What is required for healing emotional abuse which damages children’s esteem?
Previously, I gave the 1st three tips
1. Emotional Repression – Feel and express your feelings in healthy ways.
2. Emotional Violence – Heal your own inner child.
3. Parents Use Children to Satisfy Their Own Needs – Strengthen your self-esteem.
Emotional abuse includes verbal violence and the lack of positive emotional support. Abusers control, criticize, demean, ignore, make children less then, powerless, and victims.
So how does emotional abuse damage a child’s self-esteem?
Part 2 gives the remaining four tips for healing emotional abuse:
Healing Emotional Abuse
4. Parents Lacking Ability to Meet Dependency Needs
As young children we need physical touch and emotional warmth from our parents. As children we depend on this to develop trust, connection, and a strong sense of self, core self-esteem.
My mother received little touch and warmth for her Russian parents. In addition, her mother died when my mother was still young. My mother then became the caretaker mom for her dad and six other siblings. As I mentioned before I also had an emotionally absent father.
I grew up mistrusting others and most of all mistrusting myself. I lacked confidence. I always wanted to know how to do any new project before I did it, figure it out first.
Tip: Learn how to strengthen your self-esteem over time for healing emotional abuse. See The Self-Esteem Workbook by Glenn R. Schiraldi.
5. Feelings Denied
When as children we learn to deny certain feelings like rage, sadness, or joy etc., these parts of us dissociate or split off. This also has been called a soul split. As children we may experience many of these without even realizing it.
I learned in my dysfunctional family to take care of my mother’s emotions rather than feeling my own. My wife, Lyn, took care of everybody’s feelings in her birth family without even knowing.
The full range of emotions needs to be mirrored back to children by parents for the children to feel a complete sense of themselves, their abilities, and their worth.
Tip: Find a good energy healer you trust for healing emotional abuse wounds and retrieve the dissociated parts of your inner child.
6. Abandonment & Shame
Shame lets us know when we have made a mistake.
Abandonment creates shame in children. In this situation the child has made no mistake, yet feels unworthy of the parent’s time.
Also emotional abuse like name calling, criticizing, and humiliating etc. shames the child.
When a parent feels ashamed of themselves, shame filled, and then a child has no role model for building their own esteem.
I picked up my father’s shame and took it on as my own. My shame became my identity. I felt ashamed of my father being an alcoholic. I felt ashamed having his last name. With this toxic shame I believed there was something wrong with my core being. I had the lowest level of esteem for myself.
Tip: Choose healing emotional abuse which created toxic shame. This isn’t who you really are. See Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw
7. Unstable, Undependable Parents
Children need dependable stable parents for stability and a sense of safety.
When mom is a hysteric or dad is a drunk, children never know what to expect. They become hypervigilent, like I did with a drunken father, always on the outlook for danger. I gave up my feelings, needs, and power always focused on when another drunken drama might occur. On an unconscious level I feared my dad might shoot us all. I believed everyone in our small town knew my dad to be a drunk. How could I feel good about myself?
Tip: To start healing emotional abuse and trauma of being raised in a dysfunctional family. See An Adult Child’s Guide to What’s ‘Normal by John Friel and Linda Friel.
Summary of 7 tips: To Strengthen Your Adult/Inner Child’s Esteem for Healing Emotional Abuse
1. Emotional Repression – Learn to feel and express your feelings in healthy ways.
2. Emotional Violence – Learn to parent and heal your own inner child.
3. Parents Use Children to Satisfy Their Own Needs – Learn recovery methods for codependent behavior
4. Parents Lacking Ability to Meet Dependency Needs – Learn how to strengthen your self-esteem.
5. Feelings Denied – Find a good energy healer you trust to heal your wounds and inner child.
6. Abandonment & Shame – Choose to heal your toxic shame.
7.Unstable, Undependable Parents – Start healing the pain and trauma of a dysfunctional family.
See also First 3 Tips in more detail – https://www.emotionalhealthtips.com/healing-emotional-abuse/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael David Lawrience is the author of The Secret from Drama, Trauma and Pain. His book provides ways for improving emotional health, easing pain and stress, healing physical and emotional abuse and suffering, and spiritual awakening. See book on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Health-Secret-Freedom-Trauma/dp/0615479170
Michael as a Residential and Self-Esteem Coach and Mentor has over 15 years’ experience teaching teen’s self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-reliance. See eBook See eBook Self Esteem- A Teen’s Guide for Girls This book is valuable for women also. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009L4JLMO
Michael offers Bowen Therapy in person in Sedona, Arizona for easing physical and emotional pain. https://www.emotionalhealthtips.com/bowen-therapy-sedona/
Michael also conducts personalized hiking tours in Sedona for emotional and spiritual breakthroughs.
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