In episode 12 of the Yes Collective Podcast, Ryel Kestano, CEO and cofounder of ART International, talks about three different aspects of breaking generational patterns: bringing more awareness of our past patterns, bringing awareness to our unconscious stories around parenting, and bringing more acceptance to our feelings, wounds, and patterns.

These ideas come from the practice of Authentic Relating, which is a set of communication ideas and skills that help people develop deeper, freer, and more supportive relationships.

1) It all starts with increased awareness

Ryel showed us how to do real Authentic Relating as he opened up and shared about his own inter-generational trauma. The first step toward healing was bringing more awareness to his emotional wounding and the protective and defensive patterns that showed up in his adult relationships.

My background is the opposite of any kind of, you know, personal development, deep work or any of that. My dad was a businessman. He was gone on business all the time. My mom was a flight attendant. She was gone all the time. I was raised by pretty dysfunctional caregivers from early on with physical abuse, and the internalized story that I grew up with was: these things are happening to me and nobody's around to protect me or keep me safe.

And the conclusion is that I don't matter. I must not matter. That's like the only explanation that makes sense. And so I deeply internalized that into myself: I don't matter. And then I had to compensate to do things that make me feel like I matter. You know, to override or compensate for that core wound.

So, when I came into the world of authentic relating and personal growth, I was bringing a lifetime worth of unprocessed baggage, unprocessed trauma. One of the results of that was I didn't have a sense of a nurturing relationship with my mom. She left very early on. And so I took the loss of that, the void of that, and projected that onto all of my intimate partners as an adult, like seeking a mother figure.

And yet it was happening totally unconsciously. I couldn't have named that at all. It was just happening deeply. And so naturally, that's going to set up a dysfunctional relationship. That was the sort of core pattern that was running me and has been running me. It's not like it's gone from me. It's still a part of who I am. But I'm just aware of it now.

It's like awareness is the seed of transformation, everything. It has to start with awareness. And so now I'm aware of these impulses within me that come out sideways or under the conscious radar. And I can catch them and notice them now and redirect them in a much healthier way, like learning how to re-parent myself, you know, or be able to name it when it's arising in relationship.

2) Bring more awareness to your unconscious stories around parenting and family life

What unconscious stories do you have around parenting and family life? In unguarded moments, what words, feelings, and stories come out? These stories are often the result of intergenerational patterns. Instead of feeling guilt and shame around them, Ryel suggests feeling gratitude for this new understanding of the unconscious stories you carry.

You can now pause and ask: how do I want to show up for my kids? What kind of parent do I want to be? What is the new story around parenting I wish to write?

"It would come up in conversation: what is it like to parent four kids? And I would often describe parenting as [a burden] and a series of nonstop interruptions for like 18 years, which is a pretty shitty way of describing my experience of parenting.

My oldest daughter was really struggling . . . It really gave me pause and it had me look into: What am I doing? How am I contributing to an environment that this kind of behavior is manifested? And I got to see that I was inside of this story that was disempowering, disconnecting and the opposite of an experience of intimacy.

And so I basically had to restructure and reconfigure my priorities and focus on life and really shifted a lot of attention and desire to create more bandwidth for my relationship with my kids."

3) Accept and welcome all your feelings, all your issues, all your problems

A core principle in Authentic Relating is accepting and welcoming whatever feelings are coming up in a relationship. Ryel suggests that doing this work internally and coming to accept and welcome all the stuff we've hidden and don't want to look at, will help our teens feel more accepted and welcomed.

"The degree to which you are able to fully accept all aspects and parts of your own self, that acceptance will be modeled and conveyed and transmitted down to your kids. If there's anything you're pushing away and not accepting or uncomfortable with, or you're disintegrated from any aspects of yourself . . . If you haven't done or aren't doing the work of self-acceptance, I almost guarantee that it's going to trickle down to your kids and they're going to internalize that within themselves."

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