Better to be Bad in a Good World Than Good in a Bad World

Current cinema is flooded with movies about the “end of the world.” A catastrophic event occurs, the world as we know it is destroyed, and there a few “good” survivors left to face the “bad” faction who brought about the situation. This establishes a terrifying scenario in which the few people who are left must hide and struggle to survive, facing deprivation and helplessness. The world they now live in is, at best, empty of resources and, at worst, hostile. Every day they must fight for their survival. They live with hopelessness and the very real possibility of annihilation.

This is an accurate metaphor for the experience of people who received inadequate parenting. Inadequate parenting can range from benign neglect (parents who wanted to care for their children, but for one reason or another were not capable), to outright abusive. Because a child depends upon the parent to survive, it is intolerable for him/her to know the parent is inadequate. It would mean the child would not survive. Just like the survivors in the apocalypse movies, the child would be faced with certain annihilation.

In order to survive, the child interprets the parent’s inadequacies as being his or her fault, which makes that child view him or herself as “bad.” The annihilation anxiety turns into feelings of guilt because the child is "bad" for causing the parent discomfort. The child feels burdensome and inconvenient due to having normal human needs and wants.

From this guilt, internal messages and beliefs develop to help the child survive. Normal human need for love, nurture and caring-contact are