Relating childhood stuff to adulthood problems: How do YOU know when it's BS?

I was reading another thread where a number of posters insist there must be a link between the OP's childhood and her present state.

This frequently pops up on the board--specific events or patterns in a person's childhood being used to explain current tendencies. No matter how old that person is.

My therapist used to do this with me, where she would attempt to weave a narrative using whatever childhood incidences I shared with her as a base. And then she stopped. It seems that having a neurobiological diagnosis gums up the "you were raised wrong" hypothesis machine very quickly.

I'm not talking about abuse or trauma. I can see how big events can shape one's life. But then there's stuff that I consider so common that it's hard to see it being a good explanation for anything. Like having a father who wasn't very affectionate or talkative. Or being a latchkey kid. Or being born a month premature and being the smallest kid in kindergarten. Or being an only child. I have heard someone blame their problems with socializing on being an only child, and I just want to scream at them, "I grew up with three other siblings and I have problems socializing. What's my diagnosis, doctor?"

I guess my frustration is that this kind of thinking presumes the existence of an ideal childhood. That only IF my parents had done X, Y, or Z, then I'd be "normal". But when you have siblings that turned out okay, doesn't this render moot any grand conclusions about the past? Does blaming Mommy and Daddy really work when you're the only one in the family that got screwed up?

When your therapist plays up the importance of things that happened long ago, do you ever feel any resistance? How do you know when a life narrative makes sense or when it's maudlin, cliched dreck?

People look for patterns and explanations. It's a very common trait in humans to do that, though not everybody needs to do so. Perhaps it doesn't matter for you, or to you, whether your childhood experiences play any part in the fact that you have a difficult time socialising. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter for somebody else, though. And maybe it matters less whether the childhood memories are true or not (after all, as my T is fond of saying, all memories are distorted) than whether they have an impact on us today or not.
Secondly, looking at links between childhood events and current state is not the same as casting blame - it's a way of trying to understand, not of pointing a finger at somebody else and saying "It's all your fault".
The same event and environment does affect different people very differently.

I'm very reluctant to tell my T anything about my childhood, but I'm slowly learning to trust that he's the one who has the experience to judge whether something is relevant or not. As far as I'm concerned, that's one of the things I pay T to do. (However, my T has never tried to create that life narrative. So far, at least.)

Also, my current T is the first one who has asked me anything at all about my childhood. So it's all kind of new for me - so maybe my experiences aren't the most representative ones.

Sometimes I feel resistant other times not. Having my childhood narrative out ALONGSIDE my narrative today has been the answer to all my problems.

Good question, and I don't know the answer. I say that my father was distant, that I wanted desperately for him to be closer, and that I now seek a secure attachment with male adult authority figures, that doesn't mean that I blame him. There is/was a reason as to why he was who he was. We are behavioral creatures an there is a reason for all behavior, no matter what. I think that it is likely that I was really sensitive (still am) and I know that this contributed to my issues. I was sensitive to receiving attention (which I did from my mother), and not receiving attention. This to me explains the set-up for who I am now. No blame on my parents, no blame on me, it is what it is. This is a simplification of my issues, and there are many other factors that I haven't gone into here.

There is the biological component and the behavioral component. Nature versus nurture. They all interplay. The parent's issues and personalities interplay. As much as we'd like to know that parents treat their children the same, that they don't prefer one over the other, it happens because parents are human. Attachment theory theorizes that if the parent is "good enough", then the child will most likelygrow up with a secure attachment pattern.

It is true, though, if you think about us as behavioral beings, that we are shaped by our cognitive schemas, how sensitive our emotional system is, how reactive our amygdala is (fight or flight), how we experienced/perceived our childhood, which leads to how we experience/perceive our present, and so on.

I feel like I left so much out, that I was unable to pull together an articulate and cohesive reply, but this is what I believe. I can say, yeah my childhood caused me to be _____________, and not lay blame but understand that my father also had a past and a biological make up that made him who he was. So, I don't think a neurobiological diagnosis leads to a "you were raised wrong" diagnosis, but it can lead to a logical belief that interactions in your childhood have led to some issues (and along with it healthy patterns of behavior) that you are experiencing now.

I can't answer the question for you, though. If your therapist tried to weave a story that you feel isn't yours, I think you should tell her that it doesn't fit. However, if you want to possibly contemplate what your therapist is saying about your past relating to your present, know that you can do so without blaming anyone, and without feeling like there is something wrong with you if you are the only sibling who is having difficulties. Everyone is different, and that is okay. Thanks for bringing up such an intriguing post

I would be disturbed if my therapist did that. No one has the perfect childhood and I think sometimes too much blame is placed on parents or caregivers, obviously I'm not talking about abuse and neglect.

I don't know why you didn't think that was articulate, Anti.

Maybe my therapist goes about it the wrong way? 'Cuz she totally goes heavy on the "blame game" stuff when we talk about the past. While it is true she is working only on the material I've given her, she talks about my father in ways that make me feel defensive on his behalf. The same with my twin sister.

Actually, when she talks about how "mean" people have been to me, it triggers my tendency to see both sides of the story--which then neutralizes my negative reactions to the "villains" and makes me downplay the inherent "goodness" of the protoganist--me. For instance, she often plays up the importance of having been bullied. The more she does this, the more I see things from the point-of-view of the bullies and the more understandable/defensible their behavior becomes to me. Which totally negates the purpose of the exercise--which is to let me see myself as a victim of circumstance.

Apteryx, I agree with you about different strokes for different folks. Obviously the past and delving into the "why" are not my strokes. I was just curious if I'm the only one who feels like this.

I do think we can get bogged down in why, why, why and forget to work on what we have right in front of us. I tend to look at the past as just a way to understand where my ways of thinking about myself and about life got skewed along the way.

It doesn't honestly do me any good to play the blame game now. What DOES do me good is to see that I don't HAVE to continue thinking the way I used to; I don't HAVE to continue believing the old skewed/false messages that I picked up in my history. I can choose to live in the here and now, changing to more healthy thoughts and beliefs, rather than clinging to the ancient history in my life as a reason to continue in my self-loathing and destructive behaviors.

Yes, I was once (actually many more times than once) the victim and believed all the lies and messages that my abusers and I myself told myself, but I'm not being victimized anymore. I don't have to keep owning that "role".

Knowing my history has served to bring me better understanding of myself and given me the ability to give myself a break, quite frankly forgive myself, for reacting the only way I knew how at the time. But I'm not that child anymore and don't have to keep thinking as I did when I was a child. No one is hurting me anymore. I am safe and independent and quite able to stand up for myself and think for myself in ways that I just wasn't capable of at 5 years old.

So perhaps think of knowing your history as a way of just understanding why you think and behave and react the way you do now, and try not to get to terribly bogged down in the blame game except where is serves to allow you to let yourself off the hook for things that truly weren't your fault.

Ways of coping during childhood follow us into adulthood; therefore, it may be very beneficial to go back to the root in order to change the behavior. Esp if it is causing situations where we have not learned to put ourselves first, to look at ourselves in a positive light (or simply just human) or if we are stuck. Which generally brings many of us to T in the first place.

I am not sure you understand the importance parents / caregivers play in the development of a child. Or the importance of growing up feeling loved and valued. And if that was missing, how it impacts us. Jmo

My T has said my childhood is why relationships developed wrong. Why my need for attachment and dependency is there. Its why he understands the way I am with him. Why I cope the way I do with situations, and why I react the way I do. BUT he is very clear that my past and my childhood can not simply CONTROL my present and my future. That I need to work to try and get past it. That know we understand the reason we can move forward in a positive direction.

It's because I am so detached that perhaps I think it is overvalued sometimes. (Which is why I would never have children).

I see people all around me that had bad things happen to them growing up. Or they lived in a tar-paper shack, the youngest of eleventy-billion children, with parents who were crazy/drunk/ill-tempered/strict/absent, and they also had bad things happen to them. And they have turned out "fine."

Now I use the quotation marks because "fine" is subjective and can be masked. Looks don't always tell the full picture. But I also don't think "everyone is a little crazy" either. Some people are clearly more jacked-up than others, and I don't think it all goes back to how they were raised.

If person A can be raised by horrible caregivers and not be negatively affected and person B can be raised in fair-to-middling caregivers and turn out to be a living trainwreck, doesn't this undermine generalizations about the importance of "feeling loved and valued", at least a little bit? And I don't see how seeing yourself as being deprived of love isn't a horrible indictment against your parents/caregivers. That's laying some pretty heavy blame. I guess for me to feel comfortable doing this, I'd have to know that my parents' child-rearing wasn't merely questionable, but that it was really really bad. Which would mean that it would be pretty obvious as such, and I probably wouldn't need a therapist telling me it was.

We're not simple, either/or organisms. How we respond to what happens in our life (father who doesn't talk much) may or may not be significant to any particular individual; if you "liked" it, felt comfortable and companionable with no talk (versus being scared because when your father didn't talk it meant he was mad at you :-) then you see out men who don't talk. Or, if it frightened you, you will probably tend to be anxious around quiet men, thinking /wondering if they are angry at you.

We do become our mothers/fathers, marry our mothers/fathers, etc. to a certain extent. It's what we "know"/are exposed to and then you add your personality and get "you".

Sure, you might have clinical major depression but we all have a percentage "depression"/mood combination and someone with 60% happy/40% depressed MIGHT respond differently than 40% happy/60% depressed but it is kind of like "under" and "over" achievers? My girlfriend in high school was not as "smart" as I was but was an over achiever; she studied and worked hard to make the best grades she could. I was an under achiever -- I did not study and slid through on native intelligence and wit. We were in the same math class and I got a D and she got a B. . . after calling me to come over (had to sneak me into her house, she wasn't allowed visitors) to explain how to do the math homework she did but I did not do (figured out on the fly but did not retain enough to do well on the test because I didn't do the homework).

That's why we talk to therapists, let them get to know us; the more they get to know us and our lives the better they can help us because they can see patterns as to how we have been raised and how we have responded to how we have been raised and how we have chosen things based on how we were trained/educated by our parents, our natural abilities or inclinations, etc.

Just like temperament (happy, anxious, sad, etc.) the attributes we genetically inherit (my sense of direction is good; I don't get lost and I do well in history, English and writing, less well with science and math; am better at Algebra than Geometry, etc.) and experiences we have in life all contribute.

I totally blame my parents. Because they wanted a clone of themselves and didn't get it. And they refused to acknowledge I was/am my own person.

In their defense, though, they are just a product of their parents and the upbringing they had. For good or bad.

Nature/nurture. I know also there are wonderful parts of me that i inherited (genetically) from my relatives that although my mother considered a "weakness" and should be "erased/stamped out"...I am who I am, like it or not.

So now I am in T.

[quote=autotelica;2594698]I don't know why you didn't think that was articulate, Anti.

Maybe my therapist goes about it the wrong way? 'Cuz she totally goes heavy on the "blame game" stuff when we talk about the past. While it is true she is working only on the material I've given her, she talks about my father in ways that make me feel defensive on his behalf. The same with my twin sister.

Actually, when she talks about how "mean" people have been to me, it triggers my tendency to see both sides of the story--which then neutralizes my negative reactions to the "villains" and makes me downplay the inherent "goodness" of the protoganist--me. For instance, she often plays up the importance of having been bullied. The more she does this, the more I see things from the point-of-view of the bullies and the more understandable/defensible their behavior becomes to me. Which totally negates the purpose of the exercise--which is to let me see myself as a victim of circumstance.

Auto,
I had a similar experience in therapy, where if my therapist took one side, I immediately would defend the other. I noticed it but I don't know that we ever worked through it.
Has your therapist said anything about dissociation or anything? I truly hope that you tell your therapist exactly what you wrote here, because it is a really important aspect of how you are reacting.
I like reading therapy books, and I'm not a therapist, but sometimes as children we idealize the "bad" parent (I'm not saying your parent was bad) because that parent also is a person whom you need to be safe. So, instead, you blame yourself for what has happened. This belief can be pervasive and I don't know if that helps you at all or not. I do hope you talk to your therapist about this. Keep me posted

i dont think any parent is perfect and i dont believe in the perfect childhood. but i am learning that extreams are a problem.

I feel a bit like the parents are the scapegoat for a lot of peoples' problems nowadays. This does not include people who received abuse ofcourse... that is a whole other kettle of fish. In my years of therapy, it seems that therapists are all too eager to throw out the "its not your fault, your parents just sucked" line. I don't think any kid on the face of the planet had what therapists would call a "healthy upbringing". I do not want to avoid responsibility for my issues by just blaming my parents and putting it on them. I do not want to hide behind the "its not my fault, its my parents fault" thing because then I would be avoiding responsibility. That is what kids do. I am what I am today because of ME. I have been living away from my parents for longer than i was there with them, so blaming them would be rather lame. I think these days people like to sit there and point fingers to avoid tackling the real issue... how do we deal with this NOW?

Gotta start somewhere...for me, personally, the process is / was a springboard to achieve greater things. With understanding can come change. I dont feel like a dead flower any longer...more like a seedling, preparing for spring.

I think our childhood experiences certainly contribute a significant amount to our development. Our own personalities play a big part too. Our experience of the world is so highly subjective that we might all be exposed to the same thing and still react in completely different ways. Having a father who wasn't affection might cause one person to stumble, but another might manage to develop a high sense of self worth from other experiences.

When I began therapy I was completely disconnected from the way the past influenced the restricted life I'd been living. I only blamed myself. Now I realise that early childhood experiences significantly impacted my life. I believe that because it was reflected so clearly in my behaviour, and my world view, which I began to uncover slowly after beginning therapy. I don't blame my parents now. It was still my subjective reaction to the experiences I was exposed to, and I just didn't cope with my life very well. Though I've struggled at times to remember early experiences, it has helped me to begin changing the early messages I received. I don't think the messages have to result from extremely traumatic experiences in order for them to have a significant negative impact on some people. Even with a nerobiological diagnosis I'd imagine that the environment would still have some impact on things like coping methods. Just my very subjective opinion of course! If everything said about connecting my behaviour to my past didn't match up with my experiences or thoughts or behavour, then I'm sure I'd feel like it wasn't something I needed to work on.

Interesting question. In psych help in the past this was seen as important, these days no one asks and I'm grateful. I'm not in therapy but was when I was younger. I had problems here and now, and they wanted to talk about my childhood. The issues I had I could no way tie to my childhood unless you really made up some weird theory.

Some genetics plus my parents' own fears probably gave me a sense of unstable identity. They probably liked me fine, but they were so scared other adults would judge them if they didn't have perfect children. But this is the only thing I think is linked, also I think I do need the genetics for it. Note that this was not my main problem, still isn't.

These days if ever asked I say my parents were OK. Because they were for me. They didn't play mind games, if they were angry, they acted angry. If they got angry, I was angry back, because I kind of felt I had the same right as they did to choose what I wanted to do and how to behave. When I started to grow up I saw them as sort of naive and stagnant, but I never had a strong emotional need for their approval. I almost raised myself, when they didn't interfere. Lot of freedom in that.

My parents were kind of distant, sometimes angry, I was independent and if needed, oppositional, took no crap.

I'm not sure I would have done better in a warm and huggy home. They assume all kids need that. I was most happy when I had the house to myself as a kid. My parents never asked how school was or asked to see my grades. They never asked me where I had been. They just trusted that I did OK. And I did.

When I look back, my childhood is next to ideal. But try to explain that to a therapist. It wasn't mainstream so it just must have harmed me, right??? Like we are all just a blob when we are born and our parents shape us. I always had the idea I was me, since I was about one year old. If something shaped me, it must have been in a past life.

Each person is different and some need more help than others. I have 2 children who are very different. My oldest could survive just about any environment. She is tough. My youngest could definitely not survive anything. If you put my youngest in a dysfunctional family she would have the worst mental health issues. My oldest would emerge in much, much better shape.

Auto, you need to put your own story together. It is so helpful to figure out what in our environments affected us. It really helps us to move forward. How could you possibly not be affected by your environment?

A fellow PC member was kind enough to share this blog in a previous thread. I found this particular opinion relevant to the current discussion on attachment. Food for thought.

http://www.afterpsychotherapy.com/at...ory-and-shame/

Us humans are creatures of habit. We generally react from old ingrained habits and patterns we acquired from a young age when our ability to relate to others and the world were formed. It is a very rare person who reacts to a given situation or person completely from the present moment (although that would be a very healthy and refreshing thing to do). Therefore, therapists like to look at what may be contributing to the reaction or whatever situation is occuring in the present. That said, sometimes they can go overboard and it's very annoying particularly when the links can't immediately be seen or when they don't seem very relavant.

In as far as causes of disturbance go, there can't possibly be one answer. People from the same backgrounds turn out totally differently. It's a mixture of biological make up, temperament, position in family, treatment by parents and others, ability to obtain social support, even to some extent intelligence and/or creativity. People have different experiences within the same family. Even under extreme abuse some people not only grow through it but inspire others...Louise Hay is a prime example

((((Dreamy)))) Quite a pioneer in her day. I really appreciate Louise Hay's theories/philosophies. Her story is quite inspirational. The mind/body connection is fascinating.

I think it's right that habit is a big part. Look at food. We tend to like what we were used to eating as children.

And some things clearly affect us.

But sometimes therapists' explanations are so far fetched, like this and that behavior from a parent will lead to this or that problem. Sometimes it is kind of clear, if your parents have been unstable and sometimes there sometimes not, you might grow up to be scared of being abandoned. Not exactly rocket science. But it really ticks me off when they start analyze things like Oh you're depressed because this and that happened and you yourself think it was nothing big but they are "sure" they found the key. Or that you are scared of spiders because they are a symbol of your mom.

I can still tell my parents were not to blame for the issues I encountered in life. In many ways, they might actually helped me with my strengths, but no one ever sees it that way, do they?

Your post made me smile I agree with you totally. I can see where therapists are coming from but I also think sometimes it does get far fetched. This happened to me recently when T made some connections to my childhood that didn't make sense to me. They weren't as 'out there' as symbolising a spider for my mother, but I couldn't see the relevance at all.

And I agree with you that our childhoods can actually serve to change our patterns rather than keep us in the same ones. A lot of therapists (and people in general) seem to minimalise the choice we have over our actions.

Also, I think that sometimes people act in such a way because they ARE similar to people encountered in the past, not because we perceive them that way. Although my T might sometimes want to help me take a different approach to the person based on my experience, which is fair enough.

But yes, sometimes it does go too far.

I think it's matter of trusting yourself about the links T is making. If it doesn't feel right to you, perhaps it isn't. It might of course mean you're not ready to see the link, but a gut feeling is sometimes enough to let you know that T is barking up the wrong tree. I don't usually go wrong with a gut feeling...even when it led to a rupture with T over her approach.

I agree...some of the lengths are far-fetched and reaching. But your T or PhD can only throw things out there based on their experience, training, school of thought, studies, research and what you have told them (and your Pdoc or MD). I didn't mind that my T told me that my parents sucked. They did. I also felt validated, and then was able to move on from focusing on NEEDING to be validated, to getting on with my life. Yah, I got all the "stuff" and from the outside it looked like a lovely life. Maybe. But we all knew differently.

All it takes is ONE person to believe in you to get you to the next step

(ps, spinach is still my favorite food)