Patty haunts happy hours and singles groups, looking for love. She feels empty, lonely, and depressed most of the time. Once in a while she meets a man who looks like a good prospect. There's a feeling of electricity and a lot of intensity between them. She goes home with him, they end up having sex, and typically he's gone the next day, never to call again. Patty is left once again feeling empty, lonely, and depressed. To feel better, she resumes the hunt. Patty is an adult child of abusive parents.

Greg moved in with his parents after his second divorce. He is quiet, shy and inhibited, but he has learned to smile easily at others. Very little communication goes on in his parent's home, and he is not close to them. He has no friends and doesn'n go out, spending much of his free time in his room reading or working on various projects. Greg has worked as an engineer at an aerospace company for more than 12 years. When he's been offered promotions, he has turned them down, saying he doesnt want the "headaches." Even though he says he's happy and may even look happy to the casual observer, deep inside he is very lonely and depressed. Greg is an adult chile of abusive parents.

No matter how else you may have been abused, it is the effects of the emotional abuse that are at the core of the problems that still plague you as an adult. The difficulties you face today most likely include an inability to trust, low self-esteem, depression, relationship problems, eating disorders, and alcohol or drug problems. The emotional abandonment you experienced as a child - the lack of consistent nurturing, protection, and guidance - not only was frightening and painful, but also left you in a constant state of internal deprivation, with feelings of emptiness an isolation. It is likely you have tried to fill up this emptiness, to replace the love and security you lacked, with something from outside yourself - alcohol, drugs, food, sex, gambling, or relationships, to name a few - yet find they provide only temporary respite from the pain of deprivation.

You have survived abuse and are to be congratulated. You have developed some remarkable skills that helped you adapt to the craziness in your family, and those skills continue to serve you today. You have developed a great deal of strength and emotional endurance, as well as an incredible tolerance for upheaval, chaos, and uncertainty.

The only problem is that you're still operating on a survival level. It's been hard to relax your need to be in control, to trust that you can protect and take care of yourself, or to let other people close to you, to be vulnerable with others. To do so would seen threatening at a very deep level. So you remain isolated, doing your best to "handle" your life. You stay alive, but you dont thrive.