Esra’s Reviews > Actually, It Is Your Parents' Fault: Why Your Romantic Relationship Isn't Working, and How to Fix It > Status Update

Unfortunately, that bad stuff will still indirectly bother
you. That's why the child who has long forgotten his father's
angry shushing grows into an adult who can't stand loud
noises: the noises themselves aren't the problem, it's the re- pressed memory of the father's anger that causes the discom-
fort

thanks to internalized behavior, the things we
swear we'll never do are very often precisely the things we do

On a far more serious—and more depressing—note, there is plenty of evidence that the worst behaviors of parents are also
often internalized and repeated by their offspring

Tell a kid like Jeff that he's the stupidest kid in (insert
name of town, here) enough times, and he'll believe it. He'll
become every bit as self-critical as you've been critical of him.
In other words, he'll internalize the experience of being told
that he's stupid. Internalization is the process by which we ab-
sorb and take inside ourselves aspects of our external environ-
ments. Such as a parent's constant

Conversely, if a parent treats a child as though the
child is stupid or "useless," the child will grow up feeling stupid
and useless, no matter how successful he or she might be
in school or in other activities.

the key to a child's personality development is found in
the personality of the parent: in other words, it isn't just what
a parent does for a child that shapes that child's personality,
it's the way a parent does it.

A romantic
relationship grows
and changes over
time, from the
honeymoon stage of
"She's the perfect
woman!" to the
inevitable stage of
"Has he always been
this annoying?