I DESPERATELY WANT TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED
but I don’t want to expose the real me!

PREVIOUS: ACoAs Being VISIBLE (#1)

POSTS: “Healthy Adult…” and “Separation & Individuation”

1. WOUNDED CHILD (Part 1)

2. AS ADULTS
STAYING Invisible – In the present we have many options never available to us as kids – such as searching out people who are relatively ‘sane’ & already capable of seeing & hearing us.
However, as long as the WIC is still running our emotional & mental life, it is the Ego State in charge of the picking process. So we’ll continue to choose friends, mates, even jobs, whose abuse & incompatibility with us make us feel unsafe

This reinforces the WIC’s conviction that we should stay invisible, not just because of the unhealthy people we surround ourselves with, but because of the WIC unconscious connection to the Negative Introject (IT), which is our real source of threat

EXP: In doing early childhood visualizations, Tamara had an scene of herself as a 15 months old, sitting alone on bare earth in a big yard, only wearing diapers & a tiny top.

Near by her mother was hanging the wash on a clothes line, talking & laughing with another women, paying no attention to her little daughter.
It was as if there was an infinitely large sheet of plexiglass between Tamara & her mother – they could see, but not hear each other.
The infant sat there alone, unnoticed, neglected, unable to get thru to her mother – bewildered & scared! She had not created the wall, so she couldn’t tear it down & it was too vast to be gotten around. She WAS utterly alone!

🥀 This image represented her daily emotional experience growing up with a narcissistic mother, who was controlling & over-protective, while at the same time accused the child of being ‘difficult’, distant & disrespectful.  Tamara’s mother had made her feel invisible & then blamed her for the result!

Now, the only possible result of our True Self becoming visible is a feeling of danger. Our WIC is convinced that if we can be seen, we’ll everyone else in the world will treat us as badly as our family did.
So we continue to hide behind our glass wall**. We think that even if we tried to have a presence, we’d likely fail (not prepared, don’t know enough…)

The WIC says : “If I show who I really am & go for what I want”, then : • I’ll be made fun of, judged, criticized
• no one will want me or what I have to offer
• no one will pay me for what I do
• people will be jealous of me, & then attack / try to stop me”…..
AND even if I by some miracle manage, it will be taken away

**Glass wall: While we’re trying to hide behind a creative facade, we do NOT really go completely unnoticed. Depending on how we function in the world, other people see various aspects of us – both our good qualities & our damage.

• What all ACoAs** present to the world is our ‘defensive persona’, an outer shell housed in the PP or WIC ego states, & in some cases a clever but unhealthy Adult. The sad thing is that we believe this outer shell is the real us. Actually, it’s a mis-directed version of our natural personality, distorted by childhood abuse & neglect

While many of us are terrified of even that much exposure, those of us who tend towards the blatant are nevertheless suppressing or perverting the healthy Natural Child, trying to show the world (our parents) we deserve to be valued (“look at me – and – I hate you all”), as compensation

**This is not to diminish the accomplishments of many determined & talented ACoAs who have worked hard to achieve one or more goals. And not all successful people function exclusively from damage – it depends on how authentic they are in their personal life.
In PMES terms, most function out of their (P) Physical & (M) Mental aspects, but rarely (E) Emotionally or (S) Spiritually mature.

NEXT: ACoAs being Visible (Part 3)