Gabriela Morris

Someone once told me: "I've always been vegetarian, because my parents are vegetarians." And maybe you're religious because your parents are; you're an actor, doctor, musician, because your parents are?

We are brought up by our parents, the majority of whom want the best for us. That is, what they 

 is best for us; but their preferred journey for us may not necessarily be our path. Whether we follow their footsteps or create our own destiny depends on many factors.

We learn to experience and see our life through our parents' eyes first. As children, we rely on them to teach us what is safe and unsafe.

Later on, we all gather our own hard-earned wisdom largely by learning from our own mistakes. All our experiences cluster together to make a bank of knowledge and - driven by love - we are eager to pass this onto our own children one day. It can be very frustrating for parents to have their knowledge and well-meaning advice refused, or worse laughed at or ignored!

In order to understand where our parents are coming from or why they behave as they do, we need to try to understand and know them better.

The more understanding you have of them as humans, the more you mature as an adult and the more responsibility you learn to take, the more the blame starts to diminish.

We all make mistakes. It's a human thing. We tend to protect ourselves by trying to make sense out of things and build a wall so we don't get hurt again. There is nothing wrong with that, but seeing things as black-and-white or all-or-nothing can be damaging for our relationships.

As our parents are only human, they come with their own complex and varied life stories, all of which will affect how they are able to be with you and communicate with you.

In therapy clients often reflect on their childhood, but they also often talk about their parents' upbringing and the experiences of their parents' childhoods, which would have shaped them into the people they are today.

This is especially true when we think about trauma. Thanks to the study of epigenetics, we know now how trauma can be passed down the generations. Populations subjected to long-term mass trauma, colonialism, slavery, war and genocide exhibit a higher prevalence of disease even several generations after the original trauma occurred.

And how do you think this affects our mental health? Our ability to accept and move on? Receive information and think outside of the box? Transgenerational trauma can have a significant effect on individuals and their family system.

Children of trauma survivors must be willing to work through their family's trauma in order to break the cycle. We call them a cycle breakers. A cycle breaker is someone who recognises harmful or dysfunctional traits that exist in the culture of their family and decides to trade them for something different, healthier. Unfortunately, this is most likely going to trigger a negative response in other family members.

How often have you tried to communicate something, only to be made to feel like a small child again? Or tried to talk only to be met with a blank look as if you were talking a different language?

Ideally, you would feel able to express your feelings and emotions, but not all of us learned how to. And it's not exactly easy! Maybe we tried in the past, only to feel no one listens or cares.

It takes time and a lot of patience to show people you're just communicating your valid feelings. It takes time for the other side to receive, without reacting and become defensive.

When you're trying to communicate something with a person who is highly reactive it can often ignite a small flame and before you know it there is a bonfire or an argument .

If you can, try and understand what makes the other person react the way they do, instead of taking it personally. Observe the things that add to a fire and what helps to extinguish it. When you sense things have moved into a reactive territory, try to take a step back. It's not going the direction you wanted, you need to take step or two back. Then keep trying.

There are a lot of reasons that parents might become reactive or defensive. You need to look at your parent as a whole complex being who is filtering everything you say through their own frame of reference, biases and preconceived ideas.

Parents will often encourage familiarity in the child and fear the unfamiliar. It may not always be the healthiest choice in favour of our personal growth. A parent may encourage and support their own personality traits in their child: "My son Jimmy is very shy, he's just like me!" This is the part of themselves they have accepted as part of their identity.

But what we really want from our parents is for them to recognise us as adults, with all the complexities and autonomy that that entails. If we never communicate these other parts, then things will carry on as they always have. It is important to break this cycle for your own personal growth.

It will get noticed. What isn't going to get noticed is if we pretend to still be the person they desire us to be instead of showing them the real fully functioning, complex, ever-growing and changing human being.

So, before you approach a parent with something you'd like to communicate, try to ask yourself a few questions: