By Donna Williams
Children are people too, no matter what labels they have. They have
chemistry which can be imbalanced and hence can have mood disorders. They
can have neurotransmitter imbalances making them more or less compulsive,
impulsive, fixated, depressed, manic, fluctuating, miles away or full on
and in your face. They are just people.
Like people they can develop mindsets that work for them or that are self defeating. We don’t always need verbal language to get a sense of someone’s possible mindset. There is still the language of behaviour. Environments can unintentionally and unwittingly respond to their child’s experiences/mindset in ways that justify or compound the current self defeating mindset or chemistry issues, or that turn them around.
if one has a mood disorder, such as depression/bipolar with or without
OCD, underlying one’s social, emotional, communication, behavioural stuff, combinations of diet/supplementation/natural medicine/medication can often address that stuff.
if what one’s stuff is part of a personality mindset, these interventions
are limited in their ability to do the trick because one would be simply
driven to remanifest the old mindset (with its old ‘rewards’/defences/excuses/hiding places etc. So addressing this would take a change of that entire mindset, perhaps with plenty of help from hypnotherapy (as you know counselling won’t do it if one is driven to just remanifest the old
familiar, even chemically addictive pattern of the mindset) and if that’s
not possible, orchestrating the environment’s responses to turn around
self defeating patterns in an indirectly confrontational way can work in a
similar, subtle, way.
Sure, for some, dietary interventions/medication
may help that process but unless the environment is altered dramatically to
trigger that change of mindset and unless the person themselves wants to
let go the old patterns, it can be a tough thing to change.
So in case this is of your interest… here’s a little blurb i wrote for
someone else that may help some people.
…..
MINDSETS:
there are lots of mindsets people can get stuck in and ‘non-verbal’ people
are not immune to these very human dynamics that can effect any person. Many mindsets can help us, others can be self defeating.
sometimes we get stuck in a perfectionist mindset and we judge ourselves
so harshly we end up unable to dare try anything we can’t be perfect at
straight away.
sometimes we get stuck in an obsessional mindset, going over and over
the things that scare us till we build up our terror till it is much huger than
ourselves and we then scare the hell out of ourselves till we shut down,
certain that all is doomed.
there is the pessimist mindset, certain that we are somehow cursed, that
no matter how hard we try only bad things come our way and unable to see or
care much about our successes because we choose to focus instead on our
failures.
sometimes we get stuck in a dependant mindset, desperate to break free,
but also feeling their desperation to save us, certain this is why they love
us, afraid we will lose the intensely close merging relationship we have
built up with our greatest supporters and carers, desiring independance, yet
deeply insecure too that if we didn’t need them, they’d abandon us.
we can get in a co-dependant mindset, fixating on ‘loved’ others till they
are crippled by being our own life’s quest, entire sense of self, life purpose. Now we make them unable to easily dare to change because to do so would rob us, their saviour, of our very identity and social worth. We may even simultaneously reinforce their certainty of their own incapability without us or cause them to cringe under the spotlight of our magnified attention and desperation all revolving around a ‘love’ that can be suffocating or invite a crippling and inescapable dependency, leaving them unable to feel loveable as a person rather than a cause and without feeling loveable self love is not existant and the ‘objects’ of such ‘love’ cannot save themselves.
we can get stuck in a self hatred/self abusive mindset, disempowering
those who might bring us down by bringing ourselves down first, defensively
stopping ourselves from reaching out by compulsively reinforcing how
dangerous or toxic we would be if we reached out.
sometimes we get stuck in a beauracratic/dogmatic mindset, insistent
rigidly that everything must follow the rules as if we in some kind of superiority
can somehow assume we always know best.
There are good constructive mindsets too.
We can choose the mindset of the eternal optimist, choosing to believe
that all things are possible even if it takes hard step by step work, we will
conquer the mountains.
We can choose the mindset of the realist, choosing to turn away from our
blown up magnified fears and negativity and instead look at the mere
unemotional facts and then make a plan, if necessary, a new plan, step
by step, believing we have achievable goals.
We can choose the taoist mindset, believing that black and white are not
all good or all bad, that bad can work best in the right situation, that too
much good can sometimes harm, that walking the middle path, without knee
jerk reactions, without fierce fire that burns itself out, is the best
way to achieve our goals with calm satisfaction and acceptance instead of
resentment or fear, a mindset in which the only moment we have to worry
about is the one we are in each second, each minute, right now, not
yesterday, not tomorrow, and all steps are possible if we don’t look
down and don’t look so far ahead we become terrified and then assume we will
fail when in fact living in each moment, we could well succeed.
We could choose the independant mindset, freeing ourselves of
overconcern of the feelings of others and thereby freeing them too, where we all become fully responsible for exercising our potential step by step at our own
pace, for our own sake, without guilt, shame, burden or accumulated debt.
We have a choice at any time to change our mindset for one which will
help instead of hinder us.
a self defeating mindset can be changed for one which will better work
toward achieving the goals of empowerment, self forgiveness, independance, self expression and purposefulness.