"Every person has an inner constitution—a set of rules that determines how they treat themselves, what they believe they deserve, and how they manage difficult feelings. The question is never whether these rules exist but where they came from and whether you have ever actually, consciously, chosen them."
"The governing rules of the inner life begin forming before language, before abstract reasoning, before any capacity to evaluate what is being laid down. The child doesn't choose her first legislators. She simply finds herself already governed by rules she didn't enact and can't yet examine."
"What makes this complicated is that the distortion isn't caused only by bad parenting or obvious damage. It runs in every childhood, healthy or not, because the child doing this earliest work of constructing meaning is working with a preoperational cognitive system."
"So when a parent is tired, preoccupied, or short-tempered, the child's most available explanation is: I caused this. A parent's bad day becomes evidence of the child's inadequacy."
The inner rules that dictate self-treatment are established early in life, often before a child can evaluate them. These rules are not consciously chosen, even in healthy upbringings. Individuals typically do not reflect on why they treat themselves in certain ways, leading to self-criticism and emotional struggles. Therapy offers an opportunity to examine these inherited rules and consciously decide how to govern oneself, moving beyond the limitations of childhood interpretations and experiences.
Read at Psychology Today
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