HOW TO GRIEVE YOUR CHILDHOOD
Most of your core beliefs about your SELF and the world come from your parents. They were most often integrated into your being in the first 7ish years of your life.
All of your current life “problems” or whatever drama you have in your life, whether they be with relationships, money, work, self-esteem, body image, etc., come from what you learned from your parents early in life. If your parents didn’t raise you then it defers to your caretakers, but you still have parent issues because the fact that your parents didn’t raise you or weren’t with you much early in life will often cause deep emotional grief.
Of course most parents weren’t trying to do anything hurtful. They were doing the best they could, most often they were doing exactly what they learned from their parents and what their parents learned from their parents and on down the ancestral chain. This stuff is coded in at various levels, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. If you care to look into ancestral trauma you can learn more.
Your parents gave you exactly what you needed. YOU didn’t come to this planet/reality for things to be easy. You get exactly what you need at any given point, because how can it be any other way?
To break the cycle you need to first be aware that there is an issue. That there is indeed something “wrong” with you. Because there is. Of course you are perfect from an absolute perspective but from a relative standpoint we all have work to do, as individuals. And as we heal as individuals then we heal the world. It doesn’t go the other way.
So when you realize you have work to do, you can delve into your childhood with some exercises. First, the one I outlined in my prior email where you list all of the memories you have from your life. Eventually you will see some patterns develop in your relationship with a parent and you may have memories from very early in your life come to the fore. Then you need to get angry. Really angry. Probably throw in a little or a lot of rage. At this point things can go a few ways. Some people feel the need to lash out at the parent and blame them for everything that is wrong with them. Some people will need to be out of the relationship with the parent for a period of time or indefinitely depending on the situation. Others will be able to maintain a somewhat normal relationship but with new boundaries. Eventually the anger and the blame subside and you can begin to go through a grieving process. The reason you need to grieve is because you realize at the core of your being that you had certain needs as a child and your parent didn’t meet them and you will never be a child again and will never be able to have those needs met as a child. You can’t get it back. If you have lost a parent then you can still do this work because the connection is still there. There is certainly more to the process depending on your individual situation and the timeframe can vary greatly, but this is what needs to occur.
One last bit of advice. When I work with someone, I ask them to tell me about their parents and their childhood. If you tell me the relationship is good and you had a wonderful childhood then you are much harder to work with. If you hate your parents and are already angry with them and have terrible childhood memories it will be much easier to get the process started.
For those more interested in this topic I can recommend two books:
The Drama of The Gifted Child by Alice Miller
How to Be an Adult by David Richo
Of course the O.U.T Healing Process can help you heal specific memories related to your childhood that you are having a hard time processing.