Hi Jim,
Over the last two weeks I've written about five ways a child adapts to early experience, and how those adaptations end up shaping a body, a personality, and a life.
If they went by in a blur, here's the whole thing on one page.
Leaving. Forms earliest, before language. When being fully here wasn't safe, attention learned to go elsewhere — into daydream, into a book, and most often into thinking. Gift: unusual perception, imagination, and the ability to see a thing from every angle at once.
Merging. The first eighteen months, when care came and went unpredictably. The conclusion: I can't meet my own needs, so my job is to get someone else to. Some flip it into fierce self-sufficiency instead. Gift: the gifts of the heart — warmth, connection, and a real capacity for pleasure.
Aggressive . A child who watched love and power appear as opposites and picked power. Stay ahead, stay above it, never be the small one again. Gift: genuine leadership, and the energy to start what nobody else would start.
Enduring . The age of no, when the no never worked. Comply outwardly, refuse underneath, outlast it. Gift: deep steadiness, patience, and the best respect for other people's space of any of the Five.
Rigid . Correction arriving where warmth should have been, until getting it right became the way to keep the connection. Gift: mastery of form, and clean boundaries most people can't manage.
Two things worth holding as you read that.
All five are available to anyone, but only one or two got used enough to shape you. So it isn't I'm a type, and it isn't a bit of everything.
And the one you bounce off hardest — definitely not that one — is worth a second look. Sometimes it isn't yours. Sometimes it's the one you've built the most on top of.
Wednesday is where this stops being reading. We'll go through all Five in the body, one at a time, so you can feel the difference rather than recognize it on a page. Then I'll offer real ways to work with whichever is yours — leaning into what it gives you and carrying less of what it costs.
"Very helpful to feel in the body and accept this part of self. Much compassion."
"So wonderful to hear others, so non-judgemental, and to feel not alone with it."
Finding Your Survival Patterns — Five ways we adapt to early experience that shape the body, our beliefs, and our personality. Discover which became yours, and why it's not a life sentence.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026.
1pm EDT / 10am PDT / 7pm CEST.
90 minutes.
[Register for Wednesday]
Pay-what-you-can, the same as always. Can't make it live? Register anyway — you'll get the recording!
Talk soon,
Over the last two weeks I've written about five ways a child adapts to early experience, and how those adaptations end up shaping a body, a personality, and a life.
If they went by in a blur, here's the whole thing on one page.
Leaving. Forms earliest, before language. When being fully here wasn't safe, attention learned to go elsewhere — into daydream, into a book, and most often into thinking. Gift: unusual perception, imagination, and the ability to see a thing from every angle at once.
Merging. The first eighteen months, when care came and went unpredictably. The conclusion: I can't meet my own needs, so my job is to get someone else to. Some flip it into fierce self-sufficiency instead. Gift: the gifts of the heart — warmth, connection, and a real capacity for pleasure.
Aggressive . A child who watched love and power appear as opposites and picked power. Stay ahead, stay above it, never be the small one again. Gift: genuine leadership, and the energy to start what nobody else would start.
Enduring . The age of no, when the no never worked. Comply outwardly, refuse underneath, outlast it. Gift: deep steadiness, patience, and the best respect for other people's space of any of the Five.
Rigid . Correction arriving where warmth should have been, until getting it right became the way to keep the connection. Gift: mastery of form, and clean boundaries most people can't manage.
Two things worth holding as you read that.
All five are available to anyone, but only one or two got used enough to shape you. So it isn't I'm a type, and it isn't a bit of everything.
And the one you bounce off hardest — definitely not that one — is worth a second look. Sometimes it isn't yours. Sometimes it's the one you've built the most on top of.
Wednesday is where this stops being reading. We'll go through all Five in the body, one at a time, so you can feel the difference rather than recognize it on a page. Then I'll offer real ways to work with whichever is yours — leaning into what it gives you and carrying less of what it costs.
"Very helpful to feel in the body and accept this part of self. Much compassion."
"So wonderful to hear others, so non-judgemental, and to feel not alone with it."
Finding Your Survival Patterns — Five ways we adapt to early experience that shape the body, our beliefs, and our personality. Discover which became yours, and why it's not a life sentence.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026.
1pm EDT / 10am PDT / 7pm CEST.
90 minutes.
[Register for Wednesday]
Pay-what-you-can, the same as always. Can't make it live? Register anyway — you'll get the recording!
Talk soon,
,
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