Dear Daniel:

When the child turns older and his needs and feelings are filed away in a dark basement in a folder marked “unimportant/ no one cares”- then it is the job of the now-adult to go down to the basement, brush off the dust from that folder, open it, welcome his needs and feelings back into his adult brain and body, and let those welcomed needs and feelings bring life into him. That life is the motivation he needed all along, the motivation to initiate and persist through difficulties.

If the adult cannot achieve the above, then, yes he is responsible for remaining separated from his needs and feelings.

The child that he was, was not responsible for the separation taking place (the parents were). As an adult, only he can go down to the basement, therefore he is responsible to go there.

anita