The pain of conditional love

It feels to me that we are now in the grieving period post-major lunar standstill. The moon has been working deeply into the heart especially and bringing up old wounding for healing so that we can hear more of the truth of our heart’s whisperings, and so we can create a more heart-led world for humanity, collectively.

But of course we have to let go of what has been, with all its sadness, anger, drudgery and broken dreams and this can be painful.

Our Western society has been programmed for the most part to hide from emotional pain. This pain ordinates often in childhood when the unconditional love that children need is not always received. The parents generally mean well and are loving in their own way, but the love they give is often conditional and not always therefore freely given, since they too are hiding from their own emotional pain - it goes back generations and generations, just look at the Victorians.

Generally the emotions are so deeply hidden that it is not until counselling or psychotherapy that they resurface, often much to the surprise of the individual who doesn’t realise the effect their childhood had on their emotional - and indeed mental - body. For the most part they remember a happy childhood and it can be shocking to realise the extent of the pain they carry inside and this can impact their relationship with their family as they come to terms with their healing and their pain.

Tears help to clear the emotional holding, but until then, the anger, sadness and fear can remain hidden, bursting out from time to time when triggered, in ‘breakdowns’, seriousness/moodiness/withdrawal, and, for women, in the monthly cycle before they bleed (often called PMS).

Any deficiency in love - even feeling the anger, sadness and fear in a parent - can cause a child to partially close down the heart to protect it, to make it less sensitive. Babies are especially sensitive to the emotions of their parents and some are more attuned than others; many of you reading this are doubtlessly in that category, otherwise you wouldn’t find yourself on this site. We forget how much we feel from the world around us, and none more keenly than in the family ‘safe’ environment.

The more emotionally starved the child, inevitably the greater the protection around the heart and the less the child will feel emotionally. Sometimes the child will refuse kisses and hugs, because they don’t wish to open the heart and feel the pain of whatever is hidden - or the pain of their emotional needs not being met once again.

Parents who are emotionally closed will often provide for their children materially and educationally but struggle to meet the child’s need for unconditional love. The child may end up moody and serious because s/he cannot say what s/he feels because the parents do not want to hear it; they would rather pretend that everything is OK. Even when s/he speaks up it can be met by hostility or the child is told not to be silly, that everything is OK, because the parents couldn’t possibly imagine otherwise.. So s/he learns to keep quiet, which at least makes the parents happy.

S/he also keeps quiet because of the dreaded guilt. Many emotionally staved children are riddled with guilt, which they may never grow out of and this is of course accentuated by our fall from Eden, where guilt and shame ran riot in the human psyche, such was Adam and Eve’s supposed failing. The child, consciously or for the most part, unconsciously, believes something along the lines of ‘I am not loved, which means there is something wrong with me, which means I am bad and means I am at fault - it must be my fault’.

Once a child has reached this conclusion then every single criticism - and there may well be lots if the parents do not feel unconditional love - reinforces it and will feel like a literal stab in the heart. Some may even experience this physically, when they contact this early grief and worry for the health of their literal heart.

Thus grief is the often first emotion felt, and it is a painful feeling which gets buried deep. When in the future the child loses someone close to him/her (through death, moving country or the breakdown in a relationship), it can feel utterly unbearable, triggering a memory of feeling abandoned as a child.

The child can feel incredible loneliness at times too, even when later having his/her own family and many friends.

People who struggle to love unconditionally feel a strong need to be in control - they leave nothing to chance because they do not want to be caught out, they certainly don’t want to show their emotions and they don’t want to be seen to be lacking as this is viewed as a form of rejection, which is hard to bear.

Our society is full of such people. Our civilisation merely feeds more of the same. Somewhere along the way we lost touch with our nature and exchanged it for rules and regulations about how we should be and behave in this world, even if this goes against our own feelings and we can even be punished if we don’t align. So the feelings are suppressed and more importance is given to appearances instead. Prestige, title, safety, security, intellectual accolade, and respect become more important than anything else, including family and heart.

Sadly this is still true of society today; we have lied to ourselves and then to others, following an unnatural course, devoid of heart, where it is normal to ignore the emotional body and just do what is expected of us, even if that means continual separation from partners and children because of the need to maximise financial reward and ‘be someone’.

In such a society, over giving has also become a norm, a Christian ethic which still informs our collective morality whether Christian or not. Those who felt unloved as children will think nothing of over giving as a way of attempting to fill the empty void they feel inside. Many are driven towards caring and healing roles because they know what it is like to suffer, plus it makes them feel as if they have purpose and this boosts their self-worth and feeling of being needed and indeed loved.

Those who felt unloved as children, are also really good at taking the blame, after all they were at fault, because they weren’t loved, so they will just assume that when something isn’t working, it’s their fault, even though they are likely to be totally blameless. They are the ones who apologise all the time.

It is a pattern that is set up so they can be easily manipulated by others, especially parents, but later by others. If they think they are at fault then they are more likely to try to make amends and ease conflict, and this might allow other’s to more easily get their own needs met - especially if a parent is insecure and needs reassurance of the child’s love.

Children who have been subjected to conditional love will do all they can to avoid being accused of being selfish. Parents of such children will use the accusation of selfishness as a way to control their children. These children have been taught that to express their emotions (and their needs) is selfish so even during counselling or psychotherapy they can find it difficult to talk of feelings of hostility towards parents.

Thus it can take some time for children of such parents to allow themselves to feel their emotions and even longer before s/he accuses themself of being selfish for having feelings (and needs). Such children will also do all their can to avoid being accused of wallowing in self-pity, because to do so would be selfish. They would much rather help others and put on a positive front. But avoiding feelings and appearing cheerful does not help, as this is denying the truth, and it is only by being truthful that the pain can be healed from within.

It is worth noting that the parent’s accusation of selfishness if often an attempt to regain control, especially if the child is establishing boundaries of their own and attempting to take their power back.

Such children are also very good at taking on responsibility, assuming that because something is their fault they must fix it. Also, parents who were struggling with their own emotional pain, may have consciously or unconsciously trained the child to take on some of their responsibilities, especially with caregiving for younger siblings so that it is natural - or feels natural - in later life to take on responsibility for partners and other family members, even friends, over-giving and in some many cases over-mothering.

There are perfectionist tendencies to contend with too. A child who doesn’t feel good enough tries to counter this by doing his/her very best at everything. Any feelings of inadequacy are not to do with performance, but because of not feeling loved enough and s/he assumes s/he must therefore be lacking in some way. No amount of medals and A grades will fill the void, because it is not the accolade they seek, but the unconditional love that they will likely never receive.

Often the parents are perfectionists too and nothing is ever quite good enough. But it is not learned behaviour that creates perfectionism in children, but a lack of self-worth. Such children have to be careful not to pass on their perfectionist tendencies to their children and put pressure on them to uphold the family’s high standards.

Growing up, these children can become very self critical and are prone to workaholism to to avoid feelings of guilt, sadness, despair and worthlessness, which can arise if idle. Further they can feel a lack of purpose if not busy and needed and this in itself will trigger feelings of worthless and pointlessness, which can lead to depression.

Depression also arises due to the suppression of sadness and the despair which can be felt when the heart has closed and there is a sense of being unloveable and worthless. So too if there is a feeling of having failed in some way. Crying can help enormously, as this lifts the weight of sadness and clears it from the body, at least that particular layer of sadness as there is usually another layer waiting beneath.

Much of the sadness tends to be acquired during childhood and much of it is suppressed and pushed out of consciousness, held deep as energy memory, affecting the chemistry of the body too. Eventually the subconscious is full and the excess pours into consciousness, resulting in the continuation of depression and sadness. Often the depression comes when there has been a loss of love, as this triggers early grief.

Many times it is suffered in silence, no one else knows, the feelings of sadness and anxiety are not expressed to others and the tears are swallowed down. This because some view tears as a sign of weakness and for others there is a guilt around burdening anyone else. There can be rage too, and for women the hormones may bring this up in the form of PMS, the rage and anger outbursts that come before she bleeds or during menopause without the bloodletting of menstruation.

The most difficult part of this perhaps, is the deep sense of abandonment and sensitivity to loss. When loss occurs some will feel nothing other than numbness, as another layer of sadness and grief gets buried deeper inside. Such individuals will notice that there is much less joy in life but won’t be able to pinpoint the reason for this and they are unlikely to recognise that their inability to grieve has caused this. For others, the grieving can be more extreme than for most, and the initial shock gives way to profound sadness and sobbing.

All of this can cause a schism between head and heart. If the heart has been partially closed due to the pain of conditional love and loss, then it can make entering intimate relationships challenging, not least the vulnerability of opening the heart, but the letting go that is required for true intimacy to take place. This can affect sexual interactions too and the ability of a partner to open to pleasure, because of the letting go required and the open hearted nature of this deeper connection

Trust issues may arise too. The fear of criticism and rejection is great and can lead to misinterpretation of situations due to the emotional vulnerability and hyper sensitivity to criticism/rejection. It is easier sometimes to keep the heart closed, albeit this too creates its own suffering.

Individuals can find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place and any attempts at healing may at times make this feel worse. While they may know that deep down they can’t settle for anything less than true love, opening to true love is also scary and they may well find themselves sabotaging any attempts at it because of their wounding and their fear of greater abandonment - yet ironically they abandon a part of themselves if they don’t at least try.

All of us are up against our emotional conditioning to a certain extent, because our ‘civilised’ and Christianised society has been programmed to believe that emotional suppression is OK. So too our over giving and our guilty ‘nature’. There is nothing natural about this though, not at heart.

It feels to me that the lunar standstill has been asking us to look deeper into this programming and reclaim our connection with heart, healing old woundings and cultivating the courage - overcoming our fear - to open to greater love, to unconditional love at that. For many this is new territory and it can be terrifying.

We also have to be careful not to give ourselves a hard time for our perceived failings, of the choices we have made from a damaged and closed heart. We are reminded to lean towards self compassion because we did what we did - made the choices we made - based on our level of consciousness and openness of heart at that time. Now we might do it differently, but back then we didn’t know differently.

It’s also time to look at where we are taking responsibility where it is not ours to take, and where we are being manipulated and controlled so that we can take our power back. We are asked to put in better boundaries, and this as the ultimate act of self-care. We are also asked to look at our perceived guilt and let that go too, it is a Christian hangover from our separation from the garden of Eden, and not our truth.

We are also being asked to re-write our stories, to acknowledge our woundings, but to set ourselves free, to see through the illusion, the way our minds have been programmed to view reality and to remember that there are many different ways to see and view the same thing.

This is absolutely not a time for blame and more of the same, but for carving a new way, of staying true to our heart and and listening. It is OK to put ourself first, and to create a life which is truly worth living - what does our heart wish to create and usher into our life next, what fills us with joy, what makes us feel passionate?

Until that becomes clear we may find ourselves in a period of overwhelm as old emotions bubble up and as we are triggered to feel and release them. During this time, we might be be super gentle with ourselves as we allow our gentle opening.

Until the next time

Love Emma x

• Thank you to the work of Phillip Bailey and his book Homeopathic Psychology for inspiring this post.