I've been looking through the threads wondering where to post this.
I am suddenly experiencing deep grief about not having been told that I am ok, that everything is ok.
My life is fine, I am functioning - this reflects the family that I grew up in which was functioning,
except like several billion other families on this earth - my mum died, my dad had a psychotic breakdown - and he hated children.

I am slightly dissociative due to the violence in the environment where I grew up and my father's extreme violence while psychotic, so...

Very occasionally there is the deep emotion going on inside me where I don't know the back story. There is a sense that my eyes, my brain, myself is concentrating hard on survival like my family did, and behind that tension in my eyes, my brain and my self - I don't know how to let the deeper part of me know I am ok, life is ok. Any more than my parents were able to communicate this okness.

This could come under trauma, dissociation, childhood neglect, children of alcoholics (similar dynamic tho' my parents were not alcholic) or a general human question. How do children survive needing reassurance when their environment is definitely not ok, and they are not wanted in their family, their school etc.

This is not about love. Until my mum died I received abundant love, which made her absence all the more puzzling.

The only tab that I have on it at the moment is needing to repeat that it's ok, I am ok, we are safe, life will be ok... and kind of knowing that it won't be. There should be a safe place inside every child which is resilient to life's not okayness?

I remember that a few weeks ago I felt peaceful, like a deep place of rest inside me whatever went off around me. I was able to create that for myself. Then I got very busy with the flow of life outside me, and the inside of me tried to stay cheerful. Now there is just grief, despite my taking quiet time to play and be gently with myself. I don't need anything specific, yet I have a deep need to reassurance absolutely some big person to be absolutely sure it's ok.

How on earth does anyone actually transmit this to their children? Is it possible??? This is for the relationship thread, because surely "being ok" is a basic requirement for healthy relationships?

Saidso