Childhood

Below is the biography of a Social 1 woman that represents an example of the childhood of a child who will develop this character:

I am the oldest in my family and was born into a somewhat peculiar situation. My grandmother passed away two years before I was born, but my parents decided to honor her memory by giving me her name. Additionally, in a large family full of boys, I was the only girl. My arrival into the world was not easy, as it took me 20 days to be born, and my birth was medically induced. Although my parents never wanted to know my gender before I was born, I finally came into the world through a natural birth, which left my mother very upset.

I remember that she would always tell me a story that made me feel a little out of place. After my birth, due to complications postpartum, I spent three days in the nursery without being able to breastfeed. My mother didn’t want to hold me in her arms because of the birth fluids that still covered my body. She always told me, jokingly, that maybe they had confused me with another baby since she hardly saw me during that time in the nursery.

I think that from this first episode, which I repeatedly heard, about those fluids, that “dirt,” a sense of imperfection was born in me, which fueled, with the episodes I witnessed from then on, the desire to never be caught off guard again and to not feel bad about my inadequacy. I always avoided and worked hard not to feel that I was wrong, defective, focusing on the desire to “be perfect.” My uncles and my paternal grandfather lived with us. They came to stay after their house was severely damaged during an earthquake in Irpinia in 1980. The presence of all of them meant that I witnessed very few displays of affection between my parents, as they felt shame and respect for my grandfather. I took this lack of intimacy into my relationships: I tend to have little physical contact with others, in a form of shame that manifests with great rigidity in my body.

Since I was very young, I was very sensitive and cried easily. I was very close to my mother. I remember the first time I was separated from her when she went to the clinic to give birth to my sister. When my father came home that night without my mother, I began crying so inconsolably that he, exasperated, punched the wall. I was so scared that I stopped crying. It was the night of my birthday, and my father had been having problems with his hand for months.

Back then, it didn’t take much encouragement for me to burst into tears. I was terrified when they yelled at me or when they heard me shout, and I cried even when they looked at me with disgust. Although I am still susceptible to loud voices, now they just irritate me. My father used to tease me a lot when I cried and even took pictures of me to laugh. I was very ashamed of his behavior. This hypersensitivity in childhood, a characteristic of this character, always seemed to me like a condemnation. I was provoked, told I was “excessive,” that I was “too” sensitive, with all the adjectives that followed: fussy, crybaby, stupid, fragile... When I felt bad, I immediately sought solutions to stop feeling that way, especially in my father’s eyes, cooling my emotions. I learned to be as least problematic as possible and grew up very quickly, which is also a typical characteristic of childhood in Social 1.

I knew I couldn’t count on my mother, who used to cry inconsolably at the edge of the bed, and I began to develop a strong protective feeling toward her. Protecting her was the same as becoming an autonomous and responsible child. Since I didn’t feel her presence, I constantly feared that she would leave.

My father was a very rigid, strict, and hardworking man. When he was home, he would spend hours in front of the television. I hated that he monopolized the use of the receiver, and I once told him that when he died, I would keep the remote control. With my mother, he acted like a kind of mean father or teacher, treating her like she was a foolish child. Thus, I began to think of my father as a derogatory ogre and cultivated the idea that I had to defend my mother from him.

The perception that my father was a severe and violent man was reinforced later by my own experiences with him. I wasn’t afraid of his violence, or rather, perhaps I was afraid of it when I was a child, but later I started to fight him, as a challenge. I wanted to prove to him that I was better, maybe even better than he was. When my sister was born, I became the oldest and began to feel the pressure of being responsible for her. More and more, I cultivated the idea that I had to take care of everyone and that I didn’t have the right to be taken care of; I couldn’t count on anyone, I had to do everything on my own.

Over time, I began to distance myself from my mother and give more space to my sister, the youngest in the house, as she seemed more educated, fragile, and gentle than I was. I, in fact, often seemed serious and rusty. There was little room for my emotions, nor for my need for comfort, which was not considered even a mere whim. I became the third father to my sister and was her point of reference in many situations, but we often fought because I tried to help her, and she felt judged. As for my relationship with my father, I have few memories of his emotional closeness, and I often had to interpret his emotions through his lack of expression. My mother always acted as his spokesperson. Since I was the older sister, it was often I who received the spankings, both mine and my sister's. When I ran to

avoid the slaps and my father couldn’t catch me, he would ask me to hit myself, and I did. He punished me often and was very demanding of me. He always expected me to understand and set the example, and he used to shame me for my behavior when I didn’t.

Over time, my intense emotionality diminished along with the tantrums, and everything gave way to duty: fulfilling responsibilities at school, at home, and in life in general. I think that’s when my emotional freezing began. I also learned to block emotions in my body. I used to somatize a lot and kept these somatizations to myself. I rarely got sick as a child or as an adult: I had the idea that I couldn’t get sick to avoid being a burden, to not cause concern. I must say that, in general, I missed very few days of school throughout my education, except for the rare occasions when I had a fever. When that happened, I usually healed calmly, with the thermometer and medicine at hand on the bedside table. There was only one period, when I was between 11 and 12 years old, when I would get sick and faint often, which worried my parents a lot. Eventually, it was discovered that I was suffering from severe maternal anemia that required intravenous iron administration. When my father wasn’t around, I would remove the needle from my vein, as my mother was terrified of needles. Due to my anemia, I was prone to fainting; I learned to recognize the symptoms and ask for help. If my mother was nearby when the fainting was imminent, she preferred to call my father, even if that meant leaving me alone, with a pillow under my feet to raise my blood pressure. I took care of myself! I thought I had to do everything alone...

When my mother got a job at the kindergarten, my dad, my sister, and I accompanied her to school on a September morning. By the time we got home, it was already too late for me to go to class. I hesitated to enter the classroom because I was afraid of being placed next to a strange classmate and of everyone staring at me. It was getting late, and I felt like I was missing out. Dad decided to cheer me up and took me to the field to pick walnuts and peanuts. The scorching sun didn’t offer much shade, and with the bucket in hand, I started working. After a while, I felt hungry and thirsty, but my dad denied me food and water as punishment for not wanting to go to school. He punished me with “chores,” but I resisted and refused to give in. I showed great tenacity.

Perhaps the lack of memories of my mother is due to the fact that I decided to abandon my relationship with her as soon as I became aware of her continuous rejections and felt like I had no place by her side. If you look at my childhood photographs, you’ll notice that I was always close to her until I was around eight or nine years old, when I began to give up my place to my sister. The photos always show me far from my mother, and I am often alone.

It’s as if there was a constant idea of being enough for myself, of managing on my own, of being alone. Since I was little, I tried to cause as little trouble as possible for my mother. However, I felt that she was fragile and wanted to be more of a friend to me than a mother. I couldn’t stand that; it felt like I had to take care of her, and it bothered me—I judged her a

lot: "This isn’t how you are a mother," as if I knew what to do or how to be a mother... I used to say this to her all the time!

My father, on the other hand, used to tell me not to end up like my mother and my aunts, who were frivolous and carefree women. They were all beautiful women who liked to dress well, had many suitors, and laughed like teenagers when they were together. Although I didn’t want to be like them, I was sometimes attracted to their carefree lifestyle. My mother’s family is almost exclusively made up of women. But, with my father’s messages, I began to renounce my femininity and identify mainly with his all-male family. For me, lightness, femininity, and sweetness became synonymous with stupidity. I started to suppress spontaneity, laughter, lightness, and my pleasure, but also to limit the fact that I could be an object of desire and pleasure for others. I became very Spartan in the way I dressed, ate, and lived: I didn’t want to be seen as a woman or as a pleasant being, but for my intelligence and my capacity for action.

Whenever someone complimented me on my beauty, I rejected it and thought that the person wanted something ugly from me. Lightness, pleasure, fun became synonymous with risk for me. Also, I had the feeling that as soon as I started having fun, my dad would get angry with me or would end up punishing me for making too much noise, laughing too much, or being too annoying.

Once again, I searched and found the solution: pleasure had to be completely eliminated, fun didn’t count, only duty had value. Thus, I entered the spiral of control over my character: after duty, there was always another duty, and so on. I remember the afternoons after school: I did nothing and felt bored, almost regretting not having school commitments. At school, I was dedicated: we formed a good group in elementary school, and I was the best in high school. But it didn’t matter what I did or the grade I got, even if it was the best, I always had a phrase in my mind: "You only did half of your homework!"

Duty and duty again... I stopped attributing merits to myself, and sobriety served me not to relax, not to satisfy myself... I felt apathy because I only fed off effort and control. Even when I entered university and got a high grade, the highest, the next day I would go back to look at my notebook to see if I had really done the test. This motivation was so strong that I never relaxed. To this day, I find it hard to relax; when I finish one task, I immediately start another.

In high school, I met twin sisters who became my best friends and remain close to me to this day. We participated together in household chores, like cleaning and cooking, and their father joined our games. It was a way to escape my environment, to experience another reality, to not feel inadequate all the time. I felt especially close to Carmela, the more talkative of the two, and we often wore similar clothes, which led us to be called "the three twins." Although I was shy, they helped me overcome this barrier and feel more confident in

social interactions. We built a world of our own, I took them with me, I had a lot of influence over them, they listened to me in everything. I was good at maintaining a neutral position between my two best friends, especially when they argued, which happened frequently. If one of them made a mistake, I intervened and tried to be fair. This made them listen to me in everything, they saw me as a reference, they recognized me as a leader.

In the summer, we used to go to the beach together and shared the most fun and beautiful holidays. In my teenage years, I had a lot of energy and liked to practice sports, especially team sports, like tennis, volleyball, and gymnastics. I loved exploring the limits of my body during training and used to wear my tracksuit everywhere. However, I had an unpleasant episode when I was about thirteen years old. It happened in the first days when we used to go out to the square and hang out with groups of boys. There was a boy I liked very much, and as a joke, I touched his arm with my hand. In response, the boy started hitting me for no apparent reason, which made me feel humiliated and embarrassed.

I think that there, once again, the idea was confirmed that pleasure, being a woman, feeling desire, having fun, put me at risk, so much so that I got slapped. Dad did that when, according to him, I "exaggerated"; this time, a boy did it to me, and I thought I had "exaggerated." I never told my parents what happened. After that incident, I was afraid to walk alone on the street and felt uncomfortable seeing the boy at the gym, although he was friendly and attractive. I never told anyone.

After finishing high school, I decided to pursue a classical education. At that time, some of my friends disappointed me (at least that’s how I felt), so I decided to focus on my studies. I thought that if I concentrated on my studies, I wouldn’t have time for relationships or friendships that could end in disappointment. I see in this the seed of the reactivity typical of this character: instead of making space for emotion, sadness, or disappointment, I also sought the "solution" of throwing myself into action.

I often found myself disappointed and with little ability to adapt to what didn’t please me. Over time, I realized how high my ideals were, even in friendship, in the sense of justice and injustice, which made me distrustful, undervalued, disengaged... This misalignment often manifested in situations where I ended up rejecting any alternative to my predetermined path. High school was an environment I didn’t like, I didn’t like my classmates, and I refused to belong to that world.

These situations, this isolation, and this inflexibility are typical of the social character of adolescence: extreme individualism, confrontation with power or authority, contempt for what is understood as common or mediocre, inadequacy, doing nothing with the sessions... Getting out of isolation is, therefore, a first step in the development of the consciousness of the entire Social 1, in the understanding that one is just another, and that this understanding invites healing.