Family Generational Patterns of Behavior

Do you have any generational behavior patterns that have been passed down through your family to you? I do.

I remember, as a teenager, becoming aware that my mother and grandmother had a love/anger relationship. I knew that they loved each other and I also knew that they were angry with each other. The anger was underneath everything they said to each other. The emotion was never acknowledged by either of them. The anger remained unvoiced between them and some how that unresolved emotion got passed down to my daughter and me. I never knew why they were angry with each other. I just knew it was there. Recently, I may have discovered a clue to the cause of their anger. Since neither of them is alive for me to ask them, my discovery will just have to remain an educated guess.

I had my own unresolved anger at my mother because of my incest issues. For many years, I didn't want to know that I was angry at my mom. I loved her. Daughters---good daughters---if they were angry with their parents didn't admit it. How could I be angry at the person who gave me life? How could I protect my mom emotionally and express any anger toward her? I couldn't. My assigned family role was to keep my mom from protected from feeling emotional pain. I couldn't do that if I was honest about my anger so I denied it to her and to myself.

When I got into a recovery program and counseling, my mom thought it was all because of my dad's alcoholism. She could deal with that. She got angry with me because she saw it as criticism of her choices as a woman---she married him and stayed with him---and her choices as a mother---she stayed because of us kids. She told me that she stayed with him for all of those years because of us kids. Mom died in 1999 without ever acknowledging that she was angry with me for bringing things out into the open.

Several times over the past years, I have realized that the cycle of mother/daughter anger has been passed down to my daughter and me. My daughter and I have had several discussions about the anger that suddenly flares up between us.

I wrote briefly about my anger that would flare up whenever my daughter would get pregnant. You can read about that in my very first article called Three Of My Past Life Experiences found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/06/three-of-my-past-life-experiences.html . My daughter and I have talked about it and we both now know where my unexplained, very intense anger came from. With my daughter's last pregnancy, I was at peace and did not experience any of the anger of the first three pregnancies. For me, discovering and acknowledging the source of the anger dissolved it.

Recently, in the Language of Mastery class that I took, I found what I believe is generational anger. Now, without my mother or grandmother alive to ask, this is only an assumption on my part. In the class, we had a writing exercise to do. I chose the relationship with my daughter as one of my topics to write about and discovered an "ah-ha" moment.

In writing, I realized that I sometimes feel jealous of the relationship between my husband and daughter. They love each other, as they should. That was part of the problem.

As I was deciding to write this earlier, I got another piece of the puzzle. My jealousy comes from the fact that I didn't have this kind of relationship with my dad. I always missed that healthy form of love from my dad. Father-daughter relationships are different than mother-daughter relationships. Because I never had that kind of love from my dad, I resented the love between my husband and daughter. I found another shadow part of myself for me to connect with.

How could this be a generational pattern? From the stories that I heard from my mom, I know that she and her dad were very close. My mom was the youngest of eight children. The closest to her in age was a 10 year old sister. My grandmother was in her 30's when mom was born and my grandfather was in his 50's. From what my mom said, she adored her dad and he adored her. In looking at my feelings of jealousy, I wonder if a similar feeling of jealousy was possibly behind my grandmother's anger at my mom? I can't ask either of them. I do believe this is a strong possiblity.

So here comes the conscious language:
I choose to release my feelings of jealousy and love my daughter unconditionally.
I love my daughter.
I am grateful for the loving relationship between my husband and daughter. Their relationship is healthy.
I choose to have a healthy, loving relationship with my daughter.
I release my feelings of loss with my relationship with my dad.
I love my dad.
I love my husband.
I love myself.
I love all the different parts of myself. I am whole and free of the past.
I choose to release any anger passed down to me from my mother and/or grandmother.
I love my mother.
I love my grandmother.
I replace jealousy and anger with love and joy.
I am love.
I choose to release generational patterns in any and all forms.
I embrace my shadow self and reconnect with that shadow self with love and forgiveness.
I connect with I Am That I Am.
I am whole.
I choose to feel all of my emotions. I choose to search out the source of all intense emotions and release them from my body.