Ever wondered why you still cannot get up that podium to address a rapt audience when you have been assigned the task to? Ever wondered why you are always the passive member in an organising committee? Or, why you must pay close attention to details in everything you do to avoid being scorned? Personal demons are fears or anxieties that torments somebody, and these anxieties often consist of a combination of emotions such as worry, concern, nervousness, agitation, angst and fear. They can be inhibitors that constantly shake our self-confidence and consequent relations with others closely or loosely connected to us. Although, many of us in our contemporary society find it deeply self-evaluating having to admit it, we all do have our own personal demons. Fragments of these are manifest in our workplace; you sideline yourself during staff meetings to conceal a stutter you imagine will be jeered at. In our homes; you are a perfectionist or pedant who believes anything beneath this shows a deficiency. In our relationships; you are the attention-seeker who may feel hurt, or unwanted when a partner is not meeting this demand.
If a thorough assessment is being taken on the subject, one may find that childhood sets the stage for most of the anxiety experienced during adulthood. By age three, a child’s emotional resources broadens to include self-referential emotions such as pride, guilt, shame, and embarrassment, and the evaluations of others begin to influence the young child’s self-concept. Thus the healthy emotional attachments of young children to their parents and wards remain a cornerstone of psychological well-being in early childhood. Parental approaches that emphasize consistent and irrational expectations of the child which results in destructive criticisms when the child falls below these expectations, are no less detrimental to the child’s inner confidence than his adulthood. An affectionate parent-child relationship, in turn, enhances the child’s future emotional, and subsequent, social repertoire. A child who is never good enough to his parents standards, may never feel good enough to others in years to come. Echoes of this verbal and sometimes voiceless criticism that results in self-doubt may continue to resound in his ears long after childhood.
Peers may be seen as replacing parents in importance to adolescents as they have immeasurable influence in making or marring the life of a young teenager. A teenager often complained that she couldn’t go to parties with her friends. When asked why, she answered morosely that they thought she was not ‘popular’, may be always slightly clumsy in a gathering, hence, was constantly subject to ridicule. By perceptively judging herself based on the remarks of others, her self-esteem is challenged, which is only worsened if she had never really felt good enough from within. Such a teenager, with the help of supporting parents and ward, may have easily overcome these fears long before and look undisturbed in the face of a peer’s taunting.
Most fears may be self-inflicted, but whichever way they are come, these demons challenge an individual’s personal growth and overall success. Some may argue that the fear of being a failure causes one to work harder. True. But what happens when destiny comes to play and you have to fall in order to rise again? Would one be able to perceive that the fall was only meant to make you stronger and wiser, and not to mark you out as a failure? People continue to develop throughout adulthood. As people age, they may continue to be influenced by childhood experiences, positively or negatively. The lasting influence of childhood on a person’s relationships, self-esteem, and well-being is one reason why efforts to improve the lives of children are so important because lack of acceptance, insufficient love and care can, unfortunately, presage long-term social difficulties for an adult if these problems are not remedied in childhood.
