How to Survive Early Childhood Relationships

Coping strategies are developed in environments where we don't or cannot set boundaries. Emotional numbing via process routines, very early on in life children learn that they can suppress or soothe feelings of neglect and abandonment through behaviors that hijack our dopamine reward system. Some of the ways we also survived our early childhood relations is through what's called reaction formation and fawning. Children will express the exact opposite of their true feelings if that's what it takes to survive a child that's been abused or or shamed.