Rejection from parents is often at the root of lack of intimacy with others. If you are experiencing some storms in your relationships, it could be coming from within you. It could also be about the other person’s issues with rejection, but you need to check out your own “roots” that might be adding to the problem.
Rooting out destructive messages that may be causing some reactive responses in your relationships with others is really important work for you to do. Parental rejection messages can cause you to feel badly about yourself and force you to go outside yourself to seek love. It can also force you to learn at an early age to find others to replace the lack of love you are experiencing in those first relationships with your parents. Years of doing this can condition you to depend on others to define your worth and value.
If you are feeling stormy within or in your relationships, it may be that you have some roots of rejection that are filtering the ability to give or receive love. You can go back and sort through your own roots and ask yourself if you were given messages that felt rejecting of you as a child. It might even be that you had to be perfect or took on a role for the family that was not really you or was above your age capability. If you feel that was communicated to you in any way by your parents or other authority figures, root it out and replace it with a truth that you know about yourself.
You will need to recondition old “voices” from the past with new affirmations that you know to be true based on your reality. Affirm that you are not perfect, but note the good qualities you do have. If you are out of balance even in your good qualities, check to make sure that is not a message that was communicated to you in order to bring honor to the family. It may be that you are overly responsible and feel good that you are, but it is actually wearing you out. That means you are out of balance and need to adjust what is your responsibility and what is not.
Calming some of the inner storm stemming from roots of rejection will help you feel more peaceful in your outer world and especially in your closest relationships. You can begin to live more freely in the real you without the rejecting messages from within and not accept any coming from external sources.
Blessings,
Susan
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This one strikes home with me big time. I grew up near the Tennessee North Carolina state line. My family had migrated down to the area that is now Greensboro NC by the late 1600's they have been and still are spread all about that region west into Tennessee. My Mothers side of the family had been in the area that I grew up in for several generations.There where few people in my life that I wasnt either related to or had been friends of my family's for generations. I was never at a loss for constant love , affirmation and plenty of people to meet my emotional needs. That is until My father moved us to small town in the middle of Florida. This town was Not Disney and Not the beach and it was a rough tough place to get along with people, they all seemed mad at the world and ready to fight at the drop of a hat. It was here that my problems started. My parents worked at their business from 5am to 7PM every day but Sunday which ws spent at the church. The rest of the time Me, my brother and Sister where left alone. And things where not the same as back home, we fought with someone it seemed everyday, these where nasty vulgar people that cursed like sailors and smelled like Bums. Our parents didnt believe us and thought we where exaggerating because we where home sick. My brother and I played sports, just about any sport, but primarily Football, Baseball and basketball. We both happened to be better than average and our dad always took time off from work to coach at least some of our teams. The same kids that were nasty and we fought with after school and on weekends played ball on our team or another team in our league and always acted like little angels during practice or during games. As I got a little older I started to excel at baseball and my father switched from being my football coach to also being my baseball coach. Because my brother and I had success at sports and our team won a lot, my dad seemed to be a popular guy to talk to. Somehow I felt angry and resentful at him and my Mother over all this. They took us away from our security and stability and abandoned us to raise ourselves in a town full of roughnecks. The only time he paid us attention was when we played ball and it was when we played ball and excelled that all of the sudden the kids we use to fight with wanted to be friends. So my love of sports was compromised also. It was only a tool to get our father to spend some time with us and to make friends. It seemed to have stopped being about the enjoyment of the game.
ReplyDeleteAs an adult I can handle rejection and being abandoned by almost all people. In business I tried to have a small group of core trustworthy friends and the rest I was pleasant too but always felt like their friendship was conditional. Just like the kids on our sporting teams, they were willing to be our friends and spend time with us as long as we won but when I fumbled the ball inside the ten yard line in a playoff game, they didnt speak to me for weeks, so I fiqured that is just the way life is. My hide grew thick and I learned to stay out of potentially bad situations and if and when I had to fight I tried my best to leave such an impact that no one else would bother messing with me in the future. I did the same in business, if someone was trying to do something to mess with me or my organization I tried to inflict life changing pain on them so they never thought about trying it again.
All those are bad bad coping skills but they fail on comparision to what happens to me when someone close to me either rejects or abandons me. I dont cope with it well. I try to control them to manage the outcome and get them not to reject me. until just several months ago I didnt realize that the reason that some of the folks that I loved the most would at times reject me or abandon me was because I displayed several dysfunctional behaviors. I tried to manage everything, even what people thought and always assumed that if things where not going well and people were upset with me all I needed to do was be number 1 make some big moves, make more money, get a bigger job, with more of this and that and they would like me again.
I found out its all deception and fear. Fear of being abandoned by someone you love and deceived into believing that you are nothing without them. You begin to feel that if this person that loves me the most in life doesnt want me then who on earth would? IF im not good enough for the ones that love me then Im not good enough for anyone..
I am in my early 40's now, and for the first time I am talking through many of these issues with my Mom. My father passed 3 years ago without me ever working through it with him. We loved each other and told each other so, but I resented him for what he did and I thought he in many cases was self serving to his own good. Just talking to my Mom has cleared up so much. He felt guilty for the move and he knew how much we loved to play ball so he would put the key in the front door at his business and close it to coach our team. He would do the same through the years when we played ball out of town. My issues from my childhood have led to devastating outcomes, but they where just some bad choices and failure to talk through the issues. So Im pulling up these roots in my 40's when I could have done it at 14. I have 5 kids of my own. If I make the same mistakes with them they will enter into Adult hood burdened with the same issues I was. Thanks for the article Susan, as always they are very meaningful and helpful
Rejction? No one can possibly know the pain of rejection you recieve after you learn you aren't really crazy.
ReplyDeleteAll my life, I've thought I was the crazy one, being rejected by my peers. From a very young age I began to think something was wrong with me, because I just never seemed to fit in with all those I grew up with, until this past year. That would be about 49 years of my life I lived in the world of "DUH". I ended up marrying a man that made me go "DUH", and stayed married for 34 years now. But I've been evolving out of my crazy state now for the past 6 years, until my eyes were fully opened this past year.
Now I am losing people left and right because I know I am not crazy anymore, and when I hear myself say "DUH", I know I better turn around and run. I now have no one in my corner, no one to lean on, no one to pick up the pieces of my new found sanity.
I lost the one child who would care for me 9 years ago this month, my son. When I was crazy I thought of him that way. My youngest son has left me for the Marines. I lost my husband because of my daugher, and lost my daughter because of my husband. And along with my daughter goes my two baby grandsons.
Now because I now know I am not crazy anymore, I am wishing I was crazy again. It didn't hurt as much thinking your life didn't matter, as much as it hurts KNOWING your life doesn't matter.
So, what do I do now with my new found sanity? Thank God he loves me, that my life matters to him, that he is in my corner, that I can lean on him.