👏 The way you were parented as a child influences the way you view and treat your dog. 👏
And before you say, “Well, duh!” This study did an excellent job of bringing a nuance to the surface that we’ve known has been lurking in the depths for years now.
🎯 #attachmentdisorder
👏 #codependency
🎯 #proxy
This is everything we’ve talked about when it comes to the #enmeshed relationships with dangerous dogs. People are role playing, choosing animals with traits similar to their parents, and then trying to compensate for what went wrong in their childhood. Check it out: ⬇️
“Compensation occurs when parents project the unmet needs from their own childhoods onto their children and try to prevent their children from having the same experiences they had [53,54].
This projection of unfulfilled needs might lead to overcompensating and the inability to recognize their child’s real needs and temperament, resulting in overcontrolling or overprotective parenting behaviors [54,55].
Such overcompensating parental behaviors also play a pivotal role in the significant association between early maladaptive schemas of parents and their adult children [56], which are self-defeating emotional and cognitive patterns developed in childhood [57].
Pets, being included in the intersecting relationships that constitute a family system [58], akin to children, can fulfil the role of a mental stabilizer within the family system, utilizing processes such as displacement, projection, and identification [59].
Additionally, the human and non-human animal bond has been hypothesized to serve as compensation for deficient human attachment, with a stronger attachment to pets potentially compensating for unmet needs for closeness, security, and emotional and social support within the parent–child relationship [60].”
The paper is long so I won’t paste every single bit of it, but I highly recommend reading through it to better orient yourself when addressing #pit pushers. Understanding these dysfunctional cycles is key to addressing the pitbull problem.
When you see engulfing, enmeshed, #DPD or #NPD behaviors with a dangerous dog, you’re likely looking at a long standing #cycleofabuse. The person is determined to “fix” the risky dog, ignore v!olence in the relationship, or “prove” that the dog can “love” them because it will then override their childhood scripting.
Confront the cycles,
-JL #DBA Editor©️
Study:
Parents for Dog Bite Awareness 
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