Tags
child brains, courage, foreign language, gravity, impatience, language, learning a foreign language, learning a new language, older brains, social situations, socialization, stress, stressful situations, young brains
(I ‘stole’ this from my sister)
I had a thought yesterday come up about socialization. It’s like a language that I didn’t learn when I was young. Young brains absorb naturally – but not adult brains. Learning is more tedious. It takes a lot longer (a couple of years) to feel comfortable and fluent in a foreign language. But it’s not impossible. It’s very helpful to have a teacher willing to understand and correct. A therapist could be that person. Taking situations to that teacher and getting corrections helps. My sister asked her husband (who knew the language fluently) for that when she was stumped. I can see me stumbling over myself in social situations with people I don’t know well and trust. It takes courage though to ask for correction. What I learned growing up is “What does it take to survive” and naturally I fall into that under stressful situations. I learned that to deal I have to react violently and loudly, out of control, impatient in the extreme. I think there are many, many ‘words’ of this kind of ‘survival language’ that I know by heart. It takes a lot of effort and consciousness to find a different way. Like saying; “It’s just an object” when I get upset that something is impeding me or has fallen down. I say to myself; “It’s just gravity” or “It’s not doing this on purpose”. These thoughts create almost instantaneous calm.
Climbing Out Of The Well 