Young Ladies Doing the Adulting Thing

We have two young ladies living in our home.  Both of them have made great strides at this "adulting" thing in recent days.

They both have some challenges against them.  The younger, Social Hurricane, we've talked about a fair amount--anxiety and bipolar disorder and hallucinations.  She has a lot on her plate.

I'm not sure if we've ever talked about the elder daughter's fundamental insecurity issues.

Basement Artist was born three months early, and had a very rough year or so.  One hundred and two days in the hospital, four surgeries before she was eighteen months old.  It's left her with a permanently quiet voice and a spectacular scar on her side.  But we've also thought over the years that it's left her with chronic insecurity issues.  Developmental psychologists theorize that, in the very early days of life, a baby will either learn that the world is safe and can be trusted, or she will learn that the world is an unsafe place.

It's entirely possible (and I'm quite convinced of this personally) that BA's very rocky start has left her, deep in her psyche, feeling that the world is perilous and risky.  We've discussed this, and she pretty much agrees with me.

How this works out for her in practice is that she has to work, and work hard, to overcome a natural tendency toward fear.  Unless she deliberately compensates for it she defaults toward seeking the routine, the familiar, the deliberately unadventurous.  This has given her a great deal of trouble doing the "adulting" thing, because it's much easier to stick with the known than to venture out into the untried, especially because these days she's doing lots more things without a parent by her side.

To her considerable credit, she DOES work hard at compensating for it.  She seeks out new challenges, sallies forth into unfamiliar social situations, ventures into areas beyond the tried and true.  I salute her--it takes more courage for Basement Artist to apply for a job than it would take for me to face down a lion.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.