Headspace: At football or the office, how we behave matters
Each month our mental health columnist Alejandra Sarmiento offers her views on staying sane in a challenging world
I was at a football match recently. To my left, there was a man, probably in his early 40s. His son, ten years old at the most, sat on the other side of him. For the first twenty minutes of the match, this man incessantly shouted vile abuse at the players, waving his fist and occasionally standing up to emphasise an emotion. His son sat quietly, spending more time watching his dad than following the players on the pitch. By the second half, however, this little boy looked and sounded just like his dad. Same words being hurled at the players, same body language. Like father, like son.
I don’t know if that game was the little boy’s first match in a stadium with his dad. I don’t know if his dad always expresses himself at football matches with such hostility and anger. I don’t know if this little boy already uses such abusive language. What I do know is that children learn so much of their behaviour simply from observing how parents, or carers, behave. They repeat what they witness from the adults around them. This is true both for learnings physical actions and expressing emotional responses. This process of learning, and imitating, is often automatic and unconscious. In other words, reactions and behaviours become internalised.
In turn, these patterns of internalised learning become coping mechanism, if the home life of a child is dysfunctional.
A child who is often criticised, bullied or who frequently witnesses rage at home will likely become an adult who craves control and power as a means of ensuring the safety that they did not feel growing up.
A child who consistently seeks perfection and achievement as a way of trying to avoid adding more stress to an already stressful home life will grow up to be an adult who struggles to set boundaries at work. They will do all that they can to maintain appearances, no matter what the real cost may be to their relationships and to their own happiness and wellbeing.
A child who observes how a parent (or carer) locks themselves away in their room, argument after argument, will also start to isolate themselves in their room. This child will very possibly grow up being mainly attracted to unavailable partners, creating fantasy scenarios that never quite materialise.
A child who becomes an emotional crutch and surrogate companion as a way to compensate for the lack of connection and support between their parents (or carers) can be expected to become an adult who gives much more than appropriate in relationships. They will continuously self-abandon and will have no real understanding that their own needs, desires, happiness and safety matter too.
As adults, we must learn to consciously recognise our harmful patterns of behaviours so that we can move away from toxic relationships towards relationships that make us feel seen, safe and satisfied.
Alejandra Sarmiento is a qualified psychologist