There are many folks talking about not just how polarized we are but how different. And we grew up hearing that different is bad. “Three apples and a pear. Which one is different and doesn’t belong? Which one is wrong?”
Hence, there is no real dialogue, no meeting of meanings. Conversations then involve talking past each other and little listening. After all, why listen when you’re sure you’re right?
Why? When you’re sure you’re right you’re stuck with what you already know! And being stuck, you can’t learn anything new.
With that in mind, now that we’re grownups we’ve heard messages telling us to honor our differences, to even learn from those different from us. That is well and good. It is even needed.
Nonetheless, I want to discuss what we share in common regardless of our differences. I will paint with a broad brush stroke a picture of human development. The vehicle is imperfect but, so is the artist.
Space limitations necessitate taking only one characteristic that we all, regardless of sexual orientation, political affiliation, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. share in common. That characteristic I call our best kept secret.
This secret that we can’t tell anyone, save perhaps our closest friend about, can even be hidden from ourselves. We are so close to it our own breath fogs the mirror. So we’ll step back to allow what is, to be seen without distortion.
Imagine a newborn child, a radiant little being arriving on the scene. This infant is totally dependent. In fact, this beautiful child begins the longest period of dependency of any animal upon parents or parental figures.
We are not like the wildebeest. We can’t run with the herd an hour after birth. It takes us a couple of decades to be able to run with the herd.
This infant is born into a world where there are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. As an infant we don’t arrive with a script in the psyche for the social ammenities. We have to learn our lines mistake by mistake.
Early on no one minds if we poop in our pants, spit out our food, dribble when we vocalize or even pee on people. But over time this all changes. And we begin to learn that there are right ways and wrong ways of doing things.
Because of our long dependency upon the grownups, because we’re not adequate to care for ourselves in the jungle that is the world, we are all going to have feelings of inadequacy. Every little one has feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Every toddler, preschooler and grade schooler has these feelings. When do they go away?
Do they go away in adolescence or in our twenties? I know, they go away when we become parents, right? Wrong. I bet you can see where we’re going. Middle age is no cure nor is becoming an older or even an elderly person. Why?
Because our feelings of inadequacy and insecurity never go away. They are part of the fabric of being human. And they are permanent because they were woven in early in our development when the fragile psyche was vulnerable to all environmental input without filters.
How did this happen?
Well, use your own data base of life experience. How do parents show how adequate, how competent they are as parents? That is demonstrated through the behavior of their children. Therefore, the child’s behavior is put under a microscope and is expanded in importance relative to the relationship with the parental figure.
Because there is only one way of doing things in most cultures, the right way, what do parents do when children do things wrong? They correct them, of course. Now does this radiant little child learn to do things right upon the first correction? Of course not. We need repetition, repetition, repetition to learn most things. And, guess what? We get it. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times” (Gee, she’s told me a thousand times to chew with my mouth closed. I must really be stupid!)
Eventually, we learned the socially acceptable behavior sets. When we performed the right behavior, perhaps someone even caught us being good, once. “Your mother and I are proud to see you chew with your mouth closed.” Then they could focus on another flaw!
Why? So we wouldn’t be an embarrassment to the entire family!
So, growing up, we do it wrong, we do it wrong, we do it wrong until eventually we do it right! In the process we received much more specific negative feedback than specific positive feedback. The grownups didn’t realize it, but they, and we, have reinforced feelings of inadequacy in their/our children just by correcting them.
Getting more specific negative than specific positive feedback, we all got our feelings of inadequacy reinforced. The grownups / we didn’t know any better. They / we did the best possible job we could with the information at hand. And we all learned that anything worth doing, is worth doing well / right!
In fact, how were we taught to feel when we did things wrong, when we made mistakes?
“Bad boy! Get your hands off your brother!”
“Bad girl! That’s a bad girl! Don’t ever let me see you do that again!”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!”
“We are very disappointed with these grades.”
“We give you everything and this is what you do!”
It wasn’t just parents. There was a conspiracy amongst the grownups to teach us the right way to do everything.
We eventually learned the right way ‘to do.’ In fact, many of us learned how to do many things well. But how did we learn to feel about ourselves? Once we learn to carry shame of self, no matter how well we ‘do’ anything, we still can feel bad about ourselves.
As Jung said, “the psyche always seeks to compensate.” To compensate for feelings of inadequacy, we project to the world an image of adequacy, or even better, an image of superior competence. To compensate for feelings of insecurity, we may project an image of a secure, confident person.
So, much of our psychic energy is consumed with image projection reflected in achievement, status or success in a material sense. But no matter how much we achieve, it is never enough to transform the interior minus into a plus. But we keep trying.
This secret that we all share, yet rarely discuss, has all sorts of implications for human relationships. Why?
Because the way we treat others is a reflection of how we’re feeling about ourselves. How others treat us is not about how they feel about us. How people treat us is a reflection of how they are feeling about themselves. So, we have all taken many things personally that didn’t have anything to do with us. And others have taken personally many things from us that didn’t have anything to do with them.
Perhaps, if we could talk about this secret we could address relationship problems from another perspective. One that is inclusive of our own baggage. Then, perhaps our differences would be less of a barrier because our best kept secret would be a bridge that connects us together.
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