|
An enduring unsafe situation in early childhood may make the child to close down and lose its ability to sense other people’s feelings, or the energy in the group or hidden agreements, etc. Then we need to retrain our ability to notice our felt sense again (body work, breath work).
If we had strict parents we may develop a strong superego (the inner critic, or the internalized parent) that makes us exceedingly self-critical and as a result we tend to be timid, closed down, and we make ourselves small. The superego often appears like an inner voice that nags us, criticizes us, blames us and attacks us as soon as we begin to show ourselves.
An additional difficulty is, that we often
confuse superego with inner guidance. As a result we lose orientation on our life path and we do not know the difference between what helps us grow and mature and what keeps us timid and small. Inner work with the superego is often needed to learn to recognize our true inner voice. Superego is a big hindrance in communication as we tend to be too (self-)critical and so we often trigger pain in ourselves and others.
From Object Relations Theory we know that the relationship patterns to which we were exposed in our early childhood often become prototypes that we project on relationships later in life. Such prototypes are called object relations. More ...