Our Birth Family

Our birth family showed us who we are by the way they responded to our needs and us. Our self-image started being formed. We also learnt how to get our needs met. The most important emotional need is for unconditional love as this enables us to love unconditionally. We need to know that we are loved even when our behaviour is not so great. There is never a threat of love being withdrawn. Unconditional love is often not given often because the parents themselves didn’t receive and don’t know what unconditional love is. What our parents say must be true, so when a child is told that nice children don’t get angry, he has to suppress the anger, pretend its not there as he wants to be a so-called nice child. ‘Boys don’t cry’ and ‘what will other people think of you’ are similar damaging statements. And the emotion gets stuck at that developmental level. I think that’s why so many adults don’t know how to deal with emotions, they’ve been criticized so often when we were growing up and treated as unacceptable by comments like `you don’t really feel that way, you’re oversensitive, overreacting etc.. Emotions are God given and all have a purpose. Emotions need to be accepted, and mirrored to the child as being a part of them and helped to channel them in an acceptable way. For example instead of criticising the child for being angry, rather empathise with words like you’re really feeling very angry’ as a statement like this shows acceptance and allows the child to express what is happening.

Let’s look at a few examples of how our growing up experiences motivates our behaviour as adults. Imagine a young boy brought up in poverty, life is hard. When he looks at people with money, he decides that money would make him secure and happy, would make life easier ? money will meet his need for security. As an adult he becomes a workaholic, makes a lot of money, which in his mind means he is caring well for his family who should be happy. If his family complain about him not spending enough time with them, he would probably react quite defensively with statements like ‘ I’m doing all this for you, I thought you’d be grateful, but all you do is complain’. As children are very self-focused and tend to blame themselves for things that seem wrong in a family, they would probably conclude that there is something wrong with them and that is why Dad spends so little time with them.

What about Dad’s who run up and down the side of the rugby field and berate their children when they fare poorly. What is the message the child is getting? To be loved and accepted in this world, I must be at the top, the best, perfect. What about the businessman who has to get to the top and it doesn’t matter who is sacrificed on the way. This may have been learnt as a child, maybe on the rugby field!

Let’s look at the child brought up in an alcoholic home. His emotional needs are seldom met and this child will experience emotional problems in adulthood, possibly even alcoholism. As this has been the child’s role model, it will influence his behaviour as an adult, the damage continues from one generation to the next, whether it results in alcoholism, or an extremely anti alcohol stance, it does have an effect.

A perfectionist parent might give the message that you are only acceptable if you are perfect. As this is impossible, we are all imperfect; you continually berate yourself for your imperfection. You are continually striving to please that parent voice within you.

A parent with a caregiver type personality can give a confused message to the child, as the care given to outsiders is often far greater than that given to the immediate family. This might seem strange but the caregiver is trying to get her need to be needed met and where better to get this need met than outside of the family, they are far more appreciative. What message does the child get? Mom seems to help everybody else; there must be something wrong with me.

We’ve all felt rejection, it doesn’t feel nice and we would rather behave in a way to avoid it. So understandably children also start taking on roles to get their needs met, to feel accepted and to lessen the possibility of rejection. We all have a need to feel loved and secure, and have a sense of belonging. The rebel, or scapegoat, might feel that some attention is better than no attention, so in this way he gets his needs met. Another child might become the achiever in the family, or the family clown who has the ability to distract the family from its pains or the child who withdraws, fearful of expressing himself.

During childhood our self-image is laid down and we behave in a way that matches our self-image. People with a good self-image will not allow themselves to get involved in an abusive relationship. Often an abused child will marry an abuser because it matches the self-image. It’s not nice but it’s familiar. A girl whose father is distant might marry an emotionally distant man, unconsciously thinking that if she tries hard enough she’ll succeed in getting the love she felt she didn’t get from Dad. A man who has a controlling mother and was never affirmed in his role as a future head of the household might marry a very competent woman whom he will love and hate at the same time, as he sees her competency as a reflection of his inadequacy.

insert the picture of another overhead here: In order to understand the behaviour, let’s look at this OVERHEAD.

All behaviour is motivated by a need. The greater the emotion, the greater the need. If you want to help someone don’t criticize the emotion, it is the gateway to understanding the need. Criticizing the emotion will only make the person feel unaccepted and withdraw. Look behind the emotion to the need. For example, in adolescence, the lack of feeling loved can lead to promiscuous behaviour to get the need for love met. Sex is incorrectly equated with love. We become more compassionate and less judgemental if we take our eyes off the behaviour and try and work out what need the person is trying to get met, and try and meet it in a more appropriate way.

If you look at your past, it is not a matter of finding blame but rather to understand your life story. We all enter adulthood damaged in some way, but we don’t have to live our lives as victims of our past. Any good story has a consistent beginning, middle and end and your life story also needs to make sense. The good news is that you can rescript the rest of your life and discard the unwanted baggage that you took on when you were an innocent child.

Part of the task of growing up is to look at the belief systems that we were taught as children and to decide whether these are valid or not, whether we need to dump them as unwanted baggage.The following questionnaire may help you identify where some of your emotional weaknesses lie. In your own time look at those questions that you rated 0 or 1 and check whether they are really true and valid. Total scores for the different sections between 0 & 10 indicate areas where you are emotionally vulnerable. Scores between 10 & 20 indicate areas where you are psychologically strong. The questionnaire is followed by notes on interpreting your questionnaire.

If we are aware of our emotional weaknesses and accept them, they are less likely to unconsciously motivate our behaviour. We all need love, approval, to feel a sense of achievement but the problem comes in when these are attached to our self-esteem.

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