It's Time To Break Up With Your Parents (Or Kids)

Hey,

I think it’s time we talked about family.

I’m not talking about the family you choose, which has become increasingly popular in our postmodern way of life, but the family, specifically parents or authority figures, that defined your life at an early age.

Why?

Because these relationships were formed pre-verbal, and in most cases (since children only develop self-concepts around ages 3-5), were relationships that existed before you even had a feeling of your self. Before you even identified as a self.

The impact of those relationships is difficult to access and, depending on the decade, out of fashion to even try. But fashionable or not, it’s ground zero for our most stuck places as adults and why we struggle to have meaningful, vulnerable, drama-free relationships. Maybe you see yourself being clingy or codependent or drawing relationships with others like that. Maybe it’s anxiety or frustration. Or subtle or not subtle anger or rage. Or maybe it’s something else.

Whatever it is for you, it’s the remnants of a simple but unresolved pain: not feeling settled in yourself as a whole being who is worthy of love and worthy of being loved.

It doesn’t mean your parents didn’t love you, though sadly some don’t or can’t! It’s not about them. It’s about you and what you need as a child to fully arrive on this earth in your heart, body, and mind. If you want to finish the job, you must break up with your parents to separate emotionally and cognitively so you can see what is left undone. In my experience, it’s the most difficult part — the Mount Everest, or better said, the Mariana Trench—on the spiritual path.

What makes it so difficult to navigate this terrain is it’s easy to fall into blame, victimhood, or condescension. Your defenses will fight tooth and nail to make it about others to protect you from feeling the real emotional pain at the bottom that has nothing to do with your parents or anyone else. You must keep one thing in your pocket that your defenses don’t know, which you will have to prove to them repeatedly: you’re not a kid anymore, and you are strong enough to face this pain, whatever it is.

Your defenses will not stand down until you stand up.

Many people believe they don’t need this work, that they are beyond it, or, worse, that it isn’t spiritual (that they are or can be beyond it). I was one of them for a long time. There’s a humbling self-honesty that comes at some point.

Separating from your parents is a necessary stage of child and human development. Sadly, too many of us are stunted in our growth (and passing that legacy onto our children) by falling for a ridiculous narrative that separating emotionally means stopping loving when it’s the very thing that makes it possible!

It’s no different than passing by your old boss at a coffee shop. How do you react? Do you avoid them and make a sharp U-turn? Do you clench up and wince as years of memories come flooding back? Do you imagine walking up to them and letting them have it verbally (or punching them in the face)? That’s how you know that, as the saying goes, you may be done with that relationship, but it’s not done with you.

It’s the same with our parents and other early authority relationships. We may be done with them, but they ain’t done with us. That’s why we struggle mightily at work with having a boss, being a boss, and why, if you’re a leader, you should never describe your team as a family!

These are difficult topics to approach for many of us. For some, the things that happened to us as children were actually traumatic, not just painful (trauma is a word way too easily thrown around these days). No matter your story, the more we talk about it, normalize this deep work, and learn to see it as spiritual work, the quicker we can shift things in our world and the world around us.

This week's episode includes my full thoughts on this and more. I hope it stirs something in you.

What topic related to Good Authority would you like to hear more about? Submit your anonymous question on the website here!

Looking For Something To Read Or Listen To?

There’s no book club for Good Authority yet, but I'd love to share with you what’s been inspiring me and putting my mind to work with new thoughts.

I just finished Stealing Fire, a well-researched account of the $4 trillion industry of 'non-ordinary' states of being and how formerly esoteric psychological and sacred medicine practices are being used by Navy Seals, Silicon Valley founders (and the rest of us) to break out of the trance of the modern world.

I'm now reading Entangled Life by Martin Sheldrake, a wondrous and brilliant book about the omnipresence of fungi in our world and our lives. It will have you rethink the ground beneath your feet. 🙂 

And finally, my wife and I are listening to Last Child in the Woods by Richard Lauv, an urgent and profound call to ensure our kids are raised by nature and not by screens.

Thanks for spending time with me this week.

Jonathan

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