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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about transitioning into your own person while changing your relationship with your parents as an adult.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Graves Model Podcast
- Graves Level 3 – Red: Warlord
- Usually, people enter this transition in teen years.
- Some people have a truncated experience with Graves 3, so they may still have an attachment to parents that isn’t healthy.
- On the other extreme, a person can experience Graves 3 so strongly that they have permanently severed their relationship with their parents.
- At some point, we make the transition where we no longer have to be a dependent.
- Girls – Lena Dunham
- Rebellion starts to wane as we reach adulthood and our relationship with our parents will often shift again to a healthier place.
- Parents may not want the relationship to change.
- A person’s dependency on parent’s worldview may not always be financial; it may be ideological.
- DNA level programming tells us to rely on our parents for safety and instruction, which is why a parent’s betrayal is so painful.
- We pass on our DNA to our children, but we also pass on our ego. Our expression of who we are.
- The ego itself wants to live. People put their names on buildings, gravestones, children.
- We download all of our BS into the pristine little hard drives of our children.
- We are programmed to seek our parents, and our parents are programmed to download their egos into us.
- Cords can tie us to our parents, and our attempt to separate can cause some resistance.
- Add in ideologies where your parents taught you a specific belief system, and it becomes a more significant burden to the next generation.
- Stephen Covey’s Dependency Model:
- Dependence – complete reliance
- Independence – Zero reliance
- Inter-dependence – contextual reliance
- As children, we are extremely dependent upon our parents.
- As we grow older, we become more independent.
- As we mature, we begin to value the relationship we have with our parents, as peers.
- Cord Cutting podcast
- The more idyllic a childhood, the more likely someone will crave the safety that came with their Graves 2 experience.
- Such an adult can find it hard to generate safety from within, so when a parent dies the adult child feels unsafe.
- A non-idyllic childhood could look like a child’s neverending need for approval. Followed by resentment after realizing their childhood was colored by their parent’s choices.
- When you have an unhealthy relationship with your parents, your connection to them can be profound.
- Find the peace within yourself.
- It’s incredible how much our parents can still influence and trigger us no matter how old we get.
- This may come down to how we make peace with immortality.
- We know they are trying to infuse their ego on us.
- Make peace with your parent’s death.
- Let go of the responsibility that you have to keep their memory and attachments alive.
- Are you keeping traditions alive because of a sense of responsibility to your parents?
- It’s okay that an ego dies. Express your ego in your way. Live your life.
- Make a list with your parent’s names at the top.
- List their core values.
- Write down your core values.
- Compare and contrast the two lists.
- You don’t have any responsibility to your parent’s frame of reference – especially if they weren’t very good parents.
- Most people try to improve upon the way they were raised.
- You aren’t stuck in your point of origin. It doesn’t define your future.
- All the stuff you were looking for from your parents is actually within you.
- Real parenting is preparation. Teaching the child to be an autonomous human being.
- Take your power back.
- The true definition of peace with your parents is forgiving them then realizing there is nothing to forgive. They did their best.
- Find the power within you to get the needs met that were missing during childhood.
- You will know you have healed when there is no more resentment or blame.
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12 comments
Thanks for the podcast, this gave me a lot of food for thought. I’m 24, and my relationship with my mother has always been strained. I really identified with what you said about her trying to do one better than her parents did – I think she tried to make up for a fairly neglected childhood by being over-involved in mine, consequently making her angry at every decision I made she didn’t like, and very controlling to I feel an emotionally abusive level (putting me down, often calling me lazy, selfish, pathetic, etc in an attempt to make me do what she wants, and then calling me overly sensitive if I try to call her out on it). This even happened in our most recent disagreement, over my choice of partner (a great guy, I’ve only gotten positive reviews from everyone else in my life). Now, I know objectively that I’m none of these things – I’m actually starting medical school in a couple of weeks. But I still crave her approval, and when she tells me these things, though I no longer believe them boy does it make me unhappy. I think that to cut the chord I need to let go of the need for her to accept who I am and my choices, and my desperation for her to just even one time approve who I am, not who she wants me to be. This is further complicated though by the fact that, though I’ve been financially independent for a couple of years, I’m going back under my parents support as they’re paying for my school (they’re quite affluent, this isn’t a hard thing for them to do). Is this return to financial dependence a bad idea though? I also have the option of student loans. The emotional stuff I’m working on, but I’m already noticing a regression with this change in dynamic. Please advise, I’m really conflicted.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
They #$#@ you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were #$#@-ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
We don’t actually fully skip a level, but we can have a very truncated experience with the level and leave it without picking up all of its lessons and gifts. When this happens we generally have to revisit it at Graves 6 (Green).
A
The point about people skipping Graves Level 3 is really interesting to me. Thinking about it, I skipped right from 2 to 4 at about the age of 11/12/13ish. I personally never saw my parents as people to rebel against, so maybe that’s part of the reason I skipped it. Or it could be that I just didn’t really think any “rebellious teenager” activities seemed appealing and just wanted to read. I wonder how common skipping levels is and how it impacts people. Maybe an interesting potential podcast topic? I’m fairly new to this particular model, so I don’t know how much content could be made out of it.
Thank you for this podcast, it has given me more language for what I have been experiencing with my parents. I’m 33 and for the past 3 years I have been cutting the cord or separating out from them. This has meant acknowledging that my parents were abusive to me as a child. This is not easy or straight forward as it requires forgiving myself first and foremost and seeing that I didn’t deserve it, as well as realising that I don’t have to agree with or adhere to their worldviews. It’s like stepping out of a cult – it’s been unsettling but overwhelmingly it has provided relief which is very telling that it’s the right thing to do. Learning I’m an INFJ has also enabled me to build an identity I didn’t feel I had before which isn’t based around their needs, but mine.
I really relate to the issues around a co-dependent relationship. I’ve experienced a huge backlash from my parents since I started separating out which has really highlighted how they use me to get their needs met. At times its been quite shocking. This podcast has shown me I still have a way to go but I’m on the right path. I’ve craved being received and listened to by them, but sadly they simply don’t have the capacity for that. I’m going to have to go it alone and learn to do this for myself. I love the idea of a cord-cutting ceremony. Ever since Donnie Darko came out, I’ve always felt my cord is like Donnie Darko’s – more like a vortex that sucks me in. I’m intrigued to see how I will cut it – but I definitely need some INFJ time to mull this one over first!
Thank you again, this has given me lots of food for thought ?