When looking at the odder aspects of other people’s and our own behaviour, there is
one simple-sounding question we should always keep close to the front of our minds: what
did you need to do in your family of origin in order to get noticed, cared for and loved?
What conditions of love did you grow up with - and might you still, by extension, unconsciously
therefore be operating under (for it can take our deep minds a very long time indeed to
recognise that they are no longer subject to a parental aegis)?
What someone devotes extraordinary energy too now is likely to be an adult version of
more or less what they once had to do to secure the affection we all need not to perish as
infants.
There are parents who demand that their offspring succeed; and just as often - but more covertly
- parents who require them to fail.
There are parents who need their children to look conspicuously attractive and others,
tragically, who are sexually so uncontained that their children are incentivised to put
on weight or damage their bodies in order to repel the danger of incestuous advances
The questions - what conditions of love did you grow up under?
What did you need to do to get noticed?
- are, as we can see, of particular use when we try to assess behaviours that - from the
angle of our flourishing - make no sense at all.
Why does someone exhaust themselves earning gargantuan sums of money they can never spend?
Why would someone blow up one relationship after another?
Why would someone be sexually seductive with everyone they encounter?
Why can someone never find a way to be serious or appropriately authentic?
The answers always lie in the secret complex bargains that certain families have made with
their offspring: impress the world or I will ignore you, stay loyal to me or I won’t
be able to endure my loneliness, accept my sexual advances or be denied my care, protect
me from my depression or I may end up taking my life.
These melancholy analyses open up the way to a liberation from our patterns.
Once we can see that we are only in effect continuing to do what was once forced out
of us in order to exist, we will also be in a position to break free from our manacles.
We will be able to feel sadness for our younger selves but also recognise that that we are
no longer operating under the narrow strictures of the early years; we can seek out attention
and care for what is in line with our true needs.
The privilege of adulthood is to be able to find our way to our own, less distorted and
less cruel conditions of love.