I believe with all my heart that we are perfect the moment we are conceived. What I mean is we are, by definition, the perfect manifestation of our own being. We are the only one of us on the entire planet.
The reason I believe traditional parenting does not result in happy adults is because we’ve been parenting this way for generations, and so many of us are plagued with sadness, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, distrust, etc. Of course, our parents were also perfect when they were born, and surely were doing the best that they could. But our “scars”, the toxic messages we carry about ourselves, invariably come from whatever particular form of traditional parenting we grew up with.
Without criticizing our parents/caregivers, they created the internal foundation we are trying to chip away at in therapy. This is a challenging task under the best of circumstances, but becomes even more challenging when we live with our parents (or very close by) as adults. We feel the same “triggers” as adults we felt as children, and we receive constant reminders of whatever toxic messages we received as children. It’s like moving towards a happy, strong life in the truth of your own beauty and perfection, but having a foot stuck in the door.
None of this means we cannot love, respect, honour and celebrate our parents. It’s not about “blame” and it’s not about anger. It’s about self-protection.
As we journey in therapy towards re-discovering our own perfection, we often find it seductive to try to get the unconditional positive love from our parents we never got as children. We are thirsty, but we are going to a well we already know is dry. And if we can look away from the destructive messages and towards the endless exciting possibilities of a world where we know we are perfect, and then SO many wells are there for us to drink from.
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