Читать книгу Shadows Of Acceptance - Nancy Inc. Rockey - Страница 4

Devastating, wasn’t it, being the only one who didn’t get an invitation to the birthday party or the big wedding? Maybe your heartache was being the ignored child in your family, and your sibling got all the attention, the new clothes or toys. Did you always end up with the hand-me-downs? Perhaps you had “two left feet,” so to speak, so all of the other girls but you were asked to dance. Or were you a clumsy one who ended up being the last to be picked for the baseball team? What anguish! Perhaps you were just an inconvenience and your parent(s) kept telling you to “get lost.” Oh maybe not in those words, but in other ways. One fellow we know had an absent father and a mother who would shoo him out of the house with these words: “Don’t come home until the streetlights come on.” Wasn’t that the same message as if she had said – “I don’t want you here?”

There it is – that bone-chilling word – rejection. The sound of it conjures up memories of slights received and of tears shed. With it comes the poor self-worth that arrives as a result. “There must be something wrong with me. What have I done or said to be cast off like yesterday’s underwear?” Here is the shadow, the dimness that hides from view the possibilities of living a life of true acceptance.

There’s more than just an emotional response to feeling unwanted; there is also the physical response of a gut-ache or heartache. Ever been there? Some who feel unloved will comfort themselves by eating everything in sight, while others can’t eat a thing! Some will rush to a comfy spot for a long winter’s nap, while others can’t sleep a wink; their minds racing with negative and painful thoughts. Others may lash out at those close to them, yelling and cursing at them about the abuse they’ve received. Some will crawl out of harm’s way into a cave of their own making, keeping destructive thoughts and feelings inside them, while retreating to an assumed place of safety. Others may be driven to work endlessly, hoping that their accomplishments will make them feel accepted. Years may pass after the initial discounting or dismissal by a parent or some other significant person in a child’s life, but the pain of that negative treatment looms in the shadow of a life thus unfulfilled. Whenever a slight occurs later in life, be it a huge rejection or one barely noticed, those same painful feelings arise. With each succeeding rebuff, the hurt escalates in intensity and so does the reaction to it!

Most of the responses to rejection are self-destructive. The torture of keeping a mental list of abuses received only piles up resentment and bitterness with the list. Paralysis increases. Eventually, an explosion of catastrophic dimensions will occur with fallout landing on either oneself or on those with whom a victim is in closest relationship. Retaining slights or purposeful rejections, which one cannot help but do, especially because they are emotionally charged, constructs a set of grey, cloudy glasses worn every day by the victim and used to predict and prevent reactions from all they meet.

Why should this be? It is because the brain has a method of working, a design to help us to be protected and have the ammunition to combat further rejections. The only issue here, is that those attacks keep piling up and eventually can cause volcanic-type eruptions when we least expect them. Furthermore, those reactions and eruptions bring to us the very rejection that we fear.

Alice Miller, a widely-published and well-known author, has achieved world-wide recognition for her work on the causes and effects of child abuse and its cost to society. In her book entitled The Drama of Being a Child, first published in 1987 and revised in 1995, she states:

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery of the truth about the unique history of our childhood.”

She continues:

“The truth is so essential that its loss exacts a heavy toll, in the form of grave illness. In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual ‘wisdom’, we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception.”

Powerful words, aren’t they? But oh so true! The history contained in the Old Testament is a referral tool, designed for us to use so that we will not repeat the errors of our forefathers. There is always a precipitating event producing inhibitions and fear, but it is possible to break through the shadow of the past and into the light of accomplishment, success and emotional growth. Your interest in the subject of rejection is, therefore, a path of wisdom. Your physical and emotional health will greatly benefit from your choice to face your feelings, head on.

The ways that we connect or plug in to each other are greatly influenced by the shadows created from our early experiences of attaching to primary caregivers in childhood, and that attachment is determined by how those parents or primary caregivers were equipped to bond with us. Because our need to survive is so strong, it has determined how or if we will attach to others in our lives in a secure manner. Our ability to attach or to plug in has also been impacted by the wounds we received while we were in the process of determining our worth and value (the first two years of life are the most impactful, but up to age 7 is when our thoughts and feelings are formed.)

Let’s face it, the bottom line is this: wounded people wound people. Rejected people look for rejection under every rock, and nearly always find it. If they do not find it, they create it, by behaving in such a manner that others will reject them. Their shadow enlarges.

The forty-five years of study in parental rejection and acceptance, conducted by Dr. Ronald Rohner of the University of Connecticut’s Family Studies Department, concludes that if a person perceives he is rejected, he has received it. One’s perception is one’s reality.

So, if in your character-forming years (conception through age 7) you felt like you did not belong to your family and friends, or if you currently find yourself being sensitive to the slights of others, predicting that friends or family will reject you, you are in the right place! There is so much more to learn and apply to yourself on this subject.

So now, let’s move on!