I don’t love you!” Words in his defense then offered up by my grandmother. “Oh dear, don’t be so sensitive, he’s just domineering,” or “Oh sugar, he’s just abrasive, I’ll talk to him.” This was always followed by, “But he loves you so much, you are his whole world!” If that is love, please hate me. What a twisted definition of love! Even as a young child, I remember thinking, “He screams in my face because he loves me? He scares me to death and makes me cry because of his love for me? He calls me ‘stupid’ because he loves me? I’m confused.”
No wonder people struggle ad infinitum with an inability to love themselves, let alone others, no wonder people gravitate toward soulless, emotionally abusive marriages and vacant relationships.
