Do we know our parents?

“For as long as I can remember, my mother just baked me with her care,” recalls 22-year-old Lada. – A lot of things became clear to me only when we talked about her childhood. My parents sent my mother to a boarding school as soon as she was seven years old, and they took her home only for the holidays. As an adult, she tried to give me all the love that she herself needed so much when she was little. Our life story is largely determined by the circumstances of our parents’ lives. And it is better to know it in detail: this allows us to get an explanation for many events, find our place in the “family chronicle”, gain a sense of belonging to the family, and therefore feel safe.

Recognize the mystery

Learning the details of the past, we begin to see more clearly why our parents became the way they are, and what guided them when making certain decisions. Including those that concern us. “The realization that mother and father were once children and that they could also have problems in the family makes our view of their personalities more voluminous,” says psychotherapist Ekaterina Mikhailova.

Sergei, 34, talks about how he bonded with his father as a teenager through an unexpected conflict. “I was 13 years old, I was fond of history, especially the period of the Great Patriotic War. On the cover of a school notebook, I wrote: “For the Motherland! For Stalin!” When my father saw this, he grabbed the notebook and, without saying a word, tore it up. I was terribly indignant, offended. I knew that his father, my grandfather, did not fight – he was in the camp, and I decided that my father was angry because of this. I even wanted to leave the house, but my mother stopped me. She said that my grandfather was convicted in 1936: they found a handwritten letter from Lenin that Stalin should not be allowed to power. For this he spent ten years in Kolyma. A month later, on October 29, together with my parents, I came to Lubyanka Square, where people gather to pronounce the names of those who were shot in the 1930s. I felt much closer to my father than before.”

Gain independence

Getting acquainted with the details of the life of our parents, we begin to understand that they are not only our father and mother, that their mission is not limited to the fact that they gave us life. “If they had not become parents or even met each other, they would have been the same people, although with a different experience,” continues Ekaterina Mikhailova. – Interest in their past, in their childhood gives us the opportunity to get to know our parents again, to know them as separate individuals. This is also necessary in order to gain inner independence, to realize that we ourselves are not only a son or daughter, that our personality has other facets. This knowledge allows us to take a fresh look at their behavior in the past, and at situations that are repeated in our lives so far.

Nicholas is 39 years old. As a child, he suffered from his father’s beatings. Like many people with difficult childhoods, he was very afraid that he would not be able to behave differently with his children. “I avoided my father for many years. But then we still met – at the funeral of my grandfather. I just didn’t recognize my father. As a child, he caused me unspeakable horror, and now – only pity. He couldn’t help sobbing, but it wasn’t grief. The death of his father was a release for him. Only after the funeral did he tell me how his grandfather tortured him as a child. I don’t excuse my father, but now that I know about his past, I at least understood that he beat me because he didn’t know how to do it any other way. This conversation with my father happened shortly before my daughter was born. I felt lighter in my heart. And I finally decided to turn to a psychotherapist.

Remove the burden of silence

Even when a family secret is carefully hidden, our unconscious sends a signal: there is something that they want to hide from us. This signal can be vague anxiety (something is happening, but I don’t understand what) or low self-esteem (I am considered unworthy to know what others know) … Family secrets are often “inherited”, changing the lives of several generations. “If there are doubts, it is worth discussing them with your parents,” says Ekaterina Mikhailova. “Not blaming, not instilling feelings of guilt: perhaps they, too, became victims of a family secret.” And we must not forget that people tend to hide not only something shameful. Sometimes a secret protects us. “I am a late child with my mother,” says 43-year-old Elena. – She was not married, and I saw my father only a few times, in childhood. When my son was born, I wanted to tell my father that he had become a grandfather, and I asked my mother for his phone number – and she replied that his father had recently died! I was very upset: she did not even consider it necessary to tell me about it. Mom explained that during pregnancy she did not want to disturb me. But the bitterness remained. Only 10 years later, after my mother’s death, I learned from a distant relative: it turns out that my father committed suicide. That’s why mom was silent. I understood her. But now I myself don’t know what to tell my son about grandfather … “

We are not always able to decide how we ourselves would have acted in the place of our parents. That’s why it’s so important to try to understand them—and perhaps forgive them.

Read more:

• Cut the (digital) umbilical cord

Ask without accusations

To find your place in the chain of generations, it is important to find out what is hushed up. Many topics remain closed, causing vague anxiety and guilt (about adoption, about biological father or mother, about children from first marriages, about old ones, divorces, deaths, illnesses). It is important for us to know what concerns us personally: the conditions under which we were born, our first steps, the first years of life. The traits of the child we were will help us better understand the adult we have become now. Psychologist Alexandra Suchkova advises asking parents about how they grew up, about their relationship with their own parents, sisters and brothers, as well as about the choice of a professional path – one that they found themselves or that they were forced to choose. “One question leads to another, and the answers we get will not always satisfy us,” the psychologist warns. Moreover, we may begin to doubt their veracity. “Sometimes we feel that parents hide or distort some important points in their biography,” adds Ekaterina Mikhailova. – And there is a temptation to take the position of an investigator. We should not be led by this desire and strive to be told the “whole truth”: a tough demand will not improve either their well-being or our relationship. And the chances of finding out the truth in this way are small. It is much safer in this case to work with a professional psychologist: do not “interrogate witnesses in the case” at all, but proceed from what they said earlier. It’s not their problem – it’s something that’s bothering us, and we need to find out what it is. With the help of psychotherapy, answers to many questions can be found.

The story of 35-year-old Nina confirms the words of the psychotherapist: “I had a prosperous childhood, and I always believed that I got as much parental love as I needed. Although not more than that. Mom and dad were always very attentive to my school successes, they predicted a great future for me. And I grew up … and for many years I could not hold on to any job. Now I understand why – unconsciously I wanted to separate from my parents and for this I tried to get off the path that they “assigned” to me. All this I discovered during psychotherapy. But I didn’t ask my parents – they simply wouldn’t understand me. ”

In the pursuit of facts that could explain the cause of our failures and suffering, we risk becoming ruthless inquisitors.

According to psychoanalyst Gerard Decherf, the desire to know “everything” about parents means that we “are in a fantasy of eternal merging, of continuing our infancy, when we felt complete unity with our mother. By insisting on questioning, we maintain the illusion that we are still small.”

Separate truth from fiction

Experts warn against another misconception: do not confuse a real person with your fantasy about him. No matter how old we are, in relations with our parents we remain children, and the feelings that we have for them prevent us from being objective. It seems to us that they are the same today as they were many years ago, we lose sight of the fact that they have changed. “Parents, as they have become today, can no longer answer many of our questions,” reminds Ekaterina Mikhailova. “Perhaps our current problems were really influenced by the personality of the mother or father – the way it was twenty-five or thirty years ago. And in this case, it is necessary to work not with real people, but with their images, with their voices that sound inside us. Working with family history, we conclude an agreement with the group members: for at least two days, do not discuss this topic with our family members. A person should ask himself: “What worries me? Why this, why now? – and answer these questions yourself, without involving the family in the conflict.

Most often, we do not know our real parents, but those images that are imprinted in our inner world. The parental image we live with is never completely true. So, should we throw all our efforts into distinguishing truth from fiction, reality from fantasy, in order to finally know the true story of our parents? No, psychotherapists answer. You don’t need to know everything. Children and parents, unlike friends, occupy a certain, permanent place in relation to each other and should not change it. So, if we are interested in questions about the sex life of our parents, it is better to subdue our curiosity. In this case, the answers can only create a confusion of roles and generations, which will not reassure us, but unsettle us. Therefore, before embarking on inquiries, it is worthwhile to carefully consider what exactly we want to know and why we need it. “It is also important to consider,” Ekaterina Mikhailova continues, “that by asking one “investigative” question (for example, asking the mother only why she and her father divorced), we narrow her life down to one situation, to one problem (and at this moment is our problem, not hers!). And in her life, besides the divorce from her father, a lot has happened since then. And if we don’t want to know about it, it won’t be fair to her.” A dialogue between two adults can take place only if they are sincerely interested in each other. Our parents are easier and more willing to talk about themselves if they don’t feel like they’re being blamed. And for those whose parents stubbornly refuse to share their secrets, Alexandra Suchkova reminds: “To get an answer, you don’t have to ask questions – often it’s enough just to start talking about yourself.”