‘I’ll never, never, never say, mother.’ Surely, on some occasion you have thought that you were not going to say or do something that upset you so much that your mother did. And yet, now you find yourself repeating the pattern you criticized so much. You repeat their mistakes and you are not alone, it is something that happens. But why? D Familiar patterns are like invisible footprints That marked our path. We tend to repeat them because, during our childhood, the brain is like a sponge absorbing what it sees and feels. This is how he explains it to us Maite IsaCoach and expert in personal development, who details how this is our first learning model of how to face relationships, love and life. These patterns become our ’emotional comfort zone’Even when they are unhealthy.
Experts such as psychiatrist and neuroscientist Bruce Perry, author baby brainHow deeply analyzed Ways of relating to the world One that has an adult A reflection of what was learned at a young agefromBecause we replicate what we saw and experienced with our parents.
“But, on the one hand, we do not tend to repeat what we learn. Epigenetics is the genetic information passed down to us by our ancestors.. Our ancestors don’t just pass on to us your curly hair, green or blue eyes, or the diseases you’re more likely to develop, but they also pass on other kinds of information to us,” he tells us.
Expert refers to a specific case: something Research on grandchildren of genocide survivorsLike the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust, and they realized that the grandchildren of those people had all kinds of disorders and repetitive patterns associated with that kind of conflict, even though they didn’t know their ancestors, it wasn’t instilled in them through education. or by culture, but they had more concerns than others. “They had faith and a view of the world as a dangerous place from which we had to protect ourselves, a sense of confusion that others were here to use me, a fear of losing what they had. “This information was in their DNA,” he elaborated. And he adds that a person who has inherited the conflict pattern is a dangerous world, where there is scarcity, where others are enemies, where he has to fight and can trust no one.
It is as if we are given an ‘invisible suitcase’ that we carry with us throughout our lives.
The weight of family on our behavior and our personal development
There is no doubt that the weight of the family is absolutely fundamental in our development. “Family is the first school of our life. Where we learn to manage emotions, set boundaries and build bonds. It is as if they have given us an ‘invisible suitcase’ that we carry with us throughout our lives.
To cite an example, the expert says that most of our ancestors went through conflicts in other countries or right here in Spain. Dictatorship, war, famine, scarcity… these are all facts that are passed down through your generations and continue to generate thoughts and energy even while you are asleep.
“But also relationship issues. According to research by psychologist and therapist Dr. John Gottman, Adults copy the romantic relationship models they see in their parents“, points to the instructor, who quotes a specific case: “I have seen many cases, and in particular I can speak of a student who achieved a stable relationship with a partner who made him very happy. Suddenly, last year she started feeling rejected, everything he did annoyed her and they started arguing often. Using the right tools, he was able to discover that he was repeating a pattern, because at the same age that he began to quarrel with his partner, his mother became pregnant with him. “She had a promising career, with many professions, and she stopped working to take care of her children, which affected her a lot at the time and she attributed it to the pressure she received from her husband for making this decision. “
Thus, he explains to us that this mother already was Repeating a pattern from his lineage: Women make sacrifices to take care of their families and abandon their dreams when they have children, and he repeats this without realizing it when he starts an argument with his partner. Sometimes, as experts tell us, we repeat ancestral patterns even if it is not the same situation.
“We can repeat patterns without realizing it, and that’s why we don’t create the reality we want, or worse, we lose what we want in our lives because we don’t repeat what our mothers, grandmothers, aunts did until we repeat them. Don’t sabotage ourselves. , or our ancestors. It affects our relationship with money, our partner, work and any area of our life. Our subconscious already has all the information Unless you consciously remember; And the problem with this information is that we create unconscious loyalty,” the expert said.
© Getty ImagesRepeat the mistakes of our parents
There are many cases where we don’t want to look like our mother or father, repeating their mistakes, why is that? Coaches tell us that this happens because these behaviors are deeply rooted in our subconscious. “When we are under stress or in an emotionally intense situation, We tend to adopt what we know, even if we don’t consciously want to. It is as if Our brain will activate ’emotional autopilot’. Our unconscious, because it wants to protect what it creates in us at all costs, creates a loyalty that says ‘I will suffer like you’, ‘I will be poor like you’, ‘I will be unhappy’, ‘I will be my Dreams will also be abandoned. It works this way even if you haven’t met your ancestors (because you’re adopted or in some other situation), even if you don’t have enough information on a conscious level about their experiences,” he elaborates.
He also speaks Loyalty to clan, One of our strongest and oldest behavioral patterns is because it is linked to our survival. “If we go back to very remote times, when we had to protect ourselves from wild animals and the dangers of living in a wild environment, we find that belonging to a group (our family or family group) and following its rules was an absolute condition for survival. .In fact, it was very likely that a person who did not belong to a clan would die because they were not able to protect themselves. This instinct is deeply ingrained in us from an early age, which is why we mechanically “We adapt to our caregivers, because they provide us with food, care and protection. They are our first source of knowledge and minimize mistakes,” he says.
so, All these teachings of faith create identity, It is the deepest part of our psyche, it is our set of beliefs about ourselves, it is the character we have created as a result of all our lived experiences, it is what we accept as truth about ourselves, it is the mask behind which we hide to be liked, to others. Fear of being accepted by, rejected by all conditioning and all learned limitations.
“If we have learned from the ideas of our relatives and ancestors that taking initiative has bad consequences, that we should minimize our achievements to avoid envy, that we should achieve success only in the face of our friends, or that we should give up our professional life. If we don’t want to fail in life, then we will unconsciously try to confirm that belief by all possible means to reaffirm our relationship with the group,” he tells us.
All these teachings of faith create identity, which is the deepest part of our psyche.
Is it important to cut with patterns that we do not want to repeat?
It is absolutely essential for the expert. “But It’s not just about ‘cutting’, it’s about transformation. Every pattern we identify is a valuable opportunity for growth and development. It’s like when you decide to renovate an old house: first you have to understand what needs to be changed,” he tells us.
For example, and returning to the theme of identity, the coach Pointing out that to transform it we must take on the identity of the One who has already revealed everything, the One who lives the reality we dream for ourselves. We cannot change our outcomes and our behavior if our identity continues to respond to a version of ourselves Repetitive patterns of harmful behavior.
“It is important to work on healing these patterns. Because, in reality, the best gift you can give your ancestors is to transform this information from scarcity to abundance, because for your ancestors you are the seeds of abundance that they planted to heal the lineage. The best closure you can give your progeny is to express the life you want, because everything they lived, everything they overcame and everything they did will have a purpose so that you have the best chance at your life today,” he elaborated.
How should we deal with this situation, trying to prevent it from becoming entrenched?
To deal with this situation, experts recommend what he calls ‘The 4Cs’.
- Consciousness: You start by identifying patterns first. To do this, we need to expand our ability to pay attention to our emotions and thoughts.
- Perception: Practicing empathy and the ability to see situations from different perspectives, without judgment, is important in this step to understand their origins.
- Sympathy: Here it refers to the willingness to connect, take action and help others, but also be kind to ourselves in the process.
- Change: Doing the previous three exercises should lead us to the result we want, which is to create new conscious responses.
“We can turn our family history into a source of knowledge and growth, consciously choosing which patterns we want to maintain and which we want to transform,” the expert concludes.
