How to Heal with Unconscious Parents
In this read, I speak to a very specific group. This one’s for conscious Millennials (1981-1996) and Early Generation Z (1997-1998) with maybe some older or younger being able to relate. We grew up in a very transitional timeline where the world’s access and reach started to expand at an exponential rate. Information was being spread around the world as quick as a Facebook post. Including information that was once held from minorities to keep them unconscious and oppressed, are readily available on the internet. This introduced the idea of having a new perspective. Seeing the world much different and way beyond circumstances. Where before our predecessors were denied this experience or a chance at mental freedom and therefore it was already painful enough to not practice everyday consciousness in a world which seemed so cruel. Which brings us to today, where many free spirits from these generations, run into rocky relationships with our parents, guardians and elders due to this difference in upbringing and mindset.
One of the first teachers in our lives are our parents, whether they were present in our lives or not. Their presence or absence showed us what or what not to do; how or how to not to act. Your childhood and upbringing shapes who you become as an adult and goes as far as shaping the types of situations and dramas that manifest in your adult life. If you’ve experienced unconscious parenting however, developing your emotional IQ can be a painful experience. Although it may start with them, it ends with us. To raise your vibration is no one else’s job but your own. I think we should use our generational gift of knowledge to our advantage and use the information around us while it’s still free. I feel it is important for us to transmute the previously held unhealthy mindsets that were passed down so we can collectively raise the next generations to be more emotionally intelligent.
One Can Only Teach What They Know – Not What They Don’t Know
A “generational curse” in my opinion is simply the passing down of an unfavorable generational mindset or psyche that has been already learned and held by elders and ancestors. The next generation will be taught the teachings of the ones that came before them. Those of you who are on a journey of breaking “generational curses” are using the current circumstances of access and informational available to you to arm your-self with enough new information that will help aid you in building a new mindset. Therefore, manifesting a new way of life, different from the ones that your elders are used to. From my experience, I have seen how this difference in expression and upbringing can cause misunderstandings in a parent-child or guardian-child relationships today.
Our elders cannot pass down information that they did not learn. Stop for a second and think about how you were raised. Then, think about how your grandparents may have raised your parents. If a person never learned how to properly love, how can they properly love you?
Action Step #1: Forgiving your parents for whatever they did. Know they did the best they could.
Yes, even the parent that may have left you. Yes, even the parent that may have beat you. One thing you have to fully inner-stand is that God, what ever higher power you believe in, makes no mistakes. Your life is always being orchestrated in the way that it caters specifically to you – after all it is your life. You may have to experience one thing so that the next thing makes more sense. You may have to experience being left out in your family so you can learn to think outside of the box. You may have to experience adoption so you didn’t have to experience an overly toxic environment. In any moment God’s plan is better than yours even when it feels like a punishment. So, it’s best to accept the situation for what it is, look at the bigger picture and forgive your parents. They are not to blame – even if they did do it.
Release the Need for Validation – It's All Love
Parents are human to and all humans make mistakes. I mentioned in How to Find Yourself Authentically that we find it easier to blame our parents, everybody thinks their life would be better off if we just had more resources or if you were raised by a “rich” family or if only our father/mother had stayed in our life – the list goes on. But the truth is our life gets better off the sooner we except full accountability for our own life as it is now and not try to claim someone else as the culprit. Let’s face it, we all at some point look or looked at our parents for confirmation or validation and if they did something wrong our dreams of our parents being this "perfect person" was shattered. All children yearn for parental acceptance and when you’ve experienced unconscious parenting you will find that you spend a lot of your time trying to prove to them that you are enough.
Action Step #2: Accept that there’s nothing to prove. You simply are enough, as you are.
Release the need to feel validated by your parents. Now that I have explained the main generational difference between us and our elders, I agree that we are privy to knowing somethings about life that they may not know. To most of them though, they feel that they are privy to having more experience with life therefore they know more then us. Both are true. However, just like we don’t like their mindset forced on us, let’s try not to force our mindset on them – your ego loves to do this. Why? Because deep down you feel if they could just understand it, then they would understand you but as I said before, God’s plan is better than yours. So, if they don’t understand, they won’t understand – until they do. Whenever their life allows them to. Drop the feeling all together of needing to prove your side and get validation. No one can fully grasp what is not familiar to them so why would you expect them to validate you? Bees can’t speak to fish about flying so they wouldn’t ask the fish to rate how well they fly. The fish can give the bee some pointers on how to swim though, but do you see how that would be irrelevant? LOL. They both just learn to coexist. They learn that on a macro perspective, they are in the ecosystem all they can do is their part.
Everybody just wants to be loved. Both you, your parents, your elders and any family member. Know that deep down in their heart your parents do love you, they do everything they do to/for you in the name of love. But they love you the way love looked like to them. If love physically, mentally, or emotionally abused them, they may physically, mentally or emotionally abuse you. Not because they don’t love you but because they are passing down what they were taught. They are responding with all they know, not with what they don’t. We’ve all heard our parents say this at least once “I’m doing this because I love you”.
Be a Better Parent to Your-Self
When you release the need to want to be validated, you also release the care of what others think. You start to make moves according to what you want and not try to consider everyone else’s opinions when making a decision for your-self. A lot of us in the generation did not have the best relationship with our parents. But the greatest disadvantage that comes with being a generation privy to information is we can no longer live in oblivion. We are supposed to use what we now know to continue to break the “generational curses” by reprogramming our mind and then reprogramming ourselves to become a better person. We be this person to our elders and set the example. Instead of arguing about what they did, we treat them how we’d like to be treated. We then become a walking solution instead of walking around and talking about solutions – doing hits harder.
Action Step #3: Be the change you want to see in your family. Show them what real unconditional love looks like.
Some may ask, how do you become a better parent to yourself, what exactly does that look like? It looks like you approaching your parent or guardian relationships with intense presence. It looks like you addressing the traumas that were passed on to you and transmuting them instead of deflecting them and becoming the same thing you’re trying to get away from. The next time an argument starts to present itself, ask yourself where are the feelings coming from? How to Be Your-Self Authentically explains how the unconscious mind is a collection of habits. When you go to respond in the argument stop for a second and think and try really hard to not respond habitually, become conscious enough to recognize your own triggers. At what part does the conversation become emotional for you? Why? Use these moments to learn what about your parents piss you off and leave the conversation with the intention to heal yourself of this trigger.
"In those instances, the tendency is for you to become "unconscious." The reaction or emotion takes over you -- you become it. You act it out. You justify, make wrong, attack, defend...except that it isn't you, it's the reactive pattern, the mind in its habitual survival mode." --- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, 56
Do for yourself what you would have liked your parent to do for you. So then, in the next go round you can respond to them that way, giving them the opportunity to know grace that no one has ever gave to them before. Therefore now changing their programming and allowing them to see a new way of doing things, instead of telling them what to do. For example, you may have a short tempered parent who yells in any conversation and doesn't listen. You notice you get pissed off every time they yell, so you yell back and now it's a screaming match. You become present, analyze the situation and realize you're upset because you feel unheard. The next conversation you commit to not yell back at your parent when they yell at you, you use this moment to instead communicate using your "inside voice" that you feel unheard and you refuse to continue the conversation until they can give you the same respect you're now giving them. In that moment you showed them a glimpse of what effective communication looks like. So the following attempt at communication between the two may appear to be a little different, if both parties are trying.
! Effective communication is only possible if both parties are present and comprehending. If you notice someone or your-self isn't listening to listen, but instead listening to respond, you are not having an effective conversation !
Final Thoughts
This reading still speaks very generally in my opinion, I could’ve written about this for days. But the main take away is you can learn way more about yourself and your parent or elders by being a present observer of your situations - not by playing the blame game. I do understand that some relationships are way too intense and painful to approach and attempt to fix. But even absence speaks volumes. If you are a person who has an absent parent grab a journal and write out those traumatic experiences and talk about them with yourself. Ask yourself what could this experience may have been trying to shape you to be ready for? What can you learn? Try to understand the lesson God was throwing at you.
Lastly, personal boundaries are important. Know that you can heal a relationship without directly addressing the person first, never willing accept disrespect! If you are in a situation that is too "toxic" for conversation know your efforts are all that matters. Your most important witness is God. Once God sees that you are taking the steps to heal, watch how your actions manifest an orchestrated situation in your life that gives you the opportunity to address what you need to address with this person when the time is right. Sometimes to heal may also mean let this person go completely. You never know what direction it may head but everyone's situation is different. God will show you what you need to do, just be present or you’ll miss it.
It does start with them, but it ends with us.