Parental Schemas: Early Developmental Childhood

[LightSun]

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, and yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.” Kahlil Gibran


"If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy.
If a child learns to feel shame, he learns to feel guilty.

If a child lives with sarcasm, he learns to be mean.
If a child lives with manipulative parents, he learns to be manipulative.
If a child lives with emotional abuse, he will learn to withdraw.
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient.

If a child lives with encouragement he learns confidence
If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate.
He a child lives with fairness, he learns justice.

If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns to find love in the world." Unknown

 

[LightSun]

"I believe that if we were raised as children and our emotional conflicts as children were processed" properly, then we would be able of development of a gift which lies as a seedling in each small boy and small girl. It needs, love, nurture, attention and safety. We don't give credit or credence to a child's remarkable ability to process and properly digest negative emotions if, if it is explained to them at the moment and properly processed. We have not learned this as a society.

Moreover, not enough time is even to the developing child. Therefore, we have a society as we have it today. To many tines parents seek to change, control, or alter a child's natural development. This upsets flow. This upsets balance. This upsets the natural order of things. Subconsciously children will pick up on the distorted actions and behaviors of their parenting. This is why as adults we do many of the behaviors of our parents, almost against our wills. We mimicked what we saw.

Even if they want to be good, and rectify the mistakes of their upbringing, they still will be subconsciously affected. To me to heal a society, it starts with the children. To me, some of the most pivotal influences on childhood are child rearing and education. Ultimately, we must make and take responsibility for our own lives regardless of what happened. Besides our parentage reflects the pains and demons that our parents must have endured.

It is our only choice to move forward. Violence begets violence, somewhere the cycle must be broken, and it happens that it starts with me."

 

[LightSun]

Children
“How important is child rearing?”
Hilary Clinton wrote a book called "It takes a village." I concur.

"To me, some of the most pivotal influences on childhood are child rearing and education. We all live here. We all have a stake and a voice. For whatever reason the wealthiest strongest nation on the planet is behind in many pivotal areas and this includes education.
To me to heal a society, it starts with the children.

I would think that this country would put an emphasis on childhood education. We must make the pivotal changes needed in how we do things and how we think of ourselves, our children and our future."

 

[LightSun]

Respondents statement is true in part. The other portion is erroneous. (1) "We are born enlightened, ignorance is learned."


Part I.
"We are born a blank slate. Enlightenment is a journey that is never quite reached. It is the proverbial journey, not the destination that is to be sought after. In our life travels, experiences and travails we can learn through insight and inner refection a better way to approach a situation in the past that has triggered us. Only by adhering toward critical and thoughtful mindfulness can we approach a situation in a balanced way through cognitive mindfulness which root out thought distortions rooted in our unconscious belief system and made up of unhealed portions of ourselves, unresolved conflict or trauma.

It's often times called or referred to as our own personal unfinished business in life where lies a wounded part of ourselves. These unresolved issues occur in most instances during our formative years. By acknowledging this aspect I agree with you that ignorance is learned. However their lay human faults of even a baby in inborn personality character traits and temperament. We do not come into this world as enlightened. In situations of crises we unconsciously use inefficient defense mechanisms. This is to deflect our psychic wound from being poked, prodded, disturbed and brought to the surface by an emotional trigger.

These thought distortions and cognitive errors have been identified. From the CBT (Cognitive Behavior) field ten common and prevailing cognitive errors are identified. From the psychological expert field of REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior), a list of ten Irrational Beliefs that the human species frequently utilize have been identified. The thought distortions of our conscious thoughts emanate from a deeper level of the subconscious.

Often all these identified thought errors have distortions in the thought process and lie in the unconscious of our belief system. The early formative years are very crucial for our mental health, developing a healthy self concept and having good self esteem. In rating basic human needs the US lags in the area of child poverty. The US lags only behind Romania with 23.6% of children living in poverty. The united states meanwhile has 23.1% of children 0-17 living in households whose income is less than 50% of the national medium. Think of that our most valuable resource and the hope and future of our nation living in these conditions.

I have talked of the dysfunctional cycle of children growing up in adverse conditions. Consider the Kauai Longitudinal Study. The Kauai Study’s subjects are the 698 babies born on the island that year, with assessments so far at ages 1, 2, 10, 18, 32 and 40. Of the children in the study, Drs. Werner and Smith identified 129 as being at high risk for future problems, because they faced four or more adversities at birth, ranging from poverty and family discord to alcoholism or mental illness in the home.

Two-thirds of these high-risk children went on to have difficulties of their own, such as delinquency, unplanned pregnancies and underemployment. One-third, however, somehow did prevail. It is my estimate that the lucky one third had in place a percentage of the identified 40 Developmental Assets in childhood. Unfortunately due to the ignorance of bad parenting, often coming from a dysfunctional home life themselves, the parents unwittingly pass along their unresolved issues in the form of projecting unto the child. This very unfortunate circular cycle of a dysfunctional nature manifest in behavior which is composed of defense mechanisms and strategies developed in childhood that are inefficient and contain distortions of thought by way of subconscious schema instilled into an individuals subconscious belief system.

A Cognitive Schema is in essence a subconscious way to deal with situations which can trigger the wounded part of ourselves in ways that are are inefficient as well as maladjusted and not a realistic and mature way of addressing life's potentially stressful situations. A Schema develops in order to not re-experience the pain of old unhealed areas of ourselves that come out in trigger-able situations. We then resort to unhealthy cognitive schema. There are three types of schema avoidance: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral."

 

[LightSun]

Part II.
I. Cognitive avoidance refers to efforts that people make not to think about upsetting events. These efforts may be voluntary or automatic. People may voluntarily choose not to focus on an aspect of their personality or an event which they find disturbing. There are also unconscious processes which help people shut out information which would be too upsetting to confront. People often forget particularly painful events. For instance, children who have been abused sexually often forget the memory completely.

II. Emotional or effective avoidance refers to automatic or voluntary attempts to block painful emotion. Often when people have painful emotional experiences, they numb themselves to the feelings in order to minimize the pain. For instance, a man might talk about how his wife has been acting in an abusive manner toward him and say that he feels no anger towards her, only a little annoyance. Some people drink or abuse drugs to numb feelings generated by schema.

III. The third type of avoidance is behavioral avoidance. People often act in such a way as to avoid situations that trigger schema, and thus avoid psychological pain. For instance, a woman with a 'Failure to Achieve Schema' might avoid taking a difficult new job which would be very good for her. By avoiding the challenging situation, she avoids any pain, such as intense anxiety, which could be generated by the schema. The third schema process is schema compensation. The individual behaves in a manner which appears to be the opposite of what the schema suggests in order to avoid triggering the schema.

People with a 'Functional Dependence' schema may structure aspects of their life so they don't have to depend on anyone, even when a more balanced approach may be better. For instance, a young man may refuse to go out with women because he is afraid of becoming dependent and will present himself as someone who doesn't need other people. He goes to the the other extreme to avoid feeling dependent. A schema is an extremely stable and enduring pattern that develops during childhood and is elaborated throughout an individual's life. We view the world through our schema.

A person's personal belief system which hold faulty idealizations through our lens of perception in how we view ourselves and the world. Schema are important beliefs and feelings about oneself and the environment which the individual accepts without question. The individual in question lack critical thinking learned skill sets and do not challenge their beliefs. They are self-perpetuating and are very resistant to change. We in effect are brainwashed as children by both parents and society with concepts forming into belief systems that do not hold a truth basis. Remember these nefarious and self defeating thoughts, beliefs and behaviors stem from the unconscious level.

Hence, is the need to learn to become awake and more self aware to make better informed decisions and lead a happier life. Children who develop schema that are incompetent rarely challenge this belief. There is in effect a wall of fire, i.e. pain as a barrier to challenge these beliefs. This is why it is such a fallacy to conclude on your own part an uninformed opinion that we as individuals have free will and can make our destinies even after a traumatic early life. I can not reiterate enough the power of the unconscious mind which result in us making ill advised decisions as part of a part of a defensive mechanism. The schema usually does not go away without therapy.

Overwhelming success in people's lives is often still not enough to challenge the schema. The use of Rationalization, denial and other defensive mechanisms downplay or else undercut a person from feeling personal satisfaction. We alter reality to conform to our distorted viewpoint and discount contrary evidence. This too has been brought out in the light using science methodology. This is a very tough idea to accept, but a persons brain filter in and out information.

Often times to conform to a persons conceptual view of the world, any evidence to the contrary is often discounted. It is a very arduous struggle to be able to wrestle with our own thought demons. The schema fights for its own survival, and usually, quite successfully. Even though schema persist once they are formed, they are not always in our awareness. usually they operate in subtle ways, out of our awareness called Blind Spots. However, when a schema erupts or is triggered by events, our thoughts and feelings are dominated by these schema.

They are as if ghosts from our past pop out and along with these triggered instances old memories and even re-experienced old feelings are felt again and re-endured. It is at these moments that people tend to experience negative emotions and have dysfunctional thoughts. Just conceptualize war veterans suffering from P.T.S.D symptoms. It is a sad and sobering statistical truth that the majority of our homeless population are composed of ex-veterans.

Most of the general public do not have a clear conceptualization of the power of our unconscious beliefs in making decisions prior to us being consciously aware enough to be able to solve a problem or deal with a trigger-able possibly volatile situation. It has been shown through research studies that we unconsciously make a decision before we are even able to be consciously aware of addressing a given situation. They have not met science standards.

Also these cognitive distortions and irrational ideas are never questioned. Our brain informs us them to be viable and a true aspect of reality. The journey and path took in life is to uproot these cognitive errors and replace these thoughts with a more realistic approach to deal with situations that trigger us in a lifetime. Until we learn to make the subconscious more accessible to conscious critique we will be led in our lifetime by emotional response's which often are automatic in our thoughts, speech and action we perform without the use of critical thinking or making use of insight."

 

[LightSun]

Here Are 10 Signs You Grew Up With Childhood Emotional Neglect by Gerald Sinclair

1. You struggle with self-discipline.

Even if you think something is right you have trouble standing up for it. You have a lot of trouble overcoming your own weaknesses and you aren’t quite sure why.

2. You feel empty.

This can also be a numbness.

3. You pride yourself on not relying on others.

You feel as though there should never be a need to depend on other people for anything at all. You also struggle with asking for help when you need it.

4. You often want to be alone.

You like to spend time alone because most people just don’t understand you. You feel as though you don’t fit in with other people. While you would love to have real friends there is not much room for connecting with other people in your mind.

5. You seem to be unhappy from time to time for no apparent reason.

Your unhappy moments don’t come on because something bad has happened, they simply show up out of nowhere and unannounced. You don’t know how to explain this and it drives you mad.

6. You have trouble knowing what it is you’re feeling.

You know you are feeling something and that you should not be feeling it but you don’t know what it is. Even when you are happy you struggle with it. This feeling is odd and overwhelming in every possible way.

7. You have no compassion for yourself but plenty for others.

You are much harder on yourself than you would be to anyone else. While you might let a co-worker know that their mistake is okay and easily fixable when you do the same thing it is the end of the world in your mind.

8. You feel flawed.

This is what I also referred to earlier. You feel like something is wrong but you don’t know what. You think the problem is within you but it is not, not really. You didn’t do anything wrong.

9. You find it easier to love animals than people.

Animals are much easier to get along with and to connect with. Animals do not judge you and love you unconditionally. You love that you never have to worry about your dog talking about you behind your back.

10. You feel like you are on the outside looking in.

Parents that don’t notice their children’s emotions or simply choose to ignore them are sending a message that their feelings do not matter. As an adult, you continue on this harmful path of not taking your emotions into consideration and you aren’t sure how to deal with the ones you do have. Once you understand why you are feeling this way you can attack this CEN and learn to use your emotions. Your feelings are real and they matter. You are not doing anything wrong. Knowing that you matter and taking your emotions into your own hands will change your life." By Gerald Sinclair

Video 'Emotional Covert Abuse - When Parents Ignore Their Children That Is Neglect
from Lisa A Romano 10 Common Signs That You Were Emotionally Neglected As A Child – Awareness Act

 

[LightSun]

"I was brought up in a household environment by my father. He had an 'Explosive Anger Personality Disorder.' One minute he's right like the rain and sun in the heavens. The next he projected his own 'Unrealistic Perfectionist Expectations' unto me, his first born. It became apparent nothing that I did measured to his own expectation. Thus I never did well enough. Even in adult life (cognitive distortion) 'Nothing I did was ever good enough." I have a perfectionist attitude. So I tend to have 'An All Or Nothing' motto.

Problem arises I might in actuality outperform a peer, but in my mind it just meets the status quo. So in other words I have to outperform to fit in. This dos not bring true satisfaction. Much of this reminds me of the 'Note about Cognitive Schema' developed in dysfunctional households. The problem is that that are in the unconscious and very hard to eradicate. They are the so called 'Old Tapes' we learned and incorporated into our subconscious belief system."