Where Monsters really come from

Disclaimer: It's 2 AM, I'm dead tired, and I can't sleep. I have allergies like crazy and my eyes are no longer working but apparently my mind is and it wont shut up. I'm listening to the Les Mes sound track on Pandora which is awesome and very distracting, but I still need to get this out of my head. So if things don't make sense to you don't worry about it because it probably didn't make sense to me either, and I'm the one who wrote it....at least I think I'm writing it. To be honest I don't even fully remember what I just typed.  So yeah, good luck with this. (I haven't read it yet so I don't know how it will turn out. Actually I haven't even typed it yet so I can't read it to even know how it turned out.)

Lately I've been pondering where children get the idea of where monsters come from.  I mean they don't watch scary movies at 5, those don't come until 6 (I should know that's when I saw "Jaws" right before my first time going to the ocean...and my parents wonder why I have a phobia of the ocean...hmmm...;) ). So how do children learn about monsters? Here's the answer: The monster is the parent.
Think about it! When the parent goes into the child's room at night the child's mind knows something is there. Unfortunately, the child is asleep and cannot see what this object is.  The unconscious mind perceives that there is something in the room but it cannot see it. The mind knows that it's night time and it knows that something is there. Well the mind hates not knowing things so it needs a reason for this sensation that it is experiencing and labels it as a moving dark figure. Then later when the child goes to bed and the lights get turned out the mind regurgitates this "memory" of the dark figure. This causes the child to become scared because they are experiencing the fear that the unconscious mind felt that first night the "monster" came in their room. So having this "memory" and the associated feeling solidifies in the child's mind that monsters are real, and now your child believes in monsters.

How do you feel now? The child is afraid of monsters because of you! 

I'm still afraid of monsters, but for a different reason.  Apparently my parents and siblings decided to bring monsters to real life, because my family is warped like that (I love them but they are warped). When I was in 10th grade I saw the "Boogie Man" movie  and it was the scariest movie I have ever seen. I am still afraid of that stupid Boogie Man, but it's not because of the movie, it's because of my family.  I don't handle scary movies at all, I'm gutless when it comes to scary movies. After the movie I come home to an empty house and am freaking out because I know that the Boogie Man is watching me and waiting to pop out somewhere. So I'm frozen to the living room couch and I call my parents, because I'm not about to go down stairs to my room in the basement.  Well my family gets home from where ever they were and I feel safe enough to go down stairs and go to bed. Suddenly around 1 AM my sister comes running down the stairs shouting that she saw someone in our backyard. I run upstairs and go in my little sister's room and hide like a scared puppy in the corner, because I know it's the Boogie Man.  My dad goes out and checks out the yard, knowing full well where all of us kids were he decided to have fun with us. He decided to bang on the window. I needed a new pair of underwear after that. Well no one was in our backyard so I felt comfortable enough to go back to bed. I am almost asleep when suddenly a cold hand grabs my ankle. I don't even remember how I made it up the stairs because my heart had stopped and I'm pretty I was actually scared  to death at that very moment.  I will never forgive the fact that my lovely sister decided to hide under my bed and pretend to be the Boogie Man. Needless to say I slept in my parents room for a week.

I have plenty more of those stories. Like the one where my family tried to "help" me get over my phobia of spiders by putting a huge fake spider above my bed, or putting a fake life like spider on the shower curtain so it falls on me....yeah... again they are warped but again I love them :) They make life more interesting and fun.

It's amazing how things can always be traced back to the parent if you really think about it: Monsters, Why you hate moving  (Yup it's the birth canals fault you hate moving), and why you have trust issues because you found out that Santa, the Easter bunny, and the Tooth fairy never existed and it was a big lie your parents conjured up.

See it's things like this that keep me up at night. Welcome to my night time thinking.