03/20/2024
When children are uncertain or pessimistic about their value, they strive to understand what will please their parents and they try to become that. The normal need for approval grows into a craving, and they take the extreme messages they are given about their worth to heart. If a child is told, verbally or non verbally, that he has little value, his parts organize around that premise. His parts feel desperate for redemption in the eyes of the person who is withholding love, which can include any person on whom the child depends. Thereafter, carrying the burden of worthlessness, the child’s parts believe they cannot be loved, a belief they will maintain regardless of contradictory feedback, as if the devaluing person holds title to their self esteem. Burdened young parts who seek redemption from worthlessness exert a powerful influence over intimate relationships, either returning to the person who stole their self-esteem, or finding someone who resembles that person. Often this results in a long string of abusive or unsatisfying relationships . This can also look like a learned adaptation of fawning, people pleasing and abandoning the self in order to be what others need at the cost and expense of themselves.
Internal Family systems therapy can help
