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You can live with your mother, eat, walk, talk with her … And still feel lonely and useless. Why it happens? And how does this feeling affect the fate of the child?
People who are deprived of maternal attention often have the feeling that they do not have a mother at all. Although in their lives there is a person recognized by others as their mother, in their souls they feel her absence. Therefore, one of the tasks of a loveless adult child is to reconcile the feeling of orphanhood with reality.
To describe the feeling that you live without parents, without love and feel alone in the world, the term “orphan complex” or the archetype “orphan” is used. This feeling is often repressed deep into the subconscious, because it is too painful and threatens the survival of the little person.
But if you try to get rid of him, you will give up the loveless child hidden deep inside you. So much of the healing is built on learning to respond to the feeling of orphanhood.
Thirst for love
Speaking about the archetype of the orphan, the American Jungian analyst Rose-Emily Rothenberg notes the predominance of feelings of insignificance and the need for support: “He (the orphan) feels “injured” and needs all the care he can get.”
Rothenberg describes a pattern of dependency and a tendency to cling to anything (or anyone) as long as it represents the protection and safety of the mother. “I was ready to die for love,” is how one woman described opening up to repressed feelings.
People with an orphan complex experience a love hunger that keeps them stuck in abusive or unfulfilling relationships.
One act of kindness is not a life sentence
The feeling of need is so overwhelming that they simply cannot leave. They have no internal support in the form of confidence that they are loved, so they think like this: “This is better than nothing.” On the other hand, there are those who find it easier (or more accustomed) to go through life without love than to touch this wound.
This need for nurturing extends beyond the relationship as a couple and is sometimes so insidious that it can be difficult for a person to turn their back on anyone who offers even a little positive attention.
“For years, I noticed that if someone did something nice for me, I began to feel obligated. Gradually, I realized that emotional feeding is not so rare and that in every relationship I can decide when to switch to something else. One act of kindness is not yet a life sentence,” writes psychotherapist Jasmine Lee Corey.
Food instead of affection
Emotionally hungry people may also become obsessed with food, trying to replace emotional nourishment with body nourishment. For example, someone goes to the refrigerator to drown out stress. Because of this, many neglected people have eating disorders and compulsive overeating behind them.
Here are some questions to help you explore this topic:
- Have you ever felt like “a child growing up without a mother”?
- How could you hide your longing for love, support, and protection?
- How does your love hunger manifest itself?
Become your own mother
The famous Jungian analyst Marion Woodman said: “Children who are not loved in any of their manifestations do not know how to love themselves. In adulthood, they need to learn how to feed their own lost child and be a mother to him.
Training takes place in stages. In essence, we grow up to this knowledge. Just as a woman doesn’t know by default how to be a good mother to her offspring, but her instincts and heart can awaken, so does our ability to connect and “mother” the childish states within us.
An exercise
Recall a moment when you felt like protecting another person or really caring about someone. Run this feeling through yourself. Power it up. You may have drowned out your natural inclinations then, but give them extra support now.
Feel like a caring parent who can become a good mother to a child living inside you who has not received the necessary attention. What do you feel in your body? Remember yourself in this role so that you have an image that you can refer to later.
Fortunately, by becoming a good mother to your inner child, you naturally increase your strength. One woman noted that it increased her self-esteem, because it is nice to feel caring and loving. And as soon as you have a strong relationship, you will begin to receive a lot of love from your child in return.
“Mom’s dislike. How to Heal Hidden Wounds from an Unhappy Childhood by Jasmine Lee Corey
Bombay, 2021
There are few experiences in life as deep as the feelings we have for our mothers. The roots of some of these feelings are lost in the dark recesses of preverbal experience. Branches radiate in all directions, some carrying wondrous, sun-soaked moments, while others are broken, with sharp and splintery edges that we constantly cling to.
Mother is a tricky subject. We protect the image of our mother within ourselves, we protect our fragile relationship with her by denying everything that could shake it, and we protect ourselves from the disappointment, anger and pain that we push out of consciousness. In her book, psychotherapist Jasmine Lee Corey shares how to heal from childhood trauma and become a confident, loving adult.
Based on the materials of the book “Mom’s dislike. How to Heal Hidden Wounds from an Unhappy Childhood by Jasmine Lee Corey