Illusions from Childhood & Making New Rules

Last week, I talked a little about illusions. Life is pretty chaotic and we need to impose order to stay sane, so we come up with plausible explanations that help our world make sense. Made-up organizing principles. Illusions. We fall under the spell of illusions all the time without knowing it, and it’s often OK, but sometimes it’s not.

This week is about illusions we were indoctrinated into as children. These can be especially hard to break because they’ve never been articulated. There aren’t words for them – just a vague sense of knowing that this is “how things are.” It’s really tough to argue with a fallacy of logic if it’s wordless. You’ve got nothing to address. It’s like trying to have a fistfight with a ghost.

The good news is that articulating these illusions – these old rules – is half the battle in breaking their spell.

The bad news is that one of the rules says not to articulate the rules.

So, the first step is to give yourself permission to articulate the rules. Repeat after me. “It’s OK to talk about fight club.”

Seriously, though… This illusion masks the others: “No one can speak the rules.” Speaking the rules could lead to questioning the rules, and we can't have that. As kids, we were naive enough to fall for this. But we're grown-up now. The ruse is up. Let's question the rules!

So, what were they? What were the unspoken but unmistakable rules of your childhood? Here are some examples, to inspire your memory:

• The younger kids aren’t allowed to be smarter or more successful than the oldest.
• No kid is allowed to be smarter or more successful than the parents.
• House rules only really apply to girls (or boys, or stepchildren).
• No one should do anything to wake up Dad before 9 on weekends.
• Only boys (or girls, or parents) are allowed to get angry.
• Anything appearing (or made to appear) to be about survival (food/money/work) is more important than any family member.
• People with (or without) money are different, and we don't really associate with them.

What are yours? What weren’t you allowed to do? What are the kinds of things about which you’d say “we don’t do that” or “we aren’t like that”? What rules applied to what household members? What rules had no explanation?

Articulate them. You have permission. Then bring your experienced, sense-making, grown-up mind into the picture to stand next to your younger self, surveying the past, and let it ask why.

Why wasn’t anyone allowed to open that cabinet? Why was this sibling allowed to get away with stuff that you couldn’t? Why didn’t anyone ever talk about these extended family members? Why could Mom wear make-up and perfume but the girls couldn’t, even when they were 17 or 18?

In other words, go through each one and ask, boldly and loudly (at least in your own head), "WTF?" or “Says WHO?!”

If you don't relate to this, if your house rules were spoken clearly, made sense and applied equally to everyone, and the authorities' reactions to any given behavior or situation were predictable, sensible and appropriate, wow. Seriously? Good for you. You're not normal.

The rest of us have a list, some short, some long, of strange, random and perhaps inexplicable illusions we took on as kids.

Next, consider each rule and listen inside to detect whether you’re still trying to follow it, as an adult out in the world, completely separate from that past environment. What part of you is still trying to be a good son/daughter/sibling? What part of you is still trying to make life easier for someone by “being good”? And then ask if you need to follow it anymore, or if it needs modification, or if it needs to be crossed off the list, once and for all.

Alternatively, what part of you insists on breaking the rules as often as possible, just like you did (or wanted to) as a teenager? Cross that rule off the list, too. Free yourself from continuing to break it to prove a mute point.

Now make a list of new rules – rules for your house. Rules like:

• No one is allowed to demean or ridicule anyone else.
• Everyone is allowed and encouraged to be successful.
• Everyone gets to have a say in house decisions.
• No sarcasm allowed.
• Rules are for everybody, and everybody can keep or break rules with equal consequences.

If that sounds ludicrous for any reason, maybe that step isn’t necessary for you. For some of us, it’s a revolution of empowerment to make our own rules and hang them on the fridge for a while, until we’ve integrated them and don’t need reminders anymore.

In any case, questioning the inner authority that has been keeping you beholden to outdated rules and illusions is an unquestionably winning proposition.