At the airport recently I was going to the gate alongside parents traveling with their two young boys. The elder boy was walking together with his parents, but the younger was peevish, staying behind and slowing everyone down.
He didn't want to go through security and therefore walked as slowly as possible to get his parents' attention.
Suddenly this five-year-old, who followed the rest of the family hugging his teddy bear, started crying out:
"You don't like me. Nobody likes me. You like Sam more than me."
Hearing him say this, sudden tears of compassion came to my eyes.
I understood so well how he felt.
The scene could have been lifted directly from my childhood, even the words he used were the same.
My cousin still teases me about the time when we visited her family. I woke everyone up during the night as I was crying out loud my 'nobody loves me' cry. No matter how much my mom comforted me, I had already formed a belief that I was not lovable at the age of four.
It was not my fault, nor was it my parents' fault. They didn’t know how to experience their feelings or how to teach me to experience mine. In the late 70’s and 80's, when I grew up, people were often not as emotionally or spiritually aware as we are today.
Also, there’s cultural patterns. I come from Finland and Finns are known as silent people who do not easily express any kind of emotion. Emotions were simply not talked about or expressed that much when I was a child.
They did their best, like most parents do.
There’s a reason why I’ve had to heal myself emotionally in this lifetime.
Sometimes, it only requires one sentence or one look, for the child to create a trauma; a harmful self-belief which can affect them for decades if it’s not released and changed.
In my case, I never really learned how to feel and deal with my emotions, fears, and feelings as a child.
I felt abandoned because I didn’t get the emotional response I needed from my parents.
As a little girl, I learned subconsciously that I needed to earn love.
I learned if I do a lot; become better; improve myself; and aim for perfection all the time, then I get approval. Then I am enough and I earn a reason to receive the love and approval I so craved. No one required me to do that. I did a lot of sports; was good at school; and had a full schedule when I was little. I thrived as a child, but as long as I can remember, I felt lonely.
Everyone thought I was ambitious and that’s why I was so hard on myself. They thought that was why I was so hard working and needed to constantly achieve something, to feel fulfilled. I never felt I’m “there” - nothing was enough.
Working hard, pleasing people and striving for perfection didn’t work out.
It didn’t wipe away the feelings of loneliness and fear of abandonment; or the fear that I don’t belong anywhere.
I repeated these cycles for decades, until I stepped on the path of self-love and approval and learned deep down the root cause of these feelings.
As an adult, my emotional wound - I’m not lovable as I am and love needs to be earned - made me work and push myself too much. It was so exhausting, I created unstable, abusive relationships, and I couldn’t really trust anyone enough; I still thought they would hurt or abandon me. All this made me create physical issues and self-sabotaging habits - it all comes from a confused mind and misleading beliefs.
Things have changed for me since and fortunately there’s a way for everyone to change these beliefs.
Emotional abandonment is one of the deepest wounds; and difficult to overcome.
We all have emotional wounds and so many of us believe we are not good enough to have and get what we really deserve and want - often very simple things.
We can repeat our family patterns from generation to generation until we put a stop to it. Any kind of suffering doesn't really run in a family - nor do most diseases.
It's not easy to change habits or behavior if you don't know what’s causing them or how to solve your issues at the root. But this self discovery is the only way to stop passing issues on to your kids; or repeating patterns in your own life.
That is your responsibility as a parent and you owe it to yourself too (same goes with relationships). If you repeatedly do something that you don't understand and don't like about yourself (maybe something your parents did to you) - there is a way to change it.
When working with clients, and on my own healing journey, I have found ways to heal and get over these painful patterns.
The tools I have found work best to help change habits are transformational hypnotherapy; energy healing work; and coaching.
Much love,
Jenni