In recent years I did a family constellation and we left at a very confusing point. My practitioner asked me if I was “the big one or the small one” in relationship to my mom, and my unconscious had a really hard time answering that. I said, “I’m the big one” my mother felt so small to me in that moment.
But there was clearly some confusion and my practitioner said it was time for us to stop, but that it was worthwhile to investigate this. I put it away for a few years because I always felt in some ways older than my own mom, but it made no sense to me consciously.
It clicked today that a crucial element of our dynamic when I left home to go to college was my mom constantly texting me to ask me advice on how to parent my younger siblings. And of course I would always give it to her because in some senses, I recognized that I knew better and she did too. That was normal to me, I never realized how strange it was until just now as I’m healing through deeper layers of my family dynamics.
The thought, my parent asked me for advice on how to parent. That sits awkwardly. How could a parent ask their child how to parent after having been their parent? Isn’t this hard evidence for the fact that she didn’t know how, didn’t learn from parenting me, and was never willing to learn? Isn’t this evidence for the fact that she didn’t parent me? These realizations cut through me in such painful ways because I was gaslit all my life to believe that I was wrong, that they knew better, that every time I called them out on how they were abusing me that it wasn’t actually happening and I was just oversensitive and crazy and that it was all my problem.
It makes me see that I was always supposed to be the little one, and it wasn’t a failure on my part that that dynamic between a child and her mother was never developed for me. When I try to readjust my size, visually, I feel like I don’t trust her. I don’t feel safe as her child. I’d rather be the big one- my parents’ parent.
I think it can be such a strange wakeup call for those of us who were put in the position of caring for the people who were supposed to care for us because it shifts our relationship to the world. I remember that for the longest time I always attracted these people who were supposed to care for me- whether they were mentors, teachers, or therapists or the like, who actually ended up needing my care. I didn’t understand why I was caring for people I was paying to help me, how come no one would help me? These imbalanced and strange relationships made me cringe, yet they were so much of my reality that for a period of years I realized I was better alone and not seeking help. Help came with too many strings and too much of an outpour from me.
It wasn’t until a point in my life when it started to clear, and I found myself seeking help from people who could actually help me and didn’t break boundaries or didn’t insert themselves into my healing. I found that I experienced a lot of distrust because of past experiences, and operated from a place of defense which gradually dropped over a long period of time. There was usually a phase of resistance at the beginning when in my mind I tried to convince myself they couldn’t help me, but I usually stuck through it and gave them more chances. This to me was fear, because they were unfamiliar to me (and for those like me, unfamiliar is usually the safer option) and not intuition. This was another moment in which I needed to learn to distill the two, because there is sometimes intuition in fear too. I notice that pure fear comes from my mind, where as instinctual fear comes from my gut.
These people were safe because they didn’t tell me how to be, didn’t tell me what to do, and didn’t get caught in self indulgent and self absorbed emotional dumps that had nothing to do with me. They actually listened to me and wanted to know what was going on, and paid attention, they responded. This at the outset felt so scary to me because I’d never experienced it before. In these experiences no one is the big one and no one is the small one, they’re meeting me on equal footing and they’re here to guide and support, not be my authority.
That of course shaped a lot of the way that I practice too in my integrative sessions. There’s an interesting dynamic that forms that’s so particular, because I can sense when the inner child needs a gentle authority and is at the forefront of the healing. Sometimes the child needs to be seen, heard, and encouraged, sometimes they need to be attuned to in ways that were needed but never given. This is often before the adult and the child have established a healthy connection. Then at other points in time, I’m relating to the adult, and the adult can then liaise with their own inner child. Some clients need a parental energy at the start, and some others need a fierce advocate where they’ve never had one before to initiate and reinforce their developing security.
For those of you who are unaware, I studied power and gender dynamics extensively for many many years. What’s most interesting is in our imbalanced society we think that power is something that is taken, because so many of us actually feel powerless internally as the world is ruled by narcissists and sociopaths. If someone had an internal sense of power, they’d realize they didn’t need to take it from a source outside of themselves, but that’s just the codependent framework of the world at large. Oppression, suppression, taking.
What I came to realize was that power is something that’s received, if it’s given. Everyone has their own sense of power, and if they surrender it freely then that’s when it can be received. I notice these points when people try to do it in my healing practice, and I gently say no. I remind them of what they’re doing and that they have power, and I ask them to take it back.
I think that practitioners are in positions that can be very influential. That’s why I’m so careful about who I work with, especially energetically. Even if I’m not declaring my power, it’s a soft power. That’s what hypnosis and all of these modalities are- they’re exerting influence for change. No one ever saw a healer because they wanted to stay the same. I think it can be dangerous when someone’s ego gets involved or they’re not sensitive enough to the power dynamics at play because they can convince you to do things for self-serving reasons and not reasons for your, or for the, highest good. It’s something that’s always in the back of my mind for me, and for people that I personally hire.
In relating to myself, I’m the big one and the small one simultaneously. As I grow, I learn more about how to parent, and thus parent myself. There are some tangible things that can’t be changed, like how I grew up, but there are elements that can be healed continuously and presently. The dynamic between ourselves is always changing and always has room to grow. That’s where I’m coming to in recent times, is that my relationship to me is the most important relationship I’ll ever have. I may not be able to change what was the dynamic between my mom and me, but my relationship to me is in my full control and I can be hyper aware of the dynamics that I co-create, now.
