Do you find yourself making the same mistakes as your parents?

[SecretSnake]

My husband and I make a very conscious effort not to parent the way we were parented, but sometimes learned behaviors slip through. Eg, I can be quite reactive and quick to shout (literally hear my mums voice coming out of me!) and my husband can be quite authoritative especially around food (his parents have given him a lot of weird food issues!)

I beat myself up about it a lot but I’m sure I can’t be alone in this? If you find yourself doing the same how do you manage it? Do you go as far as getting counselling? Aibu or am I just being really wet about it?

Anybody?

Yes 100%

I can hear my dad at times and as much as I love him it’s the bits of his personality I couldn’t stand as a kid.

What is that about?

I'm trying as hard as I can not to, but I'm only 12 months in

Read The Book you Wish Your Parents had Read by Philippa Perry. She covers the reasons why we are triggered by the things our parents did.

Same as you with the quick reaction and shouting. I have worked hard not to do this but sometimes it happens. When it does I say to DS that I am frustrated and cant talk right now until I calm down and then apologise to him and talk about it but it's too little too late really i shouldn't behave like that.

For me counselling helped tremendously with this.

Sometimes. But I make a conscious effort to step away and apologise if I get shouty like my dad. It's hard to not occasionally slip up.

Oh hell, yeah. My mum is critical and it seems I always just miss the mark of being a good daughter. I now find myself saying stuff to my 11 year old which is well-intended then thinking how will she hear it...probably the same way I did!

I would never do or say most of the awful things my parents did, but I did used to shout which I hate myself for. I ALWAYS apologised but I have prepared myself for being hated by in the future.

Well my father had a long running affair but never left my mum. My ex is a serial cheat, but denied, denied, denied and I put up with it for years until my DC were older.

Neither parent was ever shouty or argued. I never was shouty or argued for years.

My DM was distant and cold to my DDad and I became the same to exH and was told it was the reason he cheated and lied, but he was doing that long before I became distant. Its just the usual gaslighting shit he subjected me to.

"I can be quite reactive and quick to shout (literally hear my mums voice coming out of me!)"

My dc is 5 and in the last few months I've been catching myself doing that. It wasn't an issue previously. I sometimes catch myself saying exactly the words my mum said to me and then regret it immensely and apologise to my little one.
One thing for me is I only do it when I speak (yell) in my first language. I'm trying to switch languages when 'mum rage' comes over me to control it a bit.

I'm a shouter. And today, because I'm tired, I've wildly overreacted (a trait of my DMs) to finding that DD (4) had drawn on her dressing table by chucking all her colouring pens in a recycling bag and telling her that, as a punishment, I am throwing them in the bin. Sat here now trying to work out how to come back from it and apologise to her properly.

I'm not perfect but I'm so different from my parents.
They are a defensive defensive narc and enabler. My mum relies on DARVO, silent treatments, stonewalling, smear campaigns, so much projection. Guilt tripping, triangulation, the usual. My dad backs her up NO MATTER WHAT. ANY appeal that they stop hurting me is "hurting mum" and I am ostracised.

But obviously nobody can go through this unscathed. I am /was very reactive. I lacked resilience, had no goals, couldn't plan anyway of progressing my life professionally, felt stifled by any man who was serious about me and chased after men who weren't in to me.

I was in bad shape. Over the last 7 or 8 years I've found a lot more peace.