Adopted

When Rabbis say that ego is bad, and having too much is a sin, they are not accounting how the ego can get shamed in childhood and a person has to develop defense mechanisms to protect it. These defenses cause them to not be able to see their ego needs, and have them met. It is frustrating because people are constantly shamed and it’s like being hurt all the time, and not understanding why. They do not know how to protect themselves because their parents were shame-based, and so they lost their true self in childhood. If the relationship with the parents is how the child will relate to G-d, this is very scary. The true self is denied, and the person with a shame-base does not trust themselves. As John Bradshaw says in Healing The Shame That Binds You, having toxic shame is spiritual bankruptcy. Children need healthy boundaries to develop healthily, and toxic shame damages boundaries (Page 104). The child sees their parents as omnipotent, because they see the world through them, so th...

It’s scary how I use reactive formation to get my child to be happy- I pretend to be happy to cover up my feelings that are “not allowed” from my childhood, like anger and sadness. I was fantasy bonded with my adoptive parents, learning to shut down my true self in order to make them happy, and pretend to myself that they loved me. John Bradshaw writes in Healing the Shame That Binds You: “Each child needs to develop boundaries and ego strengths. Children need their ego defenses more than adults. They need them until they can develop good boundaries. To develop strong ego boundaries, children need parents with strong boundaries. No shame-based parent has these. Toxic shame greatly damages our boundaries... a child cannot thrive. Having damaged boundaries is like living in a house without locks on the door. “Along with their egocentricism, nature provides children with primary ego defenses to take the place of boundaries. Each ego defense allows the child to survive situations that ar...

I think my daughter needing me so much has taught me that true feelings will always come through. There is no point in pretending they are not there, trying to excuse them away and ignore them. She goes to my ex for three and a half days, for Passover, and comes back totally different. Her attitude to me shifts, she is uninterested and angry when he tries to leave her with me. She screams and shrieks when I pick her up, wanting to cry her feelings out. I watch and listen, knowing her pain. It is priceless, to be able to listen. I know I love her and she loves me, and that’s all that matters, and like clockwork she calms down and is the happiest she’s been before. Knowing I understand and still love her. Life is a breeze when I can be honest about how I am feelings and in line with it. I was struggling so hard over the last three days to validate my pain. All kinds of feelings came up, most of them unworthiness and abandonment and pain from society. Not being understood. It’s the grea...

I always knew it. The inner child is the most important to heal. To know that you are worthy of love and affection, is the only way to connect to G-d. Not the way I was taught connecting to G-d was- through suffering and killing your ego. That was before I even knew I was worthy of love, and already my self-esteem was so damaged. They didn’t see or care, they acted like I was special and good that way. Being broken was seen as holy. It is not. Holiness has to come with choice. Otherwise it is just forced upon the person and is not genuinely felt. The person becomes robotic and not human, doing everything out of compulsion and not connected to their heart (Healing The Shame That Binds You, Page 95). This comes from unhealthy shame in childhood. John Bradshaw says, toxic shame is dehumanizing, being either inhuman or above-human (Ibid, Page 26). There is no room for the true self. It happens when a child is not allowed to develop into their full self, and is stunted in their ego needs....

I have to write this for my sanity. Get it off my chest because I cannot work out exactly where in my life I went wrong, and have such a hard time being happy. I want to be happy, and relaxed and present. I want to value myself and know that when I tell my daughter I love her, I mean it all the time. I don’t want to be dependent on her to love me, and not know with confidence that she does. I want my life back. Toxic shame causes us to be more or less than human, to disown our true self. Our self becomes shameful, we feel like a mistake. Instead of having healthy shame, which knows that our actions are the mistake. Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw writes that In a shame based person, the true self feels completely lost, because it became internalized (Page 114). It worries me when I see my daughter offering me “treats,” for her own attention.. I know it’s because she doesn’t feel heard enough so she is trying to buy affection. As Gabor Mate says, children live in an ...

I am so angry at how my ex father in law and his son, my ex called me lazy for staying home and raising my daughter. When it is the most important part of her life to have her mother at her side, being emotions attuned to her. They call being connected to your child “lazy.” This shows how they view emotions and connection a child has to his parents- non existent, and a lie used to manipulate the child for the parents own sake. Gabor mate proves it in his book, Scattered. “The relationship with the parents is the earth, the rain, the sun and the shade in which the child’s mental development must blossom” (Page 146). If a mother is not present to be attuned to her child, he develops ADD and problems with learning and exploring the world. He remains need and stuck in the infant stage of needing love foremost. “If the child is to be freed to go through the necessary developmental stages, the attachment relationship with the parent has to be made paramount” (Page 147).  “When the child ...

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 neve...