It's heart-rending when a child loses a parent, isn't it? And it's infuriating when a kid's been abused. The general feelings these circumstances evoke are quite obvious (even if there are more subtle reactions as well). So, why is it so hard to predict the personality attributes that will likely develop based on these experiences? It is common for therapists to meet clients who have endured extraordinary loss or abandonment and have developed profound dependency and sadness. But it's equally common for these clients to become angry and controlling. We've also all met victims of significant abuse (both episodic and serial types) who become seriously angry and aggressive people. But it's equally frequent for these victims to become passive and fearful.
When disparate lines of personality development occur, in spite of similar experiential circumstances, it seems like perhaps there is no reliable way to understand the effects of experience on personality. Notice, however, that development does seem to have a relationship to experience. That relationship is an aversion to the vulnerability caused by trauma. That is, when people have been traumatized, they avoid the feelings of vulnerability associated with the trauma.
For example, when a child experiences profound loss, life in this world is proven unpredictable and out of control. Thus the child looks for ways to prevent loss and to maintain some semblance of control. It may seem strange, but this child actually makes a choice. The choice is an unconscious choice, of course. That is, the child has no idea that they are making a choice. But nevertheless, there is a choice. The child can become a person who tends to take control within relationships, and will brook no efforts at control by others. Or, the child can become someone who is endlessly pleasing others within relationships with hope that no one will want to leave. Both relational tactics work to prevent loss. If the loss is of a severely abandoning type, it is also relatively common to become a person who alternates between a need for total control and a clinging dependency. That style, too, which tends to be much more severe and less stable, also prevents the experience of vulnerability associated with the initial trauma, since the violent swings from clinging to controlling never allow one to experience those vulnerable feelings that occur in between.
For the sake of increasing clarity, an example of the abused child can also be instructive. For the abused child, the world is dangerous and unsafe. As they develop, these children also make an unconscious choice. They must maintain safety for themselves and there are two primary ways to do so. They can become a person most others fear, or they can become a person who avoids real contact with others. That is they can become aggressive in their general style or they can become avoidant or distancing in their general style. Unlike the last example, there are very few people who alternate back and forth between these two styles since acting fearful does not fit with acting aggressive. It can be said, however, that both aggressive and fearful types avoid real relationships with others, since even the aggressive style makes emotional intimacy impossible.
These are two oversimplified explanations of a complicated psychological process. Nevertheless, they do demonstrate a point. Personality develops in relation to trauma. The more traumatic an experience is, and the more protracted that trauma is, the more likely that the personality will develop in exaggerated and/or unstable ways.
The direction of exaggerated choice seems to depend on a variety of factors, including genetics and family roles. Some people, it seems, simply do not have a genetic temperament that fits with being aggressive. On the other hand, some people simply do not have a genetic temperament that fits with being passive. one's natural temperament is likely the biggest influence in determining which of two particular roads will be chosen in response to harsh and protracted trauma.
Family roles, too, have an extraordinary influence on the particular adaptation a person chooses in dealing with life's circumstances. If two siblings have very similar temperaments, but the elder has already chosen the most natural style for that temperament, the younger will have to choose a different way. Thus, it is very common to have an older child deal with an aggressive parent by being aggressive with everyone except, of course, the aggressive parent, while the younger sibling develops a very passive and avoidant role.
However, even in healthy personalities the same strains can be observed. That is, people pick one way or another of avoiding whatever their trauma might be, even if that trauma is as small as being teased in school or being ignored by a favored sibling. The level at which a person defends against that trauma consists of the beliefs they have developed to counteract and defend against the trauma. The strangest thing about these defensive beliefs is that they include healthy thoughts. Those healthy thoughts, however, are themselves hypertrophied because they have developed for the purpose of making life livable and have not allowed for the original trauma to metabolize, integrated, and forgotten. The very same healthy thoughts can become true beliefs about oneself, but only after they are not being used in a defensive fashion.
Imagine a man, for example, whose father had been a wealthy, respected, successful, perfectionist. As children, the younger man's older sister struggled intellectually and was thus the focus of their father's disappointment. As a result of the father's treatment, the older sister developed poor self-esteem and became rebellious. She was marked as the "black sheep." The man who had been the younger brother had always been quite bright and quickly learned that the way to get his father's praise was to do well in school and to outshine his older sister. Unfortunately, as a result of his favored treatment, this man has developed within his adult personality an exaggerated sense of responsibility and an exaggerated sense of guilt. He feels he must always do what he has learned is "right" for others, and whenever he desires to have anything his own way, he experiences treacherous guilt and shame.
This man is clearly uncomfortable much of the time, but he succeeds by almost all typical measures, just as his father had. The question is, what is keeping this man in a constant state of guilt and shame when he seems to be doing so well, and what choice did he have as a child? This man has developed a relatively healthy way of dealing with being squeezed within his family between doing what his father expected, but trying not to hurt his sister. Of course as a child he wanted his father's love and would do anything to get it. However, he also had to deal with tremendous guilt for doing what he could to get his father's love while his sister was being ridiculed. In fact, it's even likely that he secretly rallied against his sister because every time she was ridiculed he felt like he was especially loved. He has likely thought to himself, "of course I did what I could to get my father's love - that is only natural." But this leaves the fact that he feels so guilty completely unexplained and unresolved.
The fact of the matter is, there is a significant part of this gentleman that continues to believe something really bad about himself. There is a part of him that feels like, "wow, what a selfish traitor I truly am, to seek my father's love for exactly what my sister lacked." The extreme responsibility taking he has developed is a relatively successful attempt at defending against feeling like a traitor since taking responsibility seems to constantly prove to him that he is not selfish. Nevertheless, he continues to feel guilty because any attention or praise he experiences or accomplishes in any part of his life reminds him of his survivor guilt vis-a-vis his sister.
Strangely enough, just as was discussed with respect to the abandoned child or the abused child, this gentleman could have just as easily developed in another direction. He could have tried to become even more rebellious than his sister. He would have lost his father's affection, perhaps, but he would have been able to live without guilt. He would have been much less successful and he would have had negative thoughts about himself like, "I was never good enough to get my father's love." That line would have led to a different person and perhaps the defensive thought, "I have always been independent." Either way, the original trauma would not be worked through or overcome.
If a trauma is metabolized or worked through completely, its influence is merely a memory, and no extreme feelings related to that memory are experienced. Thus no defensive positive thoughts are necessary for the purpose of compensating for negative beliefs about oneself. Rather than exaggerated personality attributes related to that memory, the man who has worked through the issue of his position between his sister and his father rarely thinks about what happened. Although he takes responsibility well, he does so because it feels good to maintain good relations with others and to take care of his loved one's. The way in which he takes responsibility feels good to others because it is truly integrated within his personality.
So it can be seen that even in relatively healthy personalities, the avoidance of pain related to trauma will lead to opposing styles within a person's character depending upon that person's circumstances and temperament. While it is thus very difficult to predict how a person's personality will develop given any specific situation, patterns are quite clear in opposing the experience of any particular kind of vulnerability caused by a trauma. It can truly be a wonder when a person we assume should be extremely angry due to some trauma seems instead to be relatively placid. That person, however, is generally avoiding any sense of aggression. To them aggression is so wicked that they cannot tolerate it within themselves. Unfortunately, that is exactly the problem they will have to confront. They will have to find enough aggressiveness within themselves to at least take good care of themselves – to treat themselves with respect and command respect from others. Likewise, the aggressive person needs to learn to tolerate fear or they will never connect with others. The controller will need to learn to feel in control of themselves even when others are independent of them. The person who never takes control at all and lets everyone else have their way will have to feel adequate regardless of whether or not others are pleased. Even within relatively healthy people, it is important to recognize the other side of one's tendencies. Chances are, if a person is almost always one way or another (even if that way appears to be a positive attribute) with respect to any particular issue or kind of experience, that person is that way because to be any other way threatens to reconnect them to some level of traumatic experience that continues to be emotionally intolerable.
While it is certainly not easy to predict how someone will turn out based on what trauma they might experience, one thing we know is that a person tends to do whatever they can to avoid the vulnerability and pain that was most intolerable to them when they were first traumatized. Some people are genetically predisposed to respond more passively or more aggressively. Roles within families also play a significant part in this process. Healthy or unhealthy, people distance themselves as much as possible from pain. The healthier a person is, perhaps, the more indirect or complicated will be their personality-based opposition to whatever makes them most vulnerable. Nevertheless, opposition to, or avoidance of, pain and vulnerability clearly delineates how personalities develop. How do identical circumstances lead to opposite personalities? In effect, very different personalities are truly not opposite at all if identical circumstances brought them to be. What appear to be opposites are merely two diametrically opposed personality styles both designed to avoid the same pain.
