Reading for stronger nerves: how does self-destruction work with the best of intentions? The resemblance to self-destruction in sports is no accident.
Even in early childhood, a toddler has unmonitored access to the Internet and more and more often, their own smartphone. He is often more supportive of adults than adults are of him.
Health is the basic need of life. Healthy should be our normal condition, while illness should be the exception. Illnesses begin when the complexity of the whole operation is lower than the demands of the surroundings, from which follows, that disease cannot be a basic state of life, for then life could not develop at all..
In my work line, I realized that most of my client’s condition is the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be and that most illnesses appeared because of their self-destructive behavior with good intentions. The foundation for that behavior was already developed in early childhood. .
As soon as the child develops reason and interest in his surroundings and the first signs of awakening consciousness, consciousness begins to approve of everything others do. The toddler most often mirrors and expresses their parents’ unconscious feelings because he is the only one to understand them since they are nonverbal and most physically sensitive.
The parents are upset and disturbed by this and cause them to overreact, conditioned by their childhood and adolescence experience. This relationship is similar to the mirror’s role in Snow White. The child shows their parents’ behavior and inner condition like a mirror, and when the parents don’t like what they see in that mirror, they wish to change it instead of changing themselves.
Thus, the child obtains the information that such expressing of their feelings isn’t appropriate, so just like his parents, he begins to act by himself. He changes or suppresses feelings so that he can avoid shame or guilt. This threatens expressing one’s feelings and emotional maturity, which leads to a person who can’t effectively control or express their feelings, wishes, needs, and constructive problem-solving.
He develops a feeling of impotence because he can’t solve problems that adults should be able to solve efficiently. Learned impotence leads to psychological conditions when a person isn’t able to leave or avoid stressful situations when he has the opportunity to do so. He creates self-destructive behavior.
People very often find themselves in situations of learned impotence. A person is stuck in an abusive relationship, in a stressful job, or in the way of life that doesn’t allow freedom.
A toddler should develop this homeostasis through mirroring relationships between adults. However, this is not usually the case, and the situation is exacerbated by the large difference in the way of life lived by the parents during the child’s childhood and the way of life when that child grows up.
Such development is further accelerated by the lack of time and integration of parents who do not know how to take into account bodily sensations concerning the child and cannot maturely react to a particular child’s emotion. Mostly due to their sensory-motor amnesia, which prevents the appropriate feeling of oneself and others on a nonverbal level, they communicated with the child during the first years of his life.
They react unrealistically, the child’s expression disturbs them, which the child perceives more and more clearly and tries to adapt to it. It is characteristic of emotion that the stronger it is, the more it stops time, as it requires attention and response, for which the parents have neither the time nor the lack of emotional maturity. And because the expression of a strong emotion is physical, the child is pushed into the breakdown of connection and all-body expression through sensory-motor amnesia, which prevents the strong expression of emotions – by adapting to the environment.
We expect our kids to grow up fast, become independent early, are quick learners, and are reasonable and cooperative like adults despite still being kids.
Due to the lack of time, their surroundings don’t tolerate strong feelings and can’t respond accordingly. By doing so, the child loses the opportunity for emotional maturation and competence in adulthood. He develops emotions and develops expression in them to the level of her mother.
He can only go above this level with consciousness. Still, at the same time, it creates an increasing imbalance within itself, as a change rarely follows changes in consciousness in bodily connection. Thus, physical and emotional maturity remain uncoordinated and increasingly separated over the years.
The necessity of emotional competence
In 1993, Ross Buck defined emotional maturity as the most important condition for self-control and properly applying the principle of reality. Emotional maturity (competence) is the ability to face our feelings and wishes accordingly. We must develop emotional competency so that we can take on the stress and affect our surroundings.
A toddler should develop this homeostasis through mirroring relationships between adults. However, this is not usually the case, and the situation is exacerbated by the large difference in the way of life lived by the parents during the child’s childhood and the way of life when that child grows up. He develops his feelings and, with them, expression to the level of his mother.
With that, the divide between the conscious and subconscious only grows larger, while achieving emotional competence becomes smaller. That is later seen in the inability to solve problems and relationships passed onto our children.
But the divide between the conscious and subconscious cannot exist without energy, which is needed to maintain the divide. Similar to a border that needs to be protected so that it has sense and a function. The divide within a person causes an increase in energy expenditure for functioning, as it must maintain an unnecessary and unnatural division within itself. In turn, this raises the inner feeling of pressure and anxiety that needs to be fixed one way or the other.
Such increased pressure affects the functioning of consciousness. It leads a person to decisions and relationships that regulate excessive tension in the short term, but in the long run, lead to redirecting excess energy into movement and expression that does not reduce internal division and disconnection.
He then treats the body as the source of all the problems and the weak link of the whole, which often leads to a disrespectful and spiteful relationship towards the body and a misunderstanding of physical pain with a constant need to overcome “self.”
He feels in himself what crawled under his skin as a child and defined him. At the same time, modern society has allowed him to live very differently from his parents, as long as he has the will and a strong enough ego to overcome that part of himself long enough, where the past is trapped in the muscles and fascia, and that part of us that hinders us from achieving all that is possible for us today.
We need to develop emotional competency to take on the stress and be capable of influencing our surroundings.
Constant growth
But at the same time, we live in a society where constant consumption and growth are the primary demands.
This logic is dangerous and harmful as it destroys the individual’s integrity. It’s unnatural because nothing in nature grows on its own but grows in a cycle and has its pulsating rhythm.
The logic of constant growth is based on the child’s demands by observing his parents and schooling. They command:
– A person must do the best he can
– Has to achieve his genetic potential
– With enough will and knowledge, everything is possible
– Pain takes away our time and slows us down, which in turn, disrupts growth. That’s why pain should be ignored or give it a different meaning
These demands of our surroundings and ego don’t allow peace because they always force people into a constant competition and overcoming themselves – body and spirit. This is a harmful approach, especially because it is passed from overstrained parents to young children, even before they have even had a chance to enjoy carefreeness, to realize that they are free and innocent beings who can play at will under parental protection and at home.
In reality, our parents’ bodies are so tense as if they were in a state of constant war.
It is not only the desires of young people that prepare the ground for their subsequent separation of the ego from the body but the expectations and demands of parents towards their children. Children are expected to grow up quickly, become independent early, learn quickly, be reasonable and cooperative as adults, even though they are still just children.
We demand that the child adapts to adults’ living conditions, which are increasingly different from the child’s natural conditions.
The parent’s demands grow with the child’s age: He should give his all in school. As an excellent student, he should become recognizable. He should also be excellent in extracurricular activities.
His young mind is exposed to the world and its crisis too early. He drives in the car with his parents, listening to the radio, watching the television, presenting when adults talk on the Internet, and can access content that he cannot yet physically understand and perceive.
The logic of constant growth is based on the child’s demands by observing his parents and schooling.
Even in early childhood, a toddler has unmonitored access to the Internet and more and more often, their own smartphone. He is often more supportive of adults than adults are of him. We give him everything we can and expect that he will become a professional athlete or businessman.
He shows adult behavior that surprises us in his early years, sometimes even maturity, which delights us.
But this only conceals the loss of connection and self-awareness, which we deny to meet the unrealistic demands of the environment and direct the inability to express effectively towards ourselves. He learns that it is more desirable to express anger through education, work, or sports, and learns to deny or glorify the pain that the body produces due to the inappropriate use of life energy.
This, in turn, creates the basis for self-destruction with good intentions and the inability to fix the relationships he has with others. Because he is afraid or does not know how to use emotions constructively to raise order and balance with the environment, he develops a destructive attitude.
Through work, sports, chemical, and nonchemical addiction, they lower the high amount of inner pressure, and with that, they uphold an illusion that they have everything under control. Until the body surprises them with the “chronic conditions for which there are no medical or logical explanations.”
What are we leaving behind for our children?
Misuse of energy always leads to disorder and deterioration of the system, whether we are talking about the states or family budget, inappropriately directed energy of emotions that we have adapted (for example, anger to cry or laugh) or redirected to running, cycling, or hiking by returning to a home where we do not understand, tolerate, or do not know how to constructively and maturely arrange inconsistencies.
The coronavirus has even further exposed these conditions. Self-destruction with good intentions, which we pass onto our children, is the same as a state’s debt and a destroyed environment.
