When I wrote my book, Raising a Happy Child, a major impetus was the realization, as I stated it in the book’s PR, that there is so much violence and dysfunction in the world, whether in the family, the workplace, or the larger world, because “insecure people are raising insecure children who become insecure adults who …” in a never-ending cycle. I wrote the book in an attempt to break the cycle, to change this fact of human development.
More recently, I have given much thought to the phenomenon of trauma (see my post, “Trauma”). And I realize that insecurity a result of trauma. We experience something negative in our lives, are traumatized by the incident, and become insecure.
Regarding adults, there is a difference between the incident which is the catalyst for re-experiencing trauma and the trauma itself. (All adult trauma is based on childhood trauma.) How we react to the incident, whether through our heart and true self or through our ego-mind, determines whether we re-experience trauma as a result of the incident, or whether it becomes just another fact of life which we experience, which is to say we experience it directly, with dispassion. Of course for most people on this earth, they have no choice because they know nothing other than their ego-mind and so they are re-traumatized.
Regarding children, while the distinction between the event and the trauma are technically still applicable, in fact they merge. For example, when a new-born baby is taken away from its mother to sleep in a layette rather than constantly being in physical contact with its mother, as would be the case in nature, that incident always results in trauma because the child has no ability to act with dispassion. One of its primal needs is not being met. When a baby cries for a long period with no one coming to comfort him, the same results. These are the beginning of the trauma we call “insecurity.”
Parents are like all human beings, people who have experienced trauma in their lives. The severity of their trauma determines how much of an impact it has on their raising their children. But impact them it surely does. Ways in which parents interact with their children may seem to have no connection with insecurity or trauma. But if you look deeply you will see that the nature of all parent-child interactions, just like all parent-other interactions, are based on deep insecurities which in turn are based on childhood trauma. All of the reactions to our life-experiences … the emotions, judgments, cravings, attachments … are all a function of our insecurities and thus of our childhood trauma,
And so the revised wording for the statement I used in promoting my book would be “traumatized, insecure people are raising traumatized, insecure children who become traumatized, insecure adults who …” Trauma is the elephant in the room when we sit with our suffering. Until we identify and face our childhood trauma, embrace it, and allow the pain caused by the trauma to rise up and express itself (see again my post, “Trauma”), we cannot be fully healed, we cannot be free of our suffering.
More recently, I have given much thought to the phenomenon of trauma (see my post, “Trauma”). And I realize that insecurity a result of trauma. We experience something negative in our lives, are traumatized by the incident, and become insecure.
Regarding adults, there is a difference between the incident which is the catalyst for re-experiencing trauma and the trauma itself. (All adult trauma is based on childhood trauma.) How we react to the incident, whether through our heart and true self or through our ego-mind, determines whether we re-experience trauma as a result of the incident, or whether it becomes just another fact of life which we experience, which is to say we experience it directly, with dispassion. Of course for most people on this earth, they have no choice because they know nothing other than their ego-mind and so they are re-traumatized.
Regarding children, while the distinction between the event and the trauma are technically still applicable, in fact they merge. For example, when a new-born baby is taken away from its mother to sleep in a layette rather than constantly being in physical contact with its mother, as would be the case in nature, that incident always results in trauma because the child has no ability to act with dispassion. One of its primal needs is not being met. When a baby cries for a long period with no one coming to comfort him, the same results. These are the beginning of the trauma we call “insecurity.”
Parents are like all human beings, people who have experienced trauma in their lives. The severity of their trauma determines how much of an impact it has on their raising their children. But impact them it surely does. Ways in which parents interact with their children may seem to have no connection with insecurity or trauma. But if you look deeply you will see that the nature of all parent-child interactions, just like all parent-other interactions, are based on deep insecurities which in turn are based on childhood trauma. All of the reactions to our life-experiences … the emotions, judgments, cravings, attachments … are all a function of our insecurities and thus of our childhood trauma,
And so the revised wording for the statement I used in promoting my book would be “traumatized, insecure people are raising traumatized, insecure children who become traumatized, insecure adults who …” Trauma is the elephant in the room when we sit with our suffering. Until we identify and face our childhood trauma, embrace it, and allow the pain caused by the trauma to rise up and express itself (see again my post, “Trauma”), we cannot be fully healed, we cannot be free of our suffering.
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