Contents
If our childhood was difficult, in adulthood it can be difficult for us to build healthy relationships. But if we try to surround ourselves with benevolent people, it will help us heal the traumas of the past.
ESSENCE OF INDIVIDUALITY
Individuation is the realization and embodiment of our true desires and abilities. We are social beings, therefore, during individuation, those personal qualities are manifested that received approval first from the mother and father, and then from other people.
This process begins at birth and continues at all stages of development. If we grow up in a favorable environment, it ends at about 21 years of age. In a normal family, the child receives support, parents accept and approve of his personality traits, and individuation occurs more or less naturally.
But in a toxic family, children face obstacles in this process and are forced to go through it more slowly and with pauses.
WHY SOME INDIVIDUALIZE HARDER
The mother occupies a central place in the child’s psyche, but it is she who, being toxic, turns out to be the aggressor, devaluing his unique features. As a result, the core of the child’s psyche contains a «malignant» element that prevents him from perceiving himself normally, from feeling the basic right to life and self-realization.
The core of the Ego screams in a motherly voice: “You are not capable of anything!”, “You are ugly!”, “Idiot, where are you without us?”. The development, separation, maturation of the child takes place in an atmosphere of humiliation, devaluation, ridicule, sexual and physical violence.
Those who have gone through domestic hell are not sure that they are able to please other people.
As a result of this, individuation does not pass completely, periodically “hanging up”, like a program not fully installed on the computer: it is there, but it does not work. And even if we understand that we need to value ourselves, then at the level of feelings we doubt it.
When the father is also toxic or withdraws, the problem gets worse. Due to violence and incomplete individuation, Tox children often have difficulty defining «Who am I?» and «What do I want?»
Those who have gone through home hell are not sure that they are able to please other people, because they did not receive confirmation from the family that their features are good, valuable, that they themselves can be loved.
INDIVIDUALITY AND TRAUMA
The essence of psychological trauma is this: having experienced violence, we keep it in ourselves, we are concentrated on it and look at life through its prism.
Therefore, we readily react in the world around us to everything that in one way or another resonates with a sad experience. For example, we find ourselves the same abusers among partners, employers and friends, we find ourselves in situations that repeat childhood trauma in a new way.
We are constantly internally mobilized to deal with traumatic experiences, and therefore unconsciously seek them out in order to reproduce them again.
WHAT TO DO?
Fortunately, our psyche is dynamic and ready to absorb good experience in order to create a new psychological space based on it. Through this, trauma can be balanced by positive events and experiences.
The material for creating such a space is communication with non-toxic people. It can be a new partner, work colleagues, book authors, members of circles (yoga, drawing, dancing), cooking classes, and so on. Or, for example, a therapist, a tutor, a teacher of a child at school, a doctor, members of groups in social networks.
Communicating with such people, we absorb their experience, as well as get acquainted with their feelings about life and our place in it.
In communication with people who respect our boundaries and are happy with us, we finally find ourselves
At first, communicating with non-toxic people may seem impossible to us. Here are typical unpleasant fantasies and feelings about this: “Where can they be found at all?”, “They won’t understand me!”, “I won’t be interested in them”, “I don’t belong with normal people”, “I hate them, because that they are doing well, but I had to suffer.
At first, many victims of toxic treatment feel this way, and this is normal. Gradually, such fantasies and emotions are worked out and pass. In a new communication, we increase the “volume” of our psyche, “populating” it with images of non-toxic, adequate, interesting people who enjoy life.
After that, we begin to feel that such a life is possible.
IS THIS INDIVIDUALITY?
Yes, by “loading” into ourselves the images of other people, we begin to use them for our own benefit. We “borrow” their thoughts and feelings. We identify with them, adopt a way of thinking, speech, clothes and other manifestations.
In other words, the mental experience of other people is integrated in our psyche, that is, it is built into it and modified. As a result, new unique skills of relating to ourselves and to life are created inside us. In dealing with people who respect our boundaries and are happy for us, we finally find ourselves, seeing ourselves in a normal “mirror”, and not in a toxic “kingdom of crooked mirrors”.
In a favorable environment, we, as it were, “finish” ourselves, completing what we did not have time to finish because of “toxins”. Indeed, in the home “concentration camp” we had no time for this, we had to survive there at any cost, and the psyche switched to an economical mode, fighting for its existence, retaining only crumbs of its identity.
When we receive approval and admiration, we experience the feeling that someone might like our individual traits. This becomes the basis of self-love and the inner right to a decent life.
BUILDING ON NEW EXPERIENCE
The images of new people begin to perform supportive maternal and paternal functions — they become supporting figures for us. Our ego will literally rely on them. Through this, we balance the trauma and become more stable and self-confident.
The expansion of the «inner universe» makes us more resilient, we give ourselves permission to take on the individual traits that we have from birth, but were not accepted by our parents.