From
birth to death any human is inundated with information, input, stimuli,
internal goings on and all sorts of chaos. For the infant and growing up child it
is their job to sort all that out and make sense of the world. As they grow things happen around them
that force a conclusion about their world and a subsequent decision on how to
handle that conclusion.
Unfortunately
all the decisions we made at three and seven and twelve and all the years in
between are as operational today as they were the day they made them. So we end up in the absurd position of
having a three year old in charge of our lives, because we haven’t made any new
or different decision, these decisions are very difficult to access for two
reasons.
First
they were often made before we had much language or the ability to
conceptualize, second they were survival tactics and strategies for us as
children. Literally our survival was at stake. The strategies and tactics
defended a child so the overwhelming pain of their emotions wouldn’t kill them. These
decisions are actually implemented over time, through trial and error -what is
less painful then that action-and what fits a particular child’s way of being
in this world.
Let me
give an example; Let's say
a three year old witnesses a parent hurting a sibling and in the indignation
only a three year only can muster, intervenes in the abuse. Assuming, that, of course, the parent
will do what is right. Instead
the abuse gets turned on this child. So
what happens internally to this child the next day, and the next and the next? And for years, watching the abuse go
on. If she intervenes she
gets hurt, and if she doesn’t she has to endure a sibling getting hurt. So how does the child learn to handle
that impossible ethical dilemma?
This
small example sets the stage for how to unravel our inexplicable
responses/behaviors to certain events that puzzle us and we haven’t a clue how
to undo.
No comments:
Post a Comment