(Stillness in the Storm Editor) Children need love and nurturing to fulfill their potentials in life. As a student of psychology, particularly, developmental psychology, I can attest to the fact scores of studies have been conducted suggesting the formative years of your life are critically important. The following 9 symptoms of an unloved child relate to how you define yourself in life, what’s called your personal narrative. If we learn to retake control of our personal narrative, everything in life gets easier and better.
Developmentally, the intellectual mind doesn’t begin to develop in earnest until around the age of six or seven. And it doesn’t fully mature, physiologically, until the mid twenties. Some studies suggest maturity may take as long as the late 30s and 40s to fully develop. These mainstream data points support the following premise, that as children, we outsource or definitions of reality and the formation of our personal narrative to our parents, and by extension to culture in general.
For all intents and purposes, you accept the worldviews and life philosophies of your parents. This is a subtle process that happens over years of time. As children, we look to our parents to approve of us. When we do things that they approve of the behavior and the frame of consciousness that gave rise to it is reinforced. For the most part, parents and children are more aware of the subject matter of any given behavior, discussion, or activity, more so than the characterological structure or narrative in place behind the scenes.
For example, as a child, you might desire to go to play with your friends. If your parents don’t like one of your friends because he isn’t as clean and tidy as they would like, for instance, then this judgment is the parent’s basis for not allowing you to play with them. If they go to you and say, “You can’t play with this friend because they aren’t clean, they are a dirty person” than this statement has several philosophic presuppositions that your young subconscious mind absorbs into your personal narrative structure.
In this instance, the presuppositions are that people who are unclean are undesirable, deplorable, and objectionable, shouldn’t be around you and that if you do spend time with them you might be socially ostracized from your social group. As a child, you learn that if you want to remain in good standing with your parents, and therefore, any valued ingroup, you’d better adhere to the social norms of that group or risk being an outcast.
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This particular subset of life philosophy is related to socialization and ingroup-outgroup dynamics. As human beings, social values are incredibly important, as the quality of one’s life is often directly related to their social status and ability to express themselves in ways the group values. As such, this makes a good example for understanding how our parent’s attitudes can be easily impressed on to their children.
Neurologically, social ostracism (abandonment) is mediated by the amygdala, which is responsible for identifying negative facial expressions in people. When triggered, the perception of a negative facial expression registers as disgust or disapproval, the recognition that you’ve become an outcast. This results in the production of norepinephrine (fear hormones), experienced as extreme social angst. The same systems responsible for managing social status declines are also responsible for relaying experiences of physical torture. That is, being cast out of your social group feels like being physically tortured, from an emotional level. And anyone who’s had the experience of being made fun of, rejected, or cast out of a valued social group knows how crippling this can be.
In this example, social ostracism leads to a deep questioning of your self-worth, predicated on the fact your valued social group rejected you. This self-worth crisis episode causes you to re-examine your life philosophy, retuning your value system to work in harmony with the social group. Thus, if your parents said your friend was dirty, and you internalized this, as most children do to avoid rejection from their parents, then you might find yourself making fun of your former friend. In essence, your life philosophy was altered through the display of your parents insofar as what they don’t love, what they’ve rejected.
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All of this highlights the power of unlove, that a person’s mind can be fundamentally altered if someone they love uses that love as a tool of manipulation and control.
Of course, in the vast majority of cases, our parents aren’t intentionally doing this. But the cold hard truth is most parents don’t know they are doing this to their children. All it takes is a cold look, a harshly stated rebuke, a less than compassionate response to misbehavior, and the parents disgusts and rejections can be internalized for the child as life long alterations to their personal philosophy.
What this means is that the philosophy that you develop to navigate life was likely installed when you lacked the mental skills to question it properly. But you need to question this inheritance for a fulfilling life.
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Think of your life philosophy as a hand manual for life. If you didn’t write it yourself, how well can it guide you to realize all your hopes and dreams? It likely won’t. Matter of fact, people who question things deeply and develop their own life philosophy (part of self-actualization) end up becoming some of the most fulfilled and productive people in society.
It wasn’t your fault, you were just a child. And in the vast majority of cases, your parents did the best they could.
The critical step most of us never take is to do the personal philosophy work to examine and evaluate the philosophy we inherited from our parents and society. By becoming your own philosopher you also become the author of your own life, you can actually rewrite or rework the fundamental codes of consciousness—to use a programming analogy—that you use to do everything.
What does this mean in relation to personal narrative and the unloved child?
Briefly, it suggests that if you were neglected as a child, your neurology implicitly interpreted the experience as you being cast out of your social group. For all intents and purposes, as an infant, your familial unit is your life line. Additionally, your parents, particularly your mother, are a proxy for a creator-concept; your mother is effectively your God when you are a child. If your mother disapproves of you, the substance you need to survive might not be provided. Thus, neglect or lack of love is one of the most destructive forms of abuse, and yet, its effects are often hidden from sight.
A child that suffers from neglect internalizes their parent’s disapprovals. They develop personality alters that can literally speak to them as voices of the parents, issuing disapproving remarks in their mind as they live life.
It might sound like the basis of some psychological thriller, but there are well established bodies of research that lend credence to these explanations. Particularly, the work of Claude Demause of the Association for Psychohistory.
In short, one of the tragic symptoms of being an unloved child is the oppressive nature of a disempowering personal narrative. All of the following nine attributes can be thematically enfolded into a disempowered sense of self.
In effect, the story of your life acts as a guide for your behavior and what you desire. If you think of yourself as the hero, the one who can overcome any obstacle, and transcend any seeming limitation, then you’ll act as such in the world—you’ll be the hero. Conversely, if you consider yourself to be the loser, the victim, the one who’s doomed to fail at everything they try in life, then this is precisely the kind of person you’ll become. In effect, we’re discussing the psychological science of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The solution, as ever, is to reclaim control over your life.
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Specifically, for unloved children that developed depreciated senses of self-worth, the solution is to begin the slow process of examining your personal narrative, making an effort to retune who you are in that story. In effect, you need to become the author of your own life, you need to rewrite your personal narrative so you are the hero. And you need to do this in alignment with the truth so you can actually buy into it fully.
I describe several techniques for doing this in the following article.
The cold hard truth to accept is that if you suffer from any of the symptoms below, you’re probably not in command of your personal narrative. In my opinion, most people aren’t in control of this vitally important aspect of their lives. In psychology, it is called the meta-state, which is your perspective and interpretation of the things you experience in your life.
By consciously shaping the personal narrative you use to navigate life, you can go from a disempowered welp that feels like a perennial victim of circumstance to an empowered superhero that can overcome any challenge via recognizing that anything they set their mind to can be accomplished with proper effort and dedication.
In other words, the whole of your life can transform in the twinkling of an eye if you only have faith and truly believe in your true power and potential. Perhaps this is the secret meaning of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven that says only faith and belief that you are a a son of God is required.
That said, please don’t assume I am secretly trying to dogmatize you into some religion. Quite the contrary. I am asserting that a great many secrets about life are hidden within many bodies of work, longstanding esoteric religions being a good example.
In the final analysis, there are some things that belief and choice most definately effect with great power. We need not invoke any supernatural claims to realize that obviously who you believe yourself to be has a direct impact on what you do and what you experience subjectively.
So take care to question your personal narrative—odds are, you’re walking around with really nasty beliefs about yourself that cause you a lot of hardship. Do the hard work to really and truly change those beliefs, and a cascade of life changes are sure to follow.
– Justin
by Gerald Sinclair, December 19th, 2018
Whether you are aware of it or not, you could have been ‘unloved’ as a child. This kind of thing can and will have lasting effects on you as you go through your adult life and when explored can explain a lot.
You can be taken care of on most levels and still end up being an ‘unloved’ child. Just because you had food and a roof over your head doesn’t mean you have your needs met properly. Sure, you made it through into adulthood but did you ever feel important to your parents?
If you are experiencing the things below you might not have had your emotional needs met in the ways you should have during your childhood. Whether you experienced a seriously damaging childhood or merely face some minor issues here and there, your struggles matter. Working through these things will benefit you more than you could ever fully understand.
9 Things People Who Were Not Loved As Children Deal With As Adults:
1. They aren’t good at opening up.
Adults who were unloved as children are not often good at letting people in. They tend to close themselves off and refuse to show their true selves. They are not sure how to let people in.
2. They are prone to toxic relationships.
Adults who were unloved as children tend to find themselves in toxic relationships. They seek what they are used to and sadly for some toxicity is all they’ve ever known. While this is hard to move on from, it is something they can work through.
3. Trusting others is hard for them.
Adults who were unloved as children are not usually good at trusting others. They don’t trust many people at all because they are terrified of being abandoned or betrayed. It takes a lot to get them to really tell you any of their secrets.
4. They become attached too easily.
Adults who were unloved as children are always quick to become attached to those who win them over. While it might take a minute to get into their circle once you’re there they won’t leave you alone. You cannot get away from them once they’ve clung to you.
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5. They tend to struggle with figuring out who they are.
Adults who were unloved as children tend to struggle with their own identities. They don’t know who they are or how to figure that out. They are always going from one extreme to the next.
6. They take a lot of things too personally.
Adults who were unloved as children don’t usually take anything lightly. When someone says something to them, they take it to heart. Everything gets to them whether it is meant to or not.
7. They’re terrified of failing.
Adults who were unloved as children are terrified of failing. They don’t want to let others down or themselves. They have much higher expectations than most other people do.
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8. They don’t feel like they deserve the positivity in their lives.
Adults who were unloved as children don’t usually believe that they deserve the kindness and positivity before them. They are much more modest than they should be and are always dismissing their own achievements. They just don’t see things as they should.
9. They don’t know how to face their own emotions.
Adults who were unloved as children are not good at facing their own emotions. They tend to be bottlers and do not often deal with the hard points in their lives. They will avoid the issues before them for as long as they possibly can.
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Not sure how to make sense of this? Want to learn how to discern like a pro? Read this essential guide to discernment, analysis of claims, and understanding the truth in a world of deception: 4 Key Steps of Discernment – Advanced Truth-Seeking Tools
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Source:
https://awarenessact.com/9-things-unloved-children-have-to-deal-with-as-adults/
It would be good to have a bit more info on how to actually deal with these things. I already knew I suffered from them and it was most likely because of my parents (though not entirely their fault). But what do I do about it now? I guess it’s the usual.. meditate on it, notice when those points come up and try to investigate them and their cause more thoroughly.
Is there any more articles related to and maybe discussing this topic a bit further? Thanks.
Chris,
Thanks asking these questions. There are several techniques to slowly deal with these issues. As a sufferer myself, I can tell you it’s a lifelong effort, but not a fruitless one. Recently, Ive been using a lot of writing, self-dialogue, and NLP techniques to address what I’m calling the meta-narative or characterological reference frame. Think if your life like a story, with you as the main character. Who are you in that story? Answering this questions is the investigation part, requiring you to look at yourself from a character analysis perspective. For example, if you get angry when in traffic, why is that the case? What is going through your head, what is your attitude, what does it feel like, does it remind you of any experiences from your past? How are those experiences related to the current experience? All of this will help you diagnosis the core defects in your character. In concert with this, also ask who do you want to be? Who is your ideal self? What are their character attributes? If this isn’t easy for you to do, select 5 people from history or modern times that you admire. List all the qualities you admire and why. Once done, you can take that list and use it to create your ideal self. Once that is done, you can use this ideal self as a guide to slowly retune your subconscious mind so that you actually become the ideal self. In essence, the damage from childhood translates into a self-destructive personal narrative. You unwittingly have been reinforcing that narrative all your life. But you can stop doing that and reinforce one that is more in alignment with your ideals. This is a skill, it takes hard work and practice to do, but it can be done, with great success. I discovered this method many years ago, but only recently took the time to break down the mechanics of it. All of this and much more will be in my book about this subject. I hope this helps. Feel free to reach out to me any time ([email protected])