Same buttons get pushed

A friend just sent me a very interesting piece of writing. It talks about our relationships with our parents. I found it very calming. I am my parents oldest child and I think that parents always have a difficult time with their first born, when they have grown up, left home and matured into an adult in their own right, to accept the shift in the relationship and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. Of course, it works both ways and challenges both sides to choose maturity over regressing to past behaviour. This piece of writing is idealisic and slightly too spiritualised for my liking but it does make some interesting points regarding the psychology and chemistry behind parent-child relationships, in the adult stage of life. It comes down to choices, like most things in life...

We are meant to change the way we react to our parents’ behaviors. If we are responding now, as we did as children, clearly we are not growing from the situation – and we are missing an opportunity. The goal with our family is to get to a point where we can deactivate the buttons that our parents and family know all too well how to push.

This is a great way to gauge how much of a correction we have made. How diminished is my reaction? How much kinder can I be, even in the face of those old patterns and habits that our parents have? If our reaction changes in small or even great ways, then we can know we are achieving our correction.