Having children has made me question my family
Symptom
Since having my own children I have begun to question how families treat each other and why they behave the way they do. My childhood was not a happy one and I had always just thought that was what happened in life. However, now I do have children I am questioning it all and thinking perhaps my parents could have been different had they wanted to be. I now feel cross at them and am not sure I understand it all.
Possible solutions
Talking is what got me started. For the first time I realised I needed to talk about it. I talked to my wife about how I felt and she listened. She had no idea until that point that it had even entered my head my parents had affected me at all. She told me that I always seemed to just accept everything and move on and get on with my life. She suggested I went to see a cranial osteopath because it had helped her deal with some issues regarding her childhood, so I did. The cranial osteopath helped me to understand my childhood and my young adult life and why I react to things the way I do. She taught me that my parents’ divorce was nothing to do with me and that their own childhoods had been far from happy. The most important thing she taught me though, is that I can change and I do not have to be like them. I can learn to be warm, happy and confident and that my children without question would benefit from this. I have fallen out with my family during the process but we have subsequently made up and our relationship is much more real and honest because of it. More importantly I understand more and I know that I can go on through life knowing that I do have control of how to feel and how to react.
We are all created from the examples that are set before us. If our parents are warm and loving chances are that you will be warm and loving and full of confidence, If your parents were cold and calculated this is perhaps how you will become without even realising it. It is not until you have your own child that perhaps the way you behave with others and how you to react to situations may come into question. You may be lucky and go through life never having to question it at all.
However, once you do have children and realise they are mirrors of you and your moods, you may then start to realise that you may be a product of that process too. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it is not.
The thing to remember is that your parent is likely to be a product of their childhood too and they may not have known any different either. Learning about your parents as people not parents is important and understanding about their childhoods could help with your answers. You do not have to do this alone though and it is not wrong to question it all. Generally everyone will eventually benefit.
Possible therapies
- Cranial Osteopath
- Homeopathy
- Art therapy
- Counsellor
- CBT