Testimony: “Since I Was Little, I Had Always Felt Lonely”

The emotional loneliness and helplessness that many children experience in their childhood has serious long-term consequences. In their adult life, these people continue to carry the same feeling of abandonment and existential emptiness that they suffered as children.

Despite being able to lead seemingly fulfilling and successful lives, nothing can fill the loneliness in her heart. To overcome this devastating feeling, these people need to face their past, understand the causes of their emotional emptiness, and rediscover their love for themselves. Only they can illuminate and fill the emptiness of your heart.

Sara’s story: learning to light up the dark corners

Sara went to therapy to try to understand an overwhelming sense of loneliness that she had carried throughout her life. Even in times when she was supposed to have felt happy, with a good job, friends and a loving partner, the young woman had continued to perceive in her heart a “dark corner impossible to illuminate.”

To try to find out the origin of this feeling, I asked Sara to explain to me how she had felt, throughout her personal history, her loneliness. I also asked him to try to remember when he harbored this feeling.

In therapy, we saw how one of the most recurrent scenes of her childhood was spending the afternoons alone, looking out the window, for hours.

Try to let yourself be carried back to connect with the oldest memory that comes to you.
I can be four or five years old. In the living room of my house there is a window and I remember kneeling in a chair, with my elbows on the frame and my nose almost against the glass. This is how I spend the afternoons of my childhood: when I finish my homework, I go to the window.

And what does that girl see through that window? How does it feel?
The girl feels very sad. Everything is gray, there are no colors. Even when he looks up, even the sky is gray. She is very lonely. It has nothing to do and there is no one to play with it.

And your family? Where are your father and mother?
My father works all day and my mother, who is at home, does not look at me, ignores me (breaks down crying). I want to know why, all my life I’ve wanted to know why.

“What have I done to make him treat me like this? I don’t remember any show of affection on his part. And whenever I ask him, he looks at me in passing, but doesn’t say anything.”

What is your relationship with your mother like at that stage?
I do my best to make her happy. I help her around the house and get good grades at school, but it’s never enough. It seems like I don’t exist for her. He ignores me. I always see his back, never his face. She goes about her business, she hardly ever looks at me. It seems like she’s always angry.

How is that?
He always grumbles and scolds me for everything I do. Also, since we are two sisters –Sara is the little one–, she tells us that we are an expense for the family, that we are never going to contribute anything. We are two girls and my parents have a very old mentality. After my sister was born, they wanted a boy, but it never came.

And how do you feel this emptiness affects your life?
Since adolescence, I go with anyone who gives me a minimum of affection, even if I know it is false. They use me, they take advantage of me, they leave me … and I go with the next one who offers me some crumbs of attention. I live in a desperate search for affection.

During the following week, Sara visited her parents’ home and had the opportunity to look through the old photo albums. For the first time, thanks to the memories that she worked on in her session, she saw them from the girl’s point of view and was able to understand a little better how she felt.

Tell me, Sara. What caught your attention in those photographs?
I was very shocked. I saw myself serious, staring blankly. I did not find any photo in which he was smiling. The feeling they gave me was like indifference, as if I had gotten used to being alone. Even her body posture was significant: she was always hunched forward a little, as if she had a weight on her shoulders.

What do you think was the reason for that feeling you had of having a weight on your shoulders?
I get the impression that this weight is the enormous feeling of guilt that I have always had. As they were always scolding me, I thought that I was really the only one to blame for everything bad that happened to us. I remember that, since it could arrive at any moment, I was always waiting for a scolding. He lived with the eternal feeling of having done something wrong.

And what did you do to get scolded? Do you think they were right?
It is true that, sometimes, I would get angry and, out of sheer rage, I would break my toys. But it was not good inside. They didn’t care about what happened to me, they just scold me and punished me, but they didn’t ask me why I did it. It is true that there were times when I was misbehaving on purpose, but I was very angry. They had no right to scold me for everything.

Try to remember and connect with what you felt as a child. Why are you angry?
Deep down, I’m angry because they ignore me. Always fighting to please and they never recognize me. I am the one who tries hard and they never try to put themselves in my place. I am always the bad one, whom everyone can scold. It seems like I’m always asking for forgiveness for existing. I even blame myself for being born.

Why do you feel that way?
We are two sisters, I am the little one. My parents wanted a child to have a couple, they were that old. They were trying for a long time, but my mother did not get pregnant. In the end, after seven years of having my sister, I was born.
I know that, in reality, I was a disappointment to my parents: they told me when they were angry with me, and I carry that feeling. I was never good enough for them, and I think I never will be.

Not meeting parental expectations is a terrible thing for a baby. You needed their attention and you tried hard not to disappoint them, but it was all useless because they weren’t dependent on you. They were the ones who had created those other expectations.

We are going to try to make a jump in time to the present to analyze that feeling of loneliness and of not feeling cared for that we have seen in these sessions. Do you recognize some situations in your life in which you feel that you are still carrying this feeling?
I see it in many situations in my daily life. I feel like I need to work hard to earn the affection of others. I totally depend on it. With my partners, with my friends and even with my co-workers, I always try to please so that they don’t get mad at me.

And what happens if others get angry? How you feel?
I feel the same loneliness, the same emptiness that I have seen in these last sessions. I feel the same as the abandoned girl that no one paid attention to except to scold her and to blame her for everything.

Imagine that you could go back in time, but taking everything you know now with you. Imagine that you have your parents in front of you and you can tell them anything you want.
Take a deep breath and let out everything the girl saved.
I tell my parents that they did very badly. What difference does it make to have a boy or a girl? That is nonsense, social conventions. They should have put those ideas out of their heads and accept that I was a girl. They had to love me just the way I was. Since I was born, since I was there, they should have treated me well, with love. They had no right to treat me like this. Furthermore, I was very sensitive and everything affected me much more than other children. They could have stopped looking at their navel and looked at me a little more.
They missed watching me grow up and seeing what a wonderful girl I was and who didn’t seem to exist for them.

And now that you are also there with the girl … What do you want to do with her? Is there something you want to tell him? Do you recognize some situations in your current life in which you feel that you are still carrying this feeling?
I want to take that helpless girl and hug her.
She needs all the human warmth that she didn’t have as a child.
I want to tell her that it is not her fault, that she has done nothing wrong to be ignored like this. I want to tell him that his parents’ problems and their flaws are theirs, that they are the ones who have to face them and work on them.

From these sessions, Sara began to look at herself and take care of herself much more. She understood that her parents were not going to fill her emptiness, but that she had to be the one who fought for her independence and her emotional balance. Progressively, he freed himself from that need to please others, and the more he did it, the more comfortable he felt.

5 keys to illuminate your heart

If at some point in your life you have noticed the same sense of dark emptiness and loneliness as Sara, these tips can help illuminate your heart. You can change that feeling of discomfort and abandonment for a feeling of calm and emotional balance. We are always in time to overcome the traumas of our past.

Learn to love yourself

Don’t look for love outside. If you didn’t have affection as a child, don’t keep demanding it from others. If you don’t love yourself in the first place, no relationship in your life is going to be completely satisfying. Learn to love and value yourself, become your best friend, your best company.

You can get angry

You have the right to protest and get angry when you don’t like something. Don’t repress it, express it. Keeping your emotions inside hurts you. Say what you feel without caring about others.

You are not guilty

Remember that you are not to blame for everything that happens around you. Do not let others blame you and hang their faults on you. You are only responsible for what concerns you directly.

Stop doubting yourself

That your parents did not know how to recognize the very special girl in front of them is their problem. Don’t let her emotional blindness keep pushing you to always doubt yourself. Trust yourself, your person, your ideas, your feelings and decisions.

Look forward

You cannot change the past, but you can enjoy your present and your future. It is not worth thinking about what they did not give you. Focus on what you can give yourself today.