WHO’S GOING HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS? IS IT YOU . . . OR YOUR INNER BRAT? By: Pauline Wallin, Ph.D. www.drwallin.com
When you go home for
holidays this year, leave your inner brat behind. The inner brat -- that part of your personality that’s still a two-year-old -- is responsible for much of conflict that we see at family gatherings, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s your inner brat that makes a big deal out of simple (but annoying) questions that your mother asks over and over. It’s your inner brat that feels so wounded because your sister neglected to thank you for pictures you sent her. It’s your inner brat that urges you to have 3 desserts when you don’t even have room for one.
No matter how old you are, or how professional and sophisticated you may appear to others, when you go home you often regress into a petulant or oppositional child. You may never behave this way except when you are with family.
This is because situational cues (i.e., presence of people you grew up with) evoke certain feelings and responses from you. These responses originated in your childhood, and were repeated over years. Now, when you walk through door to your family’s home, these same responses are triggered again.
Situational cues have even more of a hold on you when family home that you now visit was one you grew up in. Not only do you react to words and behaviors of people, but you also react to surroundings: familiar smells, creak on steps, food in cupboards, etc. When you encounter these familiar cues, you react in old familiar ways -- some of which may be quite immature. In other words, these cues can trigger your inner brat.
Everyone has an inner brat, left over from early childhood. It’s part of us that feels entitled to have what it wants when it wants it (just like an infant does.) It also has very little tolerance for frustration, and when things go wrong it blames situation or other people. Since inner brat is immature part of ourselves that is associated with early childhood, and since current family encounters evoke childhood memories and behaviors, then it follows that current family encounters will also trigger our inner brat.
Old sibling rivalries, unresolved feelings of anger or resentment toward parents, and buried insecurities are all closer to surface when you’re back in family home. Thus, you’re not only reacting to family members in present, but you’re also reacting to past tensions. And your inner brat makes things worse.
