Re-Experiencing Your Childhood
Now let’s examine the interaction of the entire family. The way your mother and father related to each other, to you, and to your siblings became your way of relating to yourselves and others. Their way of living and loving became your way. Your mother and father’s con licts have become your con licts. Their faults have become your faults. Their blindness has become your blindness. Your family system is the mode of operation for the behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions of the Negative Love Syndrome.
The following questions can assist us in exploring childhood patterns and in identifying automatic reactions and compulsive behaviors. Hopefully they will trigger and evoke early memories for you. Current behavior patterns need to be identi ied and then traced back to their origins in your family system.
I invite you to honestly look at the reality of your childhood experiences. Focus your thoughts and allow yourself to recall the scenes, situations, and experiences the questions trigger. It may evoke pain, but it’s a necessary stage before healing. Give yourself permission to re-experience the past along with any unhappiness or pain.
If you have a problem with recall or trying to visualize what happened, simply do the best you can and accept whatever comes. You may want to write down any scenes or incidents that these questions trigger.
Take a few deep breaths, let your body relax, and clear your mind. Allow your mind to drift back to memories of your childhood. Visualize yourself as young as you possibly can. Re-experience what it was like to be you as a child. Did you feel loved and accepted by Mother and Father? Were you really wanted? Were you abandoned emotionally? Were Mommy and Daddy there, but not there for you? Did they die? Did they divorce?
How would you describe yourself as a child? How did others describe you? Obedient? Achiever? Submissive? Sad? Sick? Angry? Rebel? Helper? Were you delinquent? Troublemaker? Bad boy? Problem girl? Dummy? Clown?
What were the non-verbal injunctions and behaviors? For example: “Put a smile on your face. Put up a good front. Hide your true feelings.” Did you get disapproving looks? How open was your family? Did they really communicate with and listen to each other? Were they uptight? How did your family act when they were angry? How was it when you felt anger toward your mom and dad? Did your family shout and scream, or did they sti le anger with a smile? Were Mom and Dad angry in the same way, or were they poles apart?
Allow yourself to recall a speci ic scene where anger was being exhibited by one or both of your parents. Recall a scene when you were angry with Mom, or Dad. Did you express it? What happened? Re-experience what you felt. Were your parents moody or depressed? Did they talk about it? Did they express and deal with their feelings directly? Or was everything hidden, secretive, and ignored?
Who was the boss in the family? What happened if you challenged your parents? Did you dare to express yourself ? What was communication like in your family? What did they talk about? What were conversations like, if there were any? Who dominated the conversation? Who never spoke up? Were your mom or your dad quiet, withdrawn, polite?
Were your parents stingy or extravagant? Did you receive any presents? Did they talk about money? Did they ight about it? Never talk about it? Did they get into trouble inancially?
What demonstrations of affection were normal in your family? How did family members behave when they touched each other, if they did? Did Mom and Dad express physical affection for each other, by holding hands or hugging? Did your parents love each other and show it? What did your parents do when you or your siblings misbehaved?
How were you punished? Were you disciplined by lectures, or were you punished cruelly Ȃ hit, beaten, or abused? Who punished you? How did you escape punishment?
Did you come home to an empty house? Was Mom afraid of Dad or was Dad afraid of Mom? Were you afraid of one of them or both of them? Were you afraid of your sister or brother? Did you terrorize your sisters, your brothers?
Did you like your family? Was it fun, loving, and joyful? Or was it depressing, lonely, and empty? What was it like growing up in your family?
By allowing your memories to begin to surface and honestly answering these questions, you have already gathered a wealth of material. The family scenarios of your childhood created layers of lies, pretenses, negative love patterns and programs. And inally, go back to the beginning of the list of Negative Traits, Attitudes, and Admonitions on pages 19 and 20. Please look at your own life. Ask yourself, very honestly, how many of these negative traits are in your life, your attitudes, your behaviors, your patterns. Check the box?? in the column marked Self. Now you know exactly from whom you learned these negative patterns.
This is an experiential connection to the Negative Love Syndrome. Fully recognizing and acknowledging how much we are like our parents is very dif icult. It is a level of self-understanding that most people never attempt to achieve. Even when they do, some degree of denial remains, allowing them only to acknowledge the positive qualities of their parents, or else blaming their parents and themselves for the guilt and shame that arises when they act against their own best interests.