i like that you call it a relationship resume:) i also like applying a scientific approach to relationships. hope you enjoyed your walk. also adding to the relationship resume: someone who isn’t too criticizing of me and someone who is a soul mate, one who appreciates my spiritual self, not just the physical aspect of me. i was reading an article on how phobias are developed and most of them are conditioned accidentally or purposefully into a child or a person. there are fears called “evolutionary phobias” whom a child is taught perhaps during third-fourth grade about dangerous species and when they get old enough to make their own decisions, they begin to have a fear of say spiders and snakes for instance b/c at a young age, they were taught they were harmful and they carried that information and when they developed the ability to rationalize their own decisions in middle school, these transform into “evolutionary phobias.” Evolutionary phobias are usually put into place as a body’s defense mechanism against pain, so even if the teacher didn’t say to the child that snake bites could be fatal, the child would be able to deduce from the information on snakes that some snakes are indeed harmful and to watch out for them. in fact fear of snakes and spiders are among one of the most known fears because of our evolutionary thoughts to avoid them and a defense against pain. some phobias that are conditioned accidentally such as mass media and pop culture by depicting pictures of people being robbed in confined spaces or crazy clowns often lead to phobias with claustrophobia or clowns. however, i think media isn’t being accidental about it, they make money off of people’s fears. anyway, some fears such as fear of the dark and claustrophobia often result as childhood experiences as being locked in the closet for a wrongdoing, our brains develop cognitive ability by age three, but at age seven begin to truly process things around us. so if you continue to beat a child every time the child does something wrong, the child may develop a phobia in their later years of physical abuse and may have low self-esteem. fear of heights usually often can be coupled with the fear of flying, but the real fear is the fear of falling. i think conditioned phobias are the worst b/c someone or something lead the person to have a fear of that thing and they can be hard to overcome and they often limit us from being ourselves. evolutionary phobias help protect us from harmful things. i feel like my inner bully was conditioned in me by the negative criticisms of people. i have a fear of failure, being rejected and hurt. also the “princess complex” which pits little girls as princesses and boys as superheroes can be proven a low self-esteem to girls. by making boys the heroes that save the day, while girls act like princesses waiting to be saved, it sometimes undermines the strength of girls. my parents have always been patriarchal and they have limited views on what women can do. they are often surprised when i say that i want to be a scientist, work with computers, go camping, play sports, do heavy lifting b/c in their minds guys do those things. they also think i’m not smart enough to be a scientist, not athletic enough, not independent enough, the list of criticisms goes on. this brings me back to the concept of fears since most phobias develop from low self-esteem and often they can be conditioned in by the first people who raised us, our parents. my inner bully takes after them and often says to me “see how worthless you are, you can’t do anything right b/c you are a weak, pathetic girl”
i think i may write my college essay on fears and the inner bully and how i am working on taking the chance to overcome them. it will allow me to bring to light the issues my inner bully keeps trying to bring up. i may need to write them out, to bring them into the light to let them go.