Refocus
The next step is for parents to turn their focus from an over-focus on their child toward a focus on growing in their own differentiation. They no longer make a project out of their child but make a project out of their own maturity. This step is made up of the sub-steps 1) detriangling, 2) growing in self-reliance, and 3) altering generational patterns.
Detriangling
In de-triangling, the parent recognizes the influence of the triangle in their relationship with their partner (or the child’s other caregiver) and their child and works to overcome their part in perpetuating the triangle pattern. This systemic understanding can help you to see that issues with your child have a different underlying cause than what you originally thought. You can see that your own individual identity gaps play into an anxious over-focus on your child, and that this is also likely influenced by a distant relationship with your partner. You can also recognize that reacting to your partner’s parenting drives up more anxious, imbalanced parenting on your own part–and that your partner’s parenting imbalanced parenting is also intensified due to their reaction to you.
Perhaps you become more permissive and overprotective in reaction to your partner’s overly strict parenting, and vice versa. Learning this can help you to turn your focus toward changing your part in the triangle, recognizing that as you balance your reactions to your partner, you can parent in more balanced ways that invite your partner to parent in more balanced ways as well. You can recognize that seeking to change your partner’s parenting will only result in them reacting to you, and therefore, the only useful action is to focus on your own role in the pattern–as you will see that each person contributes to the pattern and there is no single person to blame.
Grow in Self-Reliance
Second, you can grow to be more self-reliant by taking responsibility for your own happiness in your closest relationships. Wherever you find yourself being the most codependent with others (or fused), work to develop your own separate identity and to respect and uphold boundaries. Often this happens in people’s romantic relationships. Becoming more self-reliant in these relationships allows you to have more connected adult relationships, as you can have a better balance of autonomy and connection. This creates a calm emotional environment that is conducive to the emergence of genuine connection between people. This is important to your relationship with your child largely because it helps you to avoid becoming codependent (or fused) with your child, which would ultimately limit their maturity and development of a separate identity.
Alter Generational Patterns
Third, you can alter generational patterns by calmly and thoughtfully reflecting on your relationships with your family of origin (the family you grew up in). Many people use cause-and-effect thinking when they conceptualize these relationships in their minds, seeing their parents as the cause and themself as the effect. This can lead them to put all of the blame on their parents for the relationships becoming unsatisfying, not taking responsibility for their part in the relationship challenges. Its important to avoid blaming your parents and ignoring your own part, because people carry their part with them into future relationships. They are then prone to repeat the same relationship patterns that caused them difficulty growing up in their new families.
They are likely to cutoff from their families, and believe they can do it right just by giving enough “love.” They are then susceptible to fall into a pattern of fusion and cutoff, as they don’t recognize how the dynamics of fusion played into the relationship with their parents becoming distant or conflictual. Instead of falling into this pattern, parents can reflect on how they came to participate in codependent (fused) patterns and work to overcome their own emotional immaturities and dependencies. This can then contribute to a new generational pattern of balance, connection, and maturity.