Learning to Parent Yourself
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. - Anne FrankWe don't know what we don't know. When it comes to having the life skills to succeed, sometimes we don't know what we need because we were never introduced to them in the first place. Skills as far reaching as love, empathy, sharing, self-care and validation of self are things that ideally could be inherited from one's parents, but so many people didn't have the kind of growing up to be able to inherit those things because their parents never had them to give.This "cycle of generational deficiency" need not dictate who we are. We can learn to parent ourselves and make up for what we didn't get growing up from our parents, whatever that may be. We are not committed to passing on to our own children the same lack of absence of critical tools needed to develop and thrive.
Growing up, parents can be "emotionally absent" or "physically absent" or both, and have damaging effects on a child. Men as fathers are often the ones working and away from the house and children much of the time, and are also the ones most associated with "emotional absenteeism." The men that I talk with often wish for more of a connection with their fathers, but often with their mothers, as well.Learning to parent oneself means to identify those things that were not taught to you growing up, and then to teach yourself how to do those things. It's a process of "re-education."
It means stopping blaming your parents for what they didn't give you, and learn to accept the loss and grief associated with not getting those needs met. Parenting yourself means you can create space to integrate new skills and values into your own personality for yourself, and steer your future with those new things in place.Overcompensating, on the other hand, doesn't mean you've worked through the desire to get those needs met. It doesn't mean that the fundamental hunger to have those needs satisfied by the parent or parents, for visibility, for respect, for attention, goes away. One needs to work through them, by accessing the emotional places of loss within us, which are usually buried deep in our subconscious experience.
Often times, it also means working through other difficult experiences concerning a parent who wasn't there, either emotionally or physically, or both. There is often anger, avoidance, and other coping strategies that children employ to deal with those primary needs not being met. We usually have negative messages about ourselves as people, created as children and not abandoned as adults. These messages continue to drive us and form our habits, thoughts, behaviors, relationships and personal lives.
Getting in touch with those unmet needs from your parents is the start to learning to parent yourself. Working through identification, and working through the anger and blame, are second. And developing an understanding of what the negative messages about yourself are also important to working towards freedom and independence.
You can learn to parent yourself in the end, and start to teach yourself the skills, habits and values that you hold dear. This may take time, and professional help, but it can certainly be done.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Men’s counseling , or if counseling might be right for you, please feel free to contact me directly or visit our Men’s counseling page for detail.
