Underneath the Psychological Hood

Why Can't I Change? How to Conquer Your Self-Destructive Patterns by Shirley Impellizzeri
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ever catch yourself getting in your own way? Perhaps you are upset that you are not so successful yet youy have been offered several promotion only to turn them down. You find yourself afraid of more responsibility and are deathly afraid of making a mistake that will mess everything up. Perhaps your track record in relationships ain't all to terrific. Getting too close scares you and sometimes the relationships are not close enough that you wonder if your partner really cares about you.

What does it all boil down to. THe author here likes to link it to the parenting styles that our parents rasised us up with. There are healthy styyles where our primary caregiver which is usually the mother is always there and pays proper attention to us. They validate our feeling and if they make a mistake they fix and properly apologize for it, something called repair. Ambivalent parents are kind of flakey and unreliable. Sometimes they are their and sometimes they are not. THis produces someone who is very needy and attention seeking. Everything also worries them. THese sorts need lots of validation. The last type is the parent who is not there. THe child raised in this get a sense of false independence and unreal detachment. Sometimes they do not like it if you cozy up to them too much.

Perhaps the part I found most interesting was the part about the brain functions. The amydala is the fear detector or threat detector. The Hippocampus is our memory recorder and when things are stressfull or frightening it does not record all that accurately. OUr sympathetic nervous system gears us up for flight or fight responses.The parasympathetic gets us calmed down. Events in our life cause these diferent brain centers to work differently. If there is a lot featr our amygdala gets over sized if everything is calm and cool then our brain develops normally.

When people have a messed up background and they find their life is a mess they tend to use a variety of defenses to cover up the problem. Such defenses could include rationalization,sublimation, displacement and a host of others.

The first trick is tyo be aware of our triggers and emotions. Another trick is to go back to that old memory and change the outcome. This makes it less threatening. In addition to awareness there is grounding and staying in the moment.

I do not normally like psychology or self help books and I normally do not like books that point everythig back to the parents. Yet I have found that this books gives lots of insight into the hyuman psyche and that there is lots of useful info here to help overcome your issues

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