Many of us get caught in patterns of self-criticism and harsh judgements about ourselves - from our physical appearance to our careless words to our anxious thoughts. We didn’t choose or create any of this.
With investigation, we realize how many of our parents' habit patterns they passed on to us - anxieties, compulsions to lock and re-lock doors, ability to tell good stories, generosity, tendencies toward substance abuse…. the whole mess or as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, the full catastrophe. And then we begin to see they were as affected by their parents as we are by them. And so on and so on.
Maladaptive patterns are often passed down to us in some form or other. Indigenous psychotherapy has the concept that these patterns assured resilience and survival of the next generation and that they contain valuable information for us. This view allows us to look at our patterns and thank our ancestors for doing everything they could to survive and to make sure we survived. It also allows us to hold our perceived flaws more lightly as we were not in control when they were handed down to us. And it is our work - as it was theirs - to sort the useful patterns from the not-so-useful patterns. Awareness and open hearted investigation are our most powerful allies in this work.
When we begin to free ourselves from the difficult patterns left over from survival trauma in previous generations, we discover that the lightness of the human spirit is already present - waiting to be uncovered, waiting to be free of wrong views in order to shine forth.