Unhealed conflictive family relationships not only hurt the affected person but the entire family group and will be a pole of attraction that will allow the reproduction and repetition of conflictive behaviors with a future partner and with their own children. There are many problems that we cannot solve, most of them originating in our first years of life within the family context. It does not mean justifying what happened in our childhood, because abusive situations will continue to be so, even if they must be forgiven. Nor does it mean entering the role of victims, because our parents were responsible for us, being products of their own life experiences, and you must remember that no one can give what they do not have. So it is necessary to face the duel for the parents we did not have and accept the ones we did have, which does not mean accepting all your actions as correct. Rejection means that the basic needs of love and acceptance have not been met, two essential pillars to build a healthy mind and soul; In their place are negative feelings and thoughts about oneself, feeling incapable of doing things well, and about others, thinking that no one can be trusted because everyone is going to hurt you.
It is important to consider that sometimes parents have given love, but for some reason the children are not sure about it. For example, a sick mother who spends a lot of time in the hospital and a father who is always with her. It may also be that parents, based on their own childhood experiences, are unable to express love in a way that the young child can understand. Dr. Salomon says, “The way a father rejects a child is sometimes inversely proportional to the way he was rejected, although many times he treats him exactly the same as he was treated.” . Rejection can be overt or covert. The manifest rejection occurs: when the father leaves the home and never returns, when phrases are said that let the child know that he was not wanted or that he was expected to have been born of the opposite sex, when he is told that he is useless, a fool and that he should be more like his brothers. Covert rejection is: when parents are absent due to personal activities, when parents divorce and use the child as a means of aggression between them, parents who do not express affection in any way and overprotective parents.
Feelings of rejection by either parent have devastating effects on a child’s personality development, and mothers have almost always been the primary target for signs of rejection in their little ones, but recent new research suggests that parental rejection is more detrimental to child development.
One of the co-authors of this study is the psychologist Ronald Rohner, from the University of Connecticut, explains that no other experience has been found to have such a negative effect on the child’s personality as rejection, especially from parents . The results of this study showed that children who have felt rejected by their parents become anxious, insecure, and develop hostility and aggression towards others. It has also been discovered that the same parts of the brain that are activated when a person experiences physical pain are also activated when a person feels rejected. This experience prints a pain so great and acute that it does not disappear if you do not work with it, and that lasts until adult life, having an impact on the way interpersonal relationships are formed, because, unlike physical pain that can disappear with medication, emotional pain is something that people can relive psychologically and feel as if the same thing were happening to them again. This study also found that the rejection of the father can leave more serious traces in the child’s development than the rejection of the mother. This may be due to the fact that children perceive the father as someone with greater power or prestige, therefore, more influential and more capable of damaging the child’s personality with his actions. This study also found that the rejection of the father can leave more serious traces in the child’s development than the rejection of the mother. This may be due to the fact that children perceive the father as someone with greater power or prestige, therefore, more influential and more capable of damaging the child’s personality with his actions. This study also found that the rejection of the father can leave more serious traces in the child’s development than the rejection of the mother. This may be due to the fact that children perceive the father as someone with greater power or prestige, therefore, more influential and more capable of damaging the child’s personality with his actions.
Some consequences of having been rejected as a child may be: the child has a poor concept of himself and becomes an adult who feels unable to achieve what he sets out to do, he may even feel contempt for himself, his body or for his way of being. They also become distrustful of everyone, they think that if their own parents rejected them, everyone will too and this creates extreme codependency with the people with whom they manage to relate (friends, partner, etc.). They have difficulty expressing their feelings and prefer to isolate themselves rather than talk about them. They become spiteful, with great difficulty in forgiving and inability to feel empathy for others. They have a hard time sharing, but they feel anxious asking for help.
It can also happen that they go to the other extreme, that is, to have anti-social behaviors such as delinquency and drug addiction, at the same time that they become very extroverted, in an effort to attract attention and feel like someone important. Although many of the experiences of childhood have conditioned us to be one way or another, it is always our decision to remain in the role of victims or decide to move from that place where we feel hurt and choose to heal ourselves to live a free life. The importance of both parents being present in the child-rearing process, even if they are not together as a couple, should encourage men to want to be part of their children’s lives. Let them know that their love is just as important as maternal love, which is given too much importance;
