As a result of their complete dependence, infants become extraordinarily perceptive. Their only way to escape from intolerable terror is to develop perception skills. If an infant perceives that she is loved the way she needs to be loved by the huge all-powerful creatures around her, the anxiety that the creatures will not come when she needs them is alleviated.
But if she feels that she is not loved as she needs to be loved, the doubt of, “Will I be left here to die?” remains.
As the infant grows up, he becomes less dependent and more capable of caring for himself. But the foundational memory of being put at the risk of extinction by lack of love remains. And it’s not like the people who didn’t love the infant enough will suddenly feel overcome with love for him when he is five, fifteen, or thirty. So the constant reminders of the destructive lack of love are always present.
This wounded person will be so overcome by anxiety that he will try to regain control over the situation. The only way to do that is to convince himself that he caused the lack of love that threatened his existence. And if he caused it, he’s at least somewhat in control. (It’s the exact same mechanism as the one used by victims of crime, for instance.)
This is why he will cling to the belief that he’s not good enough. Because if he is good enough, then it must mean that this horrible experience of being unloved is not about him at all. All this suffering, and it’s not even about him! It’s much easier to convince himself that it is about him and he has provoked the lack of love by not being good enough.
So she will travel through life, seeking out proof that she is undeserving of love, fat, ugly, stupid, useless. Because if that is true, there is always hope that once she makes herself deserving, beautiful, thin, smart and successful, then the love will come. And if, God forbid, it turns out that she is already deserving, beautiful, thin, smart and successful, then that means the love is never coming. And that’s the hardest thing in the world to accept.
Clarissa's Blog 
1) You received an ARC?
2)EVERYTHING can be traced back to infancy?
Tangentially, when my cousin and her husband came to visit with their kid, my cousin said, “She only shows her real feelings when she’s just with us.” It seemed a little early to attribute emotional restraint or the conscious idea that you behave one way with your caregivers and another way with other people to a 15 month old.
LikeLike
What’s an ARC?
LikeLike
An Advance Reader Copy (ARC). The Amazon link says the hardcover version of Find Her isn’t due to be released until next month.
LikeLike
Oh, right! Yes, I’m an Amazon Vine reviewer. I get tons of cool stuff for free.
LikeLike
And no, shit starts much earlier than infancy. We all get to infancy with tons of baggage already.
LikeLike
Funny, nobody’s asked about my prenatal issues. It makes sense that if your mother’s diet during pregnancy influences your metabolism for the rest of your life, that some psychological issues might have their origin at that time, but it’s difficult to accept, and it feels very deterministic.
LikeLike
Exactly! Unless Not-Good-Enough resolves his issues, his children will inherit them. And add them to their own. Plus, there’s the whole level of historical and cultural legacy.
Blank slates do not exist. But that makes life more complex and interesting.
LikeLike
“Blank slates do not exist. But that makes life more complex and interesting.”
It seems that a lot of liquid modernity assumes that not only are people born blank slates, but that they remain that way forever and can be reprogrammed or reinvented at will. That’s why it will fail. The only question is how long it will take.
LikeLike
Very true. This is the consumerist side of the whole system. People want to be able to purchase new identities and experiences at will. They are obviously doomed to fail but there’s no explaining to consumers that not everything can be handled by purchasing stuff.
LikeLike
Not exactly recommending it, but getting yourself out of real trouble on your own is a pretty reliable way of getting over this – eventually. You really need that deeply surprising “No one came! Oh wait, I’m fine” experience to even begin, though.
To this day, one of my happiest memories is the one where I got beaten into a pulp. It started as a mugging, but after finding out I didn’t actually have anything worth calling cash on me, my assailants just started wailing on me, gleefully pronouncing that they’re going to kill me.
I remember, again, with a great deal of surprise, a kind of weak, whiny voice inside me protesting “But I want to live…” – didn’t know that was in me. Next, I laughed at pretty much all of my life up to that point, and thought “Okay, lets get you out of this” as I was already doing it. I slid out and shed the backpack and then my winter coat they had grabbed on to, and booked it for the nearby street, planning to stop in the middle of it, assuming they would not follow me into traffic, and perhaps also forcing a car to actually stop and help. At some point, I looked behind me and they were gone, probably figuring it wasn’t worth it anymore.
It doesn’t sound fun when described, but without that experience, I’d very likely have killed myself by now. I had ups and downs since then, but there was a baseline I could always bounce back from.
LikeLike
One thing I learned decades ago is that if you project an attitude of confidence, of being authoritative and skillful at whatever you’re doing, most people you meet will take your outward appearance at face value, and will treat you like a competent adult until/unless you give them reason to believe otherwise.
LikeLike
This is very true.
LikeLike