Everything we learned about love is so wrong.

“The brain changes in response to experience, called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity explains how the actual physical architecture of the brain adapts to new experiences and information, reorganizing itself and creating new neural pathways based on what a person sees, hears, touches, thinks aboout, practices, and so on. Anything we give attention to, anything we emphasize in our experiences and interactions, creates new links in the brain. Where attention goes, neurons fire. And where neurons fire, they wire, or join together.” Everything we do impacts the physical architexture and connectivity of our brains, creating mental models and expectations about the way the world works. “A mental model is a summary the brain makes that creates a generalization of many repeated experiences.” (The Power of Showing Up - Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson)

Thoughts.

You see, after I started reading parenting books, I have learned so much about myself as well. I figured out why I turned out the way I am, why I love the way I love, why I work the way I work. And in my opinion, parenting books shouldn’t be parenting books, but all that knowledge about brain development and how it impacts your sense of reality, should be common knowledge, transmitted latest by high school. That way instead of struggling with an identity crisis about who you are, what you want and some distance and vague expectations of who you are going to be, you would have the knowledge and empowerment that you and you alone are responsible for everything you feel and think. And who you can become.

Let’s talk LOVE.

Parenting books used to parent children is fairly easy because children are so openminded, they learn and adapt to everything rather quickly. Parenting books used to heal your inner child, is much harder. You will have to confront all the pain you have gone through and let it go. And you will come to realize, everything you are, everything you do the way you do, is nothing but a construct. A reality forced upon you, shaped by the experiences of your life. Let’s say as a child you had very loving and encouraging parents, that sort of love will become your mental model of how love should be. Once you get into a relationship with an abusive partner it will be rather easy for you to walk away. Whereas for people who grew up in abusive households, perceive that certain level of abuse as “normal” and it will be much harder for them to break out of an abusive relationship later on. This most people probably know. Let’s say you feel like you grew up normally. Neither too loving, nor too abusive parents. If you look in the details of how you perceive and give love, do you see a pattern that reflects something that your caregivers displayed ? Were your parents very conditional about when they would give love to you ? Let’s say, when you do a good job, you would get the reward which is affection, whereas when you do a bad job, they would withdraw affection. Congratulations, like so many citizens of our world, you were raised similar to how people train a dog. As harsh as this sounds. And once you get into a relationship, unless you do some real mindful changes in the way you behave, you are most likely to treat your partner the same. When they do something good, you will be so happy and feel loved. Whereas when they don’t share your opinion or don’t do something you expected, you will feel hurt and disappointed and you will probably sulk or cry, instead of showing empathy and mindfulness. Hello teenage relationships. Or also most adult relationships in fact.

I constantly trap myself getting really triggered and annoyed when my boyfriend Nam doesn’t do something the way I want it. My expectations are also, when he “misbehaves” from my point of view, he has to make up for it. When he doesn’t make up for it, because he doesn’t see reason why he is wrong in the first place, I pull all the “I don’t feel loved” cards. Because that’s how love was modeled to me. That’s how my brain neurons created my mental model of how love is. I love you, when you do something I want you to do. I don’t love you when you do something I don’t want you to do. I feel loved when you do something I want you to do. I don’t feel loved when you do something I want you to do. Lucky for us, that with a bit of awareness, we can still get out of this stupid love trap, thanks to Neuroplasticity. With you reading all this, your brain is already adapting and changing. So we better keep going, because we all know how toxic these kinds of conditional love relationships are. Especially, if your partner also has some childhood baggage. For a Nam for example, his response to my attacks would be to flee. When he was a child, that was his response to his parents conditional-love attacks. He never stood up for himself, he would just stay silent and go away. So even now as an adult, when I conditional-love attack him, he goes silent and he goes away. Which makes me feel hurt and go all “Oh he doesn’t love me”. When in fact his response just shows how hurt he is. You get the point right ? We all get triggered by things we experienced as children. In populare media, they keep fueling on the image that love is conditional. Because in the end, the people who make tv shows, music, movies, are also just people like you and me. And we like to consume those media because it’s relatable and confirms that how we learned to perceive love is right. And who doesn’t like to be right ?

So, back to parenting. Why is it so important that we are mindful about the way we behave ourselves in relationship with our children and other people with our children around ? How do we really impact how happy and loving and caring our children will be ? A LOT. Children might not always want to listen to what adults say. But they always see and watch, and their brain does the rest of the work. Everything we do as adults will be somehow mirrored in their brain structure and therefore in how they perceive life and reality.

Any thoughts on this topic ? Let me know in the comments below. Back to blogging feels really good. Even though the reach will be much much lower than my Instagram reach, but at least I have the confirmation that everybody who reads on here actually to some extent cares about these topics : )