Everything flows out of who we believe we are. In fact, our behaviors and social world reflect our internal emotional world and our belief system. We recreate the environment around us that we feel inside us.
Our parents are often the first to create this environment and instill our identity. Our parents’ voices often become our own internal voice, whether that be merciful and loving, or critical and harsh. Ideally, parents hold unconditional love for their children while also holding them to standards to do their best. Many of us, however, did not have the perfect parents. Maybe our parents were critical, harsh, too busy, or simply did not know how to attend to what we needed in our most developmental years. Whatever the case, our parents are the first to shape the views we hold about ourselves.
The reality is that our parents could only meet us at the depth that they could meet themselves. Like them, we can only give others what we are first able to give ourselves. As children, we get signals from our caregivers that we are either unconditionally loved or that we must earn love. Acceptance is not only a human want, but as children, a human need. We are dependent on our caregivers to love us and take care of us so children will always try whatever it takes to make their parents love them. If this carries into adulthood, we often start performing for love, needing to be accepted by others -this can manifest in workaholism, perfectionism etc. There is a difference between working from a place of knowing we are loved and accepted and working for love. There is a big difference. That difference, often forms our identity.
