Thank You for Giving Me Back My Parents!

"Thank You For Giving Me Back My Parents," she repeated through her tears.  She had just had a tremendous release from lifelong feelings of rejection.

Both of her parents are deceased.  Rest assured, her parents did not come back to life.

What did she mean, when she said "Thank You For Giving Me Back My Parents?"

Since early childhood, she felt her parents never loved her.  Because her parents wanted to spend time with each other at night, she felt they didn't love her.  Because her father made fun of her and her siblings, she was afraid of being attacked and she felt unloved.  Because she has sometimes been raised by grandma, she felt unloved by her parents.

Feeling unloved, she tried to be perfect.  She took care of her younger siblings, and still felt unloved.  She tried to please her parents, but she still felt unloved.

Sometimes when she is in a mood, she has felt unloved by her husband.  She feels tremendously embarrassed, because of her behavior when she felt unloved in the past. 

When she feels right, she feels loved by her husband.  In spite of her husband's insecurities and trust issues, she has felt loved by her husband.

We had been talking about how her thinking is different when she is in and out of her moods.  After listening to her, I pointed out that she feels loved when she is not experiencing a significant mood.  When she has a significant mood, which overcomes her for no reason at all, she feels unloved.

I should point out that her feeling unloved was not caused by everyday conflict with her husband, but was the result of a significant mood disorder.

I applied an application from "The Right Choice" from "The North Star Mental Fitness Program" to show her why she always felt unloved by her parents.  I pointed out that she had been using "because of" thinking her whole life to develop her life script of feeling unloved.  Because of this or because of that, she always concluded that nobody loved her.  Her thinking about her life created depression characterized by feeling unloved.

Then I pointed out that she could have interpreted her parent's behavior and her disappointments in a completely different manner.  I pointed out that all these years she could have felt very loved by her family. 

She immediately got it.  She thanked me for giving her parents back to her.  She had learned to interpret her past relationship with her parents as loving rather than unloving.  For the first time she was able to see and feel that her parents loved her.

What created this change?  The power of language had completely changed how she felt about herself and her parents.  It was only three words. The words were "In Spite Of".

We replaced all of her "because of" thinking with "In Spite Of" thinking.  She began thinking to herself, "in spite of my parents spending time with each other at night, they loved me ".

She had her parents back even though they are deceased, because she learned to think in a way to feel loved by them.

Do you need to stop your "because of" thinking which destroys your self-confidence and the quality of your relationships?  Do you need to think "In Spite Of" my weaknesses, problems, and insecurities, I am important and loved?

Remember, You Live within the Environment Created by Your Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach

The Right Choice from Dr. Hal's e-books presents other strategies for finding the "right way" to think about your life.  People's thinking usually continues to reinvent their emotional pain and conflicts.  The secret to making changes in your life is to change your thinking.  However the most difficult task is to change thinking that feels familiar and right.  Do you know how to think right for success in your life?

 

Comments

[Kailani]

This is also a great post for parents who don't realize how their actions affect their children's thinking.

Here from the Carnival of Family Life

[Lisa]

It is amazing how children can be so affected by things in their childhood that their parents don't even realize they are feeling, and how that can be carried into adulthood.

Here via the carnival of family life.