1.) Were you raised by the idea that bad behaviour should be punished and good behaviour should be rewarded...always pushed to excel, succeed, survive, etc.
or
2.) Were you raised by the idea that you should try to have as fulfilling of a life as possible and help others to also have this?
Out of those two choices, I really feel like I was raised in a #1 environment, even though it seems so harsh. Even if in my parents eyes they were raising me like the #2 option, they did not clearly deliver the #2 message. #2 was unspoken, if it was present. I perceived #1 a lot more.
I personally think I would have thrived a lot more w/ #2, because that is my personal belief system.
**Note: the below is just all the 'negatives' in my parents. They definitely have a lot of positives that I'm not writing about. But, I do love my parents, and I don't have any outstanding issues with them. I've pretty much come to terms with all of the below. They do try, they just have evident problem areas -- but, so do we all.
My Dad is most likely an INTJ and my mom is a rather highstrung ISxJ (although as a kid, she hid the highstrung part fairly well, most of the time). The thing is, is my brother and I weren't really problem children, so the punishment part didn't really apply. Although, I also learned at a young age that my Dad could be quite scary when you disappointed him -- he gets a condescending, impatient 'tone' to his voice (which he clearly got from his very intense INTJ father, who did the same thing -- so I can't really 'blame' my Dad for much, because he was raised in actually a much 'harsher' environment than we were, so my Dad was probably more balanced than his father was). The 'tone' is something all of us get annoyed with, and try to avoid. When I got older I'd sometimes snap back when he got 'the tone', just because 'the tone' to me demonstrated such a lack of...emotional maturity, or something. So I stopped being affected by 'the tone' - it simply made me angry instead. But when you don't disappoint him, he's quite the happy guy.
I also in general felt that my opinions didn't matter a whole lot. For example, I was quite good at the piano growing up, but 5 yrs into it, I really wanted to quit. The parents didn't let me quit, *because I was good*, so I had to keep playing another 6 yrs or so, and they finally let me quit at the end of my junior yr in high school. There was some resentment there. ;-)
And, I must have learned at a young age not really to express my opinions, because I never really did it, growing up. The times I remember expressing myself - in high school, in college, and a few times recently - I was told I was selfish, or was kinda patronized, like 'Oh, you don't know better yet...when you get older, you'll change your mind'.
Basically, I think my Dad finds me humorous/silly at times, but I know he loves me a lot. He takes pride in my accomplishments. He values my intelligence and achievements. But he gets very put out when I try to talk more about self-growth/personality stuff. When I was in a job rut about 3 yrs ago, and was really trying to seek honest feedback from my parents regarding my strengths, my Dad couldn't answer - he simply got his angry, impatient 'tone' and said: 'Well, you're not using your strengths in your current job!!'. Which made me upset, which made my mom upset. And he was so bothered by my soul-searching. I obviously touched a part of him that he doesn't have much easy access to, which is why he reacted so poorly. I don't think he ever even answered my question.
One could say my parents were never warm and overly affirming in my good *qualities* (although my mom had her moments, so of the two she was a little more demonstrative and sensitive) -- however, they were affirming in my accomplishments. So that is probably why to this day I have a confused notion of what my good qualities are, outside of intelligence.
My mom's role is to question nearly every single thing I do - and this started when I was young. So, I think I got a lot of my self-doubt from her constantly questioning me, and she has a way of guilt-tripping my brother and I about the stupidest things.
My brother has been hard for both of them to deal with and understand, because he was the opposite of me in many ways. I was the high-achiever, and he just kind of rode the undercurrents, although he's potentially much more capable than I am. They don't understand his lack of desire to 'achieve' anything..although have come to terms with it and are ok with it.