Going Back…
When you look back and think about your struggles, what have been your same-old hangups year after year? I’m writing to those who have been on the journey for a bit.
Despite your best efforts, do you still struggle with old junk, old pain-in-the-neck muck, old voices, doubts, and patterns & habits that return to nag your ear year after year. Anyone like that?
While age and maturity may change you, it doesn’t immediately change the years spent growing up in the home you grew up in. It doesn’t change the culture that influenced you. Personal growth doesn’t remove all those discouraging voices.
And so, they keep nagging your ear year after year.
In order to grow past that crap, you have to go back, uproot it, and replace it. You have to go back in order to go forward.
“The past is never dead; It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner
All of us came from somewhere, and that somewhere influences us daily.
You didn’t get to choose your family. Accept it.
Your family transmitted to you lots of messages; some healthy and some unhealthy.
In order to grow toward healthy maturity, you must uncover these unhealthy messages, submit them to healthy, compassionate thoughts, and replace any lies you’ve been believing about yourself with empathy.
Your family transmitted to you lots of messages about yourself, relationships, conflict, priorities, other groups of people, etc.
- “You worth is tied to certain behaviors”
- “You can’t trust people”
- “You must achieve to be valued & loved.”
- “Take everything personally.”
- “It’s your job to make me happy.”
- “Certain classes or races of people are less valued.”
- “You’re worthy and valued.”
Some of these messages were healthy, and other messages were unhealthy. We all have them.
Some of these messages are so embedded into our unconscious, if not our DNA, that it’s very hard to even see them much less combat them.
And BTW, most of these unhealthy messages are rooted in fear. Fear of not being good enough or not having enough. Fear is the enemy.
These messages were passed to you, and you’re passing messages to your family. That’s how distorted thoughts and
emotional reactivity show up in subsequent generations.
The baggage self-doubt and anger, along with with constant fear and shame are probably the fuel behind unhealthy thoughts and emotions.
You wouldn’t want those messages passed to you, and you don’t want to pass them along to the next generation.
Here’s the Good News. Your family does not determine your future. The lies past on to you, about you, from your family and culture, can be uprooted and replaced with healthy, compassionate thoughts.
You must go back in order to go forward.
