Ways Your Childhood Upbringing Can Impact You As An Adult
What can happen when one or more of your basic needs isn't met in childhood
My husband and I had friends over one afternoon and we got into a discussion about how the way we grew up impacted who we are and how we behave in certain situations today.
Both men were raised in families where they got to be kids, weren’t exposed to grown up challenges, and just knew they would always be taken care of. They always felt safe.
In Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, having your safety needs met is just as important as having your physiological needs met.
Because they had this need met, the adults they both are today reflects their upbringing. On one side, they are laid back, and they don’t expect the worse. Both are really chill people to be around and they always make you feel good, without even trying. They are confident, they still feel safe today, and are trusting. They are also more willing to take greater risks.
On the flip side of that, they have a difficult time understanding why other people are not the same, so their expectations can sometimes be too much to meet because they were always cared for. They felt/feel safe so they struggle to understand people who didn’t grow up that way, especially when their behaviour reflects that as adults. That risk taking can also get them into sticky situations, because they don’t see 10 steps ahead, like worry warts would, or they truly don’t believe anything bad could ever happen to them. So they just jump into any experience that feels fun.
My friend and I had different upbringings. We talked about how we both had to be “adults” even as small children. We were exposed to grown up challenges, things we weren’t developed enough to cope with, didn’t feel like we would always be taken care of and grew up really fast. Our need for safety wasn’t met.
The adults that we are today reflects our upbringing. One way is that we both fall into playing the protector role. When bad things happen, we go right into problem solving mode. We can list out exactly what needs to be done to stay safe in an emergency because we have probably already planned it all out before it even happened. If there is a zombie apocalypse, you want us on your team.
On the flip side to that, we often find ourselves in future-tripping mode, planning for things to go wrong before they even go wrong, making things go wrong.
When you spend your childhood being a peacekeeper, people pleaser, trying not to rock the family boat, or you didn’t feel safe, it might be difficult for you to feel like you get be laid back and relaxed today because you are so used to being in fight or flight. As my friend described it so perfectly, “you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.” You may also find yourself being a people pleaser to prevent the other shoe from dropping. Which means that other people’s behaviour can often control your life.
This was such an important conversation, for so many reasons.
Us sharing our stories with our spouses helps them to understand us better, so they know that when we go into a situation where we don’t feel safe, it can affect our behaviour if we are not paying attention that we have been triggered. We may become irritable, or angry (fear or worry can often mask itself as anger), or feeling like we need an exit strategy before we go into an experience.
This conversation was also a great reminder that no matter what your life was like growing up, it does inform who you are today. Good or bad, it made you, YOU. What we want to practice is ensuring that our behaviour is mentally, emotionally and physically supportive. When your needs were not met as a child, and your behaviour still reflects that as an adult, your life can often feel out of control. At least that is how it can make me feel.
I feel like this conversation also helped all of us to understand that the way we reacted as children was perfectly normal. I hope it does for you as well. We went into those roles to protect ourselves because our needs were not being met. Even as children we naturally knew how to protect ourselves, but that may not be serving us now that we are adults.
RELFECTION QUESTIONS
Let’s focus on exploring a few behaviours.
Are you a problem solver who believes you have to solve everyone’s problems even when they don’t ask for help?
Are you a protector who comes to everyone else’s aid, putting your own wellbeing aside?
Are you constantly people pleasing, making sure that everyone else’s emotional state is where you think it should be, but you yourself feel out of control, unloved, or not supported?
Do you feel like not doing these things will somehow make people abandon you, or not love you?
It can be helpful to ask yourself some questions before you go into any of these default roles.
Am I the one who needs to be solving this problem?
Does this situation, or event require me to plan for a worst-case scenario, or can I just relax and enjoy myself?
Do I need to be the protector in this situation?
Is it the adult me that is needing to people please, or have I just reverted back to a childhood behaviour where I feel it is my responsibility to keep the peace?
Or, you can simply asking yourself, why am I not feeling safe? Or, is this behaviour supporting me?
I’ll share an experience of mine. I know this is such a small example, but it was a good place for me to start to break this cycle and meet my need for safety as an adult, that I didn’t feel like I had as a child.
My husband and I have acquaintances who host parties where they invite everyone and anyone which often makes it a very eclectic group of personalities. Get a few drinks into people, and sometimes things have happened at the parties that can make a protector/people pleaser personality step into problem solving mode. Throw into that past childhood and even adult experiences where negative things have happened directly to me that made me incredibly fearful, and you have the perfect recipe for a trigger to affect the way I respond and act.
Me being the protector/people pleaser, I have found myself not enjoying the parties because I don’t feel safe and my default when I’m not feeling safe is to step into fight mode and fix it, or get so anxious that everything inside of me is screaming, “run!”
After a few of these parties, when I would get invited, my guard would be up before I even accept the invitation. I just couldn’t enjoy myself because I didn’t feel like I would be safe. This is how not having a need met in childhood can show up in adulthood.
One day, while complaining about this to a friend, blaming my feelings on everyone else, not taking any responsibility for my own emotions, I said, “I need to stop doing this!”
So the next time I was invited, I had two choices. Either not go, or I could prepared myself and break the cycle. I decided to go. I began by asking myself some of those questions above, went into it with my guard down and decided that if at anytime I didn’t feel safe, or it was getting out of control, I would just remove myself from the situation. I could also just leave. I felt like I was able to relax because I took myself out of the role of needing to be the protector, and gave myself a safe exit. I’m an adult now, I can just leave. Something we usually can’t do as children.
To break the pattern, we have to change the behaviour. This tells your body, and your brain, that you are safe.
TAKING THE PRACTICE DEEPER
Talking about childhood patterns is a big topic, more than I can go into here, so let’s baby step it. Here’s a practice if this resonates with you. I do go deeper into this in my digital workshop Unleash Your Limiting Beliefs if this is something you want to explore deeper. If this isn’t you, hopefully this share will help you to understand other people better.
What do you do today that is from an old childhood behaviour? It kept you safe then, it would be good in a certain situation, but you don’t need it all the time. Think of the things that don’t feel mentally, emotionally or physically supportive and give you anxiety.
How can you communicate this to your loved ones so they know why you behave, think or act the way you do in similar situations?
I have found this step very important. Them knowing me - ALL OF ME, makes me feel safe, seen and understood. Something I think most of us want and need.
What can you do to embrace who you are, what makes you, YOU, but change the pattern that doesn’t serve you in every situation? What reaction, response, behaviour, action or decision would be more supportive? If you felt the way you want to feel, what would you do differently?
I don’t want to rid myself of my natural protector mode personality because it can serve me. It makes me a great problem solver, and I’m really good in difficult situations. But I don’t need it turned on for every single experience. And I don’t need to solve everyone’s problems.
You practice doing it differently until the cycle is broken. You won’t get it perfectly all the time and that is okay. In fact, it is normal. You’re not a robot. This is a practice. We work at changing the behaviours that don’t serve us in the moments they don’t support our mental and emotional health. We become aware of them, and do our best - that’s all we can do.
You’ve got this. You are not alone.
Laurie-ann Sheldrick
Book Resource: Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. This book changed my life!