If, as an infant, you were left out screaming on the porch because your mother thought you'd grow up spoiled if you got attention every time you wanted it, you very likely experienced feelings of abandonment you couldn't put into words. It may have been years—many experiences or many relationships later—before you realized how deeply affected you were. But fast-forward a few years, when your boyfriend takes his third business trip in a month and then forgets your birthday and you “suddenly” feel like screaming because you feel so abandoned. When this happens, you are experiencing your life theme—abandonment—at work.
Your particular life theme may stem from the configuration of your family, the particular characteristics and limitations of your parents, the emotional dynamics between you and your siblings, or other circumstances of your life. But no matter what your theme, it will profoundly affect your sense of your own value and your capacity to love yourself.
Although each of us has our own personal variation, life themes fall into six broad categories, and generally, a single theme is most significant to your development. The major life themes are:
Neglect
Abandonment
Abuse
Rejection
Emotional Suffocation
Deprivation
Each of these themes has a powerful effect on how you feel about yourself. In childhood, as we have seen, it was the reason you thought you didn't deserve to be loved; in adulthood, it becomes the basis for your inability to love yourself.
Just as a life theme evolves over time, your sense of your own value is also incrementally created. Abuse by abuse, disappointment by disappointment, you create a self-concept based on your life theme and in time you will confirm your life theme by doing to yourself as an adult exactly the thing that was done to you as a child.
Your Life Theme and You: Cause and Effect
Perhaps you still haven't identified your own life theme. Or maybe it is so excruciatingly painful that you feel it's really all you know about yourself. Either way, it is intricately intertwined with the way you treat yourself now. Whatever your particular scenario, it's important to become acquainted with it now. For when you identify your life theme, realize how it affected you in the past, and notice how you tend to perpetuate it in the present, you begin the healing process that will allow you to learn to love yourself.
Neglect
Were you neglected, in terms of your physical, emotional, or spiritual care? Was your most significant relationship with the television set? Your best friend's parents? Drugs or alcohol? Was one of your parents an alcoholic? Did you live in a pig sty? Did your parents fail to teach you the basics of self-care, how to wash your face and brush your teeth and comb your hair?
If you were neglected, you tend to feel unworthy of the good things life has to offer and you tend to neglect yourself in the same way you were neglected early on. If you were left with the TV as a baby-sitter, never talked to by your parents, or not provided with the basic necessities, you probably don't know how to bring nourishing experiences into your life to sustain or inspire you. You neglect yourself.
You feel bad that you can't seem to buy the new coat, get yourself to the gym, stimulate your intelligence with good films or books, or find friends who will talk about the things that are important to you—and, most likely, you also beat yourself up for not giving yourself more or better attention.
Abandonment
Were you abandoned? Did one of your parents die? Was one of your parents away for a very long time during your childhood? Did one or both of your parents work so much that you hardly ever had any time to spend with them? Did your father disappear after your parents' divorce? Your mother? Were you emotionally abandoned? Did no one ever listen to or care about your feelings?
If you were abandoned, you tend to abandon yourself— that is, not stick up for yourself or be an ally to yourself in situations where you should clearly speak or act out on your own behalf. You probably also find yourself in situations where you are abandoned—your friends go off on a trip without you, you marry a workaholic who never comes home, your best friend moves across the country and then never writes or calls.
In general, you tend to be in relationships where people, for one reason or another, aren't able to be by your side or won't be loyal to you; and you very likely think that somehow this is your fault.
Abuse
Were you sexually or physically abused? Molested? Beaten? Were you verbally abused? Criticized, put down, made fun of? Were you emotionally abused? Were the nature, depth, and truth of your feelings ignored or denied? Were you called “too sensitive”? Were one or both of your parents narcissistic, that is, so impressed and involved with themselves that they took all the emotional attention, and gave none to you? Were you spiritually abused? In other words, do you have some special gift, intuition, or insight that was ignored or denigrated by your parents or siblings?
If you were abused emotionally, you tend to pick on yourself, be critical of yourself, put yourself down, and not feel that you deserve love, consideration, or care from others. You allow yourself to be treated poorly emotionally by others—let them run over your feelings, be hysterical in your presence, or critical of you; and you probably beat yourself up for allowing this to happen.
If you were physically or sexually abused you very likely perpetuate this abuse by not being kind to your body, not feeding it well, being overweight, having addictions that are physically destructive, or forming relationships with abusive people. You likely also blame yourself for not being able to find better situations and for once again allowing yourself to be treated so badly.
Rejection
Were you rejected? Did one of your parents wish you'd never been born? Did they wish you were a boy instead of a girl, or vice versa? Did you play second fiddle to another child in your family? A pack of siblings? A favored brother or sister? A twin? Were you in general ignored? Treated as if you didn't exist?
If you were rejected, you are likely to be self-rejecting, good at finding fault with yourself, and unconsciously seeking out experiences where you are not chosen or valued. You blame yourself for being in these situations but continue to find yourself drifting toward them anyway. Being left out and not being valued are familiar to you, and you tend to think this is all you deserve.
You very likely believe there's something about you which is the real reason you didn't get invited to the party—you're too loud or too shy—and why you aren't accepted by the group of friends you'd like to be a part of. You have difficulty feeling valued, feeling that you deserve to belong.
Emotional Suffocation
Were you emotionally suffocated? Did you have an overly protective or overly involved parent? Was one of your parents sexually seductive? Did one of your parents treat you as a spouse? Did one of your parents tell you all his or her troubles? Were your parents overbearing? Emotionally invasive? Did they insist on knowing your every
