I am reading "The Body Never Lies," again by Alice Miller.
What is really standing out to me this time around is the fact about feelings. Or the fact that it is more typical than not to not be aware of your true feelings.
Alice writes, "Genuine Feelings are never a product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent. I cannot force myself to love or honor my parents if my body rebels against such an endeavor for reasons that are well-known to it. But if I still attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, then the upshot will be the kind of stress that is invariably involved when I demand the impossible of myself. This kind of stress has accompanied me almost all my life. Anxious to stay in line with the system of moral values I had accepted, I did my best to imagine good feeings I did not possess while ignoring the bad feelings I did have. My aim was to be loved as a daughter. But the effort was all in vain. In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place. On the other hand, I learned that a feeling of love will establish itself automatically (for example, love for my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that I feel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions impossed on me. But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones."
"The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can delude neither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation. Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (like myself) literally almost kill themselves in the attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, without any consideration of the price this extracts both from their own bodies and from their children. As long as the children allow themselves to be used this way, it is entirely possible to live to be one hundred without any awareness of one's own personal truth and without any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception."
"A mother who is forced to realize that the deprivations imposed on her in her youth make it impossible for her to love a child of her own, however hard she may try, can certainly expect to be accused of immorality if she has the courage to put that truth into words. But I believe that it is precisely this explicit acceptance of her true feelings, independent of the claims of morality, that will enable her to give both herself and her children the honest and sincere kind of support they need most, and at the same time allow her to free herself from the shackles of self-deception."
"When most children are born, what they need most from their parents is love, by which I mean affection, attention, care, protection, kindness, and the willingness to communicate. If these needs are gratified, the bodies of those children will retain the good memory of such caring, affection all their lives, and later, as adults, they will be able to pass on the same kind of love to their children. But if this is not the case, the children will be left with a lifelong yearning for the fulfillment of their initial (and vital) needs. In later life, this yearning will be directed at other people. In comparison, the more implacably children have been deprived of love and negated or maltreated in the name of "Upbringing," the more those children, on reaching adulthood, will look to their parents (or other people substituting for them) to supply all the things those same parents failed to provide when they were needed most. This is a normal response on the part of the body. It knows precisely what it needs, it cannot forget the deprivations. The deprivation or hole is there waiting to be filled."
"The older we get, the more difficult it is to find other people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body's expectations do not slacken with age – quite the contrary! They are merely directed at others, usually our own children and grandchildren. The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the process of repression and denial. In this way we can create in our own selves a person who can satisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfillment since birth, if not earlier. Then we can give ourselves the attention, the respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us."
"To make this happen we need one special experience; the experience of love for the child we once were. Without it, we have no way of knowing what love consists of." Alice Miller
While I knew that having lived 46 years trying so hard to possess feelings of love and warmth toward my parents, and working at being a warmer person, it had never not once occurred to me that I wasn't the problem. That due to the lack of feelings of love didn't mean there was something the matter with me…but rather what I was trying to love.
I remember having odd and horrifying realizations about my self, when the lack of deep caring and love didn't arise from me, towards my parents. I would not even want to glance to long at this self that seemed to be so detached and cool. For what child doesn't want to be with her parents?
The double feelings that I had with the discovery that my father was a pedophile, was that I wasn't a broken love person. I wasn't cold or detached…I wasn't living in a broken body and cold toward family…I wasn't damaged…but my family was.
I am not sure I can tell you how it feels to believe you don't have access to warmth and caring or love towards parents…and feel you are damaged. That you arrived empty of that kind of love. Yet I knew I could feel, but couldn't carry those feelings to my parents.
It now gives me great peace to know I can't manipulate feelings…that emotions are natural responses, ones that come up without any assistance from me. It leaves me in a neutral position taking the lead from my body.
My body never lies…however, I have lied about my body.
I have lived faking my feelings.
Living a fake life.
But no more. Now, I simply agree with how It feels.
I M Perfect lady 