Children who live in criticism – learn to blame;
Children who live in hostility – learn to fight;
Children who live in humiliation – learn to be self-deprecating.
Pia Mellody believes that children come to earth with two questions, the first of which is: Who am I? The second question is: How do I survive? The latter is about the child's basic needs and ways of survival, and the growth of life, that is, from complete dependence on the environment to a state of maturity that can be self-sufficient.
In order to survive, children need the attention and time of their parents, as well as the affirmation, guidance and demonstration of the feelings they have.
In fact, children offer their parents many opportunities to learn and grow.
At certain stages of a child's development, it often reminds parents of the needs they have experienced in the same stage of development.
Young children provide opportunities for parents to understand what they experienced in infancy; Adolescent children remind their parents that they were also young and had all the mentalities and emotions of a young man.
Parents can see from their children the emotional life they once had and can use again. Growing up, children need a lot of emotional support from adults and substantial help, which need to have the following qualities:
1. Respect your child.
2. Understand your child's needs.
3. Be tolerant of your child's feelings.
4. Accept your child's uniqueness.
5. Willing to learn from children the nature of emotions, because children can experience strong feelings more calmly than adults without pretense.
6. Be willing to touch the children hidden in your heart.
A similar spirit is expressed in the poems of Kahlil Gibran: "Your children are not your property... You can try to make yourself similar to them, but you can't force them to be like you, because life is moving forward rather than backward. ”
Yet toxic dogmas teach us to crush a child's vibrant spontaneity and natural expression of emotion.
What care and satisfaction do children need emotionally as they grow up?
-01-
Reaction, resonance and affirmation
A child's earliest need is to have a warm person by his side, concentrating on reflecting and affirming the hope in his heart. During the first 15 months of symbiosis, the child needs a face with loving eyes that will be the core and foundation of the child's future self-integration.
The baby's inner feelings form the core of the self, and these early inner feelings come from the mother's feelings for him. In those days when there were no words, one experienced everything through feelings.
Children's earliest mentality is a healthy narcissism, and if the parents' own narcissistic needs are not met, they may use the child to meet their emotional needs after becoming a parent, and the child will often cooperate to meet the parents emotionally in order to survive.
-02-
Contact, warmth and belonging
If the parent's emotions are suppressed, it is impossible to give the child the contact he needs; While contact is a source of trust, a lack of physical contact is a fatal deficiency for infants.
Adults extend the need for physical contact to the emotional level, and emotional comfort includes being noticed and valued, as well as a sense of accomplishment and appreciation.
Children need to be loved by their parents from the bottom of their hearts, otherwise they will be forced to create a fantasy relationship to satisfy themselves in order to give themselves the strength to move forward.
Because emotional comfort is a basic need of the individual, just like food to the body, so children will do whatever it takes to find emotional comfort, and even use unhealthy methods, such as running into trouble, causing trouble, etc., the ultimate goal is still to get the attention of adults and contact at the emotional level.
-03-
Self-acceptance and self-actualization
The uniqueness of the individual needs to be affirmed and accepted.
The child needs to see the whole self in the eyes of the adult who takes care of him, so that a sense of self can be developed and a complete inner personality can be established.
If part of the self is accepted (e.g., the child's smile, learning to talk) and the other part is not accepted (e.g., the child's anger and crying), the unacceptable part is separated from the self.
Every time we come into contact with this part of ourselves that is not accepted, we feel our inner parents rejecting them with their eyes and words. And these unacceptable angers, attacks, and lusts have to turn into underground activities. Yet they are still alive and active outside the sphere of our consciousness.
These hidden parts sometimes appear unexpectedly, for example, and may suddenly become angry without any pre-glance. Sometimes we say, "I don't know what the hell is going on with me today" or "I'm out of control." In addition to anger, emotions of sadness and fear are likely to flare up occasionally.
-04-
Autonomous, unique, spatial and separate
Children want to be different and need physical space. The space of the body is the basis for establishing the boundaries of the body.
Two-year-olds love to say "no." If we had allowed children the right to say no, perhaps not so many people today would have been unable to resist sexual harassment and the temptation to drink and drug. Rapists are like hunters looking for prey, and they are good at discerning where the most well-behaved and obedient children are.
In the stage of developing autonomy, the greatest crisis is the sense of shame. Children must learn to live with shame and doubt, feelings that are inherently good, that help us understand our limits, that we will make mistakes rather than be omnipotent.
However, excessive shame causes the child to distort the power of the will and divert the ability to manipulate the environment to deal with himself.
In Childhood and Society, it is said: "Shame causes a person to overly control himself and develop an overly precocious conscience." He repeatedly does something, not to experiment and explore things, but to be subject to repetitive actions and unable to himself, and to gain a sense of power through stubbornness and trivial control... This superficial triumph is entirely a continuation of infantile compulsive sexual behavior, and the reason why things are only superficial and ignore spiritual connotations in the future. ”
Too much shame can lead to internalized self-deprecation that reflects obsessive control and perfectionist tendencies.
Here we can see the transmission of shame between generations: parents with obsessive control will humiliate their children the most, and children will grow up with an immature mentality of forced control. How can parents with self-deprecating tendencies provide the best example of shame, so how can such parents teach their children to love themselves?
The most damaging aspect of shame is the process it initiates, which internalizes from a feeling to a real state of mind, in which the individual's emotions, needs, and desires are degraded.
For example, I have been taught that anger is a terrible sin, so when I get angry, I feel as if I am sinning and feel very bad. The same happens when you feel scared, sad, and happy.
In dysfunctional families, guilt is unhealthy. Members of such families give up their uniqueness and only play the role they should play in order to maintain the balance of the closed system.
Whoever tries to break away from the system and abandon the rigid role and pursue independence and uniqueness will face the anger and rejection of the system and bear the heavy pressure of guilt. We must understand that this guilt is a symptom of a sick system.
It should be noted that in an unsound family, members live for the sake of the family, not for the sake of the members.
Shame can be internalized because the drive of the individual is humiliated and degraded. A curious 3-year-old will explore his own body, which is a normal tendency.
If the child is told from an early age to be a little lady or a little gentleman, not to be rude and not to be overly curious, the child's aggressive tendency may also be humiliated, and even during the training of urination, the child's excretory tendency may be inadvertently humiliated by adults, so that they will later become like me, and open the bathroom faucet when going to the toilet, so that others will not know that I am trumpeting. Once desire is humiliated, in the future, whenever one's desire arises, or when one feels some natural tendency, one will be ashamed and uneasy about it.
The same thing can happen to other desires.
If a person has not been hugged or touched since childhood, and is humiliated when he wants to be close to people and wants to be touched, he will feel very humiliated whenever he has this desire in the future. Many little boys are ridiculed for their desire to be hugged and learn to suppress these needs with projection or self-defense, thinking that manly men should not need these feminine things.
Therefore, men tend to resort to "sex" for intimate needs, while women tend to overly emotionalize and emotionalize intimate needs.
Men use sex to disguise their need for intimacy, transforming the desire to be touched and approached into sexual desire. Women are more shy and restless than men because of their sexual needs, so they hide their sexual desires through gentle and loving behavior.
In fact, intimate needs and sexual desires are normal, but in a dysfunctional family, all needs can be crowned with ugly charges, can not be their own and unsupported child, any of his feelings and needs seem to be wrong.
-05-
Pleasure, pain and excitement
Children need fun and play, challenging stimuli appropriate to their age, and appropriate pain and suffering. Coddling a child is tantamount to depriving him of the opportunity to learn from the normal pain of life. Suffering is the source of growth and wisdom.
There is a song that sings:
"The unbroken heart is empty, and the deeper your sorrow, the richer your joy." It is almost inhumane to rob a child of the source of courage and wisdom.
Perfectionist and harsh parents deprive childhood smiles and innocence, and overly serious families can easily cut off their children's natural emotions.
-06-
Trustworthy and predictable
Children need trusted parents to test their limits. This is the test needed to form the self, and only trustworthy and psychologically balanced parents can let their children explore the world with peace of mind.
When a two-year-old explores the world and develops autonomy, he needs his parents to be by his side and do what he wants to do within the sight of his parents. He must find his limits and self within a safe range.
In adolescence, when children expand the field of life and further explore life, they need the support of their own determined parents. If the father is too immature and needs his son to be grateful to him all the time, the son cannot pursue himself wholeheartedly, but needs to take care of the father who lacks confidence.
Predictability makes a lot of sense for children. Children need stable and predictable parents. In unhealthy families, the father may come home drunk, the mother may be upset or complaining about physical discomfort, the child may be trembling and cautious because they do not know what will happen next, or perhaps the bad-tempered father suddenly bursts into anger.
Immature adults expect their children to fulfill their never-ending, conflicting, and impossible wishes.
There are no so-called "bad boys" in the world. Children are born precious and unique, so we should make sure that every child has a normal and happy childhood.
Here are the effects of emotional abuse experiences that you might want to use to self-examine:
1. Fear of abandonment – You can't give up things and it's hard to leave others, you want to maintain certain relationships for a long time, even if the relationship is inappropriate or unhealthy, but you still don't give up, or you collect a lot of things and don't want to throw them away.
2. Delusion or denial of the truth – If someone criticizes your parents, you must stand up for yourself and you have a good impression of your family. You keep courting your parents and trying to win their affection, but no matter what you do, they never seem to be satisfied.
3. Emotions are not differentiated – you don't know how you feel or how to express your emotions correctly. Cry when you're angry, get angry when you're scared. Maybe your emotions turn into physical problems, often with unexplained illnesses or needing to be experienced by others to feel yourself.
4. Loneliness and loneliness – You don't have much contact with the outside world, so you sometimes lose your sense of authenticity to your surroundings, and you are lonely and lack a sense of belonging.
5. Confusion or deviation of thought – You have too much trivial content when you speak that makes people feel bored. You are obsessively worried about something that cannot be changed, such as world peace and social order. A little thing makes you anxious, but you often stay in the thinking stage and rarely put it into action; You love to analyze your own problems, but you rarely use your hands to solve them.
6. Obsessive-compulsive/addictive problems – You use alcohol or drugs to get rid of uncomfortable emotions, and you keep yourself busy so you don't think about unpleasant things.
7. High anxiety - You feel anxious for a long time but don't know what to fear, always think about things in a bad way and always worry that disaster is coming.
8. Inability to build intimacy – When you have intimacy with someone, you unconsciously destroy each other's relationships, you are often attracted to people who don't actually really love you, and disdain sound intimacy.
9. Loss of emotional vitality – some say you are cold and mechanical. You are inconsistent, verbally excited, but not; It's angry to say it's angry, but it's not the same thing, in fact your emotions are numb.
10. You are ashamed of your own needs and tendencies – whenever your sexual desire arises, you crave intimacy or have other needs.
11. The Cycle of Disgust and Guilt – You hate to take on many responsibilities for your family, but if you don't take care of them, you will be filled with guilt. You can't pursue your own pleasures, but once you plan for your own rights, you will feel uneasy.
12. Confusion between emotion and shame – Every time an emotion arises, shame is followed by a feeling of shame.
13. There is a rule: you are not allowed to show emotions - you grew up in a home that is not allowed to show emotions, and needless to say, you should know that your parents love you. Family members will never speak out about their anger, fear, heartache, and sadness, and you certainly won't say what you feel inside.
14. Forced control – you try to control all the people, things, and things around you, including the behavior of others; You also want to control what you can't control. If your emotions are out of control, you will feel ashamed.
15. False Self – You disguise yourself to achieve the set image, you wear a mask, you disguise emotions, and play a rigid role. When you're sad, you smile and say, "I'm fine. When you're shaking with anger, you say, "I'm all right." ”
16. Emptiness and Dissatisfaction – You have never had a narcissistic mentality since you were a child. You feel empty, constantly trying all kinds of things without feeling fulfilled.
17. Play mental games, manipulate others – you spend a lot of energy playing mental games and trying to manipulate others because you don't know how to meet your needs in an honest way.
18. Indulge yourself – You sometimes let yourself go, and you get angry if others don't meet your wishes. You are authoritarian, impatient, and want others to understand your needs quickly. Problems go wrong in life, mistakes are attributed to others, and you don't think you're responsible for things.
19. Always be frightened – you are always in fear and are vulnerable to fright.
20. There is an unsatisfied and immature child in your heart – you look like an adult in appearance and words and deeds, but you have a childlike mentality on the inside.
21. Authoritarian and perfectionist – you work hard and exercise strict self-supervision to be critical.
22. Your heart is poor and your needs are inexhaustible – you are dry and poor inside, expecting someone to nourish and satisfy. You enter into marriage in the hope that someone will take good care of you, but your needs are like a bottomless pit, and you may not be able to figure out what you really want.
23. Have been subjected to sexual violence, physical abuse or both.
24. Lack of ability to deal with emotions and communication skills – Strong emotions often overwhelm you, you are also afraid of other people's strong emotions, you can't convey your feelings, and it is difficult to understand other people's feelings.
25. Anger, sadness, fear, shame, joy, and guilt are internalized— you are full of anger but you cannot feel anger, and you are sad but unconscious. Sensory internalization means that those emotions are no longer really undulating and inelastic like stuck switches. While you internalize shame, all emotions are wrapped in shame.
26. Be both a persecutor and a victim – in relationships, you take turns playing the role of victim and persecutor.
27. Loss of inner unity – Feelings of neglect and isolation that you have neglected can sometimes pop up. For example, when you get angry unexpectedly, you say, "I don't know what evil I've been caught!"
28. Overly concerned about the feelings of others – Sensitive to the feelings of others and always trying to comfort others. If others get angry, you will change your behavior to make them angry; If the other person is sad, you will try to alleviate his pain.
29. "Now" phobia – you regret the past and want to start over; You are full of fantasies about the future and often tell yourself: tomorrow will be better! You live in the past and in the future, not in the present; Memories and fantasies are your way of escaping the "moment."
30. Fear of being taken in by others – you are not easy to trust others, and you are suspicious. Feeling that you should benefit from others, you are afraid that people who are inferior to you will give you a bad influence and disdain to be with them.
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Review: Li Tonghua
Duty Editor: Guo Xueliang
Source: Psychology Lecturers Alliance