shahab on Nostr: "If you are not known, seen, and appropriately responded to as a child, you will find ...

"If you are not known, seen, and appropriately responded to as a child, you will find it difficult not only to know who you are—what you feel like and what your purpose is—but also to feel safe in intimate relationships, understand how you affect other people, and safely negotiate the effects other people have on you. You apply what you have learned: maybe compliance worked, or perhaps you were always on guard, or were the toughest kid on the block, or managed your feelings by burning yourself with cigarettes or by cutting yourself with razor blades. These behaviors then become the stuff that needs to be "fixed." ... [I]n order to resolve them, we need to revisit and restructure the drama of the unwanted child. You need to come to a point that you can lovingly and compassionately observe what you had to endure as a child and give the part of yourself the care that was lacking back then. Getting there always is an arduous process. One keeps hoping that other people will love that wounded kid that you yourself can't stand.... [B]ut as long as you can't stand who you are, other people's affection tends to fall on fallow ground."

—Bessel A. van der Kolk