objects in the mirror

Those of us who spend our lives looking for someone who sees us as we really are and accepts us exactly that way are expressing a need to be seen and heard that is part of an essential developmental stage. The shrinks call it, I believe, the narcissistic wound when someone is unable to complete that particular stage in childhood and carries the unmet needs forward into adulthood.

So in other words, those of us who've been 'wounded' (why the quotes? not sure) in this way go through life looking in mirrors, hoping to catch a glimpse of the self that was never seen, never reflected back to us by our parents (or other important caretakers).

This has been written about in many, many self-help books, but I'm having a go at my own interpretation/understanding. Finally I feel free to express my own views, having absorbed/studied/perused every 'source' I could find on the subject over lo these many (10, plus or minus) years.

I've come to the point where I can actually recognize a look that comes from my mother or father because I see the very same look on my own face in the mirror - that smirk, that look of condescension or condemnation, the revulsion at a creature unfit for anything but being locked up in a small back room for the rest of her life...

And if that seems harsh, well yes, it is harsh to grow up in a family like that, where you're constantly seeking approval, constantly scanning the horizon for any sign, no matter how small, that your parents actually like you. How pathetic is that, anyway?

And not to disparage myself, no, not at all. Just finally, at long last, expressing the naked bewilderment, pain, fear, rage that come from not being seen/heard/cared for by your parents.

Remember: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What were your parents' intentions, honestly, with respect to you as a child?

This scarcely bears thinking about, as it's almost too terrifying to face directly (I recommend a good, stiff shot of Jack Daniels at this point - can't quite drink it neat, yet, the ice helps thin the mix to a tolerable, yet still effective, level. Takes the 'edge' off without losing connnection with what I really want to say.)

I think my parents didn't intend to be parents at all, but, as so often happens, they ended up being parents anyway. As my mother (so frighteningly) tells the story, this is a baby, and I am a mother. Great, way to inspire confidence, mom. Like, you think I didn't know just exactly how clueless you were, even when I was just a tiny blob of newly excreted flesh? Yeah. Well, think again - the hyper-exaggerated fight/flight/freeze syndrome that plagues me to this day comes from exactly that: Your inability to recognize that your fears and insecurities had a direct effect on my future ability to cope. When you're soaked in a brine of anxiety from the get-go in utero, no wonder I took 36 hours to be born - I was frickin' terrified, as any infant in her right mind would have been. This woman has no clue, how did I get this woman for my mother??? Help! (I have an image here of my little baby hands, nearly helpless, yet clenched with all my tiny strength, clinging to the sides of the birth canal, locked in the chimney-climb stance that said, No, I will not come out, you can't make me, you can't make me...)

Most parents have no clue what they're saying to their children. Most, if not all, parents, are addressing that shadow child-self (themselves) still buried in their own psyches. They aren't really speaking to their own children at all. They are still caught in the narcissistic phase, unable to recognize the Other as a separate, autonomous being whose needs are completely different from and unrelated to their own (needs, that is).