They told themselves, “I’ll never marry a drunkard like myįather,” or “There’s no way I’m going to marry a tyrant like my mother.” But, no matter what their conscious intentions, most people are attracted to mates who have their caretakers’ positive and negative traits, and, typically, the negative traits are more influential. In fact, if they had an unhappy childhood, they may have deliberately searched for people who were radically different from their caretakers. On a conscious level, they were looking for people with only positive traits-people who were, among other things, kind, loving, good-looking, intelligent, and creative. MANY PEOPLE HAVE a hard time accepting the idea that they have searched for partners who resembled their caretakers. Your “disowned self,” the negative parts of your false self that met with disapproval and were therefore denied. Your “false self,” the facade that you erected in order to fill the void created by this repression and by a lack of adequate nurturing.ģ. Your “lost self,” those parts of your being that you had to repress because of the demands of society.Ģ. But for the moment they are not a part of our consciousness, and it is as if they do not exist.Īs in Sarah’s case, our lost self was formed early in childhood-largely as a result of our caretakers’ well-intentioned efforts to teach us to get along with others.” Disowned Selfġ. I call these missing elements the “lost self.” Whenever we complain that we “can’t think” or that we “can’t feel anything” or “can’t dance” or “can’t have orgasms” or “aren’t very creative,” we are identifying natural abilities, thoughts, or feelings that we have surgically removed from our awareness. “we all have parts of ourselves that we have hidden from consciousness.

Cliff notes for love stargirl