Sensitizing a child to an emotion (racket)

As children grow and develop they come across events where they will experience the full range of emotions. This of course is a natural thing for a child to do. However sometimes they will be hyper sensitized to an emotion which means they will feel it more often and more intensely.

This sensitizing process happens by parents encouraging that emotion in the child. For example this can happen with shame if the parents raise the child using shame. 

For example the parent may say

“You should be ashamed of yourself for...”

Or the parent in some way derides or humiliates the child in front of its peers or siblings as a means of socializing the child.

Or if the child wets the bed and the parent uses some kind of shaming process in an effort to get the child to stop wetting the bed. For example getting the child to wear its wet underpants on its head for a period of time.

If a child is raised with this then it becomes sensitized to the emotion of shame and this becomes a function on the Adapted Child ego state rather than the Free Child ego state. As children go through life they come across situations where they feel shame or embarrassment. This is Free Child. The child who is sensitized to shame will have many more situations where they feel shame than the non sensitized child. In addition when they feel the shame it will usually be more intense. This is a racket and a function of the Adapted Child ego state.

Of course this can happen with any emotion like anger, sadness, happiness and fear. When working with clients the therapist needs to diagnose if they are dealing with an FC or AC emotion as they are dealt with differently.

Graffiti

Racket feelings and manipulation

In my upcoming workshop on racket feelings I look at the role feelings can play in human relationships. Especially how people use feelings to manipulate each other. The three most common feelings used to manipulate others are fear, guilt and shame.

For example, many men and women have had a covert unwritten agreement for many generations. Most of the time they are unaware they are even doing so. Women have learnt that in conflict with a male if they start to cry some men will tend to give them what they want, at least to some degree. They are behaving in such a way that the man will feel guilt and this motivates him to change his behaviour in such a way that suits the woman.

On the other hand men have learnt that if they begin to raise their voice and show some level of anger then some women will have a fear response and this motivates her to change her behaviour such  that it suits the man to some degree.

Then there are parents and children. Parents learn quickly that to get a child to do what they want using fear, guilt or shame is much more effective than the usually prescribed methods of time out and consequences of behaviour. The only difficulty with using the feelings method of parenting is there are some negative side effects for the child.

Graffiti

Strokes and racket development

Already mentioned has been the role of temperament in racket development and how the use of emotions in parenting can also effect the development of certain rackets.

However one of the more powerful ways of fostering a racket is with strokes. When a child displays a certain feeling how do the parents respond with their stroking patterns. Do the strokes they give foster the feeling being displayed or tend to hinder its development.

This is reasonably easy to ascertain. One simply recalls when they were young and how they observed the parents responding. See the chart below:

The patterns of stroking others does not stop in childhood but we are constantly being stroked in certain ways for the emotions we display. In many instances both parties are unaware of what is happening as it is unconscious communication. Indeed the vast majority of human communication is unconscious as this diagram shows.

To ascertain these conscious and unconscious stroking patterns with those in your current life one simply changes a few questions. See the diagram below:

Of course this is a two way process. Whist you are being influenced by the stroking patterns of others you are also influencing them in exactly the same way. To gain some insight into this one can answer another series of questions:

Graffiti

Factors in racket development

This post draws on the content of the previous two postings

In one of the previous postings I presented the following list of innate emotions.

Sad - depressed, down, flat, melancholic, bored, gloomy, low, dull 

Scared - worried, nervous, frightened, anxious, terrified, trepidation 

Shame - disgust, embarrassment, disgraced, humiliation, degraded, humble

Happy - joyous, delighted, peaceful, playful, glee, contented, glad 

Love - affection, adoration, liking, fondness, friendly, intimate 

Grief - Loss, lamenting, mourning 

Despair - Vacuum, nothingness, hopeless, blank, desolation, numb 

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous 

Anger - fury, rage, resentful, rebellious, annoyance, hate, spite, sarcasm

The development of feelings that become rackets will be due to a variety of factors one of those being the natural temperament of the child. The differing temperaments will result in a proclivity to have certain feelings and indeed develop particular racket feelings. These are listed below:

Fight - anger, sexual

Flight - scare,  shame

Freeze - scare, sad, despair

I also mentioned that a few emotions can be used as a way to parent children so as to get them to comply to the wishes of the parents. Those three being scare, guilt and shame. Thus one can initially look at racket development in a mathematical way.

If the child’s innate temperament is for flight and the parents use shame as a way to socialize the child then we have an additive effect:

Natural temperament of child is flight - 1 point of shame

Parents use shame as a socializing tool - 1 point of shame

In this case the child will have a doubling effect and hence could develop quite a strong shame racket that develops. 

The three other options are

Option 1

Natural temperament of child is fight or freeze - 0 point of shame

Parents use shame as a socializing tool - 1 point of shame

Total 1 point

Option 2

Natural temperament of child is flight - 1 point of shame

Parents do not use shame as a socializing tool - 0 point of shame

Total 1 point

Option 3

Natural temperament of child is fight or freeze - 0 point of shame

Parents do not use shame as a socializing tool - 0 point of shame

Total 0 points

In options 1 & 2 there could be some shame racket development whereas in option 3 there would be very little resultant shame racket development.

Attributions

There are other ways which will make emotions prominent in the personality (i.e. rackets). One of those is by attributions. The parents (or others) attribute a certain emotion to the child or adolescent.

When talking about their children to others in ear shot of the child parents may say things like

“She is the timid one.”

“He is the angry one.”

“She always happy and smiley.”

The child is told it is a certain way and in many instances the child will take that attribution on as the parents are imbued with psychological power by the child.

"He is the naughty one." Parents need to be careful with their attributions.

Furthermore in Transactional Analysis this is what is called a carom transaction. The parents do not speak directly to the child but talk about the child to others whilst the child listens on. This is a particularly potent transaction, more powerful than if the parent is speaking directly to the child. Very as well useful for a therapist in group or family therapy.

The other one of note are the feelings of:

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous

This is particularly important for the physically attractive female and the parents need to be very careful with it or it can become quite a substantial racket. The physically attractive girl hears comments about how pretty she looks and then when she reaches adolescence it truly starts. The parents often continue with attributions and carom transactions about the teenage girl and her physical appearance. In addition to this the psychically attractive female suddenly discovers how it effects males attitudes to her. She quickly learns that she can get ‘stuff’ from males because of her physical attractiveness. I don’t mean by having sex with them but at a subtle and often unconscious level she and the male communicate with the sexualness in the background at the very least.

This leaves the physically attractive woman in a precarious position because she can so easily get seduced by her own seductiveness. She learns at a conscious and unconscious level that her physical and emotional sexualness works. She starts to use it more and more often without her even being aware of it. In essence it becomes a racket. The sexualness is used to get males in particular to behave in a particular way. Any emotion can be used to manipulate others including sexuality with the physically attractive female. Over time she starts to rely on it, often without her even being aware of it and that leads to all sorts of negatives for her later on. 

The physically beautiful female needs to be careful not to be seduced by her own seductiveness such that it becomes a racket.

It is indeed a  difficult thing for parents to deal with. They need to somehow communicate to the physically attractive girl and adolescent not to rely on what their attractiveness can get them when there are going to be significant and powerful pressures to do so. However at the same time for her to enjoy her physical appearance. A difficult line indeed for parents to walk to avoid such a racket developing in the psychology of the girl.

Graffiti

Temperament and racket

Below is a list of the nine innate feelings that occur in humans. Each basic feeling is followed by a list of derivative feelings that come from the basic feeling.

Sad - depressed, down, flat, melancholic, bored, gloomy, low, dull 

Scared - worried, nervous, frightened, anxious, terrified, trepidation 

Shame - disgust, embarrassment, disgraced, humiliation, degraded, humble

Happy - joyous, delighted, peaceful, playful, glee, contented, glad 

Love - affection, adoration, liking, fondness, friendly, intimate 

Grief - Loss, lamenting, mourning 

Despair - Vacuum, nothingness, hopeless, blank, desolation, numb 

Sexual - romantic, seductive, passionate, sexy, sensual, lustful, amorous 

Anger - fury, rage, resentful, rebellious, annoyance, hate, spite, sarcasm

Innate temperament can be conceptualized a number of ways. One is with the model of fight, flight or freeze. Children are born with these tendencies as a basic way to deal with problems and stress in life

The differing temperaments will result in a proclivity to have certain feelings and indeed develop particular racket feelings. These are listed below:

Fight - anger, sexual

Flight - scare,  shame

Freeze - scare, sad, despair

Freeze temperament?

Graffiti

Racket feelings

Emotions are such an emotive topic. There are many and varied definitions about them and lots of alternate theories of emotion. In transactional Analysis the term racket has been used in many ways and some are listed here.


To see a larger version click on the picture.



Racket feelings are generally seen as pathological and hence it seems opportune to define what a healthy, here and now feeling is.

Also enclosed are different solutions to feelings. Again there is much conjecture on what is the psychologically healthy way to deal with feelings - express them, inhibit them or think them away.



Graffiti