Coming to terms with feeling unloved/unwanted

[goblinchild]

(Not really sure which forum category to put this under?)
I'm finding myself in the middle of coming to terms with actually FEELING and processing how unloved and uncared about I was (along the extreme isolation the trauma caused) and it's intense. I can't really function. I wasn't even purposefully looking into this issue or anything, I guess one day all the bottled up stuff I wasn't feeling just started coming out sideways as disordered sleeping and in the process of looking into that, all of this came flooding out.
The intensity of this is kinda scaring me, I haven't been this depressed in ages. (Both T and psychiatrist know what's going on, I don't want anyone to worry) It feels like I could keep processing this feeling forever and I'd never see the end of it. And I can't do that! I took a break from school when I realized how intense this was getting but I have to go back! I'm not sure if I should be giving myself more time to feel my way through this or if I should just force myself to carry on with life so I'll stop moping around.
I don't suppose this is one of those things where someone has experience and can tell me what to expect?

[Sceal]

Feeling of being unloved and unwanted are so incredible painful it's hard to describe properly.

I can only tell you about my own experience, and maybe it can help you in one way or another. (Even if it's just to know you're not alone).
I wont say I grew up in a horrible home, but it was at times emotionally neglectful. My parents have never told me that I they love me or, care for me. And I struggled so much to gain their love by trying to be what I thought they wanted me to be. I still am doing that to some degree. When I turned 30 (which to me was a big round birthday), my mother had turned 60 the same year. Our plan for years had been to celebrate by going on a vacation together. But she cancelled. A month before my birthday my father tells me they are going away on my birthday. It might not seem like such a big thing, but for me it cut really deep. I felt unwanted, unloved and simply just not good enough.
I've went back to uni that same year, and I'm still there now. This semester I've seriously thought about taking a break because I feel so broken down, exhausted and I can't concentrate on reading one bit. But I still continue. Partly because I don't want to continue to be a dissapointment. But also because... studies forces me to do something else than think about my past and my health. It is giving me hope for a potential better future that I'm working towards. So in a way, the studies have become part of my therapy. I am only doing part time, and I'm trying to lower my expectations of what I can actually manage.
It feels forecful sometimes, and it feels like I'm stuck in a corner I can't get out of or a sitation I can't win. But by not doing anything, I think I'd waste away. Become complacent. Or maybe that's just my fear.

So in conclusion really: Studying gives me more than just new knowledge. It opens up to a new potential future, and it distracts me from the past and the present. It gives me something outside of myself that's important, and it gives me time to heal before I need to one day find a job.

If going back to your education is too much for you right now (which is nothing to be ashamed of!), are there any workshops, or less-intensive classes you could take?

[Blueberry]

Goblinchild, I hear you. I'm going through something similar. It came up last time in therapy that more or less all my Inner Children feel that my M felt hatred towards me throughout my childhood. Just knowing that and feeling it physically and really deeply emotionally is pretty difficult. We didn't get on to processing it at all in therapy. We'll start next week.

It's been a week. Today I'm finally doing better. I have trouble functioning too. Earlier on in therapy, like a number of years ago, it would have taken me a lot longer to get back in some sort of functioning mode, so I can't really tell you how long it might take you. I do know that when I'm in one of these very painful phases where I can hardly function or where I get ill a lot (bad cold, flu, upset stomach etc etc) it seems like forever, until suddenly I have the impetus and energy to start caring for myself again. And then I read on here or in my diary and realise it was actually only 3 days or a week, which is inconvenient, but it's not eternity.

I have discovered that trying to force myself does not work. It would be good in some ways if it did work, but it doesn't any more. It used to. Probably I did too much forcing myself. And what I see as being lazy / doing nothing is actually: leaving myself and my body and emotions the time and space to allow feelings to come and possibly some of the healing to take place.

[sigiriuk]

I am 55.
I genuinely believed that my adopted parents loved me until very recently.
Even as a young adult i could not dare to consider that they did not love me.
Why has it taken so long for me to see this?
A child would go completely insane if it realised that there was no love. The child has to manufacture it in fantasy, in order to survive.
Only later do we struggle with the hideous reality of being unloved
God love us all
Slim

[Traveller 1]

 Goblinchild, I can really identify with how this feels. You are not alone.
My M never expressed feelings of love nor ever stated it. I was told so frequently that she hated me and wished I'd never been born, that I actually think I became desensitised to the language. The facial expressions and threatening body language is what I remember more vividly. No child deserves to be told they're hated, feeling like you do is a tragic consequence of grossly inadequate parenting.
Words cannot express the anger I felt towards the very people who where supposed to be my primary carers. Sometimes I would wonder why they did this to me, but now, I don't know or care any more. I have been able to move on by being surrounded by truly wonderful friends and family, who've expressed a warmth I could not have imagined for so long.
Letting go of some of the past is possible, with the support of good people that you learn to trust.
There is a better future, you just need someone to illuminate the way.