Podcast - Episode 0244 - Making Peace With Your Parents (Part 2)

46 comments

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  • Angela
  • September 25, 2018 at 3:05 am

  Antonia, I want to just say thank you so much for the last two episodes! There must be something going on in the universe or you and I must be on the same wave frequenc. I had almost an identical experience over the past month.

  My father was going into emergency surgery and found out he has cancer. After having an estranged relationship with him for most of my adult life, I went to the hospital and tried to play the role of the good daughter. Not because I needed an attagirl girl but because I truly love my father and wanted to show kindness. My act of kindness was a disruptor for him. He was distressed by my presence and my unwillingness to conform to the expectations that he has for my life. He ended up telling me to leave him alone. In that this wasn’t his first time telling me to leave him alone, it was the time where I finally felt like I need to accept his request. I need to be respectful.

  Listening to you in the last two episodes was just so affirming for me. I learned so much about what I need to do just by how you handled your situation. It was inspiring. By the way, you don’t need a perfect ending to inspire others. Thank you for showing us your shine and your sh#t!!

  I would love to have you on my podcast one day to talk about some of these family dynamics. Please consider it.

  Until then, be well!

  www.eshpodcast.libsyn.com

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  • David Pannell
  • September 27, 2018 at 5:19 pm

  Thank you for sharing this. Very powerful! I have deep respect, appreciation, tears, gratitude for your telling the story, and best of all, for having the courage to hang tight with loving-kindness-gratitude. Way to be! Peace and Joy, David.

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  • Vanessa
  • September 25, 2018 at 7:32 pm

  Hi Antonia and Joel.

  I lived kind of same experience you did Antonia 3 years ago when my daughter was born.
  The difference being my parents are not ill.
  I simply couldn’t go through parenthood without having a talk with my mother.

  In my family, we don’t talk. It actually is taboo. I understand why now, my mother ( enneagram 9) not being able to cope with conflict. But me, I’m a talker ( 36, woman, ENFJ, Enneagram 3 by the way).
  Long story short, I went alone, on a sunday, full of hope yet soooo scared. And yep, I bang myself against a huge invisible wall I didn’t know existed. So high. Uncrossable, uncrackable.

  My story isn’t exactly similar to yours Antonia, I came back to my parents 6 months after that episode. I wanted my daughter to have grandparents and I knew they wouldn’t make a move towards me. But something was irrevocably broken, I was the troublemaker who endangered their couple equilibrium.
  In the end, I feel like that was it. I sort of lost my mother that day. She is here yet I started a grieving process since.
  I also felt stupid, not listened to because screamed at ( by my dad ) like a child, and consequently not really loved.
  And even though I know unhappiness prevents you from being able to love or give love, I never thought I would feel it that strongly, and from my own mother.

  Three years after, I feel the benefit of it was to actually free myself from the need I had to have a good relationship with my parents. I respect them deeply and I love them. But I now feel like they don’t really count anymore. Not in a I don’t care about them way, more in a “that’s it I’m done wasting energy on them” way. That was my closure.
  I’m an EJ and I finally gave up on trying to control my relationship with my parents ( FIRM podcast ). It’s not fulfilling and it’s clearly shallow but that’s ok. And if I understood it well, it seams to me like you as an EP felt the irrepressible need to free yourself from this image your parents had about you.

  In the end, I might still be sad about it, but I feel stronger. In a personal growth sens, It’s an achievement for me to be able to let go of this relationship.

  I realize this is not a very positive comment but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

  And thank you for your amazing work and your authenticity ! I hope you’ll come to France to visit one day. I’m sure you have listeners apart from me and my husband here in Paris, we’d love a personality hacker meeting here too! :D

  Bien à vous,
  Vanessa

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  • Ash
  • September 25, 2018 at 1:25 am

  This whole podcast was so eerily relevant to me in such profound ways, I feel profoundly grateful right now. To have it all articulated in ENTP (that’s five or six years further down the road than me) kind of has me undone at the moment. This podcast was my Hodor scene, and I am SO grateful, Antonia. Maybe someday I’ll buy you a gratitude coffee. Your honest voice “in my life” means more to me than I can express.

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  • BM
  • September 25, 2018 at 7:20 pm

  Antonia, really painful, yet now the lines are clear and a “chapter is closed”. Your gift to them and to yourself is profound.

  The memes at play here are not just memes. It is a mixture of ‘value memes’, psychological issues (shadows), social belonging / group think, interpersonal issues (codependence, “contracts”), and ego developmental stage. In some sense there is no penetrating a system that is so overdetermined.

  I have been engaging with Terri O’Fallon’s “STAGES” developmental model which is the most integrative model I’ve seen. It recognizes and honors shadows/traumas at lower stages and how some people really root into one developmental level having created their identities and relationships around that. To differentiate and “think for oneself” is a later stage from the conformity/belonging stage. That transition is sometimes never made psychologically, especially if the cultural field is at odds with that.

  Glad you are finding closure and completion.