Sunday, October 6, 2013

Family Beams with Pride (Psychoanalytic)

by "Alfred Adler"   


Thankfully, Tara had wonderful parents who provided her with a loving and supportive environment to grow up in.  She can't even think of a time when she heard her parents fighting.  This has led her to become the agreeable person she is today.  She proved to be a somewhat difficult child, perhaps due to the fact she is a first born (Burger, 2011), but overall she seems to have succeeded in life.

Tara is continually striving for superiority, which is a strength and weakness in itself.   Everything she does is seems as if it's been done in an effort to make her feel like she has won.  This is an asset when trying to run a family of six.  It ensures Tara gets everything done and very rarely does something fall through the cracks or get forgotten.  Feeling as if it's a "game" of some sort, enables Tara to have continual feelings of "winning" and makes it enjoyable for her.  As Tara says, "Winning might not be everything, but it sure is more fun!":

However, this competitive need for superiority can also be a weakness since it sometimes leads to unnecessary stress.  If things are piling up Tara can become very stressed until they are finished or become less overwhelming.  Since she has four kids she feels a huge amount of success at the end of the day when each kid has sucessfully been "taken care of": taken to and picked up from all activities, fed and bathed, read to and sung to, homework finished, school activities done.  When things get out of control and she gets behind, she will write a list and start fresh the next day... overcoming any remaining obstacles.

As I've said of my past studies, "I began to see clearly in every psychological phenomenon the striving for superiority."  (Burger, 98)  Tara displays this her striving for superiority stems from the fact that there was a time in her life when she could not care for herself or her children.  She needed help from her parents and help from her friends.  I believe it's this that spurs her on with a stream of determination.

As I noticed last week, Tara was feeling very overwhelemed with an upcoming huge house renovation project involving an 800 pound steel beam in her home.  This beam also arrivedwith eight family members and happened over the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday.  This meant she would have to make a big dinner for well over 20+ people all while her entire house was being gutted and a steel beam was being installed.

She got overwhelmed and went to bed.  The next day she woke up, made a list and started checking things off.  As each thing was checked off she "won".  Her own mother would have been so proud, because she would have reacted the same way and pulled off the holiday dinner without any problems.  In the end the steel beam was installed and the family had a wonderful holiday!


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