H(caps)ave you ever felt like you are carrying around the invisible scars from your past, may you struggle with lower self-esteem, have a constant fear of abandonment, or find it hard to trust others. I felt a few of the above-mentioned feelings before I went to my therapist. As I was being told, there is always a root source of our behavior. The behavior we show in our adulthood has some sort of association or connection with how we were treated when we were a child. If we carefully study or examine ourselves and connect it with our past or childhood, we might be able to change for a better version of ourselves. This might help us to understand ourselves better and helps to heal our wounds.
Let’s talk about those negative feelings that have a connection with our past or our childhood that we want to address in our adulthood. These feelings might be rooted in experiences of rejection from your childhood. Childhood rejection can leave deep emotional wounds that affect us well into adulthood, shaping our behaviors, relationships and self perception.
While I was researching for the effects of childhood trauma, I came across with a bomb of information on this topic over the internet. Here I have tried to summarize the data into 7 points. Or in other words, 7 wounds caused by childhood rejection.
1. Low self esteem
When our parents or someone else in our lives that we see above us or higher than us, like, teacher, coach or another family member reject us, we can believe that something is wrong with us. We can have shameful thoughts. We can think that we are just not capable to receive love and support. Therefore as we grow up (if those things are happening continuously) these things impact our self esteem and makes us think that we aren’t good enough. When we become adults, we can have difficult time accepting compliments. If people show us love and support, we don’t know what to do or how to behave. We can have a lot of self doubt and seek validation from others all the time because internally we don’t talk nicely to ourselves. So we look outwards all the time for someone to tell us that we worthy and valuable. May be this makes us stuck in the cycle of wanting outer validation and then not knowing how to handle it and deal with it. This can really have a detailed effect on our self esteem.
2. Fear of abandonment
Continuing from the self esteem topic, we don’t feel we are good enough, we can consistently fear that people are gonna leave us. Rejection can cause us feel alone and we can often have this intense worry which can lead to anxious attachment behavior. For example, if a child loses his parents or lost touch with them (if this happens early in life), when the child gets older, he might get insecure and this will continue to grow. That person might not feel secure in friendships or in romantic relationships.
3. Difficulty trusting others
If we feel rejected by the people who are important to us. Like I mentioned earlier, it can be parents, teacher, coach or any other family member or romantic partner, that wound is so deep that we think, I can’t survive that again so therefore I don’t want to trust anybody else. I don’t want to let anyone in, because when I did, they pushed me out.
So having rejection can allow us to feel we can’t count on any body and develop ‘toxic independence’ . Toxic independence is an extreme form of independence. Independence itself is healthy but if we feel like we can’t rely on anyone else, we only rely on ourselves, that’s when it becomes toxic. And this is all born out of a belief that we cannot trust anybody or not any body is going to be there for us.
4. Emotional Numbness
When we feel rejected this can lead us wanting to disconnect from the emotional experience because being rejected is painful. Here I will talk about my own self. Whenever I experience something that is painful and really difficult, I often think, I don’t know if I can go through that again. Like a bad breakup. A lot of us must have experienced that. Let’s say if a child has always been ignored, now because the emotions were not addressed before, and child got no emotional support, he can have trouble expressing emotions because no one has ever showed up for him. And hence the numbing out and disconnecting is often the result.
5. People Pleasing
A healthy part of growing up is feeling like we are seen, we are heard, we are understood and we are accepted by our family, friends or close peer group. That’s a part of us developing healthfully, but when we don’t get that we can honestly have an internal kind of freakout and try to figure out to get that back, to be accepted, to have people like us. And that’s where people pleasing comes in.
I often thought that people pleasing had more to do with me being a good person and wanting other people to feel good. I am trying to please others (however as I have been told by my therapist). But that’s not the case. People Pleasing is actually a way for me to assuage my own anxieties, meaning I don’t feel okay, or may be safe, or accepted until the people around me are happy. And so when feel this kind of thing means that we are always looking out to other people for some acceptance, excitement. This makes us to walk on eggshells, we can struggle to say ‘no’. We do all the behaviors as a way to put other people’s need first.
For example, if as a child, our parents completely ignored us, we were emotionally neglected as children, then we do everything in our power to seek approval from them, to get their attention. Now as we get older we can have a difficult time asserting ourselves. So, that’s how this okay our when it comes to rejection and people pleasing behavior.
6. Perfectionism
I personally have been suffered with the wound of ‘perfectionism’. I didn’t even know about this, until I was being told by my therapist. So what is perfectionism? If a child has been rejected or has not been recognized fully or he will try to do everything possible just so with the hopes that then someone will accept him, then only, he could fit in, then he might be able to be seen and heard and understood. And that’s why, that child does all these things to act in a perfect way, try so hard to be fit in.
Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It’s a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough-that we should try again
“The Artist’s Way”
By Julia Cameron
When I read this, I thought that was really powerful and important thing to consider when we talk about perfectionism. We aren’t actually looking for the best, instead we are looking for the worst. Instead of the 90% we got on the test, we looked at that 10% we got wrong. As we grow older, it can go the same way. It’s not all the success we’ve had in our lives, it’s the one thing that didn’t go right. It’s that one relationship that ended or one promotion we didn’t get.
I would talk about me as a child (to quote the example). I had pressure to overachieve everything. Whether, it’s about grades, it’s about discipline, dealing with others etc. I was only praised for achievements that I had. Achievements that had unrealistic standards. That’s the only way that I know, that I will get that support and love that I needed. Now as I get older this can mean that I become chronically dissatisfied, dissatisfied with how much effort I put, how much grades I got.
But you know? What the good thing is? I was able to realize this wound, this suffering, while I was on the journey of self acknowledgement. Studying my own behaviors and connecting them with the childhood experiences, helped me understand myself better in adulthood and made me work towards healing these wounds.
So just be aware if you find yourself always focusing on the negative, always focusing on that 10% that you didn’t get, always focusing on that one thing that you didn’t get because it could be as a result of us feeling rejected as a child.
7. Self-Sabotage
When we felt rejected from a very young age, we can believe somewhere deep inside ourselves that we are not worthy, we are not good enough. Therefore we might get in our way to prove that belief again.
I know this is hard for people to understand that ‘how could I get in my own way?’ It’s because we don’t believe that we are worthy, that we have earned it and even if it does show up, (like I talked about previously), sometimes when people give us compliments we don’t know what to do with it, it feels a little uncomfortable. So because of all these fears and discomfort we kind of ignore or push that away. So as a way of doing this, we sabotage. We sabotage to keep us where we are, because where we are, we understand and we know that it’s comfortable. Doesn’t mean it’s healthy or feels good, but we know what to expect and that’s comfortable. We can hold ourselves there as a result of feeling rejected because we feel like, this is where we belong.
When it comes to rejection and childhood, it’s really important for us to recognize these wounds and the ways it shows up for us. Because if we don’t understand something, we can’t change it or heal from it. So just try to make a note of how this has shown up for you. Which of these signs do you find present themselves in your life the most. And I would really encourage you to find this impacting you day in and day out. The sooner we are able to identify, the sooner we are able to work on behavioral changes and manage the thought patterns that we find ourselves stuck in. If you find this getting in the way of you living a happy, healthy life, please share this with the one in need.
__The more you know about yourself, the better you become!!__
