Life Is Caught More Than Taught

We arrive kicking and screaming as we enter the world, fully equipped with feelings, needs, desires, and longings.

It doesn’t take very long for us to receive messages directly or indirectly from our parents and other adults around us. Once those messages are received, we begin to draw conclusions about the emotional safety of our world.

Here are a few examples:

A child is crying and says, “I’m sad.” If a parent responds, either directly or indirectly, with, “Don’t cry. Don’t feel sad—feel happy,” the message the child hears and internalizes is, “Deny and don’t express feelings; just be happy.”

A child says, “I’m scared, and I need you to hold me,” and Mom says verbally or nonverbally (with her attitude or body language), “You’re too needy.” The message the child hears and receives is, “It’s selfish to ask for your needs to be met. What other people need is more important.”

A child says, “I want to take art lessons and become an artist,” and Dad responds, “Artists can’t make a living. We want you to be a doctor.” The message is, “It’s okay to have desires, but it’s more important to make parents proud.”

When a child’s heart says, “I long for time with my mom,” but the mom is drunk, unavailable, and says she’s “too tired,” the message received is, “Longings are wrong.”

When our feelings, needs, desires, and longings aren’t validated, our perspective shifts and our belief system is altered. We internalize, “I don’t see what I see, I don’t feel what I feel, and I can’t trust my gut.” As a result, we shut down mentally and emotionally.

How our parents or the adults in our world relate to us determines whether or not we’re allowed to have our individual feelings, thoughts, and needs. Depending on how we internalize negative messages, we begin to think like a Victim or a Survivor. We begin to protect our hearts from being hurt again by developing survival skills.

Author Peter Scazzero suggests, “If a child is belittled for their natural response, they quickly learn to shut down and quit responding.” In other words, we respond to the conditioning we’ve received and begin to mask who we are.

How have you processed the messages you received and how has that impacted what you believe about yourself, how you think, and how you engage with the world around you?

I experienced my fair share of hurtful comments in the elementary years in my childhood and it took its toll on my self-esteem. I didn’t believe in myself and I didn’t want to be seen. I did everything I could to not be the center of attention, and I carried that into my days at college. I did everything I could to try to worm my way out of having to take speech class, however to no avail. Instead, I had to face my anxiety and fight an upset stomach every time I was required to stand before my classmates, even when it was only for a one-minute speech.

I honestly laughed out loud when one of my college professors suggested that I become a teacher because of the lesson plans I had prepared for a class assignment. I did thank her for her kind words and belief in me, but was very quick to say that I could never feel comfortable standing in front of an audience of any size. And I’ve learned to never say never because as I gained confidence and learned to love myself, I found that I did indeed enjoy speaking and teaching in a classroom setting. In addition, I have had the opportunity to officiate numerous weddings in the past 20 years, and have been blessed to do so. Those experiences have breathed life into me, created amazing memories, and provided some of the greatest joys of my life. And just so you know, I made the effort to connect to my college professor and thank her for her encouragement. I never forgot her positive words and affirmation. Those messages carried weight and challenged the lies I had believed the first three decades of my life.

Let me clarify that I’m not suggesting we blame other wounded people who took their pain out on us for not becoming who we were intended to be. And certainly, our parents are not to blame. The consistent message the generation that birthed baby boomers received was to be seen and not heard. Aptly named, the silent generation grew up in environments that weren’t conducive to connecting to their feelings, needs, or desires, and what passes to you, passes through you.

In addition to not possessing the necessary skills to teach our generation to cope any differently, many of them didn't have the resources we have available to us now. Life was completely about survival and trying to financially provide more for us than they had access to (in addition to coping with the extreme abuses they often suffered).

Because we live what we learn, our generation followed suit. Although the tide began to turn slightly for us to embrace a growth mindset, most of us didn't learn the skills necessary to parent significantly differently.

The great news is that we can learn to re-parent ourselves. Even when the messages received (regardless of the source) have set in motion insecurity, low self-esteem, codependency, a need for control, perfectionism, or even addictions, as adults, it is our responsibility to challenge faulty beliefs. We choose whether or not to challenge those beliefs, the negative thinking that results, and the less-than-healthy choices that follow suit. The resources we have access to are varied and numerous and if we decide to challenge our Victim or Survivor mentality, the sky is not the limit in terms of how our lives can transform and who we can become!