This is part one of a three part series on the powerful impact negative messages from our families of origin can have on our lives. Obviously, not everyone carries around negative messages from their families, but this series is aimed at those of us who do.
PART ONE
Every family has a narrative; a story through which the family understands itself. Members are assigned roles in this narrative, and if we are assigned a role that is disempowering it is hard to shake.
Toxic narratives from our family of origin can be like spider webs for adults. We are so entangled in them psychologically they can be almost impossible to escape.
The psychological entanglement is because we believe the lessons our parents taught us. If they taught us the alphabet, we didn’t fact check; we just accepted that’s the way it is. Similarly, if they taught us our feelings are not important, or that we are not valuable/capable human beings, we accepted that too.
As adults, even when we intellectually know some of these messages were wrong, we still can find ourselves believing them at our core. It makes sense since they were passed onto us as we were developing that core and learning of who we are. Also, even the most mature and intelligent adult may have a knee-jerk reaction to defend their parents. When we’re little we can’t entertain the idea that our parents are wrong, because our survival depends on them. Even when our survival no longer depends on them, we carry this “defence” into adult hood. Almost always, when someone is telling me about their childhood and references parents being abusive, neglectful, or emotionally unavailable they will go into justification (“but he was brought up that way”, “but she had a terrible childhood herself”).
People defend their parents even when no one is attacking, and often part of that psychological defence requires perpetuating a negative construct our ourselves.
For example, if we grew up believing we are not ever going to “succeed” in life, we may find ourselves floundering. And if we start to succeed, we may find ourselves subconsciously sabotaging our own efforts. I may have a great relationship and “find myself” cheating; have a great job and “find myself” oversleeping and missing work or be making progress on my fitness and “find myself” eating a whole chocolate cake.
The power of these negative childhood messages cannot be overstated and in Part Two I’ll look at when this dynamic is most prevalent, and most destructive.
Recent Comments