Why focus on the negative, you ask? Isn’t it better to make lemonade from sour lemons, look for a spoonful of honey in a barrel of tar and repeat, like a mantra, the words «What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger»? No, not better.
Now I will tell you the brutal truth: if you were not loved, neglected, ignored or constantly scolded as a child, and your emotional needs remained unmet, then the last thing you need is to look at the past through rose-colored glasses.
Childhood experiences taught you not to trust your own perceptions and taught you to use unhealthy ways to deal with everyday stress. If you try to look positively at the past, you will not be able to understand what damage has been done to you and what unhealthy habits you have developed.
All these banal ideas about positive thinking will interfere with development and drown out the voice of the true «I». Positive thinking in general can prevent us from healing after a disappointment, separation, divorce, or severe loss.
Why positive thinking is just another roadblock in your path
One of the most important reasons is that positive thinking only reinforces our culture’s prohibitions against criticizing mothering. Most daughters, when they decide to talk about their experiences, are met with disbelief or hear comments in response that downplay the significance of the pain they have experienced.
“Well, it wasn’t all that bad, you grew up completely normal”, “Maybe it’s time to forget about the past and live in the present?”, “No one had perfect parents, stop complaining.” Trying to look at the past in a positive way only adds another layer that hides the problems from this past.
The atmosphere of constant discontent convinces the child that something is really wrong with him. Growing up, he begins to criticize himself
Why is it worth admitting that as a child, life really threw you a “sour lemon”? And why do you have to admit how dark things really were, and come to terms with the fact that much of what you experienced did not make you stronger at all?
1. You have become accustomed to considering abnormal behavior as normal. As children, we are sure that what happens in our family happens in everyone else. The child’s view of the world is shaped by the little world in which he lives. It is his mother and father who show him how to understand and interpret everything that happens in this little world. If parents insult a child — for example, they call him worthless or worthless, or sharply criticize his personal qualities, they often justify this with discipline, strictness, the need to «temper character».
The atmosphere of constant discontent convinces the child that something is really wrong with him. Having matured, he begins to criticize himself. As a result, a habit is developed to attribute all failures and defeats to personal shortcomings that do not really exist or that can be dealt with. As long as you justify self-criticism by “character building” or deny the problem, you will remain in the role of a child.
2. You tend to turn a blind eye to problems or deny them altogether. A child who did not receive love and support in childhood wants more than anything to be “normal” — in order to finally get all this. These two deep needs make the child hope that somehow he can change everything and make his mother love him.
Sometimes we need a good dose of healthy realism to change our lives for the better.
I call it the dance of denial — it’s a kind of magical thinking, the belief that the secret to winning a mother’s love is somewhere nearby, it just needs to be discovered. Positive thinking seems to crown this whole construction, which allows you to deny the problem.
3. You are used to withdrawing from feelings. A mother who feels good about a child teaches him to cope with negative emotions and stress. Children of such mothers (with a secure type of attachment) are more psychologically stable and more easily endure failures and defeats compared to those to whom their parents could not give these skills.
The situation is even worse in those families where tears are considered a sign of weakness and a reason for criticism — as a result, children learn to hide emotions. Since young children have not yet developed the necessary defense mechanisms, they are likely to begin to withdraw from their own feelings or «bury» them deep inside. Positive thinking makes it difficult to see the hidden problems that need to be addressed, especially the accumulated heartache.
4. You tend to distrust your own thoughts and perceptions. Positive thinking will only make you doubt yourself even more. You need to learn to drown out that inner voice that says that you are wrong or it seemed to you. But you can’t do that until you dare to face the truth.
5. You are sure that nothing can be done. Positive thinking — «It’s time to leave the past in the past and move on» — convinces you that nothing can be done about the consequences of a difficult past. But this is absolutely not the case: both psychotherapy and independent work on oneself can change the situation for the better. Sometimes, in order to change lives for the better, we need a good dose of healthy realism.