The family past that is addicting

We carry within us a giant file of our history. But it is the negative influences, the bad experiences that leave deep marks on our mind. For the sake of survival, our human nature has this characteristic of paying more attention and for longer to threats than to pleasant situations.

We remember most of the time the mistakes, defects and shortcomings more of others than of ours.

This ignorance between what we feel and how we act makes us live in a level of superficiality that reminds me of the famous phrase of Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who died in the 1961s:

Until you become conscious, the unconscious will direct your life and you will call it destiny"

The influence of childhood on the adult is great and there are traumas and sufferings so deep that they discourage the person from researching how this phase of his life was, how his caregivers were, and how far childhood has an impact on our behaviors.

Whatever our view of our childhood, happy, unhappy or normal, there are always times when our basic confidence is compromised.

Stefanie Stahl even states that our unconscious - represented by our inner child - has a significant power over our perception, behavior and ways of feeling and thinking.

Much more influential than our intellect. For this psychologist, that person who was accepted and loved by her parents, carries through life a feeling of confidence as if she had her house inside her.

No matter how much love our parents have dedicated to us, it is known that their personality affects ours.

Jane Nelson, doctor of Education, couple and family therapist in the USA, author of several books, listed some types of parental behavior and their possible effects on their children.

Thus, for example, parents who want to avoid pain and stress tend not to help their children learn limits and organization. They may pass the belief that they do not need to respect any rules of social coexistence. If on the one hand, this posture can contribute to children being relaxed and enjoying small pleasures, on the other hand it can generate spoiled and demanding children.

Parents motivated by control, on the other hand, can be very strict. The negative effects that such behavior can produce in children is frustration and rebellion and in others the understanding that they should always please others to get love. Positively, such a trait teaches persistence, leadership and time management skills, respect for law and order.

There is also the behavior that focuses on satisfaction, making life fun and not difficult. Children learn to be friendly, to be considerate of others, to be peacemakers, attentive to the disadvantaged. However, over-please can be a fast path to resentment and depression as adults, when meeting people who do not behave this way.

Finally, Jane Nelson cites parents who behave with superiority, which can both encourage goals such as success and achievement and produce in their children the interpretation of "having to be perfect". In excess, superiority can develop in children a feeling of inadequacy to meet the high expectations of parents.

It is common for couples who do not have the same behaviors, being a complicating factor in the education of children and in the maintenance of the family itself.

The usual way of remembering memories that bring unpleasant emotions, as if we were ruminating on something to digest any emotional obstruction, makes us sick.

From a scientific point of view, says scientist, educator and author Joe Dispenza, living on the weight of stress is living in survival mode. It means that our entire body is on alert and our organs and senses are activated generating great energy expenditure. No organism can live in emergency mode for long periods of time.

Studies prove that such a situation takes away our brain and our body's normal and stable physiology only by thinking about the family past or trying to control an unpredictable future. By constantly recalling our bad past experiences, we are anchoring our brain and body in the past.

Emotions are the chemical consequences of our past experiences. This is because these experiences are imprinted on our nervous circuit and the corresponding emotions are printed on our bodies. Hence, our past determines our biology, with changes in the production of cortisol and adrenaline hormones, for example. Our energy runs out and the body is unable to restore and restore itself, compromising the immune system.

The worst thing is to get addicted to this state, without being able to stop thinking and feeling the past. We became addicted, without realising it, to this powerful chemistry produced by the permanent state of discomfort and malaise that changes our biology.

To get out of this state, we need to make an effort. Intentional and constant practices, such as controlled breathing added to elevated emotions such as gratitude, contentment, inspiration, among others, change this dark panorama. The possibility of change. Brain plasticity, as a discovery, when activated can change our future history.

More than positive thinking, elevated emotions bring a new energy and alter our biology, as Joe Dispenza notes.

Do you have something to thank? Is there anything in your life that gives you contentment?