Lesson 3: Your Past Shapes Your Present; your present shapes your future…

Submodule 3

Your past shapes your present; your present shapes your future. Is your present good enough for that? You are born to live your very own life but that is easier said than done. Observing your Self heightens awareness and sets the stage for making the decision that it is time to do things differently. In Unit 2, we considered the relevance of how our caregivers related to us during our earliest years and how that translated into whether we developed a Healthy Sense of Self or a Lack of Sense of Self. Were we being seen, heard, and related to as human beings who were potentially equal to our parents? These early experiences set the stage for the development of a healthy Sense of Self or they pull our attention and focus in a different direction. What exactly did we learn from our caregiver(s) before we even acquired language? And after that? Unfortunately, many of us were essentially forced to focus on their needs and wants rather than developing a sense of our Self. When healthy Mirroring (see below) doesn’t occur, there is a greater chance that we become puppets in the lives of our parents. Left with an undeveloped sense of our Self we are set up to fail to grow our own psychological backbone. Then we remain driven to do what they tell us, verbally or non-verbally, as we need their approval to survive (see below: Early Childhood Survival Strategy). Taking this into consideration, ask yourself: What elements of your past are affecting your present? What might this do to your future if nothing changes?

The BENEFITS of a Healthy Sense of Self are:

• More common sense, more realistic, more “real”
• Less controlling of others and of situations
• More inner peace

Start with the video

“I do not believe caregivers behave in egoistic or egocentric ways because they are innately bad. Rather, they behave this way only because their own needs as children were not met!” ~Antoinetta Vogels

Click to download the video transcription.

GLOSSARY

For your convenience, here is a downloadable/printable PDF Glossary, or you may visit the Glossary on our website. (Note that the glossary on the website includes some additional terms not addressed in this course, and contains links to extended and more detailed information on each term.)

NEW SoS TERMS

• Mirroring
• Early Childhood Survival Strategy (ECSS)

Definition: Mirroring

The subtle, mutually subconscious process by which the primary caretaker conveys to his or her child a sense of either being a means to fulfill the caretaker’s emotional needs or being a “real” and unique person — this sense functioned as a mirror for the child during infancy and was accepted as the truth of who he or she is. “Do you see me? Do you see me for who I am?” If you could talk, from the moment you were born, this would probably be the very first question you would ask your mother and father. Most likely you spent nine comfortable months in your mother’s womb feeling connected and safe; then came the day you were born.

The way your parents related to you

Note that in the SoS Method it is not about your parents loving you or not. It is about whether or not your parents were really seeing you and relating to you as a potentially autonomous and independent human being. Did they consider you to be another human being, living as your own person after you were born—a person who was separate from themselves? Or did they treat you as a sort of extension of themselves, as a pawn in their own games?

Unconditional acceptance of you as YOU

Maybe your caregivers took excellent care of your basic needs at first, but were they (over time) truly able to cut the umbilical cord and relate to you as your own person? Did they respect you enough to encourage you to become YOU and were they glad you were a part of the family? Was there a basic recognition/acknowledgment of you and your “you-ness” as you grew up? Or did you feel that you had become a burden because they were so busy with themselves? Could they handle how you might have been a noisy, happy, cranky, messy child as you explored your new world? Did you feel that your caregiver(s) wanted you around regardless of your mood, or was their love and attention conditional? OR, did you feel you had to find a way to conform to required conditions and behave a certain way so that you got a sense of being tolerated and experienced as acceptable? Were you (desperately) looking for that sense of being allowed to be in your mom or dad’s facial expressions, the tone of their voice, their patience with you? Ideally, our parents gave us true attention and we felt seen and heard as we grew into our own selves. That’s what the HySoS Method calls “healthy, adequate mirroring.”

Definition: Early Childhood Survival Strategy (ECSS)

Conclusions drawn subconsciously by infants/toddlers/children about how to get their needs met when they do not feel acknowledged as separate (unique) beings by their caretakers. This process becomes the foundation for an unhealthy way of experiencing the self.

When our basic needs are not met a Survival System kicks in.

From the outside, it might have looked as if our parents were doing the right thing, but in their minds and hearts they were busy living for some other, possibly unknown, goal—they had something from their own childhood that they needed to prove. They were mentally and/or emotionally already preoccupied with something else. They were not available to truly see us for the little person in development we were. Infants, toddlers, and children have a sense of that missing aspect and as it is crucial for them to be acknowledged; the growing child has to find out what to do to get her needs met one way or another. The natural inclination to do so plus the resulting conclusions are what is called the ECSS.

Approval versus acknowledgment

Being acknowledged as a separate and unique person is a basic human need during early development, so Mirroring matters greatly. In our battle to feel acknowledged, we develop skills to get as close to that feeling as we can, instead of learning life skills and developing a sense of our Self. We focus on what to do and how to be (ECSS) in order to get the signs (through approval) of being seen and taken into account by our caregiver, all the while mixing up acknowledgment with approval. Please make sure you answer the following question: How far did you have to go to get your most basic needs met early in life?

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• What needs attention and healing in your present life?
• What areas of life cause you pain?
• With whom do you have unfinished business and what is the unfinished business?
• Who would you be if your childhood need for acknowledgment had been met fully?

READING

The readings are supplied online and in a downloadable PDF file. Here is the selected reading for Unit 3 of the course.

• Healthy Sense of Self, How to be true to your Self and make your world a better place!
• Also available on Amazon is the revised edition (2023) under the title: “Healthy Sense of Self, The Secret to Being Your Best Self”

ACTIVITY

What is the state of your Sense of Self? Now that you have begun to take an inventory of what you do and why you think you do so, and who has been important to you, it’s time to check on the state of your Sense of Self. Download and print the HySoS checklist. Follow the directions to take this quick self-assessment worksheet designed to give you an initial idea of what group you might belong to (HySoS/LoSoS/NatSoS):

• Have you a Natural Sense of Self?
• Or do you lean toward a Lack of Sense of Self?
• Might you have a Restored Sense of Self?

QUOTE FROM THE GUIDED JOURNAL

Day 21

Having Ego-References*

is a condition that is based on an

Early Childhood Survival Strategy.

While observing your caregiver

when you were a toddler,

you wondered:

“How do I have to be or what do I have to do

so he or she gives me something

that looks like love?

*The concept Ego-References will be explained in Unit 5

RECAP

The early way you were related to by your primary caregivers affects how you relate to yourself on a subconscious level and is (in part) responsible for what you make of yourself during your lifetime. Unless you take initiative to develop and implement a different way of relating to yourself—by reconditioning yourself, by becoming your own parent—you might stay trapped in this early web of experiences. Breaking free starts with seeing what really happened. The information in this unit is meant to provide you with some labels to help you understand what went on in your childhood.

LOOKING AHEAD

Now that you have gone through the HySoS checklist and gotten an idea of which kind of Sense of Self you have, we will introduce in Unit 4 two categories of motivation identified by the SoS Method: Direct Motivation and Indirect Motivation. The type of Motivation at play in your life is primarily determined by the type of SoS you have—a Healthy SoS or a Lack of SoS—and these are determined by the quality of Mirroring that you received in early childhood. Please be prepared to go deeper into (your) Motivation—and into WHY you do WHAT you do!

*IMPORTANT NOTE* All comments left on the course are PUBLIC to course takers and Healthy Sense of Self employees. If you would like to send a private comment please email antoinetta@healthysenseofself.com