I wish it were as easy as awareness but it's so deep. There was supposed to be some kind of interpersonal development feedback loop accumulated over years and it just didn't happen. Now I can only sometimes get into a mood where I think I can re-develop a personality. But there is no rational basis for that hope.
> Because they probably weren’t allowed to express and integrate their emotional experiences in childhood, these people grow up to be emotion-ally inconsistent adults. Their personalities are weakly structured, and they often express contradictory emotions and behaviors. They step in and out of emotional states, never noticing their inconsistency. When they become parents, these traits create emotional bafflement in their children. One woman described her mother’s behavior as chaotic, “flip- flopping in ways that made no sense.”
I already figured this all out by myself.
The book is only wrong when it says things like "never noticing." I noticed.
> Growing up with an inconsistent parent is likely to undermine a child’s sense of security, keeping the child on edge. Since a parent’s response provides a child’s emotional compass for self- worth, such chil-dren also are likely to believe that their parent’s changing moods are somehow their fault.
This is what I did. On edge. Insecure. Victim of abuse. It's visible in body language.
> Because they probably weren’t allowed to express and integrate their emotional experiences in childhood, these people grow up to be emotion-ally inconsistent adults. Their personalities are weakly structured, and they often express contradictory emotions and behaviors. They step in and out of emotional states, never noticing their inconsistency. When they become parents, these traits create emotional bafflement in their children. One woman described her mother’s behavior as chaotic, “flip- flopping in ways that made no sense.”
I already figured this all out by myself.
The book is only wrong when it says things like "never noticing." I noticed.
> Growing up with an inconsistent parent is likely to undermine a child’s sense of security, keeping the child on edge. Since a parent’s response provides a child’s emotional compass for self- worth, such chil-dren also are likely to believe that their parent’s changing moods are somehow their fault.
This is what I did. On edge. Insecure. Victim of abuse. It's visible in body language.