No child should ever have to grow up thinking love is something you only receive as a consequence of compliance or good behavior. But unfortunately, many do.
And as those children develop into adults, there are common behaviors they display that can be traced back to that childhood. To a time when any attention they needed had to be earned before they even got a breadcrumb. A subject I can relate to, and if you can, too, you’ll probably recognize the following:
1. You apologize any time you get a chance.
Over-apologizing is often a trauma response from a time when all you wanted to do was keep the peace and make people happy. As a child, you may have felt it was your responsibility to fix problems that were way too complex for you to even fully understand, but the pressure still landed on you somehow. You thought saying sorry and smoothing things over would make others happy and maybe even result in some positive attention.
Now, as an adult, you still carry the need to make it right whenever you can. Even when you did nothing wrong, you hope an apology will help. But all you actually end up doing is making yourself a constant target for somebody to blame, so they can take advantage of your apologies.
2. It is non-negotiable for you to avoid drama.
Anything that has the potential to escalate, you immediately back away from. It’s not that you don’t want to help calm dramatic situations down, but high tensions increase your anxiety. Drama in childhood for you usually meant you were dragged into it or blamed. If those things didn’t happen, then the aftermath of moods and anger would be directed at you.
It wasn’t the sort of attention you wanted, and nothing remorseful or positive came at the end of it. Conflict would fizzle into painful silences rather than positive reconciliation, and now, you’d rather keep a wide berth from it altogether through fear of the same patterns being stuck on repeat.
Who can blame you? Being a kid and witnessing such negativity isn’t easy.
3. You stay in relationships that are one-sided for too long.
Hoping for change? Maybe that sounds like something you could remember feeling as a child, hoping that home would change from a negative or chaotic place to be, to somewhere more consistently positive.
But one-sided relationships tend to never work out in your favor if you’re the one trying to fit in and earn attention of any kind. As an adult, you’re left in situations where you wait. You give it your all, while receiving barely anything in return but the odd breadcrumb.
And the trouble is, you can wait decades and still not get what you rightly deserve. Do you really want to do that?
4. When life is good, you’re always waiting for the catch.
Life is full of ups and downs, but that’s why it’s important to really savor the good times. When an inability to do so takes over, it usually stems from an upbringing when you felt unsafe, where inconsistent moods were the theme of your household.
I know that feeling of hearing the key in the door after you’ve had a fun day, and wondering what mood will enter your home. Sometimes, it was good, but most of the time, it was colder than stone and thicker than tar.
Anticipating the bad (known as anticipatory anxiety) becomes a norm that you carry with you into adulthood. You learn somehow that good times always come crashing down, so you spend those good times waiting for it to happen.
Never really present, never really settled, the Anxiety & Depression Association of America describes it as bleeding before you are cut, which I’d agree is the most precise and eloquent way of describing it.
5. You overcommit… and burnout.
Overcommitting doesn’t usually come from forgetting that you’ve double or even triple-booked yourself. It comes from wanting and feeling you have to please as many people as you can, because then you’ll be liked.
In childhood, you may have been stuck trying to please a parent. You gave them as much as you could in the hope that they’d just turn around and pay you some attention. You thought it had to be earned, as opposed to being given naturally, as it should have been.
When you were denied attention, you ramped up your efforts to commit to trying harder, but it rarely, if at all, worked. All those attempts led to a feeling of exhaustion that you could never quite label, and even as an adult now, you probably don’t know you’re burning out.
You might think you’re coming down with a virus of some sort, but it’s not that: it’s burnout. And all because you want to make sure you’re doing as much as you can to keep everybody happy.
6. Your choices feel as though they need overexplaining.
Not wanting to be misunderstood can often look like overexplaining every choice you make or thought you have. It’s a common trauma response for people who grew up in unpredictable households where attention had to be earned, and continues in adulthood as a way to justify yourself and your existence before others question it.
Those who carry an anxious mind with them are already thinking of all the ways what they’re about to say can be judged. Those racing thoughts manifest into a kind of preemptive defense, such as, “I wish I could make it tonight, but I have this project at work that I’ve been neglecting, and it’s due this week, and because I was sick Thursday, I am even more behind, and I am just so tired. I wish I could come, but I just can’t, and I am so sorry.”
That’s a lot, right? I almost wanted to cut into my own writing and tell this pretend person that it’s okay! For a lot of people, though, this isn’t pretend. It’s another form of people-pleasing so that the other person doesn’t feel let down or disappointed by them.
7. Other people’s moods cause your hyperawareness to awaken.
Anticipating people’s volatile moods is one thing, but when those moods present themselves, it’s quite another. Adults who had to earn attention as children are often hyperaware of each of those moods, so it’s as if they’re trying to predict them while keeping track in real time. If you could ask their subconscious where the hyperawareness comes from, it’d reply with, “Because I want to scan for potential danger or rejection. I want to survive, and it’s worked ever since I was a kid.”
I truly know what that’s like, to walk on eggshells to try and keep a parent happy and try to predict which direction even the most neutral of moods has the potential to take. Growing up with a parent whose moods could be explosive meant you had to try to protect yourself, and you could only do that by being as aware of your surroundings and the people in it as much as possible. That’s certainly a behavior that can be carried into adulthood.
8. You hate asking for help.
“I don’t want to be a burden.” “I don’t want to look like I can’t do this myself.” “I don’t want people to think I’m weak.”
If you’re worried you’ll look incompetent just because you reached out, then it’s likely you’re somebody who was treated that way as a child. “You can’t do anything for yourself!” “Why am I still supporting you at this?” “Can you still not remember how to do it?”
It’s enough to make a grown person cry, let alone a child who had to suck it up and go it alone.
When kids who heard these kinds of things grow into adults, they still carry that inner critic, and often automatically listen to it each time they feel inclined to ask for help.
9. You don’t trust compliments.
Why would you trust compliments when you’ve lived a lifetime of intermittently receiving them before watching them fizzle away into criticism or more neglect?
Maybe you were told things as a child in a sporadic fashion, which momentarily gave you a confidence boost, only to have it taken from you in the next breath. You used to fight and work hard to claw any good word said about you back, but it was never really in your control.
This can often result in an adult who desperately seeks validation from others in order to feel good, yet that validation never quite sticks, and they’re left seeking more and more reassurance.
They came to not trust compliments because their meaning never felt authentic, but it’s never too late to learn how to accept them. And it’s never too late to learn that other people’s opinions of you don’t dictate your worth anyway.
Final thoughts…
I can’t imagine a world where my own son has to earn attention. I didn’t become a parent because I wanted somebody to control or manipulate. I became a parent because I wanted to be responsible for raising a loved – and loving – child.
If you had a childhood where getting any attention felt like hard work, you’ll know what it’s like to be an adult struggling with these behaviors. In time, I hope you awaken to the reality that you’re brilliant, and that you deserved more. And more importantly, it wasn’t your fault.
