How We Sabotage Our Lives

11/03/2007

Every time a baby is born, we know that another mouth has to be fed but seldom think about the fact that another personality also has to be accommodated within a family and a community. Yet this truth has enormous implications. We take trouble to meet the physical needs of growing children, at the same time teaching them which behaviours are acceptable and which are not. The parallel process is that we are all rubbing psyches, establishing control and status within the group.

Children have a natural desire to please their care-givers, but they also have a healthy instinct to fulfil their own potential. Children also have an impressive sense of justice; they know right from wrong. So they are always balancing the demands made on them against their developmental needs and rights, although they could not describe the process.

In this way we quickly learn that we have to jostle for our psychological position and we try to assert our claim to be nurtured or even indulged. Toddlers do it with temper tantrums and by saying, “Won’t!” but older people have far subtler weapons. We all thrust and parry for power until the day we die. We win against some but lose against others.

Using our instincts and formidable intelligence, we develop mechanisms whereby we send subliminal messages. Ignoring someone says, “You’re not very important.” Bullying someone says, “You are lower down the pecking order than I am.” As we grow up, we internalize a thousand such messages that end up playing like a tape in the back of our minds. “You have no right to assert your wishes,” or “You should always get your own way.”

We believe some messages that are not true, just because someone recorded them on our tape when we were weak and impressionable. On the other hand, we don’t believe encouraging messages that contradict a negative tape, because we are too programmed. Yet herein lies the hope: others cannot erase your tape, but you can.

Are you too quick to surrender your opinions and wishes? Do you subjugate yourself to anyone? Women seem to be more prone to do this in a love relationship than men are, yet if a woman is wholly, strongly herself, she has more to offer her loved one.

Are you dreaming of one day leaving the old behaviours, the old self-image behind? If you live only for the future you will not live in the future. Pluck up all your courage and start behaving differently today, or your inaction will become a debilitating habit.

Submitted by Melanie Steyn, a celebrated author and friend.