Adopting Parents. Stages Of Residence

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Adoption - this is letting go of the situation, completing the process of grieving over the loss of something important to us. Lose the illusion that it will be as we want, and not as it is. Acceptance is the final stage in the completion and living of a difficult situation, this is the stage of assimilation and "closing gestalt". This is when we agree with what is already there, and there is no desire to remake and change it, this is a reality that simply exists and you can (need) rely on it.

Opposite me sits a client, she is in "normal" relations with her parents and everything is already fine. “I accepted them,” she says. Here are just depressive conditions, which have already become frequent chronic, spoil everything. What a temptation to immediately "let go of the situation" without going into the process of grieving and without living. How sometimes we deceive ourselves, seeing ourselves at the finish line, not moving far from the start. Unfortunately, this is only an appearance of Acceptance …

At some moments of life, one way or another, life encounters circumstances that "force" you to look into the past, into the unfinished, into the denied and forgotten …

Inside her lives that mother who criticized, did not accept, loved another girl, not a real daughter. There is resentment and pain inside … How can you accept such a mother? You don't have to communicate with the outside, but what to do with the one that lives inside?

When there is an illusion of Acceptance, grievances are not nullified, but presented with renewed vigor

Mom still lives in me and she is a part of me. I can’t deceive myself, and I don’t do anything about it, I don’t rewrite my life story again, I don’t come to an agreement with myself, I don’t change the past, I just accept the mother she is, because there will be no other. Because Mom had her own mom and she was shaped by her injuries.

And this is an inner work …

At first stage of denial, when the thought that something might be wrong is not allowed at all, the events are poorly remembered, and clients say: “What kind of parents? Ordinary, like everyone else, nothing special … "or" Mom and Dad? - everything is fine with them and there is no need to ask about them”.

The stage of anger, resentment, rage and anger on the parents. The process starts when there is already at least a minimal separation from the parental figures, the prohibition on “you cannot be angry with your mother” and everything like that has already been overcome.

- "How could I be used that way, not love, or love was not necessary."

- "How could you do this to me!"

And here you can and should be angry. Be furious, cry, complain. It is better if this process takes place in the therapist's office, and not in direct expression to the parents. And it is important to live this stage, releasing suppressed emotions.

When there is no longer the strength to be angry and hopelessness is felt, we live stage of sadness or depression, when the tears no longer bring relief. There is a fear of plunging into depression and not getting out of it. The most difficult stage of living from which you want to evade, run away, not go into pain, not live it. This is a symbolic death after which there is a rebirth. Often at this stage we stop and do not live it to the end, because of the fear of dying, of not coping with our depression, running away from it with the help of various doping. Our world is so fast that there is simply no time to grieve, grieve and grieve. You need to "live", move, earn money, be positive - this is precisely what prevents the process of mourning from completing, turning it into chronic repetitions.

Acceptance stagehow you want to immediately move here, and not wander in the forests of your unconscious. Here the feeling of inner support returns, strength returns. You can look at past experiences objectively. See losses and gains. More precisely, not so - to see, in addition to losses, also acquisitions - resources. Adoption allows accept reality, as it is, and not be frustrated that it does not meet our expectations. It is possible to accept only after experiencing anger, despair, powerlessness and emptiness, pain, sadness and sadness, when you can mourn the consequences of abandonment, rejection, use, disliking, invisibility and all other insufficiencies.

When a strong, non-zeroed emotional charge of resentment, anger, claims still lives inside, then there is resistance to see another part of the truth. Only Acceptance makes it possible to look at the truth about parents and about yourself objectively.

And then:

Mom did not support me, I learned to support myself, to ask for support.

Mom rejected, but I accept myself and there are those who accept me.

When the emphasis is only on scarcity, then there is no support, no resource, and there is nothing to rely on to get it in the World. After all, when we see only what has not been given to us, we are doomed to a constant deficit. And there is no ground underfoot in this, it is a constant abyss. So I cut off the energy coming from my parents. And slide into the pit of scarcity and scarcity.

Here it is important to see that we have taken with us in our life what resources are available, and they certainly are. We learn a lot in our family systems, from our parents and ancestors. It is important to see what I have from mom and dad now. That it was through them that I received the gift of life. What else am I doing like them? What qualities did I take from them? What have I become thanks to or in spite of them? And this is the fulcrum and the point from which you can move into the World and get what is already missing.

One's own energy ceases to merge into the past, into clarifying relationships, into resentments, into expectations that parents will change and redirected into the future, into their own life. And what this life will be like is our responsibility …

I am in favor of leaving mom and dad alone in the end and live their own life, and, if possible, at a qualitatively new level. Understanding and living what will not be otherwise. There will be no other reality other than the one that is now. Adopting parents is a process, like life itself, consisting of many different situations, each of which manifests itself at a time that is relevant for it. Each of which is important to live, accept, understand, appropriate and understand something about yourself. For this we have a whole life …