Thursday, October 28, 2010

What is your fear?

According to a theorist (Adler) we all have four basic fears. This makes a lot of sense to me and I can see myself clearly.  This is in normal (I may be normal) emotionally healthy individuals.

We generally have at least one if, not more of these fears. Chart form is easiest but no matter what I do my chart does not turn out so I'll cover each point as a sentence. There are four fears, common ways we over compensate and then how others usually feel.

  1. Insignifance. When we fear insignificance we tend to do big or act big.  Others often feel irritated.
  2. Criticism.  We need to control everybody and everything. Other often feel angry.
  3. Rejection.  We need to please others, but then are angry because people do not always appreciate what we do.  Others then feel hurt because they thought it is what we wanted.
  4. Hassle.  Avoid confrontation at all cost. Others than feel helpless.
Do you see yourself? I sure do.  I am definitely the last. I am telling you this because we need to think about the way our fears effect the way we parent.  How hard is it to parent a child with trauma/attachment issues if you avoid confrontation at all cost? Impossible.  When we first showed up at attachment therapy I had no idea how to deal other than be authoritarian or avoid. Neither is healthy. I HAD to learn to face confrontation in a peaceful way.  If we want our kids to face our fears, what better example than to face our own first!

Above chart by Jackie Meyer of http://www.counselingandenrichment.com/

3 comments:

C said...

The chart showed up perfectly in my feed reader, but the column was too narrow on your blog. It's tougher to read and understand. Just FYI - because this is rich and I'm going to be linking the HECK out of it!

Brenda said...

Thanks Christine. I couldn't get it to work as a chart no matter what!!

Linda said...

Catching and reading several posts. I see myself and my dauthger. I have had some instances recently of these fears crippling relationships.

I can't imagine the challenge of parenting RAD children. This is good advice in our home too. Thanks for your wise words.