Nature vs Nurture

There's a lot to be said for either side of the 'Nature vs Nurture' argument but I believe that we are all a little bit of both: we are all products of our inherant natural traits and abilities as well as those things that we have learned (directly or otherwise) from our environments and experiences. 

Recently, I got a good look at how I was "nurtured" growing up.  My children and I spent 10 days visiting my family over Christmas and New Year's and spent a week with my parents, which ended up being quite a challenge.  This, in itself, surprised me.  It wasn't too long ago that we could happily stay with my parents for weeks at a time.  Alas, I believe age is catching up with them, especially my mother, making it more difficult for her to deal with anything that strays from the ordinary.  Now, it seems any sort of change or perceived difference in her world causes her a great deal of stress and anxiety -- and she freaks out.  My father has learned over time that the best thing to do in said situations is to ignore her and wait for her mood to pass.  Obviously, this has been going on to some degree my entire life, but it's only now that it's happening more frequently and I am able to look at it from a different perspective that I have begun to realize the implications this has had on me.

After two and a half years in therapy, I'm getting pretty good at taking a step back and looking at situations around me and figuring out how they affect(ed) me. 

What I observed during this last visit with my parents is this:

• my mother tends to completely over-react to certain situations.  She freaks out over nothing (imho) and then makes sure that her stress and anxiety is felt by everyone in every nook and cranny in the house.
• my father ignores it completely.  He's learned over the years that trying to calm her down or saying anything to her generally makes the situation worse.  So he hunkers down and waits for the storm to pass.

What I learned from this visit is that I have taken these observations and made huge, sweeping, generalized rules for my own behaviour, based on my parents' behaviour:

• my mother demonstrated that emotions are negative and unproductive.  I rarely saw what I perceived to be good grounds for getting emotional and in the end, all she ended up achieving was annoying everyone around her.
• my father, in turn, demonstrated that emotional outbursts are best left alone.  If my mother ever hoped to gain attention or even garner a reaction from him, it never came in a way that I witnessed.

It's no wonder that I have such a strained relationship with my emotions.  I mostly only saw the one (frustration/anxiety/stress) and there was no purpose and no result.  I never learned how emotions are meant to be expressed nor that they should be expressed.  I've got a long journey ahead of me as I now struggle to learn these things but I hope, now that I can at least recognize a few of the reasons behind my own behaviour, that I can make some positive improvements.