I spent a lifetime wondering: WHAT’S MY DIAGNOSIS?

I’ve been a psychotherapist in the New York City area for 40 years. All that time I have been on the look-out for a diagnosis that matched my own personality problems and personality structure. Albert Ellis had said, “We are all imperfect, fucked up human beings, including me.” And since he is the founder of Rational Emotive Therapy, and considered one of the foremost psychologists of the 20th century, I figured I should take his words to heart and find out just how much, and in what way, I, myself, am fucked up.

After “trying on for size” the different diagnoses in each edition of the DSM, I estimated that my troubles were best described by the Borderline diagnosis.

That didn’t help much at the time. But one day I read James F. Masterson, an expert on Borderlines, who described us as unfortunate folks who had been “punished in their childhood for assertive behavior.” I SUDDENLY FELT UNDERSTOOD.

We all knew that the environment influences the organism. The home atmosphere that prevailed while a child grew up should therefore influence their life and their future. Maybe that home atmosphere influences the development of the child’s sense of self worth and identity. Ya think?

So, if a child’s assertiveness or creativity is punished enough, how might that affect them? If most of the time from 0 to 3 years old you listened to the most important people in your life say variations of:

“Don’t do that. You get into everything. Are you crazy? What are you doing? That’s ridiculous. Don’t touch that. Put that back. Don’t bother me now. Can’t you see I’m making dinner/on the phone/watching TV/talking to a neighbor? Why do you ask so many stupid questions? I don’t know why there are holes in crackers. What’s wrong with you? I dunno why the sky is blue.” And then, later in life: “Your friends are all nobodies.” “Don’t open your mouth and show what a fool you are.” “I should never have had any children.” “You are just too much for me.” “You are never going to amount to anything.”

Would you take those as appreciations? Or are they experienced as punishments?

If repeated enough, does what you hear become a Mantra that you repeat to yourself for the rest of your life. But maybe you are unaware of it consciously because you learned it before your brain had developed its capacity for verbal skills. And, like hypnosis, it influences you out of your awareness. Could you feel blocked?

A parent’s job is to teach the skills that will help make the child independent so that they can survive and flourish after the parent is gone. Now, what could go wrong with that?

What effect did the punishment listed above have on the child? Did it help to make the child more independent? On the contrary, I believe that punishing a behavior extinguishes the behavior. If you punish an activity, the child stops the activity. How complicated is that? Stick around and you will see.

The Cascade

James Masterson’s book talked to me of certain authority figures punishing children for curiosity, dynamism, assertiveness, and questioning. Did I say that already? Well, that’s the whole premise of this posting.

Punishment of your assertive behavior leads you to become passive in order to avoid the punishment. You shut down that healthy little engine you were born with that drives you forward with curiosity into the world of exploration and experimentation. You stop all action.

What happens next?