I have previously said that I would be sharing information from the book "Healing the Child Within" by Charles L. Whitfield. Here is another excerpt that I believe will continue to help us understand why we struggle with the things we do. All I can add is, "Wow! Who we are as women comes from our childhood!"
In writing about things a child needs to grow up as a well balanced, healthy adult, he sited the following:
1. Survival, Safety and Security
2. Touching
3. Attention
4. Mirroring and Echoing *his thoughts here are worthy of note*
"The next need is to validate the infant, child or even the adult, as a feeling and thinking being. Mirroring and echoing is when the mother reacts non-verbally by facial expression, posture, sounds and other movements so that it realizes that it is understood.
At this point we understand that if the mother or other parent figure cannot provide these first few needs, the child's physical, mental-emotional and spiritual growth would likely be stunted.
One reason may be that the mother herself is so impoverished and needy that she uses her infant to satisfy her own unmet needs. This is the amazing thing about infants. They can sense that mother is needy, and can eventually detect her specific needs and begin providing them for her. Of course, this carries a major price....the denial, stifling and stunting of the infant's own True Self or Child Within. That price escalates as the child grows into an adult, with resulting physical, mental-emotional and spiritual suffering."
I am going to stop here as there is quite an extensive list of things that we needed as children that directly affect the way we function as adults. I know that in my own life, my mother did use me to fulfill her own unmet needs. Not that she had any conscious thoughts of this but as a victim (since she has no healing) of abuse herself, she didn't know how to take care of my emotional needs as formerly stated above.
I find it relieving to begin to understand what happened in my childhood that has caused me to have the baggage and resulting behaviors that I have carried a lot of my life. I pray that you continue to experience revelation and release your baggage as you learn along with me.