Why Can’t We Get Along?! Healing Parent-Child Relationships in Adulthood
Complex and challenging relationships with parents are one of the many struggles adults today face and seek guidance and healing around in our therapy offices. These struggles are often born from experiences and dynamics of childhood that continue to influence the parent-child relationship in adulthood. Sometimes, these dynamics are very evident, and other times they may be more subtle and hard to correlate with current experience. Being able to identify and understand how childhood experiences have affected us and our relationships is often crucial to improve maladaptive patterns and cycles we may find ourselves in. Below are a few ways early childhood dynamics can create problems and some tips for navigating them.
Childhood Dynamics
Communication: is a key function of every relationship we have ever, and will ever have. Childhood sets the stage and provides a foundation for how we communicate with other people. If when growing up, your family avoided having difficult conversations and did not talk about their feelings, you might find it difficult to identify and express your emotions or needs with your parents (and others). If the communication you received growing up was overly critical or demanding, you may have a fear of judgment and inability to advocate for yourself. This hindrance in ability to communicate can lead to long-lasting barriers between you and your parents in being able to identify and advocate for yourself in the relationship.
Unresolved Emotional Needs: Not having our needs met in childhood can lead to many different issues presenting in our adult lives. Resentment, dependency, and a need for validation are a couple of the ways that unmet needs may show up in our adult relationships with parents. Typically these unmet needs make it very challenging to show up confidently in our relationship with parents which can perpetuate the cycle of feeling unseen, unheard, or misunderstood.
Role Expectations: Family dynamics in early childhood often influence the role we play in the family. We hear terms such as the “troublemaker,” the “goody-two-shoes,” the “emotional one,”...etc. These labels, and the parts of the role that you may adopt in childhood, can make it challenging to embody a new dynamic in the family system. This becomes problematic as adults when we find it hard to relate to our parents in a different way, also making it challenging for parents to switch their lens from viewing you as a child to an adult.
What to do?
1. Acknowledge the Influence of the Past: Sometimes the most challenging part of creating a better relationship with your parents can be acknowledging how your childhood dynamics shaped you and your relationship with them. It is very common to believe that if you acknowledge ways in which your parents have hurt you, it minimizes your love and appreciation for them. The awareness and ability to be able to
acknowledge both the positive and negative is often necessary to change a negative
dynamic.
Communicate Your Needs and Feelings: Being able to share your feelings with your
parents in order to help them get some perspective into your experience can be cathartic. It is important to try to refrain from blame or criticism, in order to help them understand instead of getting defensive. There is a big difference between “You never listened to me when I was younger” and “ I felt unheard and that was very painful.”
Establish Healthy Boundaries: Boundaries are what you set in place to show people how you want to be treated. Setting boundaries with parents can be particularly challenging when there is an inherent differential in perceived power dynamic. Being able to define what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior and respectfully communicate these boundaries to your parents will begin to create a more balanced dynamic.
Seek to Understand Their Perspective: Having awareness of how your childhood experiences have shaped who you are can create an ability to take perspective and think about how your parents experiences likely shaped who they are. Although this does not justify harmful behaviors, having some empathy can help minimize your feelings of anger and frustration, which can in turn shift interactions and overall dynamic.
Work on Personal Growth: Taking efforts to improve your overall well-being and outlook can help you manage and transform your relationship with your parents. Personal growth can take many different forms including engaging in therapy, listening to podcasts, reading books, expressive arts...etc. Improving your mental health, coping skills, communication style and confidence can be helpful to approach your relationship with strength and clarity.
Consider Professional Help: Working with a therapist to address some of the ways childhood dynamics affect your relationship with your parents can be very helpful. Processing unresolved issues, learning new coping strategies, and improving your communication skills are a few of the ways a safe therapy space can be utilized to improve your ability to manage your relationship. Family therapy may also be an option to consider if everyone is on board with working on improving the relationship together.
Moving Forward
It can seem daunting to try to work on changing a parent child relationship dynamic that has been present for so long and seems impossible to shift. Developing the confidence to make positive changes for yourself, can in turn create positive changes in the relationship. It took many years for this relationship to develop and it will take time and patience to change deeply ingrained patterns. The main goal is to get a deeper awareness and understanding within the relationship and attempt to restructure the relationship in a way that honors and respects everyone's needs. Healing and reconnecting can be extremely challenging, and also extremely rewarding.