Writing this and seeing if this resonates with other’s. Read this in a book and thought it was worthwhile to paraphrase.
The specific topic is emotional intelligence/emotional intimacy.
When you are a kid, there are 3 main ways you learn about anything in this world.
- You learn from your parents.
- You learn from school.
- You bounce around with your peers and learn from trial by error. Lots of trial, lots of error.
Emotional intimacy is a very real need. Like, emotional neglect is considered child abuse. You can see that in kids; they want to connect over literally anything! They doing their best to figure out how, but also, they are just a kid. Nominally, in healthy families, kids learn how to build healthy emotional relationships with and through their parents. Parents help create the values, communication and boundaries.
However, if you didn’t learn emotional intimacy from your parents, then it gets complicated. Reasons parents don’t teach range from:
- They don’t know how
- The topic is overwhelming and anxious for them
- They don’t think its important
- They don’t have time for it; too busy trying to hustle and grind.
And more
This is definitely not a topic we learn from school.
When it comes to bouncing with trial and error:
- The other kids may or may not know healthy emotional boundaries (much less how to teach another kid)
- If your parents are teaching perfectionism; you actually don’t try at all as a survival mechanism. Can’t fail if you never try.
What you’re left with is a kid that deep down desires connection. So what happens then?
Common in the API community is that as a kid you adopt people pleasing tendencies. How this is expressed could be seen as:
- Hardcore people pleasing your parents with school and grades
- Helping your parents with work.
- Taking care of your younger siblings.
- Have you ever been called “You’re really mature for your age!” / really easy to deal with compared to other kids (You’re a pseudo adult)
Now you are this pseudo adult, maybe your parents will like you! Except, this solved none of the original issues which is parents don’t have emotional intelligence/intimacy in the first place.
The fall out from this commonly scene:
- Endless people pleasing. They will pour and pour into a black hole.
- Rebellion – If I can’t be a kid, and being an “adult” won’t get me there, I’ll go find it elsewhere. Rushing into adult relationships that aren’t good for you. Grinding jobs that take advantage of you/work is your life. (Continuing a cycle?)
- Withdrawal – I have no idea what I am doing. How the heck do I make quality relationships?! Even into adulthood, the tools aren’t there.