THE MAGICAL BELIEFS OF CHILDHOOD
As children, we think we have the magical powers to change all
that is wrong with our world. We need to believe that we can
control problems in order to survive emotionally. For example,
we may have parents who are not emotionally healthy. They may
lack the capacity to be nurturing, supportive and affirming. In
such cases, we perform to please, trying every means to get our
parents to act like functional adults. When our efforts fail in
getting what we need from our parents, we turn our feeling
inward and believe that somehow we are the one's who are
defective, not our parents. That way we can minimize the pain
that results from dealing with them. Many people turn to
self-blame as a way of coping and hold the image that our
parents will someday change and become the loving people that we
always wanted. As we transition to adulthood, many of us mantain
this psyhic image, believing that people ought to behave the way
we want them to repond. Many of us keep striving, pursuing,
performing, and fixing in order to fulfill the fantasy of what
we want from others. By taking responsibility for our parent's
failures, we let them off the hook and minimize the pain
regarding how they treated us.
As young children, we need the comfort of feeling safe. We tend
to gravitate toward that which is familiar and comfortable even
when it is dysfunctional. We maintain behavior patterns
established by our parents. The safety of our support system
makes us feel secure in the midst of an insecure world. Those
who experience appropriate parental support and comfort feel
grounded. However, as we transition to adulthood, we continue to
look for external validation to make us feel secure, while we
live in the midst of insecurity. Eventually, the notion of
trying to stay secure breaks down as we are faced with ambiguous
and challenging problems. Allan Watts, author and philosopher,
alludes to this paradox. the more we try to grab onto security,
the more we actually feel out of control. "Grabbing for security
is like trying to hold water in our hands." Paradically, it is
ony when we accept and embrace insecurity, that we actually
become more grounded.