3 Childhood Habits that Helped You Survive as a Child And Fail as an Adult
Each of you was born as a sensitive individual with a subliminal system that helped you find your place in the world. Depending on the reception you received when you were born and how your immediate family treated us, your sensitive body learned to either stay open and radiate or pull in and constrict. You discovered who you were by feeling your way through life. Yes, by feeling your way through life.
Over time these responses crystallized into unspoken rules for survival, usually filed away in the subconscious. They became feeling habits that, as a child, you thought kept you safe and alive or reinforced misperceptions that the child-mind made about the inhospitable nature of the world, always based on your experiences with your family.
Somewhere in your childhood experience, you decided to numb your sensitivity. As time passed, these patterns evolved in familiarity and strength, and those familiar feeling behaviors became second nature; they became habits. Look and see if the following childhood survival habits are still running and ruining your life.
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1. You learned to match others' beliefs and needs
You realized it was safer to acclimatize your behavior and emotions to match your parent's beliefs and feelings than have your own and be individual. That is how you learn to feel comfortable and safe; you do things that make those around you comfortable. You stop being affectionate because it made your parents uncomfortable. You stop being creative if you are punished or criticized for it. You stopped radiating warmly from your chest or eyes if your mother's eyes were unresponsive or your father's heart was hard. You learned to be silent and invisible because your mother was more relaxed then, or acted like your father because it validated him, or acted funny because the moments of laughter felt better than the absences created by your emotionally absent parents.
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You learned not to be an individual
Many of us as adults have not changed that habit and live in a state of constant anxiousness trying to make those around us happy so we can feel safe and comfortable ourselves. You realized it was safer to acclimatize your behavior and emotions to match your parent's beliefs and feelings than have your own and be individual and be rejected. Those repeated rejections begin to define your personal space. In your adult life, experiences that don't agree with your original emotional sonar blueprint are experienced as wrong, threatening, self-negating, and distressing. It stifles your ability to be authentic, creative, happy, and to be you.
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3. You learned to shut down to be accepted
You learned only to be open when it was safe and resigned yourself to shut down in areas where it did not validate you. You mistook agreement with your parent's beliefs and emotional biases for love. You decided that if you could not get validation for who you were, you learned to take what you could get, even if it was only emotional crumbs. When you found it unacceptable to be open and loving, you stopped expressing the free flow of love from your heart and, in many cases, shut your heart down entirely. When your heart is closed, you cannot know self-acceptance, which forces you into fear and pain about rejection. This action caused you to be fearful of any rejection or invalidation in your life. Many live in the habit of constant fear of being invalidated or rejected their entire life.
Understand that your connection with your family established this emotional atmosphere when you were young. When you did not get the sought-after approval and validation, it set a pattern of seeking that carried over into your adult life. Today they no longer help you survive, much less thrive, but they are still running your life, usually unconsciously. These habits keep your vibrations low, act as obstacles to your transformation, and hinder the manifestation of your life visions.
These unhealthy feeling habits do have a positive aspect; they show you what needs to be healed in your life and where you have the potential to develop new, healthier levels of awareness and sensitivity. They point to underlying emotional wounds and blocked energy flows that control your life's potential.
It is possible to unlearn the old emotional habits relating to the old emotional frequencies that have controlled your life and to open your heart, take on new emotional frequencies, learn self-acceptance and practice them until they become an empowering way of feeling and thinking.
About Fredd Lenn
Fredd is an internationally renowned seer, healer, teacher, business advisor and inner congruence coach. He works with clients from all walks of life, including European royalty, priests, monks, cowboys, teachers, students, CEOs, artists, and business leaders. Fredd’s unique blend of mystical and western practices goes beyond self-help, therapy, and recovery to restore the belief in your own power to make a difference in your own life and the lives of others.