Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Staying Calm

 I believe my calm demeanor is less about nature and more about nurture, especially since my mother’s stricter parenting style. As a young mom, she had zero tolerance for emotional outbursts. She didn’t scold too hard, but she set firm boundaries, and over time, I internalized that quietness as the “right” way to handle emotion. “Social learning theory… emphasizes the importance of observing, modeling, and imitating the behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others... Behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning” (McLeod, 2025, summarizing Bandura (1977)). This supports that my calm demeanor wasn’t inherited, but modeled and reinforced. I observed my mother’s strict emotional expectations and learned through observation and reinforcement that staying quiet and composed was the appropriate, “rewarded” behavior. Over time, this modeled behavior became part of how I handle emotions.


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