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

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] NV: Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatics and social justice practitioner, and founder of Come Back to Care. Adopt connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. 

If you're on a journey to transform your daily parenting into a social justice practice that nurtures your child's development and promotes intergenerational family healing, I am so glad that you're here. On this podcast, we explore how social justice, child development science, parenting, and family systems intersect with one another. If you've been looking for ways to align your parenting with a social justice values, you're in the right place. Together, we find our way back to our true home. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineage and come back to care together. So come curious, and come as you are. Let's move at the speed of care, and let's do this.

[EPISODE]

Welcome to episode 18 of the Come Back to Care Podcast. 

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. 

This work of getting free -- whether from oppressive and violent social norms or from our outdated intergenerational family patterns -- is daily and lifelong. That’s why I believe it’s so important to talk about what makes practicing social justice and re-parenting our inner child so hard. Because once we know why it’s so hard, we can use this understanding to let go of our shame and instead re-ignite our commitment to this daily and lifelong work. If that sounds positively uncomfortable already, I got you. Let’s get started. 

Some reasons it’s hard to break the outdated family cycles

Just like how society has standard ways of doing things, each family has its own norms too. If you think of your family growing up, perhaps at a dinner table or family gathering, you might remember patterns of communication styles, decision making styles, or standard ways of expressing love and care. And when every family member plays by these rules or norms, the family unit as a whole runs smoothly (whether it’s good or bad, functional or dysfunctional). When someone disrupts the status quo, the family member who has the most power- usually the primary caregivers like grandparents or parental figures- steps in to enforce the family rules or even punish the rule breaker. This punishment usually comes in the form of direct or passive aggressive judgment. For example, “In the Jordan’s family, we speak up. Closed mouths don’t get fed. You’re not standing up for yourself enough…you’re not enough.” Or, “Stop being so soft and emotional….you’re too much.”

If you’re holding your breath, gritting your teeth, and your shoulders are up to your ears cringing from that description, I’m right there with you. I’m feeling so much tightness in my neck, throat, and shoulders. I’m going to take a second to move a bit and I invite you to do what you need to stay rooted in your humanity and dignity as we’re up in this discomfort together. 

Phew! We got this. A lot of times when I work with a group of parents who are curious about re-parenting their inner children and I talk about the norms or status quo in their families, bits and pieces of childhood memories usually bubble up. Sometimes these memories are loving and warm memories of how you were loved and cared for exactly the ways you needed to be. Other times, these memories can be painful, stirring up vague sensations in your body of when you cried for help and no one was there. Or when you asked for connection and what you got was rejection. These childhood wounds of rejection, criticism, abandonment, and unworthiness are excruciating. What’s worse is that these inner child wounds are usually formed when many of us are so young or in our pre-verbal years. Because of this, as an adult when this sense of rejection, for example, gets stirred up perhaps by your partner the old but still raw inner child wounds from your childhood gets stirred up too. But your conscious brain can’t quite make sense of this pain. It’s familiar with this rejection but can’t quite articulate something like this: “oh when my partner left the room but I still needed their emotional support, I felt rejected. It was the same rejection I felt from when I was little and my mom had to leave me to work three jobs.”

So, this painful memory from childhood gets stirred up and the conscious brain can’t make sense of this pain. So you’re left with this giant glob of overwhelming experience. And when an experience is overwhelming or threatening, your nervous system goes into self-protection mode of fight, flight, freeze, people please. And when you’re in self-protection or survival mode, the parts of your brain and nervous system (the neocortex and the ventral vagal system) that help you make good decisions, use good judgement, and which support you in being curious, connected, and compassionate are essentially offline. 

So put that in the context of your daily parenting with your child. Maybe your child isn’t listening to you and they’re pushing your parenting buttons. Meaning they’re ripping that inner child wound band-aid off. You feel disrespected and irritated but underneath that it’s that same old wound of rejection. Your nervous system automatically sends you into the fight-flight-freeze self-protection mode. And your thinking brain and social engagement nervous system go offline. Then, you react to your child by snapping at your child and you accidentally sound exactly like your mother (again). This automatic process of reacting to your inner child instead of responding to your actual child takes place so quickly and under your conscious awareness too. This self-protection mode doesn’t care if you’ve set a firm intention to never sound like your mother again and to break the intergenerational family cycle. 

This is why I usually face palm when people only focus on breaking the family cycles. It’s incomplete without re-parenting your inner child too. Because we set an intention to break the cycle but your old childhood pain sneaks up on you when your child pushes your buttons. That pain from the past hijacks your present parenting practice. Then you lose your cool at your child and feel guilty for that three seconds later. 

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. And looking at your inner child wound is so painful. 

Besides how painful it is to be reminded of your childhood pain, your mind also has a defense mechanism to keep you in line with your family’s status quo. When you’re trying to break the outdated family cycles, you might hear scripts in your head that go something like:

“Stop it, you’re being disrespectful and disloyal to the very people who raised you.” Or “that’s not very nice to be ungrateful to the people who raised you. Didn’t they do the best they could?”

Healing inner child and intergenerational family wounds

For example, when I started out my own journey of inner child and intergenerational family healing, I couldn’t get past the feeling of being ungrateful for questioning my parents. I mean how could I question my parents when I’m supposed to love them unconditionally because they raised me? So, when this ungrateful inner monologue was playing, I would immediately go into my people pleasing self-protection mode. I would say to myself “My parents did the best they could so I just needed to accept that.” In my brain, cognitively, I understand that. But my inner 3 year old is still screaming from the wound of abandonment and my inner 9 year old is joining the party with the wound of unworthiness. So each time I’m triggered now as an adult, I immediately use my survival strategies I developed as a child which include to overwork, overdeliver, and be a perfectionist. 

If those inner monologues about being disrespectful, disloyal, and ungrateful are screaming at you, please know you’re not in this all by yourself. These inner monologues are there to protect you from quote unquote losing your family from violating the family norms.

To go beyond the inner monologues that prevent you from breaking family cycles, I have four invitations for you. 

The first invitation is to reassure this intelligent self-protection that the goal isn’t to cancel your caregivers. Instead, you’re trying to understand them better and you’re trying to update and upgrade your relationship with them- adult to adult. Similarly, you’re not getting rid of the boundaries that you set either. I’m glad to know you’re protecting yourself from hurt and harm. The goal is to perhaps walk to the edge of the boundaries you set and peek around the corner at the stories you tell yourself about those people who raised you. 

These stories you developed to help you make sense of your inner child wounds of rejection, abandonment, and unworthiness might be due for an upgrade. 

The second invitation for this upgrade is to see if you’re ready to put your caregivers in their social, cultural, and political contexts and understand where they were coming from. You can start planting some seeds by wondering how your caregivers had to survive the same oppressors you’re trying to get free from: capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. And explore how their survival of the systemic oppression from their time, specifically their fight, flight, freeze, people please self-protection affected the ways they showed love and care to you as a child or affected how available and present they were to you. 

Growing up, my father’s definition of freedom was to get out of the working class and to climb up the corporate ladder. He worked many, many, many jobs, trying to win this capitalism and class oppression game. And upon reflection now as an adult, I realized that his survival shaped how he raised my siblings and me. All the conversations at the dinner table growing up were all about academic success, three-year plan, five-year plan, and college applications. He really focused on external success. I wish you could see his face when I told him that I was going to become a therapist instead of a lawyer or a doctor. Fast forward to now, I asked him if what he was really trying to say when he was pushing me to go to Harvard and be a doctor was his way of saying that he loved me. By putting my father in his context, I can put the same old story I keep telling myself about him -- that he’s so materialistic and cold -- aside and explore what else there is to the story. This curiosity and compassion allow me to see what my dad was trying to do. And this is what I mean when I talk about re-writing our family stories and re-wiring our nervous system. 

And here’s the thing. I feel this strong urge to be a good, grateful daughter. Now that I understand where he was coming from, I should forgive what he did and didn’t do, right? If that’s happening to you when you think of your caregivers too, may I invite us both to hit pause on that urgency? Because the third invitation is to both-and before you decide whether to set boundaries, repair the ruptures, or do whatever you’d like to do to heal the intergenerational family cycles. 

To both-and means to embrace that yes your caregivers did the best they could with what they knew…and yes they also did not make you feel seen, heard, and understood. Another example is yes they provided food and housing for you…and yes they worked so much that they were hardly present. While there was a material abundance, the emotional connection was lacking. 

By explicitly naming what kind of emotional connection you did not get from your caregivers, a) your inner child wound has less control over you now and b) you can begin re-parenting yourself. That’s our final invitation. 

Re-parenting yourself simply means giving yourself the kind of love, care, and connection you wish you received from your caregivers as a child. And when you can’t do that for yourself, build a chosen family full of people you trust who can reflect back your amazingness to you. 

Because I grew up in a family that focuses so much on achievement, overworking, and being perfect, I have a tendency to disconnect from my body and disregard my feelings. I shove them aside so I can work longer hours. I have to learn to honor my body and emotions and build a community of people who hold space for me to embody my full self- physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 

In-Out-N-ThroughTM Invitation

If you're a social justice curious and conscious parent who's ready to:

+ Stop erasing yourself only to contort, conform, and perform a "good parent" script written by capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy.

+ Or who’s ready to re-parent your inner child and heal your old-but-still-raw childhood wounds.

So that you show up fully as the parent you know you can be and pass down a legacy of compassion and liberation for your child...

So that you can practice social justice through your daily parenting while promoting your child's development...

So that you can heal your inner child and honor your ancestors while raising your child with equity and liberation in mind...

I'd love to invite you to join the In-Out-N-Through™ Program. An online 6-week, cohort-based Parenting and Re-Parenting program to explore both your inner child and internalized oppression wounds. Please visit comebacktocare.com/learn for more information and registration. It's comebacktocare.com/learn.

Alright, back to the episode…

Summary:

In closing, whether you’re breaking free from oppressive social norms or outdated family cycles, moving beyond the status quo requires that you give up the illusion of comfort that comes with something predictable and familiar. The instability and uncertainty of doing something different from business as usual is so scary and hard because you lose an anchor that has been keeping you stable. But for me as a person who’s been harmed by the norms of white capitalist patriarchy and ostracized to the margins, I don’t want that anchor because to me that anchor feels like a chain around my neck, imprisoning me and cutting me off from my own humanity and dignity. To get free, it’s so important for us to do this liberation and decolonization work together. I know giving up that norm is so scary, but you know what happens when you break free from the outdated stuff that’s holding you back? You let go of an anchor that chains you to society’s oppressive norms and begin to grow roots that embed you in a community of your choosing. These roots ground you deeply in your own humanity and dignity as you’re relearning how to trust your inner voice. These roots also connect you with the land, your ancestors, your chosen family, and your child. Isn’t that radical self-love and community care for collective liberation? 

Of course I don’t hold a map that tells us where exactly we need to go because a part of liberation is for us to make that map ourselves…together. 

So no maps but I do have wise words from James Baldwin to nourish us. This is what James Baldwin said in a conversation with Nikki Giovanni in 1971. 

Quote “It’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. You become a collaborator, an accomplice of your own murderers, because you believe the same things they do…

You have somehow to begin to break out of all of that and try to become yourself. It’s hard for anybody… Hard, because you’ve got to divorce yourself from the standards of that society…

It’s when you begin to realize all of that, which is not easy, that you begin to break out of the culture which has produced you and discover the culture which really produced you… What really brought you to where you are.” End Quote (https://www.worldcat.org/title/james-baldwin-nikki-giovanni-a-dialogue/oclc/461443309?loc=)

Thank you for being here together. For more information on the In-Out-N-ThroughTM Program Fall cohort that’s starting from Aug 31st to October 5th, please visit www.comebacktocare.com/learn. I’ll leave the link along with all the references and resources in the show notes for you too. 

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.