How Your Childhood Shapes Your Relationships

Continued from the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Page

When you mother wipes away your tears she is training you to be able to soothe and calm yourself when you get older. She is teaching you to handle your frustrations, disappointments, discomforts, pain and scary feelings.

In her quest to prepare you for life, your mother is working directly with your nervous system. The nervous system issues us with all the emotions and instincts we need for survival. When you can’t get your way, you get angry. When your mom is slow to answer your cries you get anxious, ‘Where is she, will she come back?’ When you have excruciating pain from an ear infection, your eyes glaze over and you ‘check out’.

These three reactions are your basic survival instincts, the fight, flight and freeze survival reflexes. In your infancy and childhood your nervous system intensifies these reactions. Think of the 18 month old baby girl who has separation anxiety. She only wants her mom and no one else. Or the toddler, who is screaming with rage, he must have it his way. Or the shy girl, who hides behind her mother’s skirts.

Your mother helps you navigate your way through these typical childhood emotions. As she does so, you learn to control these feelings yourself. By the time you reach adult life you are pleased to be master of your own ship and you have a pretty good handle on yourself. You meet the love of your life, put a ring on her finger and to your surprise, you start having emotions you don’t understand.

‘My wife has picked up quite a few kilos since we got married. She can’t be bothered to dress properly, she is always in tracksuit pants. The house is a mess, she’s on the phone to her mother for hours and she’s got no money sense. At this rate we will go bankrupt. I ask myself, ‘How did I get into this mess?’ I am angry and frustrated all the time.’

When we get married we regress to our relationship with our parents. No matter how hard your mother tried to teach you to regulate your emotions as a child, the outcome is not always perfect. You may still not have perfected control of feelings like anger even as an adult. Now you suddenly act out these feelings with your partner. Many feelings from your childhood can be acted out with your partner, making you angry, fearful, guilty or apathetic in your relationship.

Anger from your childhood makes you see only your partner’s faults and shortcomings. These are now a like a red rag to a bull. You have turned into a grumpy, bad tempered, angry and critical person. If for any reason your mother was not very capable as a parent, you anger can become more and more intense. Now you are acting out your rage with your mother and father with your partner.

Fractal Therapy can heal these destructive feelings. It helps us to regulate our emotions better. Instead of flying off the handle, you will stop, think, and decide how best to act. You will choose not to hurt your partner with rage, but to be more measured in how you act.

The way Fractal Therapy works is by very rapidly repeating the ‘mothering’ process you went through as an infant. Fractal Therapy calms you down and you learn to copy this self calming. This is a natural growth process that does not require any conscious effort. You will discover that the way you handle emotions like anger, fear, guilt and apathy naturally improves – you will have the natural abilities to manage your emotions in a more mature way.

Fractal Therapy wires your brain so that this this emotional maturity becomes possible. Instead of acting out your emotions like anger and fear in your marriage, you now only use these emotions in a constructive way when you need them.

This means you are more tolerant of your wife or husband, more compassionate and caring. You are assertive and stand up for your rights, but you are not hurtful. You take responsibility for the part you play in the relationship. You are emotionally independent and don’t rely on or control your partner. With these new skills under the belt, upsets don’t last long and get resolved very quickly. You can see the funny side of life and laughter rings through the house.

The love and attraction that drew you to your partner in the first place can now deepen, flourish and blossom.