Oh, Those Parents

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

About childhood grievances in adulthood

Who didn't take offense at their parents? Even if you grew up in a happy family, and you have the warmest feelings for mom and dad, digging into childhood memories, you can recall a couple of cases when mom did not pay enough attention to your pressing problems, and dad, perhaps, behaved too strictly …

Alas, we are all imperfect, including our parents. Here are just a child's perception of the world endows mom and dad with unique properties, experiencing unbearable pain at a discrepancy with the desired ideal. But the main problem comes later: instead of growing up and developing their personalities, many continue to nurture childhood grievances. As a result, they become infantile, devalue their own lives, closing the doors to a happy future with their own hands.

Stuck in childhood

Growing up, among other things, involves the ability to critically assess the situation and separate the possible from the impossible. A child can be capricious and wish for an instant summer onset in winter, and an adult understands that it is impossible to influence the change of seasons. However, when it comes to grievances against parents, many show an amazing inability to adequately perceive reality, preferring to drive themselves into a vicious circle of unsolvable problems.

Experiencing over and over again the bitterness of resentment due to an unbought game console, an undeserved slap on the butt, excessive demands for academic performance at school, we remain eternal children - weak, dependent, unable to make independent decisions. Anger and resentment, like no other feelings, bind a person to the source of these passions, make him dependent on his further actions, make him wait for the next portion of emotions.

Such a situation develops without any alternative into a conscious or unconscious embodiment of the scenario of parental fate in one's life - or opposition to it.

There are a lot of examples.

Maxim's father is a former military man and quite a successful businessman. At home, barracks always reigned, for a mess in a room, poor grades or a late return home, punishment followed immediately. At the same time, there was not even a hint of a trusting relationship between father and son. Relations with the mother were also rather cool - she was under the influence of an authoritarian spouse and did not dispute his manner of raising a child.

After the birth of his own son, Maxim, although he did not follow in the footsteps of his father in the military, set up a version of the barracks at home. A very strict regime was established for the son, and the wife's rights to free time were also infringed upon. It was she who sounded the alarm, since she sincerely loved both her husband and her son, and persuaded the first to turn to a psychologist. In an interview with a specialist, Maxim admitted that he does not feel love for his son, he is indifferent to the boy, but he still feels his responsibility for him and simply plays through the only scenario he knows of raising a child.

The course of therapy helped the man to understand himself and keep his family together. Now he is eagerly awaiting the addition to the family.

Sometimes the resentment, albeit far-fetched, is so great that a person gives himself a directive: at all costs not to be like his parents. Katerina was always outraged by the excessive "philistinism" of the family. Mom and Dad did not attend fashion events and scolded their daughter for returning from the club late. They themselves dressed "as conveniently" and did not want to understand that it was extremely important for the daughter to update her wardrobe for the season so as not to look like a "black sheep". And they even forbade him to go to Moscow to enter a theater institute, insisting on mastering the “correct” profession of an accountant with subsequent employment in his father's firm, which brings a stable income.

After graduating from university and receiving a one-room apartment as a gift from her parents, Katya decided that she was old enough and would not ruin her life, repeating the fate of her mother and father. She sold her newly acquired property and left to conquer the capital. The girl deliberately refused to consider work in her specialty, preferring to finish endless courses and take trainings, instantly losing interest in the acquired skills, as soon as it seemed to her that life was becoming too routine. She could not hold on to any job for a long time, just as quickly, ties with men collapsed - she began to imagine the fate of a mother, a housewife with three children. Katerina changed jobs, cities, men, while not losing touch with her parents and regularly turning to them for financial help, because without work, debts accumulated instantly!

In her desire to escape from the fate of her parents, the girl did not manage the main thing - to find herself. Trying to live in spite of her family, she made herself even more dependent on her, which is perhaps even worse than the Maxim option. If, when copying the life of parents, the result can still be predicted, then if it is denied, the consequences defy logical calculation and can be very different. A person who copies his parents has a better chance of realizing that he is running in a vicious circle and realizing that something needs to be done about it. Denial gives the illusion of independence in choosing the path of life, but in practice it is a protracted game of disobedience.

Very often, the consequences of such a game is the development of a kind of symbiosis: a person is convinced that the parents who “broke” his life must now “compensate for the damage,” as a rule, financially. In an amazing way, a grown up, but not matured, child manages to infect this confidence and parents - one or both. As a result, addiction becomes a family - children, experiencing moral suffering and the need to "step over their own pride" come for money, parents scold the "blood", but cover debts, give money for life, often promising that this is "the last time", but soon the situation repeats itself.

The reason for the development of such a symbiosis is the lack of normal emotional relationships between parents and children. Money in this case becomes the equivalent of love, care, and an indispensable scandal allows you to express accumulated experiences, relieve stress. As a result, both parties receive moral satisfaction, albeit perverse. If a certain balance is built, and there is no person in the family who can prevent the consolidation of symbiosis, such a relationship will grow stronger and continue indefinitely.

Yet this type of addiction is perhaps the most harmless. The belief that if it were not for the fatal mistakes of mom and dad in raising a child, his life would have turned out completely differently. All these thoughts begin with “if the parents hadn’t …” - divorced, - dad did not drink, - mom did not try to make a career, but sat at home with the children, - stinted on a good education for the child, - limited independence, or, on the contrary, were would be stricter, and so on ad infinitum.

Often, the claims are justified, but the constant regret from missed chances makes you not notice new ones. Chewing on the resentment for what was not received, it is impossible to start building a real life. To do this, you need to understand that the past cannot be returned and you need to build your future based on what you have, and to be offended means to remain a child waiting for a magician in a blue helicopter who will "give five hundred popsicle".

Parents are not chosen

Children are the mirror of their parents. How often do we hear this phrase … And it means not only the peculiarities of upbringing, but also what exists in us at the genetic level. No matter how hard we try, we cannot get away from the particles of mom and dad inherent in us by nature. He smiles like a mother, and has a clubfoot like a dad - although the child is only a year old and no one taught him to do so on purpose. We can radically change our destiny, but we will still remain an extension of our parents.

Trying to detach from the family means consciously, in a living way, to amputate an important part of one's own “I”. Condemnation, insult to parents is aimed both at criticizing one's own actions and, as a culmination, at doubting the necessity of the very fact of one's existence, birth. The result is a permanent conflict, just not with your parents, as it seems at first glance, but with yourself!

Our parents connect us to life, and attempts to break this connection lead to depression, thoughts and even actualized suicides. Each fact of criticism of parents for their upbringing, as it were, launches a program of self-destruction, since the consciousness receives the signal "parents are bad, I am bad, I should not exist in this world, it will be better without me."

The cure here will not be an attempt at all costs to inflame with love for the people who gave life, but the ability to finally forget past grievances and tear away "from my mother's breast" - they begin to live independently, to live in the present. To understand such simple things as the fact that mom and dad are real people, have the right to make mistakes and will not get worse or better from recognizing the validity of your claims. And you are an adult, intelligent, independent person, and it depends only on you whether your life will be filled with grievances and regrets from not received or love, warmth, new hopes and aspirations. And if you really need a game console, then buy it yourself, and do not look with envy at those who already have it.

In fact, growing up is gaining the ability to live independently, eliminate dependence on parents, build the future, and not constantly turn back to the past. Adulthood begins where claims against parents end.

If children's grievances still interfere with your life, if you repeat the fate of mom or dad, or your spouse is “anti-dad, -mother”, come to the “Road of Life” process. Professional help can help you get rid of the pain of the past for happiness in the present and future.