Reuniting With Family Is Sometimes Like Going Back To Being Someone You Are No Longer

Sometimes a family reunion can make us feel like someone we are no longer or never were. In the eyes of our parents we are still perhaps that indecisive child or that rebellious and “answering” girl. It does not matter that we are independent adults, sometimes, before our parents we are still the same children of yesterday.

It is often said that there is no greater storm than the one that breaks out with the classic family reunions on holidays or Christmas. However, and as we already know,  there are families of all colors and flavors, there are those where harmony reigns, the greatest respect and good humor, and there are also where resentment remains stuck like little thorns in those rigid and non-functional links that take the air out and haunt you.

However, beyond taking these realities as something specific, there is a phenomenon behind which there is not much talk. At present, and due to the economic crisis, it is common for many of those young people who have become independent now to find themselves with no other alternative than to return to the family nucleus for more than obvious reasons.

Often, to the feeling of failure in the professional field, sometimes the fact of having to assume again a role that one has already left behind is added. A role sometimes constructed by our own family dynamics and that has little to do with the person we are today.

The family and its unconscious constructions

For our parents, uncles or grandparents, a part of our childhood is still there. We are still in some way the middle brother, the one who spent half his life imitating the older brother and envying the little one’s concessions. Perhaps even the memory of what they called “bad character” still remains in their memory, because we were too defiant, uncontrollable and unruly.

When in reality, that temperament is what has perhaps led us to be what we are now : proactive, creative and dynamic people, all of which provide us with great satisfaction. Traits that we self-perceived in the past as negative due to the constant comments of our parents, urging us to “change”, to “improve” until little by little, we discovered that we did not have to. Because they weren’t flaws, they were real virtues.

However, and this happens many times, when we return home or when we meet with the family, it is enough that we say or do something so that that of “but how unwieldy you are, we have to see what character you have… where do you come from? have you taken it out?

Almost without knowing how we return to that role of the past, that of the rebellious or conformist son. The achievements of the present do not matter, no matter how proud we are of ourselves, because in many family nuclei there is an unconscious tendency to return its members to their role in the past, to that position self-constructed by our parents.

This type of so common phenomenon actually has a very interesting explanation behind it. From the University of Illinois they explain to us that within a family system almost nothing works independently.

Something undoubtedly very complex when sometimes, we find ourselves in the position of having to return home due to financial or personal problems.

We must relate to the family as the adult we are now

Sometimes it happens, it is enough to cross the threshold of the family home to feel that we are returning to the past. Sometimes the feeling is pleasant, even comforting. However, for many people it means having to enter into unresolved conflicts, into differences that created distances like entire oceans or even in assuming again a role that they already left behind-

• Let’s try not to fall into these “bear traps”. The best way to re-enter that family nucleus is by being what we are now: mature adults, adults with all their vital filming, their learnings made, with their virtues and their strengths.
• This is how we will deal with those pre-conceptions and even those archetypes that our parents created at a given moment: Luis is the athlete, Carmen is the rebel, Alberto the one who was beaten at school and whom they had to defend.
• However, it is quite possible that Luis wrote poems in secret all his life and now wants to set up a bookstore. Carmen may even have been a little rebellious and only felt angry for a good part of her youth. Furthermore, it is possible that even Alberto, that skinny boy who was chased at recess to beat him, is now taking the exams to be a policeman.

What we were or what others thought we were in the past has little to do with what we are now, and that must be assumed by those who are part of our environment. It is in our power to make them see it and perceive it, avoiding assuming again that role that our family expects and thus managing to modify patterns of the past that the only thing they cause is dissatisfaction.