Most grown-ups are children in adult bodies. They may have lived 20, 50, or 80 years but the thought, behavioral, and emotional patterns habituated in childhood continue to run their lives.

When we’re born as healthy human beings, we have the innate ability to experience the complete range of human emotions and to express ourselves fully and spontaneously. Absent is the fear of judgment or rejection, or feelings of unworthiness or shame. Then the life conditioning process begins. Our interactions with our caretakers and environment determine how we think about ourselves and others, and the behaviors that are most likely to get our needs met. As dependent little beings, our very survival relies on our adaptation to the overt and covert norms of the family system into which we are born. These patterns of thought, behavior, and emotion are continually reinforced and become habit, developing into what I call the default operating system.

Why do our limiting beliefs have such power over us? How much does our early life conditioning affect our lives today? Trance states provide some interesting clues.

Although I was first introduced to the concept of childhood trances during my psychotherapist training in Germany in 1993, it wasn’t until I did a workshop with Reichian therapist Stephen Wolinsky several years later that I was struck by how our childhood experiences and subsequent trance states drive the fears that hold us back as adults.

In his book, The Dark Side of the Inner Child, Wolinsky describes a trance state as the mechanism through which we disconnect from our current reality and allow the emotions from our old reality—from our childhood or earlier life—to take over. A trance state is a situation in which we experience that emotional disconnect. It’s as if our emotions are hijacked by our unconscious minds. According to Wolinsky, age regression is the most common trance state.

Tomorrow will be my sixteenth motherless Mother’s Day. And while it had gotten easier over time, the absence of my mother feels now like a wound opened anew. Exacerbating these feelings are the demise of my fourteen-year-old dog seven weeks ago, day seventy of coronavirus social distancing, and the loss of intimate family relationships—all in the midst of an unprecedented transfiguration of life as we knew it.

With both parents gone, I currently reside full-time on the other side of the parent-child equation. Among other things, this includes my being on the receiving end of behaviors I once directed toward my own parents. As a family-systems-trained psychotherapist and coach, I have seen these types of multi-generational pattern replications frequently in my practice, as well as being an active participant of their playing out in my personal life.

Living solely on the parenting side of the parent-child dynamic has taught me a lot about myself as a child to my own parents. This is especially true regarding my mother, with whom I shared a life-long relationship riddled with mutual disappointment, judgment, and resentment. Despite my unsuccessful attempt to achieve closure with her when she was dying, it wasn’t until the roles had flipped with my own children that I was able to release the hurt and anger I carried toward my mother, replacing them with compassion, forgiveness, and love.

To what can we attribute feelings toward our partners that are emotionally overpowering? And why do we often react so strongly to the end of a relationship?

Carl Jung wrote that "...it is the strength of the bond to the parents that unconsciously influences the choice of husband or wife, either positively or negatively." As my own divorce drama unfolded, it became clear that there were deeper issues between my husband and me than appeared on the surface. As I explored Jung's premise that who we choose as partners is greatly influenced by our past experiences with our parents, I realized the tremendous influence our upbringing has on our adult relationships.

Habitual negative thinking and the emotions it invokes is, like many chronic and destructive behaviors, a form of addiction.

An old acquaintance of mine recently wrote an article about positive thinking—a subject that is often misunderstood. For many years I, like many people on the personal-development path, believed that by writing down and repeating affirmations (positive statements written in the present tense as if they were already true), I would think more positively and the changes I sought would happen automatically. I hung these inspiring statements all over my house, memorized them, and repeated them out loud, sometimes as much as 100 times a day. But it seemed that no matter how many times I said them, the changes I hoped to achieve eluded me.

Out of all the relationships we have in our lives, the ones we share with family members can be the most challenging. And there’s nothing like holiday stress to trigger the old wounds and unresolved issues that plague so many families.

Sharing close, loving, and supportive relationships is a basic human need, yet many of our family relationships fall short of this ideal. Most families have some level of dysfunction, with each member playing his or her part. Becoming aware of your own family dynamics—and consciously changing behavior patterns that create conflict—will help you avoid the interpersonal “land mines” that are often triggered in the midst of holiday stress. Below are some practical tips to help you make the holidays a time of joyful celebration, instead of fodder for unpleasant family feuds.