THAW - Freedom from Frozen Feelings [NOOK Book]

Overview

THAW - Freedom from Frozen Feelings, is a book about the emotional wounds of abandonment, shame, and contempt created by growing up in a less-than-nurturing family. If you experience abandonment issues, emotional flooding, toxic shame, a pattern of dysfunctional relationships, or you help people who do, THAW - Freedom from Frozen Feelings is a "must have".

The book outlines the wounding process experienced by those who were raised in a less-than-nurturing family; how those emotional wounds show up in various personal and interpersonal problems in adulthood. An innovative, easy to understand, integrated model of addiction, codependency, enabling relationships, Adult/Child Syndrome and other manifestations of emotional abandonment is presented. Moderate to severe cases of abandonment comes from situations in which the child does not fully or consistently get their emotional dependency needs met. THAW - Freedom from Frozen Feelings outlines these needs and the impact they have on our lives and relationships later on in life.

The wounding process may be subtle as there may be few overt signs of family dysfunction or abuse. For instance, it may be that one or both parents are able to give reasonable amounts time, attention and direction but are unable to express affection. The words “I love you” may rarely be heard, if at all. A lack of hugs, kisses, and other forms of emotional warmth leaves a child to wonder how they measure up in the eyes of their parents. It makes matters even worse when the child lives in a shame-based family system. In such families the children get messages of disapproval through constant criticism rather than messages of approval and warmth. A shame-based family system is characterized by the parent’s use of shame to provide direction

Children who get their dependency needs met fully on a regular basis will thrive,
flourish, and grow at a healthy pace. Life will be good for these kids. In the worst case scenario, kids who do not get their needs met at all will experience a failure to thrive and many will even die. Let's use the analogy of an emotional gas tank; if our needs are met fully we feel full, complete, satisfied, content, happy, etc. If we don’t get our needs met at all we feel a great emptiness inside. I have heard this emptiness described in many ways; a black hole, a void, a vacuum, an ache, a longing, etc. Perhaps we get our needs met halfway; we feel half-full but something is missing and we still feel an ache. These are emotional wounds, also known as original pain, and they result from an abandonment of our childhood dependency needs.

When parents do not meet the needs of their children it is not usually because the parents don’t love them. I say ‘usually’ because there are those cases that one cannot understand, accept, explain, or excuse for any reason. But most parents do the best they can, given the internal and external resources they possess, to take care of their children. In fact, I cannot count the times I have heard parents say “I try hard to make sure my kids have it better than I did.” This speaks very loudly to me. It says that these parents are familiar with unmet dependency needs. So, most often it is not the parent’s lack of love
or effort that is to blame.

Wounded people wound people: Parents cannot demonstrate much more than
they have been given. Our parents were raised by their parents who likely were
also wounded; and they were raised by their parents who were raised by their parents, and so on. So, it is not usually a question of whether our parents loved us, or even if the did the best they could for us. Many people get stuck on this truth and end up saying “So why go back and dig all that up? They did the best they could and that is that. You can’t change the past.” To those people I say this book will show you why it is important to “dig all that up” and introduce specific processes to heal the pain and loss of abandonment issues.