Substitutional Sources of Love, Care and Security

The kind of love, care and security that participants received from their parents was not what they had hoped to get nor was it adequate. To compensate for the lack of emotional support they received, participants turned to other possible sources of love and security. They found that older siblings, grandparents, neighbors, teachers and pets were sometimes able to give them the substitutional experience of acceptance they craved. They would escape to nature or a created fantasy world and look for substitutional acceptance.

Other People than Parents

If the parents could not give them sufficient love, care and security some other individuals took the parents’ place. Sometimes participants actively looked for the company of loving and caring people outside their homes. Sometimes an acquaintance saw participants’ situation and started to show them love and care. When a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, an elder sibling, a woman in the neighborhood was close to a participant they could fill at least a part of their emotional and physical needs for closeness. A weekend visit with their grandparents was a needed break from the loveless and oppressive atmosphere at home. To hear their grandparents frankly acknowledging that they knew about the situation at participants’ home and their empathy for participants gave them the strength to believe that there was someone on their side. Although the grandparents did not always openly comment on the behavior or the parenting methods of their parents participants had a feeling that the grandparents understood their situation. A few days with a grandfather or a grandmother who took the participant fishing or who showed them how to bake a cake or who took time to teach them some other practical skill or daily routines gave participants the feeling that they were of value. The grandfathers or the grandmothers who were encouraging, who showed their confidence in participants’ abilities and who accepted participants as their real selves gave them the substitutional experiences of love and security they needed.

“… [If you think of your childhood, what you had of one anyway, what brought safety or security into your life?] with my grandfather I got to spend a lot of my vacations and summers, my parents were glad to send me away … that Grandpa Jack was a refuge and support, I feel like he helped a lot to save me … Grandpa Jack said several times that it was wrong what my dad was doing and Grandpa Jack never spoke of the beating, but I understood that the beating and violence and everything was wrong … there you got to participate in everything, got to do everything … Grandpa Jack taught me how to use a motor saw, he was an old lumberjack and cut firewood for some farmer, and I got to come along and learn how to use the saw and how to take care of it and there you felt yourself to be equal to other people, not put down or invalidated, that feeling remained especially good in my mind, when he went from place to place and proudly introduced me to the guys that this is my grandson, here’s a good person and a good start of a lumberjack … that felt especially good because there was never any of that at home …” John, 34 years, 1^st interview

Some participants found a loving and caring person in their neighborhood. The mothers or other women from next door could become the ones to whom participants turned whenever

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they felt that they needed love and care. A piece of homemade coffee bread or cake, a cup of cocoa and a listening ear was a piece of heaven on earth for some of participants. Although their neighbors did not necessarily ask or talk about participants’ problems at home, participants got the feeling that their neighbors knew the truth about their home life. It was even relieving for some participants when they did not need to talk about their difficulties at home. The empathy of the neighbors and the feeling that someone could see and understand the emotional and physical sufferings that participants were going through gave participants some hope and faith that they were not alone. To hear that someone outside the family knew and was open to talking about what really happened in their family was a great emotional relief for some participants.

“[Were there any good things in your childhood?] Well probably Grandma and the neighbor Mary and Mary’s kids ... Maybe Mary comes to mind because she was at home and was so concretely present there ... I tried to conceal my home situation as much as possible and took refuge in the neighbor family.” Amy, 27 years, essay

Pets and Nature

Feelings of loneliness and emotional disconnection from their parents and other significant ones were frequent experiences for participants. They missed out on having an adult who was emotionally present, who would listen and understand them. To have a reparative experience, participants turned to their pets or to nature. Some found contact with domestic animals and pets that showed them unconditional interest and love filled some of the voids in their lives arising from a lack of contact with their parents and other significant persons. A dog or a cat would be the only intimate partner at home to whom participants poured out their hearts, showed their tears and authentic emotions. They were the only ones to whom participants would tell all their sorrows and describe the pain they had experienced in their lives. The dogs were faithful and never rejected participants. They put their heads to one side and listened tirelessly. Sometimes only the presence of the pet was enough to bring feelings of security. Taking care of pets and domestic animals brought participants a feeling of satisfaction that they were important to at least some living creatures. Walking in a silent forest only with the trees sighing in the wind, sitting by a lake and watching the waves beating the shore, fishing in a boat in the middle of an empty lake provided participants a source of feelings of security and a place of refuge to escape and hide when the atmosphere at home was too intense or abusive. The trees and the water gave some relief to the loneliness and the feelings of isolation associated with being an outcast.

“… the cat, it was my dearest friend, so that I cuddled with it very often even when it didn’t want to, I cuddled with it anyway … I cried especially with the cat … and otherwise it was a refuge, it was a refuge that cat … and the dog too sometimes, when I had terrible growing pains, or at least a lot of pain, maybe terrible isn’t the right word, my legs hurt a whole lot, many times, but that dog was then sometimes under me, it helped the pains because it warmed my legs, the dog was my sister’s anyway, I had gotten the cat, but the cat was the one I was out in nature with … then once came this absolutely horrible feeling when the cat disappeared, it was a female and it had been out somewhere wandering and fortunately came back home in the end, it was really huge to me, it felt like my world broke apart and fell down when that cat was missing, I looked for it by the edge of the road, I went around and shouted its name many days from morning to evening …” James, 35 years, 1^st interview

“[How do you relate to animals?] … at Grandma’s place was a dog and I always wanted to cuddle the dog but I didn’t really dare or I was scared that someone would come and take it away from me or not give it or that it wasn’t permitted to show one's feelings … I remember that I liked it a lot but

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it felt somehow like it was forbidden, that you couldn’t do that … and we had cows too and somehow I really got into their eyes, cows have really big eyes and I remember how I always looked at them and they meant a lot to me … we lived quite in the middle of the forest, so nature was very important to me and the woods there … [Were you alone there then?] Well probably not terribly far off, but anyway there by the fences and such, certainly I was alone, I had a kind of attraction to it, that maybe it was safe and I was safe there somehow … I still have the same attitude, that I’m more afraid in the city, I’m not afraid in the woods …” Helen, 46 years, 1^st interview

Fantasy and Imagination

When the atmosphere at home was not filled with love and security it was always possible to create a fantasy family and escape from reality. Participants tried to get some relief from the emotional confusion and the feelings of insecurity by focusing on something else other than their real lives at home. They used play and their imaginations to create a substitutional family that was full of love, care and security. They fancied a reality that centered on a peaceful and loving family. In that reality the mother prepares food and the father works outside the home but returns every evening. Every family member is happy and smiling and the atmosphere is filled with love and acceptance. No one fights or argues and everyone sings songs while doing their duties. Participants fancied themselves also to be princes or princesses dressed in beautiful clothes having dinner with their mom and dad.

Another imaginative source for experiencing feelings of love and care were books, novels and magazines. While reading or writing fairy tales and stories of children who were lucky or unlucky it was easy for participants to become absorbed in their thoughts and forget their personal problems and difficulties, at least for a moment. Putting himself or herself in the place of a fictional character gave him or her the possibility of living an idyllic life or of being the one whose bad events turned into good ones. Living the fantasy life of a fictional character gave participants a chance to dream about a life that was not possible in their real lives. It did not always matter to participants what kind of inoperative material was available.

Sometimes they read a religious book that was found in their parents’ library or it would be a book of breath-taking adventure that they borrowed from the school library. The most important thing was to get their thoughts focused on something else other than their personal lives. The need to be absorbed in dreams by reading was in some cases so great that participants read through all the novels and fiction books in the village school library.

Another stimulating source for the imagination and fantasy world was television. An adventure series on TV helped to keep thoughts out of daily reality.

One interesting feature that appeared in the interviews was the fantasy of being a changeling child. Participants had heard about a few cases reported in the newspapers in Finland in the 60s and 70s where a baby had been switched with another newborn baby in a maternity hospital. This boosted participants’ fantasies of their original family members who would have loved and cared for them properly. The possibility of being a changeling child gave participants secret fantastical hopes that their original parents would someday surprisingly appear and rescue them from their false homes. These fantasies of caring and loving parents gave strength to participants to manage their difficulties and unsatisfied situations.

“… [an important thing] it has really been, the reading, and I’ve always had a big imagination, so that when I learned to read and found stories, then I lived them strongly and secretly played at being a fine princess and everything possible in the woods and was always good in everything and did this kind of imaginary thing, built a kind of ideal family and all these kinds of things around myself, they

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came when I had read about these changelings, so I started to develop what my real family would be like, because this wasn’t my real family and how the mother would care very much for me and then praise me … built these kinds of stories then…” Sally, 41 years, 1^st interview

A case of the powerful use of imagination was described by a participant who experienced his parents’ physical abuse and unrestrained anger. Concentrating his thoughts on an imaginative situation, fantasizing about positive things and brooding on revenge helped him to move to another reality where he did not feel the physical and emotional pain while he was being abused. Participants have also used the fantasy of revenge when they thought that they were being emotionally maltreated. They fantasized how they would someday pay their parents back for all the maltreatment and abuse that they had experienced from them.

Religion and Spirituality

Some participants whose parents could not provide the love, care and security they needed turned to religion. At night and at times of loneliness they turned to God and felt that there was someone who listened and understood them. They prayed to God and felt that He was the one to whom they could honestly tell everything and with whom they could just be their authentic selves. They felt that their prayers, hymns and their connection to God gave them the strength they needed. Some participants found the substitutional experiences of love and security from their faith in spite of lack of their parents’ religiosity and the parents did not always know about participants' visits to churches. They would walk to the nearest church and sit and gaze at the holy statues and other decorations and sense a special peace that they could not feel at home.

“[essay] I don’t remember ever sitting in Dad’s or Mom’s lap or them holding us. I cried myself to sleep longing for love. Fortunately I had prayer and a connection upwards. … I prayed to God to help me, talked with him often. Without my childhood faith I wouldn’t have survived. The only one I could talk about things honestly with was God. I didn’t have a single adult to whom I could have spoken about my fears. … [1^st interview]… the childhood faith and that lovely thing that I had certainly helped me, like I really talked upwards a lot, though I didn’t get an answer, but it helped me … I loved these [religious things] very much as a child, in the rocking chair I sang hymns and all, I still know them by heart, so that was the kind of help I got from it.” Maria, 45 years, essay and 1^st interview