Tag: growing up

Being Christian, relationships, religion

The Bad Habit You Must Let Go Of

Have you ever had the experience of telling someone that they are hurting you only to be met with hostility, accusations, shaming and ridicule? Yeah, me too.

Have you ever been the person who responded to a hurting person with hostility, accusations, shaming and ridicule? Yeah, me too.

There seems to be something very deep in us that reacts to even the mildest suggestion that we are less than completely perfect in all our ways by becoming defensive. I used to think that this was somehow related to being punished and shamed as children, but having been a mother to 6 kids for 19 years now, I’ve come to the conclusion that being defensive is our default position.

I suspect the issue lies in the fact that we humans are so vulnerable to each other. We are vulnerable to our parents who may or may not have the skills to raise us without causing severe damage. If they are willing to raise us at all. Humans have a long, pervasive history of infanticide.

We are vulnerable to those who we are in community with. If they tell us we are worthless, selfish, lazy and unlovable, we will absorb their ugly lies as our reality. Throughout most of human history shunning was a death sentence and our psyches still process rejection as a form of severe physical pain.

A spouse that rejects us could result in the loss of position, community and even our ability to survive. Being turned out by family can cost us relationships with those we depend on and even an inability to care for our own children.

All in all, it’s really no wonder that there’s something very deep in us that recoils at the possibility that we will be condemned or rejected. In fact, it’s one of those automatic responses from our reptilian brain, much like fear, anger and shame. All it takes is someone pointing out that your shoe lace is untied and you find yourself launching into a ridiculous litany of explanations about how you like having your shoe laces untied because unlike the sort of person who goes around pointing out untied shoe laces, you aren’t a brainless sheep.

The problem, of course, is that when we allow our reptilian brain to send us into a self-defensive frenzy, we hurt people. Continue reading “The Bad Habit You Must Let Go Of”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter1 Comment
life, religion

The Wisdom of Being Wrong

I have this idea that a big part of what is wrong with us as human beings is we don’t know how to be wrong. And it’s not only because we’re pig-headed fools. It seems to be something that’s hardwired into our brain. We know from research that people will go to great lengths to avoid facing facts which conflict with what they already believe. There are those who argue that this is what’s happening in our politics today. Or it could be that since we’re a nation of smart-asses, people who hate Obama are telling pollsters that they think he was born in Kenya just to piss everyone off. The world may never know. But the fact remains that there have been a lot of very good studies which have found that once we believe something to be true, it is bizarrely difficult to convince us that we are wrong.

Scientists think this is a perfectly reasonable survival mechanism which is shared by many animals as well. Experience is the best teacher after all. So once you experience something yourself or vicariously through someone with more experience, you learn lessons which you presume to be true. You stick to those lessons – maybe develop a way of doing things around them. And it usually works. Until your environment changes and you end up like a polar bear looking for an ice floe. Then you need to adjust.

Fortunately, if there’s anything that binds humans and bacteria together, it’s that we’re both fantastically adaptable. Frankly I think it’s a bit odd that we are actually surprised to find bacteria in inhospitable places. The bacteria are probably even more shocked that we showed up. By all rights, our physical capabilities should have kept us contained to temperate zones with enough moisture to allow for a year-round supply of food. You know, like the Garden of Eden was supposed to have been.

But that’s not us. We humans change things. We change the landscape and our locations and our clothes and bodies and even the songs we sing with glee. But changing our minds? That is one change we really don’t seem to like to do. A lot of us adhere to something my mom once told me: “I’d rather be wrong than change my mind.” (I’m pretty sure she was saying it in a “If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Wanna Be Right” sort of way and not as an expression of unwillingness to admit error. But it was still funny.) Fortunately, we all know from experience that biology or no, it doesn’t have to be this way. Not only do humans change, we grow up. In fact, we can grow up the way other organisms just grow – for our whole lives. If we want to. But it all depends on learning how to be wrong. Continue reading “The Wisdom of Being Wrong”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
culture, current events, family, kids

The disappearing generation gap?

Today over at the National Review Online, Myrna Blyth has an article making fun of life coaches. In it she makes reference to a New York Magazine article about parents in their 30’s and early 40’s who, in her words, “in their hoodies and their retro sneakers, have decided it is really very cool to remain childish even when they have children of their own. … Continue reading The disappearing generation gap?

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