Childhood attachment and Adult behaviour · 6:17pm Jul 16th, 2018
I recently completed an amazing book - “When the Body says No” - by Dr. Gabor Maté, and while I’ve never felt more called out by a book for how badly I handle my own stress, it made me recognize a few things about early childhood development that likely would affect how my characters react to the world. Which made me want to blog a bit about it. I’m not 100% sure how helpful it will be for writers. But one of the things that always fascinated me is how early childhood events and things that we unconsciously take in as infants and very young children affects us as adults. Often this shows up in ways I don’t think we all recognize, either.
For a bit of background, the book itself was on the stress-disease connection, and Dr. Maté was basically calling out the medical community for not recognizing how psychological stressors, thoughts, and feelings affect how the body reacts to illnesses and disease. My personal interest in it had to do with hearing Dr. Maté speak last May. I was able to attend the Greater Oregon Behavioral Health Initiative’s yearly conference, and Dr. Maté was the keynote speaker. It was an awesome conference, but, to be one hundred percent honest, his portion was extremely painful to listen to.
One of the first things he talked about was child development, and how what we know as developmental disorders (ADHD, autism, ODD, etc) often have roots in the first three years of life. Then he pointed out that children who are adopted often start out life with the deck stacked against them from a mental health perspective. Now, as an adoptee, that statement was kind of pontification to the temple singers, but it also stung to hear that. I think often times that happens when we hear things we know to be true, but we’re rather no think about them.
Regardless, it got me thinking about how a character’s childhood affects their adulthood. I’m not going to claim to be an expert on the matter (rather the opposite, in fact, as my clinical practice has largely been with adults and adolescents), but I have taken part in research on child development and attachment. In fact, I was in charge of giving the Adult Attachment Inventory (AAI) during my master’s programme as a graduate assistance. The AAI was developed by Dr. Mary Main, and she developed it working off of the work of Dr. John Bowlby and Dr. Mary Ainsworth. For those of you who didn’t go through a graduate psychology programme, what the above doctors have been researching is the bond between parents and their children. Dr. Main’s research has been applied to continued research into the correlation between early childhood attachment and parenting styles, and continues to be used to this day to study the links between early childhood issues and adult mental and physical health risks.
So what does that have to do with writing? Well, several things. I could spend a bunch of time explaining different styles of attachment and how that affects and individual over the lifespan, but realistically, for writing, that’s not all that helpful unless you are planning on writing a deep dive into their childhood and how that messed them up, for most writers, I have a few things for you to just think about in the back of your mind about what might drive a character’s behaviour.
Emotional Expression
How was your character taught to deal with the emotion of anger? Now, a lot of times people mistake anger for rage, which is not precisely the same thing. Anger is what we feel when our needs are being blocked, and we are feeling like we need to become powerful to advocate for ourselves. The interesting thing about true anger is that it is relaxing. The body calms, as it readies for a fight. The voice drops to a lower pitch as we inform the person just how badly they have messed up, and what we would like them to do about it. Anger - in it’s true form - is cold.
This in direct opposition to rage, which is the ‘fight’ side of the flight/fight/freeze response. The body tenses up, preparing to spring into action. Now, often we are taught that rage is anger, when really they are two different things. Rage is an anxiety response; anger is a dominance display. Rage occurs when a need is frustrated or blocked. Anger occurs when we need to stand up for ourselves. Often times we are not taught the distinction, but if after encountering something that upsets us and pushes us toward the ‘anger’ end of the emotional spectrum, check yourself. If you felt relaxed during and after the feeling, likely you felt anger. But if you were twisted up inside, that’s anxious rage.
Now what does that have to do with creating characters? Well, for starters, think about what your adult/adolescent/child characters have been taught about anger/rage. Some families handle this in a healthy manner, and try to help the child process when they are frustrated, why, and how to talk about it in a way that doesn’t hurt everyone around them. Other families may have a slightly different dynamic. Maybe rage was shown frequently in the household. As a consequence, children then learn one of two things: either they learn that the only way to get their needs met is to show rage at the slightest lack of care from their caregivers, or they learn that rage is scary, and they suppress it.
Maté identified eight self-statements that tend to predict higher levels of stress in adults, and a higher incidence rate of autoimmune diseases like ALS, Lupus, MS, Scleroderma, and in some cases, cancer. Two of those statements have to do with anger, and how a child learned to handle or rather, not handle it.
If a child’s anger was constantly suppressed by their caregiver, then often they learn that ‘it’s not right for me to be angry’. Often these children take on a caregiving role in a relationship with their parents. This may seem strange, but there are some mothers who will unconsciously teach their child that they are unreliable, and need to be taken care of. An example was given in the book “When the Body Says No” about a mother who would wake up her baby to play with her at all hours of the night because the mother, not the child, was lonely. Babies and young children are highly sensitive to such mother-child dynamics, and this will affect how the child behaves as an adult. As a consequence, they learn to self-regulate on an extreme level, to the point of suppressing their own desires in lieu of taking care of others.
Emotional suppression also occurs with children who think to themselves ‘If I am angry, I am not loveable.’ I personally had a visceral response to that particular statement, as that is a self-thought I frequently find myself thinking. That said, what usually happens with children is that they are given love, care, and attention when they are ‘good’, but that love and attention is very quickly pulled away when they are ‘bad’ or ‘angry’. Now, some of this practice is the normal part of child rearing, and teaching children to set their own limits.
However, some parents will respond to a child’s anger with either a particularly explosive outburst, or manipulation. “You’re the good child, whatever happened to my sweet girl?” was frequently heard in my household when I misbehaved, and my mother learned quickly that it was easy to emotionally manipulate me into doing what she wanted me to do. Even if that meant that just a few minutes earlier she had been so upset with me that she’d thrown a particularly beloved stuffed animal across the room with such force that it broke a chip off of one of her ceramic antiques. As a consequence, I learned, as many children do, that there is a spectrum of acceptable emotions for people to feel that the parent can understand and tolerate. Unfortunately, for me that was limited to happiness, and happiness only. Which meant that I spent most of my childhood in a state of inner turmoil, but refused to express it.
I always recall a time when our marching band learned that we had made the state level competitions my sophomore year, and everyone was excited. I was excited as well, but I suppose I wasn’t expressing it at the time, because a friend of mine turned around and asked “Heart, aren’t you excited?” Only to pause and follow it up with “Oh, right, you don’t express emotions ever.”
As writers, we need to think of other reasons than just severe trauma as to why a character doesn’t express themselves emotionally. Sometimes it could be that their upbringing left them with a poverty of language for emotional expression, and as a consequence, they don’t outwardly express how they are feeling except for inappropriate displays of extreme emotion. Or perhaps they have spent their whole life repressing what they are feeling because, on a subconscious level, they are still trying to take care of their parents or their family.
One of the things that struck me from the book was a statement made about ALS patients. People suffering from ALS aka Lou Gehrig's Disease are favourites among palliative care nurses because, even as their bodies are shutting down and they no longer are able to control their muscles, they are still extremely kind. The reason behind this is simple: as children, folks with ALS learned to suppress their anger. If you ask them, they will deflect again and again that they are angry, even when they have every right to be. Because, to them, it’s not right for them to be angry, and if they are angry, then they are unloveable.
Eight Stressful Self Thoughts that make us Sick
The following are the eight self-statements that people make about themselves that tend to lead to increased stress and a greater susceptibility to physical illness and autoimmune conditions:
- I have to be strong.
- It’s not right for me to be angry.
- If I’m angry, I will not be loveable.
- I’m responsible for the whole world.
- I can handle everything.
- I’m not wanted - I’m not loveable.
- I don’t exist unless I do something. I must justify my own existence.
- I have to be very ill to deserve to be taken care of.
Those of you that were securely attached as children and as adults probably read that and went “Why would someone think that about themselves?” Those of you with insecure attachment styles probably relate to 3-4 of these. Those (like me), who go for the high score of relating to all 8 tend to be at higher risk for physical and mental illness. We also tend to have higher scores on the Adverse Childhood Experiences. Thus, in the words of one of my friends, “in the measurement of the length and girth of your misery boner, the winner is, in fact, losing the hardest.”
So back to writing… think about how your characters would respond to those statements? Do they buy into them? Or would they reject them outright? Maybe they only buy into one or two of those statements?
Let’s break down a few of our favourite characters from the show. Take Applejack, for example. Applejack is interesting because she has a rather traumatic and obvious attachment wound (in the lack of her parents). Now, she was raised by Granny Smith, but I have a feeling that if read statements from the above list, she’d buy into statements 1, 4, 5, 7, and 8. We see this in her character. AJ is hardworking to a fault, will frequently bite off more than she can chew, and when she does need to be taken care of, she’ll often go out of her way to refuse help.
Now, she’s used that particular buy-in to those statements in a healthy manner, but that doesn’t mean she’s not prone to her own stresses. She’s got her worries and fears, but many of them are related to taking care of the farm and her family. The overriding factor for AJ that probably keeps her from having a mental breakdown is the fact that she’s the element of honesty. The way to override those fears and worries is often to speak them, and to be honest with those around us about how we feel. AJ probably still has a long way to go when it comes to accepting that she doesn’t need to justify her existence, but that’s what she’s got her friends for.
Fluttershy would also probably buy into a few of the above statements. Most likely 2 and 3. However, this is something that was likely learned at a young age. We get to see her parents, who are just as shy and somewhat inhibited as Fluttershy is. To me, that suggests her mom was also relatively insecurely attached to a caregiver that she had to learn to take care of at a young age. Most likely, Fluttershy learned the same thing from Mrs. Shy. Developmental issues tend to follow us through the generations. However, if you can break those molds through making changes to the way you think and feel, we can heal those developmental traumas and move on.
The Shy Family is also interesting when we compare Fluttershy to Zephyr Breeze. Zephyr is as gregarious and outgoing as Fluttershy is shy and reserved. But here we tend to see patterns that emerge in families that raise insecurely attached children. Now, I’m not saying that Mr. and Mrs. Shy weren’t loving parents - they probably were - however, being securely attached, at least in the human world, is relatively uncommon. But one commonality that follows is that avoidantly attached children (see links above about attachment types) tend to have ambivalently attached siblings. And we see this with Fluttershy and Zephyr.
Again though, Fluttershy is able to use this and grow out of her issues. Given the opportunity to grow and change and recover from what was likely relatively mild attachment wounds, people are able to move on and grow from those experiences. If anything, Fluttershy has learned how to channel her anger in a relatively healthy manner to get her needs met. Usually.
After writing all 2400 plus words on this, I’m not sure how much of this is useable. But for me, knowing a little more about attachment and how that affects a person’s growth as an adult made me start to think about how a character’s childhood may be affecting their adult behaviours. And that helps me, at least, give a character greater depth and reason behind any little idiosyncrasies they may have as adolescents or adults.
Thank you for sharing this. This is so enlightening!
I feel so called out.
1 2 3 (sometimes 5) (excessively 6) 7 8
Please keep writing more!
Geez, Heart...
1, 2, 5, occasionally 6, 7, and 8. And adopted.
I’m going to have a drink now.
4902128
I will take you out for shots. XD
4902131
Promise?
Welp! That's rather a lot to think of, though ... in some way, unsurprising in post-analysis.
Though the fact that between generations there is that much similarity in reactions is worrying. As I understand, it's only mothers that were given AAI, but what about fathers? Were they completely absent from the child's early life?
What are the results for families were one is secure and the other is not?
Anyway, thank you for sharing this, Heartshine. It is most enlightening.
This is examining the depth of a character that I feel is often overlooked. I know that I would not have thought of examining behaviors a character learned during childhood, beyond major events, in order to account for the behaviors they express within a story during their adulthood. It's an interesting concept to think about going back to a character after they are established and consider what may have happened to encourage the traits they express. And I enjoyed the connection with the differences between anger and rage to the fight/flight/freeze responses that you initially wrote about in a previous blog.
Once upon a time I could have identified with 5 of those traits and thrown in a separated family dynamic in which my brother and I were the rope in a tug of war between our parents. Today, only 2-3 of them would apply with some waffling on how strongly they still affect my decision-making. I'm going to show this to my wife; she and her sister might benefit from this angle when they get together to talk about their childhood, which sounds awfully similar to your description of the Shy family.
What did you play in marching band?
1. I have to be strong.
2. It’s not right for me to be angry.
3. If I’m angry, I will not be loveable.
4. But everybody gets angry sometimes.
5. And then you get over it.
6. Okay?
7. I'm a man
8. I can change
9. If I have to
10. I guess.
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Lemme tell ya, this'll make for some great childhood attachments--
'specially when they just can't seem to sit still
Seriously, though--Bruno Bettelheim. Is he simply a fraud, simply outdated, or does he still have something to offer either writers or clinicians?
I love your blog's hearshine. It restablishs how great this fandom is we have so many really smart people and reading your blog's and others I've learned so much.
This is some great information, Heart! One could really delve into s characters back story and explain so many things about them in just a few flashbacks or snippets of things from their pasts. Thank you for the ideas!
On s side note, I'm everything but number 4. Along with ptsd and a bit of depression.
What has helped me more than any drug or treatment or counseling has been the friends I've made in this fandom and the show itself. I believe it has most literary saved my life.
Not sure why I mentioned all that. Hope it wasn't a bother. Thanks again for the information.
This will help me greatly in developing further the backstory for my characters in the future. Thanks for sharing!
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I think Bruno Bettelheim falls into the category of people that do things really to be jerks to other people. So far as I can tell (I had to look up who the hell he was), his theories are baseless, his work did not take factors like attachment and genetics into the equation, and basically sound like it was an excuse for him to be a dick to children.
We're starting to see some developmental basis for autism being rooted in attachment, genetics, early childhood experiences, but it's a really complicated disorder. Unfortunately, assholes like Bettelheim are the reason why most folks who are on the autism spectrum like to tell me that a 4 word horror story for them is "neurotypicals with psychology degrees." Which, given the treatment of them, it makes perfect sense. My issue with our present treatment of autism is that often times parents get 'poor babied' for having a child with autism, when realistically they just need to be taught to attune themselves to their child's unique needs. It's almost like treating someone like a person as a person and not a disorder is what is needed to treat them.
It's part of my issue with ABA as a 'treatment' for autism, because what it does really is 'attempts to shape behaviours in order to reach normalcy'. In reality, it's telling the autistic person 'hey, that thing you do to self soothe and stim with? Don't do that. We're going to do horribly traumatic things to you until you stop doing that.' I have a lot of issues with it, having worked with adults who were diagnosed as children with autism and were subjected to ABA. Also the fact that ABA is very similar to the now banned
thank fucking GodGay Conversion Therapy just makes my skin crawl as a person and as a clinician.Sorry... you probably didn't want a novel in response, but...
tl dr: Heartshine doesn't like people being dicks to children because most of the studies show that if you are good to kids, they tend to grow up just fine.
4902256
Clarinet and Colour Guard. :D 3 years on the Clarinet, did guard for 1.
4902134
Yeah. Just cut me off when I start trying to drunkenly analyze the bartender. Unless he/she's cute and my analysis gets me their number. :P
4902166
Um, that's a good question. One that I don't remember the answer to. When I was doing research for Dr. Kidwell (yes, she was a PhD psychologist at Morehead State University who was the head of the Child Psychology department and her name was kidwell XD), we did AAIs on anyone who came in. At that point, most of the parents were women, but we were starting to get males to come in as well. I graduated before the results could be coded, so I'm afraid I'd have to look into it. Usually, however, the reason attachment looks at mothers as a more important influence is because of the biological closeness required between mother and baby. Males don't have mammary glands, so while they are very helpful in rearing children, early childhood stuff from age 0-18 months/whenever they are weaned onto solid food requires mom because girls have boobs. And as babies, boobs are amazing.
Ok, they're still amazing. If I'm wearing a low enough cut shirt I get distracted by mine all the time. Damn you bisexuality!As for the other question about secure child vs insecure, there's usually a variety of factors that causes that, but... again, I'd have to look into it. I initially hated attachment psychology until I got into the field and went "oh, holy shit, this is actually good stuff to know because it augments what I know about the disorders I work with." I was (and still am to a degree) the class' walking DSM V in grad school, but one thing that field experience has taught me is that you have to look at a variety of factors to figure out just where the root causes of issues are for folks. I think I knew that conceptually at that time, but now that I've been in the field for over 7 years, it's become more and more of a focus for me in my clinical practice.
4902378
Why don’t I get the number and stop you? Two birds one whiskey sour.
Too bad there's no way to upvote blog posts. Professional knowledge that's applicable to writing good characters is something that's always great to hear.
All of my issues somehow avoid every one of those eight (if anything, my stress levels are too low, because I'm typically lazy and too easily contented with how things are). But my (child) protagonist practically has 1, 4 and 5 as a personal mantra...
That list is a killer. I could go off on a self-psychoanalysis ramble off of any one of them. Look--there's the one that comes from elementary school! Look--there's the ones that come from managing my parents' business! Look--there's the one that's why I stopped writing!
I don't like this high score club, it sucks.
1, 2, 5, 8.
And on top of that, some weird mishmash of 6+7 that combines to something like "I'm not loved/appreciated unless I can prove I'm worth it" or more negatively, "I'm always hated and criticized unless I can do something that is truly worthy of praise." I owe that one to my parents always harshly criticizing my grades in school (Not just in later years. This is all the way back to /kingergarten/, when we had a number system instead of letter grades). We had a procedure. On report card day I would be taken aside with just my parent(s), and we'd go over it interrogation-style. We'd look at every single grade and they would read it to me out loud. If it was acceptable they would move on to the next. If it wasn't, they would tell me exactly how they felt about the grade, from 'a C is completely unacceptable. We know you're better than this.' to 'If you tried harder it could be a B/B+/A-/A.' Yes, I was criticized one year after getting /straight As all year/ because one single grade was an A- and they thought I was 'slipping'. Needless to say that year was the year I burned out and every single year after that I had numerous Ds and Fs scattered across the year. My brain could never focus on homework again unless it was a subject I truly felt passionate about (AP Computer Science yes please! I'm pretty sure I scored over 100% in that class for my end of year grade).
It made me feel that the only way to be more than worthless trash is to be perfect. And that one still haunts me in the form of my severe anxiety issues today, woo! Isn't emotional baggage
severely traumatizingfun!?This post and the comments are a great spark for what to consider when making my characters feeling less arbitrary and flat, and also complicates (but will make more accurate) my self-improvement. I had thought I was out of luck at having forgotten most of my childhood before, but now I'm really disappointed at all the things that are gone since they could be a helpful problem-source finder!
Back to working at it then! Thankyou Heartshine!
Wow. Way to kick a pony where it hurts, Heart.
Not only are all eight of those selfthoughts internally generated, they were actively encouraged and reinforced by Mother Dearest.
But it's not surprising I have an enormous psychological trauma boner. S5 showed me an uncomfortable reflection in Diamond Tiara- if you drop her lyrics in Crusaders Of The Lost Mark about an octave and a half it could be ripped directly from my internal monologue.
4 6 7
4902522
That's... literally the truth. As I noted in the post, the book talks about how buying into these beliefs can quite literally kill us. :<
4902375
Thank you! I'm flattered that you took the time to give such a thoughtful and thorough answer to my somewhat impertinent question.
I was introduced to Bettelheim's literary theories as a college student through The Uses of Enchantment, and I found the first few chapters interesting and sympathetic. But then he got into this recursive Freudian analysis that went from exasperating to ridiculous to incomprehensible, after which I gave up. Even so his big idea stuck with me: that fairy- and folk-tales, as typified by the märchen collected by the Brothers Grimm, are collective practical wisdom about child-rearing, passed down via oral tradition through generations of humble country folk.
I knew he'd studied psychiatry but I hadn't known he'd practiced until I looked him up on Wikipedia in the course of researching a blogpost on fairy tales. After reading about him a bit I decided that as a clinician he was a fraud, but a fraud born of desperation: he was afraid he'd get sent back to Europe where the Nazis would kill him, so he created a story in which he was the heroic psychiatrist who'd cure all your kids' ills. I guess he told it so often for so long that he came to believe it. That would be even more likely if he was the kind of guy who genuinely wanted to help children--or, at least, the kind of guy who wanted to believe he genuinely wanted to help children.
Well, I thought, he still was on to something with his analyses of the the märchen. Then I found out that the Brothers Grimm were frauds too. Those stories that they supposedly collected through years of beating about the Schwartzwald, interviewing humble country folk? They never did that. They collected them all from friends and relations who lived in nice houses in town. Some parts they mashed together. Others they just made up. But they marketed them as eerie tales from the backwoods because that sort of thing sold, and it sold because it's always sold. Townies in Uruk probably thrilled each other with stories of backwards millet-farmers who didn't live in nice mud brick houses like they did.
But I have some sympathy for Jakob and Wilhelm because they were frauds of desperation too. Their father died when they were young and left their family impoverished. They had to hustle or they'd have starved--and their mother and brothers and sisters, too. So when a chance came to make a little money off a side-gig, they jumped at it. They were both librarians--who wouldn't?
So both the brothers Grimm and Bettelheim were fabulists who became authorities on fables and had something of a fairy-tale life themselves. And though he's been discredited as a clinician, nerds like me still have affection for the legends of Bettelheim.
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Especially the one where you say his name three times and he appears.
I do love me some psych-speak.
It's fascinating reading through that list and going "You know, read as written, I'm only hung up on like 5 of these" And then realizing that with a few very small tweaks in wording, I can complete the set.
Completionism: The real gateway drug.
...I think I got most of that...I think I'll be glad I'll take that psychology class. Really interesting stuff, especially if you keep cold hard biology/survival of the fittest in mind, which is that for some reason, our brain's evolved to do this stuff. It's nuts.
4902334
Na, it wasn't. Share that shit. If one of my online buddies said that I'd helped keep them off the path of suicide, that's make my week. Also, this is a blog by someone who does therapy (or something like that), for a living.
4902378
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4902375
Was he the dickhead that blamed "refrigerator mothers" for Autism? Or is he some other jackoff-piece-of-shit-son-of-a-bitch?
4902287
Red Green is the best, eh?!
4905746
Thank you. It's good to hear from you!
4905746
Refridgerator moms was Leo Kanner. However, he actually bothered to do research and not defraud people out of money, and in the 70s said that maybe his theory wasn't correct.
... It's also mildly depressing that you kind of have to be like "No, not that dickhead from early psychology, the other one. You know, the one who was a dick to monkeys!"
goddamnit Harlow4906042
I am glad to hear that the fandom has been helpful. Honestly, I hear from a lot of folks that MLP has been really helpful for them with working through things like PTSD and Depression. I don't know if it's the technicolour ponies, or if it's helped people get out of their shells and make new friends. Both things are good to have in life, but I think that building up your own supports here has probably been monumentally helpful. Especially since PTSD and Depression have a tendency to make us feel so very terribly alone.
4906176
Girl, if memory serves, there were people in Nazi Germany in the 1930s who had a much, and I'm talking much better idea of what autism was/is than him. Of course, a lot of that had to do with them being their...caretakers, or something...and I recall something about it being a "dry run" for later.
4906210
That's... depressing. Then again, as I noted in another post, psychology historically has been... awful with regards to the treatment of autism spectrum disorders. There's a reason why the 4 word horror story is 'neurotypicals with psychology degrees' for many clients. I worked with a few folks on the spectrum, and most of them noted that I seemed to have at least a willingness to try to figure out where they were at, even if my own issues (I have some pretty severe ADHD) made it so that the fact out default perspectives on life were kind of different (autism = details, ADHD = big picture, what are even details?) Which made for some funny interactions when my clients were upset about one small issue to them that was the big part of the problem in their lives, and I was sitting in the corner screaming 'your metaphorical forest is on fire, I don't care about the leaf!' But... we worked on the leaf, cause that was what was important at the time, even though I wanted to try to work on making sure the forest didn't burn down.
4906337
...Sounds about right (older bro's high functioning autistic, got some buddies in our model railroading hobby club who probably are as well.)
2, 3, 4, 5, 7.
Thanks again, Heart. You're always interesting to read. I lack words to describe how much.
Just yesterday finally had an outburst. Got sick of people being rude to me for little reasons. Got away with my truck, so they can move their shit by their long tongues any way they want.
Oh, that was so good. Totally worth the fuel expense i had.
4907874
Since I was a teenager, I've believed in the healing power of spending a tank of gas to get the heck away from everything for a while. Glad that it was helpful for you!
4908665
Well, it could be put that way =)
I hadn't mentioned that i'm an LCV owner-operator.
Considered quitting, but I still am. The next day clients were much nicer people.
Tank of gas does heal things, just i'd rather use a motorbike if i was to choose =)
4908683
... I'm assuming that LCV stands for "Light Commercial Vehicle", but when I googled it, the first thing I got was "Lightweight Combat Vehicle", which is a Japanese mortar carrier. For some reason I find this definition of the acronym funnier. XD
4908710
Yep, that's it. First of them, i mean.
Well, sometimes i wish my LCV had a gun on it... =)
Not sure about being in a warzone being fun though. I'd like this only as gaming experience.
4908741
Having dealt with tourist traffic to the area where I live, a frequent statement in my car has been something along the lines of "I have never more wished for an RPG in my life." But yeah, living in a war zone would be less than desirable.
4908797
That whole thing was rather amusing to read. I can relate. Except, for me it's more like "I wish I was rich and could drive a tank around town". Cus that would be cool. And you'd never have someone flip the bird or cut you off again.
I'd read that. You could split it up into multiple blogposts over a few months.
Re. "My issue with our present treatment of autism is that often times parents get 'poor babied' for having a child with autism, when realistically they just need to be taught to attune themselves to their child's unique needs":
Our present treatment of autism is based in a long tradition of recognizing as autism only the most severe autism. I've had some experience with two such kids. They're incommunicative for life--no verbalizations. One of them makes no eye contact, hates touching, and seems to see other people mainly as dangerous unpredictable bags of meat. The other is extremely active and aggressive, like no one I've ever seen before, at any age--he acts like he's continually high on crack, and does nothing except try to break things, make people angry, and physically overpower whoever is watching him. He runs around and around whatever location he's confined in at high speed, non-stop, looking for anything not nailed down that he can damage, and periodically assaulting whoever is there with him, or (his favorite activity) licking his hands over and over until he's got a nice coating of saliva on them and then trying to smear it all over everyone else's faces. I can't imagine taking care of him for a day; taking care of him for 1 hour completely wrecked me emotionally and physically.
Doing therapy with the former is a 20-hour/week job for his parents. Doing therapy with the latter is hopeless; it's a 24-hour/day job just to keep him from injuring people and wrecking the house. (I'm not convinced that what he has should be called "autism", since he seems to get enjoyment mainly out of upsetting people, which indicates significant attunement to other people's feelings and thoughts.) It would be a major victory to ever get either of them to recognize words.
So before judging someone's approach to "autism," you should know what kind of "autism" they're dealing with.
That's why I don't use the word "autism" for people who can pass for "neurotypical" for a one-minute verbal interaction. I say "autism spectrum" / "ASD" for anything more mild. Using the word "autism" to describe the entire spectrum, when before it was used only for one extreme end, causes confusion and bad treatment choices and attitudes for everybody everywhere on the spectrum. It may be a continuous spectrum, but that doesn't mean the same approaches to it work for both ends of it.
4902287
I'm still waiting for step 5.
I've got... one of those. I don't like to tell people about it. It embarrasses me. I want to be the strong one, not the one who needs help. I don't want to be a freak, and if I am, I don't want people to know.
Why them particularly?
Re. statements 1-8, those all seem like normal beliefs to me that most people believe most of. 1 & 7 even seem to me like pernicious ways of interpreting good beliefs. "I have to be strong"? Let's operationalize that to "I shouldn't always give up easily". People who give up easily, and people who don't do anything for others with their time and resources, are toxic parasites and will cause you stress.
I don't believe #5, not really. Of the others, only #2 was instilled by my parents. They certainly did not believe or project #1, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8. And I'm pretty sure I would have an ACE score near zero.
The rest I imposed on myself, perhaps in reaction against their weakness-loving, agency-denying Christianity. The thing that absolutely stressed me the most throughout my childhood was the demands and degradations of Christianity, which explicitly includes only statement 2, although 6 is pretty heavily implied in evangelical Christianity, and 4 is easily derived for some understandings of predestination.
4915578
That's the weird bit that we haven't quite figured out. Dr. Maté worked in pallative care, and he said that the phenomenon of ALS patients are always nice has been something rather strange and confounding to MDs. What was interesting to read was that most ALS patients will tell you that they had perfect lives - even if collateral information suggests the opposite. But yeah, we're not 100% sure why the test for ALS can include niceness. It's sort of weird.
I'm... also trying to respond but I'm not 100% sure if you're looking for a response to the rest, or if you're like a lot of the commenters and just sort of voicing your reactions to what I've written. All in all, I think we do have a lot of power over making ourselves ill. I think the other issue with those statements is there's a difference between occasional buy-in to them, and beliefs that they must be true. I can't remember what Cognitive Behaviour Psychologist said it (and I'm being lazy at the moment and not looking it up), but there's a concept of 'musterbation' - literally telling oneself that they must do a thing - that tends to drive a lot of anxiety. I think we start to see more and more disordered thinking when those statements become less occasional statements we make, and rather become core beliefs.
4915602 I honestly don't know if I'm looking for a reaction or just voicing mine. I haven't looked at the literature on stress and illness, but it is at least symbolically appropriate that self-dislike can cause autoimmune disease.
I wish that you could cure yourself with thoughts as well, but have less hope of that.
I suspect that most auto-immune disease aren't auto-immune at all, but attacks on undetected long-term viral infections. All MS patients have EBV; most ALS patients have Echovirus and/or HERV-K; EBV, shingles, and cytomegalovirus can cause Lupus; EBV may cause scleroderma (but see a powerful contrary study here). But that's perhaps a digression here.
I don't understand what it would mean to say that a value statement must be true--that seems to me to be pure confusion, a misunderstanding of what the words mean--but that does seem to be the view of most people, who are more certain of their values than they are of the laws of physics. And sometimes the people who hold an opinion most deeply are not aware of holding it at all--this was for instance the case with medieval scholastics, who had internalized Platonism to such a great extent that they didn't even realize their theology gave the beliefs of Plato about God precedence over statements about God in the Bible. (They would, for instance, have said, "I didn't come to believe that God is perfectly good; that's self-evident / true by definition.")
4915699
I'm probably explaining it badly, but I am trying to point out the varying degrees in intensity of the belief. Or rather, how firmly that belief holds power over us?
Honestly I found the entire topic interesting from the perspective of someone who works in the psychology field. I think that, regardless of the actual nature of 'autoimmune' disorders, the fact remains that some people are more likely to be susceptible to viruses than others. It's similar to asking the question of why some patients can be exposed to MRSA but never develop an infection, while others do. On a whole, I tend to try to look into things from a more holistic perspective - how does one's physical, mental, familial, etc health play into how they are feeling right now.
To be honest the philosophy/Christianity references went over my head, but to respond to the notion of values statements, I think that people tend to hold onto a lot of values that ultimately are harmful. I do a lot of work with clients to examine their lives and look at what they see as valuable, and how to move more toward a style of life that moves them to be more in line with their intrinsic values and beliefs. The other side of that is also working on learning acceptance of the things that they are not going to be able to change right now, if ever, and accepting that dissonance of being unable to completely live in line with those values they hold dear.
4914929
That's true. I tend to see folks who tended to be more to the mild to moderate end of the spectrum, and as a consequence the therapeutic modalities that were tried with them tended to be more traumatic for the client. I also have a rather overwhelming tendency to want to protect/work with my clients through that trauma, so as a consequence there are a few things that I will find myself getting a little more upset about than I probably should.
Yay overactive ADHD empathy.
I think that's the other side of things that I struggle with is that I'll present things and realise that, in my head, there are two perspectives on the matter, but then I'll easily forget that the other is there. Yeah, you wouldn't want to use ACT or EMDR with a nonverbal client. At that point, yes, ABA and behavioural shaping are... really what you have to work with.
I also apologize because I fear my articulateness waxes and wanes a lot, and I'm hoping that I'm at least halfway getting my point across without needing to use the entirety of the English language to do it.