How to work through grievances against parents, how to stop thinking and remembering injustice or lack of love in childhood?
We will talk about all this today in this article. And if you want to take the question “How to work through grievances against parents” seriously, then I will meet your expectations and share super useful information so that you can forgive your parents and move on with your life.
Let me introduce myself a little so that you take the information seriously. My name is Natalia Gnezdilova, I am a psychologist. Almost 15 years of experience.
How to work through grievances against parents?
Why is working with grievances considered one of the most difficult?
Because when we talk about grievances, we affect a person’s worldview. Worldview, feeling, values are located deep in the inner world, which we often are not aware of.
And if you are already an adult, then the events that happened in childhood influenced your worldview, and resentment or a sense of injustice has become ingrained in your character and in your views on the world and others.
Working through grievances against your parents is complicated by the fact that they are relatives, they gave birth to you, and according to all the laws of society, they must care and love.
But unfortunately, it is not customary for us to take maternity and paternity exams, and therefore, sometimes people become parents who are completely unable to love and care for their children.
Resentment towards parents most often comes from childhood or adolescence. This is the most vulnerable part of any person's life. As a child, we do not have the opportunity to influence others in any way, and therefore we have to obey against our desires.
Resentment is a feeling that arises in response to someone's unfair treatment of us. But it is especially painful when the closest people do not treat the child well enough.
I don’t want to go into details of possible grievances, I’m sure that you can already list on your fingers why and what you’re offended by?
Is it necessary to forget grievances?
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The situation has already passed, but the experience of this very resentment remains with you for a long time, sometimes even for life.
Emotions have their own cycle, they first increase, then reach a peak, discharge occurs and the emotions go away. But there are feelings that have no end point.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that you are offended by another person, but you yourself suffer. This leads to a depressed state of mind, depression, depression. It often becomes the cause of various psychosomatic diseases.
Resentment can destroy even the strongest relationships. It does not allow you to look at yourself and other people objectively. You dwell on the past, and this prevents you from living here and now.
Since resentment causes only problems, the answer to the question of whether it should be forgotten seems obvious. But there is a big catch in it - it is impossible to forget the insult. To forget it means to psychologically displace it, to put it in a distant drawer. But everything that is put away can be retrieved at any time.
This happens when a wife, during a quarrel with her husband, takes out all her insults that he inflicted on her a year or ten years ago and presents them to him. This, of course, makes him feel guilty, but gives her the opportunity to win the argument.
Therefore, forgetting a grudge is an unproductive strategy. From a psychological point of view, the offense must not be forgotten, but worked through. This is the only way she will disappear from your life. But before doing this, it is important to understand what kind of offense you have.
What working methods are there to work through resentment towards parents?
During my life, I have come across many different methods, meditations, practices for working with grievances, but there are practically no ones that really work.
On the one hand, you do the practices, forgive diligently, and at the time of implementation you feel liberated from resentment. But, as soon as it comes to meeting your parents, or they make some remark to you, a storm of emotions immediately flares up inside you, and it turns out that the resentment has not gone away.
Resentment, not some object that is inside you, resentment, cannot just be taken out and taken out.
The feeling of resentment consists of 2 layers:
Layer 1 - your feelings, emotions, thoughts and memories.
Layer 2 is a deeper one, which has a decisive influence on working through feelings of resentment; these are your beliefs about the world and about yourself, in other words, attitudes (programs) for certain behavior, feeling emotions in a given situation.
Any practice only works with the first layer – emotions. To get to the second layer, you need to work with beliefs, you need rethinking, awareness.
Therefore, visualization, speaking words of forgiveness, imagining parents as small children, or working with your inner child do not provide decisive and final forgiveness of parents.
It is difficult to work with beliefs on your own, therefore, you need to contact a specialist so that they can help you discover the attitudes that have a decisive influence on your behavior and feelings.
After all, by and large, when there is a resentment, it has a strong impact on a person’s life, this is both personal and professional life, even the attitude towards oneself, and then it suffers because strong resentments live inside.
Exercise 2 to work through resentment towards parents
Start working with resentment towards your parents by working through your emotions, you need to bring them out, feel them, live them and release them,
What is hidden behind the feeling of resentment?
Most often, this is anger and rage. These feelings are suppressed, they are under great pressure inside you because, once upon a time, you were still a child and did not have the right to express your anger. If there were a lot of grievances, then there was a lot of anger.
Society says that being angry with your parents is bad. And therefore, a child most often does not have the opportunity to feel and live these feelings.
Now that you are an adult, you can recognize and accept these feelings. Thus, you will let them go and you will feel better. You need to become aware of your anger.
What does it mean to be aware of anger?
It's simple, you dive a little into yourself and think about those situations in which grievances arose.
You feel your feeling of anger and say to yourself - yes, I feel all this anger, I feel it, which means it is in me. You need to feel it, it’s an unpleasant feeling, I want to tell you.
You can do an exercise to release anger and any other emotions.
A complete and detailed description of the exercise is in the article “Relieving Emotional Tension”
As I wrote above, by doing this exercise, you will work and release 1 layer - the emotional one. Perhaps, to completely free yourself from anger, you will need to perform the exercise not just once, but 2 or 3, maybe 5 times or more.
How to forgive, or the story of a would-be traveler
Imagine a tourist. He is going on a long-awaited dream trip, smiling to himself. He is waiting for adventure, and adventure is waiting for him. The adventurer puts the things necessary for the journey into his suitcase. The hero is ready to go towards his happiness.
And then the traveler remembers that he always carries with him a heavy backpack with grievances. With such a load, it will be difficult on the way, and the emotions from the upcoming trip may not be so positive. How can you rejoice when you have such a burden behind you?
If you have also had to carry something heavy, then you understand this traveler. Remember, for example, how they dragged bags full of groceries from the store. What were you thinking then? Probably about where is your hallway, counting the steps to the doors? In such situations, it is impossible to think about anything other than the heavy packages in your hands. Especially about happiness. Do you agree?
Now let's return to our hero, who was at a low start towards his dream. What is he doing?
It’s paradoxical, but the would-be traveler sighs heavily, sits down “on the path,” opens that same backpack and puts another insult there - against himself. Yes Yes! Another insult!
Just think about it: he doesn’t throw away anything that prevents him from achieving his goals and moving forward. The hero simply adds another stone to his collection because the dream is not destined to come true again. After all, he is used to collecting stones in his backpack.
The tourist does not shake out the heavy boulders and stones, but continues to collect them - feeling sorry for himself and accumulating grievances. Even if these regrets are an obstacle to your dream. Yes, resentment can become a bad habit.
Well, let's let go of the image of the traveler, wish him to get rid of self-pity and achieve his cherished adventure. Or maybe even a few magical trips.
Now do you understand why a light backpack on your shoulders is cool? Do you already want to make room for bright impressions and happy moments in your backpack? Soon I will share with you the practices of forgiveness of grievances that I successfully use myself.
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.
What do you expect from working through resentment towards your parents?
If you do the exercises that I gave you above, you will feel that there is less negativity inside. But there is still a long way to go until complete recovery.
Now I invite you to think about what will happen to you after you are freed from grievances and can forgive your parents with all your heart?
Answer these questions, or better yet, write them down on paper:
- What will happen to you when you forgive your parents?
- Will your life change in any way after forgiveness?
- How will you feel? What feelings will settle inside you?
- Will your relationship with your parents change?
- Will you treat them differently? How exactly?
- What feelings will arise instead of resentment and anger towards your parents?
These questions definitely need to be answered, is it important for you to imagine what forgiveness itself will give you?
If your grievances against your parents create in you a chronic feeling of a lack of unconditional love, then it is not a fact that forgiveness will give you these feelings.
If my mother doesn't love me, in this article, you will find ways to find unconditional love.
Is there any benefit in resentment?
After thoughts have been recorded on paper, you should evaluate what was written down from the point of view of the existing benefits .
The fact is that it is not only unpleasant for an offended person to experience this feeling, but there are also certain advantages in keeping this offense to himself. Most often, this is a reluctance to take responsibility for what happened , a reluctance to change and solve one’s problems on one’s own.
If there is someone who is responsible for your troubles, on whom you can pin your guilt and resentment, then why do anything yourself in this situation? Let this “villain” fix everything and try to change your life. And your task will be simply to accept or not accept his work in this regard.
That's the easiest way, right?
Easier. But it’s not more effective.
Moreover, this most often does not bring any effect - or even has the opposite effect. The offender does the wrong thing, or does not do what you expect, and becomes an even greater “villain” than before.
You drive yourself into a corner and surround yourself with even greater grievances, growing over them like a head of cabbage with new leaves.
Therefore, you should honestly assess the situation - and, if the offense is really beneficial to you, then accept it and start working with it . Because the offender in this situation - no matter how hard he tries - will remain an offender, and you will still leave this destructive feeling inside you.
How to work through grievances against parents on your own?
I want to talk to you from the position of an adult, and as an adult. My words may seem harsh to you, but they are very true.
If your parents did not love you as a child and offended you, then most likely they could not love, they do not know how to love, which means that no amount of forgiveness will help you.
Your task is to accept the past with all the difficulties, hardships, problems and everything else that happened to you in childhood. Do you understand what I'm talking about?
Accept and leave in the past. The feeling of injustice that you have when thinking about your parents or when comparing with other people must be accepted.
Tell yourself:
- yes, this is my past,
- yes, it was hard for me,
- yes, they didn’t love me and didn’t treat me the way I deserved it, but I survived it all.
Working independently with grievances against parents is very difficult; a small offended child constantly breaks through and switches you to the position of a victim. And you don’t even notice it, and you easily leave the position of an adult. Therefore, it is much faster and easier to work with a psychologist who can bring you back to the here and now.
Your importance
You should describe your manifestations of self-importance.
- I'm upset with her because I secretly expect her to show me attention.
- I deliberately create an image of being offended in order to make others really believe that I am offended, and so that they are guaranteed to show me attention and importance
This is behavior developed and reinforced in childhood. Since childhood, you have become accustomed to creating and cultivating the image of an offended person, which you put on yourself, because you realized that by wearing this image you are more likely to gain attention, support and approval. Your self-esteem is low, so you don’t believe that you can somehow get this attention in another way (again, limiting beliefs. Do you see how everything is intertwined in the psyche?)
- I’m used to being offended that I wasn’t congratulated on my birthday, because a birthday is an important holiday in the life of every person, and if I don’t feel this importance on this day, it’s a devaluation of me and my holiday
Next, write down everything that is important to you regarding the DR.
- It is very important for me to have the attention, acceptance and love of my friends in my birthday
- It is very important for me to be the most important person in my BD
- It is very important for me that everyone loves me on my birthday.
In the process of breaking down the offense into aspects, all sorts of tangents may pop up here and there, such as limiting beliefs that you had not previously noticed in yourself, manifestations of a sense of self-importance, the machinations of the victim, traumas from childhood, etc. At these moments, do not let this valuable material pass by. Take a break from the proposed template, you can always return to it quickly. Everything is intertwined in the subconscious, so you shouldn’t be surprised that at some point something might come out that you hadn’t noticed before.
You can complete the breakdown by listing all the decisions that you made against the backdrop of this resentment.
