The Loser Spirit Series: Leaving Our Childhood Behind

 

Loser Spirit Series: Leaving Our Childhood Behind Post Cards by Bougie Girl Apparel

In my previous posts about The Loser Spirit, I discussed how it affects our relationships, children, and overall well-being. The Loser Spirit  comes to us during our childhood and creates strife, pain, and inhibits our personal growth.

Unfortunately, the Loser Spirit also follows us into adulthood  through the following behaviors:

1. Making poor life choices to get back at our family

2. Sacrificing our own happiness in order to prove our family  wrong
3. Blaming our parents for everything that went wrong in our lives
4. Tailoring our lives in order to live up to our family label
5. Constantly seeking approval and validation from our parents 
6. Continuously expecting our  parents to bail us out of trouble

1. Making poor life choices to get back at our family
The Loser Spirit encourages us  to avenge our past unhappiness  by making ill-advised and sometimes downright dangerous decisions. It tells us that rockin' some supremely self-destructive behavior is the best way to  exact revenge on our family. By doing so, we can use our poor judgement to hold our family emotionally hostage for years to come. Yet, in the long run  we are the primary ones suffering from our multiple scrapes with the law, chemical dependency,  relationship psychodrama, and/or financial disasters.
  
2. Sacrificing our own happiness in order to prove our family wrong
As children, we are labeled very early on by our families. Unfortunately, these family labels follow us from childhood into adulthood.  The Loser Spirit advises us to waste a lot of time trying to debunk our family label. As a result, we embrace careers, relationships, and/or philosophies just because we want to rebel against our label. In the long run, we sacrifice personal contentment and create a ton of strife just to prove our family wrong.

3. Tailoring our lives in order to live up to our family label
On the flipside, some of us are so invested in living up to our family label that we base our decisions on staying within the parameters of it. We do not even stop to think as to whether our family label even suits anymore or if it did in the first place. Years go by, and we are very dissatisfied with the path associated with living up to our family label. This can create an undercurrent of bad feelings and resentment towards your family, which  further feeds into the Loser Spirit.  

4. Blaming our family for everything that went wrong in our lives
The Loser Spirit  revels in us never accepting responsibility for our actions. Instead, it points out how others have caused us to fail. The Loser Spirit points out all those times in which our family let us down. 
We stay so focused on  scapegoating our family that we do not realize that time is sliding past us.
Before we know it, the Loser Spirit has robbed us of both a present and a future.

5. Constantly seeking approval and validation from our family 
Our  family is  not going to agree with all of our choices. Getting angry with our family when they disagree with our life choices is a recipe for burnin' a lot of unnecessary daylight. In addition, this less than mature behavior can keep us emotionally glued to our childhood.  

6. Continuously expecting our family to bail us out of trouble
We are adults. Why should our family be expected to bail us out of every financial scrape?  Life happens, and we all have to ask for help at some point. However, always running to our  family for every little crisis which pops up is borderline abusive to them. Why should our family have to pay the price our perpetual irresponsibility?

Failing to acknowledge, make peace with, and/or move on from the painful parts of our childhood gives the Loser Spirit the opportunity to hitchhike into relationships with our children, spouses/significant others, friends, co-workers, and the world at large.

As adults, we have a responsibility to both work through and grow from the pain of our childhood.