Today’s question number 17. Nothing affects the Child more than the unfulfilled life of the parent. Why would this be and can you see this around you?
Every human being on earth carries wounds. This is the first confession we all have to make. We all have some fulmar another of wounds. Those wounds are designed by nature and give us our values and sense of purpose. What we had too much off as a child or too little of as a child under the age of four, creates the life of the adult. So, not only is the giant Oaktree already formatted in the tiny seed of its beginning, the way that seed is planted will determine so much of the Oaktree.
There are four phases of a typical human life.
- Run away from the wound
- Compensate the wound
- Share the wound
- Repair the wound
Run away from the wound
From the age of five years old until early 20s we try as hard as possible to escape the wound that has been placed within us during our childhood. This wound, shared by parents, is the perception that we have too much or too little of something that makes us feel dysfunctional. As a result we try to compensate for it in as many diverse ways as possible, this can be overachievement or it can be delinquency. This running away from the wound can lead to addictions or gold medals at Olympic Games. No matter how weak couch this pursuit it is driven 100% by a reaction to our first five years of life. People we can hold accountable for this wound are our parents. The wound can service for the greater good or can drive us into prison. How we act and react to this wound will depend on so many factors outside of the control of the parents. Ultimately it is an attempt to find ourselves. It’s called the creation of an ego.
COMPENSATE FOR THE WOUND
As Time marches on and we enter into late teens early 20s we start to realise that much simpler method of compensating for the wound is to find someone who has the opposite qualities who we can form a relationship with that in someways negates our wound. If we are ego centric we find a person who is grounded. If we are feeling weak we find a person who is very strong. If we don’t feel powerful we search for a person who holds their power. If we feel vulnerable we search for the opposite in a partner. This pursuit is called romance. So now the wound is searching for something that makes it go away or at least put a bandage over the top so we can become what we feel to be fully functional in the world. This creates what is called the pedestal concept. If you are reading this and you are over the age of 35 years old it is probable that you have this pedestal syndrome driving your relationships. The pedestal concept has been slowly eliminated in the current younger generations but still is in bedded in the Memes of those over the age of 35. The pedestal syndrome is the ideal that a partner must be worshipped.
The partner worship syndrome originated in a patriarchal environment that diminished women and raised men to the status of a family God. It was also brought into society mean through religious teachings that advocated the purity and virginity of the virgin Mary to put women and their purity on a pedestal in a family home. Hence, stereotypes, rather than human beings were the aspiration of couples. This stereotype has been smashed over the past 20 to 30 years and thank goodness for that however for people over the age of 35 years old this stereotype still hides deep inside the human meme. Whether it’s a gay or straight marriage people still aspire to put their partner on a pedestal and therefore value their opinions, motivation, wound relief and subordinates themselves inside the home to those emotional elements. It makes for a very very complicated relationship when one person puts the other on a pedestal. The pedestal is mistaken for love. The truth is if we love somebody we would never put them on a pedestal, value their opinions, be influenced by their feelings, be disappointed by their rhetoric and in anyway put them in a place other than human.We would love them.
Share the wound
The third phase is sharing the wound. The adult perceives that if they have children they can grow them up to be better than themselves. The parents in someway becomes not only a caregiver but a teacher of the child. Inadvertently and totally accidentally the parent becomes the teacher of their own wound. If you ask a parent about what they want for their child they always want that the child doesn’t experience the complications that the parent had due to their idiosyncrasies. For example if a parent was brought up in a passive environment and they believe that to be bad, then they will try to create the opposite for their own child. This is again another mistaken paradigm in parenting and life and we often call this love. It is definitely not love it is the passing on of the wound from parent to child. Why is this a problem? Well, children are born to teach the parents love. If the child capitulate and a bass the rules of the wounded parent they end up frustrated and at a certain age which is around the age of 11 years old they will start to push back. Basically it’s saying to the parent to heal their own wound. This would be relatively easy if not for the fact that the parent has probably spent most of their lives building up an ego that seeks to be right. With that quest the parent will typically seek a counselling process that endorses their wound and blames the world for their own childhood for it. Even the best of psychotherapy is based on the premise that the wound is real. And that is another way of causing it. In my coaching I never validate wounds.
REPAIR THE WOUND
As we approach our mid 40s toward 50, the human condition undertakes this massive transformation which is often referred to as a midlife crisis or menopause. The way, it refers to the realisation that the children are not going to comply and have their own life, and that the career of the adult is suddenly being impeded by their own incapacity. When an adult recognises that their career has plateaued and that they need to rise through some unfinished personal laundry in order to reach that higher plane without stress, they recognise the need for spirituality in their life and can quite often be misguided into the concept of meditation and life escape rather than the processing of, the wound.
Beyond the scope of this answer to explore the process of processing the wound however it is very very simple. However, should an individual become in tangled in the commercial processes that are advocated for wound management and self development it could be a lifetime of dissatisfaction and emotional trauma trying to work through what can be done in a 24 hour period.
Commercialisation of self development has become a multibillion dollar industry. In itself it is a recognition of the importance of self development and often it’s targeted very much to the 20 to 30-year-old age group. But those who need it most probably those who use at least and that is the people between the ages of 40 and 50 who are working on that wound that will block their love, their career, their health and the longevity. To often people between the ages of 40 and 50 years time, aggression, stress and lifestyle to compensate for their wound because the ego has established itself and refuses to be wrong.
Course it is not a matter of being right or wrong. It is a matter of evolution and development and becoming a teacher as well as a student. When we become a teacher in life we realise that we have a purpose greater than ourselves and then having that purpose we need to manage and deal with our own dirty laundry in order to share in a pure and healthy way the teachings we have learnt through the wounds we have carried for life. As much as we have learnt to live on purpose, as a teacher in the world, we must also learn to live as students. Every single day becomes an opportunity to learn something about ourselves, and therefore more about giving as a teacher, our purpose in life.
This giving, this teaching, this purpose greater than self, is not an argument against commercial growth and wealth creation. Quite the contrary. What is doing is offering a greater motivation for it then self obsessed materialism. It engages both.
With spirit
Y
Chris
End of Question