IJSP Number 2, 2020

80 dreamed that when I will grow up I will be able to have a family. I tried hard to comply with my parents’ requirements, but this made me believe that I don’t belong to this family. The main point of my transformation was the awareness that I rejected my biological absent father, so much that it had become part of me and that I projected this part onto everyman that I met in my life. I had to find a creative way in order to deal with the pain. Among the most important discoveries about myself as a person, were the beliefs about the world introjected from my parents, the way they had so much insisted on mental, postural, and behavioral patterns that I could hardly make the difference between what mine and what was taken from others. My sub-personalities gave me the opportunity to present myself to the world as I wanted, according to scriptural beliefs: Perfectionist, Lonely, and later as a Psychologist or as a Lady. The chosen life script was the winner in my personal, and later in my professional life. This script has limited my spontaneity and suppleness in solving problems and relationships with others, my life story being written from childhood. My life is a series of answers to the question from my childhood, „What does a person like me do in a world like this, with people like you?” The main method used to write a script was the introjection defence mechanisms, supported by decisions and self-protective reactions. I have introjected parental figures, including emotions and thoughts, beliefs, behaviours, and how to perceive the world. I refer here to a present parent figure and another one absent, which made me become more susceptible to introjection. Parental injuries and child definitions have been internalized in order to function later as intrapsychic influences, thus shaping my beliefs, emotions and behaviours. I have received two kinds of messages from my parents: What I have to do, how to feel and what I am. Feeling ignored by my father, I understood that I was not seen as myself or simply as existing. His non-verbal message towards me seemed to be: „You’re not my baby!”, which became for me: „You do not exist!”, and a part of the scenario where I stood in the shadows. Other decisions of the child in me at the injunctions level looked like: „No” and „Don’t be a Child” were: „The world is terrifying” “Do not get close” has become „I will never be close to anyone”. The adapted child made these decisions in early childhood, which generated relational problems. Attributes and commands have been perceived as emotions and body sensations, and then reproduced in behavior. The identified drivers of my life are: „Be perfect!”, „Be strong!”, „Make efforts!”, „Please others!”, „Hurry up!”. These led me to an introjected depression, received from my mother at the same age as her (she was 18 when she got married). That was the moment I started waking up. I started to look for myself, but I could not find support or comfort in what I was told, or others’ experiences.