When we reach adulthood and start to spread our wings it can be wonderful to think that the world is our oyster and that, for the first time in our life, we have autonomy and freedom.
For anyone who had a stable, nurturing, and loving start to life, spreading the proverbial wings can be exciting and satisfying. It’s quite normal for there to be hiccups along the way (break-ups, difficulty finding the right job, or difficulties managing money for instance) but for people who were brought up to have a strong feeling of self-worth and sense of self, they can navigate life (with some help and support from the right places).
For those who didn’t have such a stable and nurturing childhood, however, their freedom can be tainted by forces and patterns that feel out of their control. This could include constantly having issues in the workplace, having a string of unsatisfying relationships, experiencing mental health issues such as depression or anxiety without being sure why, or simply not understanding who they are or what they want to do with their lives. It is important to stress that this is not their fault. When these issues are down to the patterns that have taken hold in childhood, we have no way of knowing what these patterns are or what to do about them. After all, the status quo when they were growing up was normal to them and they had nothing else to compare it to. It is possible to go on for decades, or even a lifetime, without knowing that they could be doing things differently.
The good news is that it is possible to identify and start to change these patterns. If this resonates with you, read on to find out more about why these patterns have taken hold, what the patterns might be, and what can be done about them.
Why do these patterns form?
Unhelpful patterns that start in childhood and lead to distress in adulthood usually take hold because they helped you to survive as a child. When you are little and you rely on your family to take care of you, you have a natural drive to do what is required to be kept in the family and for the family to be as stable as it possibly can be. These measures might include sacrificing parts of yourself, supressing your true emotions, or taking on roles and responsibilities that are not right for you.
What might these patterns be?
People pleasing
People pleasing is a common pattern and it is important to differentiate people pleasing from kindness. Kindness to others shouldn’t hurt you. Kindness means helping people out because you want to and can do so. People pleasing, on the other hand, can be detrimental because by pleasing others you might sacrifice things that are important to you.
People pleasing can start in childhood for a variety of reasons. For example, if there were caregivers or people around you who got angry when you tried to say what you wanted or needed you may have learned that getting your needs met wasn’t safe, so you withdrew from trying to get your needs met. Another example could be that messages or beliefs in a family were passed down to you. For example, you may have learned that it was a woman’s role to please others, so you lived and breathed this message.
People pleasing may have helped you to survive your family life and for your family remain more intact that it might have done otherwise. However, when you become an adult in your own right it doesn’t serve you. You may wonder why you never get your needs met and why you always seem to be dancing to other people’s tune and never your own. You may not realise that small sacrifices that you make every day slowly ebb away at your sense of self.
Playing small
When you were a child, you might have learned to play small in order not to take up too much space. It could be because you were surrounded by big personalities and you felt there wasn’t enough space for you, or it could be because there was so much chaos that it felt unsafe to add to it in any way. Alternatively, there may have been messages like ‘children should be seen and not heard’. Not surprisingly this can lead to treading your way through life very lightly and finding it difficult to speak up or go for the things that you want.
Like there being a difference between kindness and people pleasing, there is also a difference between being quiet or introverted and playing small. Being quiet or introverted doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t make an impact or go for the things that we want. Playing small, on the other hand, does suggest this.
Struggling with self-expression and managing emotions
If you were discouraged from displaying your emotions as a child or even told that emotions were bad, it isn’t surprising that you might find it difficult to express yourself and manage your emotions as an adult. Examples of having your emotions stifled as a child might include being told that ‘boys don’t cry’ or ‘it isn’t right for girls to get angry’.
When you have your emotions stifled as a child, you may discover that it is safer not to feel them and you might become numb to them. This may be sustainable in the short term, but it can cause issues when you get older such as low mood or other mental health or emotional issues. It may even cause physical distress such as poor digestion, headaches or difficulty sleeping.
Perfectionism
If you were constantly pushed and told to do better by your parent(s), this may lead to perfectionist tendencies. Most of the time parents who do this think that they are helping their child, not realising the long-term detrimental impact this approach can have.
Many of us know, theoretically, that perfection isn’t possible but when we are a perfectionist we strive for the perfect, often without even realising it. This can become debilitating in education, work, relationships, and even hobbies.
Self-criticism
We all have an inner critic, and, in fact, it probably wouldn’t be great if we all ran around believing we are wonderful and right all the time. It can become a problem, however, when the inner critic takes up too much headspace. This can happen if you were repeatedly told as a child that you weren’t good enough. This might be by parents, other family members, or teachers. Self-criticism can result in anxiety and never going for the things that you want because you believe you will fail.
Self-blame
There can often a member of the family who is the ‘scapegoat’, the one who is blamed for anything that goes wrong. This is a way of keeping the equilibrium in the family. It might benefit the family at the time, but it is a heavy weight to bear for a child who ends up in this role, and it is a role that can continue to play out into their adult life. If this happened to you this might result in blaming yourself for things that are nothing to do with you or naturally assuming that you must have done something wrong.
Taking on too much responsibility (parentification)
Something else that can happen in a dysfunctional family is that children can take on more than they should do. For example, they may be forced to look after younger siblings more than is appropriate which results in the older child missing out on their childhood. Sometimes a child may even have to look after their parents’ emotional health or wellbeing. This is often very subtle, and people in the wider family and community have no idea this is happening.
Adults who experienced parentification in childhood might take on too much, put others first, try to control things that they can’t control, and find it difficult to have fun or even take care of themselves properly because they don’t see it as important.
There are many other patterns that can emerge from a difficult childhood. For example, there can be problems with connection due to the attachment style of parents. This is a huge subject which will be explored in future blogs.
How can you take steps to change these patterns?
If you have recently realised, either by reading this blog or through other means, that your life is being impacted by childhood patterns, the good news is that identifying the issue is the first step to changing it. Counselling is a great way to explore these patterns and get support to change them.
Here are some other things that you can do to support yourself when you realise you have been impacted by your childhood in this way:
- It’s important to be kind to yourself when you’ve had this type of realisation. This involves speaking to yourself kindly and not blaming yourself for taking on these patterns. After all, there was no way you would have realised what was happening as a child and by the time you were an adult the patterns would have already been deeply entrenched. It might also be helpful to make sure that you take some time to yourself to reflect, rest, and take care of yourself.
- Try and notice when you are repeating these patterns. For example, if you’ve realised you tend to people-please, notice when you find yourself saying yes to something you don’t want to do.
- Slow down and breathe! When you are in situations when you are likely to repeat the pattern (for instance, when you go to visit the family or when you are in a work meeting) it can help to slow things down so that you can be more mindful about what you do or say.
- Try journaling. Journaling about the pattern can help you to work out the times when you are most susceptible to it. You could also journal about ways you could do things differently and reflect on the benefits of breaking the pattern.
The important thing is to approach your pattern(s) with kind curiosity and to remember that patterns that have been there for years or even decades will take time to understand and to break. Whilst it might seem like you have a mountain to climb, I promise you that it is possible to stop these patterns eventually because I have seen people do this time and time again and it is something that I have done myself.