Children direly need to know that they are seen, heard, felt, sensed and understood...

...by those they depend upon for their very survival. 

Or they tend to get the idea that they are UNseen, UNheard, UNfelt, UNsensed, and interpersonally invisible. 

And life becomes a nightmare for them because they... 

a) give up all hope and turn to "whatever gets them through the night," 

b) try too hard and scare others away, 

c) rage uncontrollably in a never-ending "temper tantrum," or 

d) flip back and forth from one to the other for the rest of their lives.  

Parents who keep that first sentence in mind in all communication with their children tend to create and maintain the best possible interpersonal environment between themselves and those children... and reduce the chances their children will climb on other people's Karpman Drama Triangles in a state of...

anxious, insecure attachment leading to...

Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity, and getting into self-destructive and developmentally stunting...

Reciprocal Reactivity & Needless Ego Protection.

I've worked with substance abusers in recovery since 1987, people with behavioral addictions since 1991, people with extreme depression, mania and anxiety since 1999, and people with all manner of childhood trauma since 2007. The deeper one digs into their early lives, the closer it all gets to the second sentence above. 

Salutations are in order here: I want to thank not only all the thousands of people I was so fortunate to get to know face-to-face since 1987, but also the thousands I have encountered online in various "psych forums" since 2015, for demonstrating what I wrote above. Because far too many out there in the trenches of "the profession" seem not to understand how straightforward and simple their patients' psychopathology actually is even though they have learned about "the corrective interpersonal experience" in the first semester of their MS C/CP programs. 

"Active listening" is not something mechanical. It's not a pretense, a display or an "act." It's what Harry Stack Sullivan's "good enough mother" did that her good enough child got.

References & Resources

To indicate the depth and breadth of data on this topic, I have included everything I have run into from authors whose last names begin (or began) with the letters A through C. Thereafter, I have tree-topped the rest of the alphabet with material one has to be familiar with to make the assertions above.

Will the Addict ever stop Using Something if he or she remains Depressed, Anxious or Shameful?

Ackerman, N.: The Psychodynamics of Family Life: Diagnosis and Treatment of Family Relationships, New York: Basic Books, 1958.

Alanen, Y.: The Family in the Pathogenesis of Schizophrenic and Neurotic Disorders, in Scandinavian Archives of Psychiatry, No. 42, 1966.

Altemeyer, R.: The Authoritarian Specter, Boston: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Anonymous: Adult Children of Alcoholics: Alcoholic / Dysfunctional Families, Torrance, CA: ACA World Service Office, 2006.

Aunola, K..; Tolvanen, A.; et al: Psychological control in daily parent-child interactions increases children’s negative emotions, in Journal of Family Psychology, 2013.

Bandura, A.: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1997.

Bateson, G.; Jackson, D.; Haley, J.; Weakland, J.: Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia, in Journal of Behavioral Science, Vol. 1, 1956.

Baumrind, D,: Current Patterns of Parental Authority, a monograph in Developmental Psychology, Volume 4, Number 1, Part 2, New York: American Psychological Association, 1971.

Berger, K.; Thompson, R.: The Developing Person, 4th Ed., New York: Worth, 1995.

Berger, M. D., ed.: Beyond the Double Bind: Communication and Family Systems, Theories, and Techniques with Schizophrenics, New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1978.

Bhatt, R.; Quinn, P: How Does Learning Impact Development in Infancy? The Case of Perceptual Organization, in Infancy: The Official Journal of the International Society of Infant Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, January-February 2011.

Black, C.: It Will Never Happen to Me: Children of Alcoholics as Youngsters-Adolescents-Adults, New York: Ballentine, 1981, 1987.

Bloom, S.: Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies, London: Routledge, 1997.

Bowen, M.: A Family Concept of Schizophrenia, in Jackson, D., ed.: The Etiology of Schizophrenia, London: Basic Books, 1960.

Bowen, M.: Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1978.

Bowlby, J.: A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development, London: Routledge; New York: Basic Books, 1988.

Bradshaw, J.: Bradshaw On: The Family, Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1990.

Bradshaw, J.: Family Secrets: The Path to Self-Acceptance and Reunion, New York; Bantam Books, 1995.

Branden, N.: The Psychology of Self-Esteem, New York: Bantam Books, 1973.

Branden, N.: The Disowned Self, New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Brazelton, T.; Cramer, B.: The Earliest Relationship: Parents, Infants and the Drama of Early Attachment, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.

Brown, N.: Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents, 2nd. Ed., Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2008.

Burgo, J.: Why Do I Do That?: Psychological Defense Mechanisms and the Hidden Ways they Shape our Lives, Chapel Hill, NC: New Rise Press, 2012.

Cassidy, J.; Shaver, P., eds.: Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Clinical Applications, New York: Guilford Press, 1999.

Courtois, C.; Ford, J.; ed.: Treatment of Complex Traumatic Stress: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach, New York: Guilford Press, 2012.

Courtois, C.; Ford, J.; ed.: Treating Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Children and Adolescents, New York: Guilford Press, 2013.

Courtois, C.: It's Not You: It's What Happened to You: Complex Trauma and Treatment, Dublin, OH: Telemachus Press, 2014

Cross, K.: Reactive Attachment Disorder and Attachment Therapy, Kansas City: Kansas Attachment Center (online), 2005.

Crosswhite, J.; Kerpelman, J.: Coercion Theory, Self-Control and Social Information Processing: Understanding Potential Mediators for How Parents Influence Deviant Behaviors, in Deviant Behavior, Vol. 30, No. 7, August 2009.

Erikson, E.: Childhood and Society, New York: W. W. Norton, 1950, 1967, 1993.

Erikson, E.: Identity and the Life Cycle, New York: W. W. Norton, 1959, 1980.

Erikson, E.: Identity: Youth and Crisis, New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.

Miller, A.: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence, London: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979, 1983.

Miller, A.: Prisoners of Childhood / The Drama of the Gifted Child, New York: Basic Books, 1979, 1996.

Miller, A.: Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child, London: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981, 1984, 1998.

Miller, A.: Breaking Down the Walls of Silence, New York: Dutton/Penguin, 1991.

Miller, A.: The Truth Will Set You Free: Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self, New York: Basic Books, 2001.

Miller, A.: The Body Never Lies, The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting, New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

Piaget, J.: The Origins of Intelligence in Children, New York: International University Press, 1936, 1952.

Schore, A.: The Effects of a Secure Attachment Relationship on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health, in Infant Journal of Mental Health, Vol. 22, 2001.

Schore, A.: Dysregulation of the Right Brain Development: A Fundamental Mechanism of Traumatic Attachment and the Psychopathogenesis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 36, February 2002.

Schore, A.: Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.

Schore, A.: Attachment Trauma and the Developing Right Brain: Origins of Pathological Dissociation, in Dell, P.; O.Neil, J: Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM V and Beyond, New York: Routledge, 2009.

Seligman, M.: Learned Helplessness, in Annual Review of Medicine, Vol. 23, February 1972.

Seligman, M.: Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1975.

Seligman, M.: Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, New York: Knopf, 1990.

Stern, D.: The Interpersonal World of the Infant: The View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology, New York: Basic Book, 1985.

Stern, D.: The First Relationship: Infant and Mother, Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 2002.

Sullivan, H. S.: The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.

FP Attachment as "Emotional Drug Addiction" in Borderline Personality Disorder

Very much at the risk of being stoned by some who have not come this far for so saying, but as one 17 years into truly committed recovery from suicidal BPD, it is as plain as the nose on my face that desperate, often though not always limerent, FP attachment is an addiction, and that we are so dependent (actually co-dependent) upon them that any pretense of mature, realistic relationship with our FP is just that, a pretense. Albeit one that is completely understandable in light of how awful we often feel when we don't have an FP, and moreover, an FP who seems to "get" us.

I appreciate that this is probably a stiff poke in the shoulder, but our relationships with our FPs are no different from our relationships with any other form of emotion-numbing drug or behavioral addiction. (In fact, the very same neurochemicals -- including endogenous opioids, oxytocin, dopamine and adrenaline -- are in play.)

I had to face up to that as part of my recovery. Most people with BPD direly need an FP attachment because we were conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized to be as terrified of abandonment, isolation and withdrawal from that addiction as we are terrified of more abuse... by the time we were no more than five years old.

I say this from not only 17 years in recovery but having known over 100 people with BPD and having dealt with many of them in their own effort to throw off the awful hair shirt, as well as from investing the time to learn from all those listed in the fourth section of A CPTSD Library.

I had to ask -- and truthfully answer -- the question "Will the Addict Ever Stop Using SOMETHING if He or She remains Depressed, Anxious or Shameful, especially once those emotions become part of the Cycle of Addiction?"

I had to dive deep into Why do we get so Desperate for Connection? An Answer from the Purview of Attachment, Early Life Research & Codependency.

I had to plow through my denials and bargaining with "intolerable reality" to get to the fourth and fifth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery once I realized that -- as they say in AA -- "Half measures availed us nothing."

I had to see that I am not responsible for my disease, but I am responsible for my recovery from it. I had to come to see my life as just another example of Codependency, the Drama Triangle, and the "Dark Diagnosis."

To shuck this addiction, I had to get out of my "protective delusions" and into the way things are and not the way they are not. To that end, I will share this:

A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma... because IME there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

I understand fully that all that is a lot to try to digest. (It took me about 15 years.) But if one is looking for a Roadmap Out of Hell, there it is.

Of possible further interest:

Functional vs. Dysfunctional FP Relationships

How do I Get Over Losing my FP or Lover? (in my reply to the OP on that Reddit thread)