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Why “Not Being Like Our Parents” is hard to achieve

psychotherapy father sonIn my sessions the thing I hear from many clients is “I don’t want to turn out like my father”, or “I am not going to treat my son like my mother treated me”.

It’s common for people who had difficult relationships with their parents to hold such views. The challenge for many people is that “not being like one’s parents” can be a difficult task to achieve.

 

What makes us similar to our parents?

There are many influences to the development and forming of an adult personality and genetics aside, much of this influence comes from those who raise us.  In family and systems therapies, there is a term called “Multi Generational Transmission process”; this is a term that describes the process of how a developing person takes on attributes and qualities from their family of origin and makes these qualities and attributes their own.  Most often the qualities of a parent, which they are not aware of, are the qualities the parent tends to project onto their child. For example, a mother, who is not aware of how they may manipulate their spouse, could begin to see these same learnt manipulative qualities in their child and then come to the conclusion they have a manipulative offspring.  The offspring, being told over and over not to be so manipulative ends up swallowing the fact that they must be the manipulative one in the family and they begin to view themselves in the same light as the mother does.  Typically this locks into place a dynamic where the mother and child only see the child to be the manipulative one and in this, the mother’s own manipulative traits stay out of her awareness.

 

The shadow of the unseen parent

When we vow never to be like our parents in some way we deny the fact that we hold the same capacity to do the same things that they did. Often this stifles much more of the person than only the parts they are trying to avoid. For example, a man who grew up with a father who was very angry may vow never to be angry for they know how damaging this can be to a child. Over time, this person loses their sense of power, as power cannot be developed in a person without the correct use of their natural anger. In negotiations they are more likely to back down whenever things get tense, for fear of being angry, and in doing so they set up a pattern of not getting what they need. The tail end of this is that the longer they go without getting what they need, the angrier they are likely to become. And eventually the person will explode, allowing their anger to rise. After this they typically feel remorseful for the way they showed their anger in negotiating their needs and they vow never to be angry again, which leaves the anger once again building and building and thus the cycle continues.

Unfortunately, denying these aspects of oneself is like shaking a bottle of Pepsi and leaving the lid on. The pressure builds and when the lid is twisted just a little bit, half the can fizzes out and it makes a real mess, just as we do with blocked anger, fear, grief and other disowned feelings and aspects of ourselves.

The real tell tale sign this is happening is when I hear somebody say “ that wasn’t like me at all to get so upset/scared/angry about this” . This statement reveals that the parts of the person that “fizz over”, to use the pepsi analogy, have not been recognised as part of who this person is.

 

How can one move on from unliked and unwanted family traits?

As I mentioned, the aspects of oneself that are resisted and denied become interrupted in their organic development and are misunderstood and lost to their owners. Many people think that by accepting those traits similar to our parents will mean defeat, giving in, or it will be a cop out to just accept being like them.

What is often misunderstood in these situations is that by accepting those parts, we don’t end the journey we actually begin the journey.

When we meet those parts that are like our parent, without trying to change or judge them, we then have the opportunity to move and grow as a person, which often means those traits actually change over time as the person, and those aspects within them, develop.

So the paradox is that if one wants to truly change the parts of them selves that are like their parents, the first step is to accept the ways in which they are like their parents.

When we deny these parental traits, it’s like trying to travel somewhere by reading a road map while not knowing where we are starting from. It becomes impossible to take the first step. And the first step, as it is in many forms of personal development and healing, is to accept it.

Its only when the disowned parts of oneself are acknowledged and accepted that there is then room for these parent-created pasts to move and change. Once the denied aspect is allowed a voice and a place in oneself, the true needs and requirements of that aspect typically emerges.

For example if it’s the parental anger which has been finally owned and accepted by the off spring as their own, what typically occurs is an understanding of what the person was really trying to achieve through the anger. Once this is realised the anger changes form and the person becomes different with their anger in themselves and behaves differently with their anger in relationship with others. Ultimately, the more we resist those parts of ourselves that behave similar to our parents, the more we actually stay like them. And the more we can accept these parts as our own the more likely we can grow and evolve them.

Neuro Emotional Technique can be effective with early life upsets and traumas?

baby

As much as there has been a prolific amount of neuroscientific research into how the brain influences and controls memory, there has been a growing amount of research that supports the likelihood that memory is actually stored at a cellular level within the body. This finding has some exciting implications for how we think about changing, growing and healing as people, especially with respect to early or childhood trauma or abuse.

Memory Making

Research shows that, on average, a child can start to make real and accessible memories from around the age of 2 years old. This is because at this time the infant can start to think and communicate with the world, and think with themselves using basic language and thinking, a sense of meaning or story can start to be encoded within their experiences and therefore their memories.

It was previously believed that prior to this time in an infant’s life, memories were not actually formed due to the infant not yet possessing these basic cognitive assets. Research now shows that prior to 2, infants still hold memories but they are encoded differently. Rather than having images, or sounds or stories attached to their memories, they seem to be simply stored at a cellular level of the body as emotions. Simply put, the first 2 years of an infant’s memories are not memories in the sense that we understand typical memories to be, they are more like emotional memories.

Memory recall

We all know that certain stimuli can trigger specific memories. The smell of freshly baked bread can remind us of an earlier time where Mum used to make bread, or the smell of petrol can remind us of Dad’s work shed. Typically these memories are encoded in the form of pictures, sounds and often feelings. But our pre-cognitive memories are also triggered by events in our every day life too. The challenge here is that when these memories are accessed and recalled they do not come back as memories from the past, they can be experienced as emotions that seem to be from the present moment. In other words, because there is no story, picture or cognitive concept of the memory that links to their triggered feelings, often a person will not realise they are in fact recalling a memory, and will in fact think that the feeling Is emerging from something that’s happening right now In their environment. This point becomes increasingly important if there was early trauma in a person’s life, as these memories can come back as very powerful and unwanted experiences.

An example could be when a baby girl was given out for adoption at 6 weeks old. The baby intuitively stores their sense of grief and abandonment at a cellular level but with no cognitive story or meaning attached to the feelings of abandonment, it then becomes difficult for her to understand where these feelings come from when they are triggered later in adult life.
As an adult, if she’s faced with a situation where she has to say goodbye to a work colleague who is moving on to another company, she can suddenly become overcome with a disproportionately large amount of grief and sense of abandonment. In this moment she thinks that the current circumstance is the cause of their grief and abandonment, yet in reality the current circumstance is just a trigger for the very young and powerful cellular memory of being abandoned by her biological mother. For this person, there is no link in their mind between the emotion of abandonment and the original event of being abandoned.

Understanding, resolving and releasing these very early emotions can be difficult due to the fact that there is no cognitive memory involved. The person cannot think back and link their emotions to very early events and understand how and why they are overcome with powerful feelings.

Cellular memory transmission

Over the last 30 years, many researchers have shown that our early memories go back even further than birth!!!
As far back as the 1970’s, there has been research into the fact that a fetus can pick up on, and respond to, the emotions and the intentions of the mother carrying the baby, and those close to her, such as the father and extended family. Research suggests that both babies and fetuses are porous to other people’s emotions and actually take these on as their own. For example, if a mother, while pregnant, is angry and resentful at the fact that she feels too young to be a mother, the fetus actually stores the memory of feeling unwanted at a cellular level. Later in life the person has no possible way of connecting up the reason why they continue feel so unwanted and disconnected from others. Once again, the person thinks that what they experience as an adult now is a feeling caused from something occurring now, without seeing what they experience is actually an early stuck cellular memory being recalled.

In such instances, NET (Neuro Emotional Technique) gets powerful results in not only accessing these emotions, but in allowing the body to process them and let them go. NET works with the body’s natural intelligence and energy flows to pin point the times when the emotional memory was stored in the body’s cells, as well as where in the body the emotion primarily resides, and then quickly and painlessly helps the client to process and let it go with through the use of acupuncture and meridian points. The process is often so powerful that unwanted and life long patterns of behavior suddenly stop without the client having to try to change. The cycle in the mind body connection is broken and the person just moves on.

What types of early trauma can NET assist with?

  • Alcoholic or addicted parents when a child was young
  • Early violence or parental neglect
  • Dysfunctional or destructive parental relationships
  • Divorce while the child was young
  • Early childhood sexual abuse
  • Early adoption
  • Death of a parent or sibling while very young