The Root of the Problem

Last week’s hypnotherapy session was very enlightening to me. I was taken down to ‘sleep’ and told that we were going to go to the point where my personality issues began.

I was a bit nervous as I thought that the place I was taken by my subconscious would be a place of trauma, possibly to the molestation that occurred when I was very small. I was nervous as I have no memories of this time other than a single flashback image. This image is generated on occasion – but my mind has blocked most of the episode. So when I arrived at the point of the start of my ‘trauma’ and I was taken to a seemingly innocuous scene where I was sitting talking to my parakeet and playing with my dog. But when S asked me ‘what are you feeling’ then I realised why I was there. I was feeling ignored, almost even invisible.

My Mother was present in her 20ish year old self as I was about 2 years old. My Mother seemed totally unaware I was there.

I was given 2 books to read by S as part of my quest for enlightenment. One was by Brian L. Weiss, MD who wrote several novels on past life regression. And the other was ‘The Hidden Messages in Water’ by Masaru Emoto. I devoured the book by Weiss and just skipped through the one by Emoto, but I did discover some things which touched me deeply in Emoto’s writings.

The basic principle in the experiments done by Emoto proved the impact of our environment and the conditioning we receive from our experiences. They wrapped bottles of water in pieces of paper with various words or phrases imprinted on them, or they spoke the same words over and over the water. They then froze it and examined the crystal formations which resulted.

What I found amazing and mind boggling was that abuse is not as damaging to the soul as neglect. I had assumed that my issues were from the traumas of my past – at the hands of the various abusers from both my childhood and adult years. In actuality my damage is from neglect, from being ignored and not nurtured.

I was not parented; I was never given rules, regulations, curfews or limitations. My parents were hippies and they thought that I should decide myself what was an appropriate bedtime, what time I should come home if I was out and whether or not what I was doing was correct. But without a parent there to tell you what is acceptable then how does a child parent themselves?

I went to parenting classes when I had children as I knew nothing about kids. I had never baby-sat, I do not think I had even held a baby except as part of my rotation through paediatrics in University and I knew I did not want to parent the way my parents had. So I hope that I learned more about communicating with my children, that I made them feel loved and valued. But I guess only they can answer that….and part of me is afraid to ask.