Dear Jennifer:

I understand that you “feel guilty that I’m tracing my adulthood shortcomings to their parenting”- children and adult children do feel guilty for that. I did. Problem with this guilt is that it prevents us from seeing reality as is, stopping us from healing.

It is not about blaming the parents, it is about seeing how things were so that we can heal and live better lives.

You described this behavior: “I selfishly use a man when I feel empty to effect a change in how I feel, then withdraw. I can make it a month or two, but then that deep emptiness returns and I begin the cycle again”, and you asked me: “How does not feeling safe as a child translate into using men to escape the emptiness; how do I let that behavior go?”

My answer: Not feeling safe as a child does not disappear when we are adults because we have the same brain we had then. The brain doesn’t get replaced as we grow up and older. And so not feeling safe as a child does lead to not feeling safe as an adult.

As a child you escaped awareness of that unsafety in any way that was available to you then. As an adult, you escape awareness of same unsafety in any way that is available to you now. Men are available to you now, as a woman.

How to let this behavior go, to stop using (food, drugs, TV, computer games, gambling, people, etc.)? By becoming aware of that emptiness, allowing yourself to experience it. All these behaviors are about removing awareness of that emptiness, of distress. Regaining awareness- and then relaxing into it-  is the way. Thing is, of course, it cannot be done easily, and often we need help of quality psychotherapy to do so.

* Your brother, reads to me, found a way, for now, to function better. Can you ask him how he did it, what worked for him?

anita