I once heard a story about a woman who always cut the end of
a pot roast off before putting it in the oven to cook. One day her daughter asked her why she did
that and after thinking a moment replied “I don’t really know – my mother
always did that – so I do it now”. But
now the woman was curious and so decided to call her mother to find out why she
had always cut the end of the pot roast off before cooking it. “Well dear”, her mother replied, “the pan was
always too short for the size of pot roasts that your father brought home and
so I had to always cut the end off so it fit in the pan”.
This story shows how some things just get handed down from
generation to generation and can become assumptions about the way things are
done without anyone ever really thinking about or questioning it. This is often the case when we are parenting
our children. Even though we may vow to
ourselves that we will never do or say what our parents did, how often do we
find ourselves horrified when we do or say something that we immediately
recognize as something handed down from our parents.
Even worse, sometimes
issues from our past come into the present without us being aware of
what we are doing or why. I have had
clients who have said to me, “ Parenting just seems to bring out the worst in
me” or “ I just don’t know why my kids
can push my buttons so effectively”.
When we find ourselves reacting way out of proportion to an issue with
our kids, it usually is because we have either left over issues from our past
or even more serious unresolved issues or traumas. When we are under stress (and who isn’t these
days) or we are feeling overwhelmed, we move into automatic pilot and begin
reacting just as we did as children or just how our parents did. Instead of responding on the basis of present
realities, we are back in the past, and it becomes difficult to be present with
our kids.
Now we are no longer making thoughtful mindful decisions
about how we want to parent our kids. Instead of being active directors of our
own and our children’s lives, we are now merely recorders of how the past
continues into the present and shapes our family’s future.
How we are each day as parents is important because research
continues to show that how we treat our children on a day to day basis and how
we interact with them significantly changes and shapes who they are and how
they will develop. This does not occur
just on a psychological or mental level but also on a biological level as
parents actively sculpt and create their child’s growing brain structures.
We all want to be the
best parents we know how to be, and yet, the power of the unconscious mind to
influence us can often be more powerful than our best conscious
intentions. So how do we take back our
ability to choose our own direction and be the kind of parents that we
consciously want to be?
The answer starts with mindfulness. By learning how to pay
attention to our internal experiences and becoming an observer of our own
reactions and responses, we can begin to evaluate which of these consistently
interfere with the loving relationship that we all would like to have with our
children. We might be able to connect
things that are happening now to old issues from the past. We can also work on resolving these old issues
, whether they are small “leftovers” from childhood experience that we have
never noticed or questioned or whether they are more significant traumas that need to be worked through,
integrated and healed.
Therapy can increase the effectiveness and depth of all of
this personal work. Your therapist can
help you become more aware and mindful of both your present experience and how
it might connect to your past. A
supportive and compassionate therapist can deepen your insights and also
provide you with tools and skills to help you heal and grow.
One of many benefits of doing this kind of therapeutic work
is that when we can make better sense of our past and have healed our wounds,
the result is that we are better, more mindful parents. When our uncomfortable or painful memories of
the past feel more resolved, we are in a position to support the healthy
development of our children and provide them with more choices for the
future. We don’t have to live by the old
scripts; we have the power within us to create new more empowering stories for
ourselves and for our future generations.