How to Know Yourself-24: Family Trauma

Today’s topic is family traumas and the best things about your family.

Just like everyone else, every family has its tough times. This can sometimes be due to relationships, personal impasses, health issues, or even financial challenges.

Have you ever experienced a traumatic event by someone in your family?

Have there been very difficult times that your family has gone through together?

How old were you when you experienced these events, and how did they affect you?

What do you love most about your family? What makes you the happiest about being a member of your family?

It’s often challenging to understand how children react to things. When talking about past memories with my family, I saw that what was a routine event for them was a significant event for me, and I realized that they spent days wondering how it might affect me.

Here’s a fun example: small sculptures at home. Years later, we learned that my brother was afraid of these sculptures but never said anything about it. For everyone else at home, they were just decorations on the shelf.

Similar things apply to traumatic events. While some events may seem extremely traumatic from the outside, they may have no effect on children, while other events can leave deep impacts. With today’s questions, we’ll be thinking about events that left deep impacts on us. How did these events change our perspective on life, and what effect do they have on our lives today? Are there things we are afraid of or worried about today that are related to these events? If we can answer all of these questions for ourselves and uncover the reasons, we will eliminate another question mark about ourselves.

I realize that in writing about self-discovery, there seems to be a problem at the center, and we are trying to solve it. In fact, the purpose of all these exercises is to have an idea of what the problems are and what they are not. That is, both discovering the source of the problems and how to eliminate them, as well as finding out how to improve or preserve things that are not problems.

The question of what was the best thing about your family is also aimed at preventing you from blaming your family, as a result of the previous questions.

Every family has its own dynamics, truths, and realities. I don’t believe that any parent is malicious. Everyone is trying to do their best according to their circumstances, their realities, and their abilities. When you think this way, even in the most traumatic and negative events, you should consider the conditions of the family and why they acted that way. When you analyze it well, you will see that nothing is personal.

Therefore, it is important to think positively about your family. Even if you don’t understand them, think about what that family has taught you, the most beautiful times you have experienced in that family, and the best aspects of being a member; living with positive feelings will make your life much easier. At the same time, it will encourage you to share more love with your own children.