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Thread: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

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    Default Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Once you spot 'em you can lick 'em!

    1. ADULT CHILDREN GUESS AT WHAT NORMAL IS
    There is no frame of reference for what it is like to be in a normal household. You also have no frame of reference for what is O.K. to say and feel. In a more typical situation, one does not have to walk on eggs all the time. Because you did, you became confused. Many things from the past contributed to your having to guess at what normal is.
    Return to top 2. ADULT CHILDREN HAVE DIFFICULTY IN FOLLOWING A PROJECT THROUGH FROM BEGINNING TO END
    In a functional family, the child has this behaviour and attitude to model. The child observes the process and the child may even ask questions along the way. The learning may be more indirect than direct, but it is present. Since your experience was so vastly different, it should be no surprise that you have a problem with following a project through from beginning to end.
    Return to top 3. ADULT CHILDREN LIE WHEN IT WOULD BE JUST AS EASY TO TELL THE TRUTH
    Lying is basic to the family system affected by alcohol. It masquerades in part as an overt denial of unpleasant realities, cover ups, broken promises and inconsistencies. Lying as the norm in your house became part of what you knew and what could be useful to you. At times, it made life much more comfortable. If you lied about getting your work done, you could get away with being lazy for a while. It seemed to make life simpler for everybody.
    Return to top 4. ADULT CHILDREN JUDGE THEMSELVES WITHOUT MERCY
    Your judgement of others is not nearly as harsh as your judgement of yourself, although it is hard for you to see other people’s behaviour in terms of a continuum either. Black and white, good or bad, are typically the way you look at things. You know what it feels like to be bad, and how those feeling make you behave. And then if you are good there is always the risk that it won't last. So either way you set yourself up.
    Return to top 5. ADULT CHILDREN HAVE DIFFICULTY HAVING FUN
    6. ADULT CHILDREN TAKE THEMSELVES VERY SERIOUSLY

    These two characteristics are closely linked.
    You didn’t hear your parents laughing and joking and fooling around. Life was a very serious, angry business. The tone in your house put a damper on your fun. Eventually, you just went along with everybody else. Having fun just was not fun. The spontaneous child within was quashed.
    Return to top 7. ADULT CHILDREN HAVE DIFFICULTY WITH INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS
    The feelings of being insecure or having difficulty in trusting, and of questions about whether or not you are going to get hurt are not exclusive to adult children. These are problems most people have. It is simply a matter of degree, your being a child of an alcoholic caused the ordinary difficulties to become more severe.
    Return to top 8. ADULT CHILDREN OVER-REACT TO CHANGES OVER WHICH THEY HAVE NO CONTROL
    The young child of an alcoholic was not in control. The alcoholics’s life was inflicted on him/her, as was his/her environment. In order to survive when growing up, he/she needed to turn that around. He/she needed to begin taking charge of his/her environment. This became important and remains so. The child of the alcoholic learns to trust him/herself more than anyone else when it is impossible to rely on someone else’s judgement.
    Return to top 9. ADULT CHILDREN CONSTANTLY SEEK APPROVAL AND AFFIRMATION
    The message you got as a child was very confused. It was not unconditional love. The definitions were not clear and the messages were mixed. “Yes, no, I love you, go away.” So you grew up with some confusion about yourself. The affirmations you did not get on a day-to-day basis as a child, you interpret as negative.
    Return to top 10. ADULT CHILDREN FEEL THAT THEY ARE DIFFERENT FROM OTHER PEOPLE
    Feeling different is something you have had with you since childhood, and even if the circumstance does not warrant it, the feeling prevails. Other children have had the opportunity to be children. You did not. You were very much concerned with what was going on at home. You could never be completely comfortable playing with other children. You could not be fully there. Your concerns about your home problems clouded everything else in your life.
    Return to top 11. ADULT CHILDREN ARE EITHER SUPER RESPONSIBLE OR SUPER IRRESPONSIBLE
    Either you take it all on or you give it all up. There is no middle ground. You tried to please your parents, doing more and more, or you reached the point where you recognized it did not matter, so you did nothing.
    Return to top 12. ADULT CHILDREN ARE EXTREMELY LOYAL, EVEN IN THE FACE OF EVIDENCE THAT THE LOYALTY IS UNDESERVED
    The alcoholic home appears to be a very loyal place. Family members hang in long after reasons dictate that they should leave. The so-called “loyalty” is more the result of fear and insecurity than anything else, nevertheless, the behaviour that is modeled is one where no one walks away just because the going gets rough. This sense enables the adult child to remain in involvements that are better dissolved.
    Return to top 13. ADULT CHILDREN ARE IMPULSIVE
    They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviours or possible consequences. This impulsivity leads to confusion, self-loathing, and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

    If you want to check out much much more, go to http://acainnerpeace.ncf.ca/charac.htm#ch3
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE


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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    I read this on cracked.com yesterday.





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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    My dad was/is an ...... and my current partner is an ...... Patterns repeat because what feels normal is comfortable on some level.
    Last edited by Flickdreams; 07-12-2015 at 08:31 AM.
    Tiny tweaks----->BIG CHANGES

    Quote Originally Posted by Kirakonstantin View Post
    More fear-mongering? Really? Yes, this is not the 1990's anymore. Yes, things are changing. Either dance or don't. Freaking out and sowing fear isn't going to help anyone.




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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay12 View Post
    I read this on cracked.com yesterday.
    He picked out 5 but all of these are very powerful and I thought should be shared. Of course I don't have his funny take on it but the inherent value is still there.
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11 and 13 are all absolutely me. Particularly 6, but for a different reason: my mother CONSTANTLY teased and humiliated me. In public, at the dinner table (she would grab handfuls of food and slap it into my face for fun and laugh), at school, telling my friends I was a loser.. it goes on and on. When I was 16, we went to a theme park. You know at a theme park you have to ride a tram from the parking lot to the entrance? Well, she and her two friends told the tram driver I was pregnant with twins, and had him announce a congratulations to me over the tram intercom. I wanted to throw myself under the tram, while they howled with laughter until they cried.

    Because of this and many, many other similar incidents, I HATE teasing and freak out if it doesn't stop IMMEDIATELY when I ask for it to stop. When I had temper outbursts because of this as a teenager, my mom would go "AWWWW POOR KATIE KA-BOOM (like the girl on Animaniacs cartoon) ALWAYS OVER REACTING! BOO HOO HOO!"

    If people tease me nowadays and don't respond immediately to my requests to stop, I usually stop speaking to them. I have very little sense of humour and am a very serious person.

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    ^ That's aweful med! I grew up with an alcoholic father and Im also a very serious person. My dad use to tell me I was like a little old lady because I was a homebody and he went out more than me. I also feel for my dsughter who, after reading that I have a better understsnding of why she is always so angry and she also is very serious. Her father and I don't drink around her and were not alcoholics but we haven't been together since she was 3 and I found out he was verbasly abusing her telling her she's lazy like me and stop fake crying like your mom to get your way and he cslls her my name when she acts in a way he doesn't like. she doesn't want anything to do with him right now and hasn't seen hom since april. I feel bad and he keeps telling me sh'e lying but his wife even told me he and his brother always cut me down to her. I guess growing up in an alcoholic fasmily I don't think what he did warrants her never wanting to see him agasin and I'm afraid he'll take me to court but she says she'll tell the judge. I don't know my dad was horrible when he drank but I would never not ever want to see him ( he died 10 years ago) and I think what if something happens to him and she has all that guilt and I don't know why I just typed all this here for everyone to read but it really bothers me and I don't know what to do. I can't force her to go there but he wasnt's me too and his mom won't leave me alone. It's like she wants nothing to do with any of them.

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    That is truly awful, Mediocrity--so sorry to hear you had to deal with that. I was very fortunate in not being mocked by my parents. But there are a couple of points on the list I have had some trouble with.

    Thanks for posting it Optimist, you are on a roll these days...
    You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
    Friedrich Nietzsche

    Free your mind, and your ass will follow.
    George Clinton

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Quote Originally Posted by michele11 View Post
    ^ That's aweful med! I grew up with an alcoholic father and Im also a very serious person.
    Well you do at least know how to have fun as well. And you are definitely a pleasure to work with, when you are finally out of the Champagne Room and I can put you onstage.
    You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
    Friedrich Nietzsche

    Free your mind, and your ass will follow.
    George Clinton

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Number 12.

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Neither of my parents were alcoholics, but they both came from stressful family situations themselves. They were both abusive, lied often, and lived erratic lifestyles. I still feel like I walk on eggshells when I'm around other people. I still don't fully trust my parents. I think this list of things apply to people coming from "broken homes" even if no alcohol is involved.

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    I am still waiting for the explanation of what normal parents and a normal childhood is like.

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    ^^^I agree 'normal' is a poor choice of words (wtf is normal anyway!?!) on the part of the author, but I take it to mean 'healthy' or 'conducive to health'.

    I was lucky enough to have that, most of my friends and family weren't. My parents were far from perfect but they raised me with unconditional love, never minimized my feelings and taught me that anything life throws at me can be overcome with hard work and laughter. They earned my trust and they taught me to trust myself. Never have I felt that my family was something I had to learn to 'overcome' in order to be my best self, like so many of you are describing. I think what y'all have experienced makes your achievements that much more impressive, in that so many of you didn't have the support that every one does deserve.

    My parents live far away now. I miss them...

    Anyway, cool article, Optimist, thanks for posting it. I think we all have aspects of our lives wherein we act/think in ways that are a response to negative experiences. I know I have some I've struggled with, they just didn't emerge from within my family. Learning from where those patterns emerge can be the first step in changing them, if we're so inclined. Life is way too f^&*king short to be unhappy or dwell on the past instead of changing how we deal with it.

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Quote Originally Posted by Nuclear Martini View Post
    I would like to see a similar list like this for someone who grew up without a father or mother. My father died when I was 5 and I always wondered how that effected me. My mom came from a family with generations of conflct, while not alcohol abuse, we had other issues and I can relate with a few of the things on this list as well.
    So, something like Habits You Develop As An Orphan?
    Start the List you want to see and I'm sure a lot of folks would put their experiences in as well.
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    guess I'm an adult child...didn't think I grew up in a broken home though...

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Bump; Thread has become relevant to me again.
    Tiny tweaks----->BIG CHANGES

    Quote Originally Posted by Kirakonstantin View Post
    More fear-mongering? Really? Yes, this is not the 1990's anymore. Yes, things are changing. Either dance or don't. Freaking out and sowing fear isn't going to help anyone.




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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Let me add some more then, Flickdreams. This guy made great points on how parents set kids up to be jaded and spent as a bitter 40 year old by 20 years old!! I share it since it goes hand in hand with the need to self medicate over feeling you can't tackle the day/night.

    "There is a reason people engage in catastrophizing. The emotions people experience when they are in the midst of a full-blown panic are genuine and real. They originate from somewhere. It's often not enough to simply tell yourself to stop doing it. It might help temporarily, and in the moment, to remind yourself that the emotional response you're experiencing is not rational or logical, but merely reminding yourself of the rational view of events is not enough to make the emotional spiral go away.

    In most cases, that kind of emotional spiral is a pattern that is learned in childhood. Parents frequently transfer their own panics, stresses and catastrophic worries onto their children, who obviously have no means of dealing with the situation. The child in that kind of household grows up with a feeling that disaster is around the corner, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

    Actually, for the child, that's is a pretty accurate assessment of his situation -- (a) his parents have conveyed the impression that disaster is coming, (b) it's vague and indistinct but very bad, and (c) the child is powerless to stop it.

    These emotions don't go away just because you grow up. When a person is an adult, in an emotional spiral based on an irrational interpretation of his present-day reality, he's essentially re-living some past emotional experience. He is disconnected from the situation as it actually exists, and is instead responding to something that may have happened 20 years earlier.

    It's somewhat similar to the way a soldier who experiences some awful, traumatic event can develop PTSD, and will continue to respond to that event long after it no longer exists. Decades later, when he is no longer in a combat situation, something stressful may happen that triggers those old emotions, and as far as his emotions are concerned, he's re-experiencing the combat or other traumatic situation. He can't shut it off. He can't wish it away.

    The only way to stop re-living the old emotions of helplessness and panic is to face them head-on. It might help to look at your family life as a child or young person, and try to identify who may have habitually panicked and worried and engaged in doom-and-gloom scenarios -- a parent or teacher or some other authority figure. It may help to remember what it felt like listening to that person panic and worry.

    Thinking about these negative experiences can be a gut-wrenching and painful thing to do, which is why people wall those emotions off in the first place. It helps to talk about it with someone you trust. But it's the only way to stop the catastrophizing at the root, rather than just manage the effects of it." - Magnus http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/0...tastrophizing/

    This is about how we all can develop Learned Helplessness and how we can get out of that thinking -- QUICK! So often in the club we are exposed to no-win situations we can't escape either because there are no alternative clubs, our money, family, school situations, even health situations or legal ones won't let us move on. That's the perfect set up for Learned Helplessness and self medicating to ease the pain of it all.

    http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/0...anatory-style/
    Starting in 1967, Dr. Martin Seligman began a series of experiments involving 3 groups of dogs. The first group of dogs were given electric shocks, but were able to press a panel with their nose to make the shocks stop. The second group of dogs were given the shocks as well, but had no recourse to make them stop. The third group was the control and received no shocks.

    The dogs in the first and third group recovered well from the experiment. But the dogs in the second group, those that had been helpless to stop the pain, developed symptoms similar to clinical depression.

    In the second part of the experiment, the dogs were placed in an enclosed box separated by a low barrier over which they could see. When the shocks were administered, all the dogs had the opportunity to easily escape the pain by jumping over the partition, and this is what the dogs in the first and third group did. But the dogs in the second group, those which had previously learned that there was nothing they could do to escape the shocks, simply lay there whimpering and took it. They had come to believe that nothing they did mattered; Dr. Seligman called this behavior “learned helplessness.”

    The experiment was repeated with other animals, babies, and adult humans, and the results were the same. Once subjects had been exposed to a situation over which they had no control, they would continue to feel helpless, even in situations where they did have control.
    Learning Helplessness

    You were an awesome boyfriend, but still got dumped or a wonderful husband who still got cheated on. You’ve always been a good person, but your father died when you were in college, while the jackasses out there still get to go on fishing trips with their dads. You put your heart and soul into your job, but got passed over for the promotion. You worked your butt off in law school, but you still can’t find a job.

    When these kinds of things happen, you lose an important sense of control over your life; you stop believing you’re the captain of your destiny. You followed the rules, but you still got screwed. You feel disillusioned, and it becomes easy to develop a jaded, passive “What’s the point?” philosophy that informs all areas of your life.

    But having such an experience doesn’t guarantee that you’ll develop “learned helplessness.”

    During his research, Seligman noticed a curious phenomena; in all the experiments, a consistent ratio emerged: 2/3 of the test subjects which had experienced a situation over which they had no control developed “learned helplessness,” while the other third did not. They were able to see the helpless situation as an isolated event, and bounce back to proactively face future challenges.

    Dr. Seligman wanted to know the secret of the 1/3 who felt helpless in one situation, but didn’t carry this feeling over to new challenges. Why did the exact same events produce such different responses? The answer turned out to be something called explanatory style.
    Explaining Explanatory Style

    Dr. Seligman discovered that the difference between those who were able to bounce back and those who were susceptible to learned helplessness was rooted in the different ways people explain the things that happen to them.

    Seligman argues that our interpretation of events can be broken down into three categories:

    Personalization (internal vs. external)
    Pervasiveness (specific vs. universal)
    Permanence: (temporary vs. permanent).

    The authors of The Resilience Factor helpfully rename these categories in an easier to remember way and explain their meaning:

    Me/Not Me
    Always/Not Always
    Everything/Not Everything:

    “A ‘Me, Always, Everything’ person automatically, reflexively believes that he caused the problem (me), that it is lasting and unchangeable (always), and that it will undermine all aspects of his life (everything).When problems arise, a “Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything person believes that other people or circumstances caused the problem (not me), that it is fleeting and changeable (not always), and that it will not affect much of his life (not everything).”

    For obvious reasons, studies have shown that those with a “Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything” explanatory style are the most optimistic, while those with a “Me, Always, Everything” explanatory style are prone to pessimism and depression. Once MAE’s fail at something, they are susceptible to experiencing “learned helplessness” for a long time and across many areas of their life.

    The effect of your explanatory style not just on your resiliency but on your whole life cannot be overstated. Those with a pessimistic, “Me, Always, Everything” explanatory style are more prone to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and paralyzing inertia in the face of setbacks. Those with an optimistic, Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything style, on the other hand, experience improved health and happiness and significantly more success in the workplace, at school, and on the playing field.
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    An Example of Explanatory Style

    Let’s examine one situation and see how a Me, Always, Everything man reacts compared to a Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything man.

    Len gets fired from his job:

    If Len tends to a Me, Always, Everything thinking style then he might explain this event by saying, “I’m such an incompetent accountant. I was always out of my league at the office (Me). I’ll never be able to find another good job. (Always). My wife is probably going to leave me now. Man, my life is so screwed up. (Everything).”
    Now if Len has a Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything explanatory style, then he might explain this event by saying, “I got fired because there just isn’t very much work for me to do anymore, and the company is trying to be more efficient. (Not Me). The economy is really making holding a job difficult. But things will eventually turn around. (Not Always). The job wasn’t a good fit for me anyway; I really wasn’t using my true talents. At least I have a good wife at home to help me through this (Not Everything).”

    Flexible Optimism

    None of use the same explanatory style with everything in our lives. For instance, while optimistic people tend to use a Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything approach when dealing with bad events, they use the opposite style when good things happen. And vice versa for pessimistic people. And we can give into “learned helplessness” even when we know it’s not our fault-it’s not “Me” but it is “Always” and “Everything.” Ie., you worked your butt off in grad school but you can’t find a job because the job market is crap. It’s not your fault but you find yourself feeling like things will never get better and responding passively to everything in your life.

    Also, while a “Me, Always, Everything” approach can cause a person significant problems, always using a “Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything” style can also be unhealthy. Because sometimes it is your fault. You can slough off all of your personal responsibility for failures to keep from getting depressed, but you’ll also keep yourself from ever being successful in life. You can admit it’s your fault without going farther and believing the problem is pervasive and permanent.

    Finally, sometimes you’re right to be pessimistic. A bit of pessimism keeps you vigilant and prevents you from taking foolish risks. There’s no need to be blindly optimistic; Pollyanna was never an icon of manliness.

    So the key is not to wear rose-colored glasses all the time, but to be what Seligman calls a “flexible optimist.” This means seeing the world accurately, reacting appropriately-using the right explanatory style at the right time-and not letting pessimism obscure the things you legitimately have going for you.
    Relearning Your ABC’s

    So the bad news is that having a pessimistic explanatory style can have a big negative impact on your life. The good news is that you can change your explanatory style for the better. And it’s as easy as ABC. How we encounter and react to life’s setbacks can be broken down like this:

    A: Adversity. We face a setback or challenge.

    B: Beliefs. Our thoughts, feelings, and interpretation of the setback. These beliefs lead to:

    C: Consequences. How we act because of our beliefs about the setback.

    So we can’t change the A. But we can change the B, which will lead to a new C. It’s not adversity itself that creates our reactions, but our beliefs about our adversity. If your beliefs have been leading to negative, non-resilient responses that are dragging you down, you have to short circuit this reaction by changing your beliefs about challenges.

    Here’s an example of a pessimistic ABC in action:

    Adversity: James frequents a coffee shop because he has a crush on the girl at the register. He finally works up the courage to ask her out. But instead of saying yes, she turns him down.

    Beliefs: James thinks: “Geez, I’m such a freakin loser. I’m not attractive and don’t have anything to offer women. I’m never going to find a girlfriend.”

    Consequences: James alternates between feeling depressed and angry for the next week. He can’t muster up the courage to ask another girl out for over a year.

    James’ beliefs about what happened led to an overly negative reaction. To get a better outcome, he needs to change his beliefs by disputing them.
    Disputing Your Beliefs

    Just because you have certain beliefs, even if you have held them for as long as you can remember, that doesn’t make them true. False beliefs will limit your ability to get to the root of your problem and will limit the solutions you are able to come up with. If you have some beliefs that are sabotaging your resiliency, you need to dispute them, challenge them, and have an argument with yourself.

    Dr. Seligman recommends judging your beliefs on 4 criteria. Let’s take a look at them and explore how James could have reacted more resiliently to the rejection he received:

    1. Evidence. What are the real facts in the situation? Does the evidence support your belief or vanquish it?

    James could think, “I’m not a loser. I’m an Oxford scholar, I’ve done an Ironman, and I’ve got a great job at a prestigious law firm.”

    2. Alternatives: Pessimists have a tendency to latch onto the most dire of explanations for a bad event, ignoring more positive alternate explanations.

    James could think, “Maybe she had a boyfriend and that’s why she said no. Maybe she just got out of a bad relationship. It might have nothing to do with me personally at all.”

    3. Implications. When faced with a setback, pessimists have a tendency to jump to more and more catastrophic implications. But what are the chances of these implications really happening?

    James could think, “Just because a girl at a coffee shop turned me down doesn’t mean I’ll never have a girlfriend. I’ve had a girlfriend before and I’ll have one again.”

    4. Usefulness. Just because a belief is true, doesn’t mean it’s useful. Clinging to useless beliefs keeps you from working on the things that you actually can change about yourself.

    James could think: “Yeah, I’m not that attractive. But I have a lot going for me otherwise. Girls like confidence, so what I really need to work on is coming off as more confident and self-assured. Thinking about my unattractiveness is sabotaging that.”

    Whenever faced with an ABC, practice disputing your beliefs; have a knock down drag out fight with yourself and figure out what’s really going on. It may be beneficial to journal it, as writing can help you sort through why you’re feeling the way you are, and whether your beliefs are distorting what is really going on. It can also be helpful to have a spouse or trusted friend do the disputing for you. Tell them what you’re upset about and have them challenge you on your beliefs, asking you questions to figure out just how accurate your beliefs actually are.

    While at first it will take some effort to stop in the midst of your negative reaction and work on disputing your beliefs, over time it will become natural and will help you respond appropriately, positively, proactively-and resiliently to your challenges.
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    I always think I've come so far, and then I'll have some crazy reaction that I know makes no sense. Like, my boyfriend is upset right now because my 14-year-old cat sheds really badly, and her hair got clogged in his computer (she hates being brushed and loves to sleep by him when he games). Logical me knows he could do far more to clean in and around his computer, and so this is not my fault or my cat's and does not make him love me less. Emotional always expecting abandonment me says that clearly I caused this because she is my cat, and so I am not worthy of love and I should go pack his bags for him so as to not inconvenience him more than I already have.

    You get a mindfuck, and YOU get a mindfuck! EVERYONE GETS A MINDFUCK! I have been considering therapy to try to work on how I deal--or don't deal--with this sort of stuff.

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    I agree with all of this (my home was very broken, my parent's vicious fighting & bad divorce was just the tip of the iceberg.)

    I can say though I have had a very happy life b/c I refused to repeat the most toxic parts of what I witnessed as a kid.

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  32. #20
    Moderator Optimist's Avatar
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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/h...adult-biology/

    Today, in labs across the country, neuroscientists are peering into the once-inscrutable brain-body connection, and breaking down, on a biochemical level, exactly how the stress we experience during childhood and adolescence catches up with us when we are adults, altering our bodies, our cells, and even our DNA.

    Emotional stress in adult life affects us on a physical level in quantifiable, life-altering ways. We all know that when we are stressed, chemicals and hormones can flush our body and increase levels of inflammation. That’s why stressful events in adult life are correlated with the likelihood of getting a cold or having a heart attack.

    But when children or teens face adversity and especially unpredictable stressors, they are left with deeper, longer‑lasting scars. When the young brain is thrust into stressful situations over and over again without warning, and stress hormones are repeatedly ramped up, small chemical markers, known as methyl groups, adhere to specific genes that regulate the activity of stress‑hormone receptors in the brain. These epigenetic changes hamper the body’s ability to turn off the stress response. In ideal circumstances, a child learns to respond to stress, and recover from it, learning resilience. But kids who’ve faced chronic, unpredictable stress undergo biological changes that cause their inflammatory stress response to stay activated.

    Joan Kaufman, director of the Child and Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) programme at the Yale School of Medicine, recently analysed DNA in the saliva of happy, healthy children, and of children who had been taken from abusive or neglectful parents. The children who’d experienced chronic childhood stress showed epigenetic changes in almost 3,000 sites on their DNA, and on all 23 chromosomes – altering how appropriately they would be able to respond to and rebound from future stressors.

    kids who’ve had early adversity have a drip of fight-or-flight hormones turned on every day – it’s as if there is no off switch

    Likewise, Seth Pollak, professor of psychology and director of the Child Emotion Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, uncovered startling genetic changes in children with a history of adversity and trauma. Pollak identified damage to a gene responsible for calming the stress response. This particular gene wasn’t working properly; the kids’ bodies weren’t able to reign in their heightened stress response. ‘A crucial set of brakes are off,’ says Pollak.

    Imagine for a moment that your body receives its stress hormones and chemicals through an IV drip that’s turned on high when needed and, when the crisis passes, it’s switched off again. You might think of kids whose brains have undergone epigenetic changes because of early adversity as having an inflammation-promoting drip of fight-or-flight hormones turned on every day – it’s as if there is no off switch.

    Experiencing stress in childhood changes your set point of wellbeing for decades to come. In people such as Laura and John, the endocrine and immune systems are churning out a damaging and inflammatory cocktail of stress neurochemicals in response to even small stressors – an unexpected bill, a disagreement with their spouse, a car that swerves in front of them on the highway, a creak on the staircase – for the rest of their lives. They might find themselves overreacting to, and less able to recover from, the inevitable stressors of life. They’re always responding. And all the while, they’re unwittingly marinating in inflammatory chemicals, which sets the stage for full-throttle disease down the road, in the form of autoimmune disease, heart disease, cancer, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, fibroid tumours, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, migraines and asthma.
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    To be clear, the patients Felitti and Anda surveyed were not troubled or disadvantaged; the average patient was 57, and three-quarters had attended college. These were ‘successful’ men and women, mostly white, middle-class, with stable jobs and health benefits. Felitti and Anda expected their number of ‘yes’ answers to be fairly low.

    The correlation between having a difficult childhood and facing illness as an adult offered a whole new lens through which we could view human health and disease

    When the results came in, Felitti and Anda were shocked: 64 per cent of participants answered ‘yes’ to having encountered at least one category of early adversity, and 87 per cent of those patients also had additional adverse childhood experiences; 40 per cent had suffered two or more ACEs; 12.5 per cent had an ACE score greater than or equal to 4.

    Felitti and Anda wanted to find out whether there was a correlation between the number of adverse childhood experiences an individual had faced, and the number and severity of illnesses and disorders she developed as an adult. The correlation proved so powerful that Anda was not only ‘stunned’, but deeply moved.

    ‘I wept,’ he says. ‘I saw how much people had suffered, and I wept.’

    Felitti, too, was deeply affected. ‘Our findings exceeded anything we had conceived. The correlation between having a difficult childhood and facing illness as an adult offered a whole new lens through which we could view human health and disease.’

    Here, says Felitti, ‘was the missing piece as to what was causing so much of our unspoken suffering as human beings’.

    The number of adverse childhood experiences a patient had suffered could by and large predict the amount of medical care she would require in adulthood: the higher the ACE score, the higher the number of doctor’s appointments she’d had in the past year, and the more unexplained physical symptoms she’d reported.

    People with an ACE score of 4 were twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer than people who hadn’t faced any form of childhood adversity. For each point an individual had, her chance of being hospitalised with an autoimmune disease in adulthood rose 20 per cent. Someone with an ACE score of 4 was 460 per cent more likely to face depression than someone with a score of 0.

    An ACE score of 6 or higher shortened an individual’s lifespan by almost 20 years.

    Researchers wondered if those who encountered childhood adversity were also more likely to smoke, drink and overeat as a sort of coping strategy, and while that was sometimes the case, unhealthy habits didn’t wholly account for the correlation Felitti and Anda saw between adverse childhood experiences and later illness. For instance, those with ACE scores greater than or equal to 7 who didn’t drink or smoke, weren’t overweight or diabetic, and didn’t have high cholesterol still had a 360 per cent higher risk of heart disease than those with ACE scores of 0.

    ‘Time,’ says Felitti, ‘does not heal all wounds. One does not “just get over” something – not even 50 years later.’ Instead, he says: ‘Time conceals. And human beings convert traumatic emotional experiences in childhood into organic disease later in life.’

    Often, these illnesses can be chronic and lifelong. Autoimmune disease. Heart disease. Chronic bowel disorders. Migraines. Persistent depression. Even today, doctors puzzle over these very conditions: why are they so prevalent; why are some patients more prone to them than others; and why are they so difficult to treat?
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    The lifetime healthcare cost for each individual who experiences childhood maltreatment is estimated at $210,012 – comparable to other costly health conditions, such as having a stroke, which has a lifetime estimated cost of $159,846 per person, or type-2 diabetes, which is estimated to cost between $181,000 and $253,000.

    Further hindering change is the fact that adult physical medicine and psychological medicine remain in separate silos. Utilising ACE research requires breaking down these long-standing divisions in healthcare between what is ‘physical’ and what is ‘mental’ or ‘emotional,’ and that’s hard to achieve. Physicians have been well-trained to deal only with what they can touch with their hands, see with their eyes, or view with microscopes or scans."


    Take the Adverse Childhood Experiences test and see how many childhood stressors you carry!

    http://www.acestudy.org/yahoo_site_a....127143712.pdf

    While you were growing up, during your first 18 years of life:
    1. Did a parent or other adult in the household
    often or very often
    ...
    Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you?
    or
    Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    2. Did a parent or other adult in the household
    often or very often
    ...
    Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you?
    or
    Ever
    hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you
    ever
    ...
    Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?
    or
    Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    4. Did you
    often or very often
    feel that ...
    No one in your family loved you or
    thought you were important or special?
    or
    Your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    5. Did you
    often or very often
    feel that ...
    You didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you?
    or
    Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed
    it?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    6. Were your parents
    ever
    separated or divorced?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    7. Was your mother or stepmother:
    Often or very often
    pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her?
    or
    Sometimes, often, or very often
    kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard?
    or
    Ever
    repeatedly hit at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem dr
    inker or alcoholic or who used street drugs?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 ________
    10. Did a household member go to prison?
    Yes No If yes enter 1 _______
    Now add up your “Yes” answers: _______ This is your ACE Score
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

  35. #23
    Featured Member ava$'s Avatar
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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Yep, id say this is pretty accurate, Im all fucked up.

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  37. #24
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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    Quote Originally Posted by ava$ View Post
    Yep, id say this is pretty accurate, Im all fucked up.
    But, you're Cool, so..


    MANY MEN WANTED TO LAY ME DOWN, BUT FEW WANTED TO LIFT ME UP

    -Eartha Kitt

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  39. #25
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    Default Re: Habits You Develop Growing Up in a Broken Home

    I've come to the realization I'm batshit crazy thanks to my mother. Growing up with an OCD bipolar mom was an adventure!





    Quote Originally Posted by Miss_Red View Post
    Audritwo's asshole sees all, knows all. Spurs on armies of orcs. Casts fear into the dwindling races of Middle-Earth. Fears hobbits.

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