When I was younger a psychologist once asked me why I always ended up in relationships with people who were 'unavailable'. Of course, she asked me this rhetorically to prompt me to reflect on the pattern of my relationships. She asked if I could remember the first time someone had made me feel like I was vying for their attention and yet I wasn't getting my emotional needs met consistently. Yes, how cliché, it was with my mother as a child! Now, what most people instinctively do when we find a source to our problems is it either 1) brings us comfort by allowing us to say "hey, it's not my fault I'm like this", or 2) we feel guilty that we are the way we are. The problem with blaming the past, though, is it's of no use to anyone if it doesn't force change.
If we feel guilt (which is an unpleasant emotion and thus makes for a great self-flagellation device), we come to believe that feeling guilty is exoneration enough for doing what we do. But if feeling guilty is ALL we do, we usually just continue to behave in the emotionally-immature coping patterns we're used to. It's not enough to feel guilty. It's not enough to wait passively for things to change. In real life, the poor little victim princess doesn't magically get rescued by a hero. In real life the princess needs to build up her strength, overcome her own past, and slay her own dragons in order for things to change for her. It's not a matter of 'good things happen to those that wait', but rather good things happen to those who make things change.
Showing posts with label immature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immature. Show all posts
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Saturday, December 11, 2010
On ‘childish’ people and abuse
I met a lady in Chile who asked me if I knew why some people are just so childish. She was talking about members of her own family, and I guess she asked me because she thought I might have learnt something about this in my psychology classes. I didn’t. I had read a little about post-abuse syndromes, though (e.g. the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome). Now, an example of the “childish” behaviour she was talking about is two adult siblings bickering and maybe even physically confronting each other, divulging each other’s secrets in order to offend or hurt the other, pitting other family members against each other, etc. Immature behaviour? Yes. Childish? Maybe not the best word to use; children often lack the noxious intent adults seem to use. There are many adults, though, who having the skills and abilities of an adult, behave (and usually also think) as children.
I don’t mean adults acting like children in a derogatory way. I mean adults acting in “immature” ways, as in the mature versus immature coping mechanisms psychology tells us about. For example, say someone cuts you off in traffic. The mature thing to do is acknowledge you’ve been wronged, but given that the situation is fleeting and didn’t result in greater harm, you acknowledge your emotion (anger, sadness, etc.) and move on. The immature thing to do is to scream your head off at the other driver, maybe tailgate him, maybe become physically abusive if you get the chance to. The reason it would be an immature thing to do is because the reaction is disproportionate to the slight – and because you didn’t exercise self-control in response to the emotion you felt. OK, so there are immature and mature behaviours or responses that are designated as such by social norms, moral and psychosocial values, prevalence rates, etc. Now, the very same things that determine whether a behaviour is a mature or an immature response usually have to be learnt – and often in childhood. You can see this way that if you didn’t learn these things in childhood, how to behave “maturely”, the only way you know to respond is in a child-like manner: instinct and survival based, with immediacy, and without regulation of affect.
One of the things I remember reading about children who are abused (whether emotionally, physically, sexually, or whatever other horrible way we have to inflict suffering) is that their emotional development is gravely stunted. These children will have normal psychosocial and cognitive development until the point where they encounter the abuse, then will often remain in that stage of psychocognitive development until adulthood. You can see, therefore, how it follows that individuals that behave childishly are doing so because that is all they know. They react and act like a child because they haven’t learnt any other way to be. Of course, on the receiving end of it, when you as an adult encounter these people who are also physically adult like yourself, you expect them to act like you would and when they don’t we label them as childish.
So that is what I told my friend in Chile, that that at least was my understanding of how some people act the way they do. But in telling this story, you also must think about the people that have the background of childhood abuse and who have learnt to behave more maturely than a child would.
Abuse tends to rid us of many choices, of many liberties and human rights, and especially in childhood can be absolutely shattering to a person. But for those that are fortunate enough, to have escaped childhood abuse and reached a plateau into adult life, there is one choice, one moment of insight, that is all-empowering: making the choice of continuing to be the abused child of the past or becoming the adult that takes responsibility for his/her future experiences. Of course, I am trivializing a lot of things, and sorting through the behaviours and thought patterns of previous abuse victims, identifying the cognitive errors that have been laid down over repeated exposure to abuse, and eventually changing these behaviours, can take years (if ever achieved). The hardest thing to do isn’t doing all the cognitive work, however, it is that first step: believing that you, even you as a victim of abuse, now have power to decide to change things. To me, the difference between two people who have suffered childhood abuse, one who is mature and one who is immature in his interrelational style is that one of them had a moment of insight when he finally understood the words:
“You’re not powerless. You are not sick. You did not deserve what you got, but things can be better.”
Now, my friend in Chile is a very mature, very humble, and very loving person. When I told her about how some of these ‘childish’ people possibly had a troubled childhood, and are possibly cognitively and emotionally stuck there through little fault of their own, she bowed her head down as if remembering some distant memory only she knows about and told me how she really did feel sorry for her family members, even if they did act so negatively and immaturely towards others. And I guess that’s the other point I wanted to make, that perhaps instead of been irritated by these “childish” people, we take a moment to reflect on how sad their lives have probably been.
I don’t mean adults acting like children in a derogatory way. I mean adults acting in “immature” ways, as in the mature versus immature coping mechanisms psychology tells us about. For example, say someone cuts you off in traffic. The mature thing to do is acknowledge you’ve been wronged, but given that the situation is fleeting and didn’t result in greater harm, you acknowledge your emotion (anger, sadness, etc.) and move on. The immature thing to do is to scream your head off at the other driver, maybe tailgate him, maybe become physically abusive if you get the chance to. The reason it would be an immature thing to do is because the reaction is disproportionate to the slight – and because you didn’t exercise self-control in response to the emotion you felt. OK, so there are immature and mature behaviours or responses that are designated as such by social norms, moral and psychosocial values, prevalence rates, etc. Now, the very same things that determine whether a behaviour is a mature or an immature response usually have to be learnt – and often in childhood. You can see this way that if you didn’t learn these things in childhood, how to behave “maturely”, the only way you know to respond is in a child-like manner: instinct and survival based, with immediacy, and without regulation of affect.
One of the things I remember reading about children who are abused (whether emotionally, physically, sexually, or whatever other horrible way we have to inflict suffering) is that their emotional development is gravely stunted. These children will have normal psychosocial and cognitive development until the point where they encounter the abuse, then will often remain in that stage of psychocognitive development until adulthood. You can see, therefore, how it follows that individuals that behave childishly are doing so because that is all they know. They react and act like a child because they haven’t learnt any other way to be. Of course, on the receiving end of it, when you as an adult encounter these people who are also physically adult like yourself, you expect them to act like you would and when they don’t we label them as childish.
So that is what I told my friend in Chile, that that at least was my understanding of how some people act the way they do. But in telling this story, you also must think about the people that have the background of childhood abuse and who have learnt to behave more maturely than a child would.
Abuse tends to rid us of many choices, of many liberties and human rights, and especially in childhood can be absolutely shattering to a person. But for those that are fortunate enough, to have escaped childhood abuse and reached a plateau into adult life, there is one choice, one moment of insight, that is all-empowering: making the choice of continuing to be the abused child of the past or becoming the adult that takes responsibility for his/her future experiences. Of course, I am trivializing a lot of things, and sorting through the behaviours and thought patterns of previous abuse victims, identifying the cognitive errors that have been laid down over repeated exposure to abuse, and eventually changing these behaviours, can take years (if ever achieved). The hardest thing to do isn’t doing all the cognitive work, however, it is that first step: believing that you, even you as a victim of abuse, now have power to decide to change things. To me, the difference between two people who have suffered childhood abuse, one who is mature and one who is immature in his interrelational style is that one of them had a moment of insight when he finally understood the words:
“You’re not powerless. You are not sick. You did not deserve what you got, but things can be better.”
Now, my friend in Chile is a very mature, very humble, and very loving person. When I told her about how some of these ‘childish’ people possibly had a troubled childhood, and are possibly cognitively and emotionally stuck there through little fault of their own, she bowed her head down as if remembering some distant memory only she knows about and told me how she really did feel sorry for her family members, even if they did act so negatively and immaturely towards others. And I guess that’s the other point I wanted to make, that perhaps instead of been irritated by these “childish” people, we take a moment to reflect on how sad their lives have probably been.
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