PREVIOUS: Lack of Comfort #1

SITE: The Lethality of Loneliness

ACoA PAST (cont)
a. Health (see Part 1)

b. Damage – Everyone goes thru periods of loneliness, but when it’s long-term (our whole life) – it points to how greatly we were abandoned as kids – not just physically, but in every PMES way.
The ACoA’s hole-in-the-soul (Part 1) is caused by the lack of internalized healthy loving parents – because it was not available.

What we did absorb was all of their S-H, depression, anxiety & loneliness – along with their behavior pattern & distorted thinking (CDs). So we carry a great emptiness in our gut, where human beings ‘feel’ emotions – that lack of a safe, nurturing presence!

• Our loneliness started at the very beginning of life – being in the ‘care’ of parents who were emotionally unavailable, psychologically abusive &/or physically absent or harsh.

REMINDER – Children need to feel truly, deeply cared for & cared about, to be connected at a body & soul level, in order to feel safe.

Most ACoAs had no choice but to swallow whole a daily dose of ‘aloneness’ from our parents’ WIC & hostile PP. We had to live with & try to survive their inability to provide a loving, healthy connection (not symbiosis!). Their lack became ours. This broke our heart!

EXP: As an adult Julie has always had trouble falling asleep – she’ll stay up reading or watching tv until her eyes hurt. Her family moved a lot – with a constant loss of home, friends & possessions. She was a victim of bullying at home & at school, religious strictness & outrageous expectations.
She understands now that she was never comforted AND constantly deprived of trying to comfort herself in a chaotic & unhappy life.

Her mother happily told family & friends ‘funny’ stories about how hard she’d worked at stopping little Julie’s thumb-sucking as a baby – putting pepper on the thumb, covering her hands with mittens, tying her hands to the crib…. saying with a laugh “… and that rascal always managed to get that thumb back in her mouth!” Groan.
And Grandma added in disgust: “Yeah, she was born with that thumb in her mouth!” It was considered shameful & weak to need a pacifier of any kind. Better teach them early to be strong & not need anything!

• She remembers sadly that a few years later her beloved stuffed cat was forcibly thrown away – because she was ‘too old’ to be needing something to go to sleep with. She was 6!  Some years into her therapy, Julie asked her narcissistic mother what she remembered about putting Julie to bed when she was little. Mom answered offhandedly, & with a fond smile: “You were such a good baby. Even when we visited friends, I could put you in the other room & you’d fall right to sleep”.

What Julie got from that was that her mom was pleased to have a child she didn’t have to pay much attention to – to be free to do her own thing.  She never even considered helping her child transition** into ‘sleep time’ by rocking her, reading or singing to her, assuring her she was safe…. Baby Julie was just left to fend for herself.

** Babies (small kids) can ‘get going’ on their own – wake up & be ready to eat, play…. BUT they physically need help calming down after the many stimuli of waking time. Without that they find it hard to relax – to ‘power down’.

Julie also remembers her mother deliberately letting her little sister consistently cry herself to sleep – with no attention or affection, so she wouldn’t be ‘spoiled’. She even prevented visiting friends from going into the bedroom to comfort the crying baby!

NEXT: Loneliness in Childhood #1