When Your Will is Broken in Childhood and You Lose Self identity

I realized after reading that book Scattered by Gabor Mate, where all my frustration comes from in being with my daughter. How I react when she needs attention and I am stressed about something, and it exacerbated the situation to make her even more needy. The reason why I have such low self-esteem, and believing in my ability to parent with empathy - because I never saw my skills as great, due to being ignored for who I was and learning that other’s needs where more important than me. 

Page 140 writes, that a child who is forced to disregard his very self and innermost feelings, “assumes automatically that there is something shameful about them, and therefore about her very self.” Page 242 says that a person disvalues his truth and rather places value on what others think is best for him. He loses his own self esteem. On Page 243 it says that a woman who felt like living her life to please others was second nature to her, and interestingly, he explains, “it had never been her first nature, it was acquired.” Human babies are born knowing to communicate their needs very well, as anyone who has seen a needy baby who screams with rage can attest. “When we forget how to say no, we surrender self-esteem” (Page 243). 

I have always suspected that when she complains and is needy it’s because she wants attention, and I get frustrated because I am held up by my own needs and unable to give it to her. It hurts me because I know she is hurt, but because I have the tendency to not value my own self I feel forced to give in to her and it builds up resentment. This is a re-enactment of my own child-self who was not listened to, and feel frustrated at having my self repressed. I lose temper at times, and lash out on her, but I feel so much regret because I see how it hurts her and causes her to feel pushed away from me.

He writes that when a child is confronted by a parent’s angry face, the tightness and harsh voice, he will immediately experience a loss of contact with the loving parent. “He is thrown into the physiological shame state, or into a reactive and aggressive rage meant to keep shame at bay” (Page 156). 

When I do occasionally show anger towards her, for pushing my boundaries and really it is me who let that happen, she often cries and acts hurt, or becomes compliant and in a daze. When I was little, and I witnessed violence and anger from my mother, I reacted by pushing her away, I guess to push the shame I experienced away from me. 

It is amazing to see that how I treat her affects her development so much, as he says, “If the child is to be freed to go through the necessary developmental stages, the attachment relationship has to be made paramount” (Page 147).

It angers me that I never had a sense of attachment and attunement from my own childhood, and now I do not know how to show it to my child properly. I am either overly giving, or when I explode from giving too much, I am harsh and angry with her. It is so hard for me to be present. I am trying, and I know that with every effort I make and every connected moment we have it means something important and it will affect her entire life. How scary is it then that motherhood and mothering a child is seen as so minor or importance in comparison to working and having money? It’s insane. Abusing the self through drugs, overwork, addictions etc, he says, “All these behaviors and attitudes reveal a fundamental stance towards the self that is conditional and devoid of true self-respect.” And “True self-esteem is who one is, contingent self-esteem is only what one does” (Page 238- 239).

A child needs unconditional positive regard, that has “no conditions of worth attached to it,” and she cannot do anything to win or lose the the love. The key factor to healing is “cementing the attachment relationship” (Page 146).

I know she gets disassociation when I ignore her for so long, and she starts acting hyperactive. “Disassociation is a nature given emergency survival technique m. It is not meant for everyday use, but it is to be employed in the rare circumstance when to feel pain threatens survival more than to not feel pain.” Condition for it is severe distress, and helplessness. A baby goes through it when they are not mirrored in their feelings, and the mother seems over anxious and they read her expression and cannot stop the anxiety, it is too overwhelming for their fragile nervous system so they have to disassociate (Page 119-120). 

“The problem with unconscious psychological defenses is that they cannot be shed at will. They were induced without our conscious will in the first place, indeed before we had any will at all.” It then became a default setting in the brain, that gets switched on easily when experienced a similar response to the initial one (Page 120).

My responses of stress when I see my child is stressed is automatic and reactive, due to being forced in childhood to suppress my own feelings in response to others’ will, and so I repress my own needs. It leads to similar patterns of my past, of resentment and self-doubt of who I am and my rights to be myself. I disconnect from her and become a robot, and she senses my stress and is even more in stress.

“Integration of cognition with emotion- the melding of what we know with what we feel- is the very integration the healing process of ADD requires. Lack of it underlies the fragmentation of the ADD mind” (Page 144).

Knowledge is power, and the way to heal. Because I know what I was lacking, a real attachment in childhood, I know where I go wrong in my own child raising. I do not have the tools for healthy relationships, and I am not good with boundaries. It is sombering, because I tended to think I was perfect and a good mother, because I find myself to be kind and loving. The truth is, I have weaknesses in being able to be present and set boundaries with others and it extends to my daughter. I have to keep in mind that I am enough, and I can say no to her when I need to. The way I treat her will be the way she treats her own self.