Don’t really enjoy spending time with your parents, even though they aren’t terribly unkind in any obvious ways? This is why, and how to improve your relationship.
“If you think you’re enlightened, go and spend a week with your family” I love this quote from Ram Das and to me it speaks to the challenging dynamics so many of us encounter with our nearest and dearest. Whilst we might perform out in the world ‘relatively’ effortlessly when it comes to relationships, sometimes when we return to the roost, things aren’t quite as straight forward. Sometimes challenges with parental relationships can have deep roots, and traumatic early childhood experiences can certainly impact on our ability to communicate well with our parents.
For many of us there may not necessarily be anything particularly traumatic or significant that we can put our finger on, but rather we just don’t have the flow and ease with our parents that we’d like. They are actually loving, and supportive, and absolutely not ‘toxic’ in any obvious ways. So why might you not like to spend time with them, and how to stop them from getting under your skin?
Please note: at any time in this article that I mention ‘parent(s)’, I mean primary care-givers, guardians, etc in whatever shape or form.
If you’ve ever had an uncomfortable feeling at the prospect of visiting your parents, maybe even a slight sense of dread, an awareness that you don’t enjoy their company perhaps as much as you do your friends and carving out time for them feels like a necessary chore rather than a joy… reading this will help.
Understand Why your parents get under your skin
Dread meeting your parents beforehand, or feel down for a while afterwards? This is why.
The dynamics we experience with our parents or primary caregivers often evoke a unique intensity of emotion, distinct from our interactions with other adults. This is because our relationships with our parents aren't simply interactions between adults; they are deeply rooted in our childhood experiences. When a friend or colleague irritates us, we can often dismiss it with relative ease. A bit like ‘water of a duck’s back’. However, similar interactions with our parents can trigger a much deeper response, transporting us back to childhood in both mind and body. In these moments, we unconsciously revert to the role we played as children. This "inner child" emerges, influencing our emotional state and causing our usual adult coping mechanisms, such as assertiveness or relaxed demeanour, to recede. We may feel vulnerable and reactive, much like a child again.
This regression can manifest in various ways, depending on our childhood experiences. Perhaps we were rebellious, consistently compliant, or perhaps we disengaged from our surroundings. Regardless of the specific role, our parents or caregivers often unconsciously resume their corresponding roles, which might involve being overly nurturing, overbearing, controlling, or critical. The established childhood dynamic resurfaces, and as adults, we might find ourselves feeling emotionally manipulated, undermined, criticized, or disempowered.
The Parent-Adult-Child (PAC) Model from Transactional Analysis provides a framework for understanding these complex interpersonal dynamics. Further information on the PAC Model can be found here:
“ I believe this topic is incredibly relatable for a lot of people. Especially when parents start to get older and we become aware that we might not have huge amount of time left with them on this earth…”
Karin Peeters
Understanding the dynamic with our parents - a coaching exercise to explore
I find it can be helpful to have a balanced perspective and one of the ways I encourage my clients to explore this is a simple coaching exercise that you can do for yourself in a few minutes, or perhaps a little longer if you’d like to reflect more deeply. You might want to do a separate one for each of your primary care givers in turn.
Step One: Draw a circle on a piece of paper and divide it in two, a vertical line from the top to the bottom, so you've got a left and a right side with space around the circle to write too.
Step Two: Inside the right side of the circle write everything that you really like about your parent or caregiver. Capture everything that you appreciate about them that you see in them that you admire, all the positive qualities, their character traits, their personality, everything you love about them.
Step Three: Inside the left side of the circle capture all their character traits, characteristics, ways of behaving that you don’t like, that you find uncomfortable or get under your skin. Write down everything that you find challenging about them.
Step Four: Outside of the circle on the right hand side, write down the impact that these positive qualities have on you. How does it make you feel, what goes through your mind?
Step Five: Outside the left side of the circle write down all the ways those challenging and tricky behaviours impact you. Again, how does it make you feel, what goes through your mind?
For example, your parents might always pick you up at the train station when you visit them (inside circle on right side), and that makes you feel cared for and welcome (outside of circle on right side).
Maybe a parent interrupts you, speaks a lot, or kind of takes over (inside of left side) and you feel you disappear, neglected, unimportant or that you somehow do not matter (outside the circle on left side).
By reflecting on what is outside of the circle we can start to see more clearly why it might be tricky for us to spend time around our parents. It also gives us some specifics that if we choose to we can tackle it with some tools to invite a different experience for ourselves.
How to effectively communicate with parents?
Depending on how open-minded your parents are, you might be able to bring up what the impact of their behaviour is on you. This can be done by this step-by-step approach, based on Non-Violent Communication, which is based on the following four steps. The first step is I notice. The second step is I feel, the third step is I need, and the fourth step is I request. Here is an example of how that might sound like.
“I noticed that when I’m speaking my sentences get interrupted”. [Step one is ‘I notice’, and a factual statement of what is happening.]
“As a consequence I haven’t spoken very much since I arrived, and I feel a little bit redundant. It makes me feel that I might as well not actually be here. I feel sad and left out of the conversation”. [That's the second step, ‘I feel’.]
“I need to feel included in this conversation and get a sense that I belong. I value sharing what's on my heart with you. I like to feel close to you”. [This is step three, expressing our values and our unmet emotional needs.]
“I would appreciate it if you ask me about how I am, and give me more space to speak. Could you please wait for me to finish speaking before you jump in, so I feel heard?” [Make step four a tangible, actionable, very specific behaviour request.]
Curious how non-violent communication by Marshall Rosenberg can help you improve the dialogue with your parents (or other dear ones), then you’ll love this blog post:
should I see a therapist to improve my relationship with my parents?
Trauma can feel like water dripping on a rock, eventually eroding the stone…
I often get asked whether tricky dynamics with the parents is something we should be taking to therapy. Because there hasn’t necessarily been a deep trauma, at times it can feel like an exaggeration to want therapy for it. This is my vision:
We can think of trauma with a capital T, those hugely traumatic events that leave us clearly impacted and shaken. And if this is the case for you then I would absolutely recommend therapeutic support to tend to those wounds.
There's also a very subtle form of trauma and the way that is often described is that it's like water dripping on a rock, and if that drop by drop, by drop, by drop, on that rock continues for long enough, actually the rock erodes. Sometimes we can think we've actually had a really nice childhood and our parents are good people, and we know they did their best. And yet there are some really painful, deep feelings that you’re carrying inside of you. Even though every single little experience was just like a drop of water, and if somebody would witness it, they might not even make much out of it, but if that has been an ongoing experience around our parents, it could have really caused a wounding.
So if you recognise yourself in that description, it can be really helpful to have that acknowledged by a professional, to really acknowledge that this has actually caused wounding, which can be healed.
We can feel a little bit like it's not allowed to feel unhappy around our parents, or to feel affected by them, especially when they're good people, and they've done their best, and we have lots of love for them in our hearts.
It can feel disloyal, or gossipy, or that we're supposed to feel grateful and respect them, so it can be quite ambivalent, to have these unpleasant feelings towards them. And to go to therapy might evoke an inner dialogue that sounds something like “I haven't had such a bad experience, I'm not really entitled to feel like this. Other people have had much worse childhoods”. I’d like to say to you, whatever you are feeling is absolutely valid, you don’t have to justify to yourself or anyone else why those feelings are there and it’s not always helpful to compare our pain with the suffering of others. How you feel is how you feel, and it probably to bigger or lesser extend affects other relationships and your overall joy in life.
If we can meet ourselves with compassion, and reach out for support to understand, process and heal the roots of those feelings I believe it is absolutely possible to have warm, loving and enjoyable relationships as empowered and authentic adults in the world… including with our parents.
If you’d appreciate exploring how Coaching & Therapy can help you improve the relationship with your parents, please leave your details here for a free Discovery Call:
How do we balance being loving towards our parents with our own need for happiness?
Is therapy just about blaming your parents?
Healing from childhood experiences often involves a process of self-discovery and self-compassion. It's important to understand that exploring these experiences in therapy isn't about assigning blame. Rather, it's a deeply personal journey of connecting with your inner child – that part of yourself that holds the memories and emotions of your childhood. This act of self-care is a profound gift, focusing on your own experience and how it has shaped you. Therapy provides a safe space to acknowledge the impact of past events, express those feelings, and develop healthy coping mechanisms for navigating challenging family dynamics as an adult.
As you delve into this work, you may experience a range of emotions, including anger or a temporary desire to distance yourself from your parents. You might also feel the need to have difficult conversations with them. While these feelings are valid, the ultimate goal of therapy is two-fold: personal well-being and, where possible, improved family relationships. In some cases, if parental figures are unwilling to acknowledge their role or engage in the process of change, maintaining distance or limiting contact might be necessary for your own well-being. However, when parents are open-minded and willing to engage, therapy can often lead to greater understanding and much improved relationships.
Over time, as you nurture your inner child in therapy, you may find yourself less reactive to parental interactions. You can begin to relate to your parents more from your adult self, rather than being pulled back into childhood patterns. This process may also lead to a deeper curiosity about your parents' own life stories. Exploring their experiences as individuals, separate from their role as parents, can foster compassion and understanding. Tools like genograms can be helpful in tracing family patterns and exploring potential inter-generational trauma. By understanding their upbringing and the challenges they faced, you can gain a broader perspective and perhaps even recognize cycles that you wish to consciously shift in your own life.
The journey of healing and growth ultimately aims to bring greater kindness and understanding, both towards yourself and, where possible, towards your parents.
While exploring these issues might evoke feelings of disloyalty towards your parents, it's essential to remember that therapy is not about blaming your parents. It's about understanding the impact of past experiences on your life, and developing self-compassion. Ultimately, the goal is to heal, grow, and see your parents, and yourself, with greater kindness and understanding.
