PsychMechanics

Category: Psychological phenomena

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Read about and understand the various psychological phenomena you observe in your day-to-day life. Get answers to common curiosities about everyday behavior. Understanding the root causes of your behaviors and those of others will greatly improve your understanding of human psychology. No human behavior, however small, is insignificant.

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  • Psychology behind hanging up on someone

    Psychology behind hanging up on someone

    Imagine you’re talking to someone in a room. The other person gets angry over something you say.

    How do you know?

    You notice the angry stare they give you, their flared nostrils, and clenched fists. They frown for some time and storm out of the room without saying anything, slamming the door behind them.

    You know exactly what just happened. You know they were offended by what you said. You accept the reality of the situation. You don’t get mad at them for getting mad at you.

    Things get slightly complicated in phone conversations where you don’t have access to non-verbal signals. If someone hangs up the phone on you- the telephonic version of storming out the room- you’re likely to be unsure what happened.

    What triggered them?
    Did they get angry?
    Or were they just in a hurry?

    Why hanging up on someone is disrespectful

    All humans have a fundamental need to be seen, heard, and validated. When others acknowledge our presence and listen to us, they validate our existence and make us feel good and important.

    The opposite is also true.

    When we feel unseen, unheard, and invalidated, it makes us feel bad and unimportant. It makes us feel disrespected.

    This is why hanging up the phone on someone abruptly is extraordinarily rude and disrespectful. When you do that, you’re communicating:

    “I don’t respect you enough to listen to you.”

    Why isn’t someone barging out of a room as painful as someone hanging up the phone?

    In the room example I gave above, you could pinpoint why they were triggered. Thanks to the non-verbal signals. Pinpointing a reason this way helps you remove yourself from the situation. It allows you not to take things personally.

    An intention gap is often created in the absence of non-verbal signals. You’re not sure what the intention of the other person was behind their behavior. You’re not sure about their reason for hanging up.

    In such uncertain social situations, you’re more likely to take things personally:

    “They deliberately hung up the phone to hurt me.”

    It may be true but it’s a false positive if the other person had no such intention.

    Intention is key

    You may feel hurt due to the intention gap and misattribution created in telephonic conversations. But once you figure out their non-malicious intent, you can stop feeling bad.

    For instance, if someone hangs up on you, you can simply ask them why they did that the next time you talk to them. If they say something like “I was in a hurry” or “My signal broke”, you’ll get over it.

    When you’re talking to someone, and you have to hang up or attend another call, it’s always best to give some warning that you’re going to leave the conversation. A simple “Bye” or “I’ll talk to you later” can make a huge difference. These warnings won’t make the other person feel like you’ve left them in the dust.

    It’s all about power dynamics

    Now let’s talk about the juicy stuff: Situations where someone intentionally hangs up on you.

    Why do people do it?

    They do it to feel powerful. When you control a conversation, you feel more powerful. Ending a conversation abruptly is a way to control a conversation. It’s a way to exert power over the other person and make them feel powerless and worthless.

    The person who hangs up gets a temporary rush of empowerment, and the victim feels unheard, unimportant, distanced, defeated, and abandoned.

    We all know instinctively how important it is for people to feel important. So, when we make them feel unimportant, we’re hitting them where it hurts.

    Every situation is different. To understand why someone hung up on you, you have to look at the context of that situation.

    People usually try to gain power when they’re made to feel powerless.

    Say you’re arguing with your partner, and you say something they don’t have an answer for. They feel powerless when they can’t hit you back with a retort. They feel like you’ve won.

    What do they do to regain power?

    They hang up the phone.

    Immature. I know.

    And when it bothers you that they’ve hung up the phone, they seal their victory.

    Re-balancing power

    Intentionally hanging up the phone on someone is nothing but an attempt to regain power. The question you should ask yourself in such situations is:

    “What did I do to make them feel powerless?”

    If all you did was share an alternative viewpoint, this behavior is their problem. They can’t handle disagreements.

    But if you did something to hurt them, don’t be surprised if they try to regain power.

    For instance, if the argument goes out of control and you start hurling insults at them, hanging up the phone may not just be a way for them to regain power but also to regain mental peace.

    What to do when someone hangs up on you

    If they’re someone you don’t care about, don’t pick up their call again. You want to avoid telling these people how their behavior made you feel because they simply don’t care. If you do, you’ll give them the satisfaction that they could overpower you.

    When it comes to people who care about you, you may want to avoid talking to them for a while. This will give them space to realize their mistake. It’ll teach them that they can’t just brush off this behavior and expect you to be normal with them.

    If they don’t own up, the next thing you can do is confront them. Tell them how their behavior made you feel disrespected in a non-threatening manner. If they care about you, they’ll apologize and do their best not to repeat the behavior.

    Before I hang up on you

    If this behavior occurs rarely, it’s probably unintentional, and you should try not to get mad. Ask them why they hung up on you in a calm, neutral tone.

    If this behavior occurs regularly, it could point to some deeper issues. Chances are, something that happened to them in their past makes them feel powerless regularly. They’re trying to deal with their trauma by taking it out on you.

    Maybe their parent cut them off frequently in conversations, and now they’re modeling that behavior.

    Maybe they got away with doing whatever they wanted, so they don’t feel accountable for their actions.

    Whatever the reason, you can always make them conscious of their behavior via communication and see where you can go from there.

  • ‘Why do I feel no connection to my family?’

    ‘Why do I feel no connection to my family?’

    We’re hard-wired to seek connection with our closest genetic relatives- our family members. The more family members connect with each other and help each other, the greater the chances of their gene pool surviving and reproducing.

    In other words, we all have an inbuilt expectation of getting help and support from our closest family members. This is especially true for parent-child relationships.

    While you can be disconnected from siblings and extended family members, when people say they feel disconnected from their family, they usually mean parents.

    This is because the expectation of getting your needs met is the highest with parents. Children have high expectations from their parents because they depend on them for a long time before they can fend for themselves.

    Reasons for feeling disconnected from family

    The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment (and disconnection). When children believe their parents have been inadequate in meeting their needs, they feel disconnected from them.

    It’s at the core of human nature to seek reciprocal relationships, within or outside the family. When we think our needs aren’t being met in a relationship, disconnection kicks in. The purpose of these feelings is to motivate us to move away from the relationship to find better, mutually beneficial relationships.

    Let’s look at some specific reasons for feeling disconnected from your family:

    1. Abuse

    If your family members abuse you in any way, you’re likely to feel disconnected from them. We’re not only wired to seek mutually beneficial relationships but also harmless relationships. Disconnecting from a toxic relationship is a defense the mind uses to prevent further harm.

    2. Neglect

    While you can tell when abuse is happening, neglect is more subtle. A parent may not be abusive, but they may be, intentionally or unintentionally, neglectful.

    A child needs love, time, and other resources from parents. When parents fail to meet these needs, the child fails to form an attachment with them.

    Childhood emotional neglect can range from not spending quality time to being absent physically and/or emotionally from the child’s life. Among other things, it leads to an emotionally detached relationship with parents.1Musetti, A., Grazia, V., Manari, T., Terrone, G., & Corsano, P. (2021). Linking childhood emotional neglect to adolescents’ parent-related loneliness: Self-other differentiation and emotional detachment from parents as mediators. Child Abuse & Neglect, 122, 105338.

    3. Enmeshment

    We get close to people who meet our needs and grow distant from those who don’t. But there is a thing as getting too close. That’s what happens in enmeshment.

    In an enmeshed family, the family members are over-reliant on each other. There’s no boundary between them, no privacy. The parents fail to see their child as an individual.

    Children start to develop their own identities when they reach their teens. If they are enmeshed with their parents, a conflict arises between what they are and who they want to be, leading to disconnection.

    4. Parental Favoritism

    Parental favoritism is when one or both parents favor one child over the others. They redirect their time, energy, and other resources to one child at the expense of other children. The neglected children pick up on this and develop resentment and disconnection.

    5. Clash of values

    When adolescents embark on a journey to develop their identities, they have to leave who they’ve been to be what they want to be. Who they’ve been was borrowed from their parents, so there’s a clash of values between them and their parents.

    Since it’s hard to connect with those who don’t share your values, disconnection ensues.

    6. Connecting with someone else

    If your parents couldn’t care for you in your childhood for whatever reason, members of your extended family likely took it upon themselves to care for you.

    While we have an expectation of care from our closest genetic relatives, we can get attached to anyone who cares for us.

    Ultimately, what counts for survival is getting love and care, not who we get it from. A child can’t reject the help of extended family members because the expectation originally lies with parents.

    When you get attached to someone, you tend to get detached from someone else. If extended family members cared for you more than your parents, you’ll feel more attached to the former.

    7. Lack of competencies

    The whole aim of parental care is to develop in children the competencies to help them survive and thrive in the world.2Geary, D. C., & Flinn, M. V. (2001). Evolution of human parental behavior and the human family. Parenting, 1(1-2), 5-61.

    Parents must teach children plenty of mental, social, and life skills. If they fail to do so, the children feel unprepared to tackle the big, bad world they have to step into. They feel unparented. 

    This leads to resentment and disconnection.

    Of course, when children grow up and come into greater contact with the world, they find teachers and mentors they can learn from. But that flame of unmet parental expectations remains alive inside them.

    This is why, when admiring their teachers or mentors, people often say things like:

    “He’s the father I never had.”

    Maintain a respectful distance

    When it comes to disconnecting, it’s different for family and friends. When you disconnect with friends or break up with someone, you may never think of them again. You may occasionally miss them, but you’ll be mostly happy to have cut them off.

    While not impossible, it’s difficult to cut ties with your family. If you do, you’ll have to deal with the guilt.

    Even if you don’t feel connected with a family member, I don’t recommend cutting ties with them if you can’t deal with the accompanying guilt.

    Instead, you should strive to maintain what I call a ‘respectful distance’. You treat them well, respect them, and do your duties, but you don’t emotionally engage them. You don’t make them a big part of your life. You keep them at the fringes.

    You stay disconnected and don’t strive to reconnect.

    The strategy works brilliantly to guard your mental health. If you bring up past resentments, it’s only going to lead to unnecessary conflicts. If you argue and fight them, they may weaponize your arguing and fighting to guilt-trip you.

    With respectful distance, you give them no reason to fight whilst maintaining your boundaries. It also saves you from the guilt of disconnecting from close genetic relatives.

    References

  • Why do we miss people? (And how to cope)

    Why do we miss people? (And how to cope)

    Some people come into our lives and go like nothing happened. Some, when they go, leave a deep void in us. They leave behind an emptiness in us.

    The closer our relationship with someone, the more it hurts when that relationship ends. The more we miss them when they go.

    But why does it happen?

    What are those bittersweet feelings of missing someone trying to accomplish?

    Why do we miss people?

    Being social species, social connection is huge for humans. We miss many things, but missing people can hurt the most.

    Our ancestors lived in tightly-knit communities and depended on each other for their survival and reproduction. This is still true in modern times, despite globalization. No man is an island. No one can survive and thrive in this world on their own. Humans need other humans.

    Because relationships are so important, your mind has mechanisms in place to check the health of your relationships. If things go wrong with someone important to you, your mind alerts you.

    Missing someone and loneliness alerts and motivates you to repair that vital relationship.1

    Communication is key (to repair)

    One of the ways in which the mind determines that a relationship has gone bad is lack of communication. Communication is largely what keeps relationships alive.

    When you haven’t talked to someone for long, your mind sends you warning signals in the form of missing that person. Missing someone can produce a cocktail of symptoms in you, including:

    • A physical ache in the chest2
    • Change in appetite
    • Despair
    • Regret
    • Sadness
    • Emptiness
    • Trouble concentrating
    • Insomnia
    • Loneliness

    That person you’re missing takes center stage in your mind. You think about them all the time and the memories you two shared. You can’t eat or you overeat. You can’t sleep or focus on your work or hobbies.

    These symptoms overlap with the symptoms of depression. If you miss someone badly, you might end up depressed.

    If communication is what keeps relationships alive and we miss those with whom our relationship has ended, restoring communication is the logical thing to do to stop missing them.

    Of course, things aren’t always as simple as that.

    What to do when you miss someone

    Before deciding what action to take, you need to know where you stand with this person. The most important question to ask yourself is:

    Do I want this person back in my life?

    If the answer is ‘Yes’, you should do what you can to restore communication with them. You’ll no longer miss them once that happens, after your relationship gets re-kindled.

    If the answer is ‘No’, you have to find ways to cope with your feelings. You need to dig deep into your psyche and figure out why you’re missing them so much.

    Here are some of the things you can do:

    1. Gain closure

    If you were in a relationship with this person and then broke up, it’s possible you didn’t gain closure from them. By achieving closure, I mean being sure that you’ve moved on from this person.

    If you haven’t fully moved on, you’ll keep missing them. Behind all this missing, there’s a hope that this person will come back. By gaining closure, you kill that hope.

    We all have these zones of caring and not caring for others. For those in our zone of caring, we miss them when they grow distant (move to the right).

    missing someone
    After a certain point, when someone enters the zone of ‘not caring’, we stop missing them.

    For instance, not talking to your spouse for 24 hours can make you miss them. Even though you know, they’re not leaving you. You want to maintain that level of closeness.

    Similarly, our immediate family members also tend to be in our zone of caring. When we lose touch with them, we’re highly motivated to restore contact.

    When you haven’t talked to someone who was once close to you, you get to a point where you stop caring about them. When you stop caring about them, you don’t miss them anymore. The relationship is dead.

    You might occasionally miss them, though. But this missing is mere remembering. There’s no pain or emptiness attached to it.

    Your mind can’t force you to miss this person badly because trying to get back with them would only waste time and energy.

    2. Express your emotions

    The end of a good relationship can be traumatic. While you’re working through your grief, you’re likely to be haunted by their memories. It’s a natural part of getting over someone. Give yourself time.

    When you’re badly missing someone, your mind prioritizes the good moments you had with them. You tend to remember the fond memories while forgetting why the relationship ended. This is nothing but your mind’s trick to make you bring that person back into your life.

    If you can’t do that, the next best thing to do is to express your emotions. Write a letter, read poetry, sing a song, talk to a friend- anything that can help you take things off your chest. Doing this will help you process what happened and move on.

    3. Re-invent yourself

    It’s natural for us to identify with our relationships. But if our identities lean too heavily on our relationships and we lose them, we lose a part of ourselves.

    When you base your identity and self-worth on a relationship, it will be harder to get over the feelings of missing someone.

    You’re not only trying to get them back; you’re also trying to get yourself back.

    This is an excellent time to re-think the things you’ve come to identify with and base your identity on more stable foundations like core values and skills.

    4. Make new connections

    Is it the person you miss or how they made you feel that you miss?

    Loving and missing someone comes down to chemical reactions in the brain. If someone made you feel a certain way, someone else can, too.

    Just as we don’t eat the same type of food every time we’re hungry, you don’t necessarily have to fill that void in you with the same person.

    References

    1. Cacioppo, J. T., Hawkley, L. C., Ernst, J. M., Burleson, M., Berntson, G. G., Nouriani, B., & Spiegel, D. (2006). Loneliness within a nomological net: An evolutionary perspective. Journal of research in personality, 40(6), 1054-1085.
    2. Tiwari, S. C. (2013). Loneliness: A disease?. Indian journal of psychiatry, 55(4), 320.
  • When you just don’t care anymore

    When you just don’t care anymore

    Why do we stop caring?

    The answer to that question lies in the understanding of why we care. When we care about something, we give our attention, energy, time, and interest to it.

    Why?

    To get something in return. 

    After all, attention, energy, time, and interest are all precious resources. We don’t want to squander them. So, an expectation of a return is woven into the very fabric of caring.

    Caring equals investing. No one wants to make a bad investment. If you’ve invested in a failing business, you’d quickly stop investing.

    Similarly, we stop caring when we realize that we’re not going to get the return we were expecting.

    Reasons we stop caring

    Now that we’ve got the basics out of the way, let’s look at some specific reasons why people stop caring. You’ll note that they all tie back together to the ‘violation of expectations’ concept.

    1. Disappointment

    Disappointment is nothing but a violation of positive expectations. If you study hard for an exam, you expect to crack that exam. If you don’t, you’re disappointed. If you try hard again and fail again, you’re like:

    “I’m done. I don’t care anymore.”

    What you’re really saying is:

    “I want to stop investing my time and energy in something with no return.”

    2. Emotional pain

    While disappointment is a form of emotional pain, it’s not nearly as painful as when your ego gets hurt.

    Continuing with the above example, if your ego is attached to getting good scores on a test and you fail the test, you need a way to fix your emotional pain.

    One way to do that is to declare that you don’t care about exams at all. That way, you protect your ego in a pre-emptive manner.

    When your emotional pain exceeds a threshold, your mind shuts down and becomes numb. This numbness is similar to the numbness you feel when you’re physically hurt. It’s your body’s way of protecting you from further pain.

    Emotional numbness and not being emotionally invested anymore protect us from further emotional pain.

    3. Resource management

    When you take money out of a failing business, you can invest it in a business that is more likely to yield a return.

    Similarly, when you stop caring about something, you can invest that ‘care’ into something else with a greater likelihood of return.

    That’s why it’s common to hear people say:

    “I just don’t care about relationships anymore. I want to focus on my career.”
    “I just don’t care about friendships anymore. I want to devote time to my relationship.”

    4. Coping mechanism

    Like emotional pain, stress can be intolerable and can overburden our minds. Stress is usually caused when we have to process too much information. When that happens, we’re likely to throw our hands in the air and say:

    “I don’t care! I’m done!”

     What we’re really saying in this scenario is:

    “I can’t handle the things life’s throwing at me. I need a break.”

    When you take that break, you withdraw your ‘care’ from unimportant things and divert it to more important things that need immediate attention.

    5. Depression

    Chronic stress and prolonged unsolved problems lead to depression. At its core, depression is an extreme case of a violation of expectation. People get depressed when their lives aren’t what they expected.

    Apathy or not caring is a common feature of not only depression but many other disorders. But apathy is not the same as depression. It’s a different mental state than depression.

    But the goal of these two mental states overlaps.

    They’re both designed to stop you in your tracks and make you re-evaluate your life so you can shift to a different path.

    6. Anhedonia

    Anhedonia, another depression feature, is the inability to feel pleasure. When you’re depressed, you no longer derive pleasure from what you usually find pleasurable.

    This, again, is a ‘resource management strategy’ of the mind. If you had no anhedonia when depressed, you’d be spending time and energy indulging in your hobbies versus addressing your life problems.

    7. Existential crisis

    If you’re going through an existential crisis, you’ve probably concluded that nothing matters. Nothing has meaning. Since we’re meaning-seeking organisms, this violates a fundamental expectation that we all have about life- that it must be meaningful.

    When you just don’t care anymore in a relationship

    People have great expectations from relationships and marriages. When those expectations aren’t met repeatedly, they stop caring about relationships. They may choose to take a break from dating and relationships.

    Apathy can also creep in when you’re in a relationship. You stop caring if you consistently find that you care for your partner while they don’t. You stop being emotionally invested, not only because you’re getting no return but also to protect yourself from emotional pain.

    When you just don’t care about work anymore

    When selecting jobs, a common mistake is to overvalue salary and benefits and undervalue other aspects of the job.

    If you have a job that pays well but drains you mentally, you can eventually stop caring about it.

    You may have tried to fix the downsides of your work, but your seniors dismissed your suggestions. So, you stay at the job for the salary and benefits but no longer care about improving it.

    When you just don’t care about anything anymore

    This can be a sign that your expectations have been violated in multiple life areas. Everything is not what you wanted it to be, so you don’t care about anything anymore.

    It may also be a sign of an existential crisis. If you believe nothing has meaning, you think nothing is worth caring about.

  • Entitlement Dependence Syndrome (4 Causes)

    Entitlement Dependence Syndrome (4 Causes)

    A person suffering from Entitled Dependence Syndrome depends on others in an exaggerated way. The key phrase here is ‘exaggerated’ because humans, being social species, are by nature dependent on other humans.

    However, when this dependency crosses a certain threshold, it turns into entitled dependence. Humans tend to form reciprocal relationships with others, meaning their relationships are mostly give-and-take.

    When one person takes too much without giving enough, it’s entitled dependence. They feel entitled to the other person’s favors. They believe they deserve what they’re getting and should continue getting it.

    Entitled Dependence Syndrome traits

    We all know someone in our circle who feels entitled. Their sense of entitlement ticks off everyone around them. It’s hard to form a reciprocal, win-win relationship with them.

    Common traits of people with entitled dependence include:

    • Expecting others to meet their unreasonable demands
    • Not taking ‘no’ for an answer
    • Lacking empathy
    • Getting angry at not getting what they feel entitled to
    • Being arrogant
    • Being argumentative and having high-conflict personalities
    • Finding it hard to feel grateful

    What causes Entitlement Dependence Syndrome?

    Common reasons behind entitled behavior are:

    1. Adult Entitled Dependence

    Human children need care and support from their parents to survive. When they grow up, this dependency keeps decreasing as the child goes through physiological and psychological development stages.

    Eventually, the grown child is expected to become a self-reliant, self-dependent, and responsible adult.

    Some children remain stuck in childhood despite growing up. They’re over-reliant on their parents even in adulthood. The key phrase here is ‘over-reliant’ because adult children could still be reliant on their parents in some, minor ways.

    Psychology professor Haim Omar called this Adult Entitled Dependence (AED). According to Omar, an adult-child with AED is also likely to have:

    • Obsessive-compulsive disorder
    • Depression
    • Digital addiction
    • Social or performance anxiety

    This phenomenon of adult-children has increased in recent times. Some blame current economic conditions, high costs of living, and competitive job markets for it. It’s taking longer and longer for people to increase their skills to the point where they can be valuable to the job market.

    Also, more and more people are trying to find careers that suit them. They get stuck in this perpetual search for a promising career and keep collecting degrees without achieving independence.

    Lastly, parents who show disproportionate compassion towards children are also to blame. Thinking it’s their responsibility to support their children for as long as they can contributes to the phenomenon.

    AED decreases the self-efficacy of grown children. They don’t feel the necessity to stand on their own feet. They’re so pampered that they come to believe they can’t do anything independently.

    If these adult children somehow manage to break out of their cocoons and integrate with society at large, they carry their sense of entitlement with them. They expect other people to treat them exactly how their parents did. They suffer from Entitled Dependence Syndrome.

    2. Growing up in overly critical environments

    Another way children’s natural transition into adulthood can be stunted is by growing up in overly critical and punishing environments. In such environments, children are disparaged and not allowed to do things for themselves.

    If those children make mistakes, they’re severely punished. This contributes to low self-esteem, and these children end up believing they can’t take on the world when they grow up.

    3. Enmeshment

    In an enmeshed family system, there are no psychological boundaries between family members. Parents who’re enmeshed with their children see the latter as an extension of themselves. Such children are unable to build their own identities and discover their passions.

    4. Narcissism

    Narcissists care about themselves first and foremost. They lack empathy and are unable to form give-and-take relationships. They have delusions of grandeur and think that the world revolves around them. All this contributes to feeling a sense of entitlement.

    How to change entitled behavior

    If you think you have entitlement dependence, you should first try to recognize where it’s coming from. If it stems from narcissism, increasing your self-awareness to curb your narcissistic tendencies can help.

    If it stems from how your parents treated you, you have more work to do.

    Enmeshment

    If you feel you’re enmeshed with a parent, it’s high time you start working on building an identity of your own. Ask yourself these questions:

    What are my core values?
    What do I like?

    Once you have a clear idea of who you are, start living out that identity. You’ll likely experience some resistance initially from those around you. When who you are becomes more potent than any external influence, it’ll come out shining like a sun from behind the clouds.

    Adult-child

    If you think your sense of entitlement is rooted in your being an adult-child, you need to start acting like an adult. You can start by doing more and more things for yourself. Don’t take money from your parents. Reject most of their favors.

    If you’re not independent yet and are looking for an ideal career, I totally get that. You’re probably delaying choosing an ideal career because you don’t know who you are yet.

    Developing an identity of your own and then choosing a career that aligns with it is not a path most people take. It’s not easy and takes a lot of introspection.

    While you’re doing all that important inner work, I highly recommend you find some work to support yourself. You’ll be stress-free and have more mental bandwidth to explore your passions.

    Disproportionate compassion

    If you’re a parent showing disproportionate compassion and care towards your child, you’re doing more harm than good. Stop doing things for them that they’re perfectly capable of doing themselves. Stop keeping them enmeshed with you and dependent on you.

    It’s a very selfish, fear-based thing that parents do. They keep you dependent on them so that, later, they can be like:

    “I did so and so for you. I did your laundry and prepared food for you even when you were an adult. So, I expect you to return the favor.”

    Your child probably understands that you did a lot for them in childhood. They hardly need the same kind of support in adulthood. You have to let them live their life. That way, they’ll be happy with you and more likely to return your favors.

  • Why do I feel like a burden?

    Why do I feel like a burden?

    Humans are social species who have reciprocity baked into their psyche. Most people want to contribute to their society because doing so raises them in the eyes of others, thereby raising their self-esteem.

    A society in which members contribute to each other survives and thrives, benefitting each member. It increases the cohesiveness of the group.

    Humans are wired to increase the cohesiveness of their social group. They want to contribute as well as benefit from the contribution of others.

    This contribution or altruism needs to be balanced with selfishness, though. One’s own survival and reproduction are of prime importance. When selfish needs are met, individuals next prefer helping their kin.

    Helping your genetically close relatives means helping your genes. After that, individuals worry about helping their broader community.

    What makes someone a burden?

    Some degree of reciprocity exists in all human relationships. Humans don’t want to help if they’re not helped.

    When we get more than we give, we feel like a burden to others who give us more than they receive from us. We feel like a burden because the principle of reciprocity gets violated.

    Any situation where we take more from others than we deserve or incur unnecessary costs on them can give rise to the feeling of being a burden. People can feel they’re a burden to their:

    • Family
    • Partner
    • Friends
    • Society
    • Co-workers

    Some people feel like they’re a burden to everyone around them. They feel like they’re overly dependent on those around them.

    Specific reasons for feeling like a burden include:

    • Being financially dependent on others
    • Being emotionally reliant on others
    • Suffering from mental health issues
    • Dumping your problems on others
    • Letting others down
    • Bringing shame to others
    • Being stuck in a bad habit (addiction)

    We all need care and support from our loved ones, but there comes a point where our need for their support crosses a line and violates reciprocity.

    As long as we support them back, we don’t feel like a burden. When all we do is seek their support without supporting them back, we feel like a burden.

    Feeling like a burden leads to feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and shame.1

    These negative emotions motivate us to stop violating reciprocity and rebalance our relationships.

    There’s a subtle difference between feeling like a burden without really being a burden and feeling like a burden because you are being a burden.

    In the former case, feeling like a burden could be all in your head. You may think you’re violating reciprocity, but the helper is glad to help you because they like you. Or because they care about maintaining a relationship with you.

    Feeling like a burden and suicidality

    What does a society that wants to survive and thrive do to its non-productive members? If these non-contributing members are cheaters, i.e., they take without giving anything, society punishes them.

    If these non-contributing members want to give but can’t, society can’t punish them. That would be an injustice. But they’re still a burden to society. So evolution had to figure out a way to make them eliminate themselves.

    Feeling like a burden can thus lead to suicidal ideation. If you’re not contributing anything to your group, you’re wasting the group’s resources. Resources that the other members could expend on themselves to survive and thrive.2

    The person who feels like a burden and is contemplating suicide tends to think others might be better off if they end their life. 

    Some groups in society are particularly vulnerable to feeling like a burden, such as:

    • The elderly
    • Those with disability
    • Those with a terminal illness

    Studies have shown that when people with an advanced illness feel like a burden, they express their desire to hasten death.3

    How to stop feeling like a burden

    Feeling like a burden is a sign of high social intelligence. You’re violating reciprocity and incurring costs on others. You’re sensitive and considerate of them enough not to be a burden.

    They probably see you as a burden too but have enough social grace not to say it to you.

    At the same time, feeling like a burden can have drastic negative consequences. When you feel like your mere existence is a burden to others, you see ceasing to exist as a viable option.

    The best way to stop feeling like a burden is to restore the sense of reciprocity.

    The mind has an availability bias, meaning we tend to focus more on what’s happening now, ignoring what has happened or what could happen.

    Just because you’re dependent on them now doesn’t mean you’ve always been dependent on them. If you can recall the times you helped them, it will help you restore reciprocity.4

    On the same note, once you stop being dependent on them, you can always return their favor in the future.

    If you’re an elderly or a sick person, I’m sure there are ways you could still contribute and feel worthy. You could share your wisdom, for instance. Even having a hearty conversation with someone is a contribution.

    old man giving advice

    There are countless examples of people who managed to contribute to the world despite their disabilities. Stephen Hawking and Helen Keller come to mind.

    If you cared for your loved ones when they were sick, you aren’t violating reciprocity. They ought to help you without you feeling like a burden.

    My point is that it’s easy to get fooled by our evolutionary programming into thinking that we can’t contribute and are a burden to others.

    Pay attention to those in your circle who feel like a burden and help them see the light. You might save a life.

    References

    1. Gorvin, L., & Brown, D. (2012). The psychology of feeling like a burden: A review of the literature. Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 28-41.
    2. Van Orden, K. A., Lynam, M. E., Hollar, D., & Joiner, T. E. (2006). Perceived burdensomeness as an indicator of suicidal symptoms. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 30(4), 457-467.
    3. Rodríguez‐Prat, A., Balaguer, A., Crespo, I., & Monforte‐Royo, C. (2019). Feeling like a burden to others and the wish to hasten death in patients with advanced illness: A systematic review. Bioethics, 33(4), 411-420.
    4. McPherson, C. J., Wilson, K. G., Chyurlia, L., & Leclerc, C. (2010). The balance of give and take in caregiver–partner relationships: An examination of self-perceived burden, relationship equity, and quality of life from the perspective of care recipients following stroke. Rehabilitation Psychology, 55(2), 194.
  • Why we instinctively dislike someone for no reason

    Why we instinctively dislike someone for no reason

    It makes sense to dislike someone when they’ve harmed or wronged you. But why would you dislike someone who hasn’t wronged you in any way? You know you have no reason to hate them, but still do. What’s going on?

    The first thing to know about this phenomenon is that there’s no such thing as hating someone for no reason. That’s just not how the mind works. To generate the feeling of disliking someone, the mind needs some input, some stimuli. When you dislike someone instinctively, it may seem that you dislike them for no reason. But the reality is there’s always a reason, no matter how subtle.

    Disliking someone instinctively happens on a subconscious level. So, it appears that there’s no reason behind it. If you were to dig deeper, however, you’d certainly unearth a reason or multiple reasons.

    Table Of Contents
    1. Response to perceived threat
    2. Reasons we instinctively hate someone
    3. How to overcome these biases

Response to perceived threat

Imagine you’re driving on a highway, listening to music. You see an obstacle on the road and quickly steer your car to the side of the road. It all happens in the blink of an eye. Your conscious mind tries to process what happened after the event.

Later, you find out that there was an oil spill on the road that made it look like a giant pothole. Based on what your subconscious mind registered (‘Danger! Pothole ahead!’), you made a snap judgment and decision to steer away. If it were indeed a giant pothole, you’d be in serious trouble.

Our mind doesn’t want to take any chances with potentially life-threatening events. The same applies to threatening people. Almost always, when we instinctively dislike someone, they’re a perceived pothole we’re quickly trying to avoid. They represent a threat to us.

Hatred is a defense mechanism of the mind to protect us from perceived or actual threats. When you instantly dislike someone, you’ve made a snap decision that they’re threatening based on minimal information.

Reasons we instinctively hate someone

In this section, we’ll explore why we arrive at snap judgments about the people we’ve just met:

1. They’re different

Humans are prone to outgroup bias.1Shkurko, A. (2021). In-Group–Out-Group Bias. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 4133-4135. We perceive those who are different from us in any way as outgroups. The differences can be large or small. Doesn’t matter.

The moment you give another human being the slightest indication that you’re different than them is the moment they dislike you. Humans are wired to like and bond with their own tribe. In ancestral times, foreign tribes posed a threat to human tribes. So, we carry psychological mechanisms that make us suspicious of other, different tribes.

Of course, the easiest way to spot a difference between you and them is appearance. If someone looks different, you feel like they belong to a different, hostile tribe. This is the basis of nationalism, racism, racial supremacy, prejudice, and discrimination.

But it doesn’t stop at appearance.

Ancestral tribes also shared common values and beliefs. They possessed a distinct cultural identity that set them apart from other tribes. So, even today, when people encounter individuals with differing views from their own, they tend to dislike them or at least be suspicious about them.

This is also why polite disagreement is so rare and challenging in public debates and discussions. When you disagree with someone, you’re effectively saying:

“I disagree with your beliefs. I am not of your tribe.”

2. They’re competing with you

Humans in ancestral times faced threats not only from foreign tribes but also from their own tribe members. In any tribe, individuals competed with each other to raise their social status. Higher status meant more access to resources and better chances of survival and reproduction.

When you come across someone competing with you for what you want, you may instinctively dislike them. It could be:

We’re all threatened by competition, and this feeling of being threatened easily morphs into dislike or hatred. While the above examples are obvious, this can also happen in subtle ways. For instance, if you have a friend you’re close to, and they suddenly enter a relationship, then their relationship partner is competing with you for your friend’s attention. You might find yourself disliking their new partner for no reason.

Jealousy is often a big reason for disliking someone for no apparent reason. Jealousy results from upward social comparison.2Muller, D., & Fayant, M. P. (2010). On being exposed to superior others: Consequences of self‐threatening upward social comparisons. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(8), 621-634. You see someone who’s better than you or has what you want, and you feel jealous. Many people are unlikely to admit they’re jealous, to themselves or others, so it seems to them as if they dislike someone for no reason.

Additionally, jealous people are often motivated to bring down those they’re jealous of. Since jealous people know they can’t compete directly, they indirectly try to bring people who are better than them down by criticizing or trolling them.

3. They remind you of something threatening

Our minds are association machines. Our memories are essentially a web of associations. When you get that bad ‘vibe’ from someone without knowing why, it could be that they reminded you of a previous negative experience.

For example, their nose may have reminded you of an uncle who abused you as a kid. Any signal they give off that reminds you of a prior, negative experience could trigger your dislike, such as their:

4. They’ve previously threatened you

We don’t have access to all our memories at all times. It’d be so overwhelming if we could do that. If someone hurt you a long time ago, you might have forgotten it. You may have even cut that person off from your life.

When you suddenly encounter that person again, years later, you find that you can’t help but dislike them. You can’t think of a good reason why you don’t like them. This is likely to happen when your relationship with them has been good overall. Or when they meet you now, they’re super nice to you. You don’t understand what went wrong with this super nice person.

If you keep exploring, it’ll eventually hit you. You’ll remember that they did something that hurt you, even if it was just one small thing. You had long forgotten the reason, but it was alive and kicking in your subconscious.

5. You want to hide from yourself

People tend to hide their flaws and ignore the qualities they need to develop. So, when they come across someone who has the same flaws as them or possesses the qualities they want, they hide again. People who remind us of our flaws or desired qualities are threatening because they force us to self-reflect. By pushing them away, we push parts of ourselves away from ourselves.

For example:

6. Their nonverbals are off

Since most interpersonal communication is nonverbal, getting it wrong can heavily influence the judgment of others. When we meet people, we’re constantly making snap judgments about them. If they display welcoming and open body language, we feel good. If they show closed body language, we feel off.

We’re quick to put people in the ‘friend’ or ‘foe’ category because, again, the mind doesn’t want to take any chances. It makes these critical decisions based on minimal information gleaned from body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. After all, if you mistake a foe for a friend or a pothole for an oil spill, you could be in serious trouble.

7. They have exploitative energy

Human relationships are based on reciprocity, a balance of give and take. When we detect an imbalance in reciprocity with someone, we might dislike them. Now this can happen in an obvious way. For instance, a friend who has never done a big favor for you asks for a big favor. Or in subtle ways where you may not be able to consciously pinpoint the reason you feel off about them.

For example, someone not thanking you when you do favors for them. You subconsciously sense their lack of reciprocity in the ‘exploitative energy’ they give off. Still, unless you give it thought, or someone points it out, you may not realize that it’s their lack of gratitude that’s causing you to dislike them and feel uncomfortable around them.

If you sense exploitative energy in someone or feel they're using you, it's a red flag you should definitely not ignore.

How to overcome these biases

The first step is to understand them and accept that you may occasionally fall prey to them. Carl Jung said:

“No one is free from the bias of being human.”

Appreciate how your mind is doing its best to protect you. Take in everything that it tries to communicate to you. Then, collect more data to confirm your intuitions, if possible. Relying entirely on intuition or reason is not optimal. To make the best decisions, you need to rely on both.

If you do feel off for no reason around someone, pause and reflect on what’s going on. Maybe think again before you sign that deal with them. Or before you get married to them. You only want to enter long-term contracts with people you can trust sufficiently. That largely means not getting any negative vibes from them. The right people are unlikely to trigger your subconscious threat-detection sensors.

References

  • The psychology of interrupting explained

    The psychology of interrupting explained

    At first glance, the psychology behind interrupting seems simple:

    A speaker is saying something and is cut off by someone else who goes on to express their own thing, leaving the former embittered. But there’s much more to interruptions than that.

    To begin, let’s talk about what constitutes an interruption.

    An interruption in conversation occurs when a speaker cannot finish their sentence because they’re cut off by an interrupter who jumps in and begins their own sentence. The interrupted person is stopped in their tracks, and their voice trails off after the point of interruption.

    For example:

    Person A: I went to Disneyland [last week.]

    Person B: [I love] Disneyland. It’s my favorite place to hang out with family.

    In the above example, A is interrupted after saying “Disneyland”. A utters the phrase “last week” slowly to give room to B’s interruption. The terms “last week” and “I love” are spoken simultaneously, indicated by square brackets.

    Speaking too quickly after the speaker finishes their sentence can also constitute an interruption. It communicates you were waiting for your turn to speak rather than listening and didn’t process what the speaker had to say.

    There are usually three parties in an interruption:

    1. The interrupted
    2. The interrupter
    3. The audience (who observes them both)

    Why do people interrupt?

    There are a lot of reasons people interrupt. Researcher Julia A. Goldberg broadly classifies interruptions into three types:

    1. Power interruptions
    2. Rapport interruptions
    3. Neutral interruptions

    Let’s go over these types of interruptions one by one:

    1. Power interruptions

    A power interruption is when the interrupter interrupts to gain power. The interrupter gains power by controlling the conversation. The audience perceives those who control the conversation more as more powerful.

    Power interruptions are often deliberate attempts to appear superior to the audience. They’re common when a discussion or debate occurs publicly.

    For example:

    A: I don’t believe vaccines are dangerous. [Studies show..]

    B: [They ARE!] Here, check out this video.

    Speakers want to feel listened to and understood. When B interrupts A, A feels violated and disrespected. A feels what they have to say is not essential.

    The audience sees A as someone who has no control over the conversation. Hence, A loses status and power.

    Responding to power interruptions

    When you’re interrupted by a power interruption, you’ll feel the need to re-assert your power and save face. But you have to do this tactfully.

    The worst thing you can do is allow the interrupter to interrupt you. It communicates you don’t value what you have to say and yourself.

    So, the strategy here is to let the interrupter know you don’t appreciate their interruption as soon as possible. Don’t let them make their point.

    To do this, you have to interrupt the interrupter as soon as they interrupt you by saying something like:

    “Please let me finish.”

    “Wait a second.”

    “Will you let me finish?” (more aggressive)

    By re-asserting your power this way, you’re likely to make them feel powerless. Power in social interactions is rarely equally distributed. One party has more, the other less.

    So, they’ll be motivated to get their power back to look good in front of the audience. This will create a cycle of power interruptions. This is the engine of heated debates and arguments.

    If you want to fight, fight. But if you wish to re-assert your power subtly, you can do that by toning down how you let the interrupter know they interrupted you. You take your power back, but you don’t overpower them.

    The best way to do this is to let them know they’re interrupting non-verbally. You could raise one hand, showing them your palm, indicating, “Please wait”. Or you could nod slightly to acknowledge their need to interrupt while conveying, “We’ll get to you later”.

    Avoiding power interruptions

    You want to avoid power interruptions in conversations because it makes the other party feel disrespected and violated.

    It starts with self-awareness. Participate in conversations with a desire to listen and understand, not show superiority.

    But we’re human, after all, and we slip from time to time. If you feel you power interrupted someone, you can always fix it by relinquishing your control of the conversation and giving it back to the speaker.

    You can do this by saying something like:

    “Sorry, you were saying?”

    “Please continue.”

    2. Rapport interruptions

    These interruptions are benign and are designed to build rapport. They add to the conversation, not subtract from it as in power interruptions.

    Rapport interruptions let the speaker know they’re being heard and understood. So, they have a positive effect.

    For example:

    A: I met Kim [yesterday].

    B: [Kim?] Andy’s sister?

    A: Yes, her. She’s good-looking, isn’t she?

    Note that even though A was interrupted, they don’t feel disrespected. In fact, they feel heard and understood because B carried A’s conversation forward. Had B changed the topic or attacked A personally somehow, it would’ve been a power interruption.

    A doesn’t feel the need to re-assert and continue their point because their point was well-taken.

    Rapport interruptions bring natural flow to a conversation, and both parties feel heard. No one is trying to one-up the other.

    The following clip is a good example of three people talking and rapport interrupting. Not one interruption seems like a power interruption to you- the audience- because the interruptions carry the conversation forward, imbuing it with flow:

    Sometimes, however, rapport interruptions can be mistaken for power interruptions. You might be trying to connect with someone genuinely, and they’ll feel like you’re interrupting.

    This usually happens when you respond to a part of the speaker’s sentence, but they had something good and exciting coming up later in their speech that you unintentionally blocked.

    The point is: If they felt interrupted, they felt interrupted.

    Chances are, they may not be self-aware enough to understand you were only trying to connect. In any case, you should give them the floor back if they feel interrupted.

    If you believe you may have mistaken a rapport interruption for power interruption, do this:

    Instead of demanding control of the conversation back, see how the interrupter acts after they’ve interrupted you.

    If it’s a power interruption, they’ll try to take the floor all for themselves, leaving you behind with your unexpressed point. If it’s a rapport interruption, they’ll likely realize they interrupted and ask you to continue.

    Also, it’s helpful to remember that rapport interruptions are more likely to occur in one-to-one interactions than power interruptions. There’s no audience to impress.

    3. Neutral interruptions

    These are interruptions that aren’t aimed to gain power, nor are they aimed to build a connection with the speaker.

    Nonetheless, neutral interruptions can be misperceived as power interruptions.

    Humans are hierarchical animals who care a lot about their status. So, we’re likely to misperceive rapport and neutral interruptions as power interruptions. Power interruptions are seldom misunderstood as connection or neutral interruptions.

    Understanding this one point will take your social skills to the next level.

    Reasons for neutral interruptions include:

    a) Being excited/emotional

    Humans are primarily creatures of emotion. While it seems ideal and civilized that one person should finish their point first and then the other person should speak, it rarely happens.

    If people were to speak like that, it would seem robotic and unnatural.

    When people interrupt, it’s often an emotional reaction to what they just heard. Emotions demand immediate expression and action. It’s difficult to pause them and wait for the other person to finish their point.

    b) Communication styles

    People have different communication styles. Some speak fast, some slow. Some perceive quick-moving conversations as interruptive; some see them as natural. A mismatch in communication styles leads to neutral interruptions.

    A false start, for example, is when you interrupt someone because you think they had finished their thought but they hadn’t. It’s likely to happen when you’re talking to a slow speaker.

    Also, people’s communication is heavily influenced by those around whom they learned to speak. Polite parents raise polite kids. Cursing parents raise cursing kids.

    b) Attending to something more important

    This happens when the interrupter re-directs attention to something more important than the ongoing conversation.

    For example:

    A: I saw this bizarre dream [last night..]

    B: [Wait!] My mom is calling.

    Even though A feels a tinge of disrespect, they’ll understand that attending your mother’s call is more important.

    c) Mental health conditions

    Those with Autism and ADHD are prone to interrupting others.

    Pay attention to the nonverbals

    A person’s true intention is often leaked in their nonverbal communication. If you pay attention to voice tone and facial expression, you can easily identify a power interruption.

    Power interrupters often give you this ugly, condescending look when they’re interrupting.

    Their voice tone will likely be sarcastic and volume, loud. They’ll avoid eye contact with you in the manner of “You’re beneath me. I can’t look at you.”

    In contrast, rapport interrupters will interrupt you with proper eye contact, nodding, smile, and sometimes laughter.

  • If healing is not linear, what is it?

    If healing is not linear, what is it?

    Emotional healing is anything but a linear process. Think of a linear process as a step-by-step process like climbing stairs. Every single step you take moves you closer to your goal of healing in a linear fashion.

    It’d be great if healing worked that way, but it doesn’t. Instead, healing is more of a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ process.

    Imagine there’s a boxer near the top of the stairway. Every time you make some progress- climb some stairs- the boxer comes down and punches you in the face. That boxer is life.

    You started from Step 0 and moved to Step 4 when the boxer hit you. You go tumbling down the stairs. But here’s the key: You don’t go back to Step 0. You go back to Step 1 or Step 2. Even though you got knocked down by life, you made some net progress.

    If you keep moving forward, you’ll keep getting knocked down this way, and eventually, you’ll reach the top. The boxer’s punches will become powerless. Not entirely powerless, of course. You’ll rock back and forth, but you’ll be able to hold your ground at the top.

    What healing looks like

    When you make some progress in personal growth, you feel happy. You think everything in your life is finally going to be better. Then comes the punch, and you get knocked down.

    When you get knocked down, you think all the progress you made was for nothing. Worse, you may even come to believe that it’s impossible to change.

    You ignore the fact that you’ve moved from Step 0 to Step 1. You miss the fact that you’ve made some net progress.

    If you’re not sold on this boxer analogy, take a look at this graphic that shows what healing looks like:

    non-linear healing

    You might be wondering what those red and green circles are. I call them bubbles of awareness.

    You see, we humans have this metaphorical bubble of awareness around us that restricts the information we can attend to. In other words, we tend to be more aware of the things that are proximal to us in space and time.

    It’s a variation of what psychologists call the availability bias.

    It has been an essential feature of our psychology that helped our ancestors attend to the here and now. Because, unlike modern times, survival in ancestral times depended more on how well you attended to the here and now.

    When we make progress and reach a peak, that green bubble makes us think that all is well and good in our lives.

    When we get knocked down, that green bubble turns red and makes us believe that all is wrong with our lives.

    The danger with the green bubble is blind optimism and ignoring potential risks. The red bubble is nastier, though. It can lead to frustration and plunge you into the depths of depression.

    As the figure shows, the healing process is not a straight line from A to B. It’s an upward trending curve with many peaks and valleys, with lots of green and red circles.

    Focusing on the bigger picture

    If you learn to see the bigger picture, you can better handle your low, red circle days. Of course, your mind wants to default to seeing what’s immediate because that’s how it’s wired. But you have to force yourself to see more than what’s near.

    This requires significant inner work and practice, but you’ll get there. Once you do, you’ll no longer be swayed much by the reds and the greens and focus on the bigger picture.

    You’ll see that even though life knocked you down, you’ve made some net progress.

    One misstep doesn’t mean the journey isn’t worthwhile.

    One bad day doesn’t mean the whole self-improvement plan has been ruined.

    Failing to stick to your routine one day doesn’t mean routines can’t work for you.

    If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll realize how far you’ve come from your starting point.

    Say you failed to stick to your exercise regimen for one week. Recall the times when you didn’t exercise at all. You’re in a much better position now. You’re only skipping days and weeks instead of months and years.

    Time alone doesn’t heal

    If you have a bad relationship with a loved one and you seem to fall back into the same patterns with them, you’re unlikely to heal without some inner reflection. Time alone doesn’t heal wounds. You’ll have to work on yourself.

    Every time you repeat a pattern, reflect on what happened and why. You could also seek professional help.

    This ‘going back to the drawing board’ enables you to see things differently and try new approaches and behaviors. Without this important inner work, you’ll keep repeating your patterns unconsciously.

    If you do the proper inner work, you’ll find that you decrease the frequency of your patterns. You make real progress.

    And just when you’re basking in your progress, an old trigger may re-open the wound, and you slip back into the same pattern. You think all the progress you’d made was for nothing.

    This will keep happening till you get to a point where looking back, you can’t help but see how far you’ve come.

    Healing hurts, and it’s okay

    Another habit that’ll significantly help you heal faster is taking your feelings seriously, especially negative feelings. People tend to stuff away negative feelings because they’re hard to deal with.

    But those negative feelings don’t go away. They pile up on each other and create a storm.

    Prevention is better than cure.

    The best way to deal with negative emotions is to deal with them head-on when they arise. Acknowledge and process them, so they don’t pile up.

    Experiencing some hurt now by facing your negative emotions is way better than experiencing more pain later when they pile up.

  • Types and examples of childhood trauma

    Types and examples of childhood trauma

    Children experience trauma when they find themselves in a threatening situation. They’re particularly vulnerable to threats because they’re helpless and haven’t yet developed the ability to cope with frightening events.

    When children experience less-than-ideal circumstances at home or in society at large, they face Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

    However, not all adverse childhood experiences necessarily lead to trauma.

    Like adults, children can also show resilience in the face of adverse experiences. But many sudden, unexpected, highly threatening, and persistent adversities can easily traumatize children.

    Also, children differ in how they experience a potentially traumatic event. The same event may be traumatic for one child but not for another.

    Childhood trauma occurs when a threat lingers in the child’s mind long after the threatening event has passed. Childhood trauma can lead to significant physical and mental health problems in adulthood.

    All traumatic experiences that a child experiences up to the age of 18 can be classified as childhood trauma.

    Types and examples of childhood trauma

    Let’s now look at the different types and examples of trauma children can go through. If you’re a parent, this comprehensive list can help you audit your child’s life and assess if there might be problems in any area.

    Of course, some of these types overlap, but the categorization is valid. I’ve included as many examples as possible. But the best thing a parent or a caregiver can do is never ignore the distress signals given by a child.

    Any deviation from normal behavior, especially bad mood and irritability, could signify that the child has been traumatized.

    1. Abuse

    Abuse is any intentional or unintentional behavior by an external agent (abuser) that harms a child. Based on the type of harm caused, abuse can be:

    Physical abuse

    Physical abuse is harming a child physically. It includes behaviors like:

    • Hitting a child
    • Causing an injury
    • Pushing and rough handling
    • Throwing things at a child
    • Using physical restraints (like tying them up)

    Sexual abuse

    Sexual abuse is when an abuser uses the child for their own sexual gratification. Sexually abusive behaviors include:

    • Touching a child inappropriately (‘bad touch’)
    • Saying sexually inappropriate things to a child
    • Molestation
    • Attempted sexual intercourse
    • Sexual intercourse

    Emotional abuse

    Emotional abuse occurs when a child is harmed emotionally. While people take physical and sexual abuse seriously, emotional abuse is often seen as less severe, but it can be equally damaging.

    Examples of emotional abuse include:

    • Disparaging and putting a child down
    • Humiliating
    • Shaming
    • Name-calling
    • Gaslighting
    • Excessive criticism
    • Comparing a child to peers
    • Threatening
    • Overcontrolling
    • Overprotecting

    2. Neglect

    Neglect means failing to attend to something. When parents or caregivers neglect a child, it can traumatize the child whose need for love, support, and care remains unmet.

    Neglect can be physical or emotional. Physical neglect means ignoring the physical needs of a child. Examples of physical neglect include:

    • Abandoning a child
    • Not meeting the basic physical needs of a child (food, clothing, and shelter)
    • Not providing healthcare
    • Not taking care of a child’s hygiene

    Emotional neglect occurs when the emotional needs of a child are ignored. Examples include:

    • Not providing emotional support
    • Being uninterested in a child’s emotional life
    • Dismissing and invalidating a child’s feelings

    3. Dysfunctional home environments

    Less than ideal home environments negatively impact a child’s mental health and can lead to trauma. Things that contribute to a dysfunctional home environment include:

    • Parents who’re constantly fighting
    • Domestic violence
    • One or both parents with psychological issues
    • One or both parents struggling with substance abuse
    • Parentification (having to take care of a parent)
    • Separation from a parent

    4. Dysfunctional social environments

    A child needs a safe and functional home and a safe and functional society. Problems in society can cause problems in children. Examples of dysfunctional social environments include:

    • Violence in the community (gang violence, terrorism, etc.)
    • Bullying in school
    • Cyberbullying
    • Poverty
    • War
    • Discrimination
    • Racism
    • Xenophobia

    5. Death of a loved one

    The death of a loved one may affect children more than it does adults because children may find it challenging to deal with such an unexplainable tragedy. They may find it hard to wrap their little heads around the concept of death.

    As a result, the tragedy may remain unprocessed in their minds, causing trauma.

    6. Natural disasters

    Natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes are a tough time for the whole community, and children are also affected.

    7. Serious illness

    A serious illness can impede many areas of a child’s life. Loneliness resulting from isolation can be particularly detrimental to a child’s mental health.

    8. Accidents

    Accidents like car crashes and fires are sudden, unexpected traumas that even render adults helpless, let alone children. Accidents can be particularly terrifying for children because they don’t know how to help themselves.