Hidden Learning (eBook)

The Way We Are Wired for Intimacy

Professor Bruce A Stevens (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
175 Seiten
Vivid Publishing (Verlag)
9781925515695 (ISBN)

Infos

At last! The secret is out about romantic relationships. 'Emotional Learning' is what we know but lack words to express. Early learning, as an infant or child, reveals 'how we are wired' for intimacy. This book gives practical tips for discovering the script of your unique Emotional Learning, the way it impacts everything important to you and how it might be changed through memory reconsolidation - an important discovery from the neurosciences. Insights from Schema Therapy and Coherence Therapy are conveyed with helpful clinical examples and clear therapeutic principles. It may surprise you but this book delivers more than it promises.

Textauszug

1: Unlocking the Secret of Hidden learning

Hidden learning is like a mysterious person. Maybe male; maybe female. Somehow familiar but barely known. With lots of secrets. But something draws you in, for the moment and possibly for a journey of a life time.

Hidden learning is anything we have learned through experience but lack words to express. Thought comes first, then words. So what we first learn is initially inarticulate or ‘hidden’. It may be right or wrong or a bit of both. But because it is learned it will always feel true.

How can this be possible? First we will consider some sources of hidden learning.

Infants don’t have Words

There is hidden learning from early childhood. We begin to speak at about 18 months old. But we are not a ‘blank slate’. There is much that we have come to know by that age. This includes our earliest assumptions about people and the way life works. Many lessons are learned in the first years of life.

Robbie had a disturbed childhood. His father was a violent alcoholic; his mother was submissive, ineffectual, and a perpetual victim of the father’s drunken rages. Robbie was slow to learn to speak, well after two years old, but he had learnt much about how families work. Of course nearly all of this hidden learning was dysfunctional.

In this case hidden learning is what Robbie assumes to be true before he had any capacity for language.

Reflect: What do you think Robbie learnt about male and female relationships? Who is more powerful? Whose needs get met? How? If Robbie acts on this what kind of partner or husband do you think he will be?

Kylie was Robbie’s younger sister. She grew up in the same home. When she was 15 she became pregnant to the high school ‘bad boy’. He did drugs and was increasing violent on methamphetamines. He kept asking her to ‘look out for him’ when he burgled houses to support his habit. Kylie had low self-esteem but something stopped her agreeing to be a criminal accomplice. She sought counselling and this helped her think more clearly about the future she wanted for herself and her child.

Principle 2: Hidden learning lacks words but it will always feel true.

We can now begin to see the lifetime legacy of hidden learning. For both Robbie and Kylie their understanding ‘about the way things are’ had been laid down like railway tracks before words formed in their mind. Hidden learning is simply a way of learning about what is ‘normal’ in life, how to act and how to treat others. It is not about truth because this knowing is often dysfunctional.

Robbie had a de facto relationship in his early twenties. He was violent to his partner. She escaped to a women’s refuge and he was later charged for assault. Kylie got into trouble with her ‘bad boy’. How do we make sense of these poor choices in relationships? Both did things from a ‘sense of what is right’ but the source was outside of their awareness in early hidden learning.

Reflect: A disturbing question to consider. We can assume that both Robbie and Kylie had moments of feeling loved, but how much was it entangled with painful experiences in childhood? How much, for example, does Kylie associate being loved with suffering? This can be seen in her forming a relationship with the ‘bad boy’. This reflects an aspect of her early hidden learning – one that got her into difficulties. And it will continue until she sees the pattern.

Lazy Learning

Hidden learning does not stop with an ability to speak. We continue to have it throughout life. But in this case it is learning that is assumed, not thought about, in effect what I call ‘lazy learning’. This is the opposite of thinking about our life, instead there are a lot of unconscious assumptions. This might be easier to illustrate:

Brendon was barely competent in his job. He had repeated work reviews and eventually he was put on a performance plan. Against all the evidence, he thought he was very good at what he did, saying “I can rely on natural talent. Eventually they will realize how valuable I am in this place!” This indicated hidden learning from his childhood and possibly teenage years when he was bright enough to drift through school. But this understanding of himself did not apply to him as an adult. He relied on earlier learning, without taking the time to look at feedback from his supervisors. In this sense he was lazy in the way he thought about himself and his life experience.

Sally-Anne was described by her friends as “ditsy”. She floated through life, enjoying “the good times” but was slightly frustrated that her boyfriend refused to commit to her. She asked, “What is the problem? We get on.”

It may seem obvious to state that we need to think about what we experience: What has happened. Why? What the implication is for who we are and how we operate. If we are not thoughtful in this way, we will not integrate experience with prior hidden learning. This is a cognitive process, based on our ability to think and evaluate. Only in this way can this knowing become more articulate, challenged when wrong, and adapted to be more realistic.

Disrupted Hidden learning

There are ways that the thought process associated with hidden learning can be disrupted. One way this can happen is through what Freud identified as ‘defence mechanisms’.

Denial is a good example of a defence mechanism. It is like a ‘psychological switch’ that refuses to believe what is obviously true. This often happens, as therapists often observe, with the shock of grief.

Wallis was anxious when her son was posted to Iraq. She tried to remain positive but her worst fears were realized when a chaplain came to tell her that her son had been killed by a road side bomb. Initially she was in a state of shock, but then she clung on to the hope that a mistake was made, “I can’t believe it. The Army makes mistakes all the time, they get it wrong and my Billy is just another mistake. They will find him soon, alive and well, I am certain.”

This denial of reality delays the grief process and risks it becoming more complex, even pathological. But denial can be about other things.

An important area of denial that effects our hidden learning is when we deny truths about ourselves. This includes what we avoid. Sometimes it is truths about ourselves that are ‘too painful’ to face.

Rita was raised by a single mother who was devoted to her. Rita could depend on her “completely”. Later when she began to date, she found that men would pull back complaining that Rita was too “dependent and needy”. Rita had learned that “If I love someone I must depend on them emotionally.” But she denied it saying, “I am independent and basically I don’t need anyone.” So there was a disjunct between her view of herself and basically what she had learnt as a child. Unfortunately, her hidden learning about dependency was expressed in her adult relationships. This was the foundation of her behaviour in relationships but she lacked the ability to see that it applied to her. In this way she could not acknowledge or put into words “For me love and being able to depend on someone is the same thing.”

Psychologists would say that Rita lacked insight. She could not see herself in a realistic way. This is an additional way that hidden learning can fail to be expressed, because it is filtered out by denial, with the result that an individual simply acts out the ‘hidden script’.

Trauma and the Fragmented Self

Traumatic events can disrupt hidden learning. A sense of self may be shattered, disrupting any potential integration, or the natural process of putting learning into language.

Sally was raped after a school disco. She was just 16 and recalled having a few drinks, and added, “I didn’t deserve that!” Fortunately, she had a reasonably healthy childhood with many assurances that she was loved. After the assault she suffered nightmares for a number of years, but she did not conclude that she was worthless because she felt loved by her parents.

You might not have Sally’s healthy childhood. But like her did you have traumatic experiences? If you have experienced trauma at a young age, did later events confirm how you felt about yourself? Repeated trauma can reinforce early hidden learning with adverse consequences.

Barry was neglected as a child. His mother was dependent upon heroin and worked in the sex industry. Barry saw her being assaulted by violent partners. This trauma reinforced his view of himself, “I am not worth being protected.”

Trauma can mean that hidden learning remains unexpressed. This is because trauma disrupts normal thinking and insight, so it remains fragmented and proves elusive. It is hard to articulate because it remains like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

A traumatic experience can also lead to hidden learning.

Penny had ongoing relationship issues that suggested trauma related hidden learning. Often she felt vulnerable, easily withdraw from social situations and panicked if she saw any blond macho man with any features of her attacker. She was surprised when she made this connection since her memories of the rape had been fragmented with “lots of gaps”.

The challenge is to deal with what are largely unseen emotional realities. But that is the purpose of the book...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.5.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sozialpsychologie
• ISBN-13: 9781925515695 / 9781925515695