The ultimate step to becoming an adult

I have mentioned previously that becoming of age in the legal sense has little to do with how grown up we are and how maturely we behave. There is a need to grow constantly, reflect on our past decisions to learn from them and take more and more responsibility for our actions in our lives. However, there is one final challenging yet crucial lesson left.

Make peace with the past

No matter how much our parents loved us, regardless of how much they tried to raise us perfectly – we all have scars from our childhood. It is not an accusation or a sad confession: it is simply a fact. There are moments that are engraved into our brains, and not in a good way. Whether it is about being punished for something unfairly, growing up with an overprotective parent, or even growing up without one – the bottom line is that we all carry these weights with us. We have held on to them and they led to an unresolved mix of resentment, anger, selfish love, abandonment issues, fear of failure, secrecy and who knows what else. We might not think of these on a daily basis but they do pop into our minds every now and then, sometimes when we least expect it. Even if we do not admit to ourselves, nobody has had the perfect childhood – and it affects us well into adulthood.

As grown-ups, we can (and often do) choose to distance ourselves from the problem or cover it up, pretending it does not exist. However, if we do not deal with the actual issues at hand, they do come back to haunt us later on in life. Whether they present themselves in the form of self-confidence problems, commitment issues or the difficulty to bond with others is irrelevant. Nobody goes through life unaffected – and it is easy to blame our parents for our childhood traumas. This can easily strain the parent-child relationship that is already difficult because of the changes in roles within the family. Chances are, we carry a lot of resentment and hurt feelings towards our parents than we care to admit. At the same time, even if we are oblivious to it, they may feel guilty and confused about things they have done in the past. Either way, this is a matter that we need to resolve in order to be well-functioning, emotionally intelligent adults.

How to resolve the parent question

The most important thing to know is that we are allowed to need external help in all cases. We do not need to have grown up in an orphanage or having been beaten or molested as children to seek the help of a psychologist or coach. Not only those who experienced the most terrible childhoods deserve to be taken seriously. And while a professional cannot resolve our problems for us, they can teach us techniques to deal with our past grievances and issues. They can be the catalyst we need to finally come to terms with the most influential yet incredibly complex relationship in our lives: that to our parents. Whether we decide to go through this journey alone or seek professional help, there are several steps that we need to take, for our own sake.

First and foremost, we need to understand that most of our parents’ actions come from a place of love and that the pain they might have caused us was never intentional. Unfortunately, this does not apply in all cases; even parents can be bad people sometimes. Nonetheless, most parents make a true effort for their children and try their best to give them whatever they think is best for them. They have loved us and cared for us without wanting to cause harm. Before we condemn our parents for the mistakes they made in the past, we need to keep in mind that it was most likely not their intention.

We then need to practise the same acceptance and forgiveness toward them that we practise towards other people in our lives. It is fascinating that we can forgive our friends much more easily than our parents – even though our parents tend to love us unconditionally while this can rarely be said about, well, anyone else. We should make an effort to accept them for who they are, even if we feel that they are completely different people to us or if they have behavioural patterns that truly upset us. Holding grudges and judgement of someone’s behaviour will lead to constant frustration in the relationship and this is especially so in the case of such an intimate bond. Instead of embittering our relationship to our parents with mulling over the same issues over and over again, we should strive to forgive them for their past mistakes.

Finally, we need to learn the hardest lesson of all: to see our parents simply as humans as opposed to just parents. Despite what they mean to us, they are regular people with their own messed-up childhoods, unique experiences both good and bad, fears and successes, pet peeves and achievements. They are special to us but they are no better or worse than any other person. The decisions they made that we see as failures might come from a place of fear, uncertainty or simply not knowing the right answer (as often there is not one). Because of the role they have played in our lives, we have a tendency to expect the world from them – leading to constant conflict. Instead, we should recognise that they are and always will be independent individuals with their own characters and behavioural patterns. We should love them for who they are without wanting to constantly change them.

It is crucial to remember that we are not doing all of this for anybody else but ourselves. Even if our upbringing was truly awful and our parents were not the loving kind, we should still aim to accept their decisions so that we can make peace with the past. This will help us get rid of the weight of our past that we have been carrying around ever since – and may even make us more aware of our own personal traits that we might want to change. Regardless of how we approach the parent issue, self-protection is still important. Just because we accept our parents as they are and forgive them for their past actions, that does not mean that we have to tolerate behaviour that keeps harming us. However, along the way we may realise that their words and actions no longer hurt us as much as they used to, if we better understand where it is all coming from. We should all learn to let go our past grievances and love our parents for who they are – people who did the best they could for us. This is the ultimate step to becoming an emotionally healthy, self-aware adult.