MY
VISIT TO PREYE
As a clinical psychologist it is my
privilege to help people explore their inner worlds, their psychological
terrain. My friend Preye said. Hour after hour, I hear thoughts, emotions, and
feelings. This is my data. This data helps me to better understand what it is that
emotionally paralyses us. How is it that we thrive at this thing called life?
In voices that are washed with need and are ablazed with yearning. Preye mentioned
that her clients invite her into their history. They tell her stories of love,
loss, hidden fears, and deepest desires. And let me tell you, she says
inevitably these stories turn to childhood. They speak of a common, theme, a
similar rhythm. They speak of a hunger that only a parent can appease, of a
thirst that only a parent can quench. The other day this tall strapping man in
his mid forty’s, he came to explore the particularly difficult relationship
with his father. Yes we grapple with problems of our childhood long into
adulthood. And he said to me, in a voice that turned plaintive, that of an
eight year old he said “will I ever meet my father’s expectations? Will he ever
accept the man I have become today? Or will I always be a no-good loser? He was
seeking, searching, yearning for an approval that may never come. And what
about the woman in her thirty’s, so beautiful, talented, successful, she
screamed “what is wrong with me?” you tell me it’s because my mother left me
after I was born but when will this pain fade? And a woman who picks on her
skin constantly, a lifetime habit, you see. She said “these” pointing at the
rageful scars on her body, “These began the day after my father got married to
my step mum”. “Help me” each one of them silently shouts at me. “Who am I? I’m
I whole? I’m I worthy? Do I matter? Life’s essential questions. But no matter
what I say to them, my words do not seep in. Because they have internalized
another voice you see, that of their parents, an early voice. Now try erasing
that first blueprint. It runs wild, rampant, chaotic, and unpredictable. It
comes to be the way we define ourselves. It becomes the air we breathe.
Parents, few hold a greater power or more immense responsibility. And this is
why I chose this field of study, to propose that we occupy the role of
parenthood in an entirely different way, with a renewed curiosity, a heightened
awareness, and a transformed commitment. This is because nothing like parenthood
that needs to be at the forefront of our global consciousness. It’s the call,
the linchpin that affects how our children will thrive. Everything, how they
take care of themselves, each other, the earth, show compassion, tolerate
differences, handle their emotions, create, invent, and innovate. This is where
global transformation begins. We cannot expect our children to embody an
enlightened consciousness if we parents haven’t dared to model these ourselves.
It all starts with us and how we parent. Our children are facing challenges
today that we couldn’t have dreamed of. Evidence suggests that they are
buckling under the pressure. One in ten children in Nigeria shows signs or
symptoms of psychological disorder. We have children on the streets, in
orphanages, in foster homes. The use of drugs is on an exponential high.
Children are unhappy and depressed. Something is amiss. We need to sit up, pay
attention and raise our children differently. Now of course, parental influence
isn’t the only factor at play. There are confusing, colliding and chaotic
influences in our children’s life that shaped them indeterminately. We aren’t
the only ones of course. There is neurobiology, there’s temperament, there’s
social pressure, there’s poverty. We could blame psychiatry, education, big
farmers and the government and chances are we may be right, but our influence
in these spheres is relatively limited. But let me tell you where we hold
indubitable power. That is in the relationship we nurture with our children.
Our children and us, moment after moment nothing glamorous here. Early in the morning as we
brush their teeth, as we take off their bag pack, as we soothe away their
tears, brush away their fears, put them to sleep at night. This is where each
one of us holds transformative power. There is no excuse. Now this isn’t just
some clinical psychologist here speaking of her convictions Preye reminds me.
There is real science behind this to show how the parental relationship impacts
not only our emotionality and our psychology but also our neurobiology. Take for
example the quality of relationship, two kids share with their two different
mothers. One kid suffers from abuse and neglect, and the other enjoyed a
thriving connected relationship. Chances are, the first child will grow into an
adult at greater risk for drugs, crime, a lower IQ, and most tragically a
diminished capacity for empathy and relatedness. The mother of this child
certainly wasn’t evil. She was probably a mother who loved her child. You know,
we don’t hurt our children because we are evil or ill-intentioned, certainly
not out of a lack of love. We hurt our children for one reason only; it’s
because we are hurting ourselves and we barely know it. It’s because we are
unconscious, because we have inherited legacies of emotional baggage from our
own parents. We are sitting on emotional baggage that lies dormant,
unconscious, waiting to be triggered at a moment notice. And who better to
trigger us than our children? They just know the buttons to push. Through our
children we get theatre seats, orchestra seats to the theatrics of our
emotional immaturity. You know when we lose our temper with our children and
believe that they are devils and monsters, chances are it isn’t because they
are that, but because they have triggered that old wound within us. They have
made us feel the feeling that we don’t care to feel. They have made us feel
powerful and out of control, helpless and in order to regain a sense of
supremacy, we lash out at them in reactivity. You know when we pick on our
children nonstop; we nitpick at them, “why aren’t you like this”? “Why don’t you
do that”? “Why couldn’t you be more like her”? Chances are it’s not because
they are inadequate, but because we come from a place of inner lack, and we
ourselves live under the tyranny of a severe inner critic. You know when our
children are disrespectful to us and cross our boundaries and we fret and fume,
and commiserate with our friends about our evil children? Chances are it’s not
because they are wild and chaotic, but because we ourselves have a problem with
our leadership, with our consistency, with saying no, with handling conflicts,
with order. You know our children come to us whole, complete and worthy. They
are happy with two sticks, a stone and a feather. But because we have been
conditioned so deeply in an unconscious manner, so severed from our own sense
of presence, wholeness, attunement and sense of self and abundance that we
project a sense of lack onto them, and we teach them, “do not depend on your
sense of self for worth and value, but look outward”. Look to the Ferrari, the
corporate corner office, to the casino, to the pill, to the bottle, to the
needle, to spouse number one, two and three, to where you live, to where you
graduated from. Because we are severed from a sense of being and we are
consumed by doing. This is how we know self value. We teach our children you “you
can’t simply plan, you must achieve”. “You can’t have a hobby, you must excel
at it”. “You cannot dream, you must dream big and why really dream if you can’t
succeed?” It’s time for us to change the spot light , to turn it inward, and
change it from being the child who needs to be fixed, the child as the one with
the problem, and parental evolution as the solution. The extent, to which we as
parents know ourselves, is the extent to which our children will. The extent to
which we as parents can love deeply, laugh loudly, risk bravely and lose
freely, is the extent to which our children will know joy and freedom. The
extent to which we can run out into the rain without fear of getting wet is the
extent to which our children will lead lives of courage. The time to awaken is
now. The parenting paradigm needs a shift. No more the parents as the greater
than, but now we need to look at our children as equal if not greater
transforming agents. Our children are our awakeners, they are our teachers. It
is time for us parents to answer the call, to pause to reflect more, to connect
to our own abundance, to trust our own children, to understand their brilliance
to follow their lead, to self-love, to create purpose, to enter worth to be in
gratitude for this is how our children will absorb wholeness and abundance,
fullness and spirit. And from this place, they can fly free. It is time for us
parents to answer our call to our own awakening. The moment is now and our
children await.
