When children grow up with neglect and/or abuse, they tend to personalize it, taking full responsibility for it. Although events tend to be multifactorial, having several causes, which may or may not include us, children tend to believe that anything that happens to them is caused by them. Their understanding of cause and effect is fairly straightforward: “I cause whatever is done to me.” On the one hand, this is because they’re the centers of their universes. And, on the other hand, this belief is often reinforced by the scolding adult(s).

As they age, children learn about justice, fairness, and order, reinforcing the belief that we solely cause things to happen to us with the layer of: Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to the bad ones. For them, that mindset helps them survive and even thrive by forming the foundation of perfectionism, the belief that being perfect, in this respect being morally perfect (or scrupulous), leads to fairness. “If I’m fair to you, you’ll reciprocate.” “If I go above and beyond, you’ll love me.”

This set of beliefs is significant because children often have no recourse; They can’t just move out of their family homes and develop better relationships elsewhere. They need to possess a high degree of optimism in order to sustain some degree of well-being. Yet, these same children frequently find it challenging to move beyond their tendencies, which calcify as early survival mechanisms. They often believe things like: “I was a bad kid.” “If my mom or dad........

© Psychology Today