Family dynamics

The family environment in which you grew up is unique to you and is the major influence affecting how you behave as an adult and the quality of the relationships you establish.

In the adult world you do the best you can in the face of your human failings and the stresses of making your way in life. As an adult you struggle to learn to live with these ups and downs of yourself and others.

As a child you live in a different world. You have no choice but to believe that your parents and other adults always know what they are doing. In whatever way you saw your parents treating you, you assume it is intentional and right and that you are wrong.

The family is your world and you quickly learn to adjust in order to fit in to get your needs for love and security, attention, approval and recognition etc. met. You decide that who you are is not enough and is unacceptable to your parents and won't get you what you want. You also learn to protect yourself emotionally when you get hurt or frightened by building walls and developing avoidance strategies.

Decisions made both constructive and destructive about yourself and others in this early environment become your core beliefs which later become your reality. It can be a rude awakening when you realise that the walls you have built around you now hurts and pushes others in your life away, bringing about the same painful scenarios that you lived with and so hoped to escape.

There are no new feelings.

If there was an issue with trust, communication, jealousy, intimacy, anger, guilt etc. in your primary family home and the cause of these issues has never been dealt with, the same issues will show up again in your present family home. Re-evaulating and letting go of the emotional baggage from the past will bring new dynamics and new life to your present relationships and history will not repeat itself. Attempts to change the effects without dealing with the cause only results in everything staying the same.

Old relationship rules and strategies of our parent’s era do not suit the twenty first century relationships, with both partners working and seeking their own personal successes.

Attending the Greatness In You helps you look at the question: Can two people pursue their dream and create a happy, harmonious, loving and satisfying relationship?