parental disapproval

If your personal lie is something like ‘I’m not good enough’, then you will seek confirmation of this in the world. We do this in our first relationship, which is with our parents, and many people continue to do it throughout their lives. Rebirthing theory argues that every subsequent relationship is modeled on the primary one. Any unresolved issues you have with one or both of your parents will be played out in your current relationships, be it with partners, friends, even your boss.

The child seeks love and approval above everything else. But there are many ways he may feel he is not getting it. He learns that love is conditional. It is given and it can be taken away. He learns that his parents are separate entities from him, and not always there for him. He may have to compete for their attention. He may see one of his parents as an obstacle to his getting the full love of the other. This can lead to guilt. Other siblings can be rivals. He learns, ‘love is limited and there is not enough to go around’.

Feeding time and toilet training can be areas when parental disapproval is expressed. Even something as innocuous as placing a child in a cot to attend to something else can be perceived by the child as rejection. Then there’s the whole area of emotional incest. There comes a time when the child is too big to be fondled sexually, a boy gets an erection while his mother’s bathing him and she gets embarrassed, or a father gets aroused by having his daughter on his knee and puts her down. The child always infers this as rejection, and makes a decision that they did something wrong. When you’re two you make your parents right no matter what. Emotional incest must not be confused with physical intentional incest.

This is greatly exacerbated if the family is dysfunctional. If there is fear or tension in the household the child may feel it’s unsafe to speak, to express itself. This leads to more feelings of rejection, reinforcing the personal lie. As the child becomes an adult he internalises the parent’s words and comes to play the parent to his own emotions.

As we grow older we create people to get angry with us so that we can re-experience the primal pain we felt as a child. Examine your relationships and see if you’re doing this, or if someone else is doing it to you (if they are it means you’ve drawn them in). For example, if someone starts an argument with you, or they continuously show up late they may be seeking your disapproval. Being late can be covert behaviour for ‘fuck you, why don’t you love me?’ We unconsciously create upsets that will make our partner, friends or others disapprove of us.

Rebirthing has another maxim: Every upset is a set-up.

When you disapprove of another person you are disapproving of something in yourself, or some unresolved issue with a member of your family. See this as an opportunity to learn. The people we have the most resistance to can be our greatest teachers. Ask what is it about that person that bugs you? If you have any issue with authority, however small, that’s your parental disapproval syndrome.

We all believe our thoughts and feelings are real but this is not so. They are not us although we may believe they are. So if I have a thought it’s just that, something I have, and I can change it in an instant. And if I am feeling an emotion, say anger, or sadness, it is still only a feeling, it is not me. The way we think about someone in our heads is the way we see them in reality, and that is the way they become (for us). Change how you think about them and you change how they are. Your thoughts (inferences) about your parents made them the way they are. To someone else they were probably very different people. Our whole lives can be stuck in a certain time when we didn’t get what we wanted. This becomes the truth for us. Sometimes the past didn’t happen the way we thought it did. What is important is how we interpret it. That’s why we breathe, so that we can re-member more. Conscious connected breathing can enable us to do this, to release that old emotional pain out of our cells where it has been trapped for years, and thus see things as they are. When we do this we stop disapproving of ourselves (the parent in our head). Re-conception is where we look at our past and are willing to see it in a new light.

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