The Vow

My therapist and I did some parts work today. It was very strange. She was trying to talk to my inner child. I went along to an extent, but then she wanted my adult self to embrace my inner child and give the comfort that wasn't given as a child. This part felt very strange and I became skeptical. Part of me didn't understand how to, part of me didn't feel like I deserved it, and another part felt like it just wasn't the same to comfort myself. I'm still not sure how I feel about some of these aspects, but it has me thinking tonight and I write this:

At 13, I vowed I would never let anyone hurt me again. Since then, I have kept that vulnerable and hopeful Part of myself hidden away, where their dreams could no longer be crushed. No person is safe. Everyone is capable of inflicting pain. No one can be trusted. Ever since then, I've kept myself emotionally shut off from people. I never gave them a chance to see all of me. Only what I wanted them to. I never let anyone know that I craved love. If I were to let someone in completely, I was convinced they'd abandon me. Why share your heart with someone, only to have it crushed as they walk away? I've done my best to make it impossible for others to hurt me. This has made things lonely, but At least I'm not being abandoned. I am choosing this. I have given up on being loved.

Learning to love self in a healthy way is something we learn over the years of our lives. As we grow and develop we slowly develop our own self esteem narcissism. When others hurt or fail us and we are young, even as a child, because the world revolves around each of us while we are growing and developing, that hurt can be a significant injury to our narcissism as a human being. Being "hurt" or abandoned to where we don't feel "safe" with others around us can most definitely affect our ability to trust others and feel safe with others because we begin to see others as something that can end up hurting us as human beings. However, animals in general also experience this on some levels.

Human beings thrive on "nurturing", and "nurturing" is supposed to help us slowly develop our self esteem and develop our personal sense of self value and self assurance so that when we come across others who for some reason disrespect us, we are strong and safe in ourselves to the point where we move forward in spite of some of the dysfunctional behaviors of others we may come across.

Your vow of never letting anyone hurt you again was actually your way of "self caring" to an extent where you stepped up to the plate to "self protect". However, that doesn't stop one's normal human desire to be loved and gain the ability to feel safe with others and have a sense of others respecting and appreciating them.

You say, "part of me did not feel like I deserved it". Well, you actually did a very good job at identifying this challenge, good for you. First, a person needs to be able to vocalize a challenge in order to even begin to learn how to gradually heal and change that challenge in self. Most of the time when someone says this, it means that person was actually "taught" to feel that way about themselves. This is due to a lack of nurturing and often that is due to a parental lack of knowledge about how to nurture a child and cultivate an environment where a child can feel safe to grow and develop a healthy sense of self. Unfortunately, there are a lot of adults that have children that simply don't understand the responsibility and knowledge one needs to have in order to "nurture" a child so the child feels safe and develops a healthy sense of "self esteem". This is something that contributes to a lot of the behaviors you experience from others that can contribute to your sense of being vulnerable to being let down or hurt and even questioning your own self worth where you say, "Part of me did not feel I was worth it".

Your entire second paragraph in your post reflects what you have learned thus far about the challenges that a person can face in interacting with other human beings. This entire site has thousands of members that have all kinds of different challenges when it comes to having a healthy sense of self esteem and having a sense of security about "self" when it comes to interacting and sharing with other human beings. The reality of "normal" when it comes to human beings is that we all face challenges and the worst thing someone can do is feel they have to be some kind of "perfect" to be capable of love and nurturing from others or attaining some kind of imaginary ideal of what a perfect life is supposed to mean.

There is no such thing as a perfect parent, perfect friend, perfect teacher, perfect therapist and list is endless when it comes to human beings and "lack of perfection". Children "think" that these adults that are their parents are big people that just "know" how to be all grown up. The truth is a lot of grownups actually are not "all knowing" and are just human beings that are learning as they experience life.

On your healing journey part of what you will be learning how to do is to be more "humble", and that includes learning to be humble with self too. This means developing a sense of self that is not expecting "self" to be some kind of perfect and instead develop a sense of self that isn't going to practice "beating self up" for whatever self has not figured out how to do YET. YET, is a very important component when it comes to self care and learning how to not be so hard on "self" to where one thinks they are supposed to know it all somehow. No one knows it all and that means that when you are interacting with others you will experience other human beings who may let you down, not because you don't deserve to be respected or loved and appreciated, but because there is no one that will ever meet your perception of being that perfect human being that can make up for whatever you did not have when it came to being nurtured and feeling safe in your childhood.

We are actually very fortunate in that along the way people noticed different human challenges and wanted to understand "why" and we now have these labels that refect symptoms that human beings express and because we have taken time to learn how these symptoms develop, we have developed ways to help these individuals develop a better sense of self to they can slowly learn how to have a more "quality" life. When a person who is struggling can articulate what you have in your post, that is a "good thing" and it means "progress" in that you have just articulated a self awareness that is important to having an idea of where some problems are and how to begin your journey to learning how to slowly overcome these challenges. Perhaps, in your very last sentence "I have given up on being loved", is important in that what your time can be spent on now is learning that perhaps what you have given up on is what you "think" is a perfect love, and again, with human beings there really is not such thing as "perfect".
By taking a time out to personal healing and understanding "self care", you can develop a better understanding of how you may have had expectations that were bound to fail, not because you don't deserve to be loved, but because others are not going to know how to fill all your needs and that doesn't have to mean you are being abandoned like you may think.