My last two posts have been about the effects of child abuse and breaking the cycles of trauma.  Before I move on from the topic of generational patterns, I wanted to broaden the focus to a more general view.  Because not all generational patterns are bad ones! There are, in fact, good patterns that can be passed down and these are worth becoming aware of as well.   A major part of becoming an adult is separating from our family of origin.  Through this process, we can decide what aspects of our family patterns we want to keep, what we want to let go of, and what we may want to transform to fit current times and circumstances.  

Remnants of our ancestry trickle down into our life experience both explicitly (being told and talked about) or implicitly (through observation and deduction).  We learn how the world works as it is passed down through lived experience, one generation to the next.  Our lives are the roadmap for the next generation.  Embedded in our lived experience are conditioned beliefs learned over time that influence our thoughts, behaviors, and perspectives.  These beliefs are formed through childhood interactions with parents, siblings, peers, and caregivers.  They affect a child’s perception of themselves and the world around them.  Praise, criticism, encouragement and punishment all contribute to a person’s understanding of what is valued and what’s unacceptable.  Society and culture also play a role in our conditioned beliefs, often influenced by the types of education, religion, media and institutions we’ve been exposed to by our family’s choices.

Beliefs are reinforced through repetition.  When a child repeatedly hears or experiences something, they’re more likely to internalize it and accept it as truth, even if it’s not based on objective evidence.  Families often have sayings or “mottos” that are so frequently spoken, they’re taken as truths – simply the way things are.  Confirmation bias, attending to information that only confirms a belief, further solidifies these beliefs.  Sayings like “The main thing is you tried” or “boys don‘t cry” are examples of this.  And then there are the unspoken manifestations of conditioned beliefs, reinforced by the reactions and responses, such as smiling at a child for being brave when they express a difference or withdrawing from a child in disappointment.

Children are masters at picking up cues of what is most important to a family.  Even in the face of contradictions.  A parent may say that their child’s education is the most important thing, but then be quick to allow the child to miss assignments or not study in order to play in a baseball game.  It’s so very hard as parents to be aware of all the messages our choices are sending!  Nevertheless, our values and the reinforcement of certain traits or behaviors has a big impact over time and with the repetition of our spoken and unspoken feedback.  

But, as we get older, one of our opportunities in becoming an adult is to become aware of the values and patterns that we have been raised in and decide which are helpful and which are not.  My family had a very strong value of education.  I so appreciate this now, as I had a lot of support and my parents showed great pride in my getting a doctorate.   Luckily, these values felt in alignment with who I was becoming.  Had I been a poor student or not interested in higher education, it would have felt differently.  But along with this came a certain amount of pressure and expectation, a conditioned belief that there was no other choice but to be academically successful.  There are always double edges to everything.  I knew I was loved, but I certainly carried a generational expectation of who I should be.  This has stuck with me as I’ve walked alongside my own children through their ups and downs of education.  The awareness of the impact of our generational pattern helped me to seek a balance of valuing education but not purely academic achievement (I hope my daughters felt that, anyway).

My parents did not intend for me to feel such pressure.  In fact, my father was able to rise out of poverty and took extreme pride in talking his way into an MIT graduate program, coming from a lesser college than many other students.  For him, educational excellence meant  opportunity and he wanted us to have it.  Some beliefs can be empowering and motivating and align with our personal goals and values.  But it’s so important for each of us to critically examine our conditioned beliefs and be open to new information and consider how these beliefs may be influencing our thoughts, actions, and overall well being.  We must ask ourselves, what are the beliefs I was raised with?  What of these beliefs are supportive of my life and what beliefs are limiting or not reflective of who I am or want to be?  Times change and we are very different people than others in our families.  And yet, the bonds of shared history are so very strong and important.  How can we best honor the traditions and values we were raised in and yet alter them to fit our own path in the world?

It’s fun sometimes to sit with my siblings and recall the sayings that my father or mother would throw at us.  Some seem silly and some raise an eyebrow as we think about what impact they had and what it demonstrated about how they were raised and the pressure they were under.  Breaking free from generational patterns does not mean throwing all the patterns out the window, but adapting them to be more mindful of the impact.  We can honor our families by holding on to the intentions that are behind the conditioning.  Most always in a parent’s reaction there is love mixed with fear, pride mixed with concern, and a desire to protect the child mixed with a need to protect themselves.  Developing an understanding of where and how our parents’ patterns came from and how they impacted us will help shape our own freedom in parenting the next generation.  As in, maybe I can support my daughters in being 49ers fans instead of Giants fans?  It’s hard, but I’m trying!!