The Sovereign Health Solution by Dr. Eva Detko

Author:Dr. Eva Detko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press
Published: 2022-03-16T12:35:54+00:00

Overcompensation

At this point I want to talk about overcompensation patterns that many people develop as a result of early trauma. For overcompensation to develop, a child must be pushed to their emotional limits in some way, but please remember that that those limits are defined internally by the child. It is about what the child is experiencing internally at that moment, and whether others think it’s a big deal or not is irrelevant. A child can get traumatized by having the cutest puppy lick his or her face. When everybody around them just laughs and thinks this is the cutest thing they have ever seen, the child could be going through an internal horror.

Obviously, in this example, the child will probably scream or cry, and you would hope that the people around would get an idea that the child is not happy and would respond accordingly, but the point is that the internal experience of the child is 100 percent subjective and it is the only perspective that matters. So, when you are recalling your childhood, do not dismiss your early experiences. Do not just look at them from your adult perspective. You need to consider it from the point of view of your younger self and what you likely experienced at that time.

So let us look at some examples of overcompensatory behaviors. Often when people feel inferior, weak or lacking in some way in one area, they try to compensate for it in some way. So, overcompensation involves trying to make up for the feelings of inferiority by being driven to actual excellence or perceived excellence in either the same or another field. I want to emphasize how this works specifically when it comes to core emotions and what behaviors that tends to produce. The most obvious example is control. When a child feels out of control in whatever area, they will develop controlling behaviors in other areas. This is often the case when children are abused, or when there is a trauma such as death or illness in the family, or parental divorce. To most children these kinds of experiences are associated with complete loss of control. But again, this is about the subjective internal response of the child, so it does not matter what the event is as long as there is this extreme loss of control being experienced. The resulting behaviors can be OCD-type behaviors, wanting to be “perfect” at an activity, cleaning obsessively, eating disorders to control weight, obsessive exercising, etc.

What is linked closely to loss of control is failure. People who felt they failed a lot as children, or they were told they were failures, will most likely spend their adult lives overcompensating and always trying to get everything right. They will run away from failure like you would from a fire-spitting dragon. This may be as a result of repetitive scaring or a one-off incident that was particularly impactful. Type 1 on the Enneagram at its lowest expression is the most obvious example of this adaptation.

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