Taking the pressure off

My parents, because I see them as one collective entity (i.e. love), were always hard on me. Not in terms of following the rules or anything, but I felt the pressure. Interestingly, they never really disclosed to me what they were hard on me for or what they necessarily wanted. They were hard on me when I was younger just to be hard on me. It’s just what parents do to their children, I imagine their line of thinking goes. It was a duplicitous kind of pressure too in the sense that even when they would say things like, “we’ve changed” or “we’re not pressuring you”, I could still feel the intensity.

Yet, there are certainly benefits to being hard on your child. For instance, I learned to be hard on myself when I was a teenager and use that energy to go after things that I, and not my parents, truly wanted. I think that’s why they started backing off. Yet, that pressure always persisted. A force initially exerted by them resulted in an equal force exerted on me by me. Up to this point, my life purpose has really been about understanding the source of this extra weight on my shoulders and learning how to take that pressure off. A little pressure is not necessarily a bad thing when you’re young, but as you get older, it starts to feel a bit unbearable.