A Quick Test For False-self wound Symptoms

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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/01/w4-grouptraits.htm

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        This is one of over 150 articles focused on building high-nurturance family relationships and preventing divorce. This introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more you read, the more sense they'll all make.

        These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help. The "/" in re/marriage and re/divorce notes that it may be a stepparent's first union. "Co-parents" means both bioparents, or any of the three or more related stepparents and bioparents co-managing a multi-home nuclear stepfamily. 

        Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

        This is one of 12 Project-1 checklists in this non-profit site which are designed to help people assess for false-self dominance and related psychological wounds. The worksheets are based on the idea that groups vary in their ability to fill members' primary needs (i.e. to nurture them).

        The worksheet compares typical behavioral traits of members of low-nurturance and high-nurturance social groups like families, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and church communities. If you haven't recently, review this overview of assessing for false-self wounds before using this worksheet.

  Premises

        See how you feel about these opinions - A = "I agree," "D = "I disagree,", and ? = "I'm not sure."  If you're not sure, follow the links for more perspective.

• All animals have fluctuating discomforts, or needs. Families exist in every age and culture because they fill a set if primal psychological, physical, and spiritual needs better than other human groups. Filling needs (reducing discomforts) is called nurturance. Some families are better at nurturing their members than others.  (A  D  ?)

• Many adults and older kids are significantly-wounded survivors of low early-childhood nurturance. A false self develops naturally when a child or young adult doesn't get their physical, emotional, and developmental needs met consistently enough. (A  D  ?)

• Unless wounded co-parents dissolve their protective denials and commit to meaningful personal healing, they risk (a) unintentionally depriving their dependent kids of essential nurturance, and (b)  passing on significant psychological wounds as their unaware caregivers and ancestors did. 
  (A  D  ?)

• Typical kids who get too little nurturance will display (a) some of the group-related behaviors in the table below, and (b) some of these typical behaviors of wounded individuals.  (A  D  ?)

• Concerned adults often see these behaviors as signs that "something's wrong" with the child, rather than with the child's primary caregivers. Where this is true, changes pushed on the child [medication, harsh discipline, withholding prized things (or threatening to), grounding, shaming, "giving up," etc.] will probably increase the "problem behaviors."  (A  D  ?)

• A quick test for any group's nurturance level  ("functionality") is to judge on a continuum (low > moderate > high) the average primary emotions most members usually feel in a group after they adjust to it. Many variables affects the validity of this premise, so this checklist is a rough indicator of group-leader and group-member wholistic health. It is not proof.

 Inner-wound Worksheet # 4 - Directions

Choose a comfortable setting, and block off at least 30" of undistracted, clear-minded time;

Check to see if your true Self is guiding your other subselves now. If not, your worksheet results are apt to be skewed. For ideas about freeing your true Self, see this.

Focus on (a) a present or past child or adult (including you), and on (b) a group s/he actively participated in regularly - e.g. a home, family, school, church, committee, club, team, or workplace.

Then check the emotions or attitudes you feel the person usually experience/d as they participate/d. This is about discovery and recovery, not about blaming anyone!

       The more "high nurturance" traits your subject often displays relative to their family or other target group, the more likely it is that the group leader/s is/are wholistically-healthy Grown Nurtured Children (GNCs). 

        Conversely, the more "low nurturance" traits your target person displays or feels relative to their group, the more likely it is they're being unintentionally deprived from filling important core needs there and/or in one or more other important current groups, like their family, school, team, church, club, and/or social set.

        From clinical experience since 1981, this site proposes one of five reasons that millions of typical U.S. marriages and families are significantly stressed and troubled is that one or more adults (a) suffer significant psychological wounds, and (b) don't (want to) know that or what it means.

        Co-parent Project 1 here is designed to help detect these wounds and offer an effective framework for self-motivated personal healing - "parts work," or inner-family therapy. Assessing for significant wounds is the keystone of seven vital projects that courting co-parents need to work at to make wise commitment choices for themselves and their descendents.

        Also see the other 11 wound-assessment worksheets, and this summary of family-adjustment needs that typical minor divorcing-family and stepfamily kids must fill.

Continue with...

• these frequently asked questions (FAQ) about personality subselves, or...

• an example of the five hazards affecting a real stepfamily, or...

• an introduction to inner-wound recovery, or...

• ways to adapt to wounded mates, ex mates, relatives, and/or stepkids; or...

• this research summary about the effects of low-nurturance families, or...

• choose another Project-1 article, or a link above or below.

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Updated June 25, 2008