Dear Buruberu:

I read your two other threads, the first from August 2013.

You mentioned your parents are not together and live far away from you. Can you tell me about your childhood, your life with your parents. I am guessing it was not a good one, that you didn’t feel safe in the home you grew up in, that you were alone a lot, unattended, scared, angry- angry at your parent/s- but mostly very much alone. And so you went out to the world unprepared, without emotional resources to tolerate distress, to understand your emotions and consider them as guides in making decisions. You went out into the world without feeling okay. And you… were never okay, not yet.

Am I correct in part? Please let me know, correct me.

At 30 it is not too late for you to heal from that lonely childhood. The part that scratched your face did so as in to cry out: look, I am hurting! I need help! Someone help me!

Hoping to get your reply as to my first paragraph.

anita

Dear Buruberu:

You wrote above that you felt you were neglected or at least not engaged. Then you wrote that your mum is very loving. And that you were always provided for.

It is very difficult for a child, as a minor child and into adulthood, and even into old age, to see one’s parents for who they really are and one’s childhood for what it really was. No one is more invested than a child to see one’s parents and one’s childhood in the best possible light, and often this view is far removed from reality.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing if there was not a heavy, a very heavy price to pay for such wrong viewing of one’s parents and childhood. I knew your childhood was not a good one without you sharing about it because “the proof is in the pudding”- your distress throughout your adulthood and the consequent dysfunction is that proof.

And unfortunately not having a good childhood is so very common that it is … almost safe to assume so by statistical chances alone.

I believe that your healing, so very possible, depends on your willingness to see your childhood as it was so that reconnect with that understandably hurt little girl and integrate her into your person.

Have you ever attended psychotherapy or thought about it?

Will you share more about the nature of your neglect as a child or the “lack of engagement” as you called it?

One more thing: “Independent childhood” cannot possibly be a good childhood, as a child needs satisfied dependence so to form, over years of guidance and comfort, into an adequately independent adult.

anita