Early Experiences and Worldview

[GrungeGuy]

Hey Everyone,

 

Here is an article I wrote going through some of my thoughts about how our early experiences shape the way we see the world later in life. I'm not sure if I'm going to publish it in a blog or anywhere else, but I wanted to share it here and see what kind of feedback this community had. Enjoy!

 

I’m an educated, professional male in his late twenties and sometimes, I really have trouble relating to people my age. One thing that I can’t understand is how it seems like the vast majority of my peers don’t express or appear to experience a sense that there is something deeply wrong about the world we live in and that something needs to be done about it. I look at people working some corporate job and then spending their free time doing fun yet unimportant things and having unimportant conversations of little to no personal depth and I wonder, how can they be satisfied? Don’t they see all that’s wrong with the world? Are they content to do nothing? I don’t see the vast majority of people my age doing anything of substance to try and help the world and the few that do tend to be helping in ways that look crazy to me, but that’s a topic for another time.

 

As a psychotherapist, I spend a great deal of time thinking about how our early experiences shape our personalities and our views of the world. Children who have healthy attachment experiences grow up feeling that they are safe, worthy, capable, and they internalize relatively positive expectations about the safety and availability of others for interpersonal connection. On the other hand, children who grow up in an unhealthy attachment environment grow up feeling that they are not safe, worthy, or capable and internalize a sense that others will react to them in much the same negative ways that their caregivers have. Because the neo-cortex, the more “rational” part of our brain, develops later in life, early attachment experiences are stored as largely implicit memories in the more primitive parts of our brains. As a result, on a less than fully conscious level, we tend to globalize our early attachment experiences, stepping out into the world with the implicit assumption that it is likely to be like our early environment.

 

Keeping the impact of attachment on the development of the human psyche in mind, this may make more sense out of the disconnect that I, and perhaps many others, feel with their peers. The truth is, there are many terrible things going on in the world and there are many wonderful things as well, but it may be that our base of the brain, implicit sense of the world has more to do with our early environment than with a rational appraisal of things. I grew up in an attachment environment that was not safe, secure, supportive, or pleasurable and I can help but look at the world and think often about all of the abuses, corruptions, irrationality, etc. As I try to make sense of all of this, I can’t help but wonder if the world just seems like a pretty benevolent place, to people who had a relatively peaceful and secure attachment to their caregivers as children. It’s hard for me to imagine a general feeling like the world is a pretty nice place, filled with generally good people, both filled with plenty of opportunity for the fulfillment of my personal and relational pleasure.

 

As I am still very much in the midst of working through the horrors of my childhood, still largely bogged down by the ghosts of my history, this piece feels quite speculative. I will probably never really know what it is like for people from pretty good homes, because although I can attain an earned secure attachment by healing my old wounds, I will never be somebody who was not wounded. I want to continue to give voice to the part of me that knows right from wrong, that hates injustice and wants to do something about it, but perhaps I will one day be more available to what is right and enjoyable about people and the world and less overwhelmed by what is wrong.

[Mothra]

I know the feeling. I have wondered where this comes from as well. At times I have thought it was because those people grew up in homes that made more money than mine. Or maybe because their parents stayed together. Or maybe they had more of a sense of family somehow, more traditions maybe. But I think you may be onto something with the attachment. I personally don't feel attached to either of my parents, though I have vague memories of loving them when I was very young.

 

On the flip side, maybe folks like us have parents that did okay enough for us to retain a strong sense of justice and meaning. It does seem counter-intuitive that bad parenting could make children with a highly developed sense of purpose and ethics. But who knows? A lot of nature is counter-intuitive.

[brucethecollie]

Firstly, thank you for the article.  I enjoyed reading it.  I think I came from a pretty good home.  Nevertheless I see the world more the way you describe seeing it.  Perhaps this is because I grew up with an incurable chronic illness and that translated to empathy for the suffering of others and it also meant I suffered from a young age, despite a decent home life.  I have typically come to think of my way of viewing the world as an inherent part of my personality type.  I'm highly sensitive-I think I was born that way.  My dad tells me that when I was 4, I was extremely upset by the news portraying starving children.  My dad is also highly sensitive and philosophical at that.  I wonder if I have passed this sensitive thing (which by the way includes a sensitivity to medications including anesthesia, pain, and even sunlight) to my kids who just became aware (at age 6) that humans kill one another.  They were deeply disturbed by that.  They pretend to fight with swords and they kill off enemies in mario video games but the realization that people really do take each other's life and hurt each other on purpose was a very big deal for them.  A very sad realization.  

 

I have an acquaintance who claims to have never had a bad thing happen to her.  She says her family has always been great and so on.  She, admittedly, doesn't seem to stop and look around at the horrors happening around us.  She is quite jolly all the time.  I used to have a close friend who had a horrific abusive childhood and she is the same way, though.  I tend to think this is a complex thing...with many factors.  And then...how many people are hiding out from feeling overwhelmed or traumatized?  I know some damaged people that live in a hell (that they may have created for themselves) and as a result they don't see past their nose.  In fact, calling out to them the injustices of the world provoke a deep narcissistic pain, at least in my experience.  They can appear happy during the day, though.  Which is why I say they hide out.

 

This was a long way of me saying I don't know...lol

[Dermot]

I enjoyed reading this as well. Thanks for taking the time to write it. 

[EuanM]

I thought the article was absolutely first class, I really enjoyed reading it.

 

If you ever publish it anywhere, please send me the link, I might want to share it with others.