WHO NEEDS PSYCHOTHERAPY? TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HAVE PARENTS

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

Parent-child relationships and how you can ruin the life of your children

Who needs psychotherapy? To everyone who had parents!

And in this joke there is only a grain of a joke, because there are no general rules on how to raise each unique child. Also, as no two people are alike, children are different and it is not just difficult for parents to understand how to be with them.

It's almost impossible

One way or another, no matter how we work on ourselves, somewhere we will ruin the lives of our children. But in this article, I would like to draw attention to the general methods that a lot of people use. The danger of these methods is that they are not conscious.

Narcissistic expansion

In simple words - when parents consider children to be an extension of themselves and try to make them achieve what the parents themselves could not or did not have time to. For example, parents are perfectionists who have been writing a doctoral dissertation all their lives. The dissertation, despite and thanks to perfectionism, was never perfect to defend. When a child is born to such parents, they can catch themselves wanting their son or daughter to become as smart, persistent, best in class and certainly defend some kind of dissertation.

Why is it dangerous?

Parents do not realize that children are not an extension of themselves and it is likely that no dissertation will make their life happier. But it is more difficult and more unfortunate - completely. After all, parental perfectionism is a huge burden for a child.

Successful success

The second method of “spoiling” children arose in the middle of the 20th century, when success became the measure of love and vice versa.

Being successful isn't just fashionable, it's vital.

It is natural that all parents want their children to be successful and keep their expectations quite high. The bad news is that at this point they may be insensitive to what the children themselves want. What is scary for children, what is painful for them? What do their children want and love, and what do they not risk undertaking? Do these parents have answers to these questions?

This toxic mismatch between high expectations and insensitivity to the desires of children forms a nuclear mixture. And then children, already in adulthood, begin to run forward, chronically not feeling satisfaction from what they are doing. And it’s good if they are covered by a crisis of 20-30-40 years to think “how I want to live”.

Imagine that this person reaches the expectations of their parents, achieves success, but realizes at 75 that they were living in vain. This is the most difficult and critical situation. Because it seems that nothing can compensate for the loss of opportunities to live in its own way.

The Selfish Nature of Parent-Child Relationships

This is perhaps the third situation where parenting makes life difficult for children.

It is customary to think that parents are those who sacrifice themselves. In fact, it turns out that such parents implement selfish scenarios and motives, and it is better to keep them in mind than outside.

What motives could there be? For example, we want our children to be proud of us. We want to do everything for children to make their life happy.

If we do this out of basic happiness and high in life, that's one thing. This is not a problem, but giving gifts to children.

But if we decided to bury our whole life so that children can live well, imagine what a debt the children are in.

Parents who give up the goodies at lunch so that it can be left to their children. Parents who refuse to improve their qualifications so that their children can go to a good university. Or a mother who divorced her husband and raised her children herself.

Throughout their lives, these parents broadcast the idea: you owe me.

And if it happens at the level of awareness and a direct message, like "give me 10% of the income for raising you" is one thing. This is a much better scenario than the second, unconscious one. After all, if the confidence that children should be unconscious, then children should not 10%, but their whole life.

One of the perversions of human nature is that we make our children obligated

Love children not for them, but for yourself. This is key.

If you are able to love for yourself, you are able to bestow love. It comes from within. But if you love children for their sake, you do not notice that you are implementing another project. You want gratitude from children, or admiration from others. The problem is that, without realizing this other project, this need of yours, you yourself become unhappy, and you load the children with such a burden that they cannot bear.

Become more aware of parenting needs. Explicit and Implicit.

It's okay if a woman and a man want to be good parents. It's bad if they want to be perfect.

If you do not reach your own level of ideality, the volume of your anxiety about this is thrown towards the children. These are attempts to control their nutrition, upbringing, walks, relationships, friendship. Such anxiety is toxic.

Is there a way out?

No matter how good parents you try to be, 20 years later, your children will have a reason to see a therapist.

The least harm can be done to your children under one circumstance: the more you yourself are happy in your life, the more happy your children will be. Children need a happy mother who can love them.

Make sure that in this life you become happy and satisfied, and not collude with your children about how they live, what they eat and who they are friends with.