How Your Parental Relationship Impacts Your Freedom of Thought

How might we move towards free thinking and truth finding, if that is our goal?

From my experience, one of the best things we can do is fully heal the relationship with our parents. WHAT?? Stay with me. 😉

Most of our first thoughts and perceptions were passed to us from, and through, our parental figures. In Rebirthing Breathwork, one of my modalities, we work with a concept called Parental Disapproval Syndrome.

Our early childhood experiences set up an authority pattern, based on our relationship to our parents and their expression of love, connection and discipline. As the years go by, we project that pattern onto anyone else in our life in a position of authority—teachers, directors, bosses, police or the government.

If we had a trusting relationship with our parents, we are more likely to trust authority figures. If we had a problematic relationship with our parents, we are more likely to be cautious, rebellious and/or mis-trusting of authority figures.

So, immediately, through this transference, we are already not free thinkers, as we project our authority pattern or parental disapproval onto other people and situations throughout our life. And so much of our perceived freedom, including freedom of thought, lies in a relationship with authority.

Once you release (or at least recognize) this pattern, it neutralizes your relationship to authority, and frees up your thinking to form a more clear opinion of each individual situation, rather than projecting an unconscious pattern across the board (which is what most of us do).

In other words, when we are not projecting this pattern, we are more likely to see the truth of a situation more clearly. We don’t have to go seeking the truth. The truth reveals itself because we have cleared more of our unconscious biases.

But I think the hardest part is recognizing that many of us don’t actually seek the truth. We seek the information that makes us feel most comfortable and safe.

So, if you are actually committed to free thinking and truth, start with identifying and acknowledging your parental imprints—it’s a game changer.