Have you noticed that you are re-experiencing childhood feelings in your relationship with your partner? For example, you had a tendency to feel unsupported by your father and this exact same emotional pattern is coming up with your partner lately? Maybe you find yourself constantly criticising your partner, and finding nothing they do is good enough which is exactly how you felt as a child in relation to your mother? Our early experiences with our parents set up the emotional and mental templates that we then relate to the world through.
You may have no memory of these experiences and they are largely unconscious – that is – you don’t even realise they are driving your thoughts, feelings and behaviour. However these powerful patterns do get played out in your most intimate relationships and especially once we come parents ourselves. These patterns coming up are not a sign that there is something wrong with your relationship per se. Rather your intimate relationship with your partner and those early years of becoming a parent are often where these unhealed emotional traumas from your childhood will resurface.
These early emotional experiences with our parents are not necessarily abuse or neglect. However they are generally experiences where some emotional need within you was unmet. These woundings can create the core patterns of feeling unloved or not good enough, which run like a thread through our lives. Some emotional need we had as a child could not be expressed and validated so it got “stuck” in your psyche.
Our early experiences set up the development of our sense of self. Perhaps we learned to be a “good” boy or girl, in order to get the love we needed. We may also have felt that we needed to be smart, funny or clever in order to feel loved or good enough. Invariably these ways of being become limiting in our adult relationships and when we become parents ourselves, we may find ourselves projecting these emotional patterns onto our partners or even our children. As a relationship counsellor, I will often have clients come in who left their last relationship due to a particular issue, only to find that it is coming up again in their current relationship. History will repeat itself if you don’t get the right kind of support to help you take the necessary steps to change the pattern.
As a psychotherapist and relationship counsellor I support you to heal the wounds of your childhood and put them in the past, where they belong. This means that these patterns no longer need to create problems within your present relationship with your partner and that you need not play them out with your children either. By no longer carrying these emotional patterns, you are free to create the relationship you want wth your partner and children.
If your inner child is being a bit naughty and causing havoc in the relationship, it may be best to reach and get the support you need now. Contact me and let’s talk before it breaks.
