Why and How to Heal Your Relationship With Parents as an Adult
Without us even realizing it, our relationship with parents can play a significant role in all aspects of our lives. Kavita Patel is a relationship coach focused specifically on what she calls – The Parent Work.
As an expert in how and why to heal our relationship to parents she shares some insights that, for those ready to hear them, can be transformative.
In this post we’ll highlight how your relationship with your parents could be showing up in other areas of your life, and ideas for how to begin to heal it. To dig even deeper into this topic and hear from Kavita herself, listen to my podcast interview with her down below.
How do you describe a good relationship with parents?
Contrary to what you might believe, having a good relationship with parents doesn’t necessarily mean you’re best friends with them. It doesn’t have to mean you talk with them or see them weekly. Ultimately, you determine what feels like a good balance for you.
What’s important here, from Kavita’s expert perspective, is that a relationship exists. That you have not cut off your parents or shrouded yourself against them with so many boundaries that the capacity for any sort of connection is gone. That you’re still able to converse with them.
And, as with any healthy relationship, it’s also about how much openness, curiosity and understanding you’re able to bring forward. This is something that can evolve over time.
Why is it important to have a relationship with your parents?
The way we’re discussing this today is that having a relationship with your parents is not for them. This post is not about them or their feelings (not that the feelings of others don’t ever matter, of course).
This post is about you and your healing. We’re exploring why having a positive relationship with your parents is important for your personal well being, success and fulfillment in life.
One of the earliest relationships most of us experience is the one with our parents. Doing the work to heal these ‘root relationships’ can have a domino effect elsewhere in our lives. Just as ignoring the work can be holding us back in other areas of our lives in ways we don’t even realize.
This is really about looking at what you translated unknowingly and really seeing how that translation is ruling over your life and freeing yourself of that with your parents
We are all interconnected, truly, right? And with our parents, there’s a reason karmically why we came through them. So there’s even a stronger connection.
How to heal your relationship with parents as an adult
Healing a parent-child relationship as an adult sounds like a heavy lift. Here are some ideas for how to go about it:
Stop parenting your parents
One psychological process that we all go through as children is we start to exert control on outside forces.
Regardless of whether you had the best upbringing and amazing parents, or the worst upbringing and dreadful parents, every child goes through their own process of trying to control their external environment in order to feel safe.
Part of the result of this is we begin parenting our parents by telling them how to do or not do things, what to say or not to say. We begin to think we know best. We may expect them to be more emotionally aware or on their own self development journey to be able to meet us where we are.
But remember, this is not about changing the other person. What you have actual control over is only your own thoughts, behaviors and words.
Alternatively, you may be hiding aspects of yourself rather than living life fully expressed to avoid your parents’ judgment or criticism. Adjusting yourself to satisfy them is another form of parenting your parents.
The aim is to break this cycle, however it is showing up for you. Because parenting your parents, in whatever way, ultimately blocks true connection and blocks you from receiving their love.
Excavate your resistance
What you resist persists. And chances are, you’re resisting some part of your parents.
Have you ever witnessed your parent say something or behave a certain way and then thought, “I’ll never be like that.”? I have.
What we resist, persists. It’s important for us to go back and explore the moments that gave rise to these resistances within us in the first place. To fully understand the surrounding context, and to ground ourselves in the fact that those moments we’ve internalized were separate from us.
How do you do this? Through dialogue with your parents. Listen the podcast interview below for an example of how Kavita did this in a conversation with her mother.
Maintain the relationship to parents
Many people choose to cut their parents out of their lives completely. Only you know what’s best for you, but here I’m sharing Kavita’s thoughts about this.
She says that when you take that approach, you will likely feel at peace for a while. But then, everything that you have within you that’s unresolved stays stuck within you. You rob yourself of the chance to have the very conversations that have the potential to free you from long-held narratives that aren’t serving you.
Not only can cutting people, anyone, from your life become isolating but it can also become a way to avoid doing your inner work.
Doing the work of going inward in triggering situations to explore the feelings that arise, feel them and release them is how you move forward more wholly.
Set boundaries with caution
Alternatively, instead of cutting parents off completely you might be setting boundaries. It’s important to do this with mindfulness and intentionality, or else energetically this could have the same impact of cutting your parents out of your life completely.
Do your boundaries sound like a long list of rules for what someone can / cannot say or do around you? If so, you might be putting up walls that get in the way of real connection.
Instead, consider time-bound boundaries to allow yourself time to process and go inward. If a topic of conversation is bothering you, find space and time to explore that deeper for yourself – what is feeling uncomfortable within you? Is it something you can identify, heal and move through?
Taking this approach rather than making the topic off the table for discussion gives you a chance to address it rather than repress it. This in turn opens us back up for a more fulfilling life.
Recognize the communication gaps
Keep in mind that there are likely generational gaps, cultural gaps and more at play when communicating with your parents. Remember that they are more than your parents, just like there is more to you than being their child.
Being aware of these can help us be more patient. Practice defaulting to being more curious before defaulting to frustration, to give yourself a chance to truly understand each other.
Enlist the support of a coach or therapist
Doing the work to heal the relationship with parents is important, but rarely easy. If this is something you’re ready for and serious about, consider enlisting the support of a professional.
Whether you approach this with a trusted therapist, or a relationship coach like Kavita, the right support can help you maintain your resilience throughout the process.
Listen to the episode: Heal your relationship with parents
Kavita J. Patel has combined her knowledge of ancient eastern philosophy with her studies in family systems and human behavior to create her own transformational process called, The Parent Work.
Whether you have and ideal or less than ideal relationships with your parents, Kavita shares about why and how it’s important to observe, become aware of and actively work on improving these relationships.
In this episode we discuss:
- How the effects of our relationships with our parents manifest in aspects of our lives
- Why boundaries may be trapping us rather than setting us free
- How, as a parent herself, Kavita leverages her knowledge of the parent child relationships when it comes to her son
If there’s someone in your life who would benefit from connecting with Kavita or hearing what she has to say, share this episode with them.
RESOURCES:
kavitajpatel.com / Email support [at] kavitajpatel.com
Books mentioned in this episode:
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
The Surrender Experiment by Michael A Singer
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