Understanding Child Development

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We all carry wounds from our childhood that can get easily triggered in our adult relationships.

The real problem is that our childhood ways of coping no longer work. We need to upgrade our mental software.

The keys are knowing what the other's wounds are and doing now what you couldn't do as a child.

You know the pattern: You ask what you think is an innocent question, and your partner responds with an over-the-top reaction. Maybe you can rein it in, but maybe not. Their response triggers a strong reaction in you: you punch back, and now you’re both off and running. What’s going on is something below the surface—the fight beneath the fight, the triggering of each other’s emotional wounds.

Here’s the anatomy of emotional wounds, their impact, and how to break the pattern:

5 wounds, 3 ways of coping

Based on how our parents treated us, we all get wired as children to be sensitive to at least one or two of five wounds: criticism, micromanaging, not feeling appreciated, feeling dismissed or not heard, or feeling neglected. As a child, your ways of coping when you felt wounded were limited to essentially three: get good—walk on eggshells to avoid conflict—withdraw and pull back, or get angry. And if you had siblings, you often bounced........

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