How your parents fucked you up (…by accident)?
You were subconsciously programmed to respond to the wrong way to your emotions and to the emotions of the others.
And you must realize that now (unless your parents were saints) before you waste the next 10–20 years not getting all you can getting. Not loving all you can love. Not showing the world the light within you.
I was reading a book written by Daniel Coleman called Emotional Intelligence where he discusses the 3 most common mistakes that create emotionally unskilled children. These children then become adults that don’t know how to love, forgive, or understand that there is such a thing as being sad. Just make sure you don’t wallow in your sorrow.
But continuing with the 3 common mistakes and identifying them as:
1)Ignoring Feelings Altogether
When you ignore a child’s cries or tantrums, you miss out on an opportunity to teach them how to deal with that emotion. And more importantly, understanding and differentiating between one’s emotions.
Daniel Coleman says, “One of the most basic emotional lessons for a child, for example, is how to distinguish amongst feelings; a father who is tuned out, say, his own sadness cannot help his son understand the difference between grieving over a loss, feeling sad in a movie, and the sadness that rises when something bad happens to someone the child cares about.”
I had this issue and it caused a lot of complications in my life. For example, I had a huge problem controlling my anger and every emotion eventually just turned into anger.
And that is because that was what I learned from my father. He was a nice guy but he didn’t understand how to handle his emotions. And it was from his past where his father disciplined him ruthlessly for mistakes. Any mistake he made was usually served by physical discipline filled with anger(aka sandals, brooms, wires, etc.). He never touched me or my sibling ever as a principal to do better than his dad (proud of him for that and I love him for that).
But ying and yang, where there is an organization there is chaos. Where there is good, there is bad. Where there is peace, there is violence.
So where he lacks in physical, he made up on the mental (no purposefully). But that was taught because his father didn’t know how to express himself as well emotionally. My stepdad is better than before but I have chosen to be the one to break the generational destruction of emotionally inept men. And I suggest you do the same and be better than those who did not know better.
But let us look at how that problem of not being able to understand your emotions can do to a young kid. For example, when I was sad I would always want to break things. And generally, I was a very aggressive kid so I would always like to shit talk older people and try to fight them.
I was very confrontational for the reason that I was only learning through osmosis (from a shit environment). I learned that how to handle my emotions was to always attack. If you don’t attack you are weak and you will lose.
And let us take a moment of gratitude for my mother, my pediatrician, psychologists telling her at a young age to put me into sports.
Because I am 100% without a doubt in my mind sure that if I didn’t put that extra into sports, I would’ve been doing other things that would’ve caused nothing but horror. Since I transferred all that raw aggression and had my senseis and coaches teach me what it meant to be disciplined, they helped me reprogram my mind (through habituation) for a better emotional life (tough as nails bitch).
Solution: Start becoming more aware of your emotions.
When you have a moment just notice how your body feels. And the thoughts that are running through your head. And put names onto the emotion and ask this next question that will change the way you see everything. Ready for it…
WHY!
Why why? Well because you should now just know how you feel but why you are feeling that way. This way you can either get the root of the problem to your depression or find more of a solution to your happiness.
Understanding your issue and bringing it to your awareness will help you see the problem finally. And also understand seeing is not always with the eyes; sometimes it is with the mind and heart.
2)Being a Non-Chalant (or as Daniel calls it “Laissez-faire”)
Parents that always let their kids run amuck have been trained to get whatever they want. For example, when they have a tantrum at the grocery store for a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch because you said no, they give them the cereal to calm them down.
They then learn through positive reinforcement that type of behavior is suitable for things they want and show it even in adulthood.
These kids are known as the “entitled kids” or “The whimpering bitches”.
Solution: Step out of the false belief that your dreams are easy and life is easy. You must earn everything that is worth earning.
And nobody in hell would give an undeserving person all he wants in the world (unless you are a child of undisciplined old money or have a disciplined new money dad but he failed to give you the value that makes you disciplined)
Understand that crying and giving a tantrum when things don’t go your way are not the way to handle situations.
I’ve seen this, especially from females when some guy talks to the guy she likes so she goes out and tries to yell at the girl and start a whole commotion (I went to a decent school, with ghetto (meaning street heavy, not in the negative sense) kids but staffed by some of the best teachers). Because this one time she couldn’t get what she wants so she throws a tantrum like she’s been taught to get what she wants (AKA “Daddys Little Princess”).
3)Showing No Respect How The Child Feels (Fendi Facts!!!).
The best way to put this example is picture a kid crying and every time he cries he is told to stop crying and is hit. Or when a person is sad and when he is whimpering his parents tell him to stop it right now before all hell breaks loose.
How can a kid like be able to learn what his emotions even mean?
Well, I was that kid and it was pretty interesting. I had an amazing ability to hid the emotion of sadness. It was like a dagger where the sheet was anger but the sword was sadness.
And whenever someone would make me feel sad or I was sad, I would send the energy over to my sisters and mother through aggression verbally but with my sisters but verbally and physically (nothing abusive lol).
For example, I would call the oldest of my 3 youngest sisters a sheep as she reminded me of my stepfather the most. So I would take that sadness that was created and transfer through anger by destroying my sister's barbie dolls by decapitating them. Or my younger sisters would catch the ole grab you by the feet and spin you until you can’t walk straight. Or the “I hit you because you hit me” (I won this one).
Strangely though my parents told us to never fight amongst each other and to always protect each other. But the conscious mind will always bend to the will of the subconscious mind.
Solution: Margot Lee Shetterly (Banker turned writer and wrote one of the best movies I’ve seen for what it means to never surrender: Hidden Figures) once said, “You can’t change history. These things happened the way they did. What you can change is how you look at it and how you understand that it takes the good moments and it takes the difficult moments to move forward.”
Your parents didn’t know better and now you know better. Forgive them for their mistakes and forgive yourself for any mistakes you have made in the past.
And your parents did the best they could with what they had and you must understand that. You have more information and help than our parents did, so it is time to better for the kids that we bring into this world.
So that they may become what true humanity is: “Kind people that help each other for a better way of living.”
I appreciate you, thank you.
P.S. If you love this article, I have more blogs and video content on my IG page: @psychologynowwithabu
Thank you for reading and have a fantastic day (final video below from youtube about forgiveness that will help).
