Why We Always Feel Bad and Guilty
Presenter:
School of Life
Time:
3:10
Summary
There’s a strange law of psychology that reveals that small children who are treated badly by their parents will always — rather strangely — blame themselves, and not their parents, for their injuries.
Transcript
There is a strange law of psychology that reveals that small children who are treated badly by their parents will always rather oddly blame themselves and not their parents for their injuries. They hate who they are, rather than hating those who've done them wrong. Small children immediately notice when they're not loved as much as they might need to be.
They understand nothing of the reasons for this hard heartedness. But they feel all of the pain. And yet they need to locate some kind of explanation nevertheless, and so they quickly and intuitively settle on one that almost always feels most compelling to them, that they have done something wrong. Why is Mommy so agitated? Because they've done something wrong? Why is Daddy so cold? Because they've done something wrong?