Before we dive into the example of self-help, I would like to clarify that the example is just that: an example. It is not supposed to be generalised to each and every deconstructive behaviour emerging from childhood and should be viewed as a simplified, psychological reasoning.
Self-Help
As social and emotional beings, humans thrive to feel good, seek fulfilment and be accepted in social groups. When born, we arrive at this world in a state of full authenticity (as a young child, we express what we feel and think, no matter if others perceive this as appropriate, or not).
When growing up, during kindergarten, school, or upbringing in general, we encounter that society has unspoken rules, and that others expect us to adhere to those. We may, at some point, observe that being fully authentic and honest with our emotions, as we were used to in early childhood, might go against some of those rules. Even more so, superficial principles and sayings such as “men don’t cry” or “come on, pull yourself together”, to name just two, directly forbid us to be authentic and express and process our emotions freely. Furthermore, expectations of dear ones often force us to behave unauthentically, such as parents who dictate the future job of their children for instance. If we do not cooperate with those superficial principles though, we might get punished for that by others, mostly by a kind of rejection. This can be especially hurtful when coming from people we feel a connection with or want to belong to.
In order to prevent such hurtful punishment for a social being and maintain acceptable in the eyes of others, we humans tend to develop self-help strategies. Self-help strategies could entail pretending to be happy, strong, tough, cool, or simply said: putting on a social mask to hide our vulnerability. Self-help strategies can also entail to adapt one’s beliefs and self-view according to what others think of oneself (“If they say I’m weak and ugly, then this might actually be true …”). Our mind is very creative in finding ways to prevent such pain in future situations. “If I just say I’m fine next time, they will not make fun of me crying…”; “If I start to laugh at them first, I am the one who is superior”, “If I make fun of others, they may not perceive me to be vulnerable as well”.
Why self-help? In those situations, there is often no one teaching us a healthy way to cope with that rejection and hurtful feelings, meaning we are on our own and need to deal with those emotions ourselves. This then leads to a variety of different coping-mechanisms, good and bad. The consequences of such mostly come to light only years later.
With the tendency of humans to be consistent and form habits from previously more-or-less successfully working actions, the vicious cycle emerges. “Since I started to lie about my real feelings, others do not laugh at me any more, because they perceive me to be cool and tough now!”. On the first sight, the self-help strategy “lying about feelings” seemed to work in diminishing the hurtful rejection. At a second glance though, we might find that this self-help strategy disconnects us from our true feelings, our true being and personality. This disconnection paves the way for a multitude of ill-functioning behavioural patterns (such as depression, unhealthy eating habits, aggression, nervousness, anxiety, …).
The story could go further in multiple directions. People who disconnect themselves from their own inner world lose their ability to feel true happiness in life and might therefore engage in overly pleasure-seeking behaviour (overeating, drug-misuse, gambling, porn-addiction, etc.) which become compulsive (seemingly uncontrollable), habitual and automatic over time. This habituation slowly starts to be integrated in our self-view and after some time, we do not only “use a coping-mechanism” but “identify with this type of action” and think, that is just how we are. Such identification could lead to heavily skewed and distorted self-views, dissatisfaction, self-hate and feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. On the other hand, disconnection from one’s own feelings might result in a sense of inner emptiness, depressive-like states. To “fill this hole” (as many speak of it), an often exaggerated, unhealthy coping-mechanism emerges, which could lead us to be overdependent on others, feeling insecure, or the feeling of “needing to prove myself to others and myself”, among many other outcomes.
Conclusion
Unprocessed childhood traumas of every kind can potentially persist into late adulthood and limit our ability to cope with life-stressors, ending in a vicious cycle of self-perpetuating deconstructive coping-mechanisms. Finding a way out of this cycle is often perceived as “impossible” or simply “not manageable”, which may finally lead to accepting that one’s fate is determined by “being like that”. It is therefore of crucial importance to seek help from other persons, favourably professionals, who see the situation in a different light, from a different perspective than oneself. The process of breaking through this cycle takes time and patience with oneself and one’s progress. The most important part here to understand is, that this break through is possible, and that there are people who truly want to support you in this process.