Brainwashing, also known as coercive persuasion, is the concept that the human mind can be controlled or altered by certain psychological techniques.
Brainwashing and New Relationships
On the part of the child, they won't always know they are being brainwashed by their parents, until they go on to form relationships later on and emotionally they begin to struggle. Being brainwashed reduces your ability to think independently for yourself, for you to change your attitudes and beliefs.
Parenting
Children may go on to rely on their parents (or caregiver) to make decisions for them, comforted in the knowledge that any decisions made will always be in their best interest. It would never be in the child's nature to think or believe otherwise.
Love and Acceptance
Children want their parents love and acceptance. When it comes to control the signs aren't always obvious, until there is an element of struggle, when the child begins to realise they have been brainwashed.
I'm not kidding, my mother should have worked for the CIA she was so good at brainwashing. I didn't always understand why I kept getting into the same type of relationship as I'd had with her.
I spent most of my childhood thinking it was my job to make her happy but that wasn't possible seeing as nothing anyone ever did came close to making her happy.
She seemed to go out of her way to break my spirit, her brainwashing worked amazingly well. I need to avoid making the mistakes I used to make.
Thanks Randy. Yes, this was never about you Randy, how she parented you had everything to do with her issues and not you.
It's amazing what we learn, what we come through, and what we come to understand. That tends to come after our parents are no longer around.
Our parents teach us one of two things, I will parent as you have parented, you did a good job, or I shall choose not to parent as you have.
We must all do what we have to do to make our children's lives easier.
I certainly wasn't brainwashed as a child. That would have involved at least an element of parental input.
Given what you write about in your blogs about your own experiences, looking back I was lucky I didn't have the input. A balance would have been good though.
Thank you. Yes, given your childhood or mine, I would rather have had yours. I might have managed better.
Yours certainly sounded less complicated, less neglectful in that sense. I was dealing with a disability, I needed the support, but I know that without my childhood I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now, and I reconcile.
Neither was appropriate. But it's not something either of us can change. Like Randy also, we must find a way to move on and make our lives better.