This has been a relatively new concept for me and one that has me drilling down deep into my past and present as I consider how I will proceed in the next and possible last part of my life.
The Basic Concept (as I am beginning to understand it)
Emotional Scaffolding is a term used in education and psychology to describe things that kind of hold you up as a person. I’m looking to explore my version as it has worked in my life, so keep in mind that I will certainly drift from how many might use the concept elsewhere. I’m not disagreeing with other uses I’m more just doing what I have always done. Take a bit of information that enlightens me a little and then work on how this new thing fits and especially how this new information helps me understand myself now while also allow it to evolve as I go.
When I was a young fella I had a fairly chaotic life. I have no real idea if it was more or less challenging than others but as I’ve participated in various therapy sessions over the years I have been told it was at the higher end of difficultly. In fact using the “Adverse Childhood Experience” or “ACE’s model of understanding these things I rank up in the very high end of people least likely to have a long and productive life. (I’ll write about the ACE’s model sometime in the future.)
As we travel through our early years we work out how the world works, and in a way how we can at least survive and perhaps even thrive in that world. In the early days we mostly learn this through our relationship with whoever played the role of parents. For anyone who didn’t have parents in the common sense of that term it would probably be the relationship with whoever filled that role. That may have been institutional carers, older siblings, extended family or whoever you would have consciously or unconsciously experienced as your primary care giver.
As I’ve reflected on this I’ve come to believe that very often children get the idea that their main task in life is to make their parents happy and that usually seems to be achieved by obeying them and being a ‘good little boy’. I doubt most parents actually think this or intend to convey this message but if you think about it and listen to parent to child transactions it’s easy to see how it is conveyed mostly implicitly rather than explicitly. Rewards and punishments are pretty much attached to parents being happy or unhappy with their children’s behaviour. This is absolutely NOT a criticism of parents, none of this post is. For the most part many, even most parents do the best they can. Don’t forget all parents carry their own wounds from their childhood.
According to Nietzsche and later Alfred Adler maturing as a person is about the achievement of Power in our own life.
RD
My interpretation of what Adler thought is that for children it’s like they live in a land of all powerful Giants we call Adults. The task of growing up is not so much to escape those giants but rather gain our own power over them or perhaps our own power in their presence. This makes total sense to me. I can remember one time when I felt terrified and completely powerless.
I was with my father and a bunch of men bringing in bales of hay on a farm to fill up the barn. It was a dairy farm so the hay was used to feed the cows when the grass wasn’t so plentiful. I don’t remember much at all about this day except one frightening thing that to this day flashes through my mind and still gives me difficult feelings that still affect my behaviour.
My very early years we lived on a farm just outside Smithton in Tasmania. I was on the back of the truck with a couple of men as they picked up hay baless they had collected from the paddocks and were now throwing them to other men in the barn for them to stack neatly before heading out to get another truck load. This would go on for days at a time and is referred to as Hay Carting. The memory I have was tumbling through the air, a sudden jolt and then everybody laughing. What I think happened was while I was on the back of the truck one of the men picked me up like a hay bale and threw me across the barn. The jolt was being caught by one of the other men and of course, the laughter was them thinking it was hilarious. I’m sure it was for them and I can certainly understand it and don’t wish them any ill-will. In their shoes I’d have probably done the same thing. That said I cannot change the fact that the effect on me was a life long fear of that experience happening again, without warning and without explanation. The details don’t really matter to me. Maybe they did warn me, maybe they did explain, perhaps they even apologised for scaring me but I have no memory of any of those things. All I remember is tumbling out of control and these Giants laughing.
To be clear, I’m not afraid of being thrown by men in a barn, I’m afraid of being out of control and people finding it hilarious.
RD
When we are little we have little to no control over what the Giants do but they have virtually total control over everything we do. If we resist they can just pick us up and force us to comply and ultimately they can inflict excruciating pain to our body and emotions any time and any way they see fit. It therefore makes perfect sense to me that, if only for survival, a little child will do anything they can to prevent the sheer terror of experiencing that pain. (It’s the main reason I’m not a fan of using any kind of violence with children but more on that some other time.)
As we get a little older most children have a go at pushing back, they start to say NO and refuse to comply with the orders from the Giants. If you were lucky enough to have caregivers who understood what was going on this can end up being a very positive time in your development. It’s still difficult and generally unpleasant for all involved but children can gain valuable knowledge and skills about boundaries, accountability and who they are along the way that will serve us well later in life. However if those Giants don’t understand the importance of these stages all children go through I’m afraid to say those children will have some very difficult and often unconscious issues they are going to be dealing with for most if not all of their life.
The truth is most of us Giants are neither awful or brilliant so by and large most of us get through into adulthood without becoming a danger to ourselves or others. Perhaps we’ll benefit from a bit of therapy and we certainly will be helped along by good friendships, a sense of purpose and, if we’re very lucky a trusted and committed partner. I know I have.
None of this is about blaming parents. I have no interest at all in spending any time blaming anyone for anything, simply because I’ve tried it and is hasn’t helped me grow towards being a more complete person.
RD
So here’s my version of how my Emotional Scaffolding formed and how it works. While we are experiencing any kind of emotional or physical pain it is a perfectly natural and I think healthy thing to find ways of regulating the intense and painful feelings. I can think of my own easily. Running away, inventing my own imaginary world, crying, hiding, loud music, and many many others. Some worked better than others so I’m guessing the evolutionary process kicked in and I became more attached to the things that protect me most.
When I was about 8 years old I experienced some very difficult family challenges and the long and the short of it was my dad moved out. In retrospect it was probably a good thing all round and certainly good for my mother. For an 8 year old though, those few years were impossible to process. I don’t care how aware and skilled any parents are, 8 years olds do not have the capacity to understand any of it, but in a way they do the best they can. I spent virtually all my time in my own little world. I did have a couple of imaginary friends and met a couple of real ones! One of those real friends had parents who owned the shop over the road. That’s where we bought our milk and bread, newspapers and basic food. It was also where, as a troubled and fragile 8 year old I first discovered cigarettes. They had these tiny trial packs of about 5 or 10 cigarettes they would sell and my friend managed to get her hands on a bunch of those little packs. Now back then smoking was common and not really seen as a bad thing. It felt like everybody smoked in their house and kids were often sent off to the shop to buy the milk and bread and a packet of smokes for the Giants. Kids were definitely not allowed to smoke but it was common at my primary school for a few kids to bring them to school for a bit of a puff at lunch time.
I can’t really tell you why I was drawn to them. They tasted bad, I couldn’t buy them and every time I had one I felt fear and guilt. It’s hardly like a nicking a block of chocolate and hiding it under the bed. Nevertheless I felt drawn to that little packet of cigarettes and every time I lit one up I felt better. Around the same time another friend stole a bottle of Drambuie from his parents liquor cupboard and we spent that lunchtime drinking as much as we could bear. It was absolutely awful but there was something about it that gave me a strange comfort, a sense of peace and, only in retrospect, a sense of power over the Giants in my life which included my teacher. Needless to say being drunk in your primary school class was not approved of and it all led to a visit to the headmaster’s office and if I’m not mistaken, a few sessions with a therapist during class time. I can’t say for sure exactly what age I was when all these things happened. I’ve been told trauma can affect our ability to manage our own timelines, but I know for sure it all happened in primary school and I also know for a fact that while I never really liked the Drambuie or the smokes they became two ways I coped during that time. On and off and as they were available it felt good to have a smoke or a drink. This is going to sound wrong but I honestly believe looking back at those years those two behaviours and probably a few others worked as a kind of emotional escape, a place to feel in control and a way of surviving. They were, in the way I currently understand it (no doubt it will change), some of the beginnings of the emotional scaffolding, and from time to time they kept me from worse even more destructive behaviours.
Now I’m old it’s easy to explain why things happened the way they did and I can even understand more of why I did the things I did. Now I’m a Giant but to my absolute bewilderment I am not as all-powerful as I imagined Giants were when I was little. Now that I am the Giant it seems to me that all my Giant-ness enables me to do is to keep others from finding out just how powerless I so often feel. This sounds weird but sometimes I really don’t feel like a Giant striding around feeling in control. Some days I actually feel like that little boy in his imaginary world hoping no-one will discover my secrets and that no-one is going to hurt me today. Unfortunately I do not believe this is a sustainable way of living. I’ll leave you with this quote that both scares me deeply and even as I type I find myself resisting and hoping there is another way forward. Yet at the same time it gives me the very finest hint of light. If I am to be Redeemed, if I am to become complete and have a complete life it will require me to examine all my scaffolding, not with an eye to some kind of religious moral framework or a disapproving prosecutor, but with the eye of love and kindness to that 57 year old boy who still walks in a world of Giants. It’s just that those Giants are no longer people, the Giants are now the memories and the protective scaffolding that once protected me from danger, but now mostly inhibit me from being Fully Human, becoming Complete and living a Complete life.
“If someone is determined not to risk pain, then such a person must do without many things: […] – all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant.”M. SCOTT PECK, THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED