What does it mean to be a good parent? 

I don’t know the answer to this, but if I had to guess, it means parenting your children rather than turning your children into your parent. 

Growing up we learned to get our emotional needs met by figuring out what our parents needed. 

Whether mommy or daddy got upset, we attached to the subconscious belief that if we become their parent then we’ll get our emotional needs met. 

This pattern emerged from the fear and shame of feeling out of control, so we parented our parents to feel in control. 

This means that in all of our relationships, we become our partners parent. 

The same is true in our jobs. We become our boss' parent

And we then wonder why each relationship we find ourselves in keeps falling apart 

And why we're so unhappy at work. 

Ask yourself this : when was the last time you wanted to fuck your parents?

I apologize for such a grotesque question, but it makes my point. 

When we become our partners parent we begin to see the effects of that choice in the bedroom.

No one wants to fuck their parents. 

Here’s an example of how this pattern manifests itself: 

It’s Christmas Eve and you’re having the family over to play board games at your house. 

Everyone is having a great time until your mom corrects your dad, and that causes your dad to get upset. 

As their daughter, you also get trigged by seeing your dad upset. 

Subconsciously you think it's your responsibility to control the situation 

So you do what you did growing up. 

You start to parent your father so that he stops being mad…and so that you can feel safe again, because whenever dad got upset growing up you felt unsafe. 

In essence, your inner child takes over and does whatever it knew to do when you were five years old. 

So, you begin doing whatever is necessary outwardly to get your dad to stop being mad. And inwardly, you contract, your heart drops and adrenaline shoots through your veins. 

Your entire nervous system is in fight or flight mode 

This causes you to feel stress and anxiety. 

Outwardly you put on a smile and try to change the conversation

Inwardly, you are out of integrity and are ignoring the cues of your body. Without realizing it, you feel drained suddenly tired 

You own peace and happiness have now become attached to your dad's mental-emotional state. 

You are a prisoner of another persons inability to manage their minds. 

This people pleasing behavior doesn’t seem like its a big deal, but you don’t just do it with your father once a year when he visits. 

No, you do it with your boss, your boyfriend, and every subsequent boyfriend you’ve had. 

This is the source of all of your ruined relationships, and stress and unhappiness at work. 

So what to do?

The key is to learn to parent yourself—to lead yourself—in ways that you weren’t taught growing up. 

Rather than getting your own emotional needs of met by becoming your dad’s mother, this pattern is a sacred invitation to go inward.

To learn what it is your own inner child needs to feel safe again. 

And to then have the courage to give yourself that 

This journey from trying to control your outer environment to better understanding our inner environment is the journey of a life time. 

The Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Jung referred to it as individuation

I call it Self Leadership. 

Our reactive patterns will never go away, but what we can learn to do is outgrow them.

And out growing them starts with better understanding our own needs 

and our own inner landscape. 

Love and Power,
Alex