What is a Mother's Love? 8
Chapter 6
The Child Mind’s Role in Anger
The Decisions based on Beliefs are not always bad. As I said in Chapter 5, if you decided not to talk, you would become a quiet girl. If you proactively chose not to talk while understanding its benefit, you would feel better off.
If Yuhta could understand what his mother was saying and could wait for dinner quietly, Yukiko would be very happy. If Yukiko had decided to wait in a similar situation in her childhood, she would not have any trouble in scene 1 with her husband. She could say in scene 1 without any negative feelings, "I'm sorry to disturb you right after you came home. We can talk later."
We usually communicate in this way among our friends. However, we sometimes feel difficulty when communicating in this way towards our mother or our husband. We feel badly when we are not prioritized. Why cannot we communicate with our mother or husband the same way we communicate with our friends?
Take a look at the figure above. Our minds were very small when we were children, as you can see in the figure. In contrast, the minds of mothers are very large. Mothers have two types of minds. When a mother takes care of her child, she is using her Adult Mind. However, a child does not have his/her Adult Mind yet, so he/she cannot understand his/her mother's Adult Mind. When the mother emotionally yells at her child, she is using her Child Mind. This part of the mind is the same as the mind of her child. Because of this, the child can understand directly that his/her mother is angry.
In the beginning, mothers try to lightly scold their children while maintaining their composure. The mothers are using their Adult Minds, but their children cannot understand them, so the children ignore them. This triggers the mothers' Beliefs such as, "I'm not accepted," or "I'm ignored," in their Child Minds, and they become emotional. Eventually, light scolding becomes loud emotional yelling. The children can understand after their mothers begin to yell at them, and they believe, "Mother suddenly yelled at me without any reason!" "She is displacing her anger unjustly on me!" "She is stupid and I was abused."
When you want to talk to your husband, your Child Mind wants to talk with him, not your Adult Mind. Your Child Mind assumes that he is your mother. Needless to say, he is not your mother. His Child Mind responds by saying, "Leave me alone for a while!" He might shout at you, and then you will be hurt. The emotions you feel in this situation are because you are using your Child Mind instead of your Adult Mind.
As we can see, you are using your Child Mind when you argue with anger. After regaining your composure, you might regret what happened and say, "Sorry, I went a bit too far". Now you are using your Adult Mind. If you can quickly change from using your Child Mind to using your Adult Mind, your relationships will go well. If negative feelings continue toward your partner, it means your Child Mind is controlling your life too much. You are projecting your partner into the role of your parent.
