Ancestral, Family, Gender and Cultural Agreements as an Obstacle to Your Dreams
Feb 09, 2024
Grab your cup of tea and let’s have a chat about the complex web of family, cultural, and gender agreements that shape our lives. Super light convo, right? While these areas provide extraordinary gifts, they can also become burdensome obstacles on the path to realizing our dreams. Let’s check the basement of old collectibles that are just creating unnecessary clutter, shall we?
In this blog, you'll gain insight into how family lineages, cultural rules, and gender roles can derail us from realizing our potential. Specifically:
- Learn how ancestral trauma, family secrets, rigid cultural codes, and gender stereotypes subconsciously obstruct happiness and potential even today
- Get actionable tips for re-examining self-limiting rules, beliefs, and agreements you may have unconsciously absorbed
- Discover how energy psychology can help clear pain or blocks inherited from family or culture
Navigating Fear and Longing for Belonging
It's not always easy to examine these deep-rooted aspects of our identity. Fear and yearning for belonging often hold us back. But avoiding self-examination leaves us wandering through life on autopilot, following outdated rules and assumptions. To set our souls free, we must boldly ask ourselves:
- Who am I now?
- What agreements and expectations still serve me?
- What do I need to release in order to become my most authentic self?
Let's explore some primary obstacles and uncover the feelings behind them on this journey of self-discovery.
The Heavy Energy of Family Lineages and Secrets
Our bodies hold a cellular memory, an energetic imprint passed down through generations that lingers even when the events are long forgotten. For example:
- If your ancestors endured trauma like slavery, the Holocaust, war, famine, or a massacre - that burdensome energy remains. It may show up for you as exaggerated fears, patterns of scarcity, and hoarding.
- Dark family secrets like abuse, neglect, illness, or addiction also carry a burden of shame and isolation energetically. As adults, this can make us feel unworthy of care or attention.
These imprints drain our energy, weigh us down, and keep even high achievers stuck. Releasing them is vital for clearing space to take inspired action.
Cultural Rules That Contradict Our Truth
The gifts of cultural identity also come with expectations that don't always align with who we are. Going against the grain can bring up intense shame and fear over losing belonging. For example:
- Expectations around family, career choice, lifestyle, politics, religion, gender roles, financial status, and what constitutes "success" don't fit everyone.
- Individuating and determining your own identity separate from cultural conditioning requires courage, especially when the culture views individuating as betrayel.
We unconsciously absorb these rules growing up, never questioning if they serve our well-being. Examining them with heartfelt honesty is needed to walk our own path.
The Complex Dance of Gender Identity
Navigating society's gender rulebooks is an intricate dance. The steps vary greatly depending on your identity and culture, but shared hurdles emerge in the quest for authentic self-expression.
Weighty Expectations for Men
- The assumption of competence and authority comes with the pressure to overperform in areas like career ambition, leadership traits, and emotional stoicism.
- Betraying traditional masculine gender roles can bring intense shame for men whether they are straight, gay, bi, trans, or gender neutral. Many hide parts of themselves.
Impossible Standards Demanded from Women
- Women often work twice as hard just to earn the credibility and compensation automatically granted to men. Speaking up about injustice gets labeled as complaining.
- Meanwhile, opting out of career ambition escapes condemnation. So while women face stigma for professional assertiveness, they also get a "pass" for mediocrity in some cultures.
- Glaring double standards around dating, motherhood, body image, leadership style, emotional expression, and feminine duties persist. Women twist themselves in knots trying to be everything to everyone.
Just like the wise words from Barbie, "It is literally impossible to be a woman...You're supposed to be extraordinary but somehow always doing it wrong."
I find this quote to be true of all my clients regardless of gender identity. My trans clients are criticized for transitioning wrong. My bisexual clients are condemned for not “picking one,” and this goes on for every group, subgroup, ethnicity, gender, political party, and economic background. It can be exhausting figuring out the rules or expectations.
Tips to Break Free from Self-Limiting Lineages
Inherited family, cultural, and gender legacies can feel challenging to overcome. Here are 5 tips to help examine and liberate yourself:
- Get radically honest with yourself - What agreements or rules feel outdated or constraining for you right now? Dig deep to name them, and make a list.
- Release guilt and shame - Using courage, make a list of what you feel guilt or shame about. Write about how this has impacted your life. Remember, you have a right to be you, even if you don’t fit with the people in your circle.
- Rewrite the unconscious narrative - Keep all the beauty and wisdom from your lineage, and retire what doesn't serve you. As an adult, you have a right to add your own traditions to the richness of where you came from. It can be satisfying to get clear and intentional.
- Set boundaries when needed - Implementing your new boundary rules can bring up grief, anger, and anxiety. Be respectful of your own process, and understand that not everyone will understand or welcome your growth. Grow anyway.
- Try advanced healing modalities - If adrenaline is surging through your nervous system just thinking about changing rules with your family and friends, consider clearing emotional pain or psychological blocks with energy psychology tools. Using methods like Invoke and Release® can accelerate and actualize your inner shifts.
Your ancestors have handed you great gifts and fortune, and they are rooting for you to transform and release their wounds and limitations from their generation. Receive their wisdom and invite them to travel alongside you in life, while remembering their pain and sorrow does not have to be your destiny. What "agreements" handed down through your lineage could you re-examine or release today?
Healing the Past to Embrace Our Future
The pain of inherited familial, cultural, and gender legacies runs deep. You can’t think your way out of developmental trauma, so it’s essential to either find a trauma trained psychotherapist, or use a tool like Invoke and Release® to transcend limitations.
Invoke and Release® can help by:
- Releasing trapped ancestral trauma and historical imprints
- Dissolving unconscious family agreements and burdensome legacies
- Unraveling restrictive cultural assumptions inhibiting authenticity
- Breaking free from oppressive gender expectations and roles
Remember, you are the current ancestor to those to come, so take the time to release the outdated clutter and noise from your nervous system. With your inner light turned back on, you gain the clarity and confidence to walk boldly toward your dreams unencumbered. This is your public service for the generations to come. Isn’t that nice of you?
Need help sorting through your personal obstacles and don’t know where to start? The Invoke and Release® Healing Circle has a full deep dive course called, “Reveal and Heal Obstacles to Your Success™,” with a unique healing path to take you step by step on your journey of healing. Learn more here: Invoke and Release® Healing Circle.
Invoke and Release® Healing Circle
Book Recommendations:
Healing Your Wounded Inner Child: How to Overcome Your Childhood by Clarke Cullingford
