Child Abuse: Can Someone Embody Their Parents Toxic shame If They Were Abused As A Child?

What someone may find, if they were able to detach from how they experience life, is that they have the tendency to feel low. This can mean that they will often feel depressed and they may even have moments when they think about ending their life.

They may find that this is how they have been for as long as they can remember. So, if they do feel good about themselves, it could be because they have consumed something or have engaged in some kind of activity.

Hidden

Regardless of what does allow them to feel good, this is going to be something that rarely takes place and doesn’t last for very long when it does. However, although feeling low will be a normal part of their life, it doesn’t mean that the average person will realise this.

The reason for this is that they may typically hide how they feel around others, with them coming across as happy and as though everything is fine. Not only will this stop others from knowing what is going on for them, but it will stop them from receiving their support.

All Alone

Thanks to this, they are likely to spend a lot of time suffering in silence and their life is going to be one big challenge. They are an interdependent human being not an independent human being, which is why they are not supposed to keep just about everything to themselves.

Yet, if they were to think about sharing how what is going on for them, let alone actually do it, they could feel deeply uncomfortable. This can be a time when they will experience a lot of shame and fear that they will be rejected and abandoned.

A Prison

Therefore, experiencing life in this way is going to take a lot out of them but it will be seen as their only option. Due to this, they may as well live on an island in the middle of nowhere as they won’t be able to take advantage of the assistance that is around them.

Based on what they believe will happen if they reveal what is going on for them, it will be as if they are secretly a being from another planet and, if they open up, other people will realise this and they will end up being ostracised. As bad as their life is, then, the alternative will be seen as being far worse.

Bridging the Gap

In order for their life to change and for them to liberate themselves from the invisible prison that they live in, they will need to reach out for support. It might be hard for them to believe it right now but the key will be on the inside and it will be imperative for them to use it.

What they can keep in mind is that irrespective of how they feel, there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Furthermore, there are people out there who will be able to support them and see through the baggage that they are currently carrying.

A Miserable Existence

At this point, they might wonder why they experience life in this way and why they feel so bad about themselves. It could then seem as though they were simply born this way and that their life will never change.

But, as they feel worthless and they have felt this way for so long, this is not going to be much of a surprise. Ultimately, they won’t need to go to hell; they will already be living in hell.

What’s going on?

Now, although it may seem that they were born this way, there is the chance that it goes back to what took place during their formative years. This may have been a stage of their life when one or both of their parents deeply wounded them.

One parent, assuming it was one, may have been physically, verbally and emotionally abusive and neglectful. Consequently, they would have been deprived of a lot of the nutrients that they needed to grow and develop in the right way.

Wide Open

And, as they were egocentric at this stage of their life, they would have personalised what took place. This would have stopped them from being able to realise that how they were being treated had nothing to do with them and everything to do with what was going on for this parent.

Most likely, this parent carried a lot of toxic shame and self-hate but, as they were not aware of these parts of their being, they ended up unconsciously projecting them into their child. Instead of being able to see their child clearly, they would have seen in them the parts of themselves that they had disowned.

A Reminder

Thus, as their child would have reminded them of their own disowned darkness, they would have felt the need to mistreat them. This is likely to show that they themselves were also mistreated during their formative years.

If so, this would have deprived them of what they needed to grow and develop and caused them to suffer greatly. It may have also damaged their brain, making it difficult for them to self-reflect, empathise and be present.
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A Natural outcome

As they were powerless, totally dependent and like a sponge at this stage of their life, being brought up by a parent who was deeply wounded and unfeeling was bound to have caused them a lot of harm. The toxic shame and self-hate that this parent unknowingly carried would have been passed onto their child.

Now that one is an adult, they will be loaded up with layers and layers of pain, and this pain will be stopping them from being able to access their inherent worth and feel good about themselves. Working through this pain will take courage and patience and persistence.

Awareness

If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.