Expressing Parental Love

Because parenting plays such an important role in a child’s developing beliefs about themselves, it isimportant to say that most parents do feel genuine love for their children. Unfortunately, many people raising children don’t know how to express that love in a positive and reinforcing way due to their own early experiences and unresolved, internal, mistaken beliefs. These parents are not premeditative in their mistreatment of their children, and they actually do the best they can—sad as that might be. Their inability to communicate love verbally and non-verbally results in their children not knowing that they are loved. These children go forward believing they are, somehow, not good enough to warrant their parents’ love.

Remember that the naturalstate of egocentricity causes children to take responsibility for their parents’ actions, leaving them with a lot of mistaken ideas of being wrong, bad or a failure. It is only when we can listen to this pained voice within our self, when we can hear it with our compassionate heart that we have the opportunity to correct our mistaken beliefs and uncover peace within

A client, ―Barbara,‖ grew up with three older brothers, an angry alcoholic mother and a father who worked long hours and was uninvolved with his children. One of Barbara’s brothers was violent toward her. He also began molesting her when she was eight and impregnated her at age fourteen. Barbara had attended Catholic school since kindergarten and was indoctrinated with the belief of obedience and honor toward her parents. She was petrified to tell them that she was pregnant, so this very bright but terrified young woman went to the library and learned how to end the pregnancy on her own.

Because of these major emotional events, Barbara’s childhood was very difficult and fraught with many experiences that left her thinking mistaken, negative, painful thoughts about herself—the self-induced abortion being one of the more pain-inducing ones. She never discussed this experience with anyone until, at the age of forty-two,she shared it with me in the course of hertherapy. In talking with me about this, Barbara realized that, for all the years between fourteen and that present moment, she had thought of herself as a murderer. This thought was not in her conscious memory but buried deep inside her unconscious mind. After delving into this matter, she was able to find compassion for her terrified little girl self. She was able to let go of the murderer identity and realize that she had actually taken care of herself in the very best way she was capable of—at the time.

I define beliefs as thoughts we have faith in. Thoughts, in and ofthemselves, are harmless. That’s why thoughts such as ―the world is flat‖ do not inspire us, create emotions within us or move us to action. But if we were given enough evidence that this thought were true, we would develop faith in the thought and it would transform into a belief. We would then follow this belief with emotions, such as fear of falling off the edge, and behaviors, such as avoiding boats

Here’s another example that our emotions are the result of the conscious and unconscious beliefs we hold: Let’s say I were meeting a woman for the first time and strongly hoping that she would like me. Let’s also say that I was told by a mutual friend that this person frowned when she liked somebody and smiled when she didn’t. If, as my new acquaintance shook my hand, she were frowning, I would feel happy because of my belief that frowning meant this person liked me.