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One of the experiences that most deeply impact on children’s self-esteem it is having suffered emotional helplessness. Although not usually given the same importance that to the most obvious mistreatment such as whipping or shouting, its effects, in addition to lasting, are devastating.
In the first years of life, feeling that nobody cares for us, that nobody cares about us (just when we need it most), leaves a deep feeling of emptiness and loneliness which, if not healed, drags on for life.
Andrea’s case perfectly exemplifies this feeling of helplessness. She was 10 years old when his mother got sick. Until then, his parents had been focused on their professional careers and they didn’t have much time for her (just a few outings on the weekend or a short trip to nearby cities).
When his mother’s illness appeared, the situation got worse and the scant attention Andrea received was reduced to almost nothing. His father focused on taking care of his mother and almost forgot to take care of his daughter.
In addition, under the mistaken idea of avoiding suffering, he did not talk to her about anything that had to do with the disease, he acted as if nothing happenedas if she was unaware of the complex situation at home or did not harbor any feelings or worries inside her.
“That day”, Andrea told me when she came to see me, “I felt how my heart broke into a thousand little piecesAll the admiration I felt for my father vanished when I heard him tell my aunt that nothing was wrong, that children don’t notice things, that I was fine.
“Ramón, I was ten years old and I realized everything How could my mother’s illness not affect me? Every time I saw her sitting in her chair crying without further ado about her, she anguished me, I felt like I was dying, I even believed that the fault of so much grief must be mine for sure.”
“I hugged her and sometimes I also cried with grief, seeing my mother so sad. She barely had the strength to speak to me And if she saw me cry, she cried more. Neither my grandmother (who lived with us) nor my father noticed my pain, they just fed me, asked me if I had done my homework and sat in front of the TV all afternoon with a bag of sweets, so it didn’t matter. the can”.
“I also noticed when my father He came home from work at night smelling awful of wine and talking nonsense. What despair, I felt so alone, I always feel so alone and so sad.”
“ Nobody cares about me, I think I’m not interesting, that I am vulgar and gray. Gray like those men from Momo, who suck the life out of others but don’t know how to live. When I read Momo as a child, I thought that I was a gray girl, that at birth she had sucked my mother’s joy away and that is why she was such a sad woman.”
“When he died, I also thought it was my fault.I still think so. Even if I had not been born, I could have been a happier and happier woman, as my grandmother told me that her daughter was when she was little.”
How to overcome emotional helplessness
Thanks to the work we do in the consultation, Andrea was able to put everything that happened in its place and clarify this tragic episode of his life. The young woman realized that her father should have made an effort to understand her, protect her and accompany her in this situation, which was also so devastating for her (bearing in mind that she was 10 years old and it was her mother who was dying). .
Talking and verbalizing all the circumstances and feelings she experienced helped Andrea to release all the emotions that had accumulated since childhood. She was finally able to mourn the death of her mother and go through the mourning that she had been forbidden to live as a child because “they don’t know anything.”
Besides, Andrea stopped thinking she was guilty by the death of her mother and little by little, she recovered her self-esteem and self-confidence. As she commented to me several weeks after finishing her therapy, “the emptiness has disappeared, Ramón. Now I feel alive. I no longer feel gray, but colored. Also, I don’t feel alone, I like to be with other people and I enjoy their company, but also, I can be alone without feeling abandoned or sad.”
No matter how hard the situations that are lived in the family, children should be part of everything that happens (although obviously, we have to take into account their level of maturation and adapt the explanations to their language). Children feel everything that happens, but if they don’t have anyone to help them put words to the situation, their head tends to elaborate complicated catastrophic theories, where loneliness and guilt are always present.