Identifying the Root Causes of Emotional Responses: Parents

Posted on by March 2, 2015avatar
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Mom and DadI am continuing our study on Emotions to discover how and when a negative response to life’s circumstances might have taken root in our life. In order to find the root, we must look at our past influences and experiences from birth to adulthood to see how and when the door was opened for a negative emotional response to begin.

Last week, I listed 4 influences that weigh heavily on our responses to life’s circumstances. Take a look at Hannah’s illustration for a view of those 4 influences.

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Today, we are going to concentrate on our PARENTS, which most educators believe affects us the most. In fact, psychologists have discovered that 85% of our behavior, attitudes, and emotional responses are established by the age of 5-6 by watching our parents.

One of the most fascinating studies I have ever done in regards to parents was from the book, You and Your Parents by Robert McGhee. It helped me to put pieces of the puzzle together for my life, starting in childhood, as well as being a big asset as I taught adult class on The Grieving Process.

The following is an excerpt from that book.

Types of Parents

McGee says that parents can be classified into 5 general types.

  1. Supportive, Accepting Parents
    These are the parents who show love by affirming and disciplining in a loving way.
  2. Emotionally Distant, Inactive Parents
    A child may grow up having all his physical needs met, but misses out on hugs, affirmation, and intimacy. The parents are home, but not at home emotionally.
  3. Abusive Parent
    Abuse comes in the form of physical, sexual, or verbal.
  4. The Absent-Father Syndrome
    A father may be absent from home due to death, divorce, work, or a pro-longed illness. This father doesn’t provide his children with the time and emotional support they need.
  5. Perfectionistic Parents
    These parents set high and rigid standards that their children cannot reach.

Blocked Development

From these types of parental modeling, McKee says that a child’s emotional, relational, and his view of God MAY BE BLOCKED in one of the four stages of development.

1. Bonding: The Need to be Loved. (Birth-2 years old)
Its’ purpose is to convey feelings of warmth, love, value, worth, closeness, and trust. Some of the symptoms of being blocked in the bonding stage might include: shame, depression, emptiness, fear of closeness, addicted to drugs, alcohol, success, food.

A lady in one of my grieving classes described years of rejection from her mother. There were no hugs, no “I love you.” Just Mom going through the mechanical process of providing the physical needs for her daughter. At 15, Carrie got pregnant, and Mom insisted on an abortion. Lying on the operating table, Carrie ached once again for Mom to hug and comfort her, but none came. Years passed with Carrie desperately trying to please her mother and win her love. She also came to believe that God didn’t love her; particularly after what she had done. At 28, Carrie was blocked in the bonding stage emotionally, relational, and spiritually.

2. Separateness: The Need to Set Personal Boundaries. (2-11 years old)
In this stage, parents sometimes are unable to find a balance between advising and giving freedom to their child to begin forming his own thoughts and beliefs. Symptoms of blocked separateness includes: feeling responsible for making others happy, assuming others’ thoughts, feelings and behavior instead of developing one’s own, being unable to say no without feeling guilty, saying yes to please others.

Joy, another lady in my grieving class, shared her journey through bonding and separateness. Joy never doubted for a moment how much her parents loved her as a child. They showered her with hugs, provided her every need, and disciplined her with love and kindness. She also sensed just how much that Jesus loved her. So, what could be the problem?

Out of their love for her, Joy’s parents kept her under their wing to protect her. In short, they smothered her. Joy became a cripple at making decisions on her own and lost confidence in herself. She lost sight of how she felt, what she desired, and was too intimidated to pursue her own thoughts and beliefs. She became a puppet on a string in her adult life trying to please everyone with whom she interacted. She also didn’t feel she could trust herself to make a decision God was calling her to make.

3. Adolescence: The Need to Develop Adult Behavior and Identity. (12-18 years)
Symptoms of blocked Adolescence might include: a poor self-concept, uncertainty about one’s personal strengths and weakness, bitterness, making unwise choices, unwilling to take risks, taking impulsive risks, unwilling to accept responsibility and consequences.

4. Maturity: The Need to Continue Growing in Adult Behavior and Identity. (19 & older)
Symptoms of blocked Maturity might include: anxiety about the future resulting in sleeplessness, chest pains, muscular tension, increasing depression, inability to concentrate, being hurt and becoming preoccupied with revenge or “getting even.”

My former pastor, the late David Berkheimer, tells the story of a young couple who had just gotten married and the husband was watching his young bride cook their first Sunday meal of pot roast. Before she put the roast in the pan, she cut off the tip end of it. “Why are you cutting off the tip end of the roast,” the astonished young husband asked. “Because Mama does and you are supposed to do it that way,” she replied.

Not satisfied with her answer, he called his mother-in-law and asked her, “Why do you have to cut the tip end off the roast before cooking it?” His mother-in-law replied, “I cut it off because my mother did it that way. I’ll ask my mother that question.” Upon asking the grandmother the question that had so intrigued this new member of the family, grandma replied: “You don’t have to cut the tip end of the roast off before cooking it. I cut it off because my pan was too small.”

I conclude that sometimes examples of behavior and attitudes our parents modeled before us are good and should be passed down; sometimes they are not, and it goes much deeper than whether to cut the end off a pot roast or not.

Exodus 20:5 says: “I am a jealous God visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation that hate me.”

The key word in this scripture is visiting. The King James’ version of the Bible translates visiting as bringing down.

Ask yourself the question, “Do you see a re-occurrence in your family for the last couple of generations of such things as bitterness, sexual misconduct, incest, racism, alcoholism, gambling, manipulation, negative attitudes, thought patterns, etc.?”

May I say to you that those things are paying a visit to each generation because no one has closed the door on them when they came knocking?

The good news is this: You can be an instrument in charting a new course of direction for your children and grandchildren where there have been negative influences from the previous generation. When we realize what God did for us on the cross, no past family situation can out influence the influence of our heavenly father.

May I leave you with one final thought.

It is God’s design that parents model before their children the express image of Jesus. However, back to the days of Adam and Eve, all that changed as sin entered the world. Parents are imperfect beings and for various reasons sometimes can’t or won’t be the way God intended them to be.

For example:

  • Some have financial or health problems that consume their minds.
  • Others have unresolved hurts from their own past and transfer these hurts to their children.
  • Some of them are modeling the example their parents set before them, and don’t know any difference.
  • Most parents are doing the best they know how to do at the time!

Join Hannah and me next week as we take a look at another root cause of your negative emotional response: Temperament.

Identifying the Root Causes of Emotional Responses

Posted on by February 23, 2015avatar
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tree of lifeA couple of weeks ago, I began a series on Emotions, the “bulk” of The Grieving Process. Thus far, we discovered that emotions are God-given, consisting of both positive and negative feelings. They do not have to be explained, justified, or apologized for; however, what you do with those negative feelings could affect you for the rest of your life.

Last week, I stated that there are many negative feelings, but they all can be classified under three categories: anger, guilt, depression. I also noted that during grieving, most likely, you will experience all three, but at some point in the process, one will probably dominate because it has become a stronghold in our lives. A stronghold can be defined as an area of our life that is out of control and is destructive. If you took the tests that were provided, you discovered your most common negative response.

Today, it is time to find out where the door might have been left open for the negative response to take root. In order to find the root, we must look at our past influences and experiences from birth to adulthood to see how and when a door was opened for an emotional stronghold to begin. This is a very pivotal step in the healing process. It can pave the way, not only to the healing of a past hurt, but also to the management of an emotional response as well.

To those people who might be grieving through the death of a loved one, you may question the reason for looking back at past influences. “Why are you asking me to look into my past?” My past has nothing to do with the loss of the special person in my life!”

Please bear with me while I share with you an example from my own life.

My dad died when I was 25 years old. I had had a good relationship with him, but I spent months overcome with guilt, berating myself as to why “I had not told him more often that I loved him”; “Why I hadn’t done this, or why I hadn’t done that.” Yes, guilt was a part of the normal grieving process, but “my guilt trip” went beyond the normal stage of grieving.

Coupled with that, I thought it was now my duty to make sure that my mother was happy. After all, Daddy was gone, so I should be the one to give her joy and happiness. If I didn’t see instant results, the guilt adrenaline began to flow. I became a prisoner to guilt.

Little by little, with the help of good sound teaching and the Holy Spirit, I began to realize that my journey with guilt had begun in my childhood many years prior to my Dad’s death. It had spread into all areas of my life like an infectious disease, and in the process, I hurt innocent people by making decisions based on a guilt complex.

There is another reason why I take a personal interest in you looking into your past to identify the root of your emotional response. I have been the recipient of a misguided target of anger from someone.

Let me explain what I mean by misguided target.

In the United States’ missile bombings in Afghanistan a few years ago, The Red Cross Building was hit. Upon investigation, it was discovered that someone had entered one digit wrong in the computer of the intended enemy target. As a result the intended enemy target was missed, and innocent people got hit instead.

Likewise, many people going through a situation will “overly” respond to it out of a past wound that has not been healed from their past. Meanwhile, innocent people around them will receive bombshells of their anger, guilt, or depression.

So, I have been on both sides of the fence:
• I hurt innocent people by making decisions based on a guilt complex
• I have been the recipient of a misguided target of anger from someone

Are you now getting the picture as to why it is helpful for you to look into your past influences to see where you might have opened the door for a negative emotion to come in?

When you get a glimpse of some of the major experimental influences that have affected your life, a whole new world of freedom awaits you. Not only will it be an opportunity for a past hurt to be healed, but also the healing and management of an emotional response to your current and future circumstances.

Of all the influences we will ever encounter, most educators believe that nothing affects us as strongly as our parents. Psychologists have discovered that 85% of our behavior, attitudes, and emotional responses are established by the age of 5-6 by watching our parents. These behaviors, good or bad, are often carried into adulthood.

There are exceptions to the parental influence and it is these influences that also weigh heavily on our response to life. Therefore, in the next four weeks, we will take a look at what could be the 4 major influences that determine how we respond to life.

Take a close look at the illustration Hannah has so beautifully illustrated that we will be covering.

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Ground Rules

Before we start looking into these 4 major influences, I think it is important to establish a few ground rules to follow in targeting the root.

  • Do not look at these influences to blame others for your responses.
  • Do not strain your memory to “dig up” negatives influences on your life. The Holy Spirit knows when and what to bring to your memory. He knows when you are ready to receive and deal with situations in your past.
  • Be aware of false memory. Satan likes nothing more than to suggest those things that are not true. Desire truth in your inner most parts as The Holy Spirit directs, not what Satan would suggest through your mind or even at the suggestion of others.
  • Release yourself of all feelings of guilt, betrayal, and disloyalty. Taking an objective look, not to blame but to be objective, is not being disloyal.

Happy Face

Challenge: Proverbs 11:9. “Through knowledge, the just shall be delivered.”

Knowledge becomes the difference between victory and defeat
as we deal with hurts and losses in our lives.

That is the real reason we look into our past.
To win a victory in freedom, not only for ourselves, but for future generations.

With those points in mind, next week, Hannah and I would like to take you on a stroll back to the time you were born and take a look at the first people you encountered when you entered the world—your parents.

Identify Your Most Common Emotional Response

Posted on by February 16, 2015avatar
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hannah doorLast week, I started a series of posts on Emotions. Emotions, or feelings as they are also called, are the “bulk” of the Grieving Process. They can be defined as reactions or responses to things that happen in our life; our inner self being expressed.

We discovered that emotions are God-given, consisting of both positive and negative feelings. They do not have to be explained, justified, or apologized for, however, what you do with those negative feelings could affect you the rest of your life, which brings us to this lesson today.

There are many words to express our negative emotions, however, for the most part, they can be classified into 3 main categories:

ANGER      GUILT      DEPRESSION

When we experience a loss of any kind, chances are we will experience all three emotions sometime during the Grieving Process.  For example:

  • Anger works in the present: We are prone to say: “This shouldn’t have happened to me!”
  • Guilt works in the past: “If only I had done this, or if only I had done that, this wouldn’t have happened to me!”
  • Depression works in the future. “What’s going to happen to me now?”

Though we may experience all 3 emotions during the process of grieving, one will usually dominate over the other two. Why? It probably has become a stronghold in our life. What is meant by a stronghold and how does it develop?

Stronghold Defined: An area of our lives we cannot control, which is destructive.

Robert McGee, author of Search for Significance, says that emotional strongholds develop from beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions; ALL of which work together to respond to life’s situations. Look at the chart below to see how this works.

Situations

Beliefs > Thoughts > Emotions > Actions > Stronghold

  1. Situations are the real events or experiences that occur in our lives.
  2. Beliefs are ideas that we perceive as true in our mind. Many of these beliefs are
    true, such as “America is the land of opportunity.” Many beliefs are not true; they
    are lies we believe in our mind. such as: My boss snubbed me. I believe that he thinks he is
    above me, so I quit my job. I believe that I failed and will always have to live in shame.
  3. Thoughts are ideas in our minds that have been shaped by our beliefs. They stimulate
    our emotions.
  4. Emotions are the feelings we have, based on what we believe about a situation. We
    often think that it is the situation that triggers our emotions. But this is not true. It is our
    belief about the situation that affects our emotions. Our emotions then launch our actions.
  5. Actions are the things we do based on how we feel about a situation. We have a
    choice as to what to do with how we feel about a situation: ignore the message, act
    on it, or do the opposite. An un-renewed mind, according to the Word of God, will cause
    us to act upon the negative emotion.
  6. Stronghold As the same negative emotion and the subsequent action is repeated, we have
    opened the door to a stronghold, an area of our life that is out of control, and is destructive.
    In essence we have opened the door to sin in our lives.

The Bible introduces us to the open door principle of strongholds in the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:3-7.

At harvest time, Cain brought the Lord a gift of his farm produce, and Abel brought the fatty cuts of meat from his best calves. The Lord accepted Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s. This situation made Cain dejected and very angry.

God said to Cain: “Why are you so angry? Why is your face so dark with rage? It can be bright with joy if you will do what you should. But if you refuse to obey, watch out. Sin is waiting to attack you, longing to destroy you. But you can conquer it.” (Living Bible)

hannah door 2

What God was literally saying to Cain was that Satan was crouched at his doorway, waiting to leap into his life. He told Cain that he had the choice to close that open door and not let Satan destroy him.

Unfortunately, Cain did not close the door to anger and murdered his brother, Abel. (verse 8) God then said to Cain: “You are hereby banished from this ground which you have defiled with your brother’s blood. No longer will it yield crops for you, even if you toil on it forever.” (verse 11-12)

Just as Cain could no longer produce crops on the soil God had given him, when we are out of control with feelings of anger, guilt, or depression we, too, cannot produce a harvest for the Kingdom of God, the very purpose for which we were created.

My friends, I know what it is like to be out of control and at the point of destruction with negative feelings of Guilt.

Perhaps you are not quite sure what your most common negative response is in your life. Today, I would like to give you tests that have been devised by prominent Christian psychologists and authors in the field of emotional development. I have given these tests for many years to classes I teach on Grieving. I find them to be valid.

Why not take the time to take the tests on anger, guilt, and depression to identify your most common emotional response. Click the green ‘Print Friendly’ button at the top of this post to print a copy of the test. Check only those items that apply to you. Summarize your findings of all three tests at the end.

ANGER: Anger can be classified into three different categories: suppressed, open
aggression, and passive anger.

I. Suppressed Anger: Holding anger inside

  1. I am very image conscious. I don’t like to let others know my problems.
  2. Even when I feel flustered, I portray myself publicly as having it all together.
  3. I am rather reserved about sharing my problems or frustrations.
  4. If a family member or friend upsets me, I let days pass without mentioning it.
  5. I have a tendency to be depressed and moody.
  6. Resentful thinking is common for me, although people would never suspect it.
  7. I have suffered with physical complaints: headaches, stomach pain, sleep irregularity.
  8. There are times when I wonder if my opinions or preferences are really valid.
  9. Sometimes I feel paralyzed when confronted by an unwanted situation.
  10. I’m not inclined to initiate conversations about sensitive or troublesome topics.

II. Open Aggression: A stand for personal worth, needs, and convictions at someone else’s expense. This type of anger does not hide. Includes explosiveness, rage, intimidation, blame, bickering, criticism.

  1. I can be blunt and forceful when someone does something to frustrate me.
  2. As I speak by convictions, my voice becomes increasingly louder.
  3. When someone confronts me about a problem, I am likely to offer a rebuttal.
  4. No one has to guess by opinion; I’m known for having unwavering viewpoints.
  5. When something goes wrong, I focus so sharply on fixing the problem that I overlook others’ feelings.
  6. I have a history of getting caught in bickering matches with family members.
  7. During verbal disagreements, I tend to repeat myself several times.
  8. I find it hard to keep my thoughts to myself when it is obvious that someone else is wrong.
  9. I have a reputation for being strong willed.
  10. I tend to give advice, even when others have not asked for it.

III. Passive Aggression: These people recognizes that open aggression creates and atmosphere of great disrespect, so they refuse to explode loudly or get caught in games of verbal abuse. Resist ugly anger. Accomplishes goal in quieter ways.

  1. When I am frustrated, I become silent, knowing it bothers others.
  2. I am prone to sulk and pout.
  3. When I don’t want to do a project, I will procrastinate. I can be lazy.
  4. When someone asks if I am frustrated, I say, “No, everything is just fine.”
  5. There are times when I am deliberately evasive so others won’t bother me.
  6. I sometimes approach work projects halfheartedly.
  7. When someone talks to me about my problems, I stare straight ahead, obstinate.
  8. I complain about people behind their backs, but resist the opportunity to be open with them face to face.
  9. Sometimes I become involved in behind-the-scenes misbehavior.
  10. I sometimes refuse to do someone a favor, knowing this will irritate him/her.

Guilt: The feeling of GUILT causes many to respond to it like a whipped puppy, beaten down, and shame. It brings about a feeling of condemnation.

  1. I am unworthy.
  2. I fear what others think of me.
  3. I should have done this, I shouldn’t have done that—I blew it!
  4. I can’t face that person again.
  5. I’m just no good.
  6. I feel bad if I say “no” to others who ask favors of me.

Depression: Depression is a sad, hollow feeling. Spirituality does not make you depression-
proof. (This type of depression is a result of a loss; not chemical imbalance.)

  1. I feel like crying more often now than I did a year ago.
  2. I feel blue and sad.
  3. I feel hopeless and helpless a good part of the time.
  4. I have lost a lot of my motivation.
  5. I have lost interest in things I once enjoyed.
  6. I have had thoughts recently that life is just not worth living.
  7. My sleep has changed of late. I either sleep too much or too little.
  8. I am losing my appetite.
  9. I am too irritable.
  10. I am anxious of late.
  11. Morning is the worst part of the day.
  12. I do not function as well at my job as I did in the past.

Summarize your results by placing the number you checked in each category.

Anger
Suppressed Anger _____
Open Aggression _____
Passive Aggression _____

Guilt _____

Depression _____

Questions:

  1. What was your most common emotional response? If you checked at least half in a category, you possibly are experiencing a stronghold in that area.
  2. Would you say that this is the same emotional response that you have used over an extended part of your life no matter what the situation may be?
  3. Do you see that a pattern has developed in your response, no matter what the situation may be?

I would be interested in knowing the results of your test, so please leave me a comment and tell me what it was. Remember your emotions do not have to be explained, justified, or apologized for; it is what we do with them that involves wrong.

Join Hannah and me next week as we start on an exciting adventure to discover “when” the door was left open for that negative emotion to enter your life.

Test References:

Anger: The Anger Workbook by Drs. Les Carter and Frank Minirth

Guilt: Search for Significance by Robert S. McGee

Depression: Happiness is a Choice by Drs. Frank Minirth and Paul Meier