The second part of transitions you will address is influences from your childhood that impact your life.
As humans we get born into a family as tiny innocent babies. And even in the very best of families something happens and we, at very early ages, take that something to mean something about ourselves. We take on beliefs that are negative about ourselves as being a sort of person who is less than. These beliefs are about being a failure, abandoned, helpless, unloved, unworthy of being loved, invisible, having no value, things like that. And then events happen and we gather evidence for these beliefs as being truth along life’s way. We learn how to perceive ourselves out of that framework.
When I was almost three my younger sister was born. My parents were and are loving parents, however, I felt pushed aside as if I did not matter any more. I took on that I somehow was a failure, unworthy of love. After that any mistake on my part meant I was a failure. I would work hard to prove I was not a failure, but that drove me and impacted all my relationships.
In our childhood we learn how to trust or not. We learn about relationships, how to be intimate, how to give and receive, how to love, or not. Then, add in siblings and sibling rivalry, parents and their issues, school, friends or the lack of them, teachers, community activities, at which point puberty hits and hormones bathe our brains. We try to belong to our group, a group, any group. And when we don’t we add another heart belief to our stash of beliefs about ourselves that makes us less than. But we don’t actually realize this. It just is the way humans are.
And if we don’t realize what these feelings or beliefs about ourselves are and make moves to change them we continue to see life from that perspective and life happens, and things continue to confirm those beliefs as true about ourselves.
When we have not healed in how we comprehend ourselves then we bring all of that to our relationships. And our partner does the same. So we have two people that have all these feelings about themselves, don’t understand what they are and try to make a relationship work and, furthermore, often try to have the partner make up for the lacks in their life before the relationship. This is all done subconsciously. What are the childhood influences you might be facing?
To see is to begin the healing path.
Reflections:
When you think back to your childhood what jumps out at you as impacting your life? What were the feelings and beliefs you took on about yourself through those events?
What can you see of the impact on your relationships those beliefs might have had?
