From: Life Skills International [mailto:tammy@lifeskillsintl.

org] Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 4:31 PM To: Dillon, Ann Subject: May InSights - "Arrested Development"

May Special
Learn more in this month's special DVD entitled "Arrested Development." You can order it for

Dear Ann, This issue of INSIGHTS focuses on learning more about arrested development. We hope you enjoy this issue and will pass it on to your friends and family.

Dr. Paul's INSIGHT:

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like a child in a grown-up world? Maybe you were in a meeting or a social setting when you looked around and said to yourself I don't know what to do. I feel like a little kid in a room full of adults. The stress of the situation may make you feel small and unable to "run with the big dogs." I remember many times when I was reduced to a child as I sat among adults in a professional setting. I was scraping the bottom of the self-confidence barrel as it felt like my chair suddenly became oversized and I was swinging both legs because my feet couldn't touch the floor. Remember Lilly Tomlin's character Edith Ann? In one particularly vivid memory, I was sitting across the table from

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Testimonial ...

After going through a Stepping Stones Clinic and

understanding what Arrested Development truly was, a woman gave this example: I realized before I came to Stepping Stones that when I got married, my husband-to-be and I stood in front of our church and he held onto my arm. What I didn't realize then but realize now was as I stood tall, not that I didn't have my own issues or problems to deal with, but my husband-to-be was standing on a tall kitchen stool in big people's clothing drooping down all around the stool because he was so "young" in his emotional life. The decisions that he made, and the way he acted in public make sense to me now. I received truth at the Life Skills Stepping Stones Clinic to understand what Arrested Development really was and how it affected my whole life. I was then really mad at the pastor that

an adult and immediately began feeling like a very small child. This person's tone of voice and attitude triggered me and I slowly began to shrink inside my adult body. It felt like I needed a ladder to climb up to look out my eyeballs. I call this Arrested Development. Traditional therapy calls it Fixation. Due to the fact that I had been wounded as a small child, my emotional development froze at the point of the trauma. My emotions were, therefore, locked up and I acted like a child when I was stressed. If we are wounded as children, either by rejection, incest, molestation, emotional abuse, or physical abuse, the chemicals that would normally kick in around the age of 13 are blocked. Our emotional development stops, but our physical development continues. We grow and change physically, but our emotions are arrested and stay stuck. We then act like a child when we are stressed, which isn't pretty when we look like an adult. We have no impulse control and are driven by our childish emotions. We escape from the reality of life by distractions or addictions. We believe the world revolves around us. We develop a pseudo personality to cope in an adult world. This pseudo personality is often called the Jekyl/Hyde, dual personality, or the double-minded man found in Scripture. We are characteristically: * * * * * immature lacking impulse control lacking limits unstable unable to resolve issues

married us. I asked, "What pastor would marry a full-grown woman to such a very young little boy of about two years old? What was the pastor thinking when he did that to both of us?'

* desperate for freedom * resistant of authority * unhappy with our job Our childishness manifests itself in our relationships. Women seek an emotional connection with a man, but will often have "magical thinking" concerning relationships. If arrested in development, she tends to gravitate towards "bad boys" rather than experience a good man and then possibly endure the pain of losing him. Instead, she gravitates towards a "bad boy" and manipulates him to get him to meet her emotional needs; however, she cannot identify her emotional needs so he comes up short every time. She may identify her wants, but they are childish and self-centered because she is emotionally childish. Men, on the other hand, seek control over sex and money in a relationship. Men are 90% sexual and 10% emotional. Women are 90% emotional and 10% sexual. Therefore, a wounded man focuses and sees his success as handling money and expressing his emotions through sexuality. A woman can judge her husband's mood by the way he makes love to her and the way he touches her. Very seldom is he emotionally gentle and connected to her. Instead, he uses her as a way to rid himself of his emotions; his anger, rage, childishness, power and control, and manipulation. As a man matures and finds his balance, he realizes that if he would meet her emotional needs (which means she needs to identify them because men are not good "guessers" or mindreaders) and communicate with her and bond

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Coming Soon ...

HANGING ON HOPE
by Judy Hegstrom

Many victims/ survivors of domestic abuse have written their story, but they fall short of telling the devasting details

of living with a batterer. I was there. As I am editing my mom's book, I am amazed at the pain she went through, and the pain that dad inflicted on each one of us. Mom shares her most intimate secrets and gives us a glimpse into her personal diary so we can "experience" the abuse she suffered in her first marriage to my dad, Paul. This book is a trophy of grace as we journey with Judy and share in her pain. Witness the healing of a victim/survivor and the transformation of a batterer! Discover how Judy's healing and Paul's recovery can apply to your relationships. There is hope! - - Tammy (Hegstrom) Nelson

emotionally, she will respond sexually and meet his needs with joy. Wounded women lock up their emotions because they have been hurt a greater portion of the time by a man. Men who have been emotionally wounded lock up in the areas of sex and money. There is tremendous hope. Over the last 28 years we have seen couples come together and find that intimate balance where there is a complete relationship for each of the partners.

There is hope . . .
We have found that arrested development or fixation can be restarted by learning how today's behaviors are sourced in a wound or wounds of childhood. This allows the body to back off of the adrenaline and the mind begins to understand why I do the things I do. As understanding and knowledge increase, our character is developed and we are able to grow up. What I understand, I can resolve. The cure is simple. We will give you the tools you need to be mature and feel like an adult in an adult world. You don't need to feel or act like a child anymore!

There IS hope!

Paul

"For lack What I UNDERSTAND, I of can RESOLVE. knowledge

, my people perish."
Hosea 4:6

What I DON'T understand drives me CRAZY.

Dr. Debra Buss . . . Stepping Stones
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT affects many people in many different ways. It affects their relationship with themselves, their husbands, their wives, their children, and their family, as well as those at work and even at church. One wife shared the following story with me: She said she belonged to a small church group of seven women. At one meeting, her and her friends arrived before the last group member. The rest of the women in the group began to discuss the missing woman's kindness, compassion, skills, and tenderness along with her ability to personally help each of them at one time or another. When the missing group member arrived, each of the other group members individually told her of their discussion and their own personal confusion, expressing the contrast between how they lived their lives and how she lived her life. This woman was married, had a family and a home that kept her busy, and yet she found the time to help each member with their personal problems varying from emotional, physical, and even spiritual things. They asked her, "How do you do it or even have the time or the energy help each of us?" Her reply was she "didn't have the traumas in her childhood that the other group members had, along with now having a very loving and supporting husband and family." We have two options when we are dealing with arrested development, denial, or shame. We either want to believe that our home, family, school, and church as a child was normal, or we may just try to forget that any traumatic events ever happened as we were growing up. We then grow up with "holes" in our social skills, communication, and our ability to

Archives . . .
January 2010 "What Is Life Skills?" February 2010 "Paul's Story" March 2010 "Teachable" April 2010 "What Is Normal?"

share with others our deepest and most intimate part of our life us. We try to fit in with the big boys or big girls of the world and have long-term relationships with other people but are never quite able to make things happen. We bounce in and out of so many projects, jobs, friends, and social situations that even we notice our behavior. We fight the messages from childhood that said we were stupid, but inside secretly wonder if we really are stupid. We are never able to answer the question What is wrong with me? and Why is the rest of the world able to handle issues successfully but I can't? Some people handle arrested development by magically thinking that their childhood didn't really hurt them that much or it wasn't really that bad, or even that they left all that pain, trauma, and insecurity at their childhood home when they left. Now everything in their life will be okay. When everything isn't okay, they don't know what to do or how to change their lives. In the Stepping Stones Clinic, we deal with all of these issues and more because issues not dealt with, understood, and healed in a way that we can understand and get free of hinders us for a lifetime. When issues are understood and dealt with, the feeling of just not quite good enough can go away. It is not blaming others for their choices or even their reactions, but there is healing for all who are willing accept truth, understand themselves, and be truly set free from the childhood traumas. In the Stepping Stones Clinics, I help people understand what arrested development is, where it comes from, how to be truly free for the first time in their lives, and much more. The process is life-saving for many; saving their sanity and their future. If you are teachable, it is possible. HELP IS HERE.

Dr. Deb

I remember watching Lilly Tomlin's character Edith Ann as she rocked back and forth on that big ol' rocking chair; her final words being "and that's the truth!" The truth is, when we are acting like a child, we can't identify the truth. We are frozen in time as a child and become frustrated when we don't know how to "grow up." There have been many times in my life when figuratively my legs didn't reach the floor because I felt like a child. As I learned and applied the tools that Life Skills teaches, my legs grew!

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." I Corinthians 13:11

Tammy
Life Skills International P.S. Don't miss our next issue as dad talks about the symptoms of Blame-n-Shame.

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