Breaking Generational Cycles: The Path of Healing and Growth

Lisa Marie Bobby:

We all have baggage when we grow up in our families and our parents or caregivers send us off into the world. They do so with a set of inheritances that we may or may not know we’re even carrying core beliefs, inner programming, ways of relating to other people, some of which serve us very well. Others don’t, and on today’s show, we’re talking about how to identify this generational patterns.

Keep the ones that are serving you, get rid of the ones that don’t, so you can put down the baggage and move forward with newfound freedom.

Friends, we’re listening to the band Bleached. The song is Next Level. Stop, I chose this one for us, not just because it’s a great song, but I think it kind of embodies that, like the work that we do when we’re stopping old generational patterns, it’s like closing one door and then looking ahead to the next because new things are possible for all of us when we do this really important growth work.

You can learn more about Bleached, see what they’re up to on their Bandcamp page, bleached. bandcamp. com. So let’s just dive right into this. Um, As I mentioned in the beginning, we all do this, you can’t not, because we all are the product of early life experiences. We are all forged in the furnaces of wherever we came from, right?

And there can be so many. So many good and positive things that come to all of us from these experiences, the way our parents or extended families or caregivers did things shaped who we became as people. And again, there could be so many good things associated with that. I think that it can be wise and also really valuable sometimes to reflect on the positive intergenerational patterns that can come to us from.

Um, that might be generosity, a good sense of humor, being responsive or loving. Maybe it’s just being a really good cook. Like that can be a thing. Am I right? Uh, being good with money. I mean, like there’s so much stuff and it is also true that. Everybody’s family and life experience is a mixed bag and we arrive into adulthood with patterns, right?

Some of them can be subtle, but they influence the way we operate, the way we think, the way we do things, the way we react, and that way of being will. create differences in the outcomes that we get. So the work here is to say, am I getting the outcomes that I desire when it comes to my relationships or my health or my, am I getting what I want?

Is this working for me? If the answer is yes, Mazel tov, you have identified the fact that there’s something that’s working for you and maybe it was something that you inherited from your family of origin. That is great. And if there are things, particularly things that are happening over and over again, that you’re like, yeah, I don’t like this.

I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s very wise to unpack where did this come from? Why do I do this? Why do I think this way? Why do I feel this way? What is going on? And many times at the root of that exploration are old generational patterns, particularly when it comes to relationships, um, because we are taught how to relate to other people by the way that we were related to with our parents, with our caregivers, with our families.

And so a lot of times it can be relationships with other things too. Um, but just to kind of crack into this, let me give you a few examples of things that can sometimes be the usual suspects when it comes to intergenerational patterns that are worthy of exploration. So things like imbalanced gender roles and how you instinctively participate in those on one side or the other.

Uh, codependent relationship dynamics can be a learned thing. The avoidance of conflict or A reluctance to engage in emotionally intimate relationships can be something that we inherit. If our family of origin culture was one that was very sort of distance and remote and like, we don’t talk about Bruno, like, you know, that that happens.

A variety of unhealthy communication styles, including avoidance. By the way, but also things like being really reactive or emotional name calling, you know, emotional flooding like that can be something that gets passed down through the generations. Um, but also I think even mindsets, outlooks, um, infidelity can actually be something that is taught like how we do relationships.

But certainly I think more than anything else, there can be. Expectations of the way things should be that we inherit from our families, particularly with regards to relationships that are really worthy of unpacking additional things. So, I mean, again, it’s not just relationships for many people. It’s health behaviors, how they think about and take care of their bodies.

Um, for some, it’s about money. I mean, it’s true in my own family of origin, like it’s very weird about money. So as an adult, I had to do some work around this, like my relationship with money and finances. Um, Substances, you know, the role of alcohol or drugs, I mean, there’s so many different things, our relationship to education and development.

I mean, those things are passed on. So, I mean, truly, like virtually anything that you experienced in your family of origin. Um,

And what the work here is, again, is like, is this way of being, are these core beliefs working for me? Do these feel positive and helpful? Or does this Lesson, whatever I was taught, you need to end right here, right now with me so that I’m not continuing to carry this on or pass it down to my own children who will then teach it to their children and so on and so forth.

So We are, now that we set this up, very excited, going to be talking about some actionable steps, some things that you can do to not just identify, but break free from these generational cycles so that you are empowered to create a new legacy for yourself, for your family or future family. That’s what we’re doing today.

So step one is. First and foremost, recognizing that patterns exist in the first place and watch that first step. It’s a big one because this is the hard part, right? I mean, generational patterns of things that were taught, they are so hard to see sometimes because they’re like these just invisible threads that are woven into how.

We think about the world. It is oftentimes what we believe to be true about ourselves, about what the world is and how it works. Like it is very, um, common and understandable to believe everything you think when it comes to this and trust your own thoughts. It’s, it’s difficult to understand that we all have perspectives.

We have filters. Through which we view pretty much everything that happens to us and in the world. We look out through our eyes and, and the way we understand what is happening out there is run through this filter, the set of beliefs, what we have in here, and those are generally speaking, all inherited, but they’re completely invisible to us because they just feel like.

The truth, the truth, whatever that is. So in order to recognize that generational patterns exist, the very first thing that needs to happen is to get just a little bit suspicious of what is happening in your own head. Just entertain the possibility that what I automatically think or feel or believe may be, but one perspective of many.

Uh, and awareness that the perspectives that I hold impact the way I feel and then my feelings will always impact my behavior and my behaviors will translate into my outcomes. That’s what awareness is. Influences my relationships, how I cope with stress, what I do day to day, how I take care of myself, um, how I feel on the inside, right?

And the things that are working can just hum away quietly and be great without any intervention. That’s fantastic. But sooner or later, we’re all going to get to a certain point in our life, a certain age or stage where we become aware of. I don’t feel good. I don’t like the way this is going. I have a problem.

I would like this to be different. And that’s really when the growth work can begin. If we can turn that into a moment of recognition. Um, Of where is this coming from? Why do I believe this? Why do I have this expectation? Why do I react the same way in these situations over and over again? Why am I telling myself this particular story about What, you know, how I’m interpreting these events.

That’s very powerful work. I will also tell you, this can also be, um, somewhat upsetting. It’s like that moment, um, you know, if you’re old enough to know what the matrix is where you’re like, Oh, wait, This isn’t everything that’s going on, right? It’s almost you like create this dual, this dual vision. Like there’s this, this truth, this way of thinking that I believed was reality.

But now I’m seeing that maybe there’s, there’s another possibility here that can be incredibly liberating. It can be exciting, but it can also be really upsetting, um, to recognize that because Like, wow, I was making that a lot harder for myself for a long time than I needed to. But also like, if you’re a parent, you may become aware that you have been subconsciously teaching your children the same things that you’ve just recognized are now creating problems for you.

And so that I think can lead to feelings of guilt. But the good thing is that when we’re aware of it, we can take corrective action and we can start actively changing those. Patterns for ourselves, for our kids that have an impact that extends far beyond our own lifetime. So let’s talk about an example and there are so many different ways that this could look like but For example, if like many people your parents went through a really crappy divorce There is a ripple effect to that not just the divorce experience itself.

But I mean like You know, the years typically leading up to a divorce are often really bad when it comes to the relationship and the way your parents are interacting with each other, you know, and, and, um, depending on your age at that time, you probably absorbed a lot of, Oh, that’s how married people interact with each other.

And then they leave, they get divorced. One of them goes, right? So like, what did that just. teach you. And then, I mean, also outside of that, like depending on the kind of relationship that you had with one or both of your parents on the other side of that, as a child, there are so many things that you absorbed about, Oh, this is how it works.

This is how people relate to each other. This is the trajectory of relationships where there’s conflict. This is, you know, how people relate to me. Many times when parents are going through a divorce, they’re not okay. They’re dealing with big emotional stuff and they may or may not be able to fully be emotionally present and available to help their children with the kids, grief and loss and much higher emotional needs and throw a stepparent in there.

I mean, it can be all kinds of stuff. So, you know, but like reflecting on what did I absorb? And how is that now showing up in my own life experience? Do I have a catastrophic response to any kind of conflict or disagreement in a relationship? Because I subconsciously believe that we’re going to get divorced.

If we have passionate conversations about things that we’re upset about. I mean, that’s a real thing. It’s not a conscious thought. It’s subconscious, but it’s very real. That’s why we have to illuminate it. Or do I have subconscious core beliefs that sooner or later relationships are always going to end.

So trust no one. Like, is that my motto? Right. Um, is it, you know, my parents were emotionally unavailable because of their own divorce and like being really preoccupied with that. I need to be very. small and very pleasing so that, you know, I, I don’t take up too much space in the world. And so I’m going to people please myself into exhaustion.

I mean, like that can be a pattern. This can go 87 different ways coming out of a very common divorce experience. These are just a few examples. But it’s important to consider like, who am I? How am I? What is this doing to me? What are the outcomes that it’s creating in my life? But then being able to trace this back to the source, it’s fascinating to me.

And I say this as a marriage and family therapist. So one of the, um, interventions that I commonly use with my clients is something called a genogram. I probably talked about this on other podcasts, but it’s where we map out diagrams of families and relationships and who’s who and what’s what and going back like several generations.

And it is invariably true that the things that my clients experience with their own parents, like when you go back to grandparents, even to great grandparents, you can see. And I think that that, uh, awareness can make for a very powerful growth experience for people. And also I think lead to a lot more compassion for their.

Parents, I mean, I, I think when we look at this deep family work can see that, um, the parents who maybe made mistakes and didn’t treat me very well and who I have every right in the world to be angry with in some ways, were also dealing with it their own, you know, crappy, you. hand that they got dealt. So, you know, it just keeps rolling on.

Um, so I think that that can be very appealing and powerful in itself, but, but especially when you see these legacies at work in your own life. It is so incredibly empowering. And I have, I can’t even tell you, I mean, just what an honor and a privilege it’s been for me as a couples counselor and marriage counselor to, um, and then a therapist to even as a coach.

I mean, anytime I’m working with people either individually or as a couple to help them see and then. Stop and intentionally shift these old patterns break free from these intergenerational cycles. It feels like such a victory because on this journey, it’s, it’s not just about us. It’s not just about you or me, even though the work that we do here will transform our lives and sometimes very dramatic ways.

But, but to bring this into awareness, it helps. Us, if we are parents create a totally different life trajectory for our children and for their children, right? We can start beginning to very intentionally and deliberately teach ways of thinking and feeling and behaving that are going to set our kids up for success and start a very Positive intergenerational cycle that will live on far past after we are gone.

And it will be characterized by love and empathy and healthy relationships and healthy bodies and prosperous lives. And, you know, not that they won’t also have their problems and circumstances and crap to deal with, but in terms of creating a early life experience that helps prepare them to be safe.

Secure and themselves and in the world and in their relationships and feel nurtured and loved. I mean, that’s the best anybody can get at the end of the day, right? So I just want you to think about the work that you, that we get to do in the here and now isn’t just about and for. There is a much higher purpose to doing all of this.

So that is very exciting to me. I always think about that when I’m working with my clients and I, I hope it feels exciting to you too. But the recognition piece is the very first, most important and hardest part. I will say that because. This is so ingrained in us. Like we don’t even know what we don’t know about our own filters versus like objective reality.

Very, very helpful to engage with a very powerful therapist or coach who’s going to call you on some of your filters, not a really passive like standard issue, talk therapy therapist, who’s just going to kind of smile and not agree with everything you say. Somebody who’s going to stop you and say, Where’s that coming from?

And really make you dig deep into that. That’s what I want for you, because that will give you visibility into your truth. If you’re in a relationship with a therapist who isn’t challenging you enough in that way, it’s okay to ask for that. Um, they might need that feedback. So just pro tip wanted to share.

Okay. So when you have that awareness, then you’ve Unpeel the layers, you know, like, okay, where is this coming from? And then you start to think about not what’s happening, but what do I want? What do I want? Is my vision for my desired outcome when it comes to my relationship, when it comes to my health, when it comes to my finances, my career, my relationship with myself, how do I want this to be different and creating clarity about where you want to go, that will also help create some separation between it.

And that’s why this old way of being isn’t going to work for me anymore, because every time I do this, I go off in that direction and I don’t want to be there anymore. I want to go over here. So you have to figure out where you want to go that will create clarity about what to do differently, but also generate a lot of, um, Motivation that will support your ability to, to change a very positive and powerful ways.

And one place that you can go a tool that I’ve created for you to get some visibility into this is I call it my what’s holding you back quiz, because when you figure out what you want to go, then the next step is to create clarity around what. Do I need to do differently in terms of the way I think, feel, or behave in order to create my desired outcome and that what’s holding you back assessment can give you further insights into what domain of your, um, Way of being is the growth opportunity.

So, for example, it’ll give you a snapshot of whether or not it’s some of your thinking styles that may currently be creating issues for you and could be opportunities for growth. It could be, um, that you discover that it’s your way of managing emotions is something that is contributing to the outcomes.

It could also be the way that you’re. Behaving in terms of how you’re caring for yourself, how you are just operating as a human in the world. I mean, it’s weird to say, but nobody actually teaches us this stuff consciously. I mean, in school, we learn how to do homework assignments well enough and on time.

Mostly, and that’s a good thing, but when it comes to so many other like micro skills in terms of how to function as a human, there’s not a lot of specific instruction. And so anyway, this assessment will give you insight into whether or not some skill building could be helpful for you. I learned how to do things in my family of origin that carry me towards a trajectory that I don’t want anymore.

So what do I need to learn, like how to do differently in order to go into a better direction? So where you want to go and then what specifically do I need to do to get to that different outcome? So I will just tell you that one of the outcomes of, of this work, um, is that, okay, so this is going to be a different idea.

I’m just like, keep an open mind with me for one, one minute. Um, You’ve heard me talk on other podcast episodes about something called emotional intelligence, right, which in I think pop psychology, we think of emotional intelligence as being, you know, a good communicator or having empathy for other people.

We often hear about emotional intelligence in the workplace, right? It comes up a lot related to career and like how to advance through the world. All of those things are true. They’re all well and good. And when it comes to actually resetting our own patterns and learning how to do things differently, the discipline, the science and the psychology of emotional intelligence digging into this is Actually going to very often be the vehicle through which we will do the growth work.

I know it sounds weird. Stay with me, but emotional intelligence has four different layers to it. Four different components. The first one is self awareness, understanding myself differently. The second is managing. Myself in an effective way and managing yourself requires figuring out how to manage my thoughts so that I’m staying in a relatively good place mentally.

Most of the time, it also translates to how do I manage my feelings, my moods, how do I regulate my emotions so I can stay pretty much on an even keel most of the time and how do I operate my. Life, how do I behave day to day in a way that benefits me and my life and my outcomes? Those are two of the cornerstones of emotional intelligence skills.

I don’t know if you’re hearing a similarity between like some of the things that needed to change when it came to intergenerational patterns, but I think you can see where we’re going now. But the other two dimensions of emotional intelligence also relate to how do I understand People, how do I interpret them?

How do I decode what they’re doing and communicating? How do I have empathy for them? Um, and then what do I need to do in order to manage those relationships successfully, how do I respond? respond to them? How do I communicate with other people in a way that fosters emotionally safe and positive relationships?

And so when we look at the actual things that need to change when it comes to building more effective intergenerational patterns, I can’t really think of one that doesn’t fall somewhere into that framework, truly, because it, um, It’s really, I think, a way of doing all of the things we need to do, whether it’s putting some more space between our emotional triggers and our reactions, if it’s learning how to communicate in a more constructive way with other people, if it’s managing our own internal experience, so we’re not falling apart and feeling, you know, more even keeled most of the time, uh, when we want to create different outcomes in our lives, either internally in relationships, behaviorally in our careers.

That’s a very, very powerful framework to get us where we want to go. So I think that there are other pieces of breaking intergenerational patterns and sometimes very deep work that needs to be done in therapy, or sometimes, you know, very powerful in depth. Coaching work that is, you know, tip, let’s be real, like conducted by a therapist rather than a coach that goes into some of the big feelings of it.

Um, when we recognize the presence of maybe destructive intergenerational patterns and how they’ve impacted us over the course of our lives, I think it’s really normal and expected to feel. Sometimes anger, grief, guilt, you know, confusion, like all kinds of stuff because we’re reconceptualizing like our life story.

So there’s stuff that can come up. However, when we get to a point where we’re like, okay, I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to do things differently. Diving into different aspects of emotional intelligence can really provide a, um, structured And, um, helpful, productive path forward, as opposed to sitting in therapy for three years talking about how mad I am about my father for teaching me the, like, whatever, do that for a little while, nothing wrong with that.

But when it’s time to move on and be like, okay, well, What am I going to do instead would be the way to go. Um, so there’s two pieces of that, you know, healing old wounds, but also charting a path forward. And I will also say that there are different ways of doing this work. Um, I would advise working with a therapist who not just understands intergenerational Uh, patterns.

I think that most, most therapists worth their salt can do that. But I think also somebody who can help move you forward into that. Okay. So what do you want to do differently? Kind of piece, which believe it or not is not always part of. Traditional therapy, diagnosing and treating a mental health condition.

Therapists are all about going back into the past and processing things and unpacking and feeling your feelings. And yes, let’s talk about how angry you are at your dad, like all the good things. We need to go there. We need to go into those places because doing so can be very, very healing and important in this process, but not all therapists, believe it or not, are trained in this more, a coaching model of, okay.

Where do you want to go? What are the outcomes that you would like to have be different in your life? And how are you going to get there? That my friends is the heart and soul of coaching psychology, which is a very different discipline than therapy and traditional psychology. So In order to do that, there are different resources for you.

You can certainly find free resources to develop emotional intelligence skills. I have a number of them on my website. You can come to growingself. com and come into our emotional intelligence collection. I have all kinds of articles that I’ve written for you. There are other podcasts. on the subject.

Certainly take that what’s holding you back quiz, which will illuminate sort of different, you know, dimensions of that and growth opportunities for you. You might also consider doing some structured emotional intelligence coaching work. So a step by step program that will unpack this, help you discover, you know, your current way of being when it comes to those different domains.

It will help you create self awareness, it will help you create clarity, but it will also provide you with specific direction on here is what to do differently in order to feel better and get better results coming with homework assignments and action oriented types of activities that will help you move closer and closer towards where you want to go.

We do offer one of these a growing self that I feel really good about was I had branded it at one time as my happiness class, but you know what I, as I was thinking more about that, it’s so much more than just about being happy. It’s about really, I think being well, having good relationships and achieving, you know, all the things love, happiness, and success requires well developed emotional intelligence skills.

So that is my program and my. I believe that the most powerful way to go through this experience is like, you can certainly do a self directed self study course and get so much out of it. It can be very valuable in itself. And, um, this course will walk you through activities that are experiential in nature.

I mean, you will have new experiences with yourself through going through this, and you will also certainly learn new things. But at the end of the day, I think really powerful growth work. Um, It is not informational. It is experiential. It is really needing to have like these aha moments and kind of connect with things in a totally different way that that really in some very real ways, like rewires your brain.

And I think it’s really important. As much as I love online courses, like that is a true limitation of them in my experience. And so what I would encourage you to do is actually go through a structured program, but with a therapist who’s very knowledgeable in this process, who can kind of just meet you at different points in the work.

Be powerful enough to stay. No, let’s actually stay here for a little while and we need to unpack that. And yeah, what is that about for you? And really like help you go into some of the feelings because that’s really where the deepest levels of transformation occurred. I believe that you deserve that. So I would encourage you to look for that kind of program or certainly you’re welcome to do that with us here at growing self.

So that’s a wrap. breaking free of intergenerational patterns and cycles that no longer serve you. I hope that this created a understanding of what these are, how they can impact you, and also just like provided you with a roadmap for how to move forward from here. So thanks for joining me today. And I look forward to talking with you again on the next episode.

Take care.