Positive Parent Involvement Quotes

Parents don’t need to know how to play with kids. If we get kids involved in adult activities, that’s play for kids.” And then they associate chores with a fun, positive activity. They associate it with playing.

Parental looks rely a lot on brow positioning. Whereas the Dad Look involves the lowering of the brow as a whole, the Mom Look takes advantage of the power of the single, raised brow. Of Doom.

The most painful interactions with emotionally immature parents occur when their children need something from them. Whether it’s attention, love, or communication, many neglected children continue to seek some kind of positive emotional regard from their parents well into adulthood, even though their parents aren’t the giving type.

As a child, if you found a role that fit your parent’s needs like a key in a lock, you probably would have quickly identified with this role-self. In the process, your true self would have become more invisible as you transformed into what your family system needed you to be. This kind of disinvestment from your true self can sabotage your intimate relationships as an adult. You can’t forge a deep and satisfying relationship from the position of a role-self. You have to be able to express enough of your true self to give the other person something real to relate to. Without that, the relationship is just playacting between two role-selves.

Children don’t see a difference between adult work and play, says psychologist Rebeca Mejía-Arauz. “Parents don’t need to know how to play with kids. If we get kids involved in adult activities, that’s play for kids.” And then they associate chores with a fun, positive activity. They associate it with playing.

You may wonder why all children don’t make up wonderfully positive role-selves—why so many people are acting out roles of failure, anger, mental disturbance, emotional volatility, or other forms of misery. One answer is that not every child has the inner resources to be successful and self-controlled in interactions with others. Some children’s genetics and neurology propel them into impulsive reactivity instead of constructive action. Another reason negative role-selves arise is that it’s common for emotionally immature parents to subconsciously use different children in the family to express unresolved aspects of their own role-self and healing fantasies. For instance, one child may be idealized and indulged as the perfect child, while another is tagged as incompetent, always screwing up and needing help.

Research suggests that what has happened to people matters less than whether they’ve processed what happened to them. In a study of the characteristics of parents who raise securely attached children, researchers found that parents who created a secure attachment for their children were often characterized by a willingness to recall and talk about their own childhoods (Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy 1985). Even though some of these parents had lived through very difficult childhood experiences, their relationships with their own children were secure, since they had spent time thinking about and integrating their childhood experiences and were at ease with both the negative and positive aspects of their past.

some seem to get trapped in the compulsion to succeed, others take a rebellious stance. Pointing to the blatant cruelties and limitations involved in a cultural pattern which tends to value only the winner and ignore even the positive qualities of the mediocre, they vehemently criticize competition. Among the most vocal are youth who have suffered under competitive pressures imposed on them by parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by making no effort to win

As you pray for your children, you will find it to be an unending habit of your heart. Being able to positively affect your children in prayer will keep you in close contact with them and actively involved in their lives, even after they leave home. And it will continually contribute to your joy as a parent!

Since the 1980s, a growing body of research finds that mattering—the feeling that we are valued and add value to others—is key to positive mental health and to thriving in adolescence and beyond. “Mattering” offers a rich, almost intuitive framework for understanding the pressure assailing our kids—and how to protect them from it. It is as profound as it is practical. It doesn’t involve spending more money on tutors or coaches or adding another activity to an already overpacked schedule. Instead, it offers a radical new lens for how we as adults—parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors—see our kids and communicate to them about their worth, potential, and value to society.

In order to understand how engineers endeavor to insure against such structural, mechanical, and systems failures, and thereby also to understand how mistakes can be made and accidents with far-reaching consequences can occur, it is necessary to understand, at least partly, the nature of engineering design. It is the process of design, in which diverse parts of the 'given-world' of the scientist and the 'made-world' of the engineer are reformed and assembled into something the likes of which Nature had not dreamed, that divorces engineering from science and marries it to art. While the practice of engineering may involve as much technical experience as the poet brings to the blank page, the painter to the empty canvas, or the composer to the silent keyboard, the understanding and appreciation of the process and products of engineering are no less accessible than a poem, a painting, or a piece of music. Indeed, just as we all have experienced the rudiments of artistic creativity in the childhood masterpieces our parents were so proud of, so we have all experienced the essence of structual engineering in our learning to balance first our bodies and later our blocks in ever more ambitious positions. We have learned to endure the most boring of cocktail parties without the social accident of either our bodies or our glasses succumbing to the force of gravity, having long ago learned to crawl, sit up, and toddle among our tottering towers of blocks. If we could remember those early efforts of ours to raise ourselves up among the towers of legs of our parents and their friends, then we can begin to appreciate the task and the achievements of engineers, whether they be called builders in Babylon or scientists in Los Alamos. For all of their efforts are to one end: to make something stand that has not stood before, to reassemble Nature into something new, and above all to obviate failure in the effort.

Consider these traditional theories of domestic abuse: - Learned helplessness suggest that abused women learn to become helpless under abusive conditions; they are powerless to extricate themselves from such relationships and/or unable to make adaptive choices - The cycle of violence describes a pattern that includes a contrition or honeymoon phase. The abusive husband becomes contrite and apologetic after a violent episode, making concerted efforts to get back in his wife’s good graces. - Traumatic bonding attempts to explain the inexplicable bond that is formed between a woman and her abusive partner - The theory of past reenactments posits that women in abusive relationships are reliving unconscious feelings from early childhood scenarios. My research results and experience with patients do not conform to these concepts. I have found that the upscale abused wife is not a victim of learned helplessness. Rather, she makes specific decisions along the path to be involved in the abusive marriage, including silent strategizing as she chooses to stay or leave the marriage. Nor does the upscale abused wife experience the classic cycle of violence, replete with the honeymoon stage, in which the husband courts his wife to seek her forgiveness. As in the case of Sally and Ray, the man of means actually does little to seek his wife’s forgiveness after a violent episode. Further, the upscale abused wife voices more attachment to her lifestyle than the traumatic bonding with her abusive mate. And very few of the abused women I have met over the years experienced abuse in their childhoods or witnessed it between their parents. In fact, it is this lack of experience with violence, rage, and abuse that makes this woman even more overwhelmed and unclear about how to cope with something so alien to her and the people in her universe.

The plain fact is that responsibility cannot be imposed. It can only grow from within, fed and directed by values absorbed at home and in the community. Responsibility that is not anchored in positive values can be antisocial and destructive. Gang members often show great loyalty and strong responsibility in relation to one another and to their gang. Terrorists take their duties in dead earnest; they carry out commands, even if they involve sacrificing their own lives. The

They’re accustomed to putting others in the limelight and worry that they’ll get a swelled head if they recognize their own strengths. However, it’s crucial to know what your assets are and be able to articulate them. It provides self-validation and allows you to feel good about what you bring to the world. This self-recognition builds energy and positivity. While modesty and humility can help you keep things in perspective, they shouldn’t prevent you from knowing your best qualities.

A third positive result even further from the traditional tool kit of financial incentives comes from a recent randomized control trial conducted in the U.K., using the increasingly popular and low-cost method of text reminders. This intervention involved sending texts to half the parents in some school in advance of a major math test to let them know that their child had a test coming up in five days, then in three days, then in one day. The researchers call this approach “pre-informing.” The other half of parents did not receive the texts. The pre-informing texts increased student performance on the math test by the equivalent of one additional month of schooling, and students in the bottom quartile benefited most. These children gained the equivalent of two additional months of schooling, relative to the control group. Afterward, both parents and students said they wanted to stick with the program, showing that they appreciated being nudged. This program also belies the frequent claim, unsupported by any evidence, that nudges must be secret to be effective.

In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love, and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one man now drive you into the arms of another, what’s wrong with that? If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs – why not enjoy it? But wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might feel wonderful in each other’s arms, but if their respective spouses find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of alienation and resentment. The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it? The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one another, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it! Don’t let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what’s good for you.

The use of rewards—what might be called positive coercion—does not work in the long run any better than threat and punishment, or negative coercion. In the reward, the child senses the parent’s desire to control no less than in the punishment. The issue is the child’s sense of being forced, not the manner in which the force is applied. This was well illustrated in a classic study using magic markers.2 A number of children were screened to select some who showed a natural interest and inclination for playing with magic markers. Those who did were then divided into three different groups. For one group, there was no reward involved and no indication what to do with the markers. Another group was given a small reward to use the markers, and the third was promised a substantial reward. When retested sometime later, the group that had been most rewarded showed the least interest in playing with the magic markers, while the children who had been left uninstructed showed by far the greatest motivation to use them. Simple behaviorist principles would suggest it ought to have been the other way around, another illustration that behavioral approaches have no more than short-term efficacy. At work here, of course, was residual counterwill in response to positive coercion. In a similar experiment, the psychologist Edward Deci observed the behaviors of two groups of college students vis-à-vis a puzzle game they had originally all been equally intrigued by. One group was to receive a monetary reward each time a puzzle was solved; the other was given no external incentive. Once the payments stopped, the paid group proved far more likely to abandon the game than their unpaid counterparts. “Rewards may increase the likelihood of behaviors,” Dr. Deci remarks, “but only so long as the rewards keep coming... Stop the pay, stop the play.” We

In such families, internalizing children often learn to feel ashamed of the following normal behaviors: Enthusiasm Spontaneity Sadness and grief over hurt, loss, or change Uninhibited affection Saying what they really feel and think Expressing anger when they feel wronged or slighted On the other hand, they are taught that the following experiences and feelings are acceptable or even desirable: Obedience and deference toward authority Physical illness or injury that puts the parent in a position of strength and control Uncertainty and self-doubt Liking the same things as the parent Guilt and shame over imperfections or being different Willingness to listen, especially to the parent’s distress and complaints Stereotyped gender roles, typically people-pleasing in girls and toughness in boys If you were an internalizing child with an emotionally immature parent, you were taught many self-defeating things about how to get along in life. Here are some of the biggest ones: Give first consideration to what other people want you to do. Don’t speak up for yourself. Don’t ask for help. Don’t want anything for yourself. Internalizing children of emotionally immature parents learn that “goodness” means being as self-effacing as possible so their parents can get their needs met first. Internalizers come to see their feelings and needs as unimportant at best and shameful at worst. However, once they become conscious of how distorted this mind-set is, things can change rather quickly.

Parental efforts to gain leverage generally take two forms: bribery or coercion. If a simple direction such as “I'd like you to set the table” doesn't do, we may add an incentive, for example, “If you set the table for me, I'll let you have your favorite dessert.” Or if it isn't enough to remind the child that it is time to do homework, we may threaten to withdraw some privilege. Or we may add a coercive tone to our voice or assume a more authoritarian demeanor. The search for leverage is never-ending: sanctions, rewards, abrogation of privileges; the forbidding of computer time, toys, or allowance; separation from the parent or separation from friends; the limitation or abolition of television time, car privileges, and so on and so on. It is not uncommon to hear someone complain about having run out of ideas for what still might remain to be taken away from the child. As our power to parent decreases, our preoccupation with leverage increases. Euphemisms abound: bribes are called variously rewards, incentives, and positive reinforcement; threats and punishments are rechristened warnings, natural consequences, and negative reinforcements; applying psychological force is often referred to as modifying behavior or teaching a lesson. These euphemisms camouflage attempts to motivate the child by external pressure because his intrinsic motivation is deemed inadequate. Attachment is natural and arises from within; leverage is contrived and imposed from without. In any other realm, we would see the use of leverage as manipulation. In parenting, such means of getting a child to follow our will have become embraced by many as normal and appropriate. All attempts to use leverage to motivate a child involve the use of psychological force, whether we employ “positive” force as in rewards or “negative” force as in punishments. We apply force whenever we trade on a child's likes or when we exploit a child's dislikes and insecurities in order to get her to do our will. We resort to leverage when we have nothing else to work with — no intrinsic motivation to tap, no attachment for us to lean on. Such tactics, if they are ever to be employed, should be a last resort, not our first response and certainly not our modus operandi. Unfortunately, when children become peer-oriented, we as parents are driven to leverage-seeking in desperation. Manipulation, whether in the form of rewards or punishments, may succeed in getting the child to comply temporarily, but we cannot by this method make the desired behavior become part of anyone's intrinsic personality. Whether it is to say thank-you or sorry, to share with another, to create a gift or card, to clean up a room, to be appreciative, to do homework, or to practice piano, the more the behavior has been coerced, the less likely it is to occur voluntarily. And the less the behavior occurs spontaneously, the more inclined parents and teachers are to contrive some leverage. Thus begins a spiraling cycle of force and counterwill that necessitates the use of more and more leverage. The true power base for parenting is eroded.

Sometimes we forget that parenting, like love, is a verb. It takes effort and work to yield positive returns. There is an incredible amount of self-awareness involved in being a good parent. It requires us to look at what we do when we are tired and stressed and stretched to our limits. These actions are called our default settings. Our default settings are the actions and reactions we have when we are too tired to choose a better way.

There are times to teach and train and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and charged with emotion, attempts to teach or train are often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. A better approach is to be alone with the person and to discuss the principle privately. But again, this requires patience and internal control—in short, emotional maturity. BORROWING STRENGTH BUILDS WEAKNESS In addition to parents, many employers, leaders, and others in positions of authority may be competent, knowledgeable, and skillful (at day six) but are emotionally and spiritually immature (at day two). They, too, may attempt to compensate for this deficiency, or gap, by borrowing strength from their position or their authority. How do immature people react to pressure? How does the boss react when subordinates don’t do things his way? The teacher when the students challenge her viewpoint? How would an immature parent treat a teenage daughter when she interrupts with her problems? How does this parent discipline a bothersome younger child? How does this person handle a difference with a spouse on an emotionally explosive matter? How does the person handle challenges at work? An emotionally immature person will tend to borrow strength from position, size, strength, experience, intellect, or emotions to make up for a character imbalance. And what are the consequences? Eventually this person will build weakness in three places: First, he builds weakness in himself. Borrowing strength from position or authority reinforces his own dependence upon external factors to get things done in the future. Second, he builds weakness in the other people. Others learn to act or react in terms of fear or conformity, thus stunting their own reasoning, freedom, growth, and internal discipline. Third, he builds weakness in the relationship. It becomes strained. Fear replaces cooperation. Each person involved becomes a little more arbitrary, a little more agitated, a little more defensive. To win an argument or a contest, an emotionally immature person may use his strengths and abilities to back people into a corner. Even though he wins the argument, he loses. Everyone loses. His

For instance, if a Black person is watching tv, instead of being bombarded by anti-Black images and messages hour after hour, they should be able to relax and be at peace in the knowledge that Black people control the media.  When their children go off to school in the morning, Black parents and other members of their community who provide love and support for their children, should be able to know that the teachers won’t be anti-Black and won’t fill their children’s heads with ideas that make them hate themselves or feel less worthy and less valuable.  The Black community should be confident that their children are being taught their history, their ideas (Black Thought), and are being told they are beautiful and good.  There shouldn’t be any worries about schoolmates of another race making their children feel inferior.  When they grow up and go to college, Black students should be confident that Black administrators and Black professors have created an environment and curriculum which encourages their entire educational development, not only providing skills for the workplace but nurturing their minds and their sense of community.  And when these students go out into the workplace, they should be confident that Black-controlled industries will be hiring them with Black managers in charge.  Racism will become a non-factor. Most significantly, when Black people have control over their community and have Black citizenship they won’t be forced to go through every day under the constant terror of being harassed, brutalized and killed by the police.  The psychological weight that would be lifted from them would be historic.  A new sense of energy and security could be channeled into self-affirmation and community-building.  I have little doubt that such a moment in history would lead to unprecedented strong race relations between citizens of this Black nation and whites in the current nation.  It’s almost impossible to have truly strong or positive race relations when one group is constantly required to bear the burden of oppression, and the other group feels the need to ignore or deny the existence of this oppression while also enforcing it.  The levels of tension and dishonesty are an enormous drain on everyone involved.  What a sweet and beautiful day it would be when Black people would simply not have to think about whites anymore.  In the same way that amerikans spend so little of our time thinking about Lithuanians or Norwegians.  And when you aren’t forced to think about someone, or forced to live the way they tell you to live, it’s a pleasure to get together and visit voluntarily.  Black people and Europeans on this continent (amerikans) would still talk to one another.  We might even still live in the same neighborhoods.  But the difference is that Black people would be their own people.  They would no longer be surrounded by the circle of whiteness.  The black dot on the white page: the exception to the rule.  White rule.  Black people would be a nation.  An entity unto themselves.  They would not be required to imagine themselves within the context of whiteness.  Their minds would be freed from the perpetual interpretation of every action and word (it seems even every thought) through whiteness.  Africans (Black people) would simply be Africans.  A people defined by their own terms, their identity neither within nor without the boundaries of whiteness.

We can best help our children not by sacrificing ourselves for them, but by trying to fulfill our own lives. When we are involved in an honest pursuit of our own goals, we serve as positive role models for our children.

Prior to having sex for the first time, I had read many books and magazines, pornographic and otherwise, and I'd developed certain expectations of intercourse. From paperback romances I expected to feel vaguely yet ecstatically ravished, as if, for the duration of the act, I would experience everything an ad for a drugstore cologne could ever promise. From more serious fiction, I assumed that I would be blasted with a torrent of conflicting emotions, flashbacks to my birth, a rough kinship with the natural world, perhaps a Booker Prize, and, ultimately, a sense of existential ennui. From mainstream movies, I hoped for a beautifully lit and choreographed series of thrusts and embraces, with my head thrown back, my eyes shut but not squinched, and my lips slightly but appealingly parted; I also felt that the sex might be edited, continually leaping forward in the attractive bits and pieces, with only the dewiest bodily fluids. From porn, I trusted that sex would be alternately savage, degrading, pounding, and dull, and all of this sounded promising. From what my parents had told me, I knew that sex did not exist, and from what other schoolchildren had let on, I imagined that there was a real danger of getting stuck in one position or another, with the parties involved finally getting yanked apart in the emergency room.

The three C’s, as I like to call them, are the real cornerstones to not only implementing a new milestone or behaviour, but to speed the process up for you and to ensure the behaviour lasts. These are as follows: Commitment: Once you make a decision to implement a new milestone or behaviour you need to really commit to it. You will get better and faster results by sticking to the plan. Consistency: Be consistent, once you commit to a new milestone or behaviour, make sure you stick to it. Repeat your steps/actions until successful and then the key is to maintain it. It usually takes around 3 days to start seeing the fruits of your labour. One vital note here is to make sure everyone involved in the child’s day to day care is singing off the same hymn sheet and not undoing all your hard work. Credit: Positive reinforcement is the final key to maintaining the desired effect. Focus on what it is you want them to do, not what you don’t want them to do. When they do it, be sure to celebrate this with them and praise the behaviour to encourage more of the same.

It’s important for people to consciously appreciate their strengths. Unfortunately, the children of emotionally immature parents usually don’t develop much appreciation for their positive qualities because self-involved parents have little or no ability to reflect their children’s strengths. As a result, these children often feel a little embarrassed to think of themselves in terms of their most positive qualities. They’re accustomed to putting others in the limelight and worry that they’ll get a swelled head if they recognize their own strengths.

The way circus elephants are trained demonstrates this dynamic well: When young, they are attached by heavy chains to large stakes driven deep into the ground. They pull and yank and strain and struggle, but the chain is too strong, the stake too rooted. One day they give up, having learned that they cannot pull free, and from that day forward they can be “chained” with a slender rope. When this enormous animal feels any resistance, though it has the strength to pull the whole circus tent over, it stops trying. Because it believes it cannot, it cannot. “You’ll never amount to anything;” “You can’t sing;” “You’re not smart enough;” “Without money, you’re nothing;” “Who’d want you?;” “You’re just a loser;” “You should have more realistic goals;” “You’re the reason our marriage broke up;” “Without you kids I’d have had a chance;” “You’re worthless”—this opera is being sung in homes all over America right now, the stakes driven into the ground, the heavy chains attached, the children reaching the point they believe they cannot pull free. And at that point, they cannot. Unless and until something changes their view, unless they grasp the striking fact that they are tied with a thread, that the chain is an illusion, that they were fooled, and ultimately, that whoever so fooled them was wrong about them and that they were wrong about themselves—unless all this happens, these children are not likely to show society their positive attributes as adults. There’s more involved, of course, than just parenting. Some of the factors are so small they cannot be seen and yet so important they cannot be ignored: They are human genes. The one known as D4DR may influence the thrill-seeking behavior displayed by many violent criminals. Along with the influences of environment and upbringing, an elongated D4DR gene will likely be present in someone who grows up to be an assassin or a bank robber (or a daredevil). Behavioral geneticist Irving Gottesman: “Under a different scenario and in a different environment, that same person could become a hero in Bosnia.” In the future, genetics will play a much greater role in behavioral predictions. We’ll probably be able to genetically map personality traits as precisely as physical characteristics like height and weight. Though it will generate much controversy, parents may someday be able to use prenatal testing to identify children with unwanted personality genes, including those that make violence more likely. Until then, however, we’ll have to settle for a simpler, low-tech strategy for reducing violence: treating children lovingly and humanely.

The ideal position of play in life was first explored by the Ancient Greeks. Among all their gods, two mattered to them especially. The first was Apollo, god of reason and wisdom. He was concerned with patience, thoroughness, duty and logical thinking. He presided over aspects of government, commerce and what we would now call science. But there was another important god, a diametrically opposed figure whom the Greeks called Dionysus. He was concerned with the imagination, impatience, chaos, emotion, instinct – and play. The ‘Dionysian’ involved dreams, liberation and a relaxation of the strict rules of reason. Importantly, the Greeks did not think that any life could be complete without a combination of these two figures. Both Apollo and Dionysus had their claims on human lives, and each could breed dangerously unbalanced minds if they held undiluted sway.

One great way to do that is by playing what I call the “I have to listen to you now” game. Introduce this by saying, “I know being a kid is tough. There are so many things that parents ask of you! So let’s play a game. For the next five minutes, you’re the adult and I’m the kid. I have to do what you say, assuming it’s safe.” Explain to your child that the game does not involve food or gifts (your child cannot tell you to go buy them a hundred new Pokémon packs or give them thirty bags of Skittles)—it’s really about the routine of your day. But the details here aren’t important. What’s important is to reverse roles, allow your child to experiment with the position of powerful adult, and express empathy for the difficulties of being a child. While you play the game, exaggerate how hard it is to listen to your “parent”; voice things like, “Ughhhhhh, really? I have to clean up the Magna-Tiles? I don’t waaaaaaant to,” and “Ughhhhh, I wish I didn’t have to take a shower right now!” I find this game useful for myself as well—it reminds me how hard it can be to take orders when you don’t want to do something.

People like Sophie often feel guilty for complaining. Men and women alike will list the things they have to be thankful for, as if their life were an addition problem whose positive sum means nothing can be wrong. But they can’t shake the feeling of being fundamentally alone and lacking the level of emotional intimacy they crave in their closest relationships.

It is a reason why so many who seek holiness or spiritual improvement impose on themselves a strict austerity. And it is why schools and colleges used to emulate the ways of monasteries. The first Christian hermits and monastics who practiced extreme austerity in the desert saw themselves as emulating Jesus during his sojourn in the wilderness. Once monastic life became institutionalized, removing oneself from carnal temptation was a major reason why religiously minded individuals would choose to take vows. The Rule of St. Benedict, set down around the year 530, included commitments to poverty, humility, chastity, and obedience, and this became the paradigm for most Christian monastic orders. The vow of poverty generally involved renouncing all individual property, although the monastic community was allowed to hold property, and of course some monasteries eventually became quite wealthy. But the lifestyle of most monks in the Middle Ages was kept deliberately austere. Here is how Aelred of Rievaulx, writing in the twelfth century, describes it: Our food is scanty, our garments rough, our drink is from the streams and our sleep upon our book. Under our tired limbs there is a hard mat; when sleep is sweetest we must rise at a bell’s bidding. . . . self-will has no scope; there is no moment for idleness or dissipation.4 Strict precautions to eliminate the possibility of sexual encounters, regular searches of dormitories to ensure that no one was hoarding personal property, a rigid and arduous daily routine to occupy to the full one’s physical and mental energy: by means of this sort monasteries and convents did their best to provide a temptation-free environment. More than a trace of the same thinking lay behind the preference for isolated rural locations among those who sought to establish colleges in nineteenth-century America. Sometimes the argument might be conveyed subtly by a brochure picturing the college surrounded by nothing but fields, woods, and hills, an image that also appealed to the deeply rooted idea that the land was a source of virtue.5 But it was also put forward explicitly. The town of North Yarmouth sought to persuade the founders of Bowdoin College of its advantageous location by pointing out that it was “not so much exposed to many Temptations to Dissipation, Extravagance, Vanity and Various Vices as great seaport towns frequently are.”6 And the 1847 catalog of Tusculum College, Tennessee, noted that its rural situation “guards it from all the ensnaring and demoralizing influences of a town.”7 Needless to say, reassurances of this sort were directed more at the fee-paying parents than at the prospective students. One should also add that not everyone took such a positive view of the rural campus. Some complained that life far away from urban civilization fostered vulgarity, depravity, licentiousness, and hy

However, when he has issues with being bullied at school, they write it off as a typical childhood experience. Since Ross is doing well academically and is still involved in after-school activities, they do not bother to validate his emotions. Consequently, Ross constantly feels alone and comes to subconsciously believe the only person he can rely on to soothe himself is himself. As you can see, emotional neglect does not necessarily mean a child was physically abandoned—it can include a wider variety of neglect such as absenteeism or a lack of emotional connection between the caregiver and child. Moreover, a Dismissive-Avoidant attachment style can also be formed through a combination of emotional neglect from one parent and enmeshment trauma from the other. According to Thrivetalk, enmeshment trauma is a form of emotional damage that occurs when one or more parents project their values, needs, and dreams onto their child. This causes the child to abandon their own sense of self in order to please their caregiver. Ultimately, the child feels as though they must adapt to their parent’s needs to be worthy of love, and this, when combined with a caregiver who is also unavailable, leaves the child feeling emotionally abandoned. Eventually, the Dismissive-Avoidant wants to dissociate from those around them because they have an abundance of stored subconscious associations around their emotional vulnerability being rejected. In adulthood, they will subconsciously feel in control when they are on their own, and will be at peace alone. In their relationships, they will need time alone to soothe themselves because being alone has the most positive childhood associations. Since the subconscious is most “comfortable” with what it knows, it will actively work to re-create a sense of familiarity. For the Dismissive-Avoidant, this means withdrawing in emotionally challenging situations in adulthood. For those who are in a relationship with the Dismissive-Avoidant, or if you are a Dismissive-Avoidant yourself, issues can arise if this coping mechanism is not mutually understood. Therefore, to begin healing yourself or your relationship, you must first understand where these patterns come from, and then learn the steps to finally heal them.

emotionally immature people are more like an amalgam of various borrowed parts, many of which don’t go together well. Because they had to shut down important parts of themselves out of fear of their parents’ reactions, their personalities formed in isolated clumps, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit together. This explains their inconsistent reactions, which make them so difficult to understand. Because they probably weren’t allowed to express and integrate their emotional experiences in childhood, these people grow up to be emotionally inconsistent adults. Their personalities are weakly structured, and they often express contradictory emotions and behaviors. They step in and out of emotional states, never noticing their inconsistency. When they become parents, these traits create emotional bafflement in their children. One woman described her mother’s behavior as chaotic, “flip-flopping in ways that made no sense.” This inconsistency means that, as parents, emotionally immature people may be either loving or detached, depending on their mood. Their children feel fleeting moments of connection with them but don’t know when or under what conditions their parent might be emotionally available again. This sets up what behavioral psychologists call an intermittent reward situation, meaning that getting a reward for your efforts is possible but completely unpredictable. This creates a tenacious resolve to keep trying to get the reward, because once in a while these efforts do pay off. In this way, parental inconsistency can be the quality that binds children most closely to their parent, as they keep hoping to get that infrequent and elusive positive response.

Children do cooperate (most of the time, at least) when they’re involved in finding solutions to problems; they will understand “no” when they are developmentally ready; and they listen when parents listen to them and talk in ways that invite listening. Problems are solved more easily when parents use kind and firm guidance until children are old enough to be involved in the process of creating limits and focusing on solutions.

Sadly, a child often “misbehaves” because she has lost her sense of belonging or connection. Misbehavior “works” for a very good reason; that is, it regains a parent’s attention and involvement, even if that attention is negative. Believe it or not, children don’t “act out” to get attention. While all children need attention, what they really seek is safe, secure connection. When your child knows that she is securely connected to you, her misbehavior will diminish.

Men and women alike will list the things they have to be thankful for, as if their life were an addition problem whose positive sum means nothing can be wrong. But they can’t shake the feeling of being fundamentally alone and lacking the level of emotional intimacy they crave in their closest relationships.

Modern culture treats sex outside of marriagea as being no big deal. It’s considered completely normal and not something to be ashamed of; if anything, people brag about it and argue that it’s a positive good. It’s described as being a “casual” activity; something you can do with “no strings attached.” You can supposedly have meaningless “hookups,” “one-night stands,” or text your “friends with benefits” to set up a “booty call,” which is probably the most unromantic thing I can even think of. This idea that sex outside of marriage is OK is probably the biggest lie we are told, and the biggest source of our problems—not just in dating, but in all of life. I know that is a bold statement, but consider the evidence: after the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, divorce rates doubled, followed by an ongoing decline in marriage rates.1 Currently, 40 percent of children in the United States are born out of wedlock, without a stable, married, two-parent family; in the 1960s, at the start of the sexual revolution, that number was just 7 percent.2 Besides those births, there have been 60 million US children killed before birth via abortion since 1973.3 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), which would be almost nonexistent if all people were monogamous,b are instead at record highs,4 with something like 20 million new infections in the country each year.5 Pornography use has become so common that it’s just kind of assumed for men but is also regularly consumed by at least a third of all women.6 And then you have all the ways people use and abuse sex as a way to use and abuse other people through either harassment or assault, which is a huge problem: it’s estimated that one in five women are raped at some point in their lives,7 while the majority are either harassed or assaulted in some form.8 Go beyond the statistics and think about how all these things would affect the actual people involved, and all the various costs associated with each one. Add it all up, and the impact both on society and on individual relationships is ridiculously massive.

Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1963) observed that in order for people to learn anything new, their old mental pattern must break up and rework itself around the new, incoming knowledge. This process of internal breakdown and accommodation is key to continuing intellectual development. Likewise, Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski (1972) theorized that emotional distress is potentially a sign of growth, not necessarily illness. He saw psychological symptoms as coming from a freshly activated urge to grow and coined the term “positive disintegration” to describe times when people break down inside in order to reorganize into more emotionally complex beings.

What, if not a death drive, would impel sexual beings towards a pre sexual form of reproduction (in the depths of our imagination, moreover, is it not precisely this scissiparous form of reproduction and proliferation based solely on contiguity that for us is death and the death drive?). And what, if not a death drive, would further impel us at the same time, on the metaphysical plane, to deny all otherness, to shun any alteration in the Same, and to seek nothing beyond the perpetuation of an identity, nothing but the transparency of a genetic inscription no longer subject even to the vicissitudes of procreation? But enough of the death drive. Are we faced here with a phantasy of selfgenesis? No, because such phantasies always involve the figures of the mother and the father - sexed parental figures whom the subject may indeed yearn to eliminate, the better to usurp their positions, but this in no sense implies contesting the symbolic structure of procreation: if you become your own child, you are still the child of someone. Cloning, on the other hand, radically eliminates not only the mother but also the father, for it eliminates the interaction between his genes and the mother's, the imbrication of the parents' differences, and above all the joint act of procreation. The cloner does not beget himself: he sprouts from each of his genes' segments. One may well speculate about the value of such plant-like shoots, which in effect resolve all Oedipal sexuality in favour of a 'non-human' sex, a sex based on contiguity and unmediated propagation. But at all events the phantasy of self-genesis is definitively out of the picture. Father and mother are gone, but their disappearance, far from widening an aleatory freedom for the subject, instead leaves the way clear for a matrix known as a code. No more mother, no more father: just a matrix. And it is this matrix, this genetic code, which is destined to 'give birth', from now till eternity, in an operational mode from which all chance sexual elements have been expunged.

You can’t forge a deep and satisfying relationship from the position of a role-self. You have to be able to express enough of your true self to give the other person something real to relate to.

The truth is, if both partners fit each other, understand each other’s feelings, and are positive and supportive, relationships are primarily pleasurable, not arduous.

Waking Up to Your Strengths It’s important for people to consciously appreciate their strengths. Unfortunately, the children of emotionally immature parents usually don’t develop much appreciation for their positive qualities because self-involved parents have little or no ability to reflect their children’s strengths. As a result, these children often feel a little embarrassed to think of themselves in terms of their most positive qualities. They’re accustomed to putting others in the limelight and worry that they’ll get a swelled head if they recognize their own strengths. However, it’s crucial to know what your assets are and be able to articulate them. It provides self-validation and allows you to feel good about what you bring to the world. This self-recognition builds energy and positivity. While modesty and humility can help you keep things in perspective,

However, it’s crucial to know what your assets are and be able to articulate them. It provides self-validation and allows you to feel good about what you bring to the world. This self-recognition builds energy and positivity. While modesty and humility can help you keep things in perspective, they shouldn’t prevent you from knowing your best qualities.

They Make You Feel Seen and Understood What a gift it is to talk with someone who’s interested in your inner experience! Instead of feeling strange for having certain feelings, you feel understood because the other person resonates with what you’re talking about on an emotional level. When emotionally mature people find you interesting, they show curiosity about you. They enjoy hearing your history and getting to know you. They also remember things you’ve told them and are likely to reference that information in future conversations. They like your individuality and are intrigued by the ways in which you’re different from them. This reflects their desire to really get to know you, rather than looking for you to mirror them. Emotionally mature people see you positively and keep a mental library of your best qualities. They often reference your strengths and sometimes seem to know you better than you know yourself. In the climate of such interest and acceptance, you’ll feel that you can be completely yourself and may find yourself telling the other person things you hadn’t planned to or sharing a personal experience that you usually keep to yourself. You’ll also notice that the more you share with such people, the more they share with you. That’s how true intimacy develops and flourishes. Once they trust you, they’ll engage in clear, intimate communication and let you into their inner world. If you’ve been emotionally neglected in the past, this may be a new and exhilarating experience for you.

Waking Up by Getting Free of Childhood Issues Working through childhood emotional injuries is the most effective way of waking up from repeating the past. When I say “working through,” I mean the mental and emotional process of coming to grips with painful realities. Think of it as a process of breaking down something that’s initially too big to swallow: you chew on it until it can become a digestible part of your history. Research suggests that what has happened to people matters less than whether they’ve processed what happened to them. In a study of the characteristics of parents who raise securely attached children, researchers found that parents who created a secure attachment for their children were often characterized by a willingness to recall and talk about their own childhoods (Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy 1985). Even though some of these parents had lived through very difficult childhood experiences, their relationships with their own children were secure, since they had spent time thinking about and integrating their childhood experiences and were at ease with both the negative and positive aspects of their past. It’s easy to imagine why children with such parents showed secure attachment. These parents were not avoiding reality. Because they had addressed their own pasts, they were fully available to connect with their children and form a secure attachment.

Likewise, Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski (1972) theorized that emotional distress is potentially a sign of growth, not necessarily illness. He saw psychological symptoms as coming from a freshly activated urge to grow and coined the term “positive disintegration” to describe times when people break down inside in order to reorganize into more emotionally complex beings.

Unfortunately, the children of emotionally immature parents usually don’t develop much appreciation for their positive qualities because self-involved parents have little or no ability to reflect their children’s strengths.

The solution I recommend, and for which I have been widely criticized, is that no one should have children unless they have taken a six-month course on responsible parenting and earned a certificate attesting to the fact that they are responsible enough to have children. Today, anyone can have a child, including pedophiles, alcoholics, drug addicts, men who abuse their wives, etc. It is even possible to create one's own victim. That's quite a bizarre situation, if you think about it. A driver's license is required in ordre to drive a car, a diploma is required in order to access certain types of employment and it is necessary to prove one's ability to do all sorts of things before being authorized to do them. Bringing forth a life is the ultimate responsibility, and people should be able to prove that they are in a position to accept that responsibility. Even if such a measure was not enforced, it would provide people with a different way to learn about what is involved in parenting. (p. 119-120)

If you work together as a team, the arrangement should be positive and beneficial to all involved.

Wilderness leaders need to understand that there are varying normal responses to a crisis. Until there is time to regroup, behaviors may seem unusual when, in truth, they should be expected. Some behaviors that may emerge in the face of a crisis include: 1. Regression. Many grown people revert to an earlier stage of development. The theory is that, since their parents used to care for them as children, someone else may care for them now if they behave in a childlike manner. In particular, tantrums used to be very effective. Tantrum-like or very dependent behavior is not unusual. 2. Depression. Closing into one’s inner world is another common response to crisis. This is where some people find the sources of strength to cope with an emergency. This is characterized as a shutdown effect: fetal positioning, slumped shoulders, downcast eyes, arms crossed over the chest, and unwillingness or difficulty in communicating. 3. Aggression. Some people lash out, physically or emotionally, at threats, including the vague threat of an emergency. High adrenaline levels may intensify the response, and so may the feelings of frustration, anger, and fear that commonly surround unexpected circumstances. This response is characterized by explosive body language, including swinging fists and jumping up and down. What one should do about the various behaviors that surface during a crisis depends somewhat on the individual circumstances. As a general rule, open communication, acknowledgement of the emotional impact of the event, and a healthy dose of patience and tolerance can go far during resolution of the situation. Some basic procedures to consider in crisis management might include the following: 1. Engage the patient in a calm, rational discussion. You can start the patient down the trail that leads through the crisis. 2. Identify the specific concerns about which the patient is stressed. You both need to be talking about the same problems. 3. Provide realistic and optimistic feedback. You can help the patient return to objective thinking. 4. Involve the patient in solving the problem. You can help the patient and/or the patient can help you choose and implement a plan of action. Someone who completely loses control needs time to settle down to become an asset to the situation. Breaking through to someone who has lost control can be a challenge. Try repetitive persistence, a technique developed for telephone interrogation by emergency services dispatchers. Remain calm, but firm. Choose a positive statement that includes the person’s name, such as, “Todd, we can help once you calm down.” (An example of a negative statement would be, “Todd, we can’t help unless you settle down.”) Persistently repeat the statement with the same words in the same tone of voice. The irresistible force (you) will eventually overwhelm the immovable object (the out-of-control person). Surprisingly few repetitions are usually needed to get through to the patient, as long as the tone of voice remains calm. Letting frustration or other emotions creep into the tone of voice, or changing the message, can ruin the entire effort. Over time, the overwhelming responses that generated the reaction may occasionally resurface. This is normal. Without being judgmental or impatient, regain control through repetitive persistence. A crisis may bring out a humorous side (sometimes appropriately, sometimes not) among the group. When you wish to release the intensity surrounding a situation or crisis, appropriate laughter is one of the best methods. It should also be noted that many people cope just fine with emergency situations and unexpected circumstances. They are a source of strength and an example of model behavior for the others.

The relationship between nurturance and moral self-interest can be seen most clearly in nurturant forms of business practice. It involves the humane treatment of employees, the creation of a safe and humane workplace, social and ecological responsibility, fairness in hiring and promotion, the building of a work community, the development of excellent communication between employees and management and between the company and its customers, opportunities for employee self-development, a positive role in the larger community, scrupulous honesty, a regard for one’s customers and for the public, and excellent customer service. Policies such as these have increased the productivity and success of many businesses. They are models of how Nurturant Parent morality can function to help businesses be successful and to allow owners, investors, and employees to seek their self-interest within this moral system. Moral

A third positive result even further from the traditional tool kit of financial incentives comes from a recent randomized control trial conducted in the U.K., using the increasingly popular and low-cost method of text reminders. This intervention involved sending texts to half the parents in some school in advance of a major math test to let them know that their child had a test coming up in five days, then in three days, then in one day. The researchers call this approach “pre-informing.” The other half of parents did not receive the texts. The pre-informing texts increased student performance on the math test by the equivalent of one additional month of schooling, and students in the bottom quartile benefited most. These children gained the equivalent of two additional months of schooling, relative to the control group. Afterward, both parents and students said they wanted to stick with the program, showing that they appreciated being nudged.

Ambivalence exists in all human relationships, including parent-child. Anna Freud maintained that a mother could never satisfy her infant's needs because those are infinite, but that eventually child and mother outgrow that dependence...In Torn in Tow, the British psycho analyst Rozsika Parker complains that in our open, modern society, the extent of maternal ambivalence is a dark secret. Most mothers treat their occasional wish to be rid of their children as if it were the equivalent of murder itself. Parker proposes that mothering requires two impulses - the impulse to hold on, and the impulse to push away. To be a successful mother you must nurture and love your child, but cannot smother and cling to your child. Mothering involves sailing between what Parker calls 'the Scylla of intrusiveness and the Charybdis of neglect.' She proposes that the sentimental idea of perfect synchrony between mother and child 'can cast a sort of sadness over motherhood - a constant state of mild regret that a delightful oneness seems always out of reach.' Perfection is a horizon virtue, and our very approach to it reveals its immutable distance. The dark portion of maternal ambivalence toward typical children is posited as crucial to the child's individuation. But severely disabled children who will never become independent will not benefit from their parents' negative feelings, and so their situation demands an impossible state of emotional purity. Asking the parents of severely disabled children to feel less negative emotion than parents of healthy children is ludicrous. My experience of these parents was that they all felt both love and despair. You cannot decide whether to be ambivalent/ All you can decide is what to do with your ambivalence. Most of these parents have chosen to act on one side of the ambivalence they feel, and Julia Hollander chose to act on another side, but I am not persuaded that the ambivalence itself was so different from one of these families to the next. I am enough of a creature of my times to admire most the parents who kept their children and made brave sacrifices for them. I nonetheless esteem Julia Hollander for being honest with herself, and for making what all those other families did look like a choice.

This creates a tenacious resolve to keep trying to get the reward, because once in a while these efforts do pay off. In this way, parental inconsistency can be the quality that binds children most closely to their parent, as they keep hoping to get that infrequent and elusive positive response.

But as he approached fifty, Kenny yearned to do something different. Someone told him that More Than Money—the same inheritors group Jeff Weissglass got involved with—was hiring an executive director. He landed the position and, in short order, discovered that his pregnant teens had at least one thing in common with these young heirs and heiresses: Society defined and stereotyped both groups by how much money they did or didn’t have. The foundations that funded adolescent pregnancy care assumed the girls were getting knocked up because they were poor, “which was not necessarily true,” Kenny says, whereas the inheritors were pegged as “entitled and spoiled and lazy—and there’s no basis for that.” The anti-inheritor bias proved so toxic that some of Kenny’s former colleagues shunned him after he took the new job. “They’re like, ‘What a sellout! What a cop-out! Why would you do that?’ ” he recalls. “What does it say about our culture that everyone wants to win the lottery in some way, shape, or form, and there’s a whole segment of our culture that hates people who win the big payout.” This is indeed a paradox. Oscar Mayer heir Chuck Collins gave away his $500,000 inheritance in 1986, when he was a young man. (Invested in the S&P 500, it would be worth about $14 million today.) He has since dedicated himself, through the Institute for Policy Studies, to educating the American public about inequality. His memoir, Born on Third Base, includes the following scene: Speaking to a crowd of about 350 people, he asks who among them feels rage toward the wealthiest 1 percent. Almost everyone raises a hand. He then asks, “How many of you wish you were in the wealthiest 1 percent?” They laugh, but again, almost everyone. “People are envious,” Kenny says. “And what you end up doing with envy is demeaning whoever it is that you envy, because they have what we think we deserve.” During his time at More Than Money, Kenny grew friendly with Paul Schervish, then the director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, and when Schervish offered him the associate director job, Kenny jumped. He’d seen how inheritors grappled with their unearned fortunes. Now he wanted to better understand their parents. Havens was the numbers guy “and I was in charge of: ‘I’d like to know what these people are thinking, and nobody ever asks them.’ 

I’ve tried to think of every reason why I should wash my hands of this place. But I keep returning to the conclusion that I owe it to every man, woman, and child on this estate to try and save the estate. Eversby Priory has been the work of generations. I can’t destroy it.” “I think that’s a very admirable decision,” she said with a hesitant smile. His mouth twisted. “My brother calls it vanity. He predicts failure, of course.” “Then I’ll be the counterbalance,” she said impulsively, “and predict success.” Devon gave her an alert glance, and he dazzled her with a quick grin. “Don’t put money on it,” he advised. The smile faded except for a lingering quirk at one corner of his mouth. “I kept waking during the night,” he said, “arguing with myself. But then it occurred to me to wonder what my father would have done, had he lived long enough to find himself in my position.” “He would have saved the estate?” “No, he wouldn’t have considered it for a second.” Devon laughed shortly. “It’s safe to say that doing the opposite of what my father would have done is always the right choice.” Kathleen regarded him with sympathy. “Did he drink?” she dared to ask. “He did everything. And if he liked it, he did it to excess. A Ravenel through and through.” She nodded, thinking of Theo. “It has occurred to me,” she ventured, “that the family temperament isn’t well suited to stewardship.” Amusement glinted in his eyes. “Speaking as a man who has the family temperament in full measure, I agree. I wish I could claim to have a mother from steady, pragmatic stock, to balance out the Ravenel wildness. Unfortunately she was worse.” “Worse?” Kathleen asked, her eyes widening. “She had a temper?” “No, but she was unstable. Flighty. It’s no exaggeration to say there were days at a time when she forgot she even had children.” “My parents were very attentive and involved,” Kathleen volunteered after a moment. “As long as you were a horse.

The “love” of formerly abused children for their parents is not love. It is an attachment fraught with expectations, illusions, and denials, and it exacts a high price from all those involved in it. The price of this attachment is paid primarily by the next generation of children, who grow up in a spirit of mendacity because their parents automatically inflict on them the things they believe “did them good.” Young parents themselves also frequently pay for their denial with serious damage to their health because their “gratitude” stands in contradiction to the knowledge stored in their bodies. The frequent failure of therapy can be explained by the fact that most therapists are themselves caught up in the snare of traditional morality and attempt to drag their clients into the same kind of captivity because it is all they know. As soon as clients start to feel and become capable of roundly condemning the deeds, say, of an incestuous father, therapists will probably be assailed by fear of punishment at the hands of their own parents if they should dare to look their own truth in the face and express it for what it is. How else can we explain the fact that forgiveness is declared to be an instrument of healing? Therapists frequently propose this to reassure themselves, just as the parents did. But because it sounds very similar to the messages communicated to them in childhood by their parents, albeit expressed in a more friendly way, some patients may need some time to see through the pedagogic angle of it. And even once they finally have recognized it, they can hardly leave their therapist, especially if a new toxic attachment has already formed, if for them, the therapist has become like a mother who has helped them to a new birth (because in this new relationship they have started to feel). So they may continue to expect salvation from the therapist instead of listening to their body and accepting the aid its signals represent. Once clients, accompanied by an enlightened witness, have lived through and understood their fear of their parents (or parental figures), they can gradually start to break off destructive attachments. The positive reaction of the body will not be long in coming: its communications will become more and more comprehensible; it will cease to express itself in mysterious symptoms. Then clients will realize that their therapists have deceived them (frequently involuntarily) because forgiveness actually prevents the formation of scar tissue over the old wounds, not to speak of complete recovery. And it can never dispel the compulsion to repeat the same pattern over and over again. This is something we can all find out from our own experience.

However, children brought up by immature parents have a contrary experience of such. Their positive qualities are usually not dwelt upon or appreciated because such parents do not have the ability to see the strength of their children. This has resulted in making the children embarrassed of every quality they possess.. They are used to encouraging the good qualities of others and feel it is wrong for their own strength to be pointed out.

Waking Up to Your Strengths When you think of working on your weakness, you should also appreciate your strength. However, children brought up by immature parents have a contrary experience of such. Their positive qualities are usually not dwelt upon or appreciated because such parents do not have the ability to see the strength of their children. This has resulted in making the children embarrassed of every quality they possess.. They are used to encouraging the good qualities of others and feel it is wrong for their own strength to be pointed out.

parental inconsistency can be the quality that binds children most closely to their parent, as they keep hoping to get that infrequent and elusive positive response.