What you should know about your parents...

Have you ever thought why parent-children issues areso popular in psychological theories? 

Or why we often marry partners who are similar by character (and sometimes even by appearance) to our parents? 

No less, is it popular in theories as it is more popular in cabinets of psychoanalytic and in friend-to-friend conversations. 

There are some explanations as to why this is so. For example, our parents are the first people we are in contact with in our life, that is why they are important. It’s true, as practical psychologists with more than 15 years of experience  can confirm that most  of our behavioral, mental and emotional habits we develop in early childhood come from the strong influence of our parental environment. But it can’t be the final core explanation, because we can still question- why then are these particular people are our parents?

From a spiritual point of view, nothing is accidental in our life. Everything that happens with us is the perfect plan that our soul made before we were born in our body in this lifetime. And this plan has as a main purpose and many lessons, which we have to learn.  These lessons always lead to a main goal- to make our soul overcome negative traits and become better. Much of the research about reincarnation confirm this and we can consider it as a very high possibility. So taking that into account, we can see that we choose before we are born into this life, who our parents will be and in which family and circumstances we will come to experience.

But again, how do we choose them? Will they be the best and most comfortable people for us? Will they be someone who will give us the most support?? What are the criteria? It’s all about our "individual developmental plan" - they are people (actually souls) who can help us learn our main lessons. They are the ones who will best trigger our fears, negative reactions, who will be the best players in our game of life and who will be the best creators for our spiritual environment. It’s all about making your life purposeful and meaningful from a spiritual point of view. 

For example, if your main life lesson is to set clear boundaries, you most probably will have parents who treat you with some level of abuse, push you towards their interests, not supporting yours, always telling you what to do and what to wear, and etc. So it’s all for letting us to take this challenge in early childhood, set boundaries, learn lesson, to go in our spiritual development one step up and become better. But what happens in most of the cases? First, when we are born we don't remember what we planned (this is actually the funniest moment in this quest of life), so we start either allowing them to break our boundaries, or we start blaming or complaining (very often it lasts till late adulthood), and then as soon as we have a chance to run away from them into marriage, we do it! And, voila, we have season two in our movie- our partner is treating us the same way! 

Why? Because our soul thought in advance and created plan B for the case if we don't learn the lessons with our parents and asked another soul or potential partner to come and take over this duty and continue our work.

So if we learn it with our partner,we get a bonus! Happy family life and one more exam passed in our list of marks:) if not? We go to a new marriage and another (and actually some people have more than 5 trials :), or we even attract a boss with the same style, or a best friend who is treating us this way orour kids somehow start repeating our parent’s pattern. And the longer we keep our self from changing ourselves, the more people around us start reminding us about this initial lesson.

So, what can we do?

1. Ask yourself, what are the most important challenges in communication with my parents now or were in childhood? What was the most difficult for me to do? What was bothering me the most in their behavior? Identify what they pushed you to learn? What could you do differently to change it?

2. Reflect on your relationships with people around you. Do u see the same pattern? What if you try now that new behavior? Will it change the situation? Is there any chance that these challenging people are souls who are reminding you about a lesson and helping you  learn it?

3. If you practice meditation, you can do a simple but very useful one. Close your eyes, breathe deeply preparing yourself for meditation and imagine yourself in front of your parents. Look at them, into their eyes, smile at them and ask respectfully: "Dear father, what was the lesson you tried to teach me?" and  listen for the answer. "Dear mother, what was the lesson your soul tried to teach me?" and listen to the answer. Whatever appears in your mind, listen to it. You can reflect on that and analyze it later on. Then after you heard what they told you or what appeared in your mind, look at them with the smile, bow with respect and gratitude and say Thank you.

This practice helped a lot of my clients to see their relationship with their parents and identify life lessons. You can practice it several times and just meet them in your mind with bow, smile and gratitude can help you grow spiritually, because by accepting their role in your spiritual growth you can see the big picture of your life and become aware of your life lessons.