Resulting behavior from childhood experience?

[zbenjii]

I'm just wondering how an upbringing could affect a person's behavior.

I have a sister who is two years younger than I am. My father was very laid back. He would tell me stories before I would go to sleep. Pretty nice. However, ever since I could remember my mom treated me like crap. For example, my first assignment in kindergarten was to draw a picture of my family, and I was told to ask for help from my parents. Naturally, my dad was at work so I asked my mom to help me. I don't think I was a very good artist, she slapped my face--the only way I remember this is because my face was really hot-- and crumpled the handout and threw it. I went to go pick it up and uncrumpled it. I asked her how am I going to hand this in. At this point I was in tears. She told me that my teacher would take it and then she told me it better be done by the time I got back. I didn't really know what to do. I must have just sat there. I could hear her furiously doing house chores. The noises were violent and scary. She came back and I still hadn't finished the drawing which made her even more furious. When she gets like that she screams and turns red. She messed up my room and told me to clean it up. While this was happening she was stomping around and making a whole lot of angry noises. This lasted for about three or four hours. It always lasted until my dad came home. The only thing I could do is just sit there and take it.

When my dad came home it easily escalated into a fight. My mom is easily instigated and she cannot be told what to do. I was told to never talk back to her. If I did talk back to her, she would start screaming and getting violent. Sometimes hitting me, but most of the time making scary noises and throwing things around me. She would often curse and say she was going to beat me to death. When my mom and dad got into fights she would tell me it was my fault, and talk about how she hated men. This sequence of events happened pretty often. I would say it happened about every other day, if not everyday. Again, the only thing i could do was stay silent. I eventually started picking on my sister and she sometimes would start crying. Usually I would say that I was going to burn her barbie dolls or something of that nature and she would start crying. My mom would start her fit which lasted for hours. The result was me crying or running outside to avoid her. She would scream into the backyard and neighborhood that I'd better come inside. She would stand by the door and as soon as I walked by her she would start hitting me.

After a few hours of rage and a few hours of silence, by now it was nighttime and time for sleep, she would come into my room and apologize for her temper. She would say that I shouldn't make her angry. She would tell me to say sorry to her for exchange for a sorry. Sometimes the rage went into the nighttime and my bedtime was the only thing that could save me from her cycles. Sometimes she would awake me.

The normal treatment was that i was somewhat ignored. I would sometimes ask her for the definition of words and she would just abruptly and angrily tell me to look it up in a dictionary. Sometimes the beatings were much worse or more scary. One time I made her late for her job and i was in the car. She was wearing 1.5 inch heels. As soon as i got in the car she took off her shoe and started hitting me with it. It hurt obviously but she landed a shot on my head and it was soft for a while.

Another time she took out a dulled steak knife and poked me with it. All the while she would eventually come to me after a tantrum of stomping and clanking and screaming and silence for what seemed to be hours on end and apologized. I accepted and apologized too in fear of angering her. Many times I would ask her why she doesn't hit or yell at my sister, but she would never give me a response.

Currently I just want to know what kind of an effect that would have on a person. I'm 22 now. When people give me even the slightest negative feedback( they look away or tell me to stop doing something) I get this feeling like I should retract from them. I feel unwanted by females even though I'm physically attracted to them. I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. Does this have any correlation?

Thanks,


Ben

[voodoo scientist]

How would you feel if I told you that was a very stupid question? Of course it has correlation. Living with what's essentially a violent and crazy person for your entire childhood will have some ramifications on your personality, yes. Fortunately, it seems you played the survival game pretty well and came out intelligent enough in the end. Basically, you survived in an environment where the best course of action for survival and personal happiness were behavior patterns that are different from the equivalent real-life behavior pattern.

You need to recognize the warning signals your brain sends out, like timidness or anxiety or a desire to retract, for what they often are: false warnings based on rules that no longer apply. Your brain needs time to reconfigure itself for not living in a crazy, dangerous and arbitrary environment (your house), but instead in a mildly stupid, not that dangerous and still largely arbitrary environment (the world). The only way to further the process of reconfiguring is to act and learn the new rules.

[Karaten]

Of course, we do our most learning as a child, don't you think that will carry with us throughout our lives?

[chynna16]

good informative post
keep it live

[zbenjii]

How would one go about changing or learning new behavior. Or better yet, how can I make the change faster? Should I just force interactions with the opposite sex. I generally feel comfortable around males.

[voodoo scientist]

Forcing interaction is pretty much the way to go. Learning new behaviors is all about giving yourself a push to do something in a new way and then fairly comparing the results with those you would get with the 'normal' way of doing it. Try not to allow yourself to "simulate" doing it in your head and then discarding it because the simulation ends in a worse way than the normal way - because the brain lacks all the information, any untried way will automatically 'feel' less certain than a tried way when analyzed this way, and pretty much can't be trusted.

I think you formulated a very interesting question that not nearly enough people dare ask. Learning how to adapt to your environment the fastest is probably one of the most useful skills one can have.

[daftcow]

Cracking advice

I also recommend that you read "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz.  You can pick copies up fairy cheap from Amazon.  It is a really good book and helped me a lot.

You've done the hardest part already in taking steps to get help.  Keep it up, you'll do fine.

Keep in touch and let us know how you are doing.

Ali x

[aboynamedsue]

You probably have lots of hatred and fear towards women and you don't know it. Most of this might be in your subconscious. Women can sense it though, which is why they try and avoid you. Make some friends with women, convince your subconscious they're not all bad. Really, most women aren't crazy psycos that beat their children.

[Dollar hunter]

Yes dear from the childhood we start learning everything,and we learn from our mistakes only.and the world teaches us so many things.