How not to Repeat the Mistakes of Parents

Have you ever looked at your parents and thought, “There’s no way I’m going to be like that when I grow up”? Often we make a promise like that to ourselves, and after a while, we find ourselves doing exactly what we swore we wouldn’t do. We yell at our children, play now instead of completing tasks at work, stay with unsuitable partners, use the same phrases, etc.

It’s all about the family script.

Family scripts are ways of living that are passed down from generation to generation. Children repeat their parents’ scripts, they repeat their parents’ scripts, and so on.

For example, all the women in the family had some talents, professional or creative, but refused to realize them in favor of the home and children. “I don’t like it, I won’t do it,” says the daughter, and ten years later she realizes with sadness that her hobbies have been abandoned, and the same scenario has begun to come true.

It would seem that it would be easier: if you don’t like it, then do it in another way, get additional education, learn, look for yourself in a profession or art. But for some reason, the story repeats itself over and over again.

Why We Follow Family Scenarios

There Are Many Deep Beliefs That Live Inside and Affect Us Greatly

Most often they are hidden from our consciousness and “come out” only through work with a therapist. For example, somewhere deep inside there may be a belief that a working woman is not needed by her husband, that such a family is bound to fall apart. Or that it’s a shame to take care of yourself if you can take care of someone else.

A Person Seeks the Familiar Rather Than the Best

It’s a paradoxical property of the psyche: it doesn’t like changes and resists them. The new is scary, unknown, and a person has already adapted to the old, even if he does not like it in some way.

For example, a parent’s family lived poorly, and the grown-up child says to himself, “I want to make a good living.” This desire exists on a conscious level, but deep down inside the person may be at a loss for this idea, because he has no idea what to do with money when he has it.

This is a whole new troubling reality that he does not yet know how to live in. Therefore, the idea of making a lot of money can also fail, because the subconscious will sabotage this change.

Trying Not to Repeat the Family Scenario Makes Us as Dependent on It as Wanting to Repeat It at All Costs

In both cases, we stop living the life we personally want. Living “to please” and living “in spite of” are two extremes that deprive us of the opportunity to listen to ourselves and ask: What am I really like? How do I want to live?

For example, a person who grew up in the countryside does everything he can to go to the big city and not live like his surroundings. He arrives there, tries to settle down, and at some point realizes that he doesn’t understand what it’s all about.

How to Deal With Family Scenarios

If you are burning with the idea of “not living like your parents,” it’s better to let it go. Instead, with a psychologist or good books, it would be worth highlighting, identifying, examining your family scripts and sorting out yourself, your desires and values.

Examine how your life relates to what was in the family before you, consider family messages and rules.

When you better understand your family, you will be able to better understand yourself: where you act because you want to and you feel better, and where you act in spite and spite, for example.

Build your own healthy personal scenario – by the way, it never looks like a complete copy of the family scenario or its opposite. By becoming aware of the mechanisms of interaction within the parental family, you can take away those that you like and can build on, as well as change those that you don’t like, bringing something new into your life.

The main thing to remember is that everything we have realized and considered carefully stops affecting us so much.