Amy Consulting
I don't know if I have any mental illness.
I have been working for several years, and I only return home once a year during the Spring Festival. I usually rarely call home, I basically don't think about my parents, and WeChat doesn't like to reply. Parents and grandparents have a very bad relationship, sometimes parents call, and finally it always turns into bad things about grandparents, or into accusations against me, as soon as I say it, I can't stop at all, I can't try to fork the topic, it's very uncomfortable to listen to; Sometimes it's hard to talk on the phone, but I feel so embarrassed that I can't say anything at all.
My parents were disappointed with my attitude of not caring about them, and often called to teach me to be filial to them. But in fact, I give them living expenses every month, and I will also buy them gifts on birthdays and holidays. It's just that I haven't become a little padded jacket that all joys, angers and sorrows share with them, and can't say sweet words that make them happy, isn't this filial piety?
Sometimes they ask: Every time they send you a message, you are like a mud cow into the sea, and there is no news, are you really that busy? Don't you miss us at all? They thought I was selfish and cold, and I was even more disgusted. Occasionally I miss them, but I just don't want to connect, I can't get close to them, and I don't want to talk to them about anything. Although every time I think of the day when I can't get back when they get old, I feel a little sad and helpless.
When I was a child, I was lived with my grandfather, and when I was in junior high school, I was picked up by my parents, when they had a bad relationship, quarreled every day, always saying that the other party was not, and the family was full of chicken feathers. My parents were both controlling and harsh on me, often cold and violent, scolded even when I was sick, and never felt their care and affirmation. Fortunately, I started living on campus after high school, and I went home every weekend with great reluctance and helplessness. Universities chose to go to schools out of town, also in order to escape them from afar. When I was in school, I rarely wanted to contact my parents, and it was annoying to make phone calls.
Sometimes when chatting with friends, I learned that they have a very good relationship with their parents, and each call can last up to 1 hour. I was surprised and envious, and I didn't know how they did it, but I didn't want to try to change the situation, I thought it was easier.
But my parents always wanted me to contact them more and get closer to them. I'm resistant, can't do it, what should I do?
Chief psychological counselor Li Jianxue teacher, interpreted
People who were not close to their parents when they were children are difficult to be close to their parents when they grow up, which is not selfish and cool, but has internal psychological reasons.
Parents who want to be close to you, complain that you are not close to them, you want to be close to them but are afraid of their closeness, which is an intimacy disorder. As a child, when you need to be close to your parents, you are treated indifferently, or attacked or hurt, which makes you have a shadow in your heart.
Human instinct is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and these unpleasant memories and traces make you afraid to get close to them, and over time form obstacles to this relationship.
01
How do intimacy barriers form?
On the one hand, it stems from the fact that in the early growth process, parents do not give their children good companionship and timely loving responses, children and parents do not establish a secure attachment relationship, and children will develop ambivalent or avoidant attachment styles.
● Secure attachment relationship is – I think you are a good mom who wants to be with you and doesn't want to leave you, and I don't want you to leave me. (Parents are able to give their children an immediate loving response.) )
● Ambivalent attachment relationship is - I don't think you are a good mother, but I can't do without you, but I hate you when you are around. (Parents sometimes care about their children, sometimes they don't care about their children, and the response is intermittent.) )
● Avoidant attachment relationships are – I feel like I hate my mom, I don't want to be with you, I'm having fun alone. (Parents are alienated and indifferent, often ignoring the emotional needs of the child, then the child avoids the need for attachment so that he does not feel pain.) )
On the other hand, it stems from the parents' own early attachment relationship that has not been handled well. They also did not develop secure attachment relationships.
When parents have a good early attachment relationship, in many ways they can naturally establish a connection with their children's feelings.
If parents are ambivalent attachmentists, when they are attached to their children, they will turn their children as parents, on the one hand, they need their children to care more about him and greet him, and on the other hand, they attack, accuse, and complain about their children.
Parents seem to be attacking you, but they are actually attacking their own parents, just empathizing with you.
In the face of such parents, many children have accumulated a lot of emotions in their hearts, feel very depressed and angry, and do not know how to deal with the relationship with their parents.
02
What should we do in the face of this situation?
1. Express and release your emotions
Seeing and acknowledging our emotions of love, hate, anger, anxiety, fear, etc. towards our parents, and dealing with these emotions, is the beginning of the road to self-healing.
Dealing with emotions does not mean yelling directly at your parents in real life. But you can release your emotions through self-catharsis, talking to someone you trust, or through professional psychological counseling.
Accept parents and understand that they have their limitations
When we come out of the negative emotions, we can use the mentality of an adult to re-look at all the reasons why your parents were unable to get close to you at that time, and re-understand the events of childhood.
It turns out that parents also have a bad childhood, they are not bad, not that they do not love you, but they did not establish a good attachment relationship in the early years, could not be close to their children, and did not know how to love their children, so there are obstacles in the relationship between them and their parents, and there will be obstacles with their children.
In many ways, they themselves do not have the ability to deal with their feelings and emotions well, they do not have the ability to be themselves and live a good life, but they may not realize that they have made great mistakes in the way they treat their children, which has brought great harm to their lives and hearts.
For example, they are cold and violent to you, probably because they were treated like this when they were children, so they lack the ability to love, and they don't even love themselves; They discipline you strictly and never affirm you, because they want you too much to keep you from the detours they once did, well-intentioned, but clumsy in expression?
The personality of the parents is already stereotyped and does not change easily, and perhaps until the day the parents leave, they will not admit their mistakes, or they will not think that their behavior is wrong at all.
Neither parents nor themselves are secure attachment relationships, acknowledging the fact that there are obstacles to intimacy. This cannot be resolved in the short term, especially if parents are unlikely to change. What we have to do is to accept that we had such experiences in our early years and accept that we had such parents.
When you understand your parents' own limitations and flaws, your inner child can be relieved and accepted. When you let go of your expectations, you are letting go of yourself and truly reconciling with them from the heart.
3. Maintain appropriate boundaries
Healthy parent-child relationships in adults should be premised on reasonable boundaries.
Especially when parents are ambivalent attachment styles, it is precisely necessary to keep the right distance from them.
Being too intimate leads to conflict and makes it even more unpleasant. Proper distance, increased security boundaries, and easier time with each other.
Keeping a distance from your parents and respecting each other is not only to maintain freedom in life and study, but also in career and marriage choices, but also requires you to be able to support yourself and not ask your family for excessive help.
You can give enough material care, set aside a certain amount of time to visit during the New Year holidays, and usually keep in touch and greet through WeChat, telephone, message and other ways. Be there for parents when they are sick and needy.
Although we envy other people's safe relationships, we need to accept and accept our current situation, and only true acceptance will bring about relationship change.
4. Self-healing
While you can't ask your parents to change, you can change it yourself. How to repair yourself?
You can get along with yourself and love yourself in the way you want your parents to treat you. Some girls will buy a doll and take it as their own love and care, give themselves good companionship, and compensate for themselves.
As adults, we can reshape our attachment relationships through a good marriage, having children, or establishing a professional relationship with a counselor.
In a good marriage, marrying a secure attachment partner may change your attachment style, constantly absorb some safe responses from your partner, and you gradually deal with your insecure feelings.
When raising your own children after marriage, treating the children as your own and giving them full companionship and love is also a good repair for yourself.
In a good and stable psychological counseling relationship, the counselor can respond to you in a different way than your mother, and through a period of interaction, you can change the attachment pattern that you were not comfortable with before, and redevelop a new model that is better and safer.
When you repair yourself internally, your heart is more stable and peaceful, although your parents are still that parent, when they accuse, attack, and complain again, you will have the strength to resolve it.
What's more, by breaking through the barriers to intimacy, you can enjoy a pleasant relationship and a good parent-child relationship.
Li Jianxue
・Hear about it, chief expert of the Psychological Counseling Center
Member of the Professional Committee of Psychological Counselors of Guangdong Mental Health Association
Senior Marriage Counselor
Senior Family Education Instructor
Psychosexual counselor
Senior hypnotist