The less the emotional capacity for self-regulation develops during infancy and childhood, the more the adult depends on relationships to maintain homeostasis.

Experiences of proximate separation become part of the person’s psychological programming: people “trained” in this way in childhood are likely to choose adult relationships that re-enact repeated proximate separation dynamics. They may, for example, choose partners who do not understand, accept or appreciate them for who they are. Thus the

The child of an unhappy mother will try to take care of her by suppressing his distress so as not to burden her further.

When self-assertion is called for, Rachel swallows her anger and tries to justify herself, to placate or to engage in some interaction designed to persuade the other person to “get it.” These efforts are the automatic responses of the vulnerable child who works intensely to bring the parent into alignment with her needs. Her anxiety and fear of aba

Like compensatory hyperindependence, the repression of anger is a form of dissociation, a psychological process originating in childhood. The young human being unconsciously banishes from awareness feelings or information that, if consciously experienced, would create unsolvable problems. Bowlby calls this phenomenon “defensive exclusion.

Stress is magnified whenever the power to respond effectively to the social or physical environment is lacking or when the tested animal or human being feels helpless, without meaningful choices—in other words, when autonomy is undermined.

Genuine positive thinking—or, more deeply, positive being—empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth.

Women experiencing a stressor objectively rated as highly threatening and who were without intimate emotional social support had a ninefold increase in risk of developing breast carcinoma.”10

“Extreme suppression of anger” was the most commonly identified characteristic of breast cancer patients in a 1974 British study.