Children who grow up in families that are emotionally unsafe or insufficiently supportive develop ways of coping. These defensive attitudes make sense at the time and are required for the child’s emotional survival. For example, children of demanding parents may become overly compliant, whereas those of erratic parents make distrustful vigilance a first priority.
Unfortunately, some of these children continue this skewed outlook into adulthood. As grown-ups, they act as though the world was the same as the home in which they grew up. What was once a sane, appropriate response to their surroundings becomes a crazy, unwarranted reenactment of attitudes and behavior that no longer are necessary.
Neurosis is continuing to act as if we were coping with the problems of childhood, when growing up has changed where we stand in our world.