Inner Child Wounds: The Lack of Affection

In todays article, Inner Child Wounds: The Lack of Affection, I will share my story of being a child without the “I love You‘s” or hugs and kisses. I know what you might be thinking, “how is this possible?” It was believe me, and I will share how it triggered me as an adult too.

• Linda J Wolff: Reboot the Brain. Find Inner Peace. Drive Ambition. Live Successfully
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Inner Child Wounds in Me.

When I was a young girl, I didn’t think about what I needed to be a whole beautiful being. I just lived within my parents standards of how they were raised. I didn’t question things. We had food on the table, a warm place to lie down when I was tired, I guess you could say, I was given the essentials.

But as I grew and went to school, I noticed things. I’d watch as other parents would wrapped their arms around their child, hug and kiss them. The words “I love you” came with those hugs and kisses. This was a foreign language I didn’t know of, see, my grandparents didn’t give hugs or kisses either. It was just the world I knew as a child.

But as time went by and I became a teenager, I started recognizing feelings. The articulate way my mother and father wanted everything perfect. Let me explain, every morning my bed had to be made. Mind you there couldn’t be any wrinkles in the sheets or top blanket. Dishes had to be spotless to, there were vegetable gardens to pull weeds from. Also, laundry to hang on clothes lines.

Yet there was the lack of human emotion that comes through those pretty little words intertwined with love, and those warm embraces of affection.

See, I wanted that show of affection with those words.

Through that teenage girls eyes, I yearned for it. Yet, when I was twelve, my father gave me affection in the wrong way. Clearly I could see it in his eyes, it wasn’t love, it was lust. At first his attention thrilled me, as time went on I hated and feared his attention. I would hide in the closet or under the bed just until my siblings came home or my mother did. I told my mother about it, nothing happened, this went on until I met someone.

What I yearned, I thought, I found in my first relationship.

When they say love is blind, it’s entirely true. See, I had started resenting, and had become angry with my parents. They had made me feel unheard and invisible, except for when they needed things done around the house or elsewhere.

Although, I had fallen in love with Shawn, it was really me wanting an exit plan from my parents home, I was running away from the issues at home. I didn’t know how to recognize my feelings and how to get help. After eight months, Shawn and I married. It was too soon. The inner child in me thought I WAS SAFE.

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Self-Help Resources & Books

• Heal From Your Past, Create Yourself
• It Ends With Us
• Things We Never Got Over
• The 5 Love Languages
• Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress

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Understanding I Couldn’t Blame My Parents for My Inner Child Wounds

It took me awhile to understand and forgive my parents. Learning to embrace who they are and their history, it’s helped me to grow into the beautiful being I am today. When I learned of my parents lifestyles growing up, I could understand the lack of attention. See, they were not given affection either and couldn’t understand it. It was the way of life at that time, you just survived.

As for my first husband and I, we divorced after twenty years. Life becomes so complex, because he had his own issues with alcoholism. It stemmed from his childhood as well.

Healing from childhood trauma means becoming an autonomous adult. Healing is really reprising ourselves.

@the.holistic.psychologist

About five years ago, I started practicing knowing my limitations, my boundaries, Spoke my truths, respectfully.

That’s how Cultivating Calm Within came to be.

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