There's a pattern that some parents exhibit with their children when they themselves have had an emotionally deprived childhood. That is the pattern of giving all that they can to their own children often at the expense of their own vital life energy.

There are two main reasons why this pattern becomes ensconced in the parent's childrearing practice.

The first is that the parent's own emotional deprivation is stored as a series of traumatic memories and emotions (i.e. often sadness, emptiness, feelings of low self worth, feelings of aloneness, etc.) within their mind/body. This "stored" trauma act as "emotional landmines" (please see my article with this title) which get "triggered" by any sign of deprivation that they perceive their children might be experiencing.

When they are triggered, the parent begins to re-experience their own emotional deprivation with all the hurt feeling that goes with it. As these feelings are uncomfortable, the parent tries to extinguish the feelings within themselves.

What better way to do this than to attend to the child's apparent deprivation thereby extinguishing the trigger itself.

This leads to the second reason. That is, that by extinguishing the trigger, i.e. the child's apparent deprivation, the parent is able to gain some sense of internal emotional stability as well as help the child avoid experiencing the same fate as they themselves have i.e. protect the child from feeling emotionally deprived.

The belief here is that by helping the child in this way the parent is helping build the child's self esteem and self worth.

Unfortunately, the parent's behavior becomes so automatic that they often find themselves draining their own vital life energy in an obsessional way to try to protect the child and unknowingly themselves.

So what transpires is that the parent behaves in a way that models a form of "self-less behavior" to the child. By this I mean a form of behavior which appears to come across as love but instead is actually driven by the parent's fear of feeling their own emotional hurt. In a crude sense the parent acts as a "door mat”.

The parent here is therefore exhibiting "martyr-like" behavior and is therefore modeling this for the child. Martyr-like behavior reflects low self esteem, low self worth, and a total devaluing of one's self.

Hence the parent is modeling to the child, without realizing it, behavior that is teaching the child to devalue themselves!

Dr. Nick Arrizza is trained in Chemical Engineering, Business Management & Leadership, Medicine and Psychiatry. He is an Energy Psychiatrist, Healer, Key Note Speaker,Editor of a New Ezine Called "Spirituality And Science" (which is requesting high quality article submissions) Author of "Esteem for the Self: A Manual for Personal Transformation" (available in ebook format on his web site), Stress Management Coach, Peak Performance Coach & Energy Medicine Researcher, Specializes in Life and Executive Performance Coaching, is the Developer of a powerful new tool called the Mind Resonance Process(TM) that helps build physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being by helping to permanently release negative beliefs, emotions, perceptions and memories. He holds live workshops, international telephone coaching sessions and international teleconference workshops on Physical. Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Well Being. Business URL #1: http://www.telecoaching4u.com