According to Tara Bennet-Goleman, in her book "Emotional Alchemy - How the mind can heal the heart", those of us who were much loved and well cared for will grow up with what Erik Erikson called "basic trust" - a highly adaptive way of facing the world. It is adaptive because, on the whole, the person assumes that new situations and people pose no threat (until they show themselves to be untrustworthy). Adaptive people are also good at reacting very differently to different situations, which, on the face of it is the most logical thing to do (but not necessarily the most obvious)!
Tara Bennet-Goleman goes on to talk about schema's which we develop in response to difficult situations in our lives. These are ways of reacting to situations which best protect ourselves. We discover from early on that these habitual patterns work for us, and so they become preferred ways of reacting. Of course, they are highly effective for the situation they were developed in response to, but what tends to happen is that the person learns to start using these schema's even when they are not relevant. They become habits, the most obvious reactions to situations, and we use them without even thinking - like we may follow a particular road to work each day without paying much attention. And then, one day, when we are actually headi ng somewhere else we find are, in fact, on our way to work!
Someone might have learned (subconsciously, of course) that every time they love someone or something, that person (or animal) will leave them or die, and so, subconsciously, they might tend to keep people at a distance because deep down they "know" that the person will leave them. They have learned not to become too attached, as the pain or grief once the person is no longer around is too difficult to cope with. Or perhaps they have learned that no-one can be trusted to provide even their basic needs. Take the bully, for example. He has probably learned to misinterpret innocent behavior as threatening, and land up reacting to such behavior as if it were threatening. This will obviously have inappropriate results - from a rather neutral beginning.
So, like the time when we found we were heading in totally the wrong direction in our car one day, people can learn to be mindful of their
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