From the moment babies emerge from the womb, they seek out Mother’s (or caregiver’s) attention. Their needs are pretty simple: food, sleep, and the attention of focused and engaged caregivers. Research has shown that babies who don’t receive attention may not develop fully. Attention of an engaged adult gives a baby cues on how to interpret the environment, by watching Mother’s eyes and facial expression, for example. But attention also helps a person brand new to the human world learn exactly where he or she fits in. It helps us place ourselves in relation to our world, and in a deeper sense it teaches us how to attend to ourselves.
We need the attention of caring, involved adults to reflect back how we are supposed to regard our own existence. Without that kind of loving attention, we learn pretty quickly that we are not worth engaging, and grow to be disengaged people who don’t value themselves or others, sometimes with tragic consequences.
If you’ve ever taken a basic psychology course, you’ve probably heard about Harry Frederick Harlow’s (d. 12/6/81) controversial and heartbreaking social isolation experiments on monkeys.(1) While studying the maternal bond, Harlow conducted a number of studies involving partial and total isolation of infant monkeys and concluded that the experiments produced adults that were severely psychologically disturbed.* Babies of all species need the attention of an adult to ground them in their sense of self and community, to give them the safety and security to run back to as they begin to explore their surroundings, and to recognize, ultimately, that they’re here.
So what happens if you had the misfortune to be raised by a distracted parent? One who comes home exhausted at the end of the day because she’s a single mother? One who is unavailable to give attention because he drinks? Perhaps a parent who doesn’t have a solid sense of herself to begin with? It can be very challenging to understand that your very existence alone means you have value, if that isn’t recognized by others in your formative years.
One of my hypnosis clients struggled mightily with her self-esteem, especially in the context of her relationships. Carol was attractive, good-natured, and always smiling, but claimed she couldn’t get past a certain point in any romance and never really believed she’d be accepted for herself. She knew she was presenting a false, “perfect” persona, which was cracked apart as the relationship matured. As it got harder and harder for her to keep up appearances, the romance dissolved.
At the appropriate time in our work together, I brought Carol into a deeper state of hypnosis in order to regress her back to any significant sensitizing event at the core of her low self-esteem. In trance she recalled her mother (a sixteen-year-old who was ill-equipped to manage her own moods, let alone provide for a baby’s emotional anchoring) playing with her and snuggling her, dressing her up in cute outfits like a doll and showing her off to her friends. But whenever it came time to change the infant Carol’s diaper, the teenage mom was too disgusted. When the baby cried, the young mother became frustrated and spoke angrily to her. When the baby spit up, her mother leapt back with cries of revulsion. Carol’s mother often avoided changing her diaper or wiping her face, preferring to wait until her own mother came home to take charge of the unpleasant task.
“She doesn’t want to touch me!” Carol cried out during her hypnotic regression. “I can see on her face that I’m gross. I smell bad and she doesn’t want me near her. She’s holding her nose and she’s so mad at me. I made a mess!” It was heartbreaking to hear the pain in this inner child.
We worked through this and subsequent distressing events where Carol learned from her young mother that she should only be quiet, cute, neat and clean, always presenting herself well if she wanted any positive attention. Any fussing or bodily functions were disgusting and should be repressed at all costs. Carol learned in this way that she was only noticed -- only real, only here -- when she was sweet, compliant, and quiet. There was no recognition and therefore no permission to be anything other than perfect.
With a self-esteem built on this fragile framework, it’s no wonder her relationships were unsustainable.
Conversely, the wrong kind of “positive attention” can also be toxic. We might get the eye contact, interest, and recognition from a parent that serves to make us want to disappear.
Consider a client of mine whose academically brilliant father inadvertently launched Belinda’s intense self-loathing. Her father encouraged intellectual curiosity in his daughter, particularly in expanding her vocabulary and articulating “exactly” what she meant when she spoke. On paper, this is obviously a caring parent who wants his child to excel. In practice, however, the constant correction she faced when describing her self, her feelings, and her experiences fractured Belinda’s self-understanding and expression. In time, she felt that “if she couldn’t say it right, she shouldn’t say it at all.”
In one of our sessions she gave me an example of this benign type of criticism:
“I was about ten years old and I’d just learned the word ‘frank’ -- or rather, I thought I knew what it meant. We were sitting at the dinner table discussing specialized summer camps (which weren’t as common back then as they are now) and I said, ‘Frankly, I think it’s a good idea.’ I’ll never forget that my dad looked right at me and said calmly, ‘Nobody cares about your frank opinion.’ I was completely shot down,” Belinda said, “and I’ve never forgotten how that felt.
“Sometimes if I used the wrong word he’d just ignore that I said anything at all. He wouldn’t look at me, but pretend he hadn’t heard me at all and keep talking. But when I used the right word the right way, he would just beam at me!” Belinda said, glowing as if her father were shining the light of his doting attention on her right at that moment.
For an academician and an adult, her father may have been correct. Perhaps “frank” wasn’t the correct word in that context. But his attention communicated to Belinda that unless she was going to be perfect, she would shamed or worse, not recognized as being there at all.
By healing this fracture, Belinda was able to relax her impossibly high standards of expression for herself, and to accept that she didn’t have to have the perfect explanation for the way she felt -- she could simply feel. It also helped her demand less stringent behavior from her colleagues and staff.
We can’t choose who we’re born to or how we’re raised. Quite often our parents are doing the best they can with their skill set, like Carol’s mother, or attempting to raise us with the best possible chances for success, like Belinda’s father. And we may still suffer from the ill affects of the lack of or wrong kind of attention. Nothing can be more devastating to the self-esteem than believing we don’t deserve to be here or we’re not even worth being recognized.
How to solve this LoSEr (low self-esteem) thinking and RISE (recover your inherent self-esteem)?
Remember that your “inner child” is still part of you. We still have within our subconscious minds every single age we’ve ever been, every day we’ve ever lived. There are many books on the inner child and some extraordinary therapies to soothe our troubled young selves. I encourage you to search the web or a book store. In the meantime, try something like this:
- Sit quietly where you won’t be disturbed for 15-30 minutes. Close your eyes while stating your intention to yourself that you’re going to connect with your inner child.
- You can do a short relaxation by imagining a wave moving down through your body from your head to your feet; by imagining riding down in an elevator to a comfortable, safe lounge; by drifting down a lazy river or floating on a cloud, or simply by breathing deeply a number of times saying “Re-” on the inhale, “-lax” on the exhale.
- Picture a calendar flipping back in time, back as far as you’d like to go. If you recall a particularly distressing event in your childhood, be sure to go back before then. Go to the womb if that feels right.
- Imagine you can talk to that little person who was you, all those years ago. Tell that baby she can trust you, because you are her future and it’s impossible for you to lie to her. Events feel so frightening to us as children because we don’t know that we’re going to survive them; reassure your younger self that you did survive, because you’re here talking to her.
- Pretend you can pick her up and hold her, and promise her you will always listen. You will always pay attention and never shame her or ignore her. Promise her you will never let anyone hurt her, ever again. Ask her to give you an impression to signal that she needs you, and then pay attention to any feelings in your body or pictures that come to mind.
- Acknowledge to her that when you feel that feeling or see that image, you will know that she needs comfort, soothing, or attention. Maybe she even wants you to stop working for a minute and take a break to play. If you can take a moment at that time to close your eyes and identify it, promise her you will. If not, you will attend to those feelings as soon as you can. At the very least, promise her you will notice her request for attention. Promise her she will never be ignored again.
- Imagine now that you switch places, and you are viewing this interaction from your younger self. Your future, a responsible and loving adult, is holding you and reassuring you that you are present, valuable, and important; that you are seen and heard. If you have trouble sensing a signal from the inner child when you were being the adult, create one to give to your adult self now.
- Imagine your adult self asks you, “Is there anything else you need me to do so that you feel safe with me?” If the answer is yes, communicate that.
- When you’re done, slowly deepen your breathing and return to your physical senses by wiggling you fingers and toes, shrugging your shoulders or flexing other muscles, and opening your eyes.
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(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow
*The good news is some researchers claim his experiments gave rise to the animal liberation movement in the US.
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