Resentment towards parents hinders a person’s self-realization. According to psychology, the nature of an individual’s relationship with the whole world, and especially with his children, depends on what kind of relationship he has with his mother and father. Many victims of dysfunctional families refuse to have children because they are afraid of becoming like their parents. But even more often, they transfer the resentment into love relationships, abandoning them or finding someone who is as similar as possible to the tyrant from childhood. How can you forgive your offense against your parents, let go of the past and start living happily in the present? Let's start by analyzing the causes of children's resentment. This will tell you how to forgive and why you should not wait for a request for forgiveness.
Why does the resentment not go away?
As a rule, feelings “get stuck”, repeat themselves, go in a vicious circle when they do not find expression.
How it works? Any feeling is a reaction to some event in the external world. It is given to us as a hint, that is, the feeling helps determine how we feel about this event and how we should react to it.
Imagine your friend telling you: “This new jacket suits you very well!” Most likely, you will feel joy, pleasure, and gratitude to your friend. These feelings will make you smile and say thank you.
Or a neighbor's boy hit your window with a ball - then you will get angry and go to deal with his parents - demand an apology and compensation for the damage.
The same thing happens in relationships with parents. When your mother says or shows you through her actions: “You are my biggest mistake in life!” – you also have a variety of feelings. Most likely, great bitterness or intense anger, even rage.
But here's the difference. Often, no matter how great the intensity of feelings for your mother is, you are so overwhelmed by them that it is very difficult to digest them, analyze the situation, and respond adequately.
After all, on the one hand, it’s hard not to love your mother. On the other hand, at this moment I want to kill her. The combination of anger and love is precisely the feeling of resentment. I hate you, but I love you - and therefore I cannot hate you.
“Did a psychologist teach you to yell at your mother?”: why we are offended by our parents and what to do about it
You've probably seen memes about how, no matter what kind of parent you are, your kids will still have something to tell their therapist. The author and Mela expert, psychologist Vita Malygina, reflects on what has changed in the relationship between fathers and children with the advent of mass psychotherapy in our lives.
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What is the inner child and who traumatizes him?
Psychotherapy has burst forth into the masses and is attacking us with all its might. On the subway, every now and then someone whispers into their smartphone: “I have to leave this toxic relationship.” A young man at the entrance scolds a girl “for systematic gaslighting.” People now quit because of abusive managers, and get divorced because of destructive relationships.
Moreover, everyone knows exactly when and what is happening. Where is this gaslighting, where is simply passive aggression, where is hidden manipulation, and where is direct psychological violence. Because there are lists for everything. A client recently sent me a list: what in your adult life indicates that your inner child is traumatized. There are, it seems, fifty points. And in it, like in Jerome’s medical reference book, you will find everything except childbed fever. What next? Let’s say you got divorced for the first time or work didn’t work out. What to do?
We googled it and immediately found out: we need to go to a psychotherapist and do something with our inner child.
What this inner child is is not very clear, but they write that you need to love him. Well, OK. At about the third or fourth meeting, they contact mom and dad. Because, well, where else? Kindergarten and school come in second and third. But even if you are the first, you won’t catch up with them, where are they, the first educators and the first teachers? Look for fistulas! And parents, as a rule, are still nearby (and this, by the way, is a great happiness, but more on that later).
What about the moms and dads of adult clients? As soon as they hear that the child has gone to a psychotherapist, they immediately tense up: they are also scientists, they read books, watch TV series and are smart - the child will now have their eyes opened to how they were not loved in childhood, and goodbye, goodbye help at the dacha, grandchildren on weekends ...And anything else, goodbye for sure. Therefore, many clients hide from their parents that they are going to a psychotherapist, so as not to listen every second to “Did the psychologist teach you to yell at your mother?!” and everything like that.
What to do with all this? And to adult children who suddenly discovered that their inner child was terribly traumatized by their external parents. And these same parents, who for the most part do not understand what we are talking about, because they wanted the best. So what, what happened as always? This is exactly how it always turns out!
Why so hot
We live in an interesting moment: right before our eyes, human relationships are taking new forms and norms and rules are changing. What was normal and acceptable some twenty years ago now looks like dense savagery. This happens not only in our society: it happens all over the world.
On occasion, I watched the old Italian movie “The Taming of the Shrew” with the idols of the 70s and 80s in the leading roles: Ornella Muti and Adriano Celentano. I haven’t seen it for a hundred years, and then I came across a movie on the plane. So what would you think? From the point of view of today's 20-30 year olds, everything that happens there is game, abuse, sexism, ageism and enchanting gender chauvinism.
But even to us, far from twenty years old, this already seems wild. Although it was funny before
It turns out that it is not only our Soviet cinema that does not pass the test for psychological safety, as it might seem. They say that Americans, having watched their old Disney, lost their self-control and want to correct something there so that modern kids don’t learn bad things. God is their judge, of course, and it’s not for us to teach them with our constantly disappearing monuments and erasing objectionable names in the credits.
But whether or not to watch old films and cartoons is our choice. And, by the way, if young adults want to understand how their parents could do to them the way they did, it may be useful for them to watch together the movie that these same parents admired so much as children. Much will become clearer. But we don’t choose children, like parents.
So, cultural norms are changing - and what was considered natural and normal twenty years ago - for example, ruffling the hair of a preschooler walking by or scolding a fifth-grader dragging his briefcase down the steps (“Your mother probably didn’t buy this for you so you could carry them down the steps.” upholstered") - is now almost impossible to imagine in polite society. For two generations now, parents have been asking their children for their opinion on any matter and trying their best not to raise their voices, much less hit.
And if this does happen (and it happens, even with advanced parents), they honestly suffer and sort it out, including with the help of psychotherapy. Here, by the way, sometimes it becomes clear where such habits come from and why one’s own children evoke contradictory and difficult-to-bear feelings.
But why, why is it so acute right now
Women and children have remained the most powerless categories of the population throughout human history. Basic changes in relation to one category automatically entail changes in relation to the other.
The women's movement began in the 19th century and radically changed the world. Changes in attitudes towards children developed in parallel with changes in women's issues. The book “Psychohistory” by the American psychoanalyst Lloyd DeMause was published in the mid-1990s. This psychologist and historian of childhood offers a decisively revolutionary concept of the development of human society. He puts his attitude towards children at the forefront. The humanization of these relations, according to De Moz, entails the humanization and development of society. The scientist consistently examines five main educational styles, from infanticide to acceptance, deducing from them the personality types prevailing in society, the characteristics of relationships and group dynamics.
In the book there is a sign indicating which personal characteristics are associated with a particular educational style, and in this sign opposite the receiving style it is written like this: “Children raised in this style have not yet become adults.” It seems that they are growing up right now, and are being raised by the same adult children who were the first in the history of mankind to seriously make claims. And we're dealing with that right now.
Parents are angry, tormented, offended. To be fair, there are those who cannot be reached. To them, these screams and cries of grown children are like pellets to an elephant. They will just shrug their shoulders and simply decide that the grown-up child has gone crazy, or they will seriously refuse to give up the house: oh so? Are you going against your mother and father? Well, go away, ungrateful one. It's even better without you. In the end, the mother cat does not recognize her children at point-blank range. There are also people like that, so what? But we are not about these parents and not for these.
We are about those who, after the offensive words of an adult daughter or adult son about the systematic violation of boundaries, trampled children’s dignity, about the harmful Spock, for whom parents prayed, after words about exile with their grandmother to the dacha for the whole summer for the sake of fresh air, but against their will, and they also compared you with some Masha or Seryozha, for whom everything is always better than yours, after these words they don’t sleep at night, they get offended, suffer and remember their own. For example, how you had to sleep on the floor next to your child’s crib in a children’s hospital room. The kids were admitted to the hospital without their parents, and they could stay under the following conditions: you wash the floors in all the wards of the department and sleep next to the crib. They washed and slept for the sake of the peace and health of their child.
These are all sad, but quite vegetarian stories. But some children will remind their parents that it’s true - they beat them, punished them with rejection and “I’m not talking to you”, read diaries - as if in order to keep their finger on the pulse, and instructed how not to bring it to the hem... Yes, a lot all sorts of things.
Sit in a psychologist’s chair for 20 years and you’ll hear a lot of exotic stuff about your parents, and it’s all with the best intentions.
Adult children, for their part, also suffer. It’s not at all healthy at the age of 60 to find that again and again you are eager to love people who don’t see you at all, reject you, sometimes humiliate you, although they claim that this is love. And you still can’t understand what’s wrong here. Even as a child, you were used to the fact that your loved ones did this to you precisely because they loved you. For example, mom. Mom most likely had her own reasons for being cold, distant, disconnected, or simply very busy, exhausted. But you copied this way of love down to the last line, and in order to rewrite it, you have to understand what exactly was written in the original.
How to respond to complaints from adult children
Listen without bias and acknowledge. Let the Queen of England be your example. Most recently, an English prince and his princess wife, who fled to America, gave a two-hour interview in which they exposed the terrible and abusive practices in Buckingham Palace. Who would doubt that! The royal family is an ancient institution, with its ancient rules, like any large and influential family, living according to its own laws, far from perfection and new views on relationships. And what did the queen answer to all these terrible accusations, remember? With all her royal dignity she said something like this:
“I am infinitely sorry that you suffered so much in our palace. We will try to change and fix something.” That's all. Disarming and dignified.
What's stopping you?
Just listening and acknowledging is very difficult. At this moment, almost everyone feels acute pain: everything is already over, nothing can be fixed - once. You have done/have done a lot to forget how you screamed at your child, how you beat him for bad marks, how you abandoned your grandmother for the sake of a new love, how you left him for the sake of a new family. And you almost made it through. And then - bam! - it turns out that this bastard remembers everything! Pain is an unpleasant feeling, and many of us, in a split second, switch our internal toggle switches from the “hurt” button to other, also unpleasant, but still a little easier, buttons. Someone immediately feels a sharp attack of resentment (the classic “I didn’t sleep at night because of you, and you’re on the train”). Someone immediately falls into aggression - “How dare you criticize your father,” “I’ll see how you sing when your people show up.” Someone defends himself with denial: “You only remember the bad things. She hit me in the butt once, she screamed once, and you...” Take courage, breathe in, exhale, face the pain - and admit it: “I’m very sorry that this happened,” “It was unfair, I understand.”
Focus.
The phrase: “I’m very sorry that this happened, but you were an obnoxious child” is not considered a confession, but is considered an attempt to preserve one’s parental integrity and integrity. Admit it, but without the “but”. You will have to trust that everything was as your adult child remembered it.
Our ancient cultural tradition is not to trust children's feelings, and even more so not to believe childhood memories. Often, when you try to remind your parents how everything was, they answer:
-You remember incorrectly
- You have misunderstood it
- You're making it all up
- Well, you have a fantasy
-You only remember the bad
If there are other suitable options, add to the list yourself.
To clear your mind, play a little game with yourself: imagine that someone hits you on the head with a heavy object. You become indignant and shout: “Don’t do that again! It hurts me! And someone looks at you in amazement and answers: “You’re making it all up.”
You can continue: a blow to the head caused you problems, and you had to undergo treatment for a long time. At some point, you still decide to ask the person who hit you on the head with a shovel: why did he do it? You want to clarify something for yourself. And someone looks at you angrily: “You remember everything wrong. You hit yourself." Looks absurd, doesn't it?
But everything changes when adults remember their sins to their parents. It is humanly understandable: no one wants to take off their white coat, few are ready to admit exactly how they harmed their child.
And here it all depends on your individual task. If you want development, love and understanding in relationships with children, love and understanding in the family in general, try to trust your children. For them, everything was exactly as they say.
But, of course, not everyone cares about love and mutual understanding. There are people for whom it is vitally important to preserve their integrity and infallibility.
Focus.
Take a risk and show your feelings openly. Talk about your pain. About your inability to believe that once, 20 or 25 years ago, you were so stupid that you did this and that. It's hard, unpleasant. But it will greatly benefit your relationship with your adult children.
If that offended adult child is you
Usually, an active stage of re-evaluating the actions and strategies of their parents is experienced by people who turn to a psychotherapist or psychological consultant for help. This is a normal phase of therapeutic work. Normal and unpleasant. It is bitter and painful to relive difficult childhood feelings. It is not always possible to process them all, down to the bottom, in a specialist’s office. Part of the raised material goes to loved ones. If your parents are nearby - you live together, go to the dacha together, live nearby - then, of course, it will not be easy for you and different feelings will wander.
During this stage, the person experiences a lot of anger and pain. Who should carry them if not their parents?
Especially if once upon a time for some reason I could not and did not dare to do this. Especially if you're still not old enough. Little children are angry with their mother, no matter what happens in their lives, and they are especially angry if their mother leaves them for a long time. Likewise, when we get into therapy, we quite quickly regress into a child’s position and become so desperately angry with our parents, because it is the childish part of our soul that still hopes that our mother will help and save, hide, shelter, caress and regret. As soon as this part of the work is done and the person accumulates a little maturity (and therefore stops dreaming of changing his parents so that they finally become what we needed), the intensity of passions subsides and the desire to tell parents exactly what they were wrong about and how offended, decreases.
There are those who are touched tangentially by this whole story: a person does not go to a therapist, and there are now a lot of popular books on psychology, among them there are good and bad, both of them often talk about how parents are toxic, immature, and various others. — they offend their children and how this then interferes with the children. And then even a person who is not in therapy discovers that there was a lot of injustice in his childhood. My urgent advice: if this is your case and you are, as they say, bombed by emotions and feelings, if you constantly get involved in discussions that are destructive for both you and your parents - drop everything and look for a psychotherapist. Otherwise, there is a risk of getting stuck in this phase of blaming and revising the past, and progress and the necessary development will not happen.
Focus.
This is the case here. In general, for your life it is no longer important what your parents think about upbringing, yours or your children’s. It doesn't even matter what they think about you. The sooner you stop wasting your soul energy on trying to prove to them how wrong they were, the sooner you will start spending it on what really matters to you. Including what is important to you in your relationship with your parents. Right now. And the trick is this: talk about what doesn’t suit you now, and offer your solutions. Don't expect your parents to do it for you.
A couple more notes
First. If you are already an adult, you are bombarded by every word your mother or father says - because behind every word there are five stories that, as you now know, influenced your life - and you are not able to remain silent about it, so almost every visit to your parents turns into a small-scale but bloody battle, but one or two days or even a week passes, and mom again asks on the phone if you are wearing a hat, and sends a saucepan of pies by courier, and dad drags his grandchildren to football on Sundays - it means they love you. Do you understand? How can they? You wish it were different. But it turned out like this. They love you, so they are ready to pull their pies over and over again, no matter what you say to each other. Yes, the consolation is weak, but it is there.
Second. About pies. If you want them to stop dragging you around (calling at 8 am on Sunday, advising you to get a divorce or get married, claiming that they know everything better) - just ask for it. In words. Polite but confident. And don't take the pies. Get a divorce or get married on your own, despite your parents' words. Remember the old but good psychological joke: we become adults when we act one way or another, even if this is exactly what our parents advise us to do.
Illustrations: Shutterstock / A Plus Vector
What to do with old grudges
Your task is to restore the interrupted cycle “emotion – desire – action”. To do this, you need to figure out what exactly interrupted him.
For example, you love your mother so much that it is impossible to express your feelings to her. It seems that if you honestly tell her about how hurt and offended you are, your mother will immediately treat you differently and begin to love you less.
I think your fears may be partly correct and adequate. Mom, especially if she is old and has always been hot-tempered and touchy, can easily take offense at your claims. But any complaints can always be formulated in an inoffensive manner.
Compare: “Mom, I want to tell you honestly: you ruined my whole life and I hate you!” and “Mom, I have heavy feelings in my soul. Will you listen to what I say? When you told me that you didn’t want me, I felt completely unnecessary to you. I was very hurt. It would help me a lot if you said that you really don’t think so and that you are important.”
Of course, not every mother will be affected by such words. Some mothers may even say something even more offensive in response. If it seems to you that this will be the case with your mother, then I completely trust your feeling. There is another way in this case.
How to accept your parents
This desire already indicates your maturity, your readiness to take responsibility for your feelings.
We often blame our mom and dad. And we remember not the best moments. How we were punished, scolded, disrespected. But even if so, then this time is already in the past. And to this day we continue to experience negative emotions. Which only harm ourselves.
At the same time, these same parents did a lot of good things for us.
One of the most important points to realize is the following : mom and dad usually want only good, and behind their reproaches and moralizing there is a positive intention. It’s just that the methods are quite traumatic for the psyche. It turns out that they often want to lead to good, but do not know how to convey their desire to their children in a kind way.
Let's move on to the techniques.
Psychology has different techniques for working through emotions. But we would like to touch on the techniques of gratitude and repentance.
Gratitude is the understanding that you came into this Light not on your own, but thanks to your mom and dad. They gave you this opportunity. Without them you wouldn't exist. We are not always able to sincerely thank our loved ones, looking them in the eyes. But even if you do it to yourself, acceptance is a matter of time. With constant work, you will increasingly focus on the pros rather than the cons.
Metaphysical theories explain even more deeply: that you yourself chose your parents for the work that you need to do in your current life.
Repentance is another powerful technique. In which we not only thank, but ask for forgiveness. Yes, we ask you to forgive us for what we ourselves have done wrong for our loved ones. And this, most likely, was also enough. It’s just that we always have a very strong desire to whitewash ourselves and make others guilty. Confirm that you are right against his background.
These are the techniques that help you accept.
If you can't talk to your mom
This method consists of two parts and is suitable for independent work. They use it when the mother is no longer there or frankly, calm communication with her is impossible for some reason.
You remember the importance of not blocking the feelings you are experiencing, but finding an appropriate way to express them.
If expression directly is not possible, then expression through fantasy will do.
The instructions for the first part of the exercise are as follows:
- Place your mother's photo on the table. Imagine your mother - at the age at which your resentment was strongest.
- Tell “mom” about your grievance. Say whatever comes to mind, without choosing any expressions. This technique is good because you can express yourself as fully as possible without holding back. If you feel like screaming, scream. You can even throw the photo off the table or tear it into small pieces.
- Stop the moment you feel enough is enough. You can feel this physically - most likely, during the exercise your body will move, tense, maybe you will clench your fists. When it's time to finish, you'll feel more relaxed.
When the first stage is completed, evaluate your condition. Have you been able to tone down your emotions a little? Do you feel like you've spoken out? How much easier has it become for you if you rate your condition on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 was your offense before the exercise)?
If your score has become noticeably lower, you can move on to the second part of the exercise. This part is done “with a cool head.”
Attention: everything written below is not suitable for working with traumatic experiences that were the result of delinquent behavior of the mother (this includes everything that the law defines as a crime: violence, bullying, leaving in danger, etc.)
Three questions about your mother
So, if the hurricane of your emotions has subsided, but resentment and bitterness towards your mother remain, try to answer the following questions for yourself:
- What was your mother's childhood like? Was she happy with him?
- In your opinion, on a “cool” head, is there anything to feel sorry for your mother for? How difficult was it for her to raise you due to objective circumstances - wealth, living conditions, the situation in the country and in the world?
- What did your mother do good for you? What are you grateful to her for?
By answering these questions, you will recreate a more objective picture of the reality of your childhood. Often, resentment towards parents is due to the fact that we are twisted into an emotional knot and it is difficult for us to get out of it. It’s like a snow storm: we walk and it’s as if there’s nothing around.
It is important here not to close your eyes to the grievances that you have, and to look at your mother through rose-colored glasses instead of black ones. And to see the three-dimensional picture - yes, in some ways my mother was a bad mother for me. This is true. And this part of history cannot be rewritten. But in some ways she was good. Like all people. Just like ourselves.
What you have learned in this exercise can be used as a self-support technique in the future. If you again feel offended by your mother, remember this principle - to paint a three-dimensional picture. Sometimes it takes several approaches to relieve feelings of resentment.
Methods of forgiveness and acceptance of parents and any other difficult situations in life
The next step in working through resentment towards your parents is working with your beliefs. Your task is to rethink, realize - why did you need this situation? What did you have to learn?
You see, considering yourself a generous, good person, but at the same time, the other person who offended you is bad, this is a position that never gives sincere and complete forgiveness.
If you want to radically work through your grievances against your parents, then I suggest that you definitely work with the article “3 steps: accept, let go of a grudge against a person and forgive” , for the article, I recorded a video on the same topic, which you should definitely watch.
When you need specialist help
If you are overwhelmed with emotions, if self-support techniques that you read on the Internet do not work, if resentment towards your mother ruins your life, communication with relatives has become very difficult, you can turn to a psychologist for help.
A specialist will help you get out of the emotional hole. Not everyone can cope with this on their own - and there is no shame in asking for help. We don’t endure toothache forever. There is no reason to endure mental pain either. Healthy? Join my group on VKontakte: You can also find me on FB, LiveJournal and Telegram:
What are the dangers of resenting your mother or father?
As children, when we were offended by someone, we simply pouted and crossed our arms in front of us. But in adulthood, old grievances can cause quite unpleasant disorders.
Most often, the resentment of adult children is transferred into their lives and affects the following areas:
- Mental health status.
- Physical state.
- Relationships in your own family.
- Relationships with your children.
- Self-esteem.
- Communication with people.
A person who carries a grudge in his soul all his life cannot be mentally and physically healthy. His mental state is disturbed and entails the occurrence of psychosomatic diseases. He transfers his condition and negativity onto his wife (husband), children and everyone around him, and thus destroys his life. As mentioned earlier, a person may not even realize that everything that happens to him is a consequence of his tense relationship with his mother or father.
To get rid of grievances, you need to do a lot of work and listen to yourself
