This came up on Facebook recently. and it turns out I had a lot of say about it as it pertains to yours truly, so here goes.
When you feel helpless and powerless as a child, it keeps you from progressing emotionally. You never get to the independent exploration phase of development and instead are arrested at the stage were you attract, reward, and keep a caretaker.
Usually this is a parent or guardian. But really, anyone will do. The important thing is that to you, independent survival is impossible. You know that, like an infant, if you are left to your down devices, you will die.
So what you end up doing is developing your charm, your appeal, your displays of haplessness, and your ability to reward a potential caretaker via a smile. gratitude, cuteness, or what have you.
This is an inherently weak position because all your power is indirect and accessible only through others, and they might cut you off at any moment. So you are constantly singing for your supper. You are always trying to be the most bright and appealing and rewarding person you can be so that you can hold your caretaker(s) attention.
Failure means abandonment, and abandonment means death.
The problem is that if you have investing so heavily on appearing helpless in order to attract and keep a caretaker,. any progress towards independence and autonomy sets off massive anxiety alarms because if you can do things for yourself, the caretaker might abandonment, and abandonment equals death.
Worse than death. Oblivion.
This is a massive hindrance to any attempt to get better. If fundamentally, deep down, you do not believe you could survive on your own, then threatening your relationship with your caretaker(s) is unthinkable.
Better to stay weak and therefore appealing.
Even if it means never getting to grow up.
And the thing is, logically, I know that I could do the individual tasks that I have mostly left to roommates for my adult life.
Paying bills and paying rent are trivial challenges.
I know more or less how to clean house. Taking out the garbage and so on, no biggie.
So objectively speaking, I could totally live on my own and do my own thing. But when I so much as gingerly brush up against the though, this howling maelstrom of ice cold anxiety the size of Kentucky blows through me and freezes that thought in place.
And then I have no choice but to stop thinking about it. And so nothing ever changes.
And it’s a pretty humiliating thing to realize that you have, on some levels, remained a big brained infant for your whole life and you are 46.
47 in May.
But clearly. this is something I am going to have to confront and overcome if I ever want to escape this dead end cage of a life of mine and get to be a real person for a change.
And the only way out that I can see is to somehow convince my deepest self that abandonment is not oblivion and that I can do just fine on my own, without anyone to use as a barrier between me and the cold hard world.
It’s not going to be easy.
But I know I can do it.
More after the break.
On social reward
At quite an early age, I figured out what social reward was and how it worked.
A social reward is one that is strictly interpersonal. It might be a pat on the back. recognition for a job well done, a warm smile, heartfelt thanks, or any other emotional reward given by one person to another without any material or pragmatic exchange.
It’s definitely a reward in all relevant ways. The reward center of the recipient’s brain is activated. They are now motivated to repeat the experience. Neural pathways have been reinforced. In all senses, reward has happened.
And yet, the giver lost nothing. In a sense, they get the benefits of a more tangible reward without having to pay for it.
To me, this is beautiful.
For one thing, like sex, it completely bypasses zero-sum transactional thinking. All involve parties benefit and nobody loses anything.
It isn’t even a trade. Nothing is exchanged. It only exists in the world of emotion.
You know, like love.
And because of that, social rewards are intrinsically… well, intrinsic. And as we all know, intrinsic rewards are far more motivating than extrinsic ones, whether you are talking about shoveling the driveway for an old person who always thanks you warmly or going off to war to prove that you’re a man.
Another great thing about social reward is that it’s something everyone has to give. I had very little power as a kid (see above) but I had a smile.
One caveat : this particular form of reward does favor those who can project their emotions. A very closed off and inexpressive person does not reward people socially.
It’s easy to imagine a scenario where two people do identical favours, and one gets a warm and genuine thanks and the other doesn’t even get acknowledged, and it is easy to see which one is more likely to get future favours from the same person.
And yet, I feel like this largely flies under the radar in modern culture. We are so caught up in the transactional model that everything else gets swept under the rug, and when things like social reward are brought to people’s attention, there is a very strong tendency to say it “doesn’t count” for one reason or another.
But it totally does. It might not be quantifiable or tangible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It results in very real labour and behaviours.
It just doesn’t fit our usual way of looking at things.
And like I said, sex can be the exact same way. Two people get together and do something both of them enjoy and nobody had to “win” or “lose” anything.
If only everything could be so simple and pure.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.