Navigating Mental Health: A Walk Through Childhood
The Journey to Here: Understanding Our Survival Mechanisms
How did you make it here? Yes, right here, right now. Did you fight your way through? Did you run? Did you yell and scream? How did you survive until now? All of us are born with the ability to adapt and survive.
The Role of Our Environment: Beyond Parents and Caregivers
During the first few years of our lives, we have an unfortunately high chance of living in an environment that fails our needs. The concept of the environment is crucial for how I understand our upbringings. Some of us had our biological parents, and some did not. Some of us had loving caregivers, and some did not. However, our environment is a way to say with whoever was with us as we grew up. That could also include siblings, teachers, uncles, aunts, family friends, cousins, etc. I included this because I often hear people seeking out trauma work with me, and they don't want to blame all their problems on their parents. It doesn't have to be your parents. You could have amazing parents and still have endured an environment that failed your needs.
Childhood Dreams and Unmet Needs: The Artist Within
What did you want to be when you grew up? A cheesy question, yes. Important? Extremely. For the following example, let us say that you wanted to be an artist. You took the time to grab all of your utensils; paint, pencils, crayons, markers, mud? Whatever your creative little hands could get a hold of. As you worked on your masterpiece, they came home. You grabbed your precious work of art and presented it proudly to whoever just stomped through the door. You got pushed aside and were told that all too familiar line, "not right now," or maybe it was a terrible day, and you received a "shut up, ill look at it later." What you might have needed at that moment was love and connection, maybe even some validation over your hard day's work. What you received instead was an environment that failed those needs.
Survival Tactics: The Art of Hiding
When we are little, we do not have the brainpower to say to ourselves, "they were a real asshole right there," as we would today. Instead, we do not understand how to separate feeling bad from being bad. Being an artist becomes shameful and something we can never let them see again. How do we accomplish that? Easy, we hide it. If someone were to ask you about art, you're reminded of the pain and quickly play it cool, saying it's for stuck-up people, or maybe after so much time, you grew to resent that part of yourself. Fast forward to a regular night out with friends. You suddenly feel something strange happen, and your body feels weird. Your chest starts to hurt, and your breath gets shorter. Your brain searches for answers, but the only thing it can attach to is that your environment is dangerous, scary, or unsafe. What do you do? Your experience when you were small taught you well. You go and hide. You tell your friends goodnight, and you go home early. You turn on the TV and put on your favorite show to try and drown out the nagging voice that is trying to beat you up for going home so early, but hey, at least you're safe now, right? So many times, I hear stories like these in my office. I want you to know that we all protected ourselves and survived our environments since we were little kids. Now that we have grown up, the little kid inside of us has not. They still look out for danger; they still carry the pain for you. We all made it here somehow, and I want to see you as the one who learned to hide. I love that skill because it keeps you safe. It has a challenging job to do. I invite you to start looking at your skill and what it is being used to hide from exactly. Usually, what we are hiding from is shame. We hide so that others can't see what's underneath it all. What's underneath all of the walls and the armor we put on since we were small to protect us from feeling that shame. My hope for you is that you can come to a place where it is ok to be seen, to where it is ok to be you. To the ones who hide, I hope you can all feel seen one day.
