We inherit far more than we realise.
Alongside the stories, traditions and values passed from one generation to another, we can also inherit fears, beliefs, expectations and ways of being in the world.
Some are spoken aloud. Others are communicated without words.
Perhaps we learned that certain feelings were unacceptable. That keeping the peace mattered more than speaking the truth. That other people’s needs came before our own. That we needed to be strong, successful, agreeable or useful in order to belong.
Sometimes we carry the consequences of experiences that happened long before us – loss, trauma, displacement, shame, secrecy or relationships in which there was little emotional safety.
And because these things are familiar, we may never think to question them.
We simply carry them.
Like something handed from one person to another, generation after generation, we can find ourselves holding beliefs and burdens without ever stopping to ask:
Is this actually mine?
What we carry can quietly shape our lives. It can influence the relationships we choose, how easily we trust, the boundaries we set, the way we respond to conflict, what we expect from ourselves and even what we believe we deserve.
One of the possibilities therapy offers is the opportunity to slow this process down.
To become curious about the beliefs, patterns and responses that have become so familiar that they feel like part of who we are.
Where did they come from?
What purpose might they once have served?
Do they still serve us now?
And, perhaps most importantly, do we want to continue carrying them?
Awareness does not mean blaming our parents or the generations that came before us. They too were shaped by what was handed to them, often doing the best they could with what they knew and what was available to them.
But understanding where something came from can give us something enormously important: choice.
We can honour what belongs to our history without allowing it to determine our future.
We can keep what nourishes us.
And we can begin, gently and consciously, to put down what does not.