Dear k8tyB:

This opening-the-eyes experience in your therapy as to how much your childhood impacted (and still impacts) your life, this experience is an ongoing kind of experience, meaning:

Your eyes opening is not a one time event. They open and you go: wow, i didn’t know and you think that now you know-

Only there is more opening of the eyes yet to happen, more to see. And then, over time, yet more to see.

It is a gradual experience to see what was as it really was. This is because as children, it is too scary to see and keep being aware of what we see. Because we can’t change things and we are stuck in the situation we are in. So we push away from awareness the scariest things that are happening.

And for a child, the scariest is not necessarily scenes from a horror movies involving blood and all. Simply to be scared (of anything and alone, with no one to comfort the child- that is scary enough.

You asked “when did I become desperate to be loved?” My answer is: when you realized you were not loved. This is a scary reality for a child: to not be loved by the mother, the most important person in the world, for the child, the most needed.

So you closed your eyes the best you could, as every child would do (and does) in your situation. Pushing the awareness that you were not loved made it possible to endure your childhood, to not be overwhelmed by the fear in the awareness. But pushing the awareness away did not change the reality that you were not loved and that you were desperate to be loved.

anita