Integrated Essay
This is a paper I'm writing for my English class. It's still in revision, so I figured I would post it here and hopefully some of you will feel compelled to read it and give me some suggestions/compliments/criticisms.
Crystal Rowell
Integrated Essay
The first thing my grandmother on my dad’s side said to my father when he announced he and my mother were getting married was, “How far along is she?” Yeah, we’ve always had such a caring family...
Though it may make little sense to those on the outside of this family, I believe this one question, this one reaction to my father’s happiness from his own mother, will later indirectly be associated with my own social incompetence. Both my father and mother grew up in households which were extremely dysfunctional, and, coincidentally, both of them ended up so socially inept and exceptionally awkward, much like the children they would later raise within yet another dysfunctional home.
Why is it that my parents’ painful awkwardness is also mine? My father lost his father at a young age, as my siblings and I lost him, so perhaps the loss of the father figure contributes greatly to my social anxiety. Or perhaps it’s the fact that my mother grew up in a very repressed family, which then bloomed into a very twisted sexual environment and led to her existence being completely ignored, as occurred later down the line between her and my step-father, knocking her three children into the background and out of mind. Maybe it’s true that you really are your parents, and their mistakes will become your own.
“Research that has examined families of anxious children indicates that parents may exhibit behaviors that contribute to anxious children's socioemotional difficulties”( Wood, McLeod, Sigman, Hwang, & Chu, 2003). I grew up in a very difficult situation. Some of the first memories I have are from the year my parents were going through an exceptionally violent and loud divorce. During this time period I would mostly try staying tucked away in my room, simply terrified of both my parents, growing anxious every time I sat at the top of the stairs in my room listening to them scream and smash things. At the time, and even a few years after, I became convinced that for some reason my parents were plotting to kill me and my siblings, and I would become nervous whenever I had to be alone with them. I don’t think I spoke very much during this time, which would later cause my kindergarten teacher to insist upon me taking another kindergarten class the next year because my “social skills were not developed”. As you can see, that second class didn’t really help.
“Children who are more skilled at using emotion-related language and understanding emotional experiences may be more adept at regulating their own arousal during distressing situations” (Eisenberg et al., 1998). One of the lovely things my parents passed on to me is the inability to keep control of myself during distressing situations. My main line of defense turned out to be that anything could make me cry, and for the most part that’s one of the only reactions I seem to have. Because my social skills aren’t really up to par, I get frustrated easily and I don’t know how to handle it for the most part. Through my parents modeling their anxieties and reactions I managed to pick up that I could get outrageously angry and scream(my father), or bawl my eyes out when things got too heavy(my mother). For my parents this was almost reversed, my father’s mother being the one who screamed(not to mention emotionless to her children’s needs) and my mother’s father being the one who was first to shed a tear(not always emotionally available, but more so than my mother’s mother). And through my parents’ anxieties and inability to control themselves during highly distressing situations(because their parents had the same inability before them), their children also developed that inability. “Studies involving families of anxious children provide preliminary evidence that through discussion, parental practices influence the development of emotion skills” (Barrett et al., 1996; Dadds et al., 1996). Anxiety “runs” in my family, but is it because it’s actually hereditary, or because no one in my blood line has ever really been able to develop these emotional skills because their parents didn’t? The only person in my family who seemed to have no trace of anxiety was my Great Grandmother on my mom’s side, but she was my Grandmother’s adoptive mother, and therefore her emotion skills could have been counteracted by the fact that my Grandmother had to deal with the fact that her real mother was so willing to just give her away(my Grandmother’s biological mother was also emotionally unavailable and contributed to her social anxiety).
“Hetherington and her colleagues showed how parental separation frequently forms part of an ongoing process of potentially stressful changes for children (for instance, changes in neighborhood and school, dramatic decreases in family finances and in parental well-being and mental health, often the formation of stepfamilies, the experience of living in two households as a result of custody arrangements, and loss of contact with their biological fathers and with paternal grandparents)”(Dunn, Judy. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Jul 2004). I was lucky, for the most part, because I didn’t really lose contact with any family member after my parents were divorced. By law we had to visit him and through him we saw his side of the family. This was also yet another thing that would increase anxiety and further damage any ability we had to communicate properly. I became very withdrawn, even more quiet. There was a strange new man in the house who clearly wasn’t my father, we were poor and everyone at school knew it, my mother was under so much stress that every thing I did she would yell at me for.
For instance, I fell one day and slit my knee open, and I obviously needed stitches(insert frantic, heart-pounding anxiety here on my part, me screaming, “Stitches?! Am I going to die?!”). A few months after the cut had been stitched up and healing I fell again and ripped it open. Since I was closer to my Grandparents’ house I went to them for help and they called my mother. Later she would yell at me about how bad it made her look that instead of running to her for help I ran to them, despite the fact that I was terrified and just in general needed medical attention.
“The focus of the great majority of studies had been on the average prevalence of children's problems following parental separation. They documented that children whose parents separated showed, on average, higher rates of adjustment problems (such as behavior and emotional problems, school failure) than those who had not experienced these transitions”(Dunn, Judy. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Jul 2004). The reason why my anxiety may be worse than my parents’ anxiety is because my parents actually went through a divorce, something that had never occurred within either family before my parents had gotten married. I already had two parents full of anxiety, but piled on top of that was the anxiety of a new lifestyle, the stress of not always living comfortably because we couldn’t afford it, not to mention the cliche thoughts of, “Is this my fault? Oh my god, I caused this!”
This is a subject I can practically go on and on about. How has my family fucked me up? Let me count the ways. It’s easy taking one issue I have and saying, “Okay, I am like this because my parents did blank”, but that’s not the point of all of this. I guess what I was trying to do is figure out why I am like this through finding out why they were like this, almost as if it were predestination for us all to end up with this social anxiety and horrible dysfunction, as if because my dad’s dad died young, and my dad died young that means I will die young, or because my mom’s dad couldn’t defend himself, and my mom couldn’t defend herself that means I can’t defend myself. Do I have the power to change this, or does it all just happen again way down the line?
Crystal Rowell
Integrated Essay
The first thing my grandmother on my dad’s side said to my father when he announced he and my mother were getting married was, “How far along is she?” Yeah, we’ve always had such a caring family...
Though it may make little sense to those on the outside of this family, I believe this one question, this one reaction to my father’s happiness from his own mother, will later indirectly be associated with my own social incompetence. Both my father and mother grew up in households which were extremely dysfunctional, and, coincidentally, both of them ended up so socially inept and exceptionally awkward, much like the children they would later raise within yet another dysfunctional home.
Why is it that my parents’ painful awkwardness is also mine? My father lost his father at a young age, as my siblings and I lost him, so perhaps the loss of the father figure contributes greatly to my social anxiety. Or perhaps it’s the fact that my mother grew up in a very repressed family, which then bloomed into a very twisted sexual environment and led to her existence being completely ignored, as occurred later down the line between her and my step-father, knocking her three children into the background and out of mind. Maybe it’s true that you really are your parents, and their mistakes will become your own.
“Research that has examined families of anxious children indicates that parents may exhibit behaviors that contribute to anxious children's socioemotional difficulties”( Wood, McLeod, Sigman, Hwang, & Chu, 2003). I grew up in a very difficult situation. Some of the first memories I have are from the year my parents were going through an exceptionally violent and loud divorce. During this time period I would mostly try staying tucked away in my room, simply terrified of both my parents, growing anxious every time I sat at the top of the stairs in my room listening to them scream and smash things. At the time, and even a few years after, I became convinced that for some reason my parents were plotting to kill me and my siblings, and I would become nervous whenever I had to be alone with them. I don’t think I spoke very much during this time, which would later cause my kindergarten teacher to insist upon me taking another kindergarten class the next year because my “social skills were not developed”. As you can see, that second class didn’t really help.
“Children who are more skilled at using emotion-related language and understanding emotional experiences may be more adept at regulating their own arousal during distressing situations” (Eisenberg et al., 1998). One of the lovely things my parents passed on to me is the inability to keep control of myself during distressing situations. My main line of defense turned out to be that anything could make me cry, and for the most part that’s one of the only reactions I seem to have. Because my social skills aren’t really up to par, I get frustrated easily and I don’t know how to handle it for the most part. Through my parents modeling their anxieties and reactions I managed to pick up that I could get outrageously angry and scream(my father), or bawl my eyes out when things got too heavy(my mother). For my parents this was almost reversed, my father’s mother being the one who screamed(not to mention emotionless to her children’s needs) and my mother’s father being the one who was first to shed a tear(not always emotionally available, but more so than my mother’s mother). And through my parents’ anxieties and inability to control themselves during highly distressing situations(because their parents had the same inability before them), their children also developed that inability. “Studies involving families of anxious children provide preliminary evidence that through discussion, parental practices influence the development of emotion skills” (Barrett et al., 1996; Dadds et al., 1996). Anxiety “runs” in my family, but is it because it’s actually hereditary, or because no one in my blood line has ever really been able to develop these emotional skills because their parents didn’t? The only person in my family who seemed to have no trace of anxiety was my Great Grandmother on my mom’s side, but she was my Grandmother’s adoptive mother, and therefore her emotion skills could have been counteracted by the fact that my Grandmother had to deal with the fact that her real mother was so willing to just give her away(my Grandmother’s biological mother was also emotionally unavailable and contributed to her social anxiety).
“Hetherington and her colleagues showed how parental separation frequently forms part of an ongoing process of potentially stressful changes for children (for instance, changes in neighborhood and school, dramatic decreases in family finances and in parental well-being and mental health, often the formation of stepfamilies, the experience of living in two households as a result of custody arrangements, and loss of contact with their biological fathers and with paternal grandparents)”(Dunn, Judy. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Jul 2004). I was lucky, for the most part, because I didn’t really lose contact with any family member after my parents were divorced. By law we had to visit him and through him we saw his side of the family. This was also yet another thing that would increase anxiety and further damage any ability we had to communicate properly. I became very withdrawn, even more quiet. There was a strange new man in the house who clearly wasn’t my father, we were poor and everyone at school knew it, my mother was under so much stress that every thing I did she would yell at me for.
For instance, I fell one day and slit my knee open, and I obviously needed stitches(insert frantic, heart-pounding anxiety here on my part, me screaming, “Stitches?! Am I going to die?!”). A few months after the cut had been stitched up and healing I fell again and ripped it open. Since I was closer to my Grandparents’ house I went to them for help and they called my mother. Later she would yell at me about how bad it made her look that instead of running to her for help I ran to them, despite the fact that I was terrified and just in general needed medical attention.
“The focus of the great majority of studies had been on the average prevalence of children's problems following parental separation. They documented that children whose parents separated showed, on average, higher rates of adjustment problems (such as behavior and emotional problems, school failure) than those who had not experienced these transitions”(Dunn, Judy. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Jul 2004). The reason why my anxiety may be worse than my parents’ anxiety is because my parents actually went through a divorce, something that had never occurred within either family before my parents had gotten married. I already had two parents full of anxiety, but piled on top of that was the anxiety of a new lifestyle, the stress of not always living comfortably because we couldn’t afford it, not to mention the cliche thoughts of, “Is this my fault? Oh my god, I caused this!”
This is a subject I can practically go on and on about. How has my family fucked me up? Let me count the ways. It’s easy taking one issue I have and saying, “Okay, I am like this because my parents did blank”, but that’s not the point of all of this. I guess what I was trying to do is figure out why I am like this through finding out why they were like this, almost as if it were predestination for us all to end up with this social anxiety and horrible dysfunction, as if because my dad’s dad died young, and my dad died young that means I will die young, or because my mom’s dad couldn’t defend himself, and my mom couldn’t defend herself that means I can’t defend myself. Do I have the power to change this, or does it all just happen again way down the line?