This might be easier to read.

Go Ahead, Be Bad, It's Good for You
by Bill Harris

For some of you, this article is going to be a stretch. For others, it will be a gift of freedom. Those of you for whom it is a stretch probably need the gift of freedom the most. Life is ironic at times.

I just met a very interesting man. His name is Dr. Al Seibert, and he
has spent his life researching the subject of resiliency. He often
talks about what he calls "the survivor personality."

We had a very electric, idea-packed lunch a few weeks ago, because we
found we had been coming at the same topic from different directions
and had much insight to offer each other.

As you may know, almost everything Centerpointe does is based on the
work of Ilya Prigogine regarding how complex systems (like human
beings) reorganize at higher levels of functioning. When this happens,
you indeed do become more resilient, more able to deal with whatever
comes up in your environment. Another way to put it is that you gain a
greater flexibility, where fewer things can throw you off-course, off
balance. You become a survivor, to use Dr. Seibert's phrase.

Dr. Seibert has identified a very interesting aspect of this idea of
resiliency -- a group of people who have little flexibility, who have
trouble dealing with change, and who are often (quite frankly) a pain
in the ass to be around.

Who are these people? You'll never guess.

They are people who were brought up to be........good.

Dr. Seibert calls it "the good child handicap." Most parents want their
children to grow up to be decent, well-liked, and responsible. They
don't want their children to turn out "bad." But efforts to create a
"good child" unfortunately (according to Dr. Seibert's lifetime of
research), often produce an adult who is not able to cope well with
life. Such a person is, in fact, very often an energy draining "pain"
for others to live and work with.

Are YOU good?

Most people who are survivors, who have this quality of resiliency, of
flexibility, have a paradoxical "two-sides-of-the-same coin" collection
of traits: selfish-unselfish, pessimist-optimist, sensitive-tough,
strong-gentle, distant-friendly, and so on. They have emotional
flexibility. In a given situation they have a much bigger repertoire of
possible coping skills. They can flow with what is happening much more
easily. They have fewer rules -- they make up their own rules as they
go along, to fit the situation.

Part of the problem is that most "good child" messages come in the form
of prohibitions -- what the parents want the child to NOT become or NOT
do. They use "bad" people as anti-models of how to behave, and think
they must eliminate and prohibit all traces of bad ways of thinking,
feeling, and acting.

A good child is one who is:

* not negative * not angry * not selfish * not dishonest * not
self-centered or prideful * not rebellious

What the child hears is:

* Don't talk back * Be polite * Be good * Stop pouting * Hang up your
clothes * Don't whine * Don't hit * Don't fight * Share with others *
Tell the truth * Stop complaining * Smile * Don't cry * Stop asking
questions * Don't be stuck-up * Don't be angry * Don't be selfish *
Don't chew with your mouth open * Don't pick your nose

And so on.

Many are "don'ts," others are "shoulds." All are rules, and the message
is "live life by these rules."

Unfortunately, being a good, rule-bound child prevents most people from
coping with rapid change, unexpected difficulties, and extreme crises.

Here is part of a letter Dr. Seibert received from Bill Garleb, an
ex-prisoner-of-war, after Garleb had read his description of the
"good-child" pattern:

"My need to comment is so strong I could not pass it up. When I went to
parochial school, as a child, if you changed your mind and could see
the other side of something, they accused you of being inconsistent, or
"thinking like a woman." In other words, they programmed you to be
polarized and one-sided, the opposite of what a survivor personality
needs to be to cope. I am overjoyed that I have learned that being
biphasic is good. I like myself better now. It is important to note
that, although I was trained and programmed as a child not to use
biphasic traits, when my survival was threatened, I relied on basic,
inborn traits and ignored conditioning."

To survive as an adult, Garleb had to go against how he was raised. His
experience is not unusual among survivors. But many people spend their
entire life trying to behave like a good child. And just as Prohibition
created serious societal problems in the 1920s, children raised with
inner prohibitions cause many problems for others.

Some typical actions of a "good" child trying to function in an adult
body are as follows. They:

* Smile when upset * Rarely let you know they are angry at you * Seldom
make selfish requests * Point out your faults, saying "I'm only telling
you for your own good." * Give "should" instructions to others * Get
upset with you and then say "You really hurt me." * Smile and
compliment people to their faces but say critical things behind their
backs * Alert and warn others about "bad" people * Cannot accept
compliments easily or agree they are good at something * When
confronted about something hurtful they said, they emphasize their good
intentions by saying, "But I meant well." * Fear being regarded as
hurtful, tough, selfish, insensitive, or uncaring

The irony is they were raised from childhood to be emotional liars.
They had to lie about their emotions -- it was what their parents
demanded of them. Rather than being emotionally honest, they had to
learn to present the "right" emotions and suppress the "wrong" ones.

The result is they come across as two-faced. They smile and agree, then
criticize in private. When asked to express a contrary opinion, they
are unable to do so -- until they are in private.

Instead of making open requests (which might be seen as being selfish),
they hint at what they want. Appeals to get them to ask for what they
want, or admit (normal) selfish desires, will have little effect.
Though they act in selfish ways, they cannot allow awareness of their
selfishness into their consciousness.

They must make sure you do not have the wrong impression of them. To
admit normal selfish or angry feelings would be to act like their
anti-model: bad.

Here is why these "good" people drain energy our of others and are such
a pain to live and work with:

* They do not give you useful feedback. Even if they are obviously
upset or angry, they can't admit it and talk about it. If they do admit
it, they have a victim reaction (whiny or angry). They blame you.

* They are deceptive. they can act in ways that are harmful to you but
convince themselves it is for your own good.

* Their efforts to have others have only good feelings about them often
causes the opposite reaction to occur. If they get a negative reaction,
they work even harder to get the positive reaction they want -- by
doing more of what caused the negative reaction in the first place.
their efforts then cause even stronger negative reactions, which leads
them to try even harder -- and so on. They do not have the flexibility
to try something else, but instead persist with their initial behavior.

* There is a hidden threat under their efforts to make you see them as
good. If you react negatively to their ways of trying to control what
others (or you) think and feel about them, they may decide you are a
bad person and punish you.

* They avoid empathy. They become slippery when you try to discuss an
upsetting incident with them. They may send you reeling with a sudden
accusation. Later, they may say "I don't remember saying that," or give
themselves a quick excuse.

* They have mastered the art of being emotionally fragile. No matter
how carefully you try to find a way to get them to listen, have
empathy, or observe themselves, they will find a way to become upset.
Then they try to make you feel guilty for upsetting them.

* The "good" person cannot distinguish between constructive and
destructive criticism. they react to unpleasant feedback as though it
is destructive and has a harmful effect. They believe if you really
care for them you will not confront them about their upsetting actions.
(This is much different from the flexible, survivor personality who
believes that if you care for them you will confront them about their
upsetting action so they can learn from the experience.) This is why a
"good" person remains at the emotional level of a child throughout
life.

* They feel unloved and unappreciated. Even though you give them lots
of love and attention, they experience very little. They can't take it
in.

* They are self-made martyrs. They blame you for the suffering you have
caused them, then forgive you so they can feel emotionally superior to
you.

* Confronting them makes things worse. They cannot handle a
confrontation about what they do because the victim style is the best
they can manage. They have almost no capacity for self-observation or
for conscious choices about thinking, feeling, or acting in different
ways.

The challenge for someone raised to be "good" is to develop new,
additional ways of thinking, feeling and acting. This requires courage
because it requires stepping outside the artificial shell of "goodness"
into risky, even frightening territory.

Anyone trying to act like a good child is vulnerable to being
overwhelmed when faced with challenges beyond the capacities of the
"act" they were trained to perform and the rules they were trained to
follow. This is why "good" middle class young people, when faced with
real world problems, are so vulnerable to cults. After years of being
praised for good conduct in school, it feels familiar to again sit
passively and listen to an authoritative person tell them how to think,
feel, and act in order to be a new kind of "good" person.

Having a flexible, resilient personality, on the other hand, is not a
way of being that can be learned from someone else. It is not an act
designed to replace the old one. It is, rather, the emergence of innate
abilities made possible by learning from experience and flexibly
responding to whatever is happening.

It would be a good exercise to consider to what degree you fit this
profile. How rule-bound are you?

I will be sharing more about this topic in the future, as I learn more.
For now, though, it's good to know that to whatever degree you were
trained to be "good" and to follow the rules, there is hope!

Bill Harris

http://www.centerpointe.com

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