Self vs. Relatedness Binds of Our Kids
Let’s look again at these kids with an eye on the Self vs. Relatedness Bind to see how it has played out in each of their situations.
Each of the five kids was struggling in their own way. Neal and Sam became what others needed them to be. Mitch and D.J. made a mess of relatedness in their futile attempts to protect their fragile sense of selves. And Sophie? She compromised herself to desperately avoid being abandoned.
Remember the “bind” Sophie was in, having been stopped by the police, who found drugs and alcohol in her car? Her mother was pleading with her to give the police the names of the kids who ran away, who literally left her holding the bag …and the bottle and the pipe. Sophie would not give up their names and Kristen was scared that Sophie would take all the blame and suffer all the consequences. In other words, Sophie was faced with the bind of taking care of herself and risking abandonment by her “friends” or protecting those “friends” and suffering greatly for it. As we have seen, Sophie handled the self vs. relatedness bind by ignoring potential self-harm in her efforts to hold on to relationships.
Sophie was totally unprepared to handle the self vs. relatedness bind of adolescence. In fact, it was unfairly thrust upon her early in childhood. When her parents split up, she concluded that she needed to do what it took to hold on to whatever relationship she could with her father. Her sense of self became connected to the amount of attention her father could give her. When she visited him, they watched his favorite teams on television, he choose where they went to eat, and she even did a little extra cleaning of his apartment while he was out. Where dad was concerned, she put far more effort into pleasing him than developing her own interests and talents. As she moved toward adolescence, her fragile sense of self and her desperate need to hold onto relationships became a pattern of behavior. The process of negotiating the changing landscape of what her peers valued and expected, in order to fit in and not be ignored, was far more complicated than pleasing Dad and taking Mom for granted.
By the end of middle school D.J. had completely disavowed any relationship needs. In his mind, doing anything remotely like Sophie had done to fit in would be totally selling out. He was convinced that he could not have satisfying relationships while preserving his genuine self. To avoid feeling lonely and depressed, he minimized the importance of friends, devalued his fellow students as “sheep”, and distracted himself with projects and mind numbing music. Nowhere in the process would he acknowledge a fear of rejection, loneliness or a need to compromise.
Neal’s failure to win academic comparison wars in his new school made him feel like a failure. He couldn’t tolerate those feelings, so he rewrote the rules and stopped trying. He put more and more emphasis on relatedness, and though he didn’t know it, gave up self (his academic ambitions) in the process. Neal’s choices reflected a self vs. relatedness bind at work. By not caring and not trying, Neal avoided the humiliation of failing to measure up in comparison to peers, and the shame of neglecting his academic self-development. By focusing on his relationships with friends, he secured his need for fitting in.
Neal did not consciously struggle with a bind between self and connection. Instead he chose to finesse it by minimizing the academic standards or expectations for self-development. Neal finessed the self vs. relatedness bind by emphasizing an identity as a sensitive and reliable friend. Looking in from the outside, we would say that he opted to emphasize the relatedness half of the equation and did just enough to quiet expectations for academic achievement. He also redefined self as: sensitive and helpful friend. More importantly and regrettably, he quieted his own ambitions so that he was not burdened with internal feelings of shame or regret.
From a very young age, Sam recognized what her parents expected, needed, and valued, and delivered it without being asked. Her qualities of leadership and high achievement defined her and she never questioned whether she had chosen them or they were part of a false self that made her special in everyone’s eyes.
Upon reaching adolescence, while many kids chose to just hang out together, Sam’s involvement with peers seemed to always have a purpose. More often than not, she led them or directed them and those around her gladly followed. Sam was too busy to ever stop and take stock of where she stood with friends, what she wanted from friends and they from her, or what she really felt passionate about. Fitting in and feeling adequate were not worries that she consciously struggled with, because she was valued as a leader and never faced being ignored.
Although she was not consciously aware of it, Sam faced the same developmental bind, between self and relatedness, but pursued a very different solution that proved just as defensive as Neal’s, as her weekend in the hospital reminded us. Instead of Neal’s solution of redefining expectations and avoiding disappointment, Sam’s solution was to always meet expectations and never disappoint. Pleasant, involved, competent; who would have guessed how sad and angry Sam really was on the inside? In fact, Sam didn’t even know, until she sat alone in the hospital for seventy-two hours with plenty of time to think and feel. Only then did she begin to ponder how much of herself she gave up or left undeveloped in her pursuit of keeping everybody happy.
Mitch had relationships with peers through sports and school, but never a close friend. If we had asked Mitch, he would have said he had friends. Mitch was picked first when choosing sides on the playground, but he was not a kid who got invited to sleepovers or birthday parties. Mitch never recognized the self vs. relatedness bind. When he was admired, envied and in demand as a young athlete, he felt good about himself. He didn’t realize that since most of his relating centered on sports, both his self-esteem and connection to others was rather fragile and conditional. Once he lost his “top dog” status, his efforts to feel good often came at the expense of others, and therefore any chance at healthy relatedness.
Are you beginning to recognize the potential for self vs. relatedness binds in the lives of kids, not just these five? The self vs. relatedness bind will be an important concern to keep in mind as we respond to behavior that upsets us. In fact, learning to analyze before acting is an important goal I have for you. More about that later.
You’ve now had a chance to see the different ways in which all five of these kids are struggling unsuccessfully with fitting in and feeling adequate or the self vs. relatedness bind You’ve also seen some of the dysfunctional solutions they came up with to manage that bind. The next section looks at what form a child’s development needs to take, well before the demands of adolescence force these dysfunctional choices. Read on to learn more about how each of our five kids reached their current predicaments and what could have made things much easier for them.