HOW WE GOT HERE

[ Introduction ] [ Energy Movement ] [ How We Got There ] [ Fight or Flight ] [ More Contact ] [ Incipient Armoring ] [ Chronic Armoring ] [ Tools of Therapy ] [ Therapeutic Process ] [ Acting Out ] [ Concluding Remarks ]

Being alive one needs to be able to fully experience and express that emotion appropriate for the situation.  It is being able to enjoy our pleasures, grieve fully over our losses and aggressively assert ourselves.  However, the formation of chronic armoring in the individual prevents this from happening.  It is the misfortune of the world that our infants, children, and adolescents are raised in a world that at the present time knows very little of any other way.

A child's natural curiosity, needs, and drives are continually moving out into the world and interacting with it.  However, instead of adequately childproofing a home, for example, we leave the glass jar on the table where the infant can touch it with their inquisitive hands.  Rather than having their natural curiosity encouraged they receive a stern "No!" and a firm rebuke.  We rationalize our doing so by saying we must teach the child early that the world is a dangerous place.

When the baby cries we choose to not pick her up and soothe her, but to let her cry it out, rationalizing that if we pick her up we'll spoil her and let ourselves be manipulated.

Rather than feed the infant when he's hungry by breast feeding according to the infant's own biologically determined rhythms, we instead put him on a feeding schedule.

When the child shows interest in its genitalia, we become horrified, and may even beat the child.  If we're enlightened we instead try to distract him.

These are all common and probably obvious examples of ways in which the natural self-regulating behavior of the infant is denied expression and replaced by rigid external rules to follow.  But there are more subtle instances which can even be more damaging by their insidiousness and constancy:  a mother who recognizes and shows affection and validation only for those types of behavior of the child that the mother finds desirable, behaviors that the mother rewards because they reflect well on her and make up for her own low self-esteem.  These attitudes will be internalized as rejection by the child for behaving in any way less than as a perfect child.