Читать книгу When You Think You're Not Enough - Daphne Rose Kingma - Страница 12

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.

—Michael Pritchard

Children always follow their parents' example. We treat ourselves emotionally the way our parents treat ourselves emotionally the way our parents treated us. If your parents treated you as if you were unworthy of their love—even if this was unintentional— you will feel unworthy of your own love. This will be true until you consciously take steps to change the way you feel about yourself.

We've heard a lot in recent years about “dysfunctional families,” as if the majority of families actually function, as if it's only the rare or uniquely troubled family that's dysfunctional; but the truth is, every family is dysfunctional to some degree. Mine was. Yours is too. It isn't, in some ultimate sense, anyone's fault. It's in the nature of being human that our parents will have human failings. None of us has been loved perfectly, or even well enough. That's just the way it is. And that's why, as part of growing into our beauty as human beings, we must take up the task of learning to love ourselves. Ultimately, it's an inside job. It means going to the depths of yourself and getting acquainted with the lovely soul who deserves your support, care, affection, forgiveness, and compassion.

All issues of self-love are related to our sense of our own value, which is created very early on. When we're little, we depend on our parents to make life safe for us. When they fail to do so in some big or little way, our unconscious sense is that we aren't worthy of their love. We're not able to say that they're inept or inadequate parents, that they have human limitations. We can't say to ourselves that maybe they're still suffering from what they experienced with their own parents. Instead we say, If they're not loving me the way I need to be loved, it must be my fault. I must be unlovable. As children, we always interpret the lack of love we experience as somehow being our fault.

That's why the child who's left waiting on the stairs for food can't say to herself, my parents are in a bind, they're overwhelmed by their circumstances. Instead she says, it would be better if I had never been born. The child who's one of ten children feels like he's always in the way; the child of the busy brilliant professor grows up feeling she isn't smart enough; the son of the angry alcoholic father feels that his father wouldn't drink if only he behaved himself; the boy whose mother gave up her career as a fashion model feels guilty because being pregnant with him ruined her figure; the girl whose mother is deaf feels unworthy because her mother can't hear her; the teenager in the ghetto feels like a burden because her father disappeared.