He then found himself producing certain negative aspects to his self in behavior with others. He would have dramatic realization issues, as he produced deliberate efforts that would highlight characterizations of him. Every so often he would accentuate his injury to others, on a constant basis, because he wanted others to understand his pain and frustration, when really, this just added to the vicious cycle he was going through at the time. Instead of forgetting, and looking forward, he consistently thought about the injuries – the negatives.
This affected his relationships with others, as they did not know how to deal with regular negativity and frustration and pessimism. He became involved in a gloomy self-fulfilling prophecy. His pessimism, and his Coach’s self-reinforcing cycle issue created it, and so when he interacted with others the coordinated state was at odds with both parties. He felt ignorance from others simply because they could not show the understanding he craved, and so this results in rejection feelings, and non-synchrony.
And whenever he found himself talking with others, because the issue was on his mind it constantly arose, and so a self-imposed prophecy also transpired. John Bowlby’s theory of attachment and imprinting relates wholly to the subject. Bowlby’s attachment theory definitively applies to the insecure attachment my subject felt with his Coach, through anxiety and narrow communication. He felt insecure, and uncomfortable even talking or looking at Coach, and this simply added to the consistent anxiety. This also applies to his relationship with mother.
On one sense, he has security attachment of wholeness, and love, and parental guidance. But in contrast he also has elements of insecure attachment, due to the non-validation from the negative aspect of mother’s self-reinforcing cycle to son. Bowlby’s imprinting theory allows us to understand how we derive our attachment forms. In our early interpersonal experiences in terms of how we form attachment to our mother become imprinted on us, and become the ways we create attachment relationships with others.
Whether it is with mother, or others such as Coach. How we handle and have communicative coordination with others is affected in this early phase, as this attachment is the result of evolution and natural selection. We try to get as much proximity to the caregiver-mother- as we can. The real interpersonal events in Bowlby’s four focuses of this attachment, relates to mother and son. What can and cannot be communicated between he as infant and mother affects the development of his growth in communication coordination.
When as a boy, I know that mother did not tolerate certain behaviors and actions. I realize that he wet the bed regularly as a youngster and occasionally his mother would get mad, but not in an abusive sense at all. But she provided enough to give off signals in her communication, which affected him early on. These signals automatically affected him early in his life, and the attachment he felt with mother became insecure at certain times, because of upsetting mother, and realizing what mother would and would not tolerate.
As shown, that later in his life when he wants to discuss situations that he feels at whole with such as his sport, mother’s non-validation here, goes way back to the imprinting earlier in their communicative experiences. Relating back to Cooley’s citation of how the individual is “of his own”, but also a part of his “untrained consciousness”, recounts to the social, and personal communication and behaviors we are constantly involved within.
Now, as an adult- a young, ever learning one- I can see how by looking at myself externally, from an outsider’s point of view in this study, “I” is “he”, “his”, and “him” in various situations of communicative behavior and interactions, I can learn more about others and myself. I now appreciate the relationship and communicative interactions with my mother and Coach, and friends, in a profound, and more insightful form. I understand that imagining what others think, and imagining what others think I imagine of them and the situation, creates confusion, anxiety, and uncomfortable communication and behavior.
But that is the beauty of life, and how mundane it would be without subconscious, and various thoughts and imaginations. I am so thankful for the experience of learning more and more into the subject, and can, hopefully, produce more positivism and knowledge into my relationships, interactions, and more importantly, in myself.
SOURCES
Charles Horton Cooley: “Social and Individual Aspects of Mind. ” New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, (1909). Cooley: “Human Nature and the Social Order”, (1902)