You do not oppose to the opinion and values of your parents. As a kid for sure!
You call it respect. Is it really respect?
Or you never dare to question or oppose to the opinion of your parents, because you are afraid of the consequences?
In this case it's not called respect, it's called fear.
In my experience there are many people who had been threatened by their parents if their opinion, decision or choice was different. Parents feel this as a threat themselves, and the way they handle these situations is that they call their children disrespectful. Kids don't question this. They don't see that difference in meaning or choice has nothing to do with respect. That no one will be disrespectful just because of thinking about something in a different way.
And this means that people might be respected by their parents only if they share the same opinions, make the same choices, think the same about things as their parents.
But this is not respect in reality. This is training kids not to oppose the values, beliefs, opinion and decision of their parents. These parents do not accept their kids' different opinion or views, they act against them. Because life is just easier for the parents, and because they hadn't dared to oppose their own totalitarian parents either. They never learnt to question what they heard from their own parents. Everything they said was the unquestionable truth, they never went wrong, it was the kids only who could go wrong.
Kids fear losing their parents, so they quickly learn not to oppose, or if they still do, they get that they are disrespectful.
What effect it has later in life?
'Disrespectful' kids will experience gigantic difficulties in healing work. Their patterns and ingrained mindset will prevent them from questioning what they have learnt from their parents. They will still not dare to look at the values, ideas and opinions of their parents from a distance. They will still confuse respect with the fear of being rejected and ignored.
Healing work is about questioning everything that shows up in our mind. The thoughts direct us into action, so if we want to change a habit, we need to change the thoughts. We need to teach the mind to pick up new ways of thinking, we have to build a new mindset with new values, new beliefs and thought system.
Let's see what I mean with an example!
You have this desire to love and accept yourself. This is your daily affirmation, you have written it on a post-it, taped to the mirror. You repeat it every day in the morning, in the evening. Nothing changes.
You are devastated.
You're just repeating some words without any real meaning to you, without believing in what you are saying. What here matters is the belief behind the words.
What would help here is to question:
Why I don't accept and love myself at the first place?!
The answer would lead you back to childhood where you have learned who 'you are' through the eyes of your parents, and through their behavior and attitude towards you.
And you have been carrying this belief about yourself ever since. You do not dare to dig your childhood, because you do not want to be disrespectful and accuse your parents of being terrible parents! Because what if it turns out at one point that they have something to do with your misery?
WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT?
But only the truth heals. And the truth is very likely that your parents did not teach you self-love and self-acceptance. Otherwise you would do it, wouldn't you?
This has nothing to do with respect, this is reality.
So let's see it turns out they were not the perfect parents as you idealized them. It might turn out that they were terrible parents indeed, and you need to pull them off from the pedestal. Would respect - which was drilled in you - allow you to do that?
Would you be able to be with them in the future? Would you be able to deal with them? Would you be able to prevent yourself from hurting them? Accusing them? Would you be able to sit down with them at the Sunday-lunch, or at the Xmas table? Would you be able to smile at them or just snarling at them? Would you be able to pick your mom up and take her out to lunch? Would you be able to go to the fishing shop with your dad?
You have no idea how you would deal with them if you became a 'disrespectful child' and turn to your healing, haven't you? Would you put yourself first, for them and for their emotional well-being? Because as long as their emotional well-being plays a bigger role in your life than your own healing from your dysfunctional mindset, you will not heal.
Above: Shoes on the Danube Bank. Memorial sculpture on the bank of the River Danube in Budapest, Hungary, to honor the Jews who were massacred by fascist Hungarian militia during WW II.
Respect has nothing to do with opinion or choices.
Let's broaden this: respect has nothing to do with occupation, age, color, background, assets, nationality, origin, religion, education, outlook, achievement, marital status, number of kids, etc.
Respect does not mean that everyone in the family has to choose the same directions, values and have the same opinion. Forced values, opinion and direction are rather disrespectful, because they not necessarily allow a child to grow, think and question.
Respect is genuine and goes out undivided, unquestionably and two-way!
They way your parents demand respect is the same way as you can demand respect. As a child you don't do that, you think respect is something you need to give to your parents, but they are not bound to return it. Also you don't have to do anything to earn respect, it should be genuinely given to you.
If giving them respect hinders your healing work, you might want to think again.
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