My first memories as a little boy were being in a sandbox alone, afraid and worried that something terrible was going to happen to my mother, probably because I only felt safe with her; even writing about it some 50 years late makes me emotional.
It’s important to remember that every child has a different experience in the same environment because every child is uniquely different. In my family, I developed the addiction and sister and brother had other issues but we all recovered.
Everyone human being has issues to deal with from childhood however some of us have life-changing shit to deal with like sexual, physical and emotional trauma that went on for years. It slowly killed our spirit. We became disconnected from our true self, others and life. It makes perfect sense why we seek outside ourselves to deal with the pain.
Make no mistakes about it, the stress from the environment we grow up especially between before the age of four affects our brain development. Gabor Mate MD and many other experts suggest that most people with addictions missed out on the necessary brain wiring for connection and bonding which are required to develop healthy emotional attachments.
Children are by definition dependent, and their dependency means that the nature of their family relationships profoundly influences their experiences in both health and illness.
Attachment can be understood as being the enduring emotional closeness which binds families in order to prepare children for independence and parenthood. ~ Corinne Rees
Most people do not want to face the truth; that our early attachment experiences create our life-long templates for our lives and that our parents are the substantial influencers. We basically, learn the good, bad and ugly from our childhood and carry it forward. Instead, we want to say everyone has had bad things happen in their childhood and so get over it. It’s a form of denial that allows the unhealthy attachment and dysfunctional issues never to be healed and continue to affect future generations. It's NOT about blaming; it’s about the truth, it’s about healing, it’s about waking up and taking responsibility so can stop passing on our shame.
As I see it, our biggest challenge as a human race is denial, our inability to look at the truth but we must see with compassion. It's our surest way to stop spreading the Dis-Ease of addiction and other dysfunctions from generation to generation.
Attachment is fundamentally important to child protection. It is usually not the bruise but the relationship it represents that causes the greater lasting harm. The issue is not whether children are attached, but how — whether they experience relationships as valuable, reliable, and safe.
For me, it was the constant fear of my father who I rarely felt safe around him, and so I created the fake Paul in an attempt not to be hurt. I lost myself in the process and lived in the mistaken identity for 40 years.
My father is not to blame, he did the best he could with the unhealthy childhood attachments that were upon him well raising me. Today I have a lot of compassion for my father because I see the same LIGHT in me; is also with him and within all of us! We are slowly working on a new relationship. I know he has a good relationship with my brother and sister.
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection. ~ Sigmund Freud
It took me a long time to heal this deep wound and rewire my brain from one of disconnection to one of connection. I had to re-parented myself through an awakening of consciousness. HOWEVER and it’s a gigantic HOWEVER; it did not happen by myself; I needed other people to love me right where I was. It was the crucial missing piece of my recovery for years.
Had I not learned about childhood attachment I do not believe I would have healed the shame that was destroying me. I suggest everyone, doing research and healing on the subject.
Satnam Paul Noiles
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