"The child survives the Trauma of Identity by giving up on his healthy identity, his autonomy, in order to have some connection with his mother, without whom he cannot survive. He is forced to identify with his mother's wants and needs, where his wants and needs are ignored, mis-interpreted or used as a means of persecution by the mother. This, then, brings the therapeutic question "Who am I?". And existentially this question is automatically followed by the question "What do I want?", because in order to know what I want I must have a reasonable sense of who I am.
The Trauma of Love happens when the connection that the child does manage to maintain with his mother after the Trauma of Identity is not in effect a clear, loving connection, but rather a connection that is painful, unfulfilling, manipulative and persecutory.
These traumas form the foundation of our life, our ability to grow up with a healthy, stable psyche, or not. All later experiences that constitute a trauma are always, also, a re-stimulation of these early, pre-verbal, pre-memory events."
The Trauma of Love happens when the connection that the child does manage to maintain with his mother after the Trauma of Identity is not in effect a clear, loving connection, but rather a connection that is painful, unfulfilling, manipulative and persecutory.
These traumas form the foundation of our life, our ability to grow up with a healthy, stable psyche, or not. All later experiences that constitute a trauma are always, also, a re-stimulation of these early, pre-verbal, pre-memory events."
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