post estrangement: legacy of a legacy

“The way you love yourself is a direct reflection 

of how your parents loved you.

If they were critical, shaming, judgmental and 

perfectionist; then that is how you will treat yourself.  

If they didn’t support you lovingly then you will 

struggle to be assertive, to protect yourself properly 

and to ask directly for what you want.  

Real healing means knowing how to undo the 

damage done by neglectful and toxic parenting styles.” 

~ Richard Grannon.

As often happens my mind leaps in to try to make sense of what happened to me in my life and as a result changed the way I perceived the experiences of my life.

I know that my "door mat" / codependent patterns of behaviour stem from how I was treated as a child.  However, was that so very different from how most children of my era were treated?  I know that in my youth "parents and teachers" were always right.  They were critical and demanded perfection.  Is that a bad thing?  Where does the line shift from teaching good values and work ethic to being shame producing judgmentalism?  Is it in the words used, or the lack of validation of effort?  Is it the implication that only perfection is rewarded with loving attention?  Are the subliminal messages of words or actions what form our early impressions of self-worth? What failed to happen in my childhood that I was left feeling so very unlovable?

So then the question becomes, if I grew up with this self-view that I am unworthy, what exactly was it that made me believe this to be true?  Where did I cross the line into feeling that I was so unworthy that I did not deserve to be assertive, to protect myself and to be aware that I had the right to my own needs and wants? 

How does one undo or change when one is unaware that there is anything wrong?  I always knew I was unhappy with how I felt about myself, but it was not talked about.  I was able to function, to go to work, to establish a life, a home.  But I also always knew that I was different, that I did not “fit in”.  I always felt that I had to “work harder” to be accepted, to be included.  Was this neediness apparent to those I associated with?  If so were the more emotionally healthy people repulsed by my neediness?  And was I more attractive to the controlling and abusive types because they saw that my insecurities could be used to manipulate me?

And more importantly how did this lack of self-confidence translate into my parenting style? Did I go too far in the other direction validating so much that I forgot to teach the necessary balance of humility? And if in my attempt to validate my own offspring I was still unable to bestow a sense of self-esteem, what did I fail to do, what skill did I not have access to?

I am troubled by these questions because parenting was a huge part of my life for so many years and it was something I wanted to do well, or at least to leave fewer wounds on my children than were left on me.  And yet I feel that on some level, my own inadequacies, my copying techniques passed on characteristics and behaviour patterns to my now adult children that I would rather they not have to deal with.

I sense their struggles and I feel helpless to help them.  I have gained so much knowledge but how do I open doors that seem shut to better communication and better relationship building?  I understand the value of authenticity and vulnerability now in a way I never knew before, but they don’t know this person I am becoming.  I don’t even know if they are interested in knowing me as I am now.

So even as I undo the lingering effects of my own childhood traumas, how do I bring this knowledge into the present in such a way as to make a difference in their lives?  How do I point out their behaviour patterns that are destructive to our relationship without making them feel criticized?  How do I show them that I understand the nature of healing and the undoing of false core beliefs when they seem to have no interest in exploring the changing me?

And more importantly, if family trauma is inherited and passed on, what impact can I have for my grandchildren, both born and as yet unborn?  Do I have any power to break the cycle, to break the patterns of omission, of what was not done sufficiently well?

Renate Dundys Marrello

2017 – 12 – 19 

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Post Estrangement: the role of authenticity in reconciliations

I recently heard this thought in a video I was watching

“We can either have authenticity or we can simply preserve a relationship.” ~ Dr. Gabor Mate

If we put on a mask, pretend to be okay, talk about fluff we can preserve a relationship. It is what we have been programmed to do from a young age when we received the message that "our feelings" don't matter, when the grownups in our lives introduced us to the concept of not sharing our feelings was what they preferred.  Do mostly all adults in authority do this to children?  Is the process of teaching children about teaching them to share only those emotions that they (the adults) are comfortable dealing with?  If this is the case, is it any surprise that some people who study personality and character say that everyone has grown up in some way learning to be inauthentic and that this is where so many of our relational problems stem from.  

So what do we as children learn?  We learn that authenticity (being real and expressing our feelings) is frowned up by our care givers especially when those feeling are ones they find uncomfortable dealing with.  That means, anger, frustrations, resentment etc. have to be suppressed, ignored and unexpressed if we want to have a nurturing relationship with our caregivers. We learn early on that authenticity, expressing our authentic feelings puts our lives in danger if your caregivers become angry with us, withdraw their affection etc.  We learn early on which emotions to NOT express, and which emotions are the safe ones (happy, content, grateful etc). We learn when to “shut up and shut down” and we learn to pretend, put on a false mask or playact for those we can’t afford to antagonize.

So we become adults who internalize the message that authenticity is something to be feared.  We bring this false core belief to all our interactions and our relationships.  We fear to share too much, we fear to be too real because people might not like us and we continue to filter everything we say through the process of not saying anything that might “annoy” or infringe upon the “contentment of the other person.  Of course we do this in different ways depending on our personality.  People pleasers do this in an attempt to not anger or disturb the more dominating personalities.  However, the more dominating personalities sublimate their own authenticity too when they fail to look at why they get emotional release from dominating others or why they get so very angry when someone dares to point out to them that their actions are hurtful.  They don’t want to look at their authentic self to explore why they are the way they are. 

However, when we are serious about healing we learn that if we go after authenticity, when we start to express how we feel, not in a moment of anger, but in serious communication we do face the fear of destroying the relationship that has been based upon non expression of emotional truths and feelings.  And just yelling at another person that they are angry, or hurling hurtful comments is not communication of feelings. 

Communication of feelings requires us to know what we are feeling, why we are feeling it, what triggers that feeling and what we need the other person to do differently to not put up this wall of non-communication.  This requires knowledge of one’s own responses as well as understanding that the other person also has triggers and emotional responses that are not necessarily rational.

And if one person in the relationship reaches a point where they are willing to be authentic and the other person is not, you have to face the very real prospect that being authentic when the other person is not ready could destroy the relationship, because not everyone is ready to deal with authenticity.

When we recognize that the other person is not ready to be authentic we do the “tip toe dance”.  This is where the phrase “walking on egg shells” comes from.  The feeling that we constantly must be on guard about what we say; that if we say the wrong thing the other person will explode into rage at us.  We filter our comments and thoughts so as not to trigger the other person.  This is the height of unauthenticity in that we know we are doing it and we do it anyway so as “not to rock the boat”. 

This is when we recognize that we can either have a relationship or we can have authenticity but we can’t have both.  Putting our real feelings on the table, being vulnerable, being authentic will drive the person who is not ready for such a personal form of interaction away.  They will either be afraid to express their deeper more real selves or they will retaliate in anger for you daring to point out that what they did or said had such an affect upon you.

This is when you realize that some people are very happy with a casual relationship based on nothing more significant that talking about the pleasantries of life.  The gossipy conversations about other people’s lives and all the empty conversations we participate in to “fill the silence” of not saying anything at all.   Now many people are quite happy living in this state with these kinds of relationships.  They have no interest in being real, and it works for them because they either feel in control of the drama, or because they want to avoid the drama.

The problem arises when there are difficulties in the relationship, when one person is always on the receiving end of criticism and they have to stuff down their negative reaction to the critic to not antagonize the giver of the criticism.  You have a situation then where you “avoid” topics, or back away from certain discussions to preserve the peace.  However the source of the tension remains, it is the wall that feels unsurmountable because of all the things that are not discussed, not explored, not worked through.  The longer things are not worked on or worked out, the bigger the wall becomes.

Vulnerability requires us to look at how our actions affect others.  Authenticity requires us to explore these responses.  In healing we do the work on ourselves, we explore our authenticity and our vulnerabilities and get to know who we are, why others treat us the way they do, why we respond to certain triggers the way we do.  We also start to learn what their vulnerabilities are and why they are camouflaging their vulnerability with aggressive actions to avoid facing their internal issues. 

We reach a certain point in our healing however where we realize that healing relationships requires two people willing to be in the same space of vulnerability and authenticity.  We recognize that we could if we wanted to go back to putting on the mask to preserve the old relationship but we also question whether we want to go back to “walking on egg shells” to preserve something that is not very healthy, something that is filled with shrouded areas where no one is allowed to look too closely at the ghosts and skeletons in the closet.  We then face the question, which do I value more?  Do I value my authenticity or do I value a relationship based on hiding my authentic self? And if I value the relationship am I willing to put my own need, my need to be authentic aside?  Am I willing to sacrifice my need for authenticity for the need of the other person to not face their internal demons?

Every relationship we have at some point in our healing journey gets tested by these questions.  If we have been in the habit of putting other people’s needs first, ahead of our own, we might be tempted to go for the “walking on egg shells” relationships.  If we have divested ourselves of our need to be the peace keeper at all costs, we might be more inclined to say “authentic or nothing”.  We might get to that place where “no” relationship is preferable to a relationship with someone who requires us to hid our real selves to preserve their comfort level.

When we ask another person to be authentic with us we want them to face their actions and the consequences of their actions.  When we want an authentic relationship we want to work together at becoming more real.  When we are ready to be that vulnerable we want the important other people in our lives to also be that vulnerable.  But what if they are not ready?

What if they are not ready to look at themselves because one of their coping mechanisms is to look only at the faults of others?  What if they want to blame you so they don’t have to look at their own actions and their own contributions to the problem?  Can you have an authentic relationship with a person still stuck in blaming others for their problems?  I believe this is not possible unless we are willing to take the blame and be their scape goat.  However, that is about as unreal and inauthentic as you can get once you know that this is what is happening.  So then the question becomes; ‘am I willing to become inauthentic again in order to soothe the other person so they don’t have to face their own culpability in the problem?’

This is the problem that we face healing in the aftermath of in estrangement.  There comes a time when we recognize all the problems in the relationship, the parts we contributed and the parts that the other person contributed.  When we realize what we are responsible for and also what we are NOT responsible for.  When we recognize where our feelings start and that we own those feelings, but that the other person is responsible for doing the things that they did, especially when we see them doing so on purpose to trigger us to feel that way.  When we start to recognize coping strategies as an excuse to not work on healing, we reveal that side of the person that they would rather remain hidden.

If we choose to allow those people who have estranged us back into our lives, especially if they have made it clear they have no intention of changing; we can preserve the relationship only by putting on a mask of okay-ness.  We have to suppress our desire for authenticity and be aware that we have to be content wearing that “mask” even though we may want more in the way of an authentic relationship. 

Of course our other choice is to push for authenticity knowing that we then risk the relationship.  We only have the power to change ourselves.  That is where our power ends.  The other person has to travel their own healing journey to that place where they too want to be authentic and vulnerable and they too have an interest in healing the relationship in a meaningful way.

I believe that reconciliations are just as emotionally charged as the estrangement was.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2017 – 12 – 16 

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My Daily Reflections: Healing toward Authenticity

I recently watched a TEDx Talk given by Alison Ledgerwood, the topic “Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck). 

I walked away from watching this video with a new perspective on healing, and an entirely different spin on the work of healing.  Possibly the hardest part of healing is just going from thinking we are somehow damaged or broken, to seeing ourselves as amazing miracles of recovery!

So much of my healing work has been focused on discovering “what” is broken, tracing back to “why” it is broken, i.e. what happened in my past that created the broken feedback loop within my brain; and then trying to figure out “how” to go about changing that false core belief.  



And yet even after all this work I still essentially see myself as this broken think that needs fixing.  I still feel the need to focus on not letting the false core beliefs take over again (and this remains extremely difficult when faced with the people who liked my behaviour when it was based on my false core beliefs because I was softer and more amenable to their manipulations).

I still feel this basic underlying assumption that there is something wrong with me when people don’t see the authentic me as valid but would rather see the mask I used to wear in order to preserve the relationship.

I am only recently starting to understand that I have to start to see myself as this wonderful miraculous thing called a human being.  This gift of life is so overwhelmingly precious and we are trained into believing that we are defective because we are not pleasing enough to others.  

I think in healing we need to recapture that innocence of who we were before all the “bad” things that happened to us.  We need to reclaim the miracle of our life and peel away all the layers of guilt and false beliefs that have smothered our authenticity. 

The journey is one of discovering that beyond our personality (which is influenced by the patterns of behaviour of those we were raised by); there is our essence, our soul if you will, of who we really are.  The façade that we wear and present to the world is a mere shadow of who we really are.  Our gifts, our talents, our purpose are all there for the uncovering.  All we have to do is strip away the many layers of falsehoods the prevent out “soul light” from shining through. 

We are not broken things that need repairing.  We are rather walking miracles that have been burdened with carrying the weight of inaccurate perceptions laid upon us (most likely unintentionally) by the wounds of a similar delusion that burdened our early caregivers. 

I participated in a course recently called “the Spiritual Codes”, which presented the notion that we are levels of awareness.  Most of the time we are aware of our bodies and our emotions and our mental thoughts.  But we are not so frequently aware of our soul and even less so aware of our monad.

Breaking through all the conditioning toward our inner higher being is essentially what healing work is all about.  Healing is discovering who we were before we were wrapped in the constraints of conformity.



And herein lies the conundrum.  With our propensity for a negative bias we have to learn first that; no we were not “broken” by the events of our lives, but rather we became blinded to the truth and beauty of our inner higher self.  When we become aware of this we start to see our healing journey as a miracle of recovery,  something positive and joyful and beautiful rather than just an exercise of exploring ways to deal with the pain of feeling broken. 

Healing then becomes an adventure of discovery rather than the chore or drudgery of trying to fix bits and pieces of brokenness.

My mission has not changed.  I still am on this healing journey, this quest to discover and uncover and reveal the authentic me, the higher self that I know myself to be.  I will just be doing it now from a more joyful place, a place of knowing that I am already that which I am seeking, it is already there buried beneath all the junk of false perceptions and inaccurate core beliefs. 

And because I know that every person I encounter also has this inner higher self even when it is buried and hidden from sight by the dysfunctional behaviour patterns of personality, I can more easily find the compassion, which is the essence of a loving heart and spirit and soul.

Always my hope remains that by being authentic about my healing journey, I can inspire others to join me on this journey of discovery.  And I can do this with greater awareness that if they are not ready for their own journey, the potential for their healing exists.

One more piece of the puzzle fell into place for me yesterday as I listened to Gabor Mate and his son Daniel in discussion at a lecture presentation.  Gabor said something that resonated with me. “We can either be authentic or we can preserve the relationship at all costs.  In childhood we relinquish authenticity to preserve the relationship”.   And my inner higher self-applauded and said; “in adulthood we have the choice to reclaim our authenticity if we are willing to sacrifice those relationships that do not honour and support our authenticity.”

And so I return to my learning and my seeking and my quest for understanding and maybe even some wisdom.  To reclaim that authentic inner self that I know is just waiting to be uncovered.  It is this authentic self that I will share with those who are ready to expose their authentic selves to me.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2017 – 12 – 11

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