When you have the same fight over and over...what are you really craving?
When I'm working with a client on their relationships, and I'm talking to them about their family of origin and how that influenced them in relationships, there's often this pushback or resistance to talking about one's parents.
Someone might say, 'Oh, no, they did the best they could.' or 'I've forgiven them for everything that's not relevant to me.'
It's a subtle way of saying: I don't want to go there and I don't want to bring that up.
The first thing I'm curious about is why is that resistance present.
Why the need to protect or defend your parents from your therapist?
Often it’s because of family values or family messaging around what happens in our family stays in secret.
This is particularly important in certain cultures, and there's messaging that 'What happens at home or stay at home'.
We are embedded with this message that we don't talk about our family problems so it can cause you conflict when a therapist asks about your upbringing.
The second way you might put up a wall to talk about how your family influenced you as you become an adult is that now with age, wisdom and insight, you see your parents more clearly, as humans and you can rationalise or intellectualise your experiences.
You know more of their stories, and their own childhood, and you see why they may have had deficits or made mistakes or struggled.
As you become older and struggle, aren't perfect or struggle with your own stress or parenting journey, you may be more forgiving too.
You may say things like 'My mom did the best she could but she was anxious because of her own mother.' or 'My parents did the best they could but oh my gosh, you know, interest rates in the 90s. No wonder Dad was never around, he was slogging his guts out with extra shifts- I get that now as a homeowner myself.'
This is all helpful information and a helpful perspective to have: to see your parents as whole people with their own background which made them who they are, flaws and all.
It is very unlikely that you had the awareness or that contextual information growing up because usually your parents do a wonderful job of just being Mum and Dad to us, and keeping a lot of their personal challenges to themselves.
So while that information is helpful for you as an adult and may lead to you forgiving them more understanding more or having more empathy and compassion for them what we need to remember though, is that when we experience stresses or challenges with our parents, we did not have that wisdom that we have now as adults.
We need to remember the little child in you who experienced your parents from a young age, not the wise, insightful adult you are now.
Knowing why they had challenges, doesn't psychologically soothe your hurts or traumas. It allows you to rationalise them, but it doesn't stop you from having triggers or deeper feelings of unmet needs.
And that's where things can feel confusing (or interesting to me as a therapist).
You may feel confused and ask yourself:
Why doesn't this pain go away even though I know they did the best they could?
Am I selfish?
Am I a whinger?
Am I ungrateful?
I need to toughen up and get on with it, right?
What's happening is there are two parts of you responding to your parents or thinking about how they influenced you:
There's the child in you that experienced your parents as a child without any understanding of mental health or interest rates, that still lives within you.
The adult part of you that is remembering your childhood as a wise, adult who knows more about your parent's upbringing and their challenges, and you can have beautiful compassion for them.
These two parts cause inner conflict because you can't decide how to reflect on your parents: Should I let it go or should I acknowledge I was hurt, unseen, lost, forgotten or ignored at times?
I'm not here campaigning to have a pity party never forgive your parents or blame everything about your personality on them.
I'm not expecting you to rant and rave about how crap your parents were and forget everything good about them and only focus on their deficits.
What I am advocating for, as an experienced therapist, is that you don't discredit that there is a child part in you that experienced things in a completely different way, and that child part of you can still hurt today.
When you were younger, you didn't have the wisdom that you have now.
You didn't have the vocabulary you have now.
You certainly did not have the information about mental health and stress management that you have now.
You didn't have emotional regulation skills or thought strategies that help you now as an adult.
You didn't have all of that languaging around the feelings and emotions you have now.
You didn't have an understanding of all the different reasons why your parent's attention was pulled in 15 different directions.
You didn't understand why your parents couldn't be with you all the time, in a great mood, celebrating you and encouraging you along the way.
And why is this all important?
Because these unmet needs show up in your conflicts and hurt in your adult relationships.
It's why as high as you climb in your career, you may always feel like you're missing something because you're really waiting for your Dad to say he's proud of you, and that you have done enough.
It's why you struggle as a working Mum because you hated being with 5 different babysitters as a child, longing for your own Mum to come through the door.
It's why you're particularly sensitive to people coming close to your partner because your parent had an affair and changed your family dynamic forever.
It's why you may constantly want your partner to make grand gestures to display their love for you because you never felt celebrated as a child.
It's why you struggle with female relationships at work because your own sister was a bully even though you idolised her...and so on...
So even though there may be some initial resistance, it is undeniable that your parents and upbringing had immeasurable influences on you, and how you show up in relationships as an adult.
By ignoring this in therapy, it's like cutting off your left leg and still trying to walk, or not wanting to look at the bottom of the iceberg, only the little tip sticking out of the water.
We want to acknowledge this, to give you the understanding and context to resolve your current relationship issues.
How to work with your resistance to talking about your family of origin when it feels confronting.
What we want to make space for in therapy, is the duality of both perspectives: That of your wise adult self, and the younger child self, who experienced, felt and witnessed things without all of the wisdom and insight you have now.
I urge you to do this because it is often the inner child part of you that is reacting to your current relationships and stresses, or that feels dysregulated but doesn't quite have the words for it.
It's often your inner child that feels scared or feels this pang of isolation in your stomach. It is not always the wise, adult self that is taking the lead when you're triggered in relationships.
Even world-renowned author and psychiatrist Gabor Mate shares a poignant story of how he was triggered at age 71 when his wife wouldn't pick him up from the airport. He withdrew and sulked for days until he realised it was related to the abandonment he felt by his Mother who had to send him away with relatives during the Nazi invasion to keep him safe. She absolutely made the best decision, but he didn't know that as a young child- he just wanted his Mama. Read his story here.
So when you have a part of you that is yearning to be seen, heard, understood, acknowledged, recognised, soothed, appreciated or reassured, and it's a recurrent need for you, often it's your inner child reaching out for it.
How do you know if it is current issues or past issues arising in your relationship conflicts?
It's usually your inner child stuff when it feels so hard to resolve the issue, or that it's constantly coming up. It hurts more than other conflicts in your relationship and you can't easily forget it.
When your argument doesn't seem to make sense, or you don't know why you still feel empty or unfulfilled even though your partner is trying hard to give you what you need, it's likely childhood stuff.
Instead of arguing and focusing on the trigger with your partner and fighting about that, dig deeper and ask yourself:
Is it the adult me that feels something is missing here, or is my inner child crying out for something subconscious, from my earlier years?
What is it that I'm craving now and how might my strong reaction be related to my upbringing?
What is the EXPERIENCE I am craving to have in my relationship, and why is that so unmet for me?
Why am I so dysregulated or triggered by these same feelings over and over again, and yet can let other stuff go so much easier?
Where do I discredit my feelings or gaslight myself out of feeling hurt because I think I'm being a stupid sensitive adult, and possibly I am not aware it's my inner child calling out for me?
Where does my partner say it's never enough or they feel like they can never win with me? It is because it's not really about them?
I would love to hear your answers to these reflections.
Remember, the way we show up in relationships is all types of relationships: romantic, with your kids, co-workers, friends and community.
Explore your family of origin in counselling
Every person brings a lifetime of experience, hurt, trauma, beliefs and ways of coping to their relationship, so it's a unique dynamic with two puzzle pieces that we need to refine so that you two fit better together.
If you'd like support with communication in your relationship, explore supportive and relatable couples counselling with Sarah Dwyer or myself here.
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Speak soon,
Warmest,
Gabriella
