Healing Your Emotional Self

Healing Your Emotional Self

A Powerful Program to Help You Raise Your Self-Esteem, Quiet Your Inner Critic,

and Overcome Your Shame

Beverly Engel

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Healing Your Emotional Self

Healing Your Emotional Self

A Powerful Program to Help You Raise Your Self-Esteem, Quiet Your Inner Critic,

and Overcome Your Shame

Beverly Engel

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 by Beverly Engel. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada

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Engel, Beverly.

Healing your emotional self : a powerful program to help you raise your self-esteem, quiet your inner critic, and overcome your shame / Beverly Engel.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-471-72567-1 (cloth)

ISBN-10 0-471-72567-6 (cloth)

1. Mental health. 2. Self-esteem. 3. Self-care, Health. 4. Psychology, Pathological. I. Title. RA790.E555 2006
   

   158.1—dc22
   

   Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
   

   This book is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in the tsunami in December 2004 and to all the people who worried about me while I was in India.
   

   The experience taught me a valuable lesson and reminded me of how many people love me—a lesson those of us who were abused continually need to relearn.
   

   Contents
   

   Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1
   

   Part One
   

   How Your Parents Shape Your Self-Esteem, Self-Image, and Body Image
   

   1. Our Parents as Mirrors 9
      

   2. The Seven Types of Negative Parental Mirrors 29
      

   3. Your Body as a Mirror 63
      

   4. How Mirror Therapy Works 77
      

      Part Tw o
      

      Shattering Your Distorted Parental Mirror
      

   5. Rejecting Your Parents’ Negative Reflection 87
      

   6. Emotionally Separating from Your Parents 104
      

   7. Quieting and Countering Your Inner Critic 117
      

      Part Three
      

      Creating a New Mirror
      

   8. Looking Deeper into the Mirror:
      

      Discovering the Real You 139
      

      vii
      

      viii
      CONTENTS
      

   9. Providing for Yourself What You Missed as a Child 156
      

   10. Learning to Love Your Body 175
       

       Part Four
       

       Specialized Help
       

   11. If You Were Neglected, Rejected, or Abandoned: Healing the “I Am Unlovable” and “I Am Worthless” Mirrors 187
       

   12. If You Were Overprotected or Emotionally Smothered: Healing the “I Am Nothing without My Parent” Mirror 204
       

   13. If You Were Overly Controlled or Tyrannized: Healing the “I Am Powerless” Mirror 212
       

   14. If You Had Overly Critical, Shaming, or Perfectionistic Parents: Healing the “I Am Bad,” “I Am Unacceptable,” and “I Am Not Good Enough” Mirrors 220
       

   15. If You Had a Self-Absorbed or Narcissistic Parent: Healing the “I Don’t Matter” Mirror 229
       

   16. Continuing to Heal 238
       

Appendix: Recommended Therapies 243 References 249

Recommended Reading 251

Index 255

Acknowledgments

I feel so fortunate and so grateful to work once again with Tom Miller, my wonderful editor at John Wiley & Sons. I appreciate his wise feed- back and am grateful for the fact that he has gone to bat for me over and over. His faith in me has been unremitting, and it has helped me to continue to have faith in myself. I wish to thank everyone at Wiley who worked on this book, especially Lisa Burstiner, who did an eco- nomical yet astute job of editing.

To my fabulous agent, Stedman Mays, I offer my undying grati- tude and appreciation. You have gone way, way beyond the call of duty for me. I appreciate all your hard work, your feedback, your sugges- tions, your intuition, and most of all your dedication.

I also want to express my gratitude for Mary Tahan, my other agent. Mary, I appreciate your insights and suggestions regarding my books, and I especially appreciate all your hard work when it comes to selling my foreign rights. I always know you are pulling for me.

I am deeply appreciative of the numerous clients who were willing to try my Mirror Therapy techniques. Your courage, determination, and feedback are greatly appreciated.

I am deeply indebted to the work of two authors whose work I called upon for this book: Elan Golumb, Ph.D., author of
Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in Their Struggle for Self
; and Byron Brown, author of
Soul without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within
. Their wonderful work illu- minated and inspired me.

I am also indebted to the work of two people whose ideas inspired me to create my Mirror Therapy program. Arthur P. Ciaramicoli, Ed.D., Ph.D., the author of
The Power of Empathy: A Practical Guide to Creating Intimacy, Self-Understanding and Lasting Love
, provided me a framework from which to work, especially with regard to having

ix

x
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

empathy for oneself. Laurel Mellin, creator of the Solutions Program and author of
The Pathway
, has helped me to further understand the damage caused by inadequate parenting. And while I already under- stood the importance of creating a nurturing inner voice (symbolic of a healthy mother), Laurel taught me that it is equally important to cre- ate healthy limits (symbolic of a strong father).

Introduction

T
HERE ARE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE
who were emotionally abused, neglected, or smothered by their parents or other significant caretak- ers when they were growing up. Many of these people do not realize they were abused or neglected, and they continue to suffer from myr- iad problems throughout their lives because they are not getting the help they need. People who internalize the abuse manifest self- destructiveness, depression, suicidal thoughts, passivity, withdrawal (avoidance of social contacts), shyness, and a low degree of communi- cation with others. They are likely to have low self-esteem and may suffer from feelings of guilt and remorse, depression, loneliness, rejection, and resignation. Perceiving themselves as unworthy and the world as a hostile place in which they are bound to fail, many are unwilling to try new tasks, develop new skills, or take risks.

People who externalize the abuse may be unpredictable and vio- lent, their behavior characterized by impulsive action rather than con- formity to social norms. They frequently become anxious, aggressive, and hostile. They suffer from constant fear and are always on the alert and ready to hit back. Many end up mistreating others, often in the same ways they were mistreated.

At the core of all these symptoms and behaviors is an inadequately developed sense of self and a distorted image of self based on parental negative messages and treatment. Unless adult survivors address these fundamental issues, their efforts toward recovery will be thwarted.

If you were a victim of emotional abuse or neglect as a child, this book will show you exactly what you need to do in order to heal from the damage done to your self-image and self-esteem.
Healing Your Emotional Self
will guide you step by step through a program that is both innovative and psychologically sound—innovative because it uses the mirror as a metaphor and a tool for healing, and psychologically sound because it combines my many years of experience specializing

1

in treating people who have been emotionally abused with various respected psychological concepts.

Although the primary audience for this book is survivors of emo- tional abuse and neglect, this book is for anyone who suffers from low self-esteem or body-image issues. People who are preoccupied with their bodies, or who determine their self-worth by how their bodies look, will find the book particularly helpful. Many suffer from a dis- torted body image and from negative feelings concerning their bodies, but they do not understand that the cause may be negative parental messages, emotional abuse, or neglect.

Many of you know me from my other books on emotional abuse, namely:
The Emotionally Abusive Relationship
,
The Emotionally Abused Woman
, and
Encouragements for the Emotionally Abused Woman
. In those books I wrote about the fact that people who are currently being emotionally abused (or are abusive) are doing so because they were emotionally abused as children. Now, in
Healing Your Emotional Self
, I will help readers take a giant step forward by offering a powerful program that will help them repair the damage caused by emotionally abusive parents.

Childhood neglect and emotional abuse cause many of the most serious problems people suffer from today. This is not a revelation to most professionals or to many who suffer from its effects, but in spite of this knowledge, there is insufficient help for the survivors of these types of abuse. Relatively few books have offered readers a complete understanding of how this kind of child abuse affects people, ways to heal from the damage, and how to resolve relationships with parents. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive healing program spe- cific to the kinds of messages (mirrors) that emotionally abusive and neglectful parents give their children and to how this kind of abuse affects a child’s self-image.

Neglect and emotional abuse are the primary causes of both borderline personality disorder (BPD) and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), which have turned out to be
the
disorders of our time. This is true for two major reasons: Children in the past two decades have grown up with absent, neglectful parents and parents who continued to pass on the emotional abuse they themselves sustained. In addition, both the borderline and narcissistic personality

disorders have “come out of the closet” in terms of professionals telling their patients exactly what their diagnoses are. In the past they had kept these diagnoses from their clients for fear of traumatizing them.