so we all know that our experiences
during childhood can have a huge impact
on our later well-being in the last
video we talked about the fact that
childhood leaves an imprint through
teaching us both what to expect from
reality but also what is the best way to
respond to reality so it does so through
creating these little like maps or
templates about how the world works
which are traditionally called schemas
and our schemas of reality again they
teach us two things what is about to
happen and how should I respond to that
event so just to give an example let's
say every time a child shares an
accomplishment they're punished by a
sort of insecure competitive mother well
their brain their little map of reality
will be sharing accomplishments leads to
punishment and within that map will be
the adaptation I won't share my
accomplishments then so that assumption
works great in that context but if it's
played forward and sort of generalized
to other people who aren't mom which the
brain will do then suddenly that person
as an adult may be finding that they're
not sharing about their successes at
work and are feeling sort of held back
professionally so that person may be
very frustrated with himself for being
so timid at work without realizing the
deep learning that timidity is linked
into there was one time when it
protected an important relationship now
relationships are a huge part of this
learning but really all aspects of a
childhood
child's experience from culture to
medical issues to experiences at school
can have a deep impact in their
understanding of how to adapt to reality
you know I give an example from recently
I was working with a client who had an
interesting response to stress and as we
tracked it down it really came to some
deep learnings she had around her
experiences of having asthma so really
could be any notable life experiences we
have as children it's just that our one
of our most powerful
variances of the world is our
relationships with our parents it's like
our parents are our world in a way when
we're young
why because evolutionarily speaking
without mom and dad we would die so it's
like an innate sort of imperative to
preserve that relationship so mom and
dad will love us so that they'll take
care of us so there's really some
adaptations that happen around how both
to make mom and dad love us like how to
please mom and dad
I think that's ones we typically are
more aware of but let me actually focus
on something just as powerful which is
the ways we learn to adapt to make mom
and dad function well like to keep mom
and dad intact why because we need mom
and dad to be doing well in order to
sufficiently take care of us so the
child in a way learns to behave to
stabilize mom and dad or or at least try
to bring out the best in them so if they
do something it causes mom and dad to
falter they're less likely to do that
again in some very general sense the
child learns to become the child that
the parent needs them to be so let me
give an example let's say the child
shows some very natural anger but the
parent because of their own abuse
history for instance maybe in response
to seeing the child's anger looks scared
and freezes for a moment so the child is
probably going to pick up on that my
anger just seemed to mess with mom so
that's immediately kind of frightening
one because mom's not here now and also
mom scares so what's wrong
and if the mom you know recovers let's
say it's the mom she recovers and she
comes back and Riaan gauges that may not
be such a deep learning for the child
but if she doesn't recover quickly let's
say she pulls away gets cold or gets
depressed the rest of the day or
punishes the child then the child is
learning okay my anger is associated
with danger so that's a little map
expect mapped out expectation danger I
mean anger leads to danger leads to some
kind of compromise in an important
relationship so then of course the child
will try whatever
it occurs to them to try whatever they
can figure out to try in order to not be
angry that might be cutting off from
their emotions that might be shutting
down their vitality and getting
depressed that might be kind of
disinvesting in life so that they don't
have disappointments and don't get angry
it may just be covering a finger it's
sort of like a sickly sweet kind of
response whenever they're just actually
upset so the child then learns two
things what is associated with what
anger is associated with danger that's
the expectation and then the adaptation
would be I'll do whatever I need and
whatever I can figure out to not let
myself feel my anger now the reason I
use anger as an example
it's just that emotion in general
emotional moments are the ones most
often mishandled by the parents because
maybe they themselves are uncomfortable
with emotion so for instance it's not
really just anger it could be lets say
sadness that's one that's very often
sort of dropped or mishandled by the
parent perhaps because they're scared
they won't be competent to help or they
don't want to fall into their own
despair but for one reason or another it
is very common for parents to leave
their child alone in the face of sadness
perhaps even to punish or shame them for
it but even if they just just neglect it
a bit and don't sufficiently step in to
help then that leads the child again
alone with the emotion of sadness which
is not sort of how mother nature
intended it when a child is alone with a
negative emotion is by nature
overwhelming if they're in connection it
can be manageable but alone for a child
system to be alone with an emotion like
sadness anger is by nature overwhelming
so now the schema will be sadness is
linked to aloneness which is linked to
overwhelm and the adaptation will be
maybe I won't let myself have my sadness
or I'll distract myself in any way
possible I'll get into playing video
games or drinking or or just covering up
the sadness with anxiety instead now
these adaptations I'm mentioning we
would traditionally call our defenses I
just think the word defences is slightly
critical and it's
whereas the word adaptation really
appreciates we needed to shift in this
way shift our response in this way it
helped us to do so it allowed us to
survive our childhoods a bit more intact
so so far we've been looking more at the
adaptations to help mom and dad sort of
function well like mom and dad can't
handle me being angry so I'll learn not
to have anger or they can't handle my
neediness so I'll they're not to have
need or they can't handle my
independence
so I'll learn to sort of not step into
my own uniqueness in and opinions and
strength or they can't even bear to look
at their own faults let's say so the
child might have to learn to be blind to
those faults and then finally of course
the child just has to adapt in order to
survive them and Dad
so if mom and dad are abusive or
intrusive what does the child need to do
to mitigate the damage of that you know
put up walls go numb dissociate perhaps
be incredibly pleasing so as to not be a
target but in either case the child is
learning how to bring out the best and
avoid the worst for mom and dad or if I
could put it another way
how do I need to act in order to help
mom and dad survive me and order in
order to help me survive mom and dad so
I know that last statement was kind of
general and I just meant to capture just
a lot of what tends to cause people
suffering later often it comes down to
experiences with mom and dad or siblings
but that's not the end of the story any
significant life experience or something
that we learned and adapted to can have
an impact on our later functioning or
our later response to life in fact
socioeconomic status has a huge impact
in these schemas we're talking about
because it's a different world with
different requirements - that would
require us to adapt
however the learning happens it's likely
most of it's going to happen during
childhood
I just our brain is in the most active
learning phase during that time it's
trying to figure out as quickly as it
can how to be in this world but once it
knows something sort of beyond a shadow
of a doubt it it feels like it's been
proven through lots of experiences or as
I mentioned before through one big
experience which we would call it trauma
once it really feel feels like it
experientially has something proven that
this is the way the world works
it doesn't as actively continue
questioning that as we move into
adulthood however it is possible to go
back to those original templates those
original schemas and update them even
once we're adults and that happens
through a process called memory
reconsolidation so the theory or science
behind memory reconsolidation is what we
will explore in the next video
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