Due to the forces of evolution, our brains have developed, first and foremost, to keep us alive, irrespective of whether the emotions that drive us to do cause us pleasure or pain ; in this sense, the process of evolution is entirely indifferent as to whether or not we are happy ; indeed, his is why our brains have a negative bias : to help ensure our survival, our brains are wired to focus on threats, dangers and that which can harm us rather than on more positive things (which could seduce us into a state of dangerous complacency and vulnerability). The principle at play here is that it’s better to be in an unpleasant state of anxiety and fear, but alive, than it is to be in a state of peace and serenity whilst being gobbled up by a lion.

One of the main operations of our brains to evolve in order to help ensure our survival is the ability to detect threat. This is because, in the case of our ancestors, such threats were frequently life endangering (such as being attacked by a wild animal, as alluded to above).

Today, however, the threats we tend to encounter are very rarely life threatening. However, because evolution is such a glacially slow process, our brains have not had time to readjust to this fact and, therefore, will still respond to certain threats that would have been life threatening to our ancestors as if they are STILL life endangering today.

One threat that was life endangering to our ancestors was social rejection ; this is because living in groups made it more likely we would survive and, of course, it logically follows from this, if we were rejected from the group (and even more so if they were rejected by our parents when young) we would be at greater risk of death.

So, the crucial point is that our modern day brains react to rejection by significant others today as our ancestors’ brains did in the distant past i.e. as if the rejection were life-threatening. That is why, say, rejection by a parent or partner can drive us to despair or even suicide (the latter response is particularly ironic as, in such a case, our death would be brought about, ultimately, by an overly assiduous survival instinct).

In objective terms, then, we over-react to rejection in the modern day due to a trick our mind is playing on us that has its origin in millions of years of evolutionary history. It must be recognized, nevertheless, that for many of us, this is cold comfort indeed.

Overcome Fear Of Rejection | Self Hypnosis Downloads

You may also like to read :

The Long-Term Effects Of Parental Rejection

Childhood Trauma : Coping With Rejection

Childhood Rejection Leading To Possessive Behavior In Adult Relationships

BPD Sufferers May Avoid Mentalization Due To Parental Rejection

David Hosier BSc Hons; MSc; PGDE(FAHE).

The negative effects of childhood trauma can also seriously impair our work performance as adults. Some obvious examples include:

• low academic achievement.
• alcoholism.
• drug addiction.
• anger management problems (which may lead to conflict in relations with colleagues and the boss).
• relationship problems (including marital and family difficulties), depression, anxiety, headaches, somatic symptoms (such as back pain and irritable bowel syndrome).

Indeed, research published in the Permanent Journal reported that, in the United States, back pain alone is thought to cost businesses just short of 30 billion dollars per year and depression is thought to cost it about 44 billion dollars per year.

However, it is not possible, from these figures, to ascertain what percentage of the above referred to cases back pain and the above referred to cases of depression is directly linked to the adverse effects of childhood trauma.

From these findings, however, it is reasonable to conclude that educating employees about how adverse childhood trauma may have negatively impacted upon their lives is very important as it may allow them to seek more relevant, trauma-informed, treatments and therapies for their difficulties, thus increasing their chances of successful recovery. And, in order for such education to be implemented effectively, business owners, too, need to learn about the possible harmful effects of unresolved childhood trauma on their employees and, therefore, on their business.

OVERCOME FEAR OF RETURNING TO WORK | SELF HYPNOSIS DOWNLOADS

David Hosier BSc Hons; MSc; PGDE(FAHE).

When I was young, my mother seemed to derive an odd sense of satisfaction (one hesitates to use the word ‘pleasure’) from my emotional distress. At such times, I see now, her fundamental motivation to comfort me (by talking to me, never in a tactile way by hugging etc.) was to make herself feel needed, of value, powerful, in control and superior to my own ‘inadequacy’.

Indeed, I can now see that she would deliberately induce states of distress in me so that she could then play the role of a nurturing mother ; she seemed to enjoy, and derive satisfaction from, toying with my emotions – repeatedly ‘breaking’ me in order to afford herself the opportunity of ‘fixing’ me – rather as a cat might enjoy and derive satisfaction from toying with a mouse by repeatedly catching it and letting it go only so it could catch it again…and so on…and so on…

This gave her complete control and absolute power over me ; once she had reduced me to a desperate and pleading display of tears by subjecting me to her unbounded rage and name-calling, and then left me to suffer for a while (often by giving me the silent treatment ),

I would be pathetically grateful, submissive and pliable when, at a time of her choosing, she deigned to ‘forgive’ me and play (for short while until the cycle repeated itself) the ‘magnanimous’ mother (on more than one occasion, it comes back to me now while writing this) by administering to me whisky in warm milk and half of one of her valium).

In short, playing the nurturing’ mother wasn’t about making me feel good – it was about making herself feel good about herself.

However, I have never mentioned this particular aspect of my mother’s behavior to anyone for fear of sounding ungrateful and cynical. After all, as many who have suffered childhood trauma will know all too well, even our most patently reasonable and self-evidently justifiable objections to our upbringing can be, and frequently are, invalidated by others (for myriad reasons – e,g. see my articles How Narcissistic Mothers Can Invalidate Us ; my article, BPD, Effects Of Biparental Dysfunction And Invalidation and also my article about gaslighting) compunding the effects of our trauma and intensifying our irrational feelings of shame.

I was heartened, therefore, to come across the work of Masterson and Rinsley (1975). They theorize that mothers can cause psychopathology in their children, later leading to the development of borderline personality disorder (BPD), by preventing them from undergoing the separation-individuation process (see also my article on ‘enmeshment’).

They prevent their children going through this process, according to Masterson and Riley, by encouraging them to be dependent. They encourage this dependency, according to the theory, as it gives them (i.e. the mothers) a sense of pride, satisfaction , gratification and self-esteem. It is further theorized that they achieve this by positively reinforcing the child’s ‘needy’ and ‘clingy‘ behavior whilst discouraging any signs of the child creating an independent, autonomous life for him/self. This then has the effect of preventing him/her from breaking away from her and forming his/her own idenity

Indeed, tangetially related to the idea of certain types of mothers (especially narcissistic mothers) not wanting their child to form his/her own sense of identity, I recall that my own mother would frequently take it as almost a personal affront if ever I tried to change the subject from talking about her life (normally her ‘boyfriend troubles’) to talk, even for a short while, about any of my own intersests (at the time these were meteorology and magic tricks ; I often think now that it is no co-incidence that the former involved trying to understand a chaotic and difficult to predict system, whilst the latter involved developing ‘special powers’ to make the ‘impossible’ happen, like making things ‘disappear’ – no prizes for guessing what these things almost certainly symbolized in my unconscious).

But back to Masterson and Risley. The researchers state that such maternal behavior (i.e. rewarding the child’s dependence whilst punishing him/her – or, at least, withdrawing approval – when s/he attempts to gain mastery, independence and self-sufficiency) is frequently most prevalent during the developmental stage of the child when psychological and social influences are at their most potent in relation to instilling in him/her a need to become independent, thus creating maximum conflict in the child’s mind.

David Hosier BSc Hons; MSc; PGDE(FAHE).