Relationships
3 Ways to Accept Imperfect Parents
At some point, we have all felt flooded by the pain of imperfect parents.
Posted September 9, 2024 Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
As a psychologist, I’ve observed how the source of most distress can be traced back to the ways people bend reality to avoid painful truths. Experiences, people, and situations are frequently edited to create a more acceptable story.
Through this lens, suffering is not the result of situations themselves but rather our attempts to escape them and purposefully distort circumstances and people into what we want them to be.
To heal, we must not only accept people for who they truly are but also recognize our inner life and unmet needs that we unconsciously recruit other people to gratify. This means letting go of our fantasies and false narratives to accept the real people in front of us.
Difficulty accepting others often originates in parent-child relationships, when parents inevitably let down their children, fail to be present, or fail to adequately meet their needs. This can feel so crushing because children are confronted with the jarring discrepancy between the fantasy parent they’ve created and the imperfect version of them that exists in reality.
The Current Problem Was a Past Solution
Children learn to avoid the pain of unmet needs by creating fantasy versions of their parents.
This flawed mechanism was once adaptive, as it allowed the possibility of getting needs met in fantasy that either our parents could not meet in reality or that we were unequipped to provide for ourselves. Ultimately, this is a passive solution, resulting in the outdated belief that we are not capable of meeting our own needs, and entrenches reliance on others to provide what we think we cannot give to ourselves.
1. Relinquish Attachment to the Perfect Parent
At some point, we have all felt flooded by the pain of imperfect parents. To adapt, we learned to avoid that pain by manufacturing falsehoods. They protected our ego, made the world a more acceptable place, and created a more tolerable experience. These lies, once a survival mechanism, become oppressors over time – causing more suffering as they invite a constant denial of the truth.
They take the form of our attachments to the wish for a perfect mother or father. When they let us down, we face crushing disappointment because our parents deviated from the fantasy we’ve held them to.
We are often willing into existence a fantasy version of a parent. When our real mother or father breaks character in the role we’ve cast them in – their fairytale persona is shattered and we feel crushed.
The goal is to let go of attachment to the wish for a perfect parent. Remember, that wish will constantly re-emerge. But when this happens, the task is to notice it, instead of willfully cling to it, and accept them as they are.
Creating fantasy versions of people who show up in the way we need them, instead of how they really are, is an alluring strategy. But it comes at the expense of the skill to perceive and accept others with accuracy. Instead, when we forgo this skill, we accept a functional blindness to remain in a self-gratifying false reality.
This arrests us to a period of perpetual waiting and wishing — expecting our flawed parents to live up to the potential of our perfect fantasy instead of being present and responding accurately to who they really are.
2. Face What Your Fantasy Is Enabling You to Avoid
It’s important to let go of the tendency to project fantasies onto our parents. Their shortcomings and the pain we are running from are what need to be faced. What we try so hard to tune out is what needs to be heard and ultimately felt.
This is because avoidance prevents fully experiencing emotions and understanding what provokes them. While these triggers appear external, they’re an important compass for understanding our own needs and intolerance of feelings (e.g., helplessness, loneliness, undesirable). Once we stop running from these emotions, we can begin to sit with them, feel them, and accept them.
What was once unbearable can soon become an opportunity for healing.
3. Actively Practice Healing
Wounds that were made in relationships must often be healed in the context of relationships. This means practicing accepting not only the flaws in your parents, but also the imperfections of other important people in your life – your partner, children, and friends.
Start getting curious about how you are reacting to the imperfections or lack of attunement of those close to you. Is your partner’s excessive focus on a work project opening an old wound of an unavailable parent? Is your need for proof that you are a priority to them a response to the present situation, or an ancient wound that has yet to heal? What needs are you outsourcing for others to satisfy?
When we recognize our fears and understand our reactions, it creates conditions for the acceptance and love we are hoping to find. It also enables a deeper understanding of ourselves, and in turn, allows others to know us more profoundly. This is where corrective emotional experiences in new and old relationships occur.
Conclusion
Ultimately, it’s not our fantasies that cause pain, but rather our attachment to them. When we impose our fantasies — of the perfect parent, partner, or child — onto fallible people, their imperfections are revealed, leaving us disappointed.
Instead of focusing on their flaws, we should consider why we invest in their fantasy image, and the underlying hope to find contentment or fulfillment when they change. When we relinquish this need for contentment, we can sit and deal with the emotions we once tasked them to placate.
