Why do I behave this way?Lisa Chapman, Clinical Manager at South Pacific Private
Most of us have, at some point, wondered why we are the way
we are. We’ve questioned why we react to things the way we
do, or pondered why we can’t be more like someone we know
who seems to have it all figured out.
The Overview of Developmental Immaturity diagram, developed by Pia Mellody, (Senior Clinical
Advisor for The Meadows in Arizona), goes a long way into
answering these questions. South Pacific Private entirely bases its
recovery programs around this framework, which encompasses
learnings from various psychological schools of thought, including
psychological development stages, adaptations to trauma, ego
states and transactional analysis, to name a few. It provides a
major advantage to people in their recovery from addictions and
mood disorders.
The nature of the child
It’s fairly widely accepted that we’re all products of our past
experiences and environments. But before you go blaming your
family for the behaviours you want to change, be aware that the
majority of parents out there really believe they provided
everything their child needed. It is sometimes a shock for them to
learn that the child had a different perception or reality of their
upbringing. The nature of the child (at the top-left of the diagram) shows that as children, we need to feel valuable (worthy),
to be vulnerable (to feel safe and to receive help when it’s
needed) to be imperfect (make mistakes), to be dependent and
to be comfortable enough to be spontaneous and open. These
needs define how we make sense of our life experiences. In a
functional / healthy family, a child’s needs are met adequately
and their nature is accepted without ridicule or shame (i.e.
dependency needs are tolerated and spontaneity and openness
are allowed, etc). When the child’s needs aren’t met (or aren’t
perceived to be met), often because of trauma or abuse, we
begin to run into trouble.
Understanding core issues and trauma
The core issues of self-esteem, boundaries, reality, dependency
and moderation are directly affected by how the child’s needs
are met, and how they are modelled in the family system. For
example, if a child feels low self-worth, it can lead to poor selfesteem,
and their sense of reality can easily become distorted.
The most common feeling people experience around their core
issues is shame. Shame can be a debilitating emotion that affects
our ability to respond rationally to almost anything! It propels us into adaptive ways of behaving and drives us away from the real us.
This is one of the reasons why doing our own historical inventory
to identify childhood trauma is crucial to recovery. Trauma can
generally be defined as, ‘experiences during childhood that are
(or are perceived as) less than nurturing’. Trauma takes many
forms – it can be abuse of a physical, sexual, intellectual,
emotional or spiritual nature. It’s important not to minimise
trauma – it’s different for all of us and what’s fine for one person
can be horrifically traumatic for another.
Childhood trauma causes immaturity
Essentially, in the face of stress we regress to an immature state,
previously adopted during childhood trauma. We may behave
like we have lower (or greater) worth than those around us, become too
vulnerable or seemingly invulnerable, or try to excessively control
everything we can. We may behave too perfectly, or become
rebellious, or be overly (or anti) dependent. These are the primary
symptoms of trauma – adaptations, or coping mechanisms we
revert to during times of stress. We don’t necessarily stick to
displaying just one symptom either, we can slide from one extreme
to the other, or adopt any combination of the symptoms.
Secondary symptoms and relational problems
The result? Unmanageability. Life spins out of control as the snowball
gathers momentum. Our primary symptoms are masked by
more visible secondary symptoms: chemical addictions, process
addictions (e.g. gambling or sex addiction), disordered eating,
depression, anxiety, rage, the list goes on. And when you’re
displaying secondary symptoms like these, you can bet you’re
going to have some relational problems like intimacy issues. These
include enmeshment (being unhealthily involved/entangled with
another person), avoidance issues, dishonesty, interdependence
problems, or love addiction (where a person craves validation
from other people through love or sex).
The functional adult
Moving over to the right of the diagram, we see that the
functional adult develops through recovery. They learn to selfsupport,
meaning they can recover in spite of others’ actions or
decisions – they learn to reparent themselves. As a result, their
esteem comes from within, not externally, and they can protect
and contain themselves. They can begin to accept their
imperfections, have awareness and ability to meet their own and
others’ needs and are comfortable being spontaneous, open
and moderate. All without associated feelings of shame.
 At SPP, our recovery programs aim to bring people as close to the
nature of the child as possible. This is where we start to develop
self esteem, set boundaries, have a balanced view of reality
(while understanding there’s no one true reality), to have
acceptable dependency levels (by acknowledging what our
needs are by asking – not demanding or denying) and to be
moderate in our behaviour. By understanding the answers to why
we do what we do, we can begin to assume our roles as healthy,
enlightened, functioning adults.
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