I think there is just something about being cherished and loved unconditionally that helps us to do the same, there is something about being invaded, treated as though your feelings don’t matter, being hurt and shamed that wounds us to the core and makes trusting and loving just so so hard.
I just read a post on cPTSD and love it really filled me with empathy for the person, much as we may wish to become bullet proof and never hurt that is just not the way it really is if we are truly honest. And we were born for love but so often so few of us get to experience what it is.
For me joining AA was a kind of watershed in this way, there i could reveal my shame bound self, I also began to see I was not so ‘bad’ or ‘different’ or ‘weird as I was led to believe that I was. I got the sense of defects of character spoken there but this scared me, as I look back now I WAS a scared little girl in so many ways.. I did not really know the True Me, in fact I look back now and think I was conditioned to dislike her and see her as wrong.. I then got into relationships which often proved this to be true, even in my marriage I was not to explore the side of myself, because my husband was too threatened by it.. Never the less I blamed myself for years and years for him leaving me..That said I needed to be the one fronting up for me, helping me, unmasking my pain and after a lot of attempts in therapy I finally found the right person to help me.. just finding her was an epic battle and led me along a long a path of many false starts in other therapies.
Today I am slowly and painfully getting a sense of what love means and I am not as impatient with others either.. I think in a way at times I have expected a lot of people, due to the way certain things and ways of being were expected of me that were too rigid or tight…I became tight and rigid with myself and then I took on criticisms that were part of the shame bound self. These days I am learning to see these for what they are ; introjects, not a part of me, just an unwelcome visitor.. I am also finding a ground of compassion anchored inside a loving self. Perhaps as that part of me becomes stronger I will begin to understand more and more what true love really is all about.
Emerging From The Dark Night 