Adulthood has truly made its presence felt when you find yourself saying, “Oy! I sound just like my mother!” and “Oof! I’m acting like my father.” 

These are the unconscious moments in your day-to-day life where you respond to your children in identical ways your parents responded to you. Those moments when your child leaves their lunch bag at school and the words “You don’t care about your stuff!” come out of your mouth before you even think about it. Or you threaten to cancel their birthday if they don't get a good grade on their math test. 

Without knowing it, we often embrace and imitate the behaviors, phrases, posture, and patterns of our parents, grandparents, teachers, or culture. We are born heirs to inherit the generational gifts and traits of our family, whether we want to or not. 

This inheritance is known as Generational Patterns. They are real. It only takes the willingness to honestly look at yourself, your history, and your family to know how real they truly are. Generational patterns often form parts of our identity that we believe to be who we are when the truth is that generational patterns are not who we are.

Yet they do have a real impact on what we do and how we behave, the decisions we make, the thoughts and beliefs we have, and the words we speak – to ourselves about ourselves and to others. Generational patterns impact all areas of our lives.

So, What is a Generational Pattern?

We are familiar with the concept of family heirlooms passed down through the family line from one generation to the next. Generational patterns are an inheritance of a similar kind; only it’s not furniture but behaviors and beliefs that are passed down from parent to child. Our childhood environments, experiences, family, culture, and society influence these behaviors.

The word generate is derived from the Latin word genus, meaning “to beget.” 

“To beget” means to bring about, bring into existence, or reproduce. The word Generation refers to all the people born and living through an average period of 20-30 years. This period is typically when children are born, grow up, and become adults with their own children. 

Pattern is derived from the Old French word patron, which means ‘protector’ or ‘model.’ In Old English, it retains a similar definition as an ‘original proposed for imitation.’

Placing these two powerful words together gives you Generational Patterns and a definition of what this term means when we talk about its influence on our lives and parenting. Generational Patterns reproduce the model of nurturing we received as children that we then unconsciously imitate as adults in relationships with our children. 

Generational patterns have more to do with the thoughts, beliefs, emotional responses, and tools we carry than they do with the people who passed them on to us. Breaking generational patterns doesn’t mean breaking apart the family structure you grew up in. It’s about breaking open the truth of the impact your childhood experiences have had on your relationships as an adult. 

What Is a List of Generational Patterns?

So, imagine you’ve decided to open the inherited family wooden chest. It’s time to unpack what’s inside and identify what you’ve inherited. 

At the top of the box are a few sealed envelopes. Inside them are letters from the bank, a title deed for a property, medical certificates, application letters, and responses from universities and companies. There’s a marriage certificate, your baptism certificate, and a memorial program from your father’s funeral. 

These documents tell the story of your family’s history, evidence that can help you name the generational patterns passed down to you.

The Generational Patterns unpacked here break down your mind and the way your brain developed its wiring with the following: 

• Financial habits and beliefs
• Religious beliefs and traditions
• Mental health issues
• Cultural beliefs and practices
• Gender roles and expectations

Underneath all the documentation, the inheritance chest also contains a photo album, sentimental items from childhood – baby blankets and soft toys, birthday cards and postcards from travels, love letters your dad wrote your mom. There’s your mom's journal, something you remember her writing in daily, and now you get to read her thoughts. 

The Generational Patterns uncovered here break down your heart and expose your capacity to connect with yourself based on your:

• Emotional availability or unavailability 
• Emotional intimacy or lack thereof
• Neglect or abandonment
• Enmeshment and codependency

Right at the bottom of the family chest you have inherited, you find a shoebox with a lid on it. Inside, you find another diary and loose photographs of your mom or dad before they had you. Reading the diary, you get a clearer picture of some of your parents’ struggles, and some of their behavior towards you starts to make sense. 

Generational patterns found in the shoebox, unknown up until now, break down your actions and make sense of your behaviors in relationship to: 

• Perfectionism 
• Toxic Communication styles
• Strict authoritarian parenting
• Emotional or physical abuse: power, control, force, constant criticism or comparison
• Addiction
• Lack of boundaries
• Avoidance of conflict

When parents say, “This ends with me,” they intentionally choose to break down their past so they can build up a new future. Their inheritance provides the information that makes room for reflection, which builds awareness. With knowledge comes the potential power built upon a new foundation to create a new pattern for future generations. 

What Does it Mean to Break Generational Patterns?

When you want to change a generational pattern, it helps to start by identifying it. A few powerful questions to consider are:

1. Whose actions, beliefs, and choices are you performing? Did you choose them or inherit them? 
2. What are the feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and dreams you have for your life? Are they yours, or were they passed down to you?
3. What are you struggling with? Where are you putting in effort, and it’s still hard to stop certain habits? What about your life is exhausting and discouraging? 
4. Is how you’re living framed by the generations that came before you? Your father’s dreams, your mother’s hopes, your religious decrees, cultural practices, or societal norms? 

How you communicate, relate to others, whom you date or discriminate against, and what activates your fight or flight response can indicate generational patterns accumulated throughout your life. It’s an excellent reflection of what you are carrying and becoming aware of as you work towards changing some generational patterns. 

This is the middle stage of breaking generational patterns. Looking through your inheritance and unpacking each item in the chest gives you the information you need to make a choice.

The choice? What do you want to hold onto and are proud to pass on to your children, and what do you want to release that no longer serves you or your family?

The deeper into the box you go, the wider your freedom to choose becomes. Understanding your past and its impact on your present places you in a position to transform your future. 

This process is a part of your life you need to be aware of to access the freedom to choose.

How Do You Change Generational Patterns?

With the contents of your inheritance laid out before you, the gift of evidence of who your parents were and what they passed on to you leads you to the end of one journey and the beginning of the next. Now that you know what Generational Patterns are, you can choose to be the one to change the pattern and create a new one.

The process to begin breaking generational patterns in your life requires you to:

1. Identify what parenting patterns you have inherited by looking at your childhood. What patterns were in your childhood home, and what was your experience of being parented? How did your parents’ parenting style impact or influence you? 
2. Observe your current parenting patterns. What beliefs and strategies are alive in how you parent your children? 
3. Choose which patterns you want to pass on to your children. What is your commitment to your children? What vision do you have for your relationship with them?

You get to dream and decide what your gift to your children will be. The inheritance your parents gave to you does not have to be the inheritance your children receive from you. 

Are you prepared to do the work?

The work of breaking generational patterns requires you to replace the inherited ones with your intentional ones. Generational trauma may be disowned and transformed into Generational Gifts. 

In the words of Alan Cohen, “To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. YOUR HISTORY IS NOT YOUR DESTINY.”

What Happens When You Break Generational Cycles?

You get to be authentically you. Without the weight of inherited generational patterns, you are free from your past and can be fully present in your life. You will move away from communicating in unconscious behaviors and living out subconscious beliefs based on shame, blame, pain, or guilt and toward connecting in a conscious presence of patience, curiosity, confidence, and love. 

Once you have done the work of breaking down your generational patterns, you can begin to build, from the foundation up, who you want to be based on who you really are. 

When you break generational patterns, you build:

• Self-awareness to recognize when to make changes.
• Compassion for yourself and your family rooted in understanding.
• New core beliefs that transform your behavior, actions, and relationships. 
• A legacy for your children.

The pain of the past doesn’t have to hold you back anymore. Liberation leads to love, and love leads to a life that you are proud to pass on to your children. 

The Philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Breaking generational patterns is your remembrance of the past that leads to continual growth and improvement. 

To learn more about generational patterns and how to change them, get your FREE copy of our new ebook, Healing Generational Patterns. This transformative guide will take you on a journey of self-discovery and healing, leading you toward creating a brighter future for your children.