Psychology: The Difficulty of Examining Negative Behavior Patterns

Have you ever found yourself in one of those situations where pointing out to someone that their own toxic behaviors are the cause of the very problems they are constantly suffering under... and it actually makes you the "bad person" in the equation?

I realize that was a very long and rambling sentence...

Earlier today, I was having a continuing conversation with a friend who had previously stopped in at our now defunct store during my work time there, and we got to talking about relationships, friendships and the negative cycles that sometimes seem to go on, and on, and on.

I was illustrating some point with an old "funny" comment I sometimes use to illustrate the strange reasoning of difficult people: "Well, the child support check wouldn't have BOUNCED if you hadn't been a jerk and gone off to try cashing it right away!"

Think about that statement, for a moment... and what is really being said. And yes, it's just a metaphor, not an actual current situation.

What We Don't Want to Look At...

Our negative habits often fall under the broader headings of "overt" and "covert."

It's usually pretty easy to "own" our overt negative habits "Yeah, I know! I'm ALWAYS late!" because they tend to be "out there" and in people's faces. In the case of the bounced child support check, we rationalize that our paycheck took a couple of extra days in the mail, rather than we simply didn't want to pay.

But our covert bad habits are trickier. We tend to become very reluctant to admit that we are "ALWAYS late" because we are deeply resentful of having to pay attention to someone else's schedule. Or we're resentful that the child support payments keep us from being able to go on vacation.

Well, admitting that would make me sound like a selfish asshole!

Indeed.

But sometimes we just are selfish assholes, and sometimes we fall into patterns and habits that make us precisely that, without actively being aware that we are doing so.

I have had that happen to me a number of times in my life.

Example: Those Unpaid Bills

There was a time in my life when I neither answered the phone nor opened my mail... because I just "knew" that the only reason anyone would be getting in touch with me was to collect money from me.

Of course, that's not a very responsible approach to living. Being perpetually late with bills — sometimes to the point where services would be suspended — is not particularly clever.

But was I really such a slob? Such a useless procrastinator?

Not exactly...

My underlying problem was actually my own unwillingness to step up and admit that I simply wasn't able to earn enough "living" to afford my life. I lacked the life skills and qualifications to get and hold a job well-paid enough to support my ex's and my lifestyle at the time.

Instead, I allowed my passivity to gradually let us fall into bankruptcy. Which took some seven years to extract myself from... All this, because I was not willing to look directly at my own shortcomings.

Treating Symptoms vs. Healing Problems

I won't get into what several years of therapy eventually unearthed... suffice it to say that we sometimes learn some really horrible things from ingrained behavior patterns in our family of origin. And we can say that we have "dealt with our childhood issues" to our hearts' content... but those things tend to show up again and again, especially when we are under extreme stress.

In Western medicine and psychology — in particular — we have a tendency to give people "happy pills" for their problems, rather than heal the underlying issues causing those happy pills to become necessary, in the first place.

Metaphorically speaking, it's going to the Doctor and getting pills for our persistent headaches... and whereas the pills get rid of those headaches, we never stop to figure out WHY we get headaches twice a week. We simply "normalize" having headaches, and call the pills the "cure."

I won't get into my personal opinion about the mental health profession... but I do believe that the entire "for profit" system is of dubious merit, as it tends to favor "treatment" (ongoing) over "healing" (permanent).

Regardless, examining our deep-rooted negative behaviors can be a considerable challenge!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

(Thanks to encouragement from @shadowspub I am taking the #creativecoin tag for a trial run!)

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.)
Created at 190804 00:42 PST
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