Occasionally people ask me why we choose our particular blend of Getting and Protecting Behaviors. Why, for example, do some people predominantly attack, while others run?
There are a great many reasons why we choose our behaviors, some of which have unknown power—DNA, epigenetics, and more—while other causes are not identified at all. But rather than speculate about what we don’t know, I can say that mostly we choose behaviors based on what we SAW as children, or what we FEARED, or both.
To illustrate, some people are runners because one or more parents were runners, and these people simply followed the models presented to them in their formative years. Other people run, however, because of the fear generated by one or both parents being attackers. Some people cling because it's what they saw parents do, while others cling because they were neglected, and they learned to cling to get what meager attention they could.
Regardless of how we learned our unloving and unhappy behaviors, however, the solution is pretty much the same for all. We must learn to identify how we behave, share what we do and feel with people who can love us, trust the love we find, remember that love, and share it with others.
