Click here for details about membership. When we were children, our parents and other important adults served as mirrors for us. We then internalized these perspectives and carried them with us into our adult lives. If neglect, abuse, criticism or smothering were what we experienced as children, then we are likely to see ourselves in negative ways as adults.
Neglect teaches children that they are uninteresting and unimportant.
Criticism teaches children that they are never good enough or that they are valuable only if they achieve perfection. Smothering teaches children that they are incompetent and that they are valuable only as an extension of the parent. Abuse teaches children that they are powerless and that something must be terrible wrong with them. In order to heal from distorted images of ourselves we need a frame of reference outside of ourselves with which to compare our negative self-image. Healing begins when we allow ourselves to see ourselves as God sees us.