Becoming Free(er) from Parental Wounds

EPISODE 80 | BECOMING FREE(ER) FROM PARENTAL WOUNDS

The way you interact with others, including your children, shows the pattern - the same pattern that your parents had with you, okay. So, my experience of that child, of being trapped in my younger self - when I was in that state, my emotions had no place to be seen, there was no place for my emotions to be received, to be affirmed, acknowledged or regulated, okay. So, it was only always suppressed. 

[00:00:25] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.

[00:01:01] Welcome to day five of my 30-day Instagram Live Challenge, where I'm talking about some aspect of the interior life or the interior journey into authenticity and wholeness each day. So, today is day five and today is a big topic.

[00:01:20] When I launched this challenge, when I started this challenge, I think I mentioned that it's going to be real and it's going to get deep. And I'm not kidding. 

[00:01:30] PARENTAL WOUNDS
When I was praying about what to talk about today, it was very clear that what I needed to talk about today flowed from the topics that covered the last couple of days. And what I'm going to be talking about is becoming free, or freer - becoming freer from our parental wounds, okay, becoming freer from our parental wounds. 

[00:01:56] So, by parental wounds, I'm referring to - you may have heard father wound, mother wound; the wounds that we receive from our fathers and our mothers, right? If this is an area that is very new to you, you haven't heard this language before, it may be a little bit uncomfortable, but at the same time, you may feel like it resonates with some parts of you.

[00:02:21] Alright, so, this is a difficult, challenging topic to hear about, especially if you're not familiar with it. And it certainly isn't an easy topic for me to share on as well. It is so crucial. It is so crucial to the interior journey that I really wouldn't be doing you any service and I wouldn't be, I would say, I wouldn't be authentic and living up to integrity if I didn't find some way to talk about this. 

[00:02:50] So, if we want to know who we are from the inside out, right - so this journey into authenticity and integrity, this becoming who we are, getting to know who we are - the aim, the objective is to be able to live and to relate in the world from a stable core, from knowing who we are. To be able to love more - how do I say it - love more healthily, right? To handle all kinds of relationships with greater boundaries and to become emotionally and spiritually mature.

[00:03:22] Now, usually, if you're asked, would you like to be emotionally or spiritually mature, you'd probably be thinking, yeah, of course, I would like to be emotionally and spiritually mature. Maybe most of us would like to think that we are already pretty emotionally and spiritually mature, right?

[00:03:39] Because we recognize that these are important traits. But if we can kind of like sit back and look at the interactions that we have in our lives, and if we can be honest about it, I think we would be able to recognize that there are many times in which we probably didn't act very maturely and we may regret it. Or it may be so uncomfortable that we don't even want to think about it, right?

[00:04:07] But they're there, they're there. And so, in this journey towards greater integration, we need to be able to be honest about, well, about the reality that we have inside us, and about the reality that we experience outside of us. It takes a lot of courage. 

[00:04:24] And right here, this topic about growing freer from our parental wounds, healing from our parental wounds - right here is one of the reasons or probably one of the main reasons why I think this interior journey requires so much grace and so much courage - it takes a lot of courage.

[00:04:43] So, those of you who are already on this journey, who have already become aware and you are making this journey and you are maybe doing inner child healing, you're facing up to what has always been so difficult for you to, really just look in the eye, right, the difficult truths of your relationships from your family of origin.

[00:05:01] I want to say I really honour you. I see you. I know how hard this is and you are truly courageous and faithful and you know, just really daring to make this journey and there's no need to think too far in advance. We really do this one step at a time.

[00:05:20] With or without the spiritual dimension, with or without the religious dimension, I think confronting our parental wounds is an incredibly difficult process. But when you add on the spiritual dimension, when you add on, let's say, for me, as a Catholic Christian, as a disciple of Christ, there's a term that we use - like, you know, the costs of discipleship - that being a disciple of Christ, there’s a cost to it. It's not easy.

[00:05:48] And a lot of times, people think about cost of discipleship as something that's external to them. You know, things that they may have to give up, maybe materially, opportunities that they have to sacrifice, like maybe career, and all that kind of a thing.

[00:06:00] Now, I'm not saying that those are not real costs of discipleship as well. But having made some of those decisions myself in my own journey, that impact, let's say, my career progression - even the kind of income that I can earn and all that, and they were real and they were difficult for me to make. None of that compares with the costs of facing up to what's wounded in me, to go into parts of myself that are hard to be with.

[00:06:34] So, in I think day two, the Live that I did with the title Noticing the Patterns of Our Brokenness, I mentioned or I shared how I experienced Christ being in the darkest parts of me, the parts that I was afraid to enter. And that it was only because he was there that I began to be willing to enter the dark places inside me.

[00:06:57] Well, guess what? As I entered those places, as I experienced more invitations to healing, as I became more aware of why my sense of self was so fragmented and so broken, it always led me back to my relationship in my family of origin.

[00:07:16] Although in the here and now, a lot of times the difficulties that I faced were not family related, in the sense of, you know, I also struggle with friendships in my professional capacity. There are all kinds of triggers, right? There are all kinds of people that make me - that I find really difficult to deal with, to work with. Th ere are all kinds of struggles. But those are the struggles in the here and now. I eventually learned that they're all connected to my family of origin relationships, to my earliest relationships.

[00:07:45] The parent and child bond is so powerful and sacred. It really has a hold over us. Whether it is a good relationship, like a really healthy relationship, or even if it is a very distorted and unhealthy relationship and dysfunctional - that parent child bond is very powerful. It really impacts us and nothing holds us trapped, like our father and mother wounds.

[00:08:11] THE PLACE WE FIND OURSELVES
So, at this point, I just want to also share a resource, okay? There is a podcast called The Place We Find Ourselves. Some of you may be familiar with it. It's by Adam Young, a counsellor. And in the second episode, because there are many, many episodes now. 

[00:08:26] But right at the beginning, episode two, there is an episode with the title, Why Your Family of Origin Impacts Your Life More Than Anything Else. And I really, really encourage you to go and listen to that.

[00:08:41] Especially if you're not quite convinced why your parental wounds is such a big deal that you still have to deal with it. Maybe you're thinking, I've already moved past from that and I've moved on from that, right? I'm grown up and I 've moved on and I'm okay.

[00:08:54] Well, guess what? The past is still present in your life and the interactions that you have right now - if you're married and with kids, even with your spousal relationship, with your children or at work; the dynamics that you have with your colleagues, with those that if you're a leader with those under you - they're all affected by your relationship with your parents, whether you're aware of it or not. I

[00:09:18] So, I have my husband's permission to just also say that, you know, my husband has also been working on his wounds and interior journey. He's in his mid-forties, and he continues to grapple with what triggers him, especially in the context of work.

[00:09:33] He's a senior leader in his organization. He has to deal with a lot; hundreds of people, both within his own organization as well as with vendors and other organizations.

[00:09:44] And he has become very self-aware and he knows when there are disproportionate emotional responses in him to certain dynamics or certain kind of personalities. And he has worked in the last few years, since Covid-19. You know, he's had a spiritual director, counsellor, therapist, and also now there's an executive coach that he's working with.

[00:10:09] And from all these dimensions, when they help him process, when look at the struggles that he's having, guess what? It still comes back to his relationship with his parents. Okay, and in his case, his parents have both passed on for many years, for about 10 years already. So, even when our parents are no longer on this earth, they can still impact us.

[00:10:37] The relationship that we had with them from our childhood still has a long tail, okay? As we grow up and as we grow old, the impact they have on us doesn't diminish unless we heal, alright - unless we heal. The way I'm going to approach today's sharing - there are many ways I could approach this - but the way I'm going to approach is just from a very personal perspective.

[00:11:03] I'm not speaking as an expert, as in someone who studies parental child relationships, or I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a therapist. But I am someone who has really grappled with my own wounds and I've sought resources and I have experienced shifts, okay. And I am able to articulate what it felt like at different parts of this journey.

[00:11:27] And because I know how difficult and challenging this is, I'm hoping that my sharing, kind of like giving you a sketch of the ground that I've covered - how different parts of it felt - may help you locate yourself in your journey with your parents. Okay, and I'm hoping that it will give you some encouragement, some hope and for you to consider daring to work on this relationship or these relationships.

[00:11:58] MY OWN INTERIOR JOURNEY
So, before I start that sharing, I just want to acknowledge this is an incredibly difficult topic to talk about because one of the tensions that we all experience is shame that we feel negative feelings or emotions about our parents sometimes. Even if the top emotion seems to be anger, a lot of times underneath that anger, there's shame.

[00:12:22] And there's grief that we don't want to acknowledge. We don't allow ourselves to grieve. There is also that part of us that genuinely feels like, you know, I want to be able to try and respect my parents or honour my parents, but it's so hard to do when they're hurting me. But I feel like I cannot officially acknowledge my unhappiness with my parents.

[00:12:42] Now, this is especially true in my culture, in the Asian culture, where filial piety is a huge thing to respect and honour your parents. And then even as a Christian, again, there's that value of honouring your parents. And I want to say that doing this work is not dishonouring of our parents.

[00:12:59] In fact, it is actually more truly honouring our parents because without truth, there can be no love. Without truth, there can be no freedom. It takes greater courage and greater sacrifice to risk loving - by loving in the truth. Okay. And so, if we have unhealed relationship wounds with our parents - and by healing, I don't necessarily mean that we will be able to have a very ideal, happy, healthy relationship with our parents, okay?

[00:13:32] But just becoming healthier so that the hold of that relationship over us no longer is one that traps us without us knowing. By doing so, I believe we actually honour our parents, and importantly, it really honours God, who is the parent, our ultimate father in heaven.

[00:13:52] Okay, so, I am also only on this journey because I do love my parents, but it was very difficult to learn what that love means and how to love.

[00:14:05] All right, so anyway, without further ado, I'm going to go into sharing just with you, from my own journey - okay, what I've experienced, my journey up to this point in three parts. Just receive from it, take from it what you will. If it's not helpful, just set it aside because at different parts of the journey, the experience is very different.

[00:14:25] Okay, and you may resonate with just one part of the journey, then maybe pay attention to that part. Another part of the journey may be very triggering for you, and you're not ready to hear that, and that's fine, okay? Because I have gone through these parts - I know it later point in the journey, when you haven't done the work that you need to do for where you are right now.

[00:14:44] 3 PARTS OF MY JOURNEY
Okay, so the three parts of my journey into becoming freer to love my parents, freer in my relationship with my parents and also not just with my parents, but freer to love others without being trapped by the dynamics that I inherited from family of origin. 

[00:15:02] 1ST PART - BEING TRAPPED IN MY YOUNGER SELF
Okay, first part is when I was trapped in my younger self. Okay, and I think I was, that state for very long - into around the time I was 30, without my realizing. So, what that means is without me knowing my relationship with my parents and my relationship with others is often affected by my relationship with my parents. I was often very reactive, defensive - often felt kind of helpless, especially when I was interacting with my parents.

[00:15:33] They still have that - "awe" you know? I had that awe of them, like I had when I was a child, cause every little child is in awe of their parent. Right, and even when we grow older, even when you become an adult, you don't automatically lose that awe, right?

[00:15:49] Now, while it is normal and natural, and even I'll say maybe appropriate when you're a very young child to have that awe of your parent and for the parent to have that much influence and power over you and the decisions that you make, that kind of dynamics is no longer appropriate when you're, let's say, 30 years old, right?

[00:16:07] But we don't just automatically break out of that and if we don't intentionally move into freedom, what often happens is even when you're 40, 50, 60, even 70, you may still find that no matter who you are, what you've accomplished, you are still trapped in those kinds of dynamics with your own parents, even if they're not around.

[00:16:30] And that the way you interact with others, including your children, shows the pattern - the same pattern that your parents had with you, okay. So, my first part; my experience of that child, of being trapped in my younger self, when I was in that state, my emotions had no place to be seen, there was no place for my emotions to be received, to be affirmed, acknowledged or regulated, okay. So, it was only always suppressed.

[00:17:01] Now, one of the turning points or one of the main turning points of this was when it was really kind of like a stroke of - not luck, but kind of grace - there was one day when I suddenly had an awareness of how I couldn't really see the world apart from how my mom sees the world.

[00:17:18] Okay, so, I mentioned in an earlier sharing also that I was so influenced by her without me even knowing. I was in a codependent relationship with her without even knowing. And I know that term at that time in my life. When I realized that this extended to that I couldn't see my father apart from the way that I felt my mother saw him, I realized that there was something wrong. I realised there was something wrong. 

[00:17:45] I didn't know how to be in any kind of relationship with my father. I actually didn't really have much of a relationship with my father growing up. In my awareness, that was a difficult, problematic relationship.

[00:17:54] But at some point, I realized that I can't even have the ability to see him kind of like neutrally or just on my own. And I realized I didn't know my own perspective. And I was 30, I was turning 30 - I was nearing 30. I haven't turned 30 yet, but I was nearing 30. And it was kind of like a wakeup call at that time.

[00:18:13] Like I don't know who I am and I don't even know how to see each of my parents from my own point of view. When I decided to do something about it, which was really small, I decided to try and give my father a chance. I wanted to try to have a less antagonistic relationship with him.

[00:18:32] I wanted to try and have a less - well, actually, at that point, it wasn't even antagonistic. I just minimized contact and conversation with him and I thought I would try to be a little more cordial, a bit nicer. Well, it really shook up the dynamics in my family. Like the dynamics between m e and my mom and me and my dad. 

[00:18:51] Because for growing up, part of the stability that we've arrived on as of in the family unit, included me just not having a relationship with my dad and just being really super aligned with my mom. And when that shifted, even though I think nobody could articulate it, in a sense I would say all hell broke loose. Okay, as in, it was a very painful period in my life. 

[00:19:17] It was the first time in my life or so where I felt like I had a very difficult relationship with my mum because up to that point she was always very happy with me. I mean, of course she had issues with me; she scolded me before and all that kind of thing. But generally, I knew what she needed, I knew what she wanted and I always gave her what she wanted.

[00:19:33] And suddenly now I was not doing that. I was trying to go my way. I felt the need to know my own thoughts. I needed some distance from her because she was too overpowering an influence over me, right? I realized she was too overpowering, too powerful an influence over me and I needed to have a bit of distance. And so, there was a lot of pain in that relationship during that time.

[00:19:57] When I went to see a spiritual director, a priest actually. He wasn't my spiritual director, but I confided in a priest. And actually, I was confiding in him about something else. Something that had happened in my life 10 years prior - almost 10 years prior to this - that had me living in shame for almost a decade.

[00:20:17] Okay, it was like, in my mind, that was like the worst thing I'd ever done. It was so sinful and that was something I couldn't forgive myself for and I didn't think God could forgive me. Interestingly enough, when I was narrating - when I narrated this whole story to him - to this priest about what I had done and how I had fallen, the thing that he brought up first was not about this this horrible sin that I'd done, you know. 

[00:20:42] He said, you know, that's not the root of the problem. He said the root of your problem, Ann, is that you're in emotional bondage with your mother. And I remember just breaking down and crying because no one had ever said that to me before. And honestly, if not for the fact that by that time I had experienced that things were really not quite right with my mum, even though I didn't know how to name it, right - if that had not happened first, that I hadn't seen this other side of my relationship with my mother, I would have been so indignant if anyone had dared to speak against my mother or my relationship with my mother, right? I would have been so defensive. But this time when this priest said that; that actually the root of my problem was that I was in emotional bondage with my mother, I didn't need him to tell me that. He just gave me the words. I knew it was true.

[00:21:41] And when he said to me that, you know, it's not that I don't love my parents, I don't love my mum or that I don't love God - he says he can tell that I'm - you know, in a sense of like effort and desire is there, right? I have the effort and a desire to love but I wasn't free. 

[00:21:58] And he said so you don't really love them in that sense. He said, I mean, you love as much as you can but you don't really love them because you're not free. 

[00:22:05] Whatever you're doing, you're doing out of duty. You're doing out of obligation. But where there is no freedom, there cannot really be love. And so, whether it is to my mother or to my father or to God, I can't really say that I love them.

[00:22:20] And he said to me, you know, what I needed to experience first was what it meant to be loved, to receive God's love first. So, that was the kind of like this the turning point for me from being trapped in my younger self to becoming aware that, well, there were issues, okay. So, from unawareness to awareness, to being problem aware.

[00:22:43] But even after I was problem aware, and I realized I needed to kind of like have some distance. I didn't really make progress in own inner life and in my relationship with others because I found that even when I was so consciously trying not to repeat the same mistakes that my parents made, or trying to make the same - trying so hard not to repeat the same mistakes that I felt my mother made with me - I still did it.

[00:23:11] I don't have own children, but I was working with young people, right - with youth and with young adults. And in a sense, I felt quite maternal towards them. I mean, I was the mentor. I loved them. I cared for them, right? I was exercising some kind of spiritual parenthood. And even though I so didn't want to harm them, didn't want to hurt them, I found that without my awareness, I was repeating the same kind of wounded dynamics that I had with my mom.

[00:23:38] That was what made me realize I had to find out more about what was this thing that had a hold over me. Right, and that was when I started inner child healing work.

[00:23:51] So, in yesterday's session, I spoke about inner child healing work. I directed you to listen to the series on my podcast where I shared about inner child healing work and what I experienced.

[00:24:00] 2ND PART - BEING A SAFE ADULT
So, I'm not going to go too much into that here. You can hear about my experiences and the impact that inner child healing had on me on my podcast. But during that time - so, this is now part two, right? Going from part one was when I was so trapped in my younger self. Whether I unaware or aware that I was having a problematic relationship with my parents, I was still strapped in my younger self.

[00:24:20] All my relationships were impacted by the dysfunctional patterns of my family of origin. I had no agency over it because you know a lot of happening - a lot of things were happening under my consciousness, So, then when I became more conscious, I went into the journey of re-parenting my inner child. I grew to become the safe adult. So, growing up, I didn't have a safe adult. And here I'm not talking about physical safety. I did have physical safety. I was fortunate enough to have physical safety, but I didn't have emotional safety. I didn't really have a safe adult that showed me that that they could hold my emotions, that they could teach me how to understand my emotions, and how to regulate my emotions. And so, I just became very afraid of my emotions, alright.

[00:25:08] But during inner child parenting, one of the essence is now as an adult, I can be that safe adult I didn't have, that my younger self didn't have. And in the presence of the safe adult, which is the adult me - the adult me - I could let the younger parts of myself, inner child, express all the emotions that I had suppressed, that she had to suppress in the past.

[00:25:33] It was now safe for her to be angry. It was safe for her to grieve. It was safe for her to rage. It was safe for her to express her fears of being abandoned. It was safe now for my inner child to say all the things that she was not allowed to say when she was a child, when she was younger because they were considered to be inappropriate or disrespectful.

[00:25:57] When I gave her permission as the inner parent, as now the safe adult - oh, my inner child had so much to say, you know? that's a process that needs to happen. And during that period of time, I had to really, really feel all those emotions; feel my anger, feel my grief, my hatred even, because I never allowed them to surface.

[00:26:21] Was it scary? Yes. And it helped that there were people that facilitated this process for me - spiritual director and then later counsellor. It was necessary, okay? It was necessary.

[00:26:36] Now, I have this very formed and active superego, okay? So, I have this very good inner policeman - policewoman that will tell me this is not right to feel this way. This is not right to do.

[00:26:48] So, for example, when I'm angry, when I allow myself to become angry at my parents, the good daughter and good Christian part of me is like, oh, but you know, maybe it's not right to be angry. You're supposed to forgive, right? But I have begun to learn to trust my emotions and that my emotions have a role - have a place to play, right? And that I needed to, in this moment, feel the feelings for as long as I needed to.

[00:27:18] Okay, now as I'm sharing this, I'm way past - I'm past that stage when it was all so raw. If I wasn't, I wouldn't be able to speak so calmly about this because when I'm in that state or in that season, I really, really needed a lot of distance from my parents.

[00:27:36] Okay, that was the season where I needed hard and clear boundaries because literally as my body came back online - that was also the period of time when I began to start listening to my body. I would actually physically fall sick after a confrontation or a difficult interaction with one of my parents.

[00:27:58] Okay, sometimes it didn't take very much more than one phone call - one very difficult phone call with a lot of, let's say, emotional dumping. Especially if I had not expected that call to be of that sort. Okay, so, there's a lot of unpredictability.

[00:28:18] Sometimes, I don't know if I answer a call is it going to be just a very mundane, every day, okay kind of call? Or if that call is going to come with a lot of emotional charge, a lot of emotional stress? And when I am caught off guard, in the past, it's like I can immediately start feeling my stomach going into - I chronic acid reflux for a while and then that I would feel that acid reflux and then sometimes the very next day I would fall sick with stomach flu. Okay, so for me, it's all about the gut. A lot of my physical issues has got to do with the gut. That's where I hold my pain and my stress.

[00:28:57] Okay, so, as I learned to just accept reality, part of the reality I had to accept was this weakness, this apparent weakness. I hated - I hated that I was so called so "weak" that I would fall sick after a phone call.

[00:29:14] Okay, there's a part of me that felt like that's something to be ashamed of. It didn't help that when I tried to express just this reality to my parent that the response that came back was also, why are you so weak? You need to be stronger. And okay, so I realized there's some things that it wasn't helpful to communicate.

[00:29:39] Okay, the child in me, as in, even as an adult child, being the child in a dynamic, always of course, wishes that parent can understand me, that I wouldn't be misunderstood, that the parent can see me. But what I continue to experience, even as an adult, is that when I'm vulnerable, or when I'm honest about my limitations or my weakness - you see, they may not intend and consciously be trying to shame me, but when they come back with such a response, like, why are you so weak? You need to be stronger. That's exactly the problem, right? 

[00:30:09] I was never safe to be myself, to be vulnerable with my parents and to feel that I was accepted and loved. There was always this sense of I needed to be more because I was not enough.

[00:30:21] So, during that period of time, I had to draw harder boundaries. I had to draw clearer boundaries. I needed more distance. And while there was that part of me that felt like this was being a bad daughter, that this was being a bad Christian, I was also learning to let that go. Because I trusted that I mattered to God. That it wasn't just me being good that mattered, but that surely God as parent is different from my experience of my parents who are human and limited, finite and clearly also broken - you know, maybe from their own experiences, from their parents.

[00:31:02] So, part of this journey, in this second part of, healing this parental wound requires us to be able to go where our scripts may judge us and our scripts may criticize us, and say, this is not being a good child, this is not being filial, this is not honouring. Okay, and so, this journey really requires a lot of surrender, a lot of trust, a lot of faith.

[00:31:26] It was also during this second part - you know, this long, quite long second part of my journey where I started going for counselling. So, nobody ever suggested to me that I go for counselling or therapy. I think it was really when I saw that how I kept falling sick after a difficult interaction with my parent, I felt like literally I cannot be kind to myself and to my parents at the same time. It was almost like I felt I had to choose. I had to choose between being kind to them or being kind to myself, right?

[00:31:55] So, in the past I would always choose to suppress myself and even if there was resentment and anger and tension, I would choose to do the dutiful thing. Because I felt like, actually, I didn't have a choice if I wanted to be a good person, a good daughter, a good Christian, that was what I had to do.

[00:32:09] But as I learned that I was important too, as I learned that actually I wasn't free to really love someone else unless I could care for myself first, kind of felt like I was in tension. In tension, right? And I had to choose between them or between me.

[00:32:25] So, inner child reparenting helped me because when I could, in a sense, also imagine or visualize that there is actually a younger child in me that was neglected in the past, that wasn't cared for in the past. Now, if this was a real child - and those of you who maybe are parents and you have your own child - if you felt you had to choose between that child and your parents, if your parents were, without them realizing, was hurting your child, would you protect your child? For me, I felt that I - at least I could imagine, right - if I had a child that I was caring for and I was responsible for, yes. I would be able to step in. I would fend for her.

[00:33:10] So, inner child reparenting helped me to see that I am as worthy of that kind of love and protection as if I had my own daughter, know? So, that changed dynamics, right? So, I would guard my child, especially when she was still very vulnerable, my inner child.

[00:33:26] But as time went on, I also was aware my parents are getting older right now, even up to now - you know, thanks be to God - they are still mobile. They're still independent, right? But now and then when there's illness - you know, sometimes you have to go to the ER - it's always a reminder that it could just be a matter of time before that physical freedom and independence is not there anymore. And I'm going to have to really make a choice. You know, how present I can be to them, right - to help and to be there.

[00:33:56] And at that time - this was quite many years back. Like I said, when I chose to be kind to them and I exposed myself to whatever it is that, you know, they may say to me, I would fall sick, right. So, if I chose them, I would have paid the consequences afterwards. And I knew this can't be the status quo.

[00:34:17] I don't know when the time may come where really - they're going to need me because I would like to be able to be there for them, I mean, I do love them. I mean, I do care for them. I really struggle in my relationships with them, but I would love to be able to - I want to be there. Not just because it's a dutiful thing, not just because it is the right thing to do. I mean, no matter what, I would not be here without them, right?

[00:34:39] So, that part, I also know. But how can I do that without harming myself? Because now I value myself too. Now, that was what made me think, what have I done in terms of this healing process, this interior journey? And on the spiritual front, I have gone as much as I could, you know? I've done inner healing, I've done inner healing retreats, I've done spiritual direction, I've done inner child healing - was also often in the context of through a spiritual director, actually. And I really learned a lot, grown a lot. But that was when I realized, well, I haven't tried counselling. I haven't tried therapy.

[00:35:10] Right, and so no one actually ever told me that I needed that, but I've - I don't really have any qualms with that. I really believe there is real help that can be found there. And I just thought to myself, you know, if I were to really invest and I want to do whatever I can on my part, right, to help this healing journey. I mean that's a lot of it is grace and a lot of it I can't control. But have I done everything I could? If I want to imagine that I want to, you know, in the future to be able to be in a relationship with my parents, where I can love them and myself at the same time, oh, that would be so wonderful, you know? I could be kind to them and kind to myself at the same time, but I needed help.

[00:35:53] So, that's when I decided to start counselling. And in a sense, counselling opened my eyes even further, and sometimes, I don't know - I will say to me all the time, things have to get harder before they get easier, right? Before they get better. Because after I started counselling, what I began to see was that the patterns of dysfunction didn't just - it wasn't just my parents, it was in the larger extended family, which made a lot of sense, right? It makes a lot of sense. It's part of the system, it's part of the network.

[00:36:20] And so, I had to grapple with, you know, all that. But I also learned to differentiate, to become my own person, to individuate. And I noticed how difficult it was when I'm in the presence in - like, when the family gatherings, I actually kind of like, can feel myself get going, shrinking back into that little girl, even though I was already by then, like, in my mid to late thirties, right?

[00:36:43] And I began to notice how even my parents, when they are with their family, they kind of - like, it's a different side to them that shows up. They play the role that they have, I guess I've always played in their family of origin, you know? And all this is like it played, they play out unconsciously, right?

[00:37:02] That's what I mean by we may not be aware of these dynamics. But they hold us hostage. They hold us trapped. But when we can make them conscious and when we choose to heal from them, then even when they are present, we actually have some choice and some ability to choose not to act out of these dynamics.

[00:37:22] So, but that capacity to have agency and choice, it's earned. It's earned in a sense that you can't just suddenly have it. It's earned through this healing process. Okay. So, I said the first part of my journey was just being trapped in my younger self without awareness and then being trapped in my younger self with some awareness but still trapped.

[00:37:42] Then the second part of my journey was as I began to re parent my inner child and you know, I learned - I became that safe adult to see my own emotions. Let my inner child and the younger parts of me express all the emotions that had been repressed and let my body, in a sense, also fall sick. Because I think, it was when my body realized that finally, I was listening, you know, to my body - I think it also - it allowed itself to just let out all the tension that it had been holding, you know, in my earlier years, in my earlier decades.

[00:38:15] And that was why I think for a good five, six years, I really was in very bad health. It wasn't apparent. Externally, I seemed to be fine. I could still exercise and all that, but I knew, you know, like, I was very weak. I fell sick really, really often until I paid attention to my body, paid attention to my emotions and allowed myself to have space and distance from family. 

[00:38:38] Okay, so having that period of time where you have distance from family is often - and I see this in other people's journeys as well - is often a necessary part of that journey. How you navigate that and exactly what form, I mean, that could change from person to person. But it doesn't mean that you're a bad child. Okay, I think something that we often forget is this whole thing - life is a journey.

[00:39:03] We don't have to remain frozen in where we are right now. But if we don't dare to take the steps forward, we will forever be stuck where we are. And when we take the steps forward, sometimes it leads us to places where it seems like we're going backwards. But with discernment and with accompaniment, if we keep going forward, you'll find that at some point you've left that place that felt, you know, in a sense, like we're in a regression.

[00:39:27] 3RD PART - BECOMING FREER
So, that brings me to the third part of my journey, which I think I entered very recently, like maybe even within the last year only, right? And this part - and part three would be now really becoming freer. I wouldn't - I'm not totally free, okay? Definitely not totally free but much freer. And there's been a significant enough shift that I can recognize that I've entered into a new season, in terms of being freer to love my parents, even in a relationship that still hurts me.

[00:40:02] The way I see them is different, but what is important is I didn't try, in the previous season, when I was reparenting my inner child and all that - I didn't try and force myself to have compassion for my parents. Now, when you are working through anger and grief and all that, and reparenting your inner child, to try and jump ahead and try and have compassion for your parents and trying to think of things from their perspective, that's actually going to set you back. That's going to keep you from healing.

[00:40:30] Okay, so at every stage, there is something that needs to happen. So, remember I said earlier of this sharing, that like depending on where you are, if let's say, right now, you are kind of like in part two and you're working through your issues and allowing yourself to be really angry with your parents, allowing yourself to recognize all the injustices and the ways that they have hurt you because now you're finally allowing yourself to admit that this is truth; it is true. It's the truth that you had repressed, suppressed a truth, that you had not allowed yourself to give voice, to articulate.

[00:41:04] When you give that truth voice, of course, you'll be angry. Of course, you will be upset. Of course, you will feel even maybe hatred and grief and you know, you don't want to have anything to do with your parents and all that for a season - is appropriate and only if you allow that to come out, will you be able to move on from there, right?

[00:41:25] ATTUNING TO MYSELF & OTHERS
So, for me, it took me many years, but I passed that stage. And right now, I have more space in me, because of that previous work, to attune to myself and also to attune to my parents. What does that mean? Like, when there's a situation happening, I can be present to how uncomfortable I'm feeling.

[00:41:47] I can be present to the anxiety in me, the younger part in me kind of like shrinking in anxiety and like, I want to avoid them. This is like, you know, when I was a kid and if mom and dad were fighting and they fought - you know, you know, as a kid, you just want to stay away, right? You just want to stay away. You don't want to get caught in the fray.

[00:42:07] But in many family relationships, a child can get triangulated into the parent's relationship. That was the case for me, okay. As a child and as a teenager, I was often triangulated into that relationship. And so, as I learned and I tried to stay away, I learned that that was actually unhealthy for me, right. When there's conflict or tension or whatnot, again, the instinctive thing is I want to run away. I want to stay away for my own safety.

[00:42:32] Now, I can attune that part of me. But I also have space to attune to what's going on in my parents, even if they're not actually saying anything. Like, they may not be communicating in a way that's healthy, right?

[00:42:45] But it's like have this ability now to have a sense of what's really going on inside of them. Now, I can sometimes sense their fear. I can sense their anxiety or their insecurity that is being masked - masked by their aggression, masked by their - you know; however, it is they are choosing to speak coming across, you know? We mask our insecurity in so many ways. It's the same with our parents, right?

[00:43:10] Before I this space in me - before I had this greater freedom, I would just be reacting to that mask that they wear, right? It might be aggression. It might be anger. It might be some - if I’m experiencing it as condescension. But now, I can see past that and feel the anxious person underneath that, or the fearful person underneath that. 

[00:43:30] This had never happened before, right? So, this is still relatively new, I would say. It only happened this year. And I remember when I processed this in therapy, and with my spiritual director as well - both of them were very happy for me and very - you know, because they know how long it's taken me to reach this point. And it's really grace, it's really grace, right - that my younger parts now have space to be heard by me.

[00:43:51] And here's the thing - what I think is most wonderful is I realized that I have so much more trust and confidence in myself. Meaning, even when I'm feeling activated, somewhat triggered, okay - it's like the inner child in me, the younger parts in me, they trust me that I will know how to protect them. And so, because they now trust me, like my younger parts trust me as their inner parent, they are not as reactive as before. They will just kind of like tell me, okay, I don't like this. I'm upset.

[00:44:28] But if the adult self, me, can say okay, let's give us a moment. I still want to meet my parents. This is going to happen, we're going have this gathering, we're going to have this meeting. But don't worry, we'll find a way. We'll be okay, you know? We'll find a way to be in there and I will know when I need to draw certain boundaries. You'll be okay.

[00:44:47] Those anxious part in me now often can settle back down a lot faster than before. And what I've found is that now in this new space, sometimes I can think of creative ways to manage interactions with my parents or to draw certain parameters around the interactions with my parents in ways that soothe them and kind of like help to put them into a more settled and spacious - maybe not spacious - but a more settled state.

[00:45:20] Does this mean that it can always manage, like, you know, that the relationships and the dynamics will never be - that there'll never be conflict? Of course not. And it's still stressful. It's still stressful, right?

[00:45:30] It's just that now I realize that I have more capacity to deal with it. And like I said earlier, when I started therapy, when I started for going for counselling, the reason was because I hope that someday in the future, I would have an ability to be kind to my parents and kind to myself at the same time that I didn't have to choose between them and me, right.

[00:45:52] And that's what I'm beginning to experience now. realizing that now, it's not that if I have to be kind to them, that I will suffer. I now have the ability and the space to know how to manage both more than before. I still want to grow in that. I still want to grow in that, right. And part of being in this space now means that I have much greater ability to bear being misunderstood by my parents, to bear their disappointment.

[00:46:18] Sometimes, it may not even just be my parents, but it could be let's say my elders, you know - the elders in the family. As children, we live for their love. We want them to think well of us, right? It hurts a lot when we know that they're disappointed in us. And as I did this healing work and this differentiation, often I realized that I was choosing to act differently from what my parents had been brought up to believe is love, is respect, is filial piety.

[00:46:46] And the only way for me to become my own person was to, in some sense, actually reject certain things that they've been trying to hand down to me. And I have to intentionally and consciously reject and say, no, I do not agree, okay? And I could see that some of these could be the dysfunctions that they inherited from their elders, from their parents and whatever you call it. It could be culture. This could be the cultural value. This is what it means to you know, have respect, this is what we did.

[00:47:12] Becoming my own person means having the freedom to make my own discernment and saying no, that was harmful - I had been harmed because of this. I choose not to continue it. It stops here. Right, so, in a sense, I'm rejecting that, but I'm not rejecting you. I'm not saying I don't love you, but I need to find a way to love you that's authentic and honouring; that I know honours God. But you may not agree with it all the time, right?

[00:47:39] And so, in this funny situation that sometimes verbally, my parents might express disappointment and complain - you know, about me. And I'm much more okay now. Like, in the past I'll feel so hurt like, you know, can't you see how hard I'm trying and you know? And then you still think that I'm not loving you, and you know, I'm such a disappointment. But now it's like, it's okay for you to think what you think.

[00:48:01] And I understand that you're upset because I know I'm really not doing what you want me to do. And I know that you are, you know? And you have every right to be disappointed because you know, you're disappointed because you didn't get what you want. Doesn't mean that I don't love you. I do. And when it counts, you will see I'm there.

[00:48:17] And I think I've proven enough times, right, that I'm there. There are other ways that I'm loving you, that even if they don't verbally say it, you know. I can now feel like that their bodies - their body language can show that they are comfortable, more comfortable sometimes in my presence or in the presence of me and my husband.

[00:48:36] And I just want to say in this context, it's so important for me that I have a secure relationship with my husband because a lot of times - and even now, when it's more challenging when I know they want to talk about something really difficult. ask my husband to be present having him there is usually a lot more helpful because he doesn't get as triggered as I do because it's not his family, right.

[00:48:57] I mean, when it comes to his family, then he's very vulnerable and I'm there to support him. So, sometimes having someone, whether it's a sibling or a spouse, that understands and that stands with you with this, is helpful. So, for me, I'm very fortunate my sibling, my younger brother, is also on this journey.

[00:49:15] And so, this is something that we can talk about, that we can share very honestly about and that, you know, kind of makes a big difference, right? So, this is, I think, this is the extent to which I wanted to make today's sharing. It's not about a solution. It's not about like what you need to do. I just wanted to share the experience that I have - that I had going through these three parts.

[00:49:43] Okay, because right now, I would only say three parts; this is what I've experienced up to this point. If there's any part of you that is really afraid to go there. Just remember, if you really want to become authentic, if you really wish to become free, to become your own person, to have an integrated core, this isn't an option.

[00:50:09] This is absolutely essential. You need to be able to look at your family of origin, you need to be able to look at the wounds that you have inherited; the father wounds and the mother wounds that you have. And you need to work on it. And then with that, being worked on, you'll find that your capacity to care, not just for your parents, but - and everyone else.

[00:50:30] And in all contexts, you have more emotional maturity and more spiritual maturity when within you, like all the younger parts that were exiled, anxious, fearful, now know that they have this leader, that they have this inner parent that they can trust - which is you, This inner self. In yesterday's video, I talked about a good, wise, and loving governor, right - within ourselves. That's the true self, the core self. And that is what needs to happen when we go on this journey of healing from our parental wounds.

[00:51:04] So, whether you are estranged from your parents, or you are able to still make it for all the family gatherings and everything; you know how to make nice on the surface. But actually, deep inside you, you just want to have as little interaction as possible from your parent. 

[00:51:20] RECOGNISING SOME SIGNS OF BEING READY
Whether or not you think that you actually have a really good relationship with your parent, sometimes you may think that it may be that you can't see where there are problems. And I just want to say that it is usually a red flag when you can only see what's positive in your parents or you really feel the need to see your parents only in the most positive light. That could be an indication that you're not ready to face the shadows and you're not ready to acknowledge ways the ways they have actually hurt you. And if you can't see the shadows in your parents, you're not going to be able to see the shadows in yourself.

[00:51:49] All right, so, yeah. So, whatever the nature of your relationship with your parents is, I hope that you will take some time to kind of like consider how you might want to grow in freedom into your own self. Okay, and as a follow up action, I really would suggest that you listen to that episode of Adam Young's - that I mentioned at the start of this episode - Episode 2 of The Place We Find Ourselves; Why Your Family of Origin Impacts Your Life More than Anything Else. Go and listen to that to understand why it is what you experience in your family of origin continues to impact you today. 

[00:52:31] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

If you like what you hear on this podcast and would like to receive a monthly written reflection from me as well as be updated. On my latest content and offers, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter, Begin Again. You can find the link to do that in the show notes. Until the next episode, happy becoming!