Using Your Childhood to Be a Better Person
By Dr. Michael Osit
How do you know how to be a good parent? How do you know how to treat people so that you are a caring, kind, and respectful person? Where are the manuals that teach you how to be good parents and good people? Unfortunately, there aren’t any. We learn as we go – hopefully. But as hard as you try to be your best, many obstacles prevent you from being the kind of person and parent you aspire to be.
Social Learning Theory (SLT) is a process that all of us, to varying degrees, experience from early childhood through adulthood. Simplistically, SLT is experiential and it is a process. We randomly, and sometimes purposefully, display behaviors in a relationship or social situation, and those behaviors are either positively or negatively reinforced. Presumably, if you interact with another person and the result is a positive feeling or outcome, you are more likely to exhibit that behavior repeatedly. Conversely, if you display a behavior in a relationship or social situation and the consequence is negative, you are less likely to display that behavior repeatedly. Makes sense, right? Then why do we keep repeating the same parenting, social, and relationship mistakes in our lives? If we have negative outcomes for repeated actions, one would think that we would change our behavior patterns. For example, if your parents had a parenting trait or style that was hurtful, dysfunctional, or unhelpful, it is highly possible that, at times, you similarly parent your children. It is as if you can’t help it. The explanation is, that your family is that manual that taught you how to parent, how to love, express anger, kindness, respect, cope with competition, failure, success, rejection, loss, and a myriad of other social and personal issues you need to possess as an adult.
The problem is that you take away, on a very deep, often subconscious level, the behavioral traits of your parents. You inculcate the learnings from your family dynamics rooted from early childhood and on. What complicates it even more is that you are so unaware that you are repeating the ills of your family dynamics. Of course, you also take away the positive teachings of your parents and family dynamics.
Realizing that interactions with your children, spouse, peers, and even bosses, do not occur in a vacuum is the first step in evolving into the person you want to be. Talking to your boss stirs the authority issues, positive and negative, that you may have had with your parents. Consequently, your emotional reaction can be the result of that interaction, with your history sprinkled into it.
Beyond becoming aware of your subliminal interpersonal dynamics stemming from your family of origin are the conscious, purposeful modifications you need to be making with the current people in your life. Think about and identify the positive effects and relationship experiences and try to keep replicating them. You can even build on them. More importantly, identify what made you feel badly as a child, and had ill effects on your development, and make sure you aren’t repeating those interactions with your children and adults in your life. Improving your self-esteem and present relationships comes down to mindful interactions incorporating a change in those negative ingrained behavior patterns, coupled with a continuation of the positive effects you have had on yourself and others.
Dr. Michael Osit is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in Warren, and the author of The Train Keeps Leaving Without Me: A Guide to Happiness, Freedom, and Self Fulfillment (2016), and Generation Text: Raising Well Adjusted Kids In An Age Of Instant Everything (2008).