Other People are Responsible for the Way I Feel

A consistent characteristic of imperative people is the desire to persuade others to be just like them. When encouraged to look back to their childhoods, most imperative people can recall a history of strong persuasion. The parents have been so intent on keeping order that their behavior said, “If I can get you to behave in my world, there will be order.” Developmental years were full of relationships that featured arm-twisting, intimidation, or threats.

Jack told me that he had learned early on that it was not safe to be vulnerable. He told me, “I remember a scene when I was only five or six years old. I had just stepped onto the back porch of our home to set something outside when a very loud clap of thunder sounded. Scared to death, I ran indoors, where my father grabbed me and told me to quit acting so ridiculous. Then my mother scolded me for upsetting my father. I was immediately defensive and told them they were both mean. The next thing I knew, I was smarting from a spanking.”

“In a sense you were in school at times like that.” I said, “You witnessed how effectively they persuaded you to be what they wanted, so you eventually learned to do likewise with your family.”

While it is a good thing to express opinions (as opposed to repressing them), it is not healthy for us to become bossy or condescending or explosive in order to get our way.

Les Carter, Imperative People: Those Who Must Be in Control

When the dream of childhood ends

For most people it is the demands of life which harshly put an end to the dream of childhood. If the individual is sufficiently well prepared, the transition to a professional career may take place smoothly. But if he clings to illusions that contradict reality, then problems will surely arise. No one takes the step into life without making certain presuppositions—and occasionally they are false. That is, they may not fit the conditions into which one is thrown. It is often a question of exaggerated expectations, of under-estimation of difficulties, of unjustified optimism or of a negative attitude.

CG Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Your Ending Style

You need to understand your own characteristic ways of coping with endings. One way to do this is to think back over the endings in your own life. Go back to your early childhood and recall the first experiences involving endings that you can remember.. deaths in the family, your parents’ departure on a trip, the death of a pet, or a friend’s moving away. Continue forward on this our of your life history and note all the endings you can recall along the way. Some involved places, social groups, hobbies, or sports; others involved responsibilities, training, or jobs. Some endings make be hard to describe. They have few outward signs, but they may leave long-lasting scars: the ending of innocence or trust, for example, or the ending of responsibility or of a religious faith.

What you bring with you to a transitional situation is the style you have developed for dealing with endings. The product of early experience and late influence, this style is your own way of dealing with external circumstances and with the inner distress they stir up. Your style is likely to reflect your childhood family situation, for transitions tend to send family members to different tasks: One person feels all the grief and anxiety for the entire group, another comforts the mourner, another takes over the routine responsibilities, and yet another goes into a sort of parody of “being in control of the situation.”

What can you say about your own style of bringing situations to a close? It is abrupt and designed to deny the impact of the change, or is it so slow and gradual that it is hard to see that anything important is happening? Do you tend to be active or passive in these terminal situations? That is, is it your initiative that brings things to term or do events just happen to you?

Think about how you tend to act at the end of an evening at a friend’s house or a night on the town. Do you try to drag things out by starting new conversations and activities as others seem to be ready to leave, or do you say suddenly that it was a nice evening and dash out? Or what about some recent larger ending: leaving a job or moving from a neighborhood? Did you say goodbye to everyone, or did you leave a day ahead of schedule just so that you could avoid the goodbyes?

Everyone finds endings difficult, so your own style is not a sign that you have some “problem” that others don’t have. The person who leaves early and the one who stays late are both avoiding endings and the discomfort of facing a break in the continuity of things. Whether you are a dasher or a lingerer is largely the result of how you learned to avoid the “party’s-over” experience as a child.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

The Risk of Independence

All life itself represents a risk, and the more lovingly we live our lives the more risks we take. Of the thousands, maybe even millions, of risks we can take in a lifetime the greatest is the risk of growing up. Growing up is the act of stepping from childhood into adulthood. Actually it is more of a fearful leap than a step, and it is a leap that many people never really take in their lifetimes. Though they may outwardly appear to be adults, even successful adults, perhaps the majority of “grown-ups” remain until their death psychological children who have never truly separated themselves from their parents and the power that their parents have over them.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled