Today let’s look at the process of how a simple occurrence can plant a seed in your subconscious that will continue to grow along with you.
What happens in early childhood is that we live an experience that we don’t like; one that threatens our perception of our ability to survive. Remember when primal needs are threatened, our brain tries to correct the offending behavior.
This is where the “if…then…” statement originally gets written. Our brain archives this happening as important and tries to make sure that we are better equipped to respond in the future should it happen again, known as a coping strategy. The fomula becomes: if…then…coping strategy
You remember our selective vision & attention? Since it’s important to us, our attention will be pulled to the happening all the time, on the look out for it. And herein the irony.
If it’s a specific behavior it may have multiple triggers (remember the white rabbit)- that you are unaware of – and therefore yes it does keep happening. What develops is then a fear about the fear, which is what we call anxiety.
Let’s look at a concrete example. I’ve told this story in the past, but it’s relevant here. My parents were young parents, it was the mid 70‘s, they were hippies, they both had challenging family lives with loads of ancestral conditioning. In short, they were ill prepared to consciously parent anyone, particularly given that they were 21.
Both of my parents were quite religious. We would spend every Sunday at church and I would go to Sunday school. One Sunday my parents literally forgot me at Sunday school. They went out for lunch with friends and I remained with the babysitters at the church.
After a while they came back, but I can still remember being on the steps of the church, sitting next to a rather irritated woman who was waiting with me (remember no cell phones!). I felt ashamed, unwanted, and like a burden.
Here the associated fear is that I’m already out of the tribe…because they’ve forgotten me. In child psychology it’s well known as separation anxiety. So my brain is focused on what to do in the future in this situation and will work on developing, what is known as, a coping strategy. We’ve looked in the past at the “If…then…” statements that end up conditioning our behavior and creating these habitual response loops.
So there are likely a series of beliefs & then programmed conclusions that I drew from this situation: happening -> conclusion -> coping strategy (behavior adjustment)
My parents are unreliable. -> I need to rely on myself -> violent sense of independence
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This woman is mad because of me -> Being a burden causes rejection -> never ask for help.
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People can just leave you -> That makes me feel weak.-> relationship avoidance
Now I could have gone in the other direction: unreliable parents could have led to desperate clinginess instead of independence, being an over people pleaser instead of never asking for help, or ending up in relationship with people who can’t/won’t leave.
As you can see the problem ends up being the coping strategy/behavior that we have adopted to correct the initial wound. We know that when you’re attention is pointed to not making that “happening” occur again, every time it does reinforces a base belief – like fertilizer on the seed. Your brain says “see I was right….this keeps happening”. Meaning every time someone is unreliable, I can be reassured that only relying on myself was the right move. When really everyone, myself included, can be unreliable at times (if you’re dealing with someone who is always unreliable, that is THEIR coping skill). But this is the defense mechanism my brain had written to avoid being disappointed in my exchange with others.
Getting out of these loops is, believe it or not, easier than one would think. It is a matter of retraining your brain. But it can be done.
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