what is your relationship with your parents like?

[Plenum]

when you are a kid, your parents are like gods. Mum, who is supposed to look after you, and a father, perhaps, who might be a strong figure. Those are the archetypes, anyway, of Mum and Dad.

in truth, the reality is subject to the full variety of human personality and inter-relationship. One or both parents might have a substance addiction, even something 'legal' as tobacco or alchohol. One or both parents might be abusive, one or both parents might have quite serious mental disturbances. And yet, as a delicate and impressionable child, it is these two figures (mom and dad) from which we copy most of our language, our early habits, and learn how to interact and cope with conflict, how to 'reason'. Of course, a child has many many influences on them, but even as a full adult of 35+ years I can still trace various habit patterns and behaviours back to my folks, some of which have needed conscious 'adjusting' over time.

my mother was bit aloof and emotionally distant. Physical contact and affection wasn't really part of the M.O. ('modus operandi') of how us 3 kids grew up. It wasn't until later in life that I become fully comfortable with physical contact and even casual touching.

my father worked like a human machine running his small hospitality business (chinese takeaway store). From him, I implicity adopted an attitude that life is hard, and that discipline of the self is required to approach it. I probably took that belief pattern a bit too far in my time, and it has needed some relaxing and balancing on my side, so as to become more spontaneous and free flowing.

what I'm trying to say is that in addressing the distortions of the self, sometimes we have the heal the distortions of our parents, from whom we copied and adopted various attitudes from.