“I Know You Love Me™”
Healing Damaged Adult Child/Parent Relationships
The International Psychotherapy Integration Conference
Florence Italy - May 2010
"Healing Adult Child / Parent Relationships" by
Stefan Deutsch
AIM
To investigate the hypothesis that the key to healing damaged adult child/parent relationships is working with awareness, goal setting, and communication plus unconditional love. That there is also an implicit correlation between the quality of one’s relationship with parent or adult child and one’s relationship with self.
METHODS
A 2 year study, administering a Likert Scale at the start of counseling and again at the conclusion, to a sample of 25 clients who indicated strong resentment toward one or both parents. The population - 30-50 year olds - with degrees ranging from B.A’s. to Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s. The study ran from October, 2007 through November, 2009.
RESULTS
Many clients reported breakthroughs and generally positive results within the first 3 to 6 months. All made significant improvements in their relationships, especially accepting their parents’ limitations and expressing love in different forms to the parent. All were genuinely surprised at their parent’s willingness to reciprocate and were able to discern that their relationship with themselves was also transformed.
DISCUSSION
The Continuum Theory™ approach to human development integrates 4 developmental tracks that all impact the brain’s neuroplasticity and therefore influence growth and healing. Three of the tracks are; awareness, communication, and vision/goal orientation - similar to Gestalt Psychotherapy, Positive Psychology, Imago Couples Dialogue, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Unique to The Continuum Theory’s approach has been the insistence of integrating these 3 tracks and adding a fourth track – that of loving unconditionally. The 4 tracks are a ‘working group’ that must be simultaneously trained in order to fully impact the brain’s neuroplasticity for achieving optimal results if healing and positive behavioral changes are expected. The study demonstrates conclusively that by developing one’s tool set of awareness, vision, communication plus loving unconditionally we can achieve positive results in damaged relationships between adult children and their parents.
Results Here (opens in new window)
FACT – Human beings go through life looking for love/loving energy – which comes in a myriad of forms.
Premise I – That human beings need loving energy – as other forms of life sustaining energies like air, food and water – which are always cyclical – meaning they need to go in and out of the physical system for optimum health. Inhale/exhale. Drink/urinate. Receive/give loving energy.
Premise II – That human beings form a strong belief system from infancy that this loving energy is only available from outside sources – and proceed to look for it, compete for it, sacrifice for it, and perform for it – at all costs.
Premise III - The source of fear in relationships is not getting the loving energy we need from others on a consistent basis – producing resentment which leads to reciprocating the negative behavior. The analogy is not having control over one’s food supply – always feeling and fearing that quenching one’s thirst and satiating one’s hunger is controlled by another.
Premise IV – That human beings believe that parents were ‘hatched out of an egg at forty’ and therefore know how to parent, especially how to love unconditionally, and when they don’t they are withholding love purposefully and with intent to do harm.
Premise V – a) That human beings (parents) believe that the child they gave life to and loved unconditionally for the first few years – should love them unconditionally no matter how they, the parents, behave. b) That human beings (parents) believe that their children should know they are loved even when they, the parents, behave conditionally.
Premise VI – That human beings are afraid of relationships….this fear arises from the experience of being raised in conditional environments. Meaning – if the person who gave me life and protected me when I was little, and did lots of nice things for me can still be so hurtful and undependable when it comes to giving me the life sustaining energy called love – then who can I trust to consistently get it from?
Premise VII – That human beings, once they figure out that their parents are conditional, begin to experiment – first with friendships – with more or less success – later with members of the opposite sex – often mistaking biological attraction for love – and getting hurt. At this stage individuals no longer look to their parents for unconditional love - they invest their energy in trying to find it with partners.
Premise VIII – That human beings believe that in marriage the person vowing to love them till death do us part actually knows how to and will love them unconditionally – i.e. be their savior.
Premise IX – That human beings believe – as they did with their parents – that the person who they married and is now behaving conditionally actually knows how to be unconditional and is being conditional intentionally.
Premise X – When human beings realize that their parents, their spouses and themselves are doing the best they can even though they behave conditionally, a behavior everybody learned – and that people are not hurting each other on purpose – they can begin to learn to be aware of their own conditional behaviors, aware of the conditional behavior of others, learn to communicate about both in a loving manner, and begin to exhibit more and more unconditional behavior.
Premise XI – That human beings are schooled all their life to become independent and responsible for their own survival – work so they can eat and drink and be sustained – but are never schooled to provide loving energy to themselves. Human development and psychotherapy can educate and train adults and children how to take care of themselves and become independent and responsible for loving themselves.
Darwin mentions ‘love’ 92 times in his treatise on evolution – ‘survival of the fittest’ only twice.Erich Fromm states in The Art of Loving – ‘…human beings are starved for love.’
Harville Hendrix teaches in his Imago workshops – ‘Only unconditional love can heal.’
The 4th nutrient, which can be exchanged in various quantum amounts and generated in a conscious fashion.
When we don’t receive any one of the vital, life-sustaining nourishments – air, food and water - we experience pain! When we don’t receive loving energies we experience pain! Is it possible that loving energy is a vital, life-sustaining nourishment, just like air, food, and water are? Think of when the absence of love, the withdrawal, withholding of love hurt you as a child or an adult. The fact is that we feel nourished, energized, and we thrive when receiving love just like we feel nourished when we breathe in clean, fresh air, have a nourishing meal and drink fresh water. I believe that what we call ‘love’ is nothing more or less then a life sustaining vibrating energy, the 4th nourishment, the 4th nutrient, we need. Love when received and ingested behaves in the same way in our system as do all other nutrients. The way our body-mind-Self reacts to love proves that love is real, although love may not be tangible or visible.
Love, this needed, necessary nutrient is either present or absent – in small or large quantities. The presence and absence of love causes the following: an increase or decrease of energy, a sense of wellbeing or lethargy, a feeling of joy or sadness. For all of these to occur in a human being takes energy or the absence of energy. And these do occur in human beings, therefore love is an energy. This has serious implications to the way we ‘gift’ love and ‘receive’ love because human beings look primarily to other human beings for this nutrient called love. In review - love is a thing, that makes it real, it behaves like the nutrients, air, food water so, it is a nutrient which is either present or absent always causing reactions that require energy. That is the proof that love is an energy. What is love? Cole Porter asked. Now you know – Love is a life-sustaining energy!
