Reflection: Thoughts About the Influences of Our Upbringings

What is the role of a parent; of parents?

In the perfect world, we're supposed to bring up our children to become well-adjusted and functional adults, capable of facing and handling the challenges they encounter in life. Right?

This is NOT "The Ideal World!"

I suppose we could say that the sheer scale of the mental health industry is testament to the myriad ways parents bestow suboptimal life lessons on their children. If you sit in on most therapy sessions, invariably someone's relationship with their parents will be on the menu.

Clearly, not everything we learn is good or useful.

One of the things I spent many years trying to overcome is a behavior set the psychology profession calls "Learned Helplessness."

To avoid a long stream of psychobabble, the fundamental idea is that a person ends up making poor choices because the result of their upbringing and life experience is that they feel like any decision they make will be ineffectual and meaningless.

Psychologically speaking, it means that we avoid making important life decisions because "our opinion about anything doesn't MATTER, anyway."

In other words, we feel helpless in the face of the challenges of the world.

Having been raised by parents who swung wildly between being totally UNavailable and being overly controlling and meddlesome, I learned that it was best to just "say nothing" and be as "invisible" as possible.

Maybe that's a worthy approach when you are young and don't have any options, but it doesn't work so well when you're on your own and having to deal with the rigors of life.

In my case, it led to many years of simply "going with the flow," regardless of what opinion I might actually have, on the inside.

After many years of therapy, I eventually learned to overcome my "voicelessness," but I still have to be on guard all the time... and aware that I might just slip back into the pattern of having no opinion.

If you're looking to live a happy and balanced life, it's important to recognize and face that there is a problem, and then to get advice from someone you trust.

Life gets better!

Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your weekend!

How about YOU? Have you ever heard of "learned helplessness?" Are there any childhood lessons you realize have NOT helped you become a well-balanced adult? Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 2023.01.15 00:11 PST
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