Welp! I Am My Mother

I don't have a typical close relationship with my mother, evident in us going three weeks without speaking to each other in the last post. Matter of fact, I have spent more time away from my mother than I have with her. From the age of 3, I wasn't really with my mother. Not that I'm trying to share any personal details, I'm painting a picture to show that in my formative years, my mother and I weren't in the same vicinity.

So tell me why I catch myself exhibiting her mannerisms? Ever so often I would catch myself in a sitting position that mimics hers. There's a way she crosses her legs and sits with her chin on her hand while resting on her knee that I apparently do as well. I would find myself saying things only she would say. Of recent, it occurred to me that just like my mother, I start my day with listening to news headlines and political analysis. Well, after devotions. While I do mine driving to the office, my mother has her radio time at breakfast. Sometimes I smile when I realize that I've done something like her but there are times when an alarm goes off in my head like "OMG have I inherited her bad traits too?!"

Like some people, while growing up I told myself that aside from the good quality traits she had which every decent human being should have, I did not want to be anything like my mother. Yet, here I find myself at 27 more and more like my mother, exhibiting even character traits I didn't want in me. While reading up on it, Victoria Donoghue, a psychologist said in anarticlethat it's easy to become our parents without realizing it

Yes, it's very easy, especially for those who are not aware or conscious of it. The reason it is so common is because between eighty to ninety percent of our life, we're actually operating on the unconscious level. Most of our interactions are unconscious. For the most part, people start acting like their parents and start inheriting attributes from our parents when we're infants and toddlers. Their brains are actually programmed by our caregivers to act and behave in the world. So it actually starts much younger.

 According to another article inThe Guardian, becoming our parent is both a factor of DNA and something else deeply embedded in our brains. Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo explains

“In general, love recruits neurotransmitters (eg, dopamine) and neural basis that activate brain areas involved in these complex functions: emotion, reward, goal-directed behavior, decision-making. More precisely, the brain-love matrix activates subcortical regions that are associated with euphoria, reward, addiction and motivation, and also higher-order cortical regions associated with self-representation and social cognition.” In sum, when we love, it influences how our brain acts, thinks and responds. And no matter how you feel about your parents now, as a child, they are your first love. These subcortical regions of our brain that are activated by our love responses are also involved in the areas of our brain that define our abstract definition of self. Cacioppo notes that this has led to speculation that the people we love and who love us back are integral to our representations of ourselves. Specifically, Cacioppo explains, “Maternal love includes similar brain areas, with a specific involvement of the periaqueductal gray matter (PAG) – a brain area that receives direct connections from the limbic emotional system, and contains a high density of vasopressin receptors that are important in maternal bonding.” This PAG is also involved in pain suppression during intense emotional experiences like childbirth. Cacioppo’s research has also found that when we love, the very neurons in our brain begin to mimic those of the person that we are involved with. And it happens with mothers, too. Cacioppo adds: “The more a woman identifies with her mother (or perceives herself in her mother), the more a similar self-expansion (and self-integration) process occurs. We identified overlapping brain areas for such simulation process and love, which could explain why this matching process tends to occur in love, including maternal love.”

I find this all very interesting. Does it mean we all involuntarily become our parents or are there exceptions? Is this a truth that makes you happy? And what happens if you want to change your truth?