Ep 22: How My Parents & I Are Breaking Our Family Cycles Together

“When I really slow down and get radically honest about my persistence and perseverance, both traits that I really value in myself, I see that my “I’m never going to give up and I’m going to try harder” is actually driven by fear of rejection and abandonment. I can see that “I’m never going to give up” is another flavor of survival strategy of people pleasing. ”

 

Episode Summary:

In this episode, you and I are going to explore what it looks like to put your parents or caregivers in their contexts to break your family’s intergenerational cycles. I’ll share my own story…specifically the story of when I slammed the door in my parents’ faces last month. To start, I’ll unpack how my mother and I got to the root of our family rule to “always be nice, polite, and grateful”. Then we’ll reflect together on how you are teaching gratitude to your child and nurturing their emotional literacy. Next I’ll share how my father and I had an honest conversation about his survival strategy that he projects onto me. And then we’ll pause to reflect so that you can identify your parental figures’ survival strategies that might be hidden behind your own family rules or patterns.

Full episode transcript here.

Episode Outline

  • Planning a visit to your family of origin can be a mixed bag of feelings. Nat’s example of feeling excited, duty-bound, and anxious.

  • Grounding our caregivers in their contexts gives us the information we need to both be compassionate towards them and to set the just-right kind of boundaries, when necessary.

  • Nat’s mother unpacked her social conditioning and explored why “being nice, polite, and proper” was important for her to survive patriarchy and capitalism.

  • How Nat’s “growing up her view of her mother” liberated her from her old family dynamic with her mom so she could connect with her mother in a real, messy, and honest way. 

  • Two reflective questions for you to explore your own family rules you grew up with by noticing which of your child’s behaviors you tend to encourage and discourage.

  • How “forced gratitude” can hurt emotional literacy in you and your children because gratitude can become a tool that silences your body’s needs and your feelings.

    Expanding gratitude with a both-and exercise with your child.

  • Deepening gratitude with an embodied exercise using one follow-up question with your child.

  • Assessing if you have a balance between protection and connection with your child by looking at a balance between your “prepare and protect” mode and being present with your child.

  • How Nat explored her father’s urge to “prepare and protect” her from class oppression and capitalism.

  • How Nat and her father began to break this outdated family cycle when she compassionately honored her father’s truth and hers simultaneously.

  • Interrogating perseverance to see if it’s rooted in fear of rejection and abandonment.

  • Reflecting on your daily parenting to see if there’s a balance between productivity, perseverance and “non-productive” things like rest, play, creativity, etc.

  • Intergenerational family healing is a spectrum. There’s no one right way to heal as long as you do it with safety and discernment.

 
 

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