Early childhood

During my early childhood I recieved punishments for actions that didn't merit them.

My father administered corporal punishment tothe degree beyond which it becomes an ineffective form of child disipline, and where the disadvantages of administering the punishment heavily outweigh the advantages of doing so. The punishment would always be accompanied by yelling, which in turn created a conditioned response. This response is:

 

yelling - unconditioned stimulus

 

corporal punishment - unconditioned stimulus

 

pain - unconditioned stimulus

 

my withdrawl - conditioned response

 

Yelling is associated with corporal punishment, which in turn is associated with pain. To avoid further pain, I withdraw. As yelling is associated with corporal punishment, which is associated with pain, I withdraw upon being yelled at, even if it's not likely that I will be hit. This is the conditioned response.

As a deeply religous person, my mother attempts to follow her religion faithfully. However, she is intolerant of other beliefs that conflict heavily with her own. Fierce yelling would be used as a form of 'punishment' for not sharing the same beliefs. Since I already associate yelling at a standard tone with corporal punishment, this creates another conditioned response. Buddism is a religion that places an emphasis on freedom, and I have no fear of any religion itself. However my mother's yelling has caused me to associate religion with yelling, which is already associated with corporal punishment.

 

My father holds some beliefs that would be deemed unacceptable elsewhere in the world. While I don't share those beliefs, failure to demonstrate acceptance of those beliefs was punished by yelling. Therefore, I pretended to accept those beliefs. Since I am part of a long-term relationship with my father, I instinctively pretended to share those beliefs over a long period of time, this is the origin of the reaction sets.

 

My mother holds beliefs that heavily conflict with those of my father, but administers the same punishment for not sharing those beliefs. Therefore, I created another reaction set to survive in the relationship. Since this set conflicts with the other set and my own beliefs, which in turn conflict with those of the set created to survive with my father, I was punished by both parents. This caused me to become shy over time, however this irritated my father, leading to further punishment. Shyness made it very difficult to use either set, so a third set was created which is emotionally flat, with the exception of expieriencing fear.

 

Later at school, though I was very popular, my closest "friends" were abusive, resulting in the creation of more sets which conflicted with the previous sets. I will explain thios in further detail in the next entry.

Please understand that I am very grateful for all of your help, and that if I respond inappropriately to your comment it is more than likely a result of a reaction set, though as I wrote this I was successful in disposing of some of the sets.

 

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Significant progress has been made since this entry was posted at Gamespot, however I posted this, as it contains important info regarding the sources of some of my psycological problems, which is key to resolving the other issues as well.