Reframing how we see our beginnings

Lots of times our struggles begin in childhood with our families. We carry feelings about what was imposed on us, knowing the internalized issues that began there feel like a betrayal in a way. As children, we expect our parents and families to be perfect, to take perfect care of us and protect us.

But is it really a betrayal? Consider this, no one is perfect, everyone has issues. This include our families and parents and most of these too have their beginnings in their childhoods. It is true, some families and individual are more messed up than others, so they have more problems being good parents or even wanting to be a parent at all in some cases.

Knowing that no one is perfect and our parents did what they could given the struggles they had, isn't it easier to forgive them and ourselves for being less than perfect? Really the hand we're dealt as children just marks the beginning of our path and journey. We still get to choose what we make of it and to grow wiser as the journey goes on. We may even help our parents and family of origin grow and heal as we do. We may as well be kind and loving and forgiving of ourselves and our families....for there really is little blame when you consider the bigger picture.

imposed,,,,,betrayal,,,,,perfection,,,,,protection,,,,,,messed up,,,,,,,struggles,,,,,,kindness,,,,,loving,,,,,,,forgiveness,,,,,,blame,,,,,,,

Its all our own to feel....

Indeed....and embrace in ourselves in all our complexity.

This is very true and yet another aspect of my insight. My insight does reframe slightly for me the imperfections of my parents, my father's abusive parents and family in general.

However I needed this insight for a very different reason. I was distressed about the fate of a toddler with two troubled separated parents who were fighting over her in an extremely destructive way. All my life, I have felt the distress and damage done to abused children, even as a child myself and wanted nothing more than to take away the pain, knowing there wasn't anything I could really do except be there and feel love and compassion for them. This insight can bring peace to empaths and others who witness such situations, shift perspectives and trust they can heal in time.

It kind of goes with Denmarkguy's new article on the Peril's of Helping.

I agree, we can heal from what happened and we don't need to stay victims of the past.

That doesn't take away that I feel an obliged course on parenting for pregnant women (and their partners) wouldn't stand amiss. But then again, if you haven't looked into your childhood wounds and patterns as a parent-to-be, a course might not help you very much, because a lot of our behavior is subconscious, until someone else points it out to us. (Another adult that is, because the opinion of children is rarely respected or heard).

If you want to adopt a child, you have to go through all sorts of interviews and tests with psychologists, but even the most messed-up, dysfunctional couple can have a child the natural way. I admit that I don't know how to resolve this paradox, because I feel it would infringe upon your rights when others can decide if you can have a child or not, but I just wish people would be smarter and take a little more time to do some introspection and ask themselves honestly if they are fit to raise a vulnerable human being.

Bumping this thread up with one further point. It's not just parents who have issues and whom we expect to know it all when we are young children. It's all the adults in our lives, including teachers, figures of any authority, extended family, even older children. It helps if we can realize in retrospect that they too are driven by their issues and pasts and really most of what was imposed on us as children had little to do with who we are or were then. We can reframe and let it go as not material to who we are now.

It's interesting seeing this thread because I've been reading about trauma and the effects on young children's brains.

Because we're close in age, some of the more senior people on this board, I think we're in the same place about this, but at a different stage of life, it might not be possible to forgive or let go. The brain can be damaged from early trauma, and it can take years to retrain and heal those pathways.

While we might say we forgive before those pathways are healed, I see forgiveness as being a progressively deepening kind of thing. And at certain stages, it's more honest and healing to fully feel you anger, rage, and grief.

It seems like this kind of growth comes through cycles of dissociating (falling apart) and then reintegrating.

I fully agree. We have to feel it all, work through it all and it is done in stages over years in order to fully let it go and heal when it comes to trauma and ongoing abuse. What I was speaking more of was people who grew up in families where there wasn't abuse but other problems, generational ways of coping that were less than fully functional, often as a result of a parent or grandparent or both being abused.

I agree entirely with what you say. It's just that I've come to realize that some of us HSP's might have grown up in slightly disfunctional situations, while not being abusive, the accumulative affect of many small maladaptions can be equally traumatic as one serious event. For instance, I know my mother was abused as a child. I was not abused, and yet I inherited many PTSD-like traits. And when I saw inherited, I don't mean strictly genetic inheritance, although that plays a part, but I mean an environmental inheritance from the myriad interactions I've had with my mother over the years. It's as if from conception, I absorbed and internalized all her tension, anxiety, and responses to trauma. And I've passed on this legacy to my own children. While I don't think any of us are abusers, we are all far from perfect.   It can be hard to break the cycle.

Agreed. We have a term for that here: generational healing. As HSP empaths we pick up the issues of those around us as children and internalize those along with the assumptions as normal behavior. They in turn can become our issues. In addition, people, in an effort to not repeat the mistakes of their parents, often go to the other extreme causing new problems as well.

The good news is we can heal all of this in ourselves once we forgive the people from whom we absorbed this legacy and once we do, we relate to everyone around us differently. This results in them responding differently over time as well and healing spreads out like ripples in a pond.

Brains do alter as a response to environmental stimuli, ingrained conditional responses do have a corresponding neural net. However this can happen at any time in our lives and as we learn new things, we can undo that and lay in more healthful patterns neurologically too. The brain is wonderfully plastic.

melodiccolor wrote:Brains do alter as a response to environmental stimuli, ingrained conditional responses do have a corresponding neural net.  However this can happen at any time in our lives and as we learn new things, we can undo that and lay in more healthful patterns neurologically too.  The brain is wonderfully plastic.

Yes, that's the good news. At one time they thought the brain was pretty much hard-wired in adulthood, but they're showing, now, that changes can take place at more advanced ages. You really can teach an old dog new tricks!