The Facts of Life – Revisited

Many years ago, whilst I was studying for my Diploma in Neuro Linguistic Psychotherapy, I watched a video which was called The Facts of Life. It was presented by a very successful family therapist called Virginia Satir. Sadly, she passed away in 1988.

When I heard the title I remember thinking, ‘I know the facts of life’. After all my two children had grown into adulthood and I had a granddaughter. In any case, the video was part of the training, so I settled down to watch it.

Virginia Satir spoke to the camera and said, ‘There are only two facts of life’. ‘The first fact of life is that …’

‘We are all born small’

‘And the second fact of life is…’

‘Everyone else is bigger’

I could not argue with either of these, simple and obvious statements. I reflected on them and realised that they explained the human condition at a fundamental level.

When we are born, we are totally dependent on other ‘bigger’ people i.e. family and health professionals. These ‘bigger’ people all know what is best for us, they know when and how to feed us, how and when to change our nappies, when we need to sleep, and the list goes on.

Until we are eighteen months to two years old, we pretty much rely on other ‘bigger’ people for our very existence and even then, we are not self-sufficient and need the care of others if we are to survive and thrive.

Development Stages

We need to make a slight detour now. In 1979 a Sociologist called Morris Massey authored a book called The People Puzzle. In it he hypothesised that we all go through key developmental stages. This is not uncommon when we think of people such as Sigmund Freud, Erik Ericson and other luminaries from the world of psychology and psychiatry.

What set the developmental stages the Morris Massey presented was their simplicity and the fact that there were only three of them. For the purpose of this story, we are interested in the first stages which are described below.

• The remaining two stages are as follows:

• • From around seven years of age to around thirteen we go through the Modelling Period. This is where we copy significant people in our lives and we see children dressing up as their parents, pretending to drive the family car and so on.

So back to the main topic of this publication. If we take the Facts of Life as per Virginia Satir and Morris Masseys first period of development, we have and interesting scenario. In it we have a young child who is very dependent on ‘bigger’ people right at the time in their development when they have little cognitive skills and just accept what they are told or shown.

This unfiltered experience of the world in which, by comparison, we come off worse can and more often than not does set us up with a deep-seated belief that we are not as good as others or that others know better or are cleverer than us.

Many of the clients I see in my private practice will tell me that they are not good enough. The combination of the two aspects mentioned earlier is, in my opinion, based on my experience of working with several hundred clients in the therapy room at the root of the insecurity that so many of us feel and endure.

We are born into a world of comparison in which we come off worst and then spend a lot of time trying to get away from this burden.

In my opinion, this is the basis of ‘Imposter Syndrome’ as we have to unconsciously act out a part that we do not fully believe in

You are no longer small and everyone else in no longer bigger and don’t forget that all of these ‘others’ who we may think know better than us all have been exposed to the same facts of life and imprint period.

‘Have the life you were born to live’

Tony Wright Dip Psych NLPt

One to One Therapy in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Working with people in supporting them with their mental and emotional wellbeing.

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