Oh no, I’ve turned into my mother!
There’s a reason we turn into our parents.
Have you ever said or done something then immediately thought “oh no I sound like my parents”? Well there’s a reason for that, but to understand the reason we have to learn about our brain.
Most of our thought processes, emotional regulation, and coping skills are learned between the ages of 0-5 years old. Children at this age are sponges and soak up everything around them, including their parents language and behavior, or whoever the child was around the most. Therefore, if our caregivers were aware of their thoughts and emotions and had good coping skills, we tend to also carry those traits. However, if our caregivers were often unaware of their thoughts and emotions, became overwhelmed or angry at unexpected events, or were unable to calm down or handle their emotions in healthy ways, we tend to take on those traits as well.
What does this mean? If our parents often got upset and yelled over little or unexpected things, then we probably have a hard time coping with little or unexpected things as well. We might have even developed a negative core belief of “I can’t handle it”. Similarly, if our parents had poor coping skills and often drank after a bad day at work, we might also use drinking as a way to cope with bad or difficult days.
Can you see how this can be a problem? As we move through life, we often don’t stop to think about how we are thinking or feeling. We just keep moving in this fast paced world where we are expected to always be doing things, even if they are not productive or helpful. So when we decide to have children of our own, and haven’t stopped to understand ourselves, we then pass on all those same traits we learned to our children. And on and on goes the generations of similar traits until someone stops to think, maybe there’s a better way.
However, everything is not just on our parents, right, we are unique individuals with our own lives and experiences as well. As we go through life, numerous things impact the way we think, how we feel, and how we react to our environment. Many of these changes come from our experiences with friendships, relationships, social events, interactions with others, traumas, and more. To learn more about how these events can distort our thoughts and create negative core beliefs in ourselves, please read our other blogs or contact us at (325)644-8757 to see how therapy can help you become a better version of yourself.
