Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

by Becky Kennedy

mechanisms: self-doubt and self-blame. With self-doubt, kids invalidate their own experience in an attempt to feel safe in their environment again. They might tell themselves, “Wait . . . my mom didn’t actually say those awful words to me, that couldn’t have happened, no way . . . Yeah, no, I must have remembered that wrong. After all, my mom hasn’t apologized yet or even said anything to me about it, she definitely would say she’s sorry if she said those words.” Kids use self-doubt to protect themselves from the overwhelming feelings that would arise if they accepted the reality of what really just happened. They do this because being alone in their feelings seems like “too much,” and self-doubt offers a way to escape and self-preserve. And yet, a child is wiring herself to believe, “I don’t perceive things accurately. I overreact. I cannot trust how things feel to me. Other people have a better idea of my reality than I do.” This is a scary circuit to build, because it leads to teens and adults who don’t trust themselves and cannot locate intuition. Instead, they use other people’s treatment of them to define who they are and what they deserve.