I'm Anna Runkle, also known as the crappy childhood fairy, and today I'm going to
talk about what I call the underdog effect. So this is kind of the sort of
air around a person who had a crappy childhood that... it kind of reminds me
of like the cloud around Pigpen if you remember the character Pigpen from the
Charlie Brown cartoons, and there's like that dirty cloud around them all the
time and it's just got little specks of dust and maybe a bug or something in it.
And this is not a literal cloud around us but it's a combination of
stigma that comes from the outside and just bad self-esteem that comes from the
inside that follows us around if we have not worked out the crappy childhood crap.
So what do I mean by that? There are three parts of it: one is bad habits, one
of them is bad judgment, and the third one is distorted perception that makes
it hard for us to see our part in problems. The underdog effect is
a reflection of bad stuff that happened you know in our circumstances at one
time that now gets inside and it's part of our behavior a part of our character.
And so with all the disadvantages that we can get from growing up with a
crappy childhood like brain changes, just like not really getting the "memo" on how
you're supposed to act or deal with jobs you know not maybe having role models on
how to do this. Maybe the childhood PTSD has affected
our ability to pay attention in school and there's a learning deficit or a lack
of education so there's all these like external things that can happen but
these ones that we take inside are the ones that we can actually change so when
we can identify what part of the crappy childhood experience sort of got in, this
is great because we cannot change what happened in the past but we can change
what's gotten inside of us. So I break it down into bad habits, bad judgment, and
distorted perception. Let's take the example of being late for work, being
late for work is a bad habit, what's going on there? I'm having bad judgment
maybe as a result of having a high stress childhood
if you remember last week we talked about the study out of the University of
Wisconsin that showed that people who had a high stress childhood, which is
basically a crappy childhood, have trouble predicting, have trouble judging
whether an action they're about to take is going to have big consequences or
little consequences, so that's bad judgment. And then the distorted
perception, let's see, I tell you I do this and I think it's pretty common is
that it's hard after a crappy childhood to be very clear about like what's what
problem part of the problem did I cause and what part of the problem was beyond
my control? So for example when people are late, they will very often say it's
because of traffic. Okay I don't know about where you live, where I live the
traffic it is somewhat unpredictable but what is predictable is that it's
unpredictable and you always know it could take you know...if
something is normally ten minutes away it could take twenty and so the smart
thing to do is to leave 20 minutes before you have to be there. So these
things start going into a cycle so I'm late for work,
it becomes a habit, I start having bad judgment about how much worse it's gonna
be if I continue to be late, that I might lose my job, I start having distorted
perception about whose fault is it, I don't see it's my fault then I do lose
my job, and I overreact and then the cycle repeats. I lose my temper with
people at work, bad judgment, distorted perception, I didn't lose my temper on
purpose it's just kind of happening to me. That's what I mean by the underdog
effect, is we start out at a disadvantage and we start to go into a cycle that
starts making the problem worse and starts making that problem part of our
reality part of who we are. So how do we back up out of that identity and that
reality? First you got to take stock and ask yourself thinking honestly do I have
a bad habit, is there something I'm doing that is chronically causing stress and
worry and setting me back in life? And then to honestly ask yourself am I using
bad judgment? Am I having trouble detecting that trouble will follow? Let's
say it's
casual sex with somebody, bad judgment of determining like what's gonna happen
if you sleep with somebody you don't actually know or what's gonna happen if
you have unprotected sex with somebody. The consequences can be enormous and
then it can be hard to see our part, and I've seen this over and over again so
casual sex has occurred, things turn out disastrously, and you know there's a lot
that can go wrong there in terms of like sexually transmitted infections,
unintended pregnancy, heartache and disappointment. So let's say a casual sex
thing occurs the other party never calls again and we're just like incredibly
upset like how could this have happened and we cannot see our part we'll say
what a jerk, you know he said he would call. Well, so the question of distorted
perception is is it realistic in a situation like casual sex that you would
absolutely know what the character is of this other person on whether
they're sincere and what they're saying they're going to do? And in that example
no you don't. Let's say it's about overeating, right? So do I have a bad
habit? Yeah I tend to overeat, do I have bad judgment? Yes I think that I can go
to a restaurant that has really huge portions and just eat a little bit, do I
have distorted thinking? Yeah I start to blame the restaurant, why do they have
this food, why are they putting this in front of me, it's my friends they eat
this, it's not really fair I have a bad metabolism. So you know this, we go
into the underdog effect and it's this like negative cycle of thinking where
our behavior is not working for us and we cannot see that the trouble
begins when we make a bad judgment and we cannot see that it's that only we can
change the judgment we have to change the decisions we're making about that.
Now believe me I know how hard it can be to change the decisions, and literally it
can be beyond us to do in the moment but there are steps we can take to start to
change the pattern. So I recommend first you take one problem at a time and you
can either choose the most important problem that's causing the
most pain in your life or you can take one that's a little easier but it has a
solution in store. It really helps, just your motivation if you can actually
solve a problem so you might want to pick a problem where there's a solution
that you could solve within today or within a couple of days, just so you
have the pleasure of solving a problem and when that's done then move on to the
second one. So let's say my problem is being late to work, so the second thing
is I want to make a red line against it all right so this week I am going to
be on time for work even if I have to miss my shower or skip my coffee I'm
going to be on time to work I'm gonna do whatever it takes. Three, I'm gonna take full
responsibility for changing it I'm not gonna make this contingent on what
anybody else does and if there are other people involved in my morning I'm going
to account for that and take full responsibility that the only person who
can get me to work on time is me. The fourth thing is to quiet the hamster
wheel about it that makes it so hard to think clearly about stuff, now this video
I'm gonna keep mentioning it throughout the crappy childhood fairy blog and in
all these videos, but you want to take a personal inventory about it. You want to
write down the fears and resentments that are active for you in this and then
seek to be free of them, meditate. Meditation is such a good way to like
quiet your mind and become aware since we know for a fact that those of us who
had a high stress childhood have trouble detecting when trouble is there, it's so
important to keep improving our brain function and meditation is one of the
best ways there is, it can be very simple, I teach a method on the video that I
mentioned before where you can sit down, 20 minutes is great if you can just do 5
minutes that's good too and you say to yourself a very simple word, a mantra, you
can use the word "this" you can use the word "release" or you can create a word
any word you want but it's good if it doesn't have too much meaning to just
rest your mind have no goal other than rest your mind. And a rested mind is a lot
better at being sensitive to problems, risks, and noticing solutions. Number
six is get help from others, we're not good at figuring this stuff out by ourselves
we are meant to do this together with other people. We know that our
judgment gets a little squirrely as a result of having had a crappy childhood,
but even if we had a crappy childhood we're pretty good at listening to other
people's situations and offering good suggestions because when we're not
triggered by stuff, which we're not by other people's problems, we do have good
judgment and we can help each other. Number seven is stop being dishonest
about it. When I made the change in my life where I didn't make excuses it was
really hard, I remember the first time I was honest about why I was late and the
reason was, I had overslept. And I wanted to say it was because there was
something out of my control but over sleeping is under my control.
And so it was like a consulting job and I really kind of messed people up I
was a whole hour late, and I came in and I said I'm really sorry I'm late
and I didn't say why actually and you don't have to! You don't have to, in fact
it's a service to other people when you are late to be as not undisrupted as
possible just say I'm sorry and get to work and if people do need to know why
tell the truth, and I'll tell you why you should tell the truth is because until
you start to experience the direct consequences of what's happening you're
going to keep having distorted thinking. There's this little part of us when we
fib and say oh it's because of the traffic we believe it was the traffic we
already know that as people with a crappy childhood we have trouble
learning from our mistakes. So in order to learn from our mistakes it's so
important to just drop down into being honest you can say nothing or if you
must say something say the truth but just see if you're willing to make a
policy of just total honesty right now. Now never be honest just when it's going
to hurt people you could, it's so much better to say nothing, but just don't lie.
This is all about we're trying to get our brain back on
line and part of a crappy childhood is often that adults lied to us and we've
developed a very good capacity to kind of fit ourselves to the lie and a lot of
recovering from a bad childhood is to not fit ourselves to the lie to go ahead
and experience the discomfort of the truth. And you'd be
surprised the consequences are not so bad and it's actually a way when we can
admit humbly that what the real reason is that we've let people down, people
have more respect for us. I mean when's the last time when somebody said they
that traffic made them late that you actually believed them anyway? And even
when we believed them just hearing about traffic stresses us out. So a simple
policy of just being honest, and humble, saying nothing if we can, explaining
honestly if we must what it is that's gotten in the way of our fulfilling our
responsibilities. Number eight is apologize to those who we've affected
and let them know we're working on it just again be humble be straightforward
and it will build more respect with people.
Number nine is just now enjoy how good it feels to be acting with integrity and
to be honestly working on the bad habits that are holding us down in the underdog
effect. Growing up with a crappy childhood, there can be so many little
issues piling up that you can't even remember what they are it's just
like layer upon layer of stuff where you had a bad habit, you started getting distorted
thinking, till you don't even know what the source of these problems
are and it's overwhelming, like it's terrible to think that you don't have
control over these problems so one at a time, there's a way to start tackling
this stuff and pretty soon we're gonna release a course on how to start
unpacking the damage caused by a crappy childhood. So if you're interested in
that course or you want to see the upcoming videos between now and then
make sure you follow the blog so that you can get an email every time a new
video or posting comes out, thanks!