Dear laelithia:

You are welcome.

Regarding ideas of where you should go from here:

I would suggest giving more importance to your childhood experience as something that requires further processing and healing. (I understand you are a psychologist- I hope that quality psychotherapy is available to you so to do such processing and healing).

You wrote that as a child you “longed so deeply to be seen by them, to be heard, to hear loving words of affirmation”- and you continued to explain that your parents didn’t get that attention from their parents, that they were stressed, and so forth.  The child that you were didn’t think those thoughts (these came later on, looking back and analyzing). All you experienced as a child was the lack of attention, and that hurt you a lot. For a child, not to be seen or heard or loved is devastating. To reach out and be rejected, as you were, is crushing.  It does not result in actual bleeding or broken bones, but it creates such an emotional wound, a trauma that needs to be attended to and healed as best possible, sot hat it will no longer interfere with your relationship functioning in life.

Will be back to the computer in seven hours or so. Take good care of yourself, laelithia, and post anytime.

anita