Approval seeking

Approval seeking

I met a woman who was beaten by her mother, a very long time ago. Her sister (who was beaten even more severely) invited their mother to live with her. The clear response to this is "holy shit, that's stupid." But my friend explained it this way. The one person that a beaten child seeks approval from the most is the person who beat them. For whatever reason.

And I thought to myself, thats not true of me. I hate my mother, but she never beat me, not badly, so the rule doesn't apply. I can despise how she treated me without suffering the syndrome of caring what she thinks.

Wrong. Turns out, I have this same psychology, although I didn't realize it. I was very happy with my decision about where my life was headed next. I was going to be self-actualizing, to exert some independence, to join the real world! Well, when I told my mother what I planned to do and she expressed the slightest bit of discontent, I found myself in a dissonance state. I found myself doubting my plans, despite how agreeable to me they had been only a short time ago. I found myself remaking plans to do things her way, which was a continuation of the same stressful lifestyle I've been living, am living now, that's driven me to make drastically different plans for the future. All of my self-actualization ambitions went out the window when the need to make my mother happy invaded my brain and planted its flag. And once I figured out that this is what was going on, that this had happened to other people and it really never made anything better, I was able to take a step back, and try again to do what I thought I had been doing all along; to not care what my mother thought, and live my own life.

And so, this all to show that if you know how psychological cause/effect systems have manifested in other people, you can recognize it in yourself, and rewrite your story. And that's why I feel that the study of psychology etc should not be limited to the people who make it college. I mean really, teaching history as a requirement for graduating high school is justified with "we want to make sure these kids don't repeat the mistakes of the past." But based on that logic, isn't the teaching of psychology much more relevant? The idea that abused children are more likely to abuse their own offspring; seems like this knowledge could help someone to change their life a lot more than the knowledge that zoot suits were a product of the economic times. Yes that's all very interesting and perhaps changes how we interpret our surroundings and maybe even how we participate politically (and isn't that really the goal), but isn't making sure that child abuse doesn't propagate through generations more important? Priorities, lets have some.

When you know what your future is likely to be, you have the power to change it. We are teaching kids about the possible future of society, but what they need is knowledge about their individual prophecies, or the people that they choose to have intimate relationships with. I mean, if I had to choose between interpersonal psychology and basic chemistry... electrons go around protons, ooh look how that knowledge affects how I live my daily life!

And that brings me to my next point...