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Are you repeating family trauma despite vowing to be different?
I have been thinking recently about cycles, and cycles of trauma in particular. As I examine what is happening in our world today, I can only conclude that we have not moved past our traumas very well. We are in a constant state of amnesia and denial, repeating atrocities done to us to others. In our close relationships, we get stuck in familiar cycles and dynamics. Behaviours our parents exhibited that we vowed never to repeat become a part of us.
Stepping out of these cycles is not easy. To do so, we must understand them and become aware of them within our mind and behaviour and our relationship dynamics. Without this awareness, we don’t have many choices to do something different. With choice, we can learn to transform the repetition of harm we inflict upon each other and ourselves.
Many of you may remember the series Battlestar Galactica. I loved this show, and it is all about cycles. Running from something we have created that follows us like a shadow. Looking for a new home only to create the same thing over again. The prophetic figures would repeat, ‘It has happened before, and it will happen again’. The show didn’t offer much hope that things could change except for the rift between androids and humans disappearing, which perhaps speaks to the ability for relationships to transform.
When we work together in therapy, we often identify how we repeat our past as it comes up in the present. Let’s look at a client’s experience to see how this can happen.
A client’s experience
I would not be surprised if you recognized yourself in this client’s example. This is a cycle of parental identification and self-hatred.
My client, we will call her Beth, grew up with a mother who had bipolar struggles, which resulted in a roller coaster of emotional reactions to the people in her life. Her mother’s emotional struggles with depression, resentment, and hostility towards others were difficult to deal with. Beth became what we refer to as a parentified child. That is, she became focused on taking care of her mother and managing her mother’s emotional struggles. She was not provided with safety, comfort, and encouragement as a child. Beth’s mother could not accept responsibility for her impact on her family and others and saw herself as a victim of those around her. Her mother would often verbally attack Beth’s father, who responded with passivity and endurance to cope. This meant Beth was mediating between her parents, and her father frequently complained to her about her mother.
What did Beth learn from this?
- I don’t matter.
This is a core belief and wound that Beth carried. She learned that she had to put her needs aside and focus on caring for others. - Emotions are bad.
Beth’s experience of her mother’s emotions was negative. There was no resolution to her mother’s struggles, and there was no repair to relationships. She resented her mother’s emotional self-absorption and lack of compassion for others. This made her emotions difficult to connect with positively. - I don’t want to be like my mother.
The experience of her mother filled her with shame and resentment towards her mother, and she was afraid of anyone experiencing her this way. So, anytime Beth experienced herself struggling with depression, sadness, and hurt feelings, this fear would take over. This added to a lack of acceptance of her experiences, feelings and needs. - Relationships are not my choice.
Beth’s focus on meeting other people’s needs and beliefs about not feeling good enough made her vulnerable to relationships that mirrored her relationship with her mother. Beth realized she had never chosen any of her partners but tried to make them fit for her when they didn’t.
Breaking the cycle.
One of the ways Beth’s early experiences repeated was through her fear of being like her mother. So the cycle recurred when:
- She experienced unhappiness.
Beth felt shame – I don’t matter parts, and I don’t want to be like my mother parts, reacted and took over. - This caused her to disconnect from her unhappiness and feelings – Trying to manage the feelings by suppressing them.
- Which results in not working through the struggles and experiences.
- This leads to ongoing depression, anxiety and self-harm that reinforces the fear that I am like my mother.
To move out of this cycle, Beth worked through the many layers and aspects of this cycle to give herself the compassion and self-acceptance she needed as a young child. Once she truly understood and experienced that she was a separate person from her mother, she was able to embrace her feelings and needs as her own, and her depression and anxiety lifted. We can speculate that the separation from identifying with her mother’s experience let go of the shame around her struggles and enabled her to embrace her emotions and desires. When we listen to our feelings and acknowledge our experiences, this is an act of self-acceptance.
The unconscious re-enactment (our trauma cycles) passed contempt from one generation to the next. Beth’s mother focused her contempt on those around her to escape the contempt that was directed at her. Beth focused that contempt on herself to escape the fear of being like her mother.
A few last thoughts about breaking cycles.
Each person’s cycle is going to be unique to them. As we can see from Beth’s example, there are many parts to work through and become aware of within ourselves. It has to start with awareness, which is hard to do on our own when the cycle keeps us unconscious to repetition. In Beth’s example, she repeated her mother’s shame of her emotions and struggles and her fear that she would be like her mother. Which repeated aspects of her mother’s struggle. Bringing awareness to these repetitions by ourselves is very hard, if not impossible.
The power of relationships with others that can see what we can not see can be life-changing.
If this resonates with you and you want to break your cycles, check out our therapists’ availability through our booking system to book an appointment.