4 feelings your childhood still affects you.
Childhoods are the foundation of every human.
They are beautiful yet critical because that is what builds the lives of our adulthood.
At the childhood level, our great mentors were our parents (those that cared for us). Don’t get it twisted with the word “mentor”, I know it involves an experienced person but at the childhood level, children only know their parents or those who catered for them because they see them every day and they adopt their characters and see them as our ideal, perfect person and so we trust whatever they say was right.
Parents always have great expectations from us (children) and their actions end up influencing our lives to their peak or doom.
Lots of children out there are still acting base on their childhood challenges because that has been their home since childhood and change are difficult, some don’t even have a why so why should they undertake the process of change.
Our parents are humans like us and some of them probably didn’t have a great childhood so they gonna scrap on because they don’t have everything figured out.
Furthermore, so this write-up is not to blame anyone but to understand why you act the way you do, see the problem, find the solution, and see if you need a change.
Nothing sucks like limitations.
And not taking responsibility for your life makes it worse to solve.
Here are the 4(four)ways if not more your childhood still affects you;
1. Feeling responsible for other’s emotions:
Let’s say you had a parent with mental issues and they confide in you (their child) on your developing brain. This builds up a child to be responsible for others emotions because that is what they did for their parents all their childhood life.
Childhood is supposed to be fun, that’s where children need to explore, and having that kind of burden placed on them at a young age, formulates their brain to cater to others emotions
This occurrence limits the adult from knowing priorities, giving affirmation to people’s opinions and requests, it stresses the adult both mentally and emotionally and it kills self-esteem in them. I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t trust your children or share your burden with them but knowing at what stage of their life, their mental and emotional capability helps you know if it’s right.
It’s a great feeling being there for someone but hurting yourself in the process is not the truthfulness to self but destruction.
Being available all the time and, not able to say NO,
Or the thought of you not having your boundaries, not taking care of yourself brings up some thoughts of guilt in you, you should understand that it probably came from you being given an emotional responsibility that wasn’t yours to bear at that age.
“Childhood is the best of all the seasons of life, and the longer it lasts with happy memories, the stronger the emotional stability in adulthood."
2. Feeling responsible for your parent’s emotional state:
I don’t how long it’s gonna take for some parents to realize that their children are not responsible for how they should feel, I understand you (parents) have expectations from your children and it hurts when they don’t behave in a certain way you expect them to but it shouldn’t get to you because they are children still in the process of learning and every child’s learning rate are different from another child.
Letting your expectations get to you, warrant you getting upset and using abusive words on your child, limits their exploration and learning process, and that mess up the brain of the child.
Children will always be children, filled with so many questions in their heads and so they explore the inside and outside, they want to know what’s going on in the family and environment, they absorb the emotions, and they act out how they feel not because they want to make mummy or daddy sad, or being a jerk. Children are just being children and you are making you angry by expecting them to do what you think they should be doing.
So if you were given the burden of your parent’s emotions, it probably made you feel like a bad child ‘im making mummy or daddy angry’, maybe you were even told that you are a bad child.
This feeling subjects the adult with such childhood into experiencing not feeling good enough.
3. Feeling pressured to fulfill your parent’s dreams:
Having your parents manipulate you into fulfilling their unmet dreams and you start to believe that you are responsible for making everyone happy or believe that everyone’s expectations are more important than yours without really checking if it’s what is important to your life goals and your life goals aren’t meeting to others expectations, maybe you’ve probably tried it and they are still not satisfied and happy and that’s because you can’t make anyone happy truly if they don’t want to be.
4. Feeling of being emotionally neglected:
When all attention is given to your sibling with a mental health issue, pressure is put on you on how to act, what to say, and all attention is given to your sibling. This might not be harmful physical because it shows you want the sick one to be better but emotionally it is because the healthy child suffers emotional neglect because of the less energy given to the healthy one and more energy to the chaotic one, and what this does to adult is that it arises a dis-feeling of I don’t matter and it limits the adult from assessing of self because they were disconnected due to not having a voice to speak and ear to listen.
It’s possible to be present but emotionally detached from your child and that creates a feeling of abandonment in adulthood because of the insufficient space for exploration of self in my family.
All these are phases of one’s life that came through what we had to experience as a child and following these 4 feelings above, resulted in self-shame, neglect, and self-abandonment of one’s self.
I have lived and scaled through them and I could say… Yes. Change is difficult but knowing your whys, paying attention, learning how to take a step back, and not just respond to your emotions like that, taking full responsibility for your improvements only then can you expect people to appreciate you and always listen to yourself and ask meaningful questions.
Childhood is a golden part of our life that we can never go back to but you can take responsibility for making your adult life worthy.
“Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional."
Note:
The comment session is there if you have questions to ask and if you can relate to these feelings, hit the clap button and follow me…
