As children, we believe that we have magical powers to change all that is wrong with our world. In order to survive, emotionally, we need to believe that we can control our destiny.

Children raised by an emotionally unavailable mother and/or father

Emotionally unavailable parents lack the capacity to be nurturing, supportive, and affirming. As a way of coping with an emotionally unavailable mother or father, children often "perform to please," and try every means in their arsenals to make their parents feel happy while striving to get their own needs met. When their efforts failed and their needs weren’t met, they turned inward. Some of these children arrived at the wrong conclusion—that they were defective, not their parents. They do not recognize their parents' problems. By turning their frustrations within, they unknowingly minimized the pain that resulted from dealing with them.

Children grip tightly to the magical illusion

As children, we turn to self-blame as a way of coping and grip tightly to the illusion that our parents will someday morph and become the loving people that we longed for. As we transition to adulthood, many of us maintain this faulty, idealized interpretation about parental expectations. We believe that those who care for us should eventually understand and learn to be there for us. However, during adulthood we keep striving, pleasing, pursuing, performing, and fixing in order to fulfill the fantasy of what we want from others, including our parents. By taking the responsibility for our parents’ failures, we let them off the hook and minimize the emotional pain connected to how they treat(ed) us.

Young children count on the soothing of comfort and safety

They move toward that which promotes security. Kids may mimic behavioral patterns established by their parents. The lack of safety and a stable support system can make kids feel insecure in the midst of a chaotic world. As they reach adulthood, they continue to search for the validation, nurturing, and comfort which was lacking from their childhood experience.

Be aware of your childhood and decide to transcend it

Inevitably, if children of emotionally unavailable parents are to develop and change as adults, they need to start making conscious what has been hidden in order to transcend their childhood pain. We must begin to confront the challenges, paradoxes, problems, and difficult realities that are part of adult experience. We move into uncharted waters that present us with risks and uncomfortable feelings. No one has prepared us for this "wilderness experience." This is the “groan zone”—a place where we struggle to learn and apply new skills for living. It is our journey to flush out and grieve what didn’t work from our childhood and to establish independent ways of behaving.

Few like the angst that accompanies change

No one likes to feel the angst that accompanies change and growth, but the option is to remain stagnant, holding onto archaic childhood assumptions, which block us from the freedom to establish a more meaningful lifestyle. Worn-out childhood interpretations foster avoidance and impede everything that opens us up to a new level of consciousness. In order to leave our childhood behind, we must first come to terms with the twin killers of personal progress: laziness and fear. Everyone must go it alone. We must wade into the waters of change in spite of the prospects of terror. No one is immune from the vulnerabilities associated with fear and inertia. As psychotherapist Sheldon B. Kopp once said, we all need to learn to be a "do-it-on-your-own-cause-there’s-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you-grown up.”