Entrenched Patterns

I had a good conversation with a friend last night and we got talking about our upbringings and how deeply they form us. To some degree, our adult lives take two forms: following entrenched patterns that we learned from our parents, or fighting against those patterns and forging new ways. When I got off the phone I thought about this in relation to my own family of origin. I looked at my compulsions to be neat, organized and in control and realized I formed those as a defense against tension I couldn't control between my parents. I saw my offbeat sense of humour as my way to stand out and find my own place as a middle child between a sister and a brother. And my darker qualities of perfectionisim and intolerance for weakness were bred in the same soil of childhood.

One of the best things about moving out of my twenties and into my thirties was the self awareness that dawned for me. I became more present in my daily life, more in tune with my emotions and I worked harder to find the reasons why I felt or behaved in certain ways. When I could connect my actions to my feelings, I realized that everything we do has a reason; it's all based in some primal urge somewhere that needs to be looked at and possibly corrected. We are not animals. We can and should learn from our mistakes. Repeating the same negative behaviours over and over doesn't help us, but we can't begin to fix what we aren't aware of. We must consciously work to bring the unconscious to light, assign reason to our behaviours, and decide to change if necessary.

I highly recommend the written word for this kind of self discovery. A nightly journal, for your eyes only, gives you a place to write in circles about how you feel until you make the connection that you are acting out a childhood behaviour that isn't healthy for you. You'll have these amazing "Aha!" moments where you'll realize that you have been using a coping mechanism, left over from childhood, that no longer has to rule your life. You can change. Baby steps at first, and eventually you train your unconscious to react differently to stress and change. It's an extraordinary transformation that has happened many times in different forms over the years for me, and I hope will continue to happen for as long as I'm alive.

I wonder what particular forms the neuroses of my kids will take. I know they will have their own journey as adults to work through these things, and I hope I'll be able to help them where I see they could use a nudge in the right direction. I pray I'll be able to teach them how to be self aware in childhood so they don't need to wait until adulthood to work on some of these things, and give them some skills to manage the tough things that come their way in life.