Animal behavior is shaped mainly by evolution, genetics, and instincts. What’s left is simple. Mama tiger teaches her cubs what to eat, what not to eat, how to hunt, what predators to avoid, and how to avoid them. That’s about it. Humans need to learn pretty much everything and that’s where things go wrong. Imagine a mama tiger teaching her cubs to eat spoiled meat or seek to play with the predators who love munching on tiger cubs. Human parents can screw up their kids in a vast array of ways. By their words, behaviors, and how they mirror their kids, dysfunctional parents can teach their kids to feel incompetent, worthless, bad, unlovable, invisible, etc. They can teach them to be unemotive, overly dramatic, fearful, anxious, avoidant, depressed, narcissistic, borderline. perfectionistic, self-sabotaging, self-harming, addictive – the list goes on.
Good therapy for issues like these requires extensive psychoeducation; the forming of a safe, trustful bond; and affective re-parenting with empathy, non-judgment, unconditional acceptance, warmth, and encouragement. When you think about it, good therapy is really a way to help your client become a fully functioning human. Tigers get to be tigers without therapy. Sadly, too many little humans are subjected to adverse experiences instead of humanizing experiences which enable them to access self-confidence, natural emotions, self-awareness, the wisdom of the Self, and a deep sense of connectedness with self, others, and world, This is why therapy is so valuable and necessary to correct and complete the journey to being human.
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