Summer Talkback Series - Heather Parker on Why Your Family of Origin Impacts Your Life
Download MP3Hey, everyone. Before we get to the talk back, we wanted to share just a brief note. Unfortunately, our equipment didn't record the first 20 minutes of Heather's talk back. However, one of our amazing members, Rebecca Brock, was able to share a recording that she made with her phone. So we've gone ahead and spliced that audio into the beginning.
Jonathan Haas:It's not great, but it's better than having nothing at all. If you know Rebecca, please thank her for saving the day. And with that said, here is Heather Parker.
Heather Parker:When I got the, the email about this and the topic that you guys gave us options, I'm really,
Heather Parker:just encouraged by the goodness
Heather Parker:to talk about real things. Sometimes I feel like in the church, we we kinda wanna bypass, some of these things that are really happening to us and the families that we very love in. And so, I just think it's really cool that you guys are doing this and inviting open communication and open discussion around it. So to start off, I just want to take a minute to invite you to reflect this kind of inward for a minute on a couple of questions that I wanted to ask you. So take a minute to check-in about, how your family that you grew up in related to emotions just in general.
Heather Parker:Yeah. There's no right or wrong answer. Just take a minute to kinda reflect how
Heather Parker:your family related to emotions.
Heather Parker:Now I invite you to take a minute to think about, you know, what do you do personally about how you deal with conflict? What do you do with it? Again, there's no right answer. Just kind of be curious with yourself. It's not often we even take a few seconds to slow down and think about those questions, much less to think about where they came from or jarring answers about where they came from.
Heather Parker:And so, I want you to just hold on to those for a minute and bear with me. So what I wanna really look at is, this idea that your experience and your family origin shapes how you show up with yourself personally, how you show up with other people, and how do you view and honor your relationship to God. We we can't help but not be the case. Our families are the 1st picture experience of any kind of true connection or relationship, and, and
Heather Parker:we don't get to choose what family we're born into. And so,
Heather Parker:there's all kinds of parts that go into this. So before I ever start, I feel like this is really important. As I share tonight, I want to invite you to listen in context of your experience in your family. As a parent, when I am in these seats, it is really hard sometimes to do that because I began thinking of like, oh, wow. What a market's experience.
Heather Parker:Like, Oh wow. What have my kids experience? Wow. I was trying to get back and do this differently or just seeing the mistakes that we've made or the ways that we would have to do over and so I know that's fair for all of us who have children and I'm just inviting you to bookmark that for a minute because, where we start making changes for ourselves is, be curious with ourselves first. This is not like us having control anyway.
Heather Parker:So I just felt the need to say that because I know where I go as a parent when I begin listening to these things about family awards. So before I start, and I might be doing this over so that everybody can see, I wanted to just kind of draw out like a big picture of where we're gonna go. So if you think about what makes you, you, I'm just gonna draw a big heart. Okay? And this is me.
Heather Parker:So when you think about what makes you you, there are lots of things that kind of impact who you are, your sense of self, and there's 3 main kind of blue things that every single one of us experience. You can think of them as like, oh, you know, nobody gets out of here without these windings. The first one is that we live in a fallen world, right? So you can think of these as like there's 3 deaths. We live in a fallen world.
Heather Parker:I think everybody was here with me. There's no there is no perfection here. This is not the Garden of Eden. We don't live there. We have hope for that, but we don't live there.
Heather Parker:And so there are effects of living in a fallen world in that we're not going to experience perfection this side of heaven. And then the second thing is that, we are flesh. We are human. Every single one of us is a human being, and so when you think about what does it mean to be human, we're creating the newest image, and if you really slow down and consider what does that mean, that means that we have the full range of emotions, and Jesus came in the flesh. If this human body didn't matter, God wouldn't have brought Jesus here in the flesh, and yet we are broken and we are not perfect.
Heather Parker:No one on here on this face of the earth is perfect. We're all broken except for Jesus, the only perfect man that ever walked. So you're dealing with the flesh, and that impacts what goes into making me lean. And then the last thing that we really look at is family of origin. Okay.
Heather Parker:So I feel like in the church, we do a really good job of talking about a broken world. We live in a fallen world. We'll talk about the flesh, how none of us are perfect, but we don't always go to the full being that American freak out can be afforded to understanding what makes me unique. There's a quote, and this is the John Calvin. I'm gonna get in trouble for something John Calvin.
Heather Parker:Anyway, it's in Cowan's Institutes in the first chapter, the first paragraph, the first sentence. This is what he says, Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom consists almost entirely of 2 parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves, but these but as these are connected together by many ties, it's not easy to determine which of the 2 proceeds and gives birth to the other. We do a really good job of stressing the importance of knowing the character of God, and I believe that is the utmost importance, but we don't always take time to slow down and look at ourselves and like, wait, who am I? And yet we're created in His image. There's a lot of wisdom to be gained by being curious about who I am as a person and what makes me me.
Heather Parker:And so when you think about these 3 S, this is, you know, the fallen world slash in our family of origin. Okay, so if those things go into making me me, then you have to begin to look at, I want to make sure I don't forget any parts of this. All of this is going to make me me and they helped me determine my identity, like who I believe not, who I believe I am, and then who I believe God says that I am. And so all of that flows out of this I am creation of Him and it flows out. This creates my identity.
Heather Parker:Well, out of
Heather Parker:my identity, the things that I believe to be true about
Heather Parker:me and about God, remember the things that inform that are the fall of the world, flesh, and my family of origin. I'm creating this narrative and, I was told many times that your sermon Sunday morning set up this, this talking. It really did. I listened to it last night on a run and, yeah, the stories that we tell ourselves, they come from very specific places and a lot of it is our family of origin, and so out of this becomes my identity. Well my identity informs intimacy, and so if you, and I'm not talking about, just
Heather Parker:like male, female, intimacy, marriage, that
Heather Parker:kind of thing. I'm talking about connection with other people. So who I believe I am, who I believe that God says I am, that informs how I begin to connect with other people or not, And then out of those, those relationships and that intimacy, that begins to inform my interactions and a better way to say that is my behaviors because my behaviors began to be, adapted to make sure that it's protecting the intimacy, the relationship. So as I go through this, I just wanted to be able to give you, kind of this big picture. I'll refer back to it but like what, where this is all coming from and kind of my perspective and going into this.
Heather Parker:I feel like that's really important. So if you're looking at this big picture of things and kind of where this is all coming from and you think about the family of origin, what is the Bible that is a book full of stories about families? Full, full and short, and the good, the bad, the in between, and so there's a real, important part of beginning to be curious about what did my experience in my family contribute to how I'm showing up just on a daily basis. Well, the way that I approach family of origin and like really like when I thought about this talk, I was like, Oh my gosh, I truly love this grandpa. This grandpa.
Heather Parker:This grandpa. This grandpa. And I really heard out on a lot of things and I'm trying to be specific here. So I was trying to be specific on which, how I want to approach this. So when I think of family of origin, I think of 2 kind of, components that are really, really connected.
Heather Parker:One of those is something we call attachment and then the other one is developmental trauma, and I'm gonna circle back, but I wanted to give you an overhead. This is kind of the the the combi the combination of how I'm gonna approach this. So let's start off talking about attachment. What is that? What does that mean?
Heather Parker:Think about what we were created for. We were created for connection and safety. Think about Leonardo and Eden. It was perfect. They were safe.
Heather Parker:They were connected with one another. They were connected with God. That is what we are created for. Think about the trinity. There's connection.
Heather Parker:So when you think about this is what I've created for, it makes sense that just because I'm here on this earth, I'm I'm still created for that, and so attachment is about this experience of having relationships where I feel safe and connected or what's the first relationship we have is with our parents and so the ultimate goal is for this connection and safety. There's even a I always say that science catches up in scripture. Scriptures have always nailed it from the beginning. There's all kinds of research that we've done around attachment now and the significance of it and black matters and the importance of it for children as early as either of, like from conception. There's this really interesting, experiment that was done by this guy Jerry Harlow, years ago around the significance of this place of safety and stand in mothers that were monkeys.
Heather Parker:1 was like a wire shaped kind of harsh edged monkey, but this is also where the food was dismissed. So if they wanted nourishment, they had to go here. This is where it was gonna get, be fed or be provided. The other monkey was this like faux cloth, really soft, comfortable monkey, and through all these experiments, they noticed that these monkeys being separated at birth always gravitated towards the comfort over food. So there's something really significant about this need for connection, and I'm sure a lot of you have heard of that being a failure to thrive.
Heather Parker:You can have a infant. He was fed and the diaper is changed, but if they don't have physical touch and connection, they can die. It's a real thing. So there is something really significant about this connection. So Kirk Thompson is a, he's a psychiatrist.
Heather Parker:He's done a lot of work going on to attachments and trauma and he does work in, it's called interpersonal neurobiology, but he talks about how, and he's a believer. He talks about how we were not created to do life next to people. We were created to do life with people. Being known and knowing, that is what we were made for. And so, Levin says, we come into
Heather Parker:this world looking for someone who's looking for us. So I recognize that even
Heather Parker:in talking about this, we're so far removed from empathy that we're like, yeah, we're gonna, you know, you you figure out how to do your life now at this point, You know, you you figure out how to do your life now at this point, but the reality is from conception, we are looking like this is what we're made for, this kind of connection. And remember, that I'm in a fallen world and we are imperfect people and yet this is what we're made for. It's going to impact us. So, this relationship, this first relationship we have with our family of origin, with our parents is, is the single most thing that impacts your brain function than anything else
Heather Parker:or just that's, I mean,
Heather Parker:I say it a lot, but from the beginning, your brain is creating all these neural networks. There are these these connections around how to be in the world and how to be received in the world. And so, another person, Adam Young, he's got a podcast called The Place We Find Ourselves. He's a believer. He's a therapist in Colorado, but he talks about how the way that this affects our brain is that, one, we learn immediately, like how to be or not be aware of our emotions from this caregiver connection.
Heather Parker:That's where it comes from. Then we learn to be, we have to regulate those emotions
Heather Parker:or not.
Heather Parker:So when you are born, your guy created us with these things called mirror neurons, and there are these neurons in our brain that fire and make actions when we have an action towards someone else and when we see the mirror of action coming towards us and it's creating these connections, infants come into the world with no nervous system to regulate their emotion. None. Zero. They're totally dependent on their caregivers to help them regulate. Well, if you slightly up and think about that, what does that mean if your parents are disregulating themselves?
Heather Parker:Like, sometimes it's predictable things like, you know, travel for work and so someone's absent, they just can't be there. Sometimes it's, a mother who's depressed and she's struggling to be present. Sometimes it's sickness that they can't help but be absent. Either way, that infant is affected immediately when there's no one there or the one that is there is dysregulated. So from the get go, this is how we're being affected.
Heather Parker:Instead of this affects our style relating to other people from the front right up. So Adam Young has a, a white piece framework. So I'm going to just get a reference of it because I think it's really helpful in context of this of talking about because of the big 6 when you think about attachment. And I really wanna emphasize right here that we don't need perfect parents. With that, that does not exist.
Heather Parker:We will never be perfect parents, but what we do need are parents who are willing to at least be curious about what's going on with us, are willing to circle back around around and have repair?
Heather Parker:And so as I go into this, please
Heather Parker:hear me say I'm not communicating. It has to be, like, just for it to be healthy. It does we don't have perfection. So we just needed parents that could be curious about us and were willing to respond in a way that would support connection to ourselves and to them. And I can go into lots of stories here because, I like y'all, but my story of that wasn't exactly, even and steady and open and so there's, there's all of us have these pieces of our story that influence how we show up.
Heather Parker:So I'm going to give you 6 kind of things that define what I mean by attachment. One is achievement and it's basically our responsiveness to the other person. So it's this idea of, you know, were your parents attuned to you, responsive to you, not that they could read your mind, but that they were attuned to you enough that they knew that something might be up, and they were at least curious. Like, hey. What's going on?
Heather Parker:Or, you know, what might be happening right now? So just kinda consider that. Yeah. The second one is responsiveness, and what that means is, if you were sad or if you were angry or if you were fearful, did your parents respond in a way that was kind and curious and caring? Or was it one of those things where if you were angry, you were told, good Christian little girls don't get angry.
Heather Parker:Parents, that's disrespectful. You know? Or was it like, oh, I see you're angry. Okay. What's happening?
Heather Parker:We gotta have some boundaries and parameters around this, but what might be going on? It's and so that's the responsiveness. Engagement, and all that means is like, did your parents really want to know you? Not like where you're going tonight, but, like, really know you. Like, oh, what makes you happy?
Heather Parker:What makes you sad? What ticks you off? Like, you know, really curious about you. Did your parents have the ability to regulate your arousal? So that's that thing of where I was talking about how your parents from the beginning are supposed to be in a container.
Heather Parker:A child doesn't know how to do that, and I will say this. We know enough now to know that birth to 10 years is one of the most formative the most formative times in our life. Yes, God gives us lots of grace and neuroplasticity. We can grow. We can change and all those things, you.
Heather Parker:That's what we tend to like. We don't know what to do with this emotion, and so regulating it means that you can provide a container for it. Were your parents strong enough to handle your difficult emotions? So did they welcome your anger to the sadness and curiosity, or were they threatened by it? If you're angry, they can personalize it.
Heather Parker:Maybe like themselves. This is how I failed or, you know, you're not gonna disrespect me.
Heather Parker:Us being able to have a place where we can show up in our true selves and know that connection is still gonna be there is totally part of attachment. It's necessary. And the last one is, did your parents have a willingness to repair? Like, when they messed it up? Were they willing to come back and go, Oh, I blew it.
Heather Parker:I've had to say I'm sorry so many times, and I'm sure I will say it many, many, many more times. And so it's this, is there a willingness to repair? We're not gonna get it right every time, and neither did they. But, the willingness to repair is what secures that relationship. So if you think about Jesus' model, all this is doing is mirroring Jesus' model.
Heather Parker:What did He do? He moved towards the vulnerable. He met their vulnerability with curiosity, and He honored it. He named it what it was. And then He moved towards them with comfort and care.
Heather Parker:That was it. It's not rocket science, but we want to make it really, really complicated. And so all this is, is a model of what Jesus did. I feel like I should probably pause right here and say this. As we go, please hear me say, and I say this with my clients, and I believe it's true for myself, This process of examining how does my family of origin impact me, is not a process of blaming.
Heather Parker:We are not blaming our parents because every single one of us are in the same boat of living in a fallen world, being broken people, and having our own family of origin, and may move on towards that later. But it's this is not a process of blaming, but it is a process of naming. Because you cannot change or address things going on in you if you're not willing to be honest about the reality of your experiences. And so, I never want anybody to feel like this is a, Yeah, my parents did It's not. We're just being willing to tell the truth.
Heather Parker:And there's a difference in telling the truth and, like, demoralizing someone. That is not what we're doing. I feel like that's important. Okay. So that's attachment.
Heather Parker:Now I'm going to go down the other arm of this. Developmental trauma. I recognize that right now you can look on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever you want to look on, and trauma is like here, there, and everywhere. It's a little frustrating because I think sometimes it's minimized or whitewashed to be, yeah. It just kind of takes the context out.
Heather Parker:But, and at the same time, it's a real thing. So when I'm talking about developmental trauma, basically we're talking about adverse occurrences, things that happen to us, that lead us to a place of disconnection in our mind body system. And so, and I'll go into kind of give a little more context to that. But there, it's so significant that, in California, UC San Diego, created a study called the ACES study, and it stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. And through this study, they've been able to determine that the experiences that a child has, there are 10 questions on this questionnaire, and it's just, you know, questions like, were your parents ever divorced?
Heather Parker:Did you ever feel like you were not loved? Were you ever hit? There's several of these kind of in context. But through these questions and through further studies, they've been able to determine a direct correlation between these adverse childhood experiences and the disease process of cancer, obesity, and then processes of getting involved with drug addiction and gangs. And the higher your number is on this ACEs score, then it just increases your, possibility of experiencing some of these things.
Heather Parker:So it is like, we have science to back the reality that it matters about what we experience. So what happens, you know, we're made for connection and safety, right? We come into these families that are not perfect and not perfectly safe. And so, it creates this real core dilemma. I need this connection and this relationship for me to feel safe in this world.
Heather Parker:And for a child, it really does feel like life and death. Like, if something's gonna break this connection, I could die. That's how strong it feels for a child. And we get so far removed from ourselves as children, it's hard for us to go back and connect to that sometimes. But that is the reality of it.
Heather Parker:So it creates this real dilemma that it's like, I have to do whatever I have to do to preserve this relationship. And so, if being me threatens this relationship, then I have to choose. Have a sense of self, being who God created me to be, my own person, having a sense of identity, or maintain this connection. Well, hands down, children will choose the connection every time. And you've got to remember, what we start as children, we perpetuate as adults.
Heather Parker:Gabor Mate is a, he's a physician. He's done tons of research in attachment and trauma and addiction. And he has a quote that kind of summarizes this, that we will sacrifice our authenticity to maintain connection. And so here's, kind of think about it like this. We'll pretend that this podium is me, this is my sense of self, And I'm closest to it at birth, of being who I was created to be.
Heather Parker:Well, the minute I get this sense that, like, oh, if I speak up and say, well, I don't like spaghetti. I don't want spaghetti for dinner. And my mom's reaction is not,
Heather Parker:yeah, well, I understand you
Heather Parker:don't like spaghetti, but this is what we're having. You know, would you like to help me choose later? Or just with kindness or curiosity. Or I'm like, no, I'm sorry. I'm not saying like, Bow down to your children.
Heather Parker:But the minute if their reaction is like, That's disrespectful, you'll eat what I put on your plate. I learn immediately, I am not going to say what I like. That is not going to happen. These same things that I'm talking about, these adverse occurrences, happen in education, as well as at home. And so you've got your family of origin, and then you get put in this educational system where a lot I used to teach school.
Heather Parker:You're with those people at least 35 hours a week. There's a lot that can go down there. So other things happen where it's like these interactions where the message is, If I stay close to my authentic self, I will lose connection. I'm going to step even further away from that. And so over time, we we kind of we split off from who we were really created to be.
Heather Parker:As we do that, we still have to survive, right? I'm made for intimacy and connection, and I still have to survive. So then my interactions come into play. I begin to create really elaborate strategies to maintain the connection. And my strategies may maintain the connection, but they often get me further away from myself and who I was made to be.
Heather Parker:And so you think, all this is happening in your family of origin, right? I'm learning, like, oh, if I, if I get upset, Dad gets upset. Don't do that. If I get sad, Mom gets sad. Don't do that.
Heather Parker:And so we began to create these strategies of like, I'll be good, can't be bad. It's black or it's white. We will begin to like, what we call it, acting in and acting out. It's kind of this way that we'll develop the stories that we tell ourselves. These shaming ways that we will, oh, I'm a bad daughter.
Heather Parker:Or, I have to perform well for Him to be happy with me. And so you think about all these ways that strategies can kind of, come out of this. For me, what I learned was, be compliant. As long as I'm compliant, there are not a lot of problems. Listen, which these things are not I mean, they go into some of our greatest strengths until they're not working as strengths anymore.
Heather Parker:So I learned to listen, don't speak. I learned to, be as small as possible because if I get take up too much space, like, that's too much and they can't handle that. And so I began to develop these strategies that look really good on the outside. Like, I can perfectionist, a go getter, I can handle it, I'm going to work hard, I'll tackle this. Really good strategies.
Heather Parker:And they kept connection. But they get me further away from me. Sometimes our strategies are, I'll be the rebel. Forget it. I can't please you anyway.
Heather Parker:So watch me. We do whatever we have to do to maintain the relationship, or to protect the connection. And that's just one of the ways that we do it. Well, here's another part of this. All this cycle that's going on around my family of origin, and all these things that I'm learning, think about it.
Heather Parker:You're with these people day in and day out, and you're learning how to dance in the system of your family. Well, the thing that begins to hold this system together is shame. Because shame is the thing that will keep you in line. And sometimes, it's coming outward. You know, you need to do this, you need to do that, you shouldn't have said this, you should have said that.
Heather Parker:But oftentimes, whatever we're experiencing in our family of origin, we grow up to then do that to ourselves. So it's like, the, you know, you need to be perfect. You need to get it right. That way, everybody's happy with you. Well, I'm 52 years old.
Heather Parker:I've been out of my house a long time. Nobody's telling me that. But I am. And so the way that if I get close to allowing myself this freedom to be, and to, like, make a mistake, and try something new, and look stupid, and not care, If I get close to that, this shame is right on my shoulder. You better get it right.
Heather Parker:Don't try something you're not going to be perfect at the first time you try it. That's not coming from outside of me. So in our families of origin, it's it starts out with what happens to us. Things we can't control, it's things that are being said or done or dynamics. But then what we begin to do is we begin to relate to it, and we begin to do those things to ourselves.
Heather Parker:So it's what's being done to us, and then it's what I begin to do to myself in light of that. And so shame becomes this binder, or like this encapsulating way of holding it all together, Making sure you don't step out of the system of what's expected because there's a fear you might lose the relationship. So if you think about this whole dynamic that I'm talking about, born into this family, I'm made for safety and connection, this attachment. I don't live in a perfect world. So there's this developmental trauma.
Heather Parker:Some people have really, really deep, hard, hard developmental trauma. Some people, it's not that, it's not as intense. But I will say this, my radar always goes up in my office when I have somebody come in and they're like, I had a perfect family. Like, really? It was all good.
Heather Parker:My radar is going nuts because I'm like, oh. How is that a strategy? To always see the good? To never allow the reality that you grew up with human people. Like, they weren't perfect every day.
Heather Parker:They had bad days. There's no way we grow up in families that are perfect. It does not exist. And so it doesn't it's not like, it just makes my curiosity like, okay, what's here? There's more here.
Heather Parker:Not that I want to make everybody's family bad, but there's freedom in being honest about it. And being truthful about it. So all these dynamics go into what I believe about myself, other people, and God. I'll give you a personal example. Growing up in this dynamic, and growing up in a single parent home, any of my experiences with men was not really good.
Heather Parker:And so then I'm being told there is this God, and He loves you, and He's safe. And I'm like, Oh. Yeah, I'm supposed to believe that, but my experiences were like, Don't you dare believe that. But so what do I do to hold that system together? I shame myself.
Heather Parker:I should be believing that God is good. What's the reality? That's terrifying. So you see how, like, even my experiences of I might know truth. I can go to scripture, I believe the truth.
Heather Parker:But until I was willing to really dig in and be curious about it, it was just this bind of of shame. I need to believe this, but this is not what I believe. And I love, in your Sunday sermon, talking about how we don't know how long David wrestled with this stuff. But we have this tendency to pressure ourselves to think, Oh, you know, the Bible says this. David went from, Where are you, God?
Heather Parker:To, Oh, you're so good? That's what I have to do. I doubt it was that quick. And so, this process of beginning to be curious about what is happening in me? Where is this coming from?
Heather Parker:Can I sit with it? Can I go to somebody for help with it? That is part of this healing, but it's also it can't happen unless we're willing to be honest about it. So this family of origin impacts my relationship with myself, others, God, the stories that I tell myself. All of these narratives that are playing, I didn't just make them up.
Heather Parker:They came from experiences. And some of them may be false narratives. They really may be false narratives. But they're still impacting me. And so I have to be able to be willing to dig into them and see, Okay, where is this coming from?
Heather Parker:What's true about it? What am I telling myself? And what is legitimate, like, true that I don't want to admit that this is hard and true? And so, it's affecting my, the story that I'm telling myself, and it also affects the expectations that I have on other people. So we think, Oh, I left home, I went to school, I went to work, and I'm gonna go do my own life.
Heather Parker:We will repeat what we learn in our family of origin. We do what we know until we know different, or until we want different. And so unless there's a willingness to be curious about that,
Heather Parker:we'll just keep doing it. That's the way it goes.
Heather Parker:And so my family of origin impacts how I relate to other people as being human. I want to say this kind of in a summary. I believe there's grace in all of this. We come into these families created for safety and connection. We don't live in a perfect world.
Heather Parker:Doesn't exist. God, in His grace, does allow us to create strategies to survive whatever we had to survive. Even if those strategies are dysfunctional, God, in His grace, allows us to have these strategies to survive, and they help us survive. And then, we look for connection with other people, which always reveals strategies. And I believe that so this means of grace to help us survive is awesome.
Heather Parker:And then, there's even grace upon grace because He loves us so much that He doesn't want us to just live out of survival. That there's a willingness to say, hey, maybe there's more. Like, you're made for more. So to begin to unpack those strategies and maybe not live out of strategy, but out of our authenticity, closer to what we were created for. It only happens when we're willing to unpack all this.
Heather Parker:And God's grace is above all in in His mercies. But it's just like, we can walk out of here thinking, man, I am quiet. This is a lot. Yeah, it's a lot for all of us. And there's such grace in seeing it, and such grace in embracing it.
Heather Parker:And so, yeah. You can't change what you don't acknowledge. And so my invitation is just to really invite everybody to be curious about,
Heather Parker:how has my family
Heather Parker:of origin impacted me? How might I be amending myself? Or changing myself, or managing myself, or moderating myself to make sure I don't lose this relationship that I have now? Because what happens is we have these parental relationships, and then we move into friendships and spouses. And so we keep doing the same thing.
Heather Parker:We keep moderating, amending, hoping we can maintain this relationship. Whereas true relationship, true connection, means that I can let you be you, and I can be me, and I am not threatened by the differences. And we can still have connection. And so that's the invitation, just to begin to be curious about it. Yeah.
Heather Parker:That's it. Just tying it all together.
Jeffrey Heine:All right, everybody. We're going to jump into this time of q and a. If I can make one request, and it's it's a it's a silly one, but the the request is this. If you could please stop upvoting, because that just keeps changing what's in front of me, and I will not be able to make sense of any of this. So thank you for all of your votes and all of your questions.
Jeffrey Heine:You can stop. All right. I hope that those, the the sugar rush is gonna help you, with this time. But, first off, Heather, thank you so much for your presentation. That was, so rich, and the questions, represent that.
Jeffrey Heine:The best talk backs are the ones that lead into great Q and A, and so thank you. There are some really great questions, and I wanna make sure that we get through as many of them as we can. So starting off, this one, which a lot of people moved up the chain. How do we pursue an authentic self, free from the weight and burden of sin and shame, without falling into the trap of a Disney be true to yourself belief?
Heather Parker:That's a good question. Yeah. The first thing And let me just say this right here. I do not pretend to have the answer to all these questions. So, I'm just gonna make that very clear right here, but I will, to the best of my ability, be as honest as I can.
Heather Parker:Yeah, so, there's 2 things that come to my mind and, one is telling the truth and remembering the gospel. And what I mean by that is telling the truth, being willing to tell myself the truth. And that may mean you need some help. A lot of us don't know who our authentic self is. If you had asked me that maybe yesterday, I don't know.
Heather Parker:It's changing as I grow and as I get older, but it's like, you might need some help determining what is your truth. Who who am I? I can remember as I was really beginning to go through my process, I didn't even know where to start. I had to start with something like, I need to make a list of things I like and I don't like. Because I couldn't tell you.
Heather Parker:And so, I needed help sifting through and sifting through what is my authentic self and what comes up for me when I think of sharing that with somebody else. So, telling the truth to myself and maybe to somebody I trust, and maybe that's just a therapist to start with, I don't know, it depends on where you are. So, telling the truth about who I think I might be, even the parts that I might not want anybody to know. Telling the truth, and then remembering the gospel. Because the gospel reminds me every day that I was created in His image, He knows I'm fallen.
Heather Parker:And so, telling the truth about all of that is not surprising to Him. And His reaction to me is not the same as my parents' reaction to me. And I might need help with that part too. And so I would say telling the truth and the gospel, and there's probably other ways I could keep going about that, but that's the first thing that comes to my mind.
Jeffrey Heine:So privilege of having a microphone is that I get to ask my own follow-up questions that you have no jurisdiction over. So my follow-up would be, what if one of the strategies that you've developed is to not be honest with God about who you are?
Heather Parker:Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:That I have such a sense of who I want to be that I don't want to admit that's not who I am.
Heather Parker:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the thing, that, we will stay in our strategies until we find space that offers curiosity. And so it's like, the fact that anybody would even be able to recognize that this is what I do, I don't want to be honest with God.
Heather Parker:Like, that's huge, that's honest. Even being able to name, I don't want to be honest with God. And then having a place where you can begin to be honest, like, yeah, The fact is, is I doubt your goodness. And, so it's, yeah. We're really committed to this strategy, but it's shame that holds that strategy in place.
Heather Parker:And so I would say, even just if all you do is begin to start allowing curiosity with yourself, like allowing questions, that's a good place to start. And then inviting somebody who feels safe and unbiased.
Jeffrey Heine:And so this kind of relates to one of the questions, that someone submitted. So someone that's safe and a context for that curiosity, is therapy is a context of being with a counselor, Is that the only way? Is that the best way? How would you describe that?
Heather Parker:No. I don't think it's the only way. And I don't think it's the only way. And, sometimes people have their own biases that influence the direction that they take you in when you're ready to dig into harder things. Going to a friend is great.
Heather Parker:It's awesome. But if they're not really trained in how to hold the complexity of trauma and some of these things, you might get advice that is not very supportive. And so, it depends on the situation about what you're going to a friend or not going to a friend or whatever. But it's, there is something really significant about having an unbiased someone who can really sit in the curiosity with you. So the big answer is, no, a therapist is not the only way to do this.
Heather Parker:And quite honestly, there are a lot of therapists who will tell you what you want to hear, too. And so I'm not trying to I don't believe I have all the answers, and I don't believe I'm the best therapist out there. But I've had my own experience with therapists who will collude with your strategies. That, you know, it's a sin to be to question God. Well, that's not true.
Heather Parker:David questioned God in a lot of the Psalms. But so there are a lot of therapists who will collude with your strategies, hence not helping. And so to be able to be with somebody who can be curious about it. So if you have a pastor, a friend who can really hold that space with you, by all means, yes. But when you start digging into your own story and the trauma of your story, to me, it's helpful to have somebody that's not related to that.
Heather Parker:Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:Next question. How do we process past trauma of family hurt without getting stuck there? Navel gazing or blaming everything on others?
Heather Parker:Yeah. That's a good one too. Most of us are afraid to engage in our stories or engage in the process because of this. We're afraid, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get stuck, and I'm gonna go down this swirl, and it's just gonna be me blaming everybody else. Which is why I think it really matters where you turn, because I think my husband would back me up on this.
Heather Parker:There was a season in our life where we really needed wise counsel, and we needed safe people and guidance, and what I got was not that. And it really did a lot more damage than good, and so, being able to a lot of times we're afraid to engage in our stories, or afraid to engage in this process because we're afraid of getting stuck. What keeps you stuck more often than not is refusing to be honest about it. And so, that's what keeps you navel gazing. The refusal to be honest about what's really happening, and you're just ruminating in this anxiety.
Heather Parker:I always think of anxiety as kind of like a smokescreen to what's really going on. And that's what navel gazing is, like this, you know, it's this fear to tell the truth. And so, yeah. So being afraid of getting stuck comes from not being honest about what's really happening, in my opinion. Other people can have different opinions.
Heather Parker:Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:So, this next one, how can I improve my relationship with my parents if they refuse to discuss the ways they have hurt me?
Heather Parker:Okay. So here's the truth of that. Improving the relationship doesn't always mean that it's closer or that you have connection with them. Improving the relationship may mean that you are just more connected with yourself and what's going on with you so that you can show up in those places with good boundaries, and maybe with some grace, but good boundaries. And so, improving the relationship with a parent who refuses to acknowledge what they've done is really hard.
Heather Parker:Because, most of the work Regardless of the relationship, you have to do your own work. You cannot look at the other person to dig in and admit their problem or admit what they did to you before you dig in. And so, if you have a parent who's refusing to do that, do your own work anyway. And in doing that, and digging into your own work and looking at how is this affecting me, what's happening, what do I want, what am What do I need to forgive? What do I need to acknowledge happened and have good boundaries?
Heather Parker:Yeah. I'm thinking of all these rabbit trails I could go down. All that to say, start with yourself. And I really do believe and trust that as you do that with wise counsel, you'll know one step at a time. But if you go into it trying to get them to see, it's just gonna be really frustrating.
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. How specific do we need to be in remembering the past? Like do we need to get down to specific episodes, events?
Heather Parker:What
Jeffrey Heine:if some of those things are hard to remember, hard to recall? That might lead us to think like, oh, things were just fine, or there are things that we specifically are not remembering because we don't want to go there. How specific do we need to be as we're unpacking these things?
Heather Parker:Well, because I specialize in trauma, I'm not I don't think you need to go anywhere fast. Like, we have these really protective ways that we've learned to exist, and if you go fast and try to get really specific and name this, this, and this, your system is gonna revolt against that. And so, in my opinion, starting off just being able to recognize that there's the system, and how I experienced things just in general, in relationship, and then there's the part that, how I'm using that against myself. But that being said, some people who have really specific events, that still impact how they show up. Yeah.
Heather Parker:You can have a situation where, due to different events that happen when you're a kid with a parent, or with a sibling, or with somebody else, you're like, yeah, that was a long time ago. But then you get met with something in present day and just because it the way our brain works is it's holding onto information, but it's holding onto information through our 5 senses and our emotions. And so it's not always cognitive, like, oh, I remember a, b, and c. But you get close to something, and it's like your brain's going, that smells familiar. That feels familiar.
Heather Parker:You may not have even thought of it. And so, there may be specific events that need to be processed in a way to turn the volume down. Nothing's gonna make it go away. Like, we can't make things disappear. But there are ways that we can engage in therapy that help address what's going on in the brain and the nervous system that turn the volume down on it.
Heather Parker:Those things, if they're so specific in your history that they show up in your present, they might need to be named and discussed. The general water that we were swimming in is a little harder to name specific events. It's enough to be able to name this was the water I was swimming in, and I don't ever remember it not being that way. I don't have to go back and give a list of 50 examples. My body knows something wasn't right.
Heather Parker:Does that answer your question?
Jeffrey Heine:Yes, yeah. I do have a follow-up.
Heather Parker:I feel like I should brace myself.
Jeffrey Heine:So my follow-up would be, how do we balance that, that curious exploration of things and, discerning what our strategies might be based on how we've been treated or events or what the water was and who was in charge of the water. How do we balance that and kind of what Paul said to the Corinthians that to keep a record of wrong is unloving. Like, when are we pulling out the ledger of you wrong me like this, you wrong me like this, you wrong me like this, in a way that's unloving, and when is it the curious unpacking of our origin?
Heather Parker:Right. That's a great question. I think it kind of goes back to that, what we were talking about with naming versus blaming. Keeping a record of wrongs is saying, you owe me. This is what you did to me.
Heather Parker:Naming is saying, this was my experience, I'm not asking anything of you. Maybe, maybe not, maybe I have my own boundaries, but this was my experience, this was my truth, and this is how it's impacted me. I'm not coming to you with a record of wrongs, I'm being honest about how this is how this impacted me. I think that happened over and over and over in scripture. I mean, so I am not the theologian.
Heather Parker:I think it was Paul that said, be careful of I can't remember his name. For he did me much harm. Alexander. Thank you. So, Heather.
Heather Parker:So it's like, that was not keeping a record of wrongs, but it was using the wisdom of past experiences to notice this is not safe. And there's a difference. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
Heather Parker:But I mean, does that I'd be curious what you would say. Like, you're the pastor.
Jeffrey Heine:I do have a microphone. No, I think that that's, I think that's a great explanation of it. That the record, I see it as like a ledger of debt. Yeah. And so if I'm bringing it up, I'm calling up the debt.
Jeffrey Heine:You owe me. You need to pay me back for this. You need to make up for this somehow. And so I can envision a parent hearing from a child, however old that child might be. Hearing from them, you wrong me like this or you hurt me like this, and they're just hearing, you owe me like this, you need to be sorry enough for this.
Jeffrey Heine:And so it I think that the individual who The child who is addressing these things would probably need to be extra clear that that's not what they're doing. And then probably before making it extra clear, they would need to check and make sure that it isn't what they're doing. That that's not what their heart is after in that moment. Now's the comeuppance, you know it's a reckoning.
Heather Parker:Right.
Jeffrey Heine:But no am I legitimately bringing this forward to say this is worthy of acknowledgement, and that this will be part of repair, not a repayment.
Heather Parker:Right, right. And repair doesn't necessarily mean that there's relationship that's gonna happen. It's just the repair of being able to say I see you as human, and I see me as human, and I want to be honest about my experience in that. That's it. What we're talking about, this is what we deal with.
Heather Parker:This is what is real and what is happening. But even the belief of if I bring up something that was my reality, and my truth, and my experience, that somehow or another I'm making you pay for it. Even that comes from these interactions, the stories that we learned around, oh, I learned I can't be honest and say, hey, that hurt my feelings to my parent. Or they feel threatened that I'm calling them out. Whereas in relationship, in all relationships, we need to be able to say, that hurt without being met with denial and then a twist, and it's back on you.
Heather Parker:And so it's that's part of it.
Heather Parker:Does that make sense?
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I did want to get to this question. How do alternative families, that would be foster families, adoption, boarding school dorm parents?
Jeffrey Heine:That gets specific. But how do these other environments affect our family of origin experience? I think maybe we could also toss in there, because some people asked about siblings. And so how about the broader community or different types of parenting and family?
Heather Parker:Totally. It affects it in the same context. Because it's So you think about adoption, that connection is happening from the point of conception. And so even though a child might be adopted at birth, there's still a breach in the attachment. And then there's, you may have this wonderful person who has adopted you.
Heather Parker:There's still a breach in the attachment. Being willing to be curious about how that might have affected your nervous system or whatever, Without blaming or anything like that, just being honest about it, it affects you. A lot of families that have big families with lots of kids, their attachment relationship was closer to an older sibling than it was to an actual parent. And so this impact of disconnection can be related to an older sibling. There are kids Like we have a friend, who, when her parents were missionaries, she went to boarding school.
Heather Parker:It heavily impacted all of it, because it was the formation of her attachment relationship. Not only who was in the boarding school and the people who were running the boarding school, but the fact that the people that she was born into were not there. And so that impacted it as well. We're not going on an expedition to find these places to point fingers and go, da da da da da da da. But we have to be honest with, if we really are human, we are impacted by these things.
Heather Parker:And so looking at them only, creates the opportunity for more freedom around them, rather than pretending like you're not affected by this. You are.
Jeffrey Heine:So, this is one of my favorite questions. I am a parent, and now I am nervous. And then the question is, any tips?
Heather Parker:I am a parent, and me too. Yeah. Yeah, here's my biggest tip. Be honest with yourself, do your own work, and say you're sorry. Over and over and over again.
Heather Parker:You cannot give to another person what you have not experienced for yourself. So you can think that you're giving your kids all kind of grace, but then behind the scenes you're beating yourself up. You're gonna do to them what you're doing to yourself. So the biggest advice is, join the club. You're a parent and you're broken.
Heather Parker:So am I, we all are. Do your own work. Be curious about your own story and how it impacts your daily life and how you function. Say you're sorry. Be willing to get to know them in the same way you're hopefully willing to get to know yourself.
Heather Parker:It is scary. I can't tell you. I mean, there's so many times And doing what I do, sometimes I will walk out of especially these I've been in these really in-depth trainings around developmental trauma. And I can't help but walk out thinking, Crap. I mean, I have really like, I know where I was when I was 25 and had my first kid, and then 31 with our second kid.
Heather Parker:I was so not regulated. Like, my I know I was not. I was nowhere near able to be a container for them. And so what I've tried to do is, every opportunity I get, to be able to go back and go, Man, I'm really sorry. Not just once, repeatedly.
Heather Parker:Not to make them ownership for my I'm not trying to make them responsible for my, you know, repentance. That's not what I'm saying. But just being able to go, wow, I see you. I see how you're growing. Wish I'd done this differently, but look at this.
Heather Parker:So, yeah. Just be honest.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's see. Some people are still submitting questions, which is fantastic, but now confusing.
Heather Parker:It's messing you up.
Jeffrey Heine:Okay, so this is one just to be able to hear some more examples of strategies that you commonly see that people employ to maintain connections and to survive or to stabilize. What are some more examples that might be helpful for us to consider? Maybe we are using those.
Heather Parker:Here's a broad definition that will help you really just get curious for yourself. A strategy is anything that you are using to stay disconnected from yourself, or from others, or both. And so the same behavior can be used for connection or disconnection. So I'll give you an example. I can, yeah.
Heather Parker:I'll use an example. Exercise or running. I can use that in a way that is, I'm wanting to be connected with myself, like I need some time to really sink in and see where am I, what's happening with me, what's going on. I can also use that as a strategy to disconnect from myself. I'm just gonna go run because I wanna think, I wanna feel, and I'm getting out of here.
Heather Parker:So it's like any behavior can be used on both sides of it. So you have to look at a strategy as what am I using to disconnect from myself, or from myself and others? Work. I'm gonna dig into work. Well, that looks like a really good thing, and it is a really good thing, and I need it.
Heather Parker:I have to develop the awareness of when am I using that for, because this is authentically where I am. My heart is here. I'm working because I want to be here and I'm engaged. Or when am I numbing out and just going through the motions of something? And so it's like, just beginning to get really curious about what are the ways that I connect and disconnect with myself and other people.
Heather Parker:And so they can show up in all kinds of ways. Does that kinda make sense? Yeah. Like I could give you a list, but that list could fall on either side depending on where you are in that day. Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:So this kind of moves from, you said like from birth to 10 years old, developing a lot of these different strategies and assessing what connection to self or connection to others looks like. So at what point in the teen years do we seem to throw that desire away and do whatever seems best to me?
Heather Parker:That's the thing is I don't think we really throw that desire away and do what's best for me. Doing what's best for me becomes a strategy. It's like if it feels too vulnerable to be authentic with my family or with friends, then making it all about myself is just a strategy to not engage, or to keep somebody right here. And so, when I say birth to 10 years, a lot of that has to do with the neurobiology of just neural networks and what's happening in the brain. It's like the fastest point of growth is during that time.
Heather Parker:We're still doing that in our teen years and on up. But teen years just gets to be that place where it's, our strategies shift a little bit.
Heather Parker:And it's like, I'll just make this about me.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, it is time for us to wrap up. I did want to answer one of the other questions that was in here, which is, are these recorded? Yes, they are. Are they available now? No, they are not.
Jeffrey Heine:They were gonna be made available at the end of the summer, once the series has wrapped up, but they are being recorded and you will be able to revisit these and pass them on to friends, family, and others. And the great thing is, because we did Slido, your parents don't have to hear your voice ask a question. No, but mine will hear my voice. Yeah, except for us. Yeah, yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:But thank you so much. Please join me in thanking Heather. I'm going to pray for us, and then we'll dismiss. God, we are so grateful that you love us, even though we are so broken, that you look at us with the love of a father and a mother, even more deeply than any of us could ever know. And Lord, in that love, you sent your son to suffer on our behalf that we might have hope.
Jeffrey Heine:Hope even in the midst of these dynamics and and and family, of origin, complexities that we all exist in. And Lord, we have a hope for a future, because of Your love. And so, may we hold that in our hearts and our minds, as we dare to explore some of these things that are quite difficult and quite challenging, but may every step of exploration lead us closer to You and Your love for us, that we might in turn love You and trust You and obey You with all that we are. We pray these things in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:Thank you all.
