When you’re raised by emotional abuse, there’s a kind of void inside, and we’re taught that to fill it we need to act like Good Children, Good Citizens, Good Workers, Good… Whatevers. But no act of a good child will ever fill that void. No achievement, no award, nothing we do can fill it. Because that void, that voice, is what drives us as children to behave the way our parents want us to behave, and if they let us know that we are good people — regardless of whether or not we get straight As or win the gymnastic championship or whatever — that void might vanish. We might see ourselves as worthy. And their dynamic depends on us seeing ourselves as unworthy. It depends on the void.

Learning to get rid of that void is hard.

Apparently, installing it is easy.