Finding our place of belonging

          Rudolf Dreikurs, a student of Adler, said that all misbehavior arises from   discouragement. We are living in very discouraging times, so it’s no surprise that we see a great deal of misbehavior.   It’s difficult to find the post signs to guide us towards what is going right and what to do more of, because the media has made sure to focus our attention to what’s going wrong and have us pay a great deal of attention to all the misbehavior.   Anyone who is attempting to do something helpful or useful is just being ignored or worse, squashed under all the negativity that’s out there. Yet we are continuously making a “big deal” about all the negative, unhelpful and down right destructive behaviors people are exhibiting.   We are not looking for solutions or ways to solve the problems. We are looking to find more ways to be divisive and fight.   Adler said that people who are well adjusted look to overcome  (over ...

WHY PUNISHMENT AND REWARDS DO NOT TEACH US HOW TO LIVE TOGETHER When we use punishment and rewards (even consequences) it is often a way of trying to control another person’s behavior.   As parents, we often see our role as one of disciplinarian or teacher/coach.   We could then conclude that we are the ones who know better, who understand right from wrong, who have the task of teaching the rules of social order to our charges. The problem, however, is when we discipline using rewards and punishment or consequences designed to control. This approach arises from a very limited understanding of how learning to be a contributing member of one’s community actually takes place.   Alfred Adler’s theory, sheds some great insights with the ideas of self determination, our need to belong and purposiveness of behavior.   He postulates that human behavior is goal oriented, which is very important, because it points out our movement towards a desired outcome. I’ve ch...

I was pondering why people have a difficult time accepting who we are, when we’ve decide to show up as ourselves and no longer play our customary role or “part”.   When we’ve taken on a persona which we’ve created, that hides our imperfections, our vulnerabilities, our secrets, and we’ve been that “person” with our friends and family, we’ve become predictable.   They’ve either accepted certain things about us, or not, but either way that is the person they expect to show up each time.   When we do, they in turn can be in their role.   I’ve seen this most recently in my own family.   Even when a sibling behaved very badly, as long as everyone knew that’s who “they are”, they had no problem with it.   However, another sibling attempting to do the right thing and changing up the dynamics, doing something helpful for the group, is now seen as the “bad guy” because he stepped outside of his role.   They know how to interact with us and to be ...

Yesterday at the Family Education workshop, we were talking about being good enough and how we parent today based on how we were parented.   We tend to overcompensate, in our own style of parenting, in areas we experienced a lack of or too much off when growing up.    So if our parents were under involved or unplugged we might become over involved.   If our parents were overly controlling, we might become permissive, or decide that we’ve had enough with being controlled and now it's our turn to do the controlling. If there was a great deal of fighting and yelling we may become a yeller or not speak up at all.   In turn, our kids in their attempt to find their place of love and belonging, need to somehow fit within that schema.    From the child's mind: If my parents need to be involved all the time, then I’m going to need to somehow supply that for them.   I might in turn become very needy of their services, finding ways for them to f...