NON-EXISTENCE LEADING TO ANXIETY
One of the greatest effects of non-existence/neglect is the emotion of betrayal leading to anxiety.
The betrayal comes from what a child expects both naturally and also from observing their contemporaries. It’s natural for a child to both desire and expect a parent to notice and praise their efforts and actions, and this extends to other examples such as not providing for Christmas anticipation or maybe trying for a happy holiday. The hollow gap from what is expected and what is received is betrayal and this betrayal leads to a lack of trust first to parents and then to others. It carries through to the adult where trust is lost in people and also in events, leading to anxiety. The wounds are not visible but many suffering from panic attacks, anxiety and lack of self confidence are victims of it.
Trust is the keyword here. They have been let down so many times in the past they can’t know trust and are worried that trend will continue. In fact although there is much to distrust in adult life it is not as absolute as one who is scarred as a child. They will become distrustful of other children for example and this will make others distrustful of them, this will not be powerfully obvious but others will feel it all the same and the sufferer usually tries to compensate for this to try and give others what they want which is usually wrong due to lack of parental influence/guidance.
However, often the sufferer is proud of what they have achieved, in effect living a lie pretending to be something they don’t naturally feel. They may feel the weight of the World on their shoulders in that they think profusely as a result of not being able to predict the future. This’ll make them worry a lot “I can’t stop thinking about what might happen” and this may be seen to be a positive attribute but it leads to heavy stress. It seems that things “always go wrong” and importantly any support group they have is ‘guilty’ of never realising just how ‘catastrophic’ things might be – itself a betrayal.
The development of this alter ego from childhood betrayal of trust can affect adult relationships heavily, from work colleagues to sexual partners. They may not even have adult friends simply being that no one wants to talk to as they were at school and in close relationships again it’s felt trust may be betrayed at any moment. Particularly in the modern world with its lust for communication; the phone beeps too much; “why don’t you answer that?”; “who were you speaking to?”; “why were you online so long?”; “I’m sure there are ways of deleting messages you don’t want me to see”. All of these are signs of the abused adult dancing on the thin conscious ice with the shadows of the subconscious underneath which may break through with explosive results given just a small spark of illogical reason.
