EP 18: Why it’s so hard to get free Pt.2

 

Episode Summary:

This episode is part two of the Why it’s so hard to get free series. The previous episode is all about why it’s so hard to unsubscribe from oppressive social norms. Now we’re zooming in to focus on our family. In this episode, you and I are going to unpack some of the reasons why breaking family cycles can be so difficult even when we set firm intentions not to pass down hurtful family patterns to our children. 

Full episode transcript here.

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

  • Each family has its own norms.

  • Implicit memories from your childhood can be painful. When it gets stirred up by your child, your nervous system sends you into the fight, flight, freeze self-protection.

  • That pain from the past hijacks your present parenting practice. 

  • Breaking outdated family cycle so you don’t pass them down to your child is so hard because the other side of this coin is re-parenting your inner child.

  • The inner monologues about being disrespectful, disloyal, and ungrateful to your parents can keep you from breaking free from your family’s status quo.

  • Nat’s personal example of feeing ungrateful when she questioned her parents. 

  • Invitation #1: Updating and upgrading the stories you tell about your caregivers and the boundaries you set.

  • Invitation #2: Putting your caregivers in their social, cultural, and political contexts and understand where they were coming from.

  • Nat’s personal example of her father’s survival strategy and its impact on her upbringing and inner child wounds.

  • Invitation #3: Embracing your parent’s need to survive, its hurtful impact on your inner child wounds, and its adaptive impact on your strengths. Both-And.

  • Invitation #4: Re-parenting your inner child. Giving yourself what you didn’t get and building a chosen family.

  • Abandoning the familiar to grow roots in collective liberation.

  • James Baldwin’s wise words to give us courage to break free from the illusion of safety.