Confessions of a self-created person.

To Change Your Behavior, Change Your Environment

The impact that external stimuli can have on behavior is well-known. I have written previously about choice architecture and how it can be used to drive better health habits.

These effects go beyond the physical environment. Your friendships matter too.

One popular study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, tracked 12,067 people for 32 years and found that “a person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese.” [3]

The people we connect with and the places we live in often determine our behavior and habits as much as we do ourselves.

The good news is that, at least to a certain degree, your environment is within your control. If you want to change your behavior, then change your environment. Even small adjustments can make a difference.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to design for laziness and make default options healthier or more productive.

Creating a healthy environment, creates the tool for healthy change. "If you build it, they will come." Socially what we expect, is what we get. Get that. If we take the tribe off-grid, teach and expect healthy thinking - instead of depend on existing negative assumptions - violence, negative self perceptions, drug use, and gang membership will decline. This would be done by mixing healthy, positive people, with those who have the genuine WANT to improve their happiness/mental healthiness level, i.e., break negative family cycles.  I have these people lined up.

They are done with struggling to have a healthy life surrounded by negativity. They want a chance to exploring and enhance their - otherwise ignored - good choices skills. The U.S. culture doesn't have that. The Neighborhood Tribal structure does.

The Pygmalion Effect Defined

The farm is supported by research such as this:

_______________________________ 

I had no animals, but there were high expectations in a bumpy take-off in life.

Sitting in the office of a state institution at fifteen years of age, the wise, glowingly loving, respectful and educated worker told me a message that would be a repeating theme in my life, "You have to be responsible for your own life. Stay away from drugs as that will not serve you, make wise decisions for yourself, and you will do anything you set your mind to."

My two older brothers and I had been left at my father's parent's house when I was four. "It's his turn to take care of them now." My grandmother quoted her as saying, just last year, when I finally asked why. My mother had been pregnant again, and wanted to start over. Her boyfriend refused to marry. The child was adopted, loved, and had a happy life. Michael and I were already connected on Facebook two years ago, and he shared he was my half-brother. The family had been told of his existence 25 years ago. Nothing would surprise me about my mother.

My brothers and I moved with my father, who married in a few short months after we were dropped off, but his parent's house would always be my refuge and home. Their home had consistency, love, acceptance, and identity. Children were allowed to be children when the environment is safe. My core identity would always be tied to their home regardless of outside influences - as we reflect those who accept and love us - if not love us, who we seek to love us. It would be my refuge.

We visited our mother on Saturdays. My father's time became an issue with me. He would be on the road during the week, and not share much of his attention with us kids on Sundays, though I considered myself very patient. The television became my nemesis, and thought it needed to go. Straight needles were lying on the floor next to it, and a mischievous streak suggested I slip them in the back smelly slits. I obliged with high hopes! A week later he turned it on (I was helping in the kitchen) and it exploded. Smoke was everywhere! Needless to say the new nemesis (which at five not realized existed) was now the television repairman. With needles in hand dad lined up us three kids. Pigeon-toeing my feet (aids a five-year-old attempting the appearance of innocence), and looked down. "No, we don't know how they got in there!" I can't remember if he punished all of us or none, but he never found out who did that. Hi dad!

We were in the care of an attractive and highly violent, unpredictable woman, all of nineteen years old, while he was successful in sales on the road. The house was reminiscent of Diane Rehm's autobiography (I'm on page 138), "Finding My Voice", only I wasn't my step-mother's child.  The weapon of choice, a 2x4. My father assured her, and their two children, he loved them by behaving in the same despicable manner. Children from authoritarian, violent households become perfectionists in school and manner, learning to acquire no irrational fears, as the real ones are quite big enough for both classifications.

I was fed up with violence at seven-years-old and decided to take matters in my own hands. My cat had run away, as my step-mother didn't like snow tracked in (now I realize how small that snow must have been) and decided I could too. She agreed, thinking I was kidding. I packed the Betty Crocker cake mixes from Christmas, a few books, Mrs. Beasley doll to keep me company, and a blanket. My two older brothers pitched in their piggy banks.

Ending up reading under the street lamp after dark, my step-mother strutted down and announced (after she had given permission), "If you come home now, you won't be in that much trouble." I revolted. How do you give someone 'permission', and then say they will be punished? I walked the opposite direction. I was sick and tired of her tyranny. Who was she anyway? Down a few blocks on a busier street a man appeared on the sidewalk. I hadn't realized my little yellow suitcase was a billboard. The guy had an uncanny resemblance to Glenn Campbell. "Where ya goin'?"

"I don't know. Where did you come from?"

"I live over there." He pointed to the other side of the park. "Oh. You aren't going to call the police are you?"

"I am the police." Spoken as if by an angel.

I uttered another "Oh." more quietly this time. "You gonna let me go?"

"Yeah, I figger you'll go home soon. See ya later."

I know you're thinking WHAT? Hey, crazies weren't really known about in the late 60s in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was a really big small town, the next scene explains how small.

I ended up walking in a strange nicer neighborhood (it had sidewalks), and walked as straight as I could. A car rolled beside me. "Where ya goin'? Wanna get in the car with us?"

"No." This went back and forth for a quite a few minutes. Then I got in the car.

We stopped at a house, and a lady got out to look at me. They almost kept me waiting in the car long enough to change my mind. Driving again, I sat between the two in the front. The driver asked the name of my street. I mumbled the answer in my lap hoping it wouldn't be heard. He asked again.

"Oh!  I know where that is !" He was friends with a neighbor kid, Shawn. When we rolled on my father's street he was looking in bushes with a few other guys with flashlights. The driver yelled out, "Hey, you lookin' for a little girl?"

"Yup."

"I think I gotcha one." He got out of the driver's seat, and I sheepishly got out. "We'll discuss this later." Was all he said. On entering the house my step-mother furiously grabbed me with both hands by the jacket collar. "Where have YOU been?"

"Go downstairs!" Dad barked. He had already beaten my brothers for their crime of 'contributing piggy bank contraband'.

I really don't have to explain how dancing looked that night. It was ugly. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why I he was mad teenagers brought me back to 'his house'. Looking out the window the next morning, snow induced gratitude, but not for being in THAT house. In addition to the beating I was grounded for two weeks.

Word spread like wildfire in school that the second grade straight A student ran away. I was scorned, confronted in the hallway and harassed, but not a soul asked why. It was obvious I was 'different' socially. 'Play' had to be risk-free, as I had no refuge if injured. 'Joy' was something to be kept discreet or destroyed, 'friends' a way to tame terror by creating scary stories in a single overnight. The need for a 'mother', a family joke.  'Girl Scouts' was a setup, humiliation imminent if a treat was accepted. With everyday a different landmine; prescience eluded me; safety, a fantasy. I had become self-reliant, and self-contained; in a word: Marginalized.

Two years later my eldest brother winced and cried out while sitting on my birth mother's sofa on Saturday. She took HIM into the bathroom and called the police. I had evaded that beating, and became the most hated child in Indiana.  Earlier in the day my next older brother, after a heartless, long beating, came in my room and asked if I got that one too. "I hate you." That I had made above a C on report card, and lied about candy changed the rest of my life.

My mother was intolerant of perfection when the courts removed us from my father's house five years later. My brother, on realizing this decades later (Why didn't he then?) asked her why she hadn't wanted me. "No one is suppose to know about that.  How did you know?"

"Chris told me." He said.  She held a grudge against my strength of spirit, perfectionist coping mechanism, self-reliance, and 'I can do anything' tomboy attitude - and let me know on a daily basis with her mocking laughter, while passionately teaching my brothers to disrespect girls. The only way my child mind could find to rationalize this, given the European legacy of hatefulness toward non-whites, was to be very, very afraid I had an unusually strong hate gene that could carry over to my children.  As the years rolled by I became terrified to have European children. In the first two years I nearly drowned (she was sunbathing), nearly fell off the roof of our second floor apartment (hung from small lip and swung in the walkway, away from cement below), and landed in the hospital from an overdose. No 'American' intervention. I went searching for friends to stay alive.

Drugs helped medicate the pain for four years, until it became violent with my mother. As I lay in bed, belt buckle welts had covered my body from the bridge of my nose to my feet, just the week before. Things do not always turn out as planned, especially when you're fourteen. With limited business options, I had stashed a chemistry lab under my mattress piece by piece from school, thinking I could make it on my own if only there were a chance to produce drugs. However, no chemist, supplies, nor business site had ever materialized, but no needle ever touched my skin. On finding the supplies my mother thought me a heroine addict.

When someone is going to do something final, such as kill, they do not talk about it, they prepare. Having lived with her, and my step-mother, an acute sense of the proximity of danger had developed. She had taken on an unusually cold-hearted air (even for her), and avoided contact with me as if I were already gone. There was a distinct air that she had a concrete plan with my Marine step-father, and I slipped out the window permanently that night. The feeling of exhilaration and liberation has never been matched. A policeman drove toward me walking on the road and took me to my friend's house. I desperately wished it was as I told him, "I live here", as we arrived at my friend's house.

Now, here, you're thinking you've seen the movie. Others who have not been in this situation have told me they know what happens next...But you don't. I was always loved by those grandparents mentioned above, and they were of extremely high standards. I was their child. I was willing to die as testament to that fact. In fact, before leaving my mother's I had given their Christmas blue sapphire ring to a trusted friend for safekeeping.  I had socially planned to stay alive those five years, and maintained friendships with older people, as my resources and experiences were limited. Carefree was not a word that applied to my childhood.

I wandered friend's houses for two weeks, and then my boyfriend caught up.  He took me to a runaway shelter. I'll just say his influence messed that up altogether. Through a connection in the shelter we were on the road again, and ended up in the worst part of town, with the worst person possible. We were transferred on the highway to Bo. After a few days in Bo's home, on waking, his arms were locked around my body...squeezing. "My boyfriend will find out." I repeated over and over as the tears streamed down my face.  No faking was necessary.  I was beyond petrified, as I hadn't read the book. After a few minutes of going back and forth, he asked, "Have you been raped?" I hadn't, but I was TOO honest, and told him I'd been taken advantage of.  He actually let me go. Honest to God. We went to the next room and had breakfast, where he told me he had gone to prison for murder. He had shot a man with a shotgun in the stomach when he came out of a bar. "He deserved it." He stated passionately. I was in absolutely no position to argue.

An innate sense of peace and calm has gotten me out of many hazardous situations. He called the police to get me out of his house. When they arrived I was telling a fast story they were buying, but they took me and the other girl from the shelter anyway. On the way down winding stairs I kept tugging down on the cuffs and threw them off on the bottom. Running for it (Who wants to go to jail for staying alive?)!  The policeman pulled his billy club over my head, as I was cornered in the fenced yard, and sincerely double-dared me to move an inch.

I was lucky, as there is an epidemic in Canada, and many missing in the U.S. also.

Arriving at the station the policeman was laughing and bragging about his catch, when I asked who was in charge. The warden stood and introduced himself. My response? I cussed him out one side and down the other, as I had never been so angry. I thought my life was over, and was not going down without a fight.

My probation officer had sent me to jail earlier that month for a weekend, as my mother had filed incorrigibility charges. I met Bob Denver (Gulligan's Island) on that initial trip. Yes, it's true.  He visited kids having hard times on a regular basis, and I happened to be one of them that day. He looked very different in person, and a man on each side of him, yet he was very warm and pleasant - though I can't say the same for those nasty mouthed men.

Now, back to the warden, this was no ordinary man. Matter of fact, he still amazes me. He made a phone call to the felon to find out what kind of kid I was, and found the truth. That man kept me from being friends with anyone in the 'joint'. I sat for one and a half months while working girls came and went. The first girl I met was the pimp's girlfriend, Mary. I still haven't figured out how they have girlfriends, but apparently it's true. She was called out of the ward and came back hating me. I hadn't told her the story for fear Bo would come after me, but someone just told her. She was furious, and as predicted, never spoke to me again.

I was known as the news broadcaster, being so bored I talked to each one as they returned from court. There was a girl whose eyeballs were literally bleeding and swollen, and bruises all over her body. The cops had made a derogatory comment about her mixed baby, and she had spit on them. When she returned from court the matrons told me on no uncertain terms to leave her alone. She had lost the case.

On visiting day every week I waited for my father, eagerly asking the matrons, "Is he darker, shorter, with brown eyes?" Eventually I would curl up in a ball and go to sleep. He never came. There are many processes one must go through to become self-possessed. Sometimes it is younger than other people. Sometimes no one ever pans out.

There was a competition in the classroom for a candy bar. They wanted us to name the parts of a sentence. I asked the girls to put down their pencils. I turned in my paper and we all had a treat ! Everyone was saying I was a genius, when it seemed very obvious I was simply educated.

A teacher in the jail approached me while I was alone in a classroom writing a letter to my boyfriend.

"Chrissy (my family name), you're awful pretty. We could make a lot of money together you know? You don't have any family, do you?" He continued to harrass me until I left. Those businessmen know how to find vulnerable girls, and are not monitored. I would learn as an adult it is the favorite unspoken sport of America's males in finding unprotected females: An option to fishing. I would be propositioned while working in a furniture store at the age of 44. It never ends.

The country feels it has a right to intellectually castrate and contain control over women through focusing on the weaker aspects of gender instead of legitimate personhood. It has become blatantly obvious my country is no longer capable of shame.  If the feeling paid, it would. Could producing unwanted children be the subconscious agenda of a sector of the 'pro-life' movement, or is that getting too real? The obviousness of this is egregious. As long as the cause is the sole media focus - instead of the Cause and Effect - the sex trade will have fresh, unlimited fodder. They feed on my sisters from Foster Care and Group Home - instead of  supplying a place of belonging, protection, and empowering human beings to reach their full potential, which is what my tribe is designed to do.

The warden gave orders to the matrons to take phone numbers of other inmates from me, and punish them. During my exit process we had a talk. He came behind me sitting in a chair and squeezed my shoulder blades together - hard.

"I don't want to see you in here again, DO YOU HEAR ME?"

"Yes."

"If I do, I'm going to kick your ass. Do you believe me?"

"Yes."

"O.K. then, you can go."

This is what he was worried about.

After a month in a halfway house I landed in The Children's Home of Cincinnati. Hence, "Sitting in the office of a state institution at fifteen years of age, the wise, loving, and educated worker told me the message that would be a repeating theme in my life, "You have to be responsible for your own life. Stay away from drugs as that will not serve you, make wise decisions for yourself, and you will do anything you set your mind to."

 I found it odd that I was one of three residents with native blood out of twelve young women in the cottage. Inevitably, whenever I meet a native peer they tell me they had to leave home at fourteen. The unhealthy self-image is a legacy no matter your cheek bones or pigment. Self-loathing expresses in very hurtful ways. 

One month after moving in there was an incident with another resident, which sent me into uncontrollable sobbing - letting out all the trauma and pain of the last five years. In this release of negativity and pain a healing and receptiveness began. It was a new beginning. 

The young men had three cottages, divided by age, to our one. The older ones lived in the co-ed 'independent cottage'. The young men were incredibly respectful and decent.  We all had high behavioral standards. The head worker in a guy's cottage was the nephew of the worker who guided me.  I am convinced some family's are just special in figuring out kind wisdom, and have the ability to share it.

My guide, Sally Brantley, was always direct, take no bull, positive and respected most of every word I said. That method was utterly endearing. Her nephew married a white teacher in the day school. We all dressed up and went to the wedding. It was an amazing experience, and seemed perfectly normal to everyone as we were, quite literally, the only family each other had.

We were encouraged to go to doctor appointments alone to practice independent living skills. While we were at The Children's Hospital Clinic the doctors asked us to sign a paper at 15, to help them teach gynecological medical school. After all, we were questionable girls, and they didn't have to answer to anyone. We found it odd, with all their education, they weren't able to do their job without help from young girls in a makeshift orphanage. The fact that the CEO of a hospital lived across the cove from my successful father in Noblesville, Indiana didn't matter. I was a ward of the state. It would remain the most painful memory of this time.

It became crystal clear to me the country I had put my hand over my heart every morning in public school had not intended to protect or respect me at all, I was a female. As I nurtured self-respect, I realized it wasn't me that didn't deserve respect, it was the mode of operation of my country. This theory would prove correct every year of my life supported in reports of women in universities and the military. 

In spite of this, surrounded by supportive staff and a strong, intelligent buddy I began to make good, healthy choices, and given respect, responsibility and a part-time job in return. My part-time job was with Curt, a man who had lived in what was then ~1920, an official ophanage. He lied about his age to fight in World War II, and on his return became the campus grounds keeper. I was his assistant. I came to realize self-creation was entirely possible. We were all given the impression if we just made healthy choices life would turn out fine, and we had a real chance at a happy, healthy life.

I returned to mainstream America as caretaker for my two toddler half-sisters. In my mother's mind it was a business arrangement, and paid for room and board. While working within the disrespecting, negative household, I sorely missed the supportive environment. However, this time I was armed with healing, self-possession, and others who had faith in me. In ceremony, a fir tree had been planted in the roundabout in a foot of ice and snow - the blizzard of '77. There was raw survivor guilt associated with leaving. One native sister tore her own room to shreds, screaming at the top of her lungs for half an hour, came out straight-faced, and we walked to dinner never discussing the incident. She would later graduate to the independent cottage and joined the military. 

I was the lucky one who escaped institutional socialization. Though in a poignant moment in the month before leaving I paused, looking out the window, the realization consciously surfaced of how much I liked my open-mindedness and open-heart. I knew mainstream would have its hold on me soon, and change what I cherished the most about myself. In this way, there was no wish to leave.

The social worker was six feet tall with long blonde hair half her height. She was a product of the liberal 60's, and when Anne said good-bye in my mother's kitchen, she held my face in her hands while her eyes filled with tears. "I'm going to miss you Chris." I knew Anne wanted to see me let the notorious protective guard down. I stiffened up, after all, she was returning me to hell. It seemed contradictory, but there was no other place for me to go. I would forget how to cry in grief from that day forward. I left at the end of January, 1978.

The Children's Home gave me a weekly aftercare worker, and a therapist for the family. That did not last long, of course, but the therapist did do one favor for me. In the first family meeting Jim Bellew sat back with his pipe for a moment, stood up and announced, "There is nothing wrong with Chris. There is, however, something VERY wrong with this family." Finally, someone with intelligence came in contact with them. I was amazed there was actually someone she could not seduce into her way of thinking. She had succeeded with the therapist in the cottage.

In a few months, after breaking up with the excruciatingly hurtful boyfriend who had served as my lifeline to mainstream society, and the execution of a previous close friend, I had whittled down the old social circle to nothing. The love of wonderful sisters, a gift for baking, success in school, and a part-time job now existed as my anchor.

Feeling the possibility of a promising future, I called to thank the warden for his help, which I now completely understood. The only peaceful conversation I had with my mother went something like, "You know, Chris, if anything happens to me, Jim (my step-father) would be a great husband." Aghast, I half-smiled and walked away. Obviously, we were not cut from the same cloth.

The school counselor watched me check off all college prep classes for the next year.

"You can't do that !"

 My response?  "Watch me." Dreams of a rich future, college-bound friends, and consoling music were a constant refuge. My new boyfriend's brother turned in a literature class to yelled, "Where did you come from?"

The closest university was a conservative state ivy league school. It was a bad fit. With constantly discouraging parents I went anyway, and majored in speech and hearing therapy and philosophy. My grades were above average. This lasted one and a half years with scant friends.