Hajja Salesjana - May June 2016

2 1 and support her. The husband complained that the wife didn’t listen to him and wouldn’t accept help. They both felt stuck. What was happening? Rather than understanding each other, they were interpreting the situation according to their own family backgrounds. Let’s face it, we all carry baggage. Whether we like it or not, all of us have been impacted by the upbringing we have had. Most of our parents acted with the best of intentions. However, they were not perfect... and nor were their parents. Inevitably, they will unwittingly have transmitted messages that we, as children, interpreted as a rejection. At times, we will have felt put down and not valued. There will have been instances when we did not feel good enough – our sibling or someone else’s child was always better than us. Our childhood invariably shapes the way we see the world and experience relationships. This is very evident in dysfunctional or abusive relationships; however, this happens to all of us to some extent. Long before we meet our potential spouse, our upbringing shapes the way we behave, the way we express love, sadness and anger. In this case, the wife came from a family where she was the older sibling. She always felt that her worth was measured according to her achievement, which wasn’t the case for her younger brother. Being a bright student, she pushed herself to meet high standards, to get approval and validation. When she didn’t, she felt like a failure, and unconsciously felt scared that she was not loveable any longer. When her husband insisted that she gets a helper, she interpreted that to mean that he thought she was not good enough and was not meeting his expectations. Therefore, she felt she was going down in his estimation. The husband, on the other hand, was the