Need to Heal Yourself Before Can Heal Others

Sometimes I read things and it makes me realize too much, and so I sink into depression and cannot function normally. Eventually it comes out, in my pain being ignored for so long. After I forced myself to pretend everything was fine for too long.

I really wanted to write this, to process it. To make myself feel better for what I lacked as a child, and see pain in my own child for. Reading Scattered by Gabor Mate fueled all this realization at how much suffering I go through. He says that babies are wired to need attunement from their mother, and if she is stressed for some reason, they will feel something is wrong and then end up feelings of being alone and like no one can understand. We need this attunement so strongly, and will go all our lives trying to get it fulfilled in others such as a spouse or even our own children. It says that infants, as they grow up will attempt to satisfy the he lack of human contact by other means -addictions (Page 74). This makes me so hurt, because I felt this as a baby, I know it because my mother is like this till today- unable to attune to other people’s feelings. If I say one thing, she’ll say another... always contradicting it if it’s against her feelings. She is unable to put herself in other people’s shoes.

I see how I have a hard time attuning to my daughter, and how she avoids being honest about how she truly feels a lot of times due to being insecure. For example, she wants to clean something, and even if she doesn’t know how to, she’ll see me watching and keep struggling and pretending she knows how to do it. Or she’ll see someone laugh at her, and instead of being confused she’ll laugh along. It hurts so much to see, because I know she doesn’t feel comfortable to show her emotions. And I feel it’s my fault because I didn’t have enough empathy for her.

It’s very depressing to me, because I watched myself bawling in front of my toddler, out of my prolonged frustration with my sadness, and she just reached out to me and asked if she could kiss me. I felt awful because it showed that she felt she had to make me feel better, when she is the baby.

It says that a parent who is anxious may try to avoid showing this to the child, but he will pick up on this by her not being able to be attuned to him as normally as she would like (Page 74). Right on.

“A consistently available nurturing caregiver is a fundamental need of the human infant. Adoption means separation from the birth mother to who’s body, voice, heartbeat and biorhythms a newborn is attuned to at birth” (Page 52). Goes on to say that adoptees have a considerably higher level of ADD patients in the clinical population than average (Page 52).

I can attest to all of this. I see how when I ignore my child, she goes to food to eat to pacify herself. I do the same, when I am stressed, and so we are almost in the same boat so of course it feels impossible to help her. I try when I can to be present and loving, but I understand now why it is so difficult. It is so difficult to watch her eating because I feel bad she is stressed.

ADD comes from genetics first, and then will only come out if the environment is susceptible for it (page 28). A tense and stressed environment is a grounding for ADD (Page 33).

A child with ADD looks like he has deficit of attention, but really his mind is preoccupied with something much more important- emotional anxieties. The brain can’t get into “school work mode” because it is consumed by anxiety of emotional connection with the world. The inner world becomes better than the outer world (Page 125). This all makes me remember my childhood of feeling like something was missing; the connection with my parents and feeling their tenseness and short tempers.

I still feel the need to have someone connect to me and be attuned to my emotions. I still don’t have that, and although I try to express myself I feel like nobody is listening. My child needs me to attune to her, and it stresses me because I don’t even have anyone who sees. “...Lethargy and shame are closely connected with the neurological memories   of the distant, stressed or distracted caregiver.” When they develop awareness of their own brain, it leads to “feelings of being emotionally alone,” and the infant is in distress (Page 137). I worry when I see my toddler unable to play without my paying attention to her, and when I do, she seems to want more and more attention and I get upset because I don’t have the patience to play. She senses it and calls me to play even more, and it’s a cycle.

When children sense their parents leaving or abandoning them, they cannot understand the adult motives, and think something is wrong with them. They then begin to either act out for attention, or become compliant to their parent in order to gain love (Page 31). That is what my daughter does, and I cannot fathom how she feels so hurt by my needing time to myself and how innocent she is, that it hurts her. I give her a bit of attention, and it is not enough she wants me to play more and more, and so I get annoyed. I worry that she feels shamed of her needs, and it triggers my feeling like I am too needy, and subconsciously I expect her to be like the parent I never had to attune with how I’m feeling.

Carl Rogers says “The healing process relies on the basic trustworthiness of human nature.” He says infants are narcissistic by nature, and go through a stage of not having their own experiences or point of views of others, and therefore see the world through their own needs. They may get stuck in it, if their needs are not met and they cannot outgrow this stage (Page 145). Yes, this is the story of my life. I got stuck in the stage of not having been seen, and still like a narcissist toddler who needs attention.

In his book Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers says that a child has to feel unconditional positive regard, and that nothing he can do can take this away or create it (Page 146). I love this, and I see it with my daughter that she needs this. To feel accepted for who she is is vital to her self-growth. I see that when I seem untrusting in her ability, such as to use the toilet, she stops and regresses to pampers. She gets a shocked and shamed look on her face when I tell her she cannot do something, because it creates too much hassle for me.

A newborn needs the calm, directive attention of his mother to organize his attention. This is because the emotional side of the brain develops before the logic side (Page 124).

This all may be why we judge others are being too needy of us, and see others as insecurely as we see ourselves due to our own shame of needs not being met: the shame of the self that a baby feels when he is aware of his own self due to his mother not attuning to his needs. It causes people to see the outside world in constant emotional anxieties, and be stuck in their own world (Page 125).

It angers me that religious Rabbis and teachers can put down the ego as “bad,” when it was really from unmet ego needs in childhood that we have no control of. It is retraumatizing to learn that your basic needs are shameful and should not be had. Instead of repressing and suppressing ourselves, it is important to find the source of our problems and heal.