In the blog on Why, we discuss pictures and how we perhaps feel we must ‘live up to’ these pictures, or expectations that others have of us, be it our parents, our family, our friends, our co-workers, anyone.
But it is important for us to discover our pictures, what they are, why they are, and where they came from.
For when we want things to be a certain way and they don’t turn out that way, we can easily react. This simply means we have had an expectation of how life should be and when that picture is not met, we don’t like it.
This is how we end up with disappointment and a whole load of smashed pictures. But is this a ‘bad’ thing?
We all have pictures about what we think life is: from what we think it is to be a good mother, a good friend, a good father, a good partner, a good worker, a good child. The list is endless: from what we think our life will look like when we get married, have a baby, find a new job, make more money, buy something we like or need, feel better, get healthy, etc. The list goes on and on and on and on.
We all have grown up with ideals and beliefs of what we think that life should look like. These ideals and beliefs are oftentimes formed in our childhood. We learn from others what life should look like based upon our parents’ relationship and that of other family members. This teaches us what a relationship ‘should’ look like, based upon how we did things in our family. Our family’s beliefs and ideals of how family life and relationships should be are formed when we are young. And our pictures can be vastly different from those of others.
This oftentimes raises many issues when we get together with our first partner, as we may have each had very different childhood experiences and backgrounds. We will each have various ways of dealing with things, and conflicts can easily arise.
We also formulate beliefs, ideals and pictures from what we are taught in school, our friendships and what we see on TV, in magazines and in the movies. We often assume that others have the same pictures or ideals/beliefs as we do, and oftentimes this can cause challenges in our closest personal relationships, as we assume others see things the way we do.
These beliefs span every part of life: they include the titles of how we see ourselves as mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, friends, partners, co-workers, grandparents, students, professionals, etc. They also include how we see ourselves in life, the type of person we think we are, the type of person we think we need to be, and what life looks like when certain things happen to us. This list is endless.
But we rarely question these beliefs in life. We accept that our viewpoint is the way things are. We simply think life is this way, based upon the pictures we hold. Oftentimes, the only way these beliefs and pictures get challenged is when we face an issue in life that causes us to question, such as an illness or an accident.
Until then, we accept that is just ‘us’ and that is the way it is.
But in life, are we not constantly fed pictures of what life ‘should’ be, particularly by the media?
When we are born, do we have an understanding of what a marriage is? Do we have an understanding of what family is?
Where do these ‘understandings’ come from?
Usually from our parents and other family members, or those around us.
What happens when we have only one parent, or an abusive relationship between our parents, or one parent is away, or one parent did not want a baby? We end up with vastly different pictures, as there are a myriad of different situations we all can be raised under.
Our pictures around what family or marriage look like are formed differently. And when we come together in relationship with another, this can lead to conflict.
What if our parents ‘got along’ but there was no love in the relationship? What if the relationship was purely functional? What if we were always told to ‘do well in school’ and when we came home with good marks, this was the only acknowledgement we received, and we then substituted this for love? What if we then learned that seeking recognition for what we do is more important than anything else, for this is what we perceive as ‘being loved’? Does this behaviour not cause us to go outside ourselves, constantly seeking to please others, in an effort to gain their recognition, their attention, and secretly hoping they will ‘love’ and approve of us? Could this not potentially lead to pleasing our partner in a way to gain their approval?
How are our relationships formed with our siblings? Is there competition and comparison? Is there always a jockeying for position in the family, perhaps for favour with a certain parent? These pictures, ideals and beliefs formed in the home when we are small affect all our relationships later in life.
What of friendships or other relationships outside the home? Do we have pictures about what these should look like when we are born, or are these formed when we begin to attend school?
How do these pictures affect our relationships? How we should behave at work, or how a colleague should treat us? Note the intentional use of the word ‘should’ here. Our pictures are formed in life based upon our experiences: the relationship our parents have, our relationship with our siblings, our friends, our teachers, the media, movies, music, social media – all of these shape the expectations we then have in life and create our specific blend of ideals and beliefs, or the way we ‘think’ we should live.
What are the typical messages we are told about marriage? For example: the movies tell us we should have an attractive partner, 2.5 kids, a dog, and a nice house with a white picket fence. But are most marriages like this? No. Our experience from being with our parents (or not being with parents directly) would also form our ideals and pictures of what marriage would look like. So if dad (or mum) were not present, or our parents were always screaming at each other, we may come to expect that marriage will have these behaviours towards each other. We learn and we think this is ‘normal’ behaviour.
“Normal” does not mean it is indeed normal, it only means that it is COMMON in society.
Where do we receive pictures about what it is like to be a woman or a man in life? Do men always need to be hard, tough, to go out and earn the money whilst the woman stays home and raises children? Do women need to be super sexy, curvy, no wrinkles, always ‘available’ and always be the ones to be there for support, always self-sacrificing for others?
There are literally millions of messages we receive on a daily basis from the media, movies and others regarding gender roles alone!
Put simply: are these pictures true?
These are fairly simplistic examples but you can grasp the gist here – our pictures come from outside us: from messages that the outside world provides for us in the form of what we experience and view each day. The media (and our family of origin) has a large hand in forming these pictures, whether we would like to admit this or not.
Pictures form expectations: we expect life to be a certain way based upon what has been demonstrated to us. If it is not, then we have the right to react, because life was not the way we expected it to be = a smashed picture.
In counselling sessions, we often look at the layers underneath reactions, addressing, and often challenging expectations and core ideals we hold as our ‘truth’. This assists to understand more about ourselves and perhaps why things happen as they do.
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