Love is not nor should be a fairytale-the codependent fantasy.

What many people do not realize is that when you are emotionally abused as a child, patterns of relating to others--as well as to self are impacted in negative ways.

If you were emotionally abused as a child and treated with indifference, then you have been programmed to see self as a victim. The psychological term for this is called 'learned helplessness.'

Unfortunately those of us who were abused, tend to attract narcissistic type personalities.

It seems we emotionally abused children attract partners later on in life who fail to have the capacity to have empathy and or compassion for others. As adults we attract similar energy beings to our parents, as if we are seeking a matching glove to our childhood experiences.

Research with powerless dogs has indicated that when a being feels powerless to escape cruelty, the being will eventually 'give up' believing escape is possible. When this happens a mental switch is turned off, that disengages the mind from ever believing that choice...

During my work as a Life Coach for Adult Children of Alcoholics, I have found common traits to be true. The act of having ones childhood pain ignored, denied or treated with indifference by ones parents, but especially by ones mother has a devastating impact on how one sees Self as an adult.

No longer under the thumbs of ill equipped parents, adult children leave their families of origin and begin trying to make a go of life out there on their own. Sometimes many years later, wounded adult children still struggle with feelings of unworthiness, powerlessness, and inauthenticity. My clients universally seem to feel 'stuck'. No matter how much spiritual work they do, and regardless of how often they are able to distract themselves from the quicksand within, more often than not, most usually come back to this nagging feeling of being 'stuck'.

It isn't an easy task. Helping my clients 'see' what the people they most trusted brainwashed them to deny, can be complicated to say the least....

But what about those of us who felt unwanted, like a burden, as if we were just in the way, and made to feel guilty for being born?

What happens to a child's ever developing sense of self, when they are bombarded day in and day out with the sense that who they are on a quantum level--is not worthy of being validated?

Do I sound like I am bringing the hammer down on parents?

Good!

Because I am.

There is no job more important than that of a mother or father. There is nothing more important in a parent's life than how that parent is able to make his/her child feel about Self. There is no job, no relationship, no house, no public honor, no goal more important in this world--than a parent's responsibility to ensure that their child knows...