You’re sitting through a perfectly pleasant family barbeque with your in-laws, but inside you’re thinking, “I know how you treated him or her.”
This morning, Sean Kelly, Mariam Serkal and Dr Julie Gowthorpe RSW address a complication situation: What happens when your spouse begins talking about their childhood, and suddenly, you’re furious with your in-laws?
When someone we love tells us they were hurt, our protective system switches on. We think, “You deserved better. Someone should have protected you.” So that anger comes from love.
Children often activate parts of our own childhood. A child may be loud, emotional, stubborn, or defiant. That can be normal behaviour, but the parent’s nervous system remembers, I was punished when I acted that way. The reaction may feel as though it is about the child, when it is partly about the parent’s own history. Remind yourself, “this is my child, not my childhood.”
