The importance of emancipating oneself emotionally from one’s parents is that only in this way can true personal autonomy be built. If it is not achieved, the past becomes a burden that hinders progress.
Emotionally emancipating from parents is not an easy task, especially when the relationship has been conflictive or is marked by traumatic events. However, achieving this liberation is one of the essential conditions to be healthy adults.
Oddly enough, unhealthy bonds are often stronger than others. Unresolved problems or traumas weigh more in life than happy experiences. For this reason, on many occasions, emotionally emancipating oneself from one’s parents also means dealing with painful experiences and healing them.
This is worth it. A person who is unable to emancipate himself emotionally from his parents carries the past as if it were a burden. As much as he keeps physical distance or never thinks regarding them, it is very difficult for him to feel at peace. But how to free yourself from those bonds? The following are seven keys to achieve it.
1. Stop blaming them
Becoming an adult is regarding taking responsibility for your own life. This includes feelings, emotions and decisions. When one has had many problems with parents, there is a temptation to blame them for all one’s mistakes.
It is true that upbringing determines much of who we are. However, it is also true that there is a point at which each of us is capable of taking charge of what he is and what he does. This includes repairing gaps, resolving traumas, correcting errors, etc. This guarantees true emotional independence.
2. Accept them
Very few people in the world can say that they had the perfect parents. Most parents look for the best for their children, but they are not always good at identifying it. Not everyone is ready to play that role of guide and example.
The truth is that being emotionally emancipated from your parents presupposes the ability to accept them as they are, and as they were. No matter how much you renege, it’s not going to change them. It is much more intelligent and liberating to try to understand and accept them, rescuing the best of them.
3. Love them, regardless of whether they love us
All loves are imperfect and that of parents towards their children is too. Sometimes they can’t even truly love them because their emotional limitations prevent them from doing so. There is no evil as such, but human difficulties that they were unable to resolve.
Loving is a way of emotionally emancipating oneself from one’s parents. That love does not have to be intense, but it does have to be real. The appropriate thing is that it is composed of respect, consideration and good wishes towards them. It is a way so that his presence does not continue to gravitate in our lives.
4. Not feeling responsible for your happiness
In many cases, children are not able to emancipate themselves emotionally from their parents because they experience many feelings of guilt around them. They understand them, they recognize their limitations, they love them and that is why they would like to give them the happiness that they have not achieved by themselves.
The affection towards the parents is expressed looking for them to be well. But from there to feeling responsible for their happiness, there is a long way. Each person is responsible for their own well-being and parents are no exception. Like all human beings, they will not be completely happy and no one is to blame for this.
5. Be empathic
Trying to put yourself in the place of the parents is a very liberating exercise. Increase understanding of what they did or didn’t do. It allows you to delve into their motivations and the obstacles they have had, not only as parents, but also as individuals.
Being empathic is another way to emotionally emancipate yourself from parents. And not only that: it also helps broaden our own perspective. It is a way of seeing situations from another point of view and this enriches our understanding of ourselves.
6. Cultivate gratitude
There is always much to be thankful for parents, despite the mistakes they have made. Life itself is a gift that they gave us, even if they have not known how to cultivate in the best way that life that was entrusted to them.
No one becomes an adult on their own. Surely, at many times those parents were there to take care of us, feed us, protect us from illness or danger and try to make us good people. It is much better to emphasize all that, than what they did not give us.
7. Acknowledge and accept the past
The past can get through us, being a major obstacle to leaving hate behind. No one can turn the page and pretend that yesterday didn’t exist. The best way to locate ourselves in the present is by going back to that past with an understanding gaze. Delving into what it was and the reasons why it was so.
Appropriating the past is a necessary step in emotionally emancipating oneself from one’s parents. This appropriation supposes a reinterpretation of what happened in the light of what was learned. Also a full acceptance of what it was, how it was and we can only take responsibility for the consequences. The only thing that follows is to grow.
Source: The Mind is Wonderful
