Six Aspects of Being an Adult

Living Life as an Authentic Adult

really are.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you

Most people are unaware that they are conducting their lives more from a childs
frame of reference than in an adult mode. Although men and women mature
physically and become more capable in their practical lives, rarely do they achieve
emotional maturity. In my view, the primary barriers to maturity are unresolved
childhood trauma, the defenses the child forms to ward off emotional pain and
existential dread. The latter refers to a core anxiety related to growing up, facing the
fact that time is passing, and giving value to life in spite of deaths inevitability.
There are six major aspects of the adult approach to life:
1. Rationality: Adults experience their emotions, but when it comes to their actions,
they make rational decisions on the basis of self-interest and moral concerns. As
Murray Bowen observed, adults are able to distinguish between the feeling process
and the intellectual processand [have] the ability to choose between having ones
functioning guided by feelings or by thoughts. They have a strong sense of identity
and strive to live with integrity, according to their own principles and values.
2. Formulating and Implementing Goals: Adults formulate goals and take the
appropriate actions to achieve them. In this respect, they establish their priorities in
life. In contrast, people living within a childs frame of reference often overreact
emotionally to events that are insignificant in the overall scheme of their lives, and fail
to respond to events that are important or crucial to their well-being. Because adults
tend to pursue their goals and priorities honestly, their actions are more likely to
correspond to their words.
3. Equality in Relationships: Adults seek equality in their relationships whereas
those who operate from a childs perspective often assume the role of either the
parent or the child in relation to their loved ones. In Voice Therapy, I described how
adult individuals interact in a close relationship: People whose actions are based
primarily on the adult mode relate to each other as independent individuals with
considerable give and take in terms of reciprocal need gratification. They have
developed their capacity for both giving and accepting love and do not attempt to
recreate a parent in their partner by forming an imagined connection or fantasy bond
with them for safety and security.
4. Active versus Passive: Adults are proactive and self-assertive, rather than
passive and dependent. They dont feel victimized by life or complain or dump their
problems onto other people; instead, they face their problems or challenges directly
and work out solutions rather than depending on others for direction. They seek help
only in relation to what they actually need, as in areas where they lack expertise, not
in relation to unresolved emotional needs from the past.
5. Non-defensiveness and Openness: People who are emotionally mature do not
have defensive or angry reactions to feedback; they do not offhandedly disagree with
negative commentary. Instead they are open to exploring new ideas, welcome
constructive criticism and, in this way, they expand their self-knowledge and selfawareness.

Adults seek self knowledge to know themselves and develop an accurate self-concept;
they are aware of both the positive and negative aspects of their personalities and
have a realistic perspective of themselves in relation to others. In their pursuit of selfknowledge, they are aware of unconscious motivation, open to the analyis of that
dimension of mental life and attempt to integrate it to the best of their ability.
6. Personal Power: People do not have control over their thoughts and feelings;
these arise unbidden in the course of everyday life. However, adults take full power
over every part of their conscious existence. Indeed, they change any behavior or
characteristic that they dislike in themselves, such as being overweight or abusing
substances. In this sense, adults approach their lives from the standpoint of being
responsible for their destiny.
The Child Mode
When people experience the world in the child mode, they feel powerless and at the
mercy of others as well as overpowered by their own feeling reactions. In the actual
world of the child, the child is helpless and totally dependent and is often the victim of
negative circumstances that are beyond his/her control. Children feel, but they are
generally unable to act or protest outwardly in their own defense.
I was impressed with the way one woman described a childs perspective in a personal
narrative:
Recently, someone reminded me about the unconscious desire to be a child, and it hit
me. I never heard it that clearly. Its ruining my life and making me unhappy. Im 41,
and Im sick of it.
The life of a child is helpless, scary and powerless. Functioning in an adult world as a
child creates a never-ending misery of inequality, fear and paranoia. As a child,
anyone can control and overrun you. As an adult, of course, you own your life and
destiny. But if you remain a child in your adult life, you look at the world around you
as dominating, controlling and dangerous. Thats a miserable life.
Ive lived my adult years searching for my parents; not the obvious ones I was born
to, but their replacements. My subconscious desire to have parents in my adult life
has caused me years of discontent.
The major deterrent to living an adult existence lies in the fear of growing up. This
includes the fear of breaking imagined connections with parents, being alone,
standing out as an individual, having a strong point of view, recognizing ones value
and confronting the inevitability of death, the ultimate separation from self. Like this
woman, many people have a strong desire to hold on to fantasy bonds or imagined
connections to parents and their symbolic substitutes that offer safety, yet at great
cost to their personal development. To live like a child in an adult world is itself a
defense against death anxiety.
In her story, the woman revealed how, in an attempt to preserve the illusory
connection to her parents, she recreated her father in her husband and her mother in
close women friends. She went on to describe why she held on to her identity of being
the bad child for so many years.

To hang on to this old identity with all my might, for many years, was so compelling
why? All I can answer to this is remaining a child, although miserable, is farther away
from the agony of aging and death. So the compelling draw is hard to let go of.
Of course, I still have my moments of childish reactions, but Im learning to catch
them, notice the almost physical feeling that comes on, and stop it before I engage. I
will make mistakes, but I plan to forge forward as an adult, and search instead for
equality. Nonetheless, this leaves me very alone. And the aloneness leaves me
anxious, and sadbut its real. And life as an equal, although painful, is fuller. And Im
ready for the challenge.
In summary, living in the child mode is largely chaotic and dysfunctional, whereas
living ones life as a adult is generally more adaptive and successful. Retaining a
childs frame of reference has numerous disadvantages: for example, people who
operate from this perspective often find it difficult to formulate their goals and
priorities in life and tend to feel helpless and victimized. They blame others for the
problems they encounter rather than taking responsibility for how people react to
them. In reality, people largely determine the course of their lives and determine the
way that others respond. Lastly, reacting to life in a childlike manner can be quite
emotional but often lacks a depth of genuine feeling.
Accepting the premise that living in the adult mode is obviously preferable, why is it
that so many people function as children emotionally and stubbornly refuse to grow
up? This question will be answered and the psychodynamics of the situation
elaborated in part two of this blog.

Why People Fear Growing Up and Functioning as Adults

In a previous blog, 6 Aspects of Being an Adult," I briefly described the reasons why
so many people operate as children emotionally and refuse to grow up. I discussed
how, to varying degrees, individuals are restricted in their ability to function in an
adult mode because of unresolved childhood trauma and the defenses they form to
relieve emotional pain and existential dread. In this blog, I explore the
psychodynamics underlying the tendency to hold onto a childs perspective despite
the emotional turmoil, maladaptation and unhappiness it creates.
The principle barriers to living an adult existence are the fears associated with
becoming adult. There are five major aspects to the fear of growing up:
1. Symbolic separation from parents and other individuals who have offered some
sense of security. This occurs as we mature, form a new and different identity, choose
our own path in life and establish new relationships. These types of separation
experiences can arouse a sense of loss related and fear. When we are anxious or
frightened, we tend to reconnect to dependency bonds.
2. Preference for fantasy as a defense mechanism over reality considerations. Painful
events in childhood often lead to suppression, dissociation and varying degrees of
retreat into fantasy processes. These habit patterns become addictive and long
lasting.
3. The threat of feeling ones aloneness. Knowing ourselves as independent, authentic
adults makes us acutely aware of painful existential issues. In addition, there is a fear
of being different or standing out from the crowd. This is related to the primitive

evolutionarily based threat of being separated or ostracized from the tribe, which is
emotionally equivalent to being left to die.
4. Adults have more responsibilities for self and others. In general, adults carry a
heavier dependency load, as they are looked to for direction, support and actual
parenting. This makes them more cognizant of the fact that their own unresolved
dependency needs from childhood will remain unfulfilled.
5. Death anxiety. Death fears are triggered by both negative and positive events. As
people sense time passing, are confronted with sickness, frustrations in life and
reminders of death, they fear about their mortality. Paradoxically, as men and women
give special value to their lives, experience unusual successes, and find new and
unique gratifications, they tend to suffer more death anxiety. The more we value life,
the more we have to lose in death.
Generally speaking, most people retreat from being fully alive adults in order to avoid
reawakening the unconscious, as well as conscious, feelings of terror surrounding
death. Indeed, systematic research indicates that people respond to the fear of
personal mortality at a subliminal level yet modify their lives accordingly, often
without any awareness of their death anxiety.
Sometime between the ages of 3 and 7, children first realize the fact that they will
eventually die. They handle this crisis by repressing the loneliness, hopelessness, rage
and terror surrounding the evolving awareness of their finite existence. They institute
numerous defenses to surpress and deny the reality of death and form fantasies of
fusion in an effort to insure that the unconscious pain and dread will not resurface.
Once the child suppresses the fear of death, certain events in life arouse or intensify
it, whereas other circumstances and defenses relieve it. The defenses that ameliorate
or quiet death anxiety act as a major interference to becoming an authentic adult.
Defenses that reduce death anxiety but act as a barrier to personal growth
and maturity.
The Fantasy Bond: The core defense is the fantasy bond, originally an imagined
connection with ones parents, that offers a modicum of safety and security. Early in
life, children form this illusion to compensate for personal trauma, i.e. to reduce
feelings of emotional hunger and frustration brought about by deprivation, rejection,
separation and loss. Later, these same fantasy connections are transferred to new
relationships, groups and causes. Because of this propensity to cling to unreasonable
dependency ties, people tend to remain fixated at a childs level of functioning. They
project negative aspects of the attachment with their parents onto current situations
often recreating their early trauma in the present day. The extent to which people
come to rely on fantasies of fusion while reliving the past is proportional to the degree
of psychological pain they experienced in childhood. People excessively involved in
fantasy bonds tend to be overly dependent on others, progressively maladaptive and
fail to function successfully as adults.
Under conditions of stress, when parents are largely mis-attuned or punitive, children
cease identifying with themselves as the helpless child, identify with the powerful,
punishing parent and take on those negative traits as their own. In other words, they
incorporate their parents at their worst not as they are typically, and find safety in
thinking, acting and feeling like their parents. To preserve this imagined connection,
one must retain a sense of sameness and avoid differentiation. People feel frightened

to both move away from the merged identity with their parents and to break with any
negative identity they acquired in their families.
During this process of incorporation, when children feel overwhelmed by fear, they
fragment into both the parent and the child. As they grow older, they continue to treat
themselves much as they were treated, both nourishing and punishing themselves in
the same manner their parents did. The result is that people tend to vacillate
between the parental and childish state, both of which are immature. Consequently,
they spend only a small portion of their time in the adult mode.
Literal and symbolic denial of death: The fear of death drives people to form
belief systems and worldviews that deny existential realities by offering literal or
symbolic immortality. In Beyond Death Anxiety: Achieving Life-Affirming Death
Awareness, I described literal immortality as manifested in beliefs in an after-life or
reincarnation, which have a calming effect on unconscious death anxiety. People who
approach life from a childs perspective often extend the fantasized connection with
their all-powerful parents to various religious belief systems and share with fellow
believers the magical conclusion that there is a God in the heavens acting as a
parental figure who rewards and punishes them. They are truly Gods children.
Symbolic immortality is manifested in the imagination that one can live on through
ones works, through the accumulation of power and wealth, or through ones
children. However, children are capable of relieving their parents death anxiety only if
they make similar choices, entertain the same political and religious beliefs, and
exhibit similar personality traits. Many parents attempt to defend themselves by
molding a child in their image, insisting on sameness and discouraging their childs
unique interests and goals.
Vanity: People who exist in a child mode often possess an exaggerated positive
image of themselves in certain areas. This sense of being special offers a kind of
magical thinking that denies their vulnerability to death. On an unconscious level,
they believe that death happens to someone else, never to them. They retain an
image of invincibility and omnipotence, which served as a survival mechanism in early
childhood, and utilize it whenever they become anxious regarding their mortality. The
trouble is that vanity and narcissism set people up for painful experiences of
disillusionment and rejection. Attempting to maintain a superior image causes them a
good deal of unnecessary stress and anxiety.
Preoccupation with trivial issues and problems: The certainty of death can lead
to a basic paranoia that many people project onto other aspects of life that do not
warrant an intense reaction of helplessness and powerlessness. People distract
themselves with everyday problems and trivial events to which they over react with
anger, fear and panic. When preoccupied in this way, they are able to shut out
feelings about life and death concerns but at the expense of feeling childish and
powerless.
Microsuicide: Microsuicide refers to a myriad of defenses that interfere with the
attainment of emotional maturity by accommodating to death anxiety through
attacking or limiting oneself. In trying to exert control over their fate, people narrow
their experience and gratification thereby giving up important aspects of living,
including meaningful relationships, mature sexuality and significant priorities and
goals. In retaining attitudes of progressive self-denial and self-hatred along with
maintaining addictions, dangerous risk-taking behaviors and other self-defeating habit

patterns, people shut out pain and create a false sense of omnipotence with respect
to the reality of death. By diminishing their lives, they have less to lose in dying.
However, in their retreat, they tend to experience painful feelings of existential guilt
about their self-betrayal and feel regret for a life not fully lived.
In Conclusion
Fear, especially the fear of death, constitutes the ultimate resistance to a fulfilling and
successful life. Living as mature adults with a minimum of the defenses described in
this blog, leaves people acutely aware of their aloneness and of the uncertainty and
ambiguity of life. At the same time, it offers virtually unlimited possibilities for
personal gratification and self-expression, and is well worth fighting for.
People can aspire to developing a mature approach to life and move toward a more
satisfying and freer existence. This subject will be addressed in my next blog

How to Become More Adult and Successful in Your Life

Fear is the primary enemy to becoming an adult. Psychological defenses that are
limiting and to some extent dysfunctional are strengthened and intensified when
people become anxious. Yet anxiety states are often reacted to subliminally and
defenses are instituted and affect our behavior without conscious awareness. In that
sense, you cannot approach your fear directly; however, you can address the problem
of being an adult by recognizing and challenging defenses and altering childish
behavior patterns. Besides, people can become alert to situations and personal
interactions that trigger their fear of growing up and can take control over negative
actions that relieve or quiet the fear. In this blog, I address key issues that are
significantly helpful in maintaining an adult posture in life.
Learn how you are childish and challenge a passive-dependent orientation.
Identify behaviors that are symptomatic of the child mode and change them by
adopting more adult responses. Among the more straightforward, easily identifiable
childish behaviors are sulking, whining, complaining, manipulating to get sympathy,
continually seeking direction, acting in a disorganized, incompetent and irresponsible
manner, procrastinating, habitual lateness, driving recklessly, carelessness and
slovenliness and being neglectful in relation to ones health.
In addition, it is important to challenge feelings of inferiority, submissiveness and a
passive-dependent orientation in relation to authority figures, friends and loved ones.
By holding on to parental substitutes and continuing to depend excessively on others
by acquiescing to their wants, needs and points of view, it is evident that you will
remain a child. It is also important to recognize when you are being defiant or
rebellious in your responses and strive to take a more rational adult position.
Submission and defiance are equally childish; both are outer directed and tend to
elicit parental responses of either approval or disapproval.
Take power over your life.
Anything under conscious control can be changed deliberately. People can consciously
change negative character traits, destructive habit patterns and addictions. Only

thoughts and feelings are automatic; they can only be understood and changed
indirectly through insight into unconscious phenomena. One method is to look for
discrepancies between your actions and your stated goals; these contradictions are
often caused by unconscious or partly conscious critical inner voices. By bringing
these voices into conscious awareness and recognizing how they are influencing your
behavior, you can change behaviors that are dictated by the internal negative thought
process and gain insight into areas of your life where you have difficulty maintaining
an adult perspective.
The critical inner voice is made up of a system of negative thoughts, beliefs and
attitudes toward oneself and others that predispose varying degrees of alienation. The
voice can be harsh, punishing and demeaning, or seemingly positive, self-protective
and indulgent. It strongly influences the acting out of self-defeating microsuicidal
behaviors that adversely effect ones life. The voice represents the internalization of
parents rejecting, negative attitudes or actual hostility toward the child, as well as
their maladaptive point of view about life. A person can learn to identify their selfattacks, recognize their source, estimate their effect on their behavior and counter
them by taking constructive action. I have developed systematic Voice Therapy
procedures to help clients with this negative process that effectively improves their
lives. If you are in trouble psychologically or merely wish to further develop yourself, I
strongly recommend seeking out a personal psychotherapy experience. It will offer a
unique opportunity to understand yourself and expand your life.
Observe your emotions, but govern your actions by rationality. Your choice
of actions should further your best interests and goals and fit your
moral considerations.
People are capable of acting rationally in spite of strong feeling reactions. This works
most efficiently when they observe and regulate their emotional responses and
identify the primal elements in their reactions. Primal feelings are typically intense
and dramatic, and there is an urgency to express them. These powerful feelings
represent a reliving of emotions you suffered in childhood. Being aware of primal
components in your feelings helps diminish their intensity and defuses melodrama
and overreactions.
Taking time to reflect on your emotions and considering the consequences of your
actions fosters a rational approach to problem solving.
It is particularly important to learn to accept angry emotions. Anger is a normal
reaction to frustration that is proportional to the degree of frustration experienced.
Anger, like all feelings, must be allowed free reign in consciousness, while the acting
out of anger must be subject to both ethical and reality considerations. Incidentally,
angry feelings can be a source of energy and vitality when they are under your
control.
Dont blame others for your failures or rejections. You create your own
world.
Refrain from blaming other people or circumstances for your mistakes, failures or
rejections. People are largely unaware of the degree that they are responsible for the
situations that they face in life. For example, we recreate the world of our childhood

through our selection of partners, in the way we actually distort them and finally in
the way we provoke them.
Recognize that perceiving others as responsible for your problems is immature and
maladaptive. In actuality, you create your own circumstances, so you can be active in
changing them. Furthermore, when things go wrong, it serves no purpose to attack or
punish yourself as well. With the right attitude, you can simply learn from negative
experiences and handle things differently. Be more accepting of your mistakes,
because if you believe that you dare not fail, then you cannot act. People are
paralyzed by insisting on perfection and end up berating themselves and others for
their failures.
Dont be defensive; seek out feedback, particularly criticism, and respond
accordingly.
It is valuable to seek objective criticism. Honestly-stated critical perceptions of you are
actually gifts that can contribute to your self-knowledge and understanding. You are
fortunate to find out the truth about yourself, even if it is negative. In a relationship,
refrain from reacting to feedback by attacking your partner, crying or falling apart,
punishing with the silent treatment or stonewalling. These are childish responses
that effectively silence the other person and gradually lead to a shutting down of lines
of communication within couples. Instead, look for the truth in any information you
hear that is negative, even though your knee-jerk reaction may understandably be
one of anger or embarrassment. Carefully consider or explore feedback rather than
reject it summarily, then decide which aspects of the feedback you agree or disagree
with, and respond from an adult perspective.
Develop goals, both personal and transcendent, and live by them with
integrity.
An important aspect of being an adult involves envisioning goals that express your
unique identity and interests, and then taking the actions necessary to achieve these
goals. Actively strive and compete for your objectives, both personal and vocational,
rather than seeking satisfaction in fantasy. Make a concerted effort to maintain
personal integrity in your life by insisting that your actions correspond to your words.
Investing energy in transcendent goals and activities that extend beyond ones self
interest, for example, contributing to a humanitarian cause or trying, in some way, to
improve the lot of future generations, helps build self-esteem. In a certain sense, it is
selfish to be generous and giving, and it is a sound mental health approach.
Become aware of your defenses and challenge them.
Psychological defenses that protected you from painful feelings as a child are now
dysfunctional, restrictive of your life and interfere with your developing a mature,
adult perspective. It is important to challenge the methods you still use to protect
yourself from pain and anxiety. Be especially aware of reliance on fantasy, additive
patterns and actual addictions.
In a very real sense, it is safer to be vulnerable and open in relationships. Adults,
unlike children, can cope with the possibility of rejection and loss; they are not
dependent on others for maintaining their lives. Besides, remaining defended tends to

guarantee negative outcomes or failure in developing close, satisfying and loving

relationships. Beware of forming fantasy bonds or illusions of connection with your
partner; although they may reduce anxiety and offer a sense of security, they limit
your ability to love or accept real love in your life. Utilizing others for safety or as a
defense against ones sense of aloneness and existential pain seriously interferes with
genuine relating.
Cope with the fear of death.
Latent or actual death anxiety acts as a core resistance to adult development. In
Beyond Death Anxiety: Achieving Life-Affirming Death Awareness, I wrote, Facing
issues of mortality can imbue life with a special meaning in relation to its finality and
heighten an awareness of the preciousness of each moment When death fears
surface in the course of everyday life, you can face up to the realization of your
personal mortality, identify the accompanying emotions of fear, sadness and rage,
and find a way to communicate your thoughts and feelings to those people you trust.
Focus your attention on living fully in the present rather than imagining the future.
Death is not happening to you now, and it serves no purpose to dwell on the fact that
you are going to die someday, or to rehearse or ruminate about the anguish of how
you might feel at that time. Actually, it is counterproductive to anticipate and pre-live
negative outcomes of any kind. It causes unnecessary pain and suffering and arouses
debilitating voice attacks. It requires courage to remain in the present and to live fully
despite your finite existence. Living in an adult mode involves remaining vulnerable to
both the joy and sadness inherent in the human condition.
--------------------------------------------------------You know, I think in psychology, there is to much blaming the 'child'. Everything goes
back to the child. Maybe more than is warranted. I'm not seeking to say modern
psychology is incorrect but it just seems that the child gets blamed for
anything the adult cant do or is finding hard to cope with in the present. So
much so that it is said you aren't an adult until you stop being a child. This theoretical
framework sets up the child as something to be overcome, something holding you
back, the eternal enemy of the 'adult'.
To me, the thing that is amazing about this is that the child is set in the distant past,
almost pre-memory. By definition the adult is left to deal with something that
may or may not have been as he cant remember or in hindsight he can project
his current ills by looking back in the past to the first time he displayed said behavior.
We can then build a theory from there in the hope that it'll transform him in the
present. In a similar way, another way we lead our lives is setting things up in the
future. This construct up ahead in time which by definition we'll never get to, we only
know by thought. In between these 2 is the person in the present, the thing that
actually is and exists right now.
Surely there are better psychological frameworks that can help the individual where
the pivot point is now rather than the past or the future.

I think the problem could be boiled down to a "logical, adult" love of structure.
We know we act crazy, so we want to understand why. In order to understand, we
seek information that helps us to build a framework. Using this framework, we put
sticky notes on all of our feelings, and we say, "Oh, that's good! Very grown up" or "No
no! That's bad! That's the child throwing a tantrum, being needy, etc."
This sticky note posting doesn't actually help. Sure, it helps to label thoughts and
feelings in terms of getting a handle on them and seeing them for what they are, but
as you say, there is also a sort of "blame" attached to this labeling.
Once the emotions and thoughts are recognized, a new tactic is required. The "child"
can't be allowed to do what it wants all the time, and the "adult" can't be allowed to
scold and label all the time. You might even say that the very act of labeling in this
way is a good step forward, but it's also the next hurdle to overcome.
So, I think the goal should be more like an integration of emotion, feeling, logic,
reason, and so on. It doesn't really matter what you call it; what matters is what you
do with it and how you do it.
Feelings need to be okay, but not totally immune to rational thinking. Rational
thinking needs to be strong and clear, but not to the extent that it kills or invalidates
how we feel.
It's like an image of a rainbow on a computer. The image is made up of a bunch of 0's
and 1's. 0 is child, 1 is adult (or vice versa). We get so stuck in looking at the 0's and
1's that we forget that it's not binary numbers for the sake of binary numbers - it's a
rainbow, for crying out loud!
If you want to continue with structure, there is then a child, an adult, and a "god" that
sees the bigger picture. Or, if you want to continue with the more feelingy side of
things, there are pixels and gradients and brush strokes, but it requires something
bigger to see the whole image. You have to zoom out to see the whole piece of
artwork. Or just continue on with both!
Of course, there always seems to be a duality in this world... Maybe we're just
destined to work on these opposites, to choose one or another at the right times, and
to just attempt to see the bigger picture while still making "better" choices at certain
times that lead us towards a chosen goal or aim.
--------------------------------------------I think some of the best models of that were being used in the 1980's under the
heading of dynamic psychotherapy; a phrase that indicates that the therapist isn't
representing a particular branch or brand of therapy but rather a mix designed to be
efficient, to produce results for the sufferer and without a lot of bs theory.

To be able to suffer the therapy itself, though, seems to require either that the person
has hit rock-bottom on their own or they're in a similar bind - such as a pre-prison,
court-ordered psych evaluation. The similarity here, being that there's nowhere else
left to go.
Anyway, I remember reading a real case of a guy in his mid thirties to early forties. He
was often described as an *sshole and had been in and out of fights and jail for most
of his life. He had all kinds of victim excuses and was most emphatic with his pet
phrase: "I can't change", or "I ain't never going to (be able to) change".
Facing his therapist, he displayed the typical body language and attitude of a person
resigned to being some kind of bully and expressed a bunch of excuses along with the
typical defenses.
The therapist asked him, "so, how long have you felt you'll always be nothing but an
*sshole?" The patient was taken aback and became a little angry, saying, "I never said
that!" The therapist said "sure you did, you just sat there explaining what makes you
an *sshole and told me that you'll always be an *sshole. How else is someone
supposed to interpret that? So, my question to you is, how long have you felt
hopeless?"
Well, to make a long story short, the patient 'got' that the therapist could see through
some of his bs, so he became more honest and started making progress in a group
therapy program in which everyone was allowed to participate in each member's
case.
I think there are two important things to take from this:
1) that all the cases I read about under this heading, resolved to a large extent by
understanding that, between the ages of 3 and 7, some kind of major life change (for
the worse) grew out of a deeply felt loss of emotional support and love from a parent.
The parent left due to death or some other reason and the parent that remained was
depressed or otherwise emotionally unavailable. There are variations of this theme,
but the point is of an emotional loss of significant impact. This "death", and the
inability to cope with it along with its consequences, led to many kinds of reactions
and behavior patterns based on a feeling of helplessness, panic and anxiety and
subsequent denial and trying to "work all this out successfully" in later life, AKA
"acting out."
2) that in order to be able to help another person to even approach the realizations
that can change them for the better, the therapist has to have the experience or
ability to deal with his own stuff first. Otherwise, there will be conscious or
unconscious collaboration between patient and helper to "not go there", or "not go so
deep" when "going there", or "going that deep" is exactly what's needed.
So, for me, the pivot of 'now' is the point where there is no other option than to seek

help and all work goes into exploring and resolving past experience until one's actions
in the present begin to make perfect sense with the new way of looking at his/her
behavior-organizing principles.
For what you're talking about, Luke, I'd recommend Howard Wishnie M.D. and his book
Impulsive Personality, Understanding People With Destructive Character Disorders,
1987. A description of a type with which I can relate to some extent. FWIW
Don't get me wrong. Drs. Firestone has put out some great work and I expressly
recommend Robert's "voice therapy". His idea of the "fantasy bond" also rings true
and is one aspect of the "fantasy connection" that Wishnie introduced in the above
mentioned book as a wider concept.

Are You Your Own Person?

"Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions or customs of other people
are the rule of conduct," said John Stuart Mill. "There is wanting one of the principal
ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social
progress." In other words, to be happy you need to be your own person. But what
exactly does it mean to be your own person? And how do you personally measure up?
These are questions I want to address in this blog.
There is certainly no formula for determining whether you are your own person.
However, I will address some general questions, which in turn will be used to
construct a self-assessment inventory to help you gauge where you stand and where
you may need some work. Indeed, we all can use some work. If there is any settled
philosophical consensus about humankind, it is that none of us are perfect.
In what ways and to what extent do you depend on others?
To be your own person clearly requires independence of thought, feeling, and action.
This means that you can and do think, feel, and act without excessively relying on
others to give you direction. However, as John Donne famously proclaimed, "no man is
an island," and human happiness cannot be attained in a social vacuum. So, being
independent does not mean that you live outside cultural, social, and legal
boundaries; or that your character is not shaped by a process of socialization; or that
all social conformity is unhealthy. Still, there exists a personal sphere of personal
independent existence characterized by autonomous thinking and acting, which
cannot be subtracted from a person without taking away the capacity for happiness.
Indeed, some people may be so dependent on others that they feel (understandably)
that their lives are out of their control. They may feel lost, confused, manipulated,
degraded, and needy. They may feel as though an important ingredient is missing
from their lives but really not even know what's missinglet alone how to attain it or
get it back.
Some people may be easily intimated by others. They cave in to social pressures to
think, feel, or act in certain ways, even if they know or should know better.
Some people live vicariously through others (for example, their children, partner,
friends, or people they admire) instead of plotting an independent life plan. So, the

accomplishments of someone else are substituted as though they were their own.
Indeed, admiring, being proud of, or being happy for someone else are healthy
responses to the good fortune of anothermuch more so than envy, jealousy, and
distain. But living through others is no substitute for living through oneself. The latter
tends to promote and sustain happiness; while the former does not.
Others may isolate themselves from social interaction. As the words of Simon and
Garfunkel's classic song go, "Hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I touch no one
and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island. And a rock feels no pain; and an
island never cries." But this is more properly a form of depressed thinking than it is a
healthy coping mechanism.
Still others may tend to deliberately do the opposite of what is expected of them
primarily for the sake of being oppositional. This is also counterproductive because it
is not based on any rational determination of what conduces to one's own best
interest or the best interest of others.
While too much conformity or reliance on others can leave you without your own
sense of purpose or direction, too little thwarts your chances of attaining any goals
you may have set. However, between relying too much or too little there is also a
"golden mean." While no person in the course of living attains perfect balance
between these opposite poles, being your own person requires attainment of a
significant measure of balance.
Such a balanced life is one where there is interdependence between you and others.
There is reciprocity between the support you receive from others and that which you
give, consistent with your own freedom and that of others to forge respective life
plans and make reasonable strides toward them. In this balanced state, you may be
actively involved in helping others thrive but not to the exclusion of helping yourself
to live contentedly. You know where to draw the line between healthy helping and
becoming a slave to others. In this healthy state of interdependence, there is
mutuality in friendship, business ventures, intimate relationships, kinship, and other
social encounters. Thus, in intimate relationships between persons who are their own
persons, each party is a partner and does not mooch off of the other. Sexual intimacy
involves mutual gratification and neither party is the other's servant.
How authentic are you?
In intimate relationships, unequal power structures are typically incompatible with
being one's own person because both the dominant and dominated are not free to be
themselves. For example, in the traditional marriage between a man and a woman,
the man is expected to "wear the pants" and the woman is expected to submit herself
to him. This weighs heavily not only on the woman's capacity for authenticity but also
on the man's. Simone de Beauvoir succinctly expressed the price paid by both parties:
A fallen god is not a man; he is a fraud. The lover has no other alternative than to
prove that he really is this king accepting adulationor to confess himself a usurper. If
he is no longer adored, he must be trampled on.
In turn the woman is expected to absorb her identity into his. "The supreme happiness
of the woman in love," said De Beauvoir, is to be recognized by the loved man as a
part of himself; when he says "we" she is associated and identified with him, she

shares his prestige and reigns with him over the rest of the world; she never tires of
repeatingeven to excessthis delectable "we."
Relationships of this ilk are usually dysfunctional and can involve both physical and
emotional abuse. And, while De Beauvoir portrayed the model of male domination,
the same dysfunction can exist when the female is the dominant one. Only when
there is mutual recognition of and respect for personal space can authentic
relationships among intimates flourish.
Traditional gender role models are not the only potential source of losing your
authenticity. Other social roles such as your job could also consume your individuality
if you let it. Thus the company man who devotes his life to the bottom line prosperity
of the corporation; the soldier who becomes a fighting machine; the accountant who
views life as a series of debits and credits; the pedantic professor; the journalist who
eavesdrops; the politician who sells out his constituency (and therefore his soul) to get
reelected; the lawyer who gets off rapists and others he knows are (as a matter of
fact) guilty; the devoutly religious individual who surrenders all his worldly
possessions to a cult leader and is willing to drink the Kool Aid; people such as these
hide their personhood behind a social mask and as a result lose their individuality. But
you don't have to allow a role to swallow up who you are.
Jean-Paul Sartre admonished that, for human beings, "existence precedes essence."
By this he meant that people are not like manufactured items-like tables and chairs
that are conceived in advance and produced with a certain "essence," that is, for a
certain purpose. Instead, we possess the freedom and responsibility to decide our own
purposes in life. This is a constructive antidote against losing yourself in a social role.
You are not a table or chair; nor are you just an accountant, politician, doctor, lawyer,
teacher, or banker. You are a multifaceted human being with thoughts, feelings, and
desires that cannot be subsumed under a job description or a social role. This is who
you really are and what you can be, if you let yourself.
How willing are you to stand on principle?
If you are your own person, then you will be prepared to stand your ground when your
principles or values are at stake. This does not mean that you must fight every battle
to the death, but there will be times when surrendering your values in order to avoid a
difficult situation would be to destroy the personal dignity that is requisite to being
your own person. Suppose you are a nurse and you are ordered by an incompetent
physician to do something that you know would harm a patient. Refusing the order
and suffering the consequences may be the price of continuing to be your own
person. Standing on principle can take courage. On the other hand, in telling yourself
that you have no other choice but to follow the order, you would be lying to yourself,
living in "bad faith," as the existentialists would say. This is because you really do
have a choice even if you don't like the alternatives. In the end, people who maintain
their dignity instead of selling their moral souls tend to command more respect and to
be well regarded by others.
To what extent do you base your decisions on rational judgment?
John Stuart Mill also emphasized the importance of thinking rationally in being your
own person. "He who chooses his plan for himself," he said, "employs all his faculties.
He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather

materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness
and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision."
This means that, as your own person, you look before you leap. You do not act on
personal whims. You welcome the opinions of others and remain open to alternative
perspectives besides your own. You consider the pros and cons of your options; and,
instead of vacillating, you actually make a decision. You are aware that you can never
be certain about life choices and there is inevitable risk in whatever life choices you
make. You are also aware that it is better to decide on the basis of a rational judgment
than to make your decision by indecision. The latter can happen when you
procrastinate and, as a result, time passes and the decision is made for you. When
this happens, you lose the opportunity to act rationally, which makes it less likely that
things will turn out the way you would prefer.
To be your own person you will also need to do a reasonably good job at avoiding
irrational emotional outbursts, fits of anger or rage, depression, intense anxiety,
debilitating guilt, phobias, compulsions, and other irrational emotional responses to
the events in your life. Such emotional responses tend to defeat your own interests
and goals. These irrational emotions can control you rather than you them; and
persons so out of control cannot be their own persons.
Dependence on chemicals such as psychoactive drugs or alcohol can also override
reason and lead to irrational and self-destructive behavior. Indeed, many lives are
turned upside down by alcohol and drugs like cocaine, heroin, oxycontin, or other
psychoactive drugs and medications. A person who has an addiction to such
substances can suffer serious loss of autonomy. It can eventually adversely affect
virtually every aspect of one's life.
As is well known, among the most daunting challenges with addictions is admitting to
having the problem. Many people live in denial for years as their careers fall apart,
their significant others leave them, and their friends cut off ties. No rational person
wants these things to happen, but they can and do happen. This is because the
chemical dependencies take over.
As Mill suggests, developing, honing, and applying your rational "faculties" is the best
general antidote to whimsy, procrastination, self-defeating emotional responses,
compulsiveness, chemical dependencies, blind subscription to custom or tradition,
and other physical, social, or psychological factors that can undermine your personal
autonomy.
Do you follow through on your decisions?
Making a rational decision, however, does not itself ensure that you will act on it. As
Mill so aptly emphasized, you also need "firmness and self-control to hold to" your
decision. Indeed, many times people decide to do things that they never follow
through on. Such inertia, or weakness of will, can defeat the point of having made a
decision in the first place. From individual decisions to collective ones, much time and
effort can be wasted in reaching decisions that never see the light of day.
Putting things off until another time or day is a popular mode of inaction. This may be
due to laxness, fear of having to deal with the repercussions of the decision, a sense
that you just "can't" do it, or even forgetfulness (with or without Freudian
undercurrents).

Building willpower to follow through on your decisions is profoundly important to being

your own person. You can do this by practicing. As Aristotle maintained, you can
cultivate virtuous habits through practice. The more you push yourself to follow
through on your decisions, the more habituated you are likely to become in acting on
them. Like a muscle, willpower gets stronger when you use it. Use it or lose it!
How self-confident are you?
Weak willpower can also be symptomatic of low self-confidence. As Aristotle instructs,
to be self-confident is a mean between being self-deprecating and being vain. The
self-confident person unconditionally accepts himself and avoids self-rating. So, if you
are self-confident, you will avoid trying to prove (to yourself or others) how bad you
are or how wonderful you are. Instead you will make a realistic assessment of the
merit of your actions. If you do something wrong, you will attempt to learn from it and
move on. What you won't do is degrade yourself by calling yourself names or
otherwise engage in a vicious self-defeating game of self-devaluation. This is because
being self-confident requires being self-accepting, and self-berating is incompatible
with accepting yourself.
Healthy self-acceptance must also to be unconditional and not depend on what others
might say or think. Unfortunately some people devote their lives to doing what they
think would please or meet with the approval of others. Of course, there is nothing
wrong with wanting to please others or to get their approval; and it can be preferable
to gain and sustain the approval of others, especially if the person whose approval is
sought has some power over your life-for example, your employer. A problem arises,
however, when you seek to please or gain the approval of others in order to validate
your own self-worth. When the latter is the case, you can live a roller coaster
existence whereby your self-worth rises and falls on the fickle barometer of getting
and remaining in the good graces of others.
This is a good way to frustrate your personal happiness. On the contrary, a selfconfident person, Aristotle admonished, is also a self-lover and perceives herself as
her own best friend. Indeed, best friends do not demean and degrade but encourage
and inspire. Nor do they make their friendship contingent on who likes or approves of
their best friend. So too is this true in the case of a self-confident person.
How comfortable are you with trying new things?
As a self-confident person you will also be prepared to spice things up by trying out
new and different thingswithin reason of course. So, Mill also talked about
"experiments in living" in which people try out new life arrangements to see which
ones work and which ones don't. As Mill eloquently admonished, "there should be
different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of
character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should
be proved practically, when anyone thinks fit to try them." So we can and should
tinker a bit instead of simply sticking to doing what tradition or custom dictates. Are
you largely driven to accept things because they are customs or traditions? Are you
uncomfortable with trying out new and different things?
Here "customs" or "traditions" can be broadly understood to include social routines
and even the way you earn a living. So, you may have gotten used to engaging in the
same recreational and social activities and now routinely engage in them even though
they have become boring and unrewarding. You might go to the same restaurants, eat

the same foods, play the same games. You may have worked at the same job for
many years without any changes or variations in how and what you do. Such routines
can take the vital spirit out of your life, leaving you uninspired and uninspiring to
others. You may feel emotionally flat and reflect the same in your social interactions
with others. If this is you then making changes-seeking out new and different social
activities, making new friends, cultivating new hobbies, and altering work routines
can add new vitality to living. So you might "experiment" a bit.
Take the self-determination inventory
Now that you have a clearer idea of what it takes to be your own person, taking the
below inventory can help give you a better idea about where you stand. For each of
the impediments to being your own person given below, place a check in
the space that you think best applies. For example, if you disagree that you tend to
rely on others to tell you what to do, say, or how to feel, then place a check in the
"Disagree" space of impediment 1. On the other hand, if you think you have some
aspects of this impediment but not all of them, such as that you think you often ask
others too many questions that you can answer for yourself, then you can select
"Somewhat Agree" in the impediment 1 space.
Self-Determination Inventory
Impediment to being
your own person
1. I tend to rely on others to
tell me what to do, say,
or how to feel.

Disagree / Somewhat Agree / Agree

_____

______

______

2. I tend to try to live through

others.
_____

______

______

3.I tend to be intimidated by

others and to cave to social
pressures.
_____

______

______

4. I tend to keep to myself

and avoid social interaction.

_____

______

______

5. I tend to sabotage my
goals by intentionally trying
to do the opposite of what
others expect of me.

_____

______

______

6.I often feel as though I am

playing a role instead of being
the person I really am or want
to be.
_____

______

______

7.It's like I'm a servant in our

relationship, like what I want
doesn't matter and what he/she
wants does.
_____

______

______

8.I tend to do things that I know

are wrong and feel guilty
afterwards
_____

______

______

9. I tend to act impetuously or

out of emotion without first
considering the consequences
and regret it later; or I become
obsessed or anxious about
making a mistake and have a
hard time deciding.
_____

______

______

10.I often take alcohol or drugs

to make myself feel better.
_____

______

______

11. I tend to put off following

through on my decisions; or
make excuses, or somehow get
sidetracked and don't do what I
intend to do.
_____
12. I often feel incompetent,
stupid, or otherwise inadequate
to make decisions for myself _____

______

______

______

______

13. I often try to please others

or get their approval in order
to validate my own self-worth. _____

______

______

14. I am afraid to try new

things.

______

______

_____

The first step in self-improvement is always to identify what needs to be improved.

Being your own person is essential to your happiness. So, identifying these things can
be a first step in increasing your happiness.
Where do you go from there? The general answer is to work cognitively, behaviorally,
and emotionally on the impediments you need to remove. Each of these obstacles to
being your own person will have cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dimensions that
you can work on. Getting professional help from a therapist can be useful, especially if
you are feeling depressed or in desperation. You can then focus in on the impediments
you need most to work on.
There are also a number of self-help books that take a cognitive-emotive-behavior
approach. In my book, The New Rational Therapy, selections of which are available on
Google Books, I address all of these impediments by providing some useful antidotes
to the faulty thinking undergirding them. For example, see the chapter on Being Your
Own Person; the chapter on Building Respect; the chapter on Controlling Yourself; and
the chapter on Becoming Morally Creative.

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