As we learn to LoveandTeach, we learn to avoid causing wounds in our children which would later cripple them with PCSD.
Timestamps:
00:00 Woman insists her childhood was loving even though she now feels alone, lost, and confused.
01:14 Why people feel this way.
03:10 Greg asks questions to help the woman see her life accurately.
08:43 What children fear when they make a mistake.
09:50 Disapproval now creates PCSD in your child and life becomes about avoiding pain instead of living.
Transcript:
A woman asked to speak with me about her life, and to offer insight and direction. To be clear, she was asking for help, which is important to know in understanding my response to her. I don’t offer insight and suggestions unsolicited, where I’d be intruding.
How PCSD Goes Unrecognized
She told me that she felt alone, lost, confused. She had never experienced a successful relationship. She asked me why she would feel like that, and why her relationships always ended, because she KNEW that her parents had been loving to her all her life.
“Impossible,” I said. “Children who are unconditionally loved with anything approaching consistency do not grow up feeling alone, lost, and confused.”
She continued to insist that her childhood had been loving, which is quite common. Why?
Lots of reasons, but here are the three biggest:
- Who wants to admit that their own parents didn’t love them?
- Ignorance: If you’ve never been unconditionally loved, you wouldn’t know whether you HAD been as a child, and you would tend to make the favorable assumption that you had been.
- Betrayal. Our parents TOLD us they loved us, so if we now claim they didn’t, we label them liars and ourselves traitors. Heavy.
So, rather than go back and forth with me saying, “No you were not loved,” and her saying, “Yes, I was,”—you weren’t, I was, you weren’t, kind of boring—I approached her differently.
“Can you recall a time in your childhood when your parents were angry, irritated or disappointed at you?”
“Sure, but that’s true in all families, isn’t it? And it wasn’t that often.”
“We don’t need to talk about how often,” I said. Two reasons:
- She was pretty invested in defending herself, even though she had asked me for help.
- Kids remember a TINY fraction of the unloving events in their lives. In the absence of unconditional love, unloving events are just the air they breathe. So she WOULDN”T remember them.
Feeling Afraid
I continued: “Just remember one or more of those times, when they were irritated at you. Do you remember being afraid?”
“No.”
“I believe you.”
Again, pain and fear were the air she breathed, so a fearful moment would NOT have been remarkable or memorable to her.
Still, I continued, providing more opportunities for her to see her life accurately. “When they were irritated, did you LIKE it?”
“No, of course not.”
Me: “Now we’re going to learn something important for you. Of course you didn’t like their anger, and if you didn’t LIKE it—the feeling wasn’t any of the “happy” feelings—what feelings are left? Angry?”
“No.”
“I agree. Probably not. Most feelings boil down to some version of mad, sad, glad, afraid. The only one that fits here in the negative category is AFRAID. You were AFRAID. You may not remember it, but you were.
“THAT is the single feeling people mean most often when they say they don’t like something, or they’re are unhappy. Even anger is a response to pain and fear.
“So relax, can you see how if a parent—100 times bigger and stronger than a child—is angry, the child would be afraid? That YOU were afraid?”
“Hmmm, I guess so. Actually, that feels right, even though I can’t remember much of about it.”
“I’ll bet you can. Close your eyes and relax. Think of a time in childhood when you were suddenly caught doing something you knew was wrong.”
What Children Fear the Most
Took a second, but she said, "One night when I was little, I remember staying up and playing in my room way later than my bedtime. Suddenly my mom came in to my room, and instantly I got afraid because she had caught me."
"You’re getting close. You were afraid, yes, but not just of getting caught. When children feel unconditionally loved, they don’t get afraid when they’re caught. Why would they? What bad thing can happen if you feel loved by the person seeing your mistake? So, what were you afraid of?"
She replied:
"I wasn't afraid that she didn't love me, because I know she loves me, but I was just afraid that I had done something wrong."
“Nope. Kids who feel loved REALLY don’t care if they make a mistake. Really, which proves that you didn’t even know what unconditional love FELT like. You didn’t know what it would have been like to make a mistake and NOT be afraid of ‘doing something wrong.’”
I continued: "Imagine you have 20 million dollars, and you KNOW it's yours. Then somebody comes and takes 10 dollars (emotionally just like somebody being angry with you, or you being caught being wrong). Would you get afraid then? No, that would be silly. So, when your mother caught you, you were NOT sure you had 20 million dollars." You were not sure you were loved without condition.
"But I wasn't afraid that she didn't love me. I was just afraid that I had done something wrong, or that I would get a consequence".
”If you were certain that she loved you UNCONDITIONALLY, the only kind that counts, then you’d have 20 million. "Doing something wrong" would be irrelevant to you. It would matter zero.
“Nor would you be AFRAID of getting a consequence. You might not LIKE the consequence, but there would be no fear.
“It’s hard for you to wrap your head around because this is new, but the truth is that you were afraid she would withdraw her LOVE. You somehow knew she couldn’t be angry and loving in the same moment.”
Tears rolled down her face as she realized that she had been afraid of not being loved all her life—by mom, dad, boyfriends, teachers, girlfriends, bosses, everybody.
Your Child and PCSD
Why am I telling you this story about an ADULT, when most of you are raising children younger than this?
Because this woman IS YOUR CHILD years from now. What seems like a small moment of disapproval, disappointment, frustrations, anger, whatever right now is actually one of uncounted hundreds—perhaps thousands—of such moments in the life of a child, creating an atmosphere of pain and fear that eventually create PCSD.
The child become so hypervigilant about avoiding more pain that their entire life becomes about avoiding pain, which is NOT LIVING.
Avoiding pain is why we use, anger, victimhood, withdrawal, alcohol, cutting, video games, social media, and on and on.
Our childhood pain—thousands of unrecognized events like the ONE this woman remembered—is why we live angry, feel depressed, lash out at partners, and on and on.
EVERY word you speak to a child—or facial expression used, or tone of voice, or posture, or on and on—communicates to your child how the world IS, and that determines how the child will respond to it.
Everything you do with your child moves him or her closer to feeling loved, and to being loving and responsible, or you move them away from those lifegiving qualities. Everything you do brings life or death into their life.
Later in life, as adults—chronologically speaking—these kids are usually still children, still reacting to pain—real and perceived—rather than making genuine choices.
PCSD, which is utterly crippling, is caused by unremarkable events like the one described by this adult woman.
As we learn to love and teach, we learn to avoid causing these wounds in our children. We allow them to be loving and responsible instead, which is the greatest success we’ll ever have in our own lives.
It’s so worth it.
