The Negative Love Syndrome and the Quadrinity Model©
A Path to Personal Freedom and Love
by Bob Hoffman

Re-experiencing your Childhood

Now let's examine the interaction of the entire family. The way Mommy and Daddy related to each other, to us and to our siblings became our way of relating to ourselves and others. Their way of living and loving became our way. Our Mother and Father’s conflicts have become our conflicts. Their faults became our faults. Their blindness became our blindness. Our family system is the mode of operation for the behaviors, beliefs, and patterns of Negative Love.

The following questions can assist us to explore childhood patterns and identify automatic reactions and compulsive behaviors. Hopefully they will trigger and evoke early memories for you. Current behavior patterns need to be identified and then traced back to their origins in your family system.

I invite you to honestly look at the reality of your childhood experiences. Focus your thoughts and allow yourself to recall the scenes, situations, and experiences the questions trigger. It may evoke pain, but it's a necessary stage before healing. Give yourself permission to re-experience the past along with any unhappiness or pain.

If you have a problem with recall or trying to visualize what happened, simply do the best you can and accept whatever comes. In doing the Process work, you are asked to be both participant and spectator as you chronicle your memories and feelings. You may want to write down any scenes or incidents that these questions trigger.

Take a few deep breaths, let your body relax, and clear your mind. Allow your mind to drift back to memories of childhood. Visualize yourself as early as you possibly can. Re-experience what it was like to be you as a child.

Did you feel loved and accepted by Mother and Father? Were you really wanted? Were you abandoned emotionally? Were Mommy and Daddy there, but not there for you? Did they die? Did they divorce?

How would you describe yourself as a child? How did others describe you? Obedient? Achiever? Submissive? Sad? Sick? Angry? A rebel? A helper? Were you delinquent? A troublemaker? Bad boy? Problem girl? Dummy? The clown?

What were the nonverbal injunctions and behaviors? For example, "Put a smile on your face. Put up a good front. Hide your true feelings." Did you get disapproving looks? How open was your family? Did they really communicate with and listen to each other? Were they uptight?

How did your family act when they were angry? How was it when you felt anger toward Mom and Dad? Did your family shout and scream, or did they stifle anger with a smile? Were Mom and Dad angry in the same way, or were they poles apart?

Allow yourself to recall a specific scene where anger was being exhibited by one or both of your parents. Recall a scene when you were angry with Mother, or Father. Did you express it? What happened? Re-experience what you felt.

Were your parents moody or depressed? Did they talk about it? Did they express and deal with their feelings directly? Or was everything hidden, secretive, and ignored?

Who was the boss in the family? What happened if you challenged your parents? Did you dare to express yourself?

What was communication like in your family? What did they talk about? What were conversations like, if there were any? Who dominated the conversation? Who never spoke up? Were your Mom or your Dad quiet, withdrawn, polite?

Were your parents stingy or extravagant? Did you receive any presents? Did they talk about money? Did they fight about it? Never talk about it? Did they get into trouble financially?

What demonstrations of affection were normal in your family? How did family members behave when they touched each other, if they did? Did Mommy and Daddy express physical affection to each other, by holding or hugging? Did your parents love each other and show it?

What did your parents do when you or your siblings misbehaved? How were you punished? Were you disciplined by lectures, or were you punished cruelly, hit, beaten, or abused? Who punished you? How did you escape punishment?

Did you come home to an empty house? Was Mommy afraid of Daddy or was Daddy afraid of Mommy? Were you afraid of one of them or both of them? Were you afraid of your sister or brother? Did you terrorize your parents, your sisters, your brothers?

Did you like your family? Was it fun, loving, and joyful? Or was it depressing, lonely? What was it like growing up in your family?

The interaction of your entire family and how you were taught to be in the world was your family system of behaviors, beliefs and programmed Negative Love patterns. The family scenarios of your childhood created for you layers of lies, pretenses, and Negative Love patterns. By allowing your memories to begin to surface and honestly answering these questions, you have already gathered a wealth of material.

And finally, go back to the beginning of the list of Negative Traits, Attitudes and Admonitions (Page 8). Please, look at your own life. Ask yourself very honestly, how many of these traits really describe my life, my attitudes, my behaviors, my patterns? Check the box in the column marked “Self, S.” Now you know exactly from whom you learned these patterns. This is an experiential connection to the Negative Love Syndrome.

Fully recognizing and acknowledging how much we are like our parents is very difficult. It is a level of self-understanding that most people never attempt to achieve. Even when they do, some degree of denial remains, allowing them only to acknowledge the positive qualities of their parents, or else blaming their parents and themselves for the guilt and shame that arises when they act against their own best interests. From time to time, through intensive work on one's self, people actually do recognize how much they are like their parents, but then many feel helpless for not seeing another possibility for their lives.

Through my work with many people over more than 30 years, I have found that true freedom is possible. Your Negative Love patterns, though learned and adopted, can be un-adopted. Your essence, your true reality, is like a brilliant diamond. It has never been lost — only covered and hidden by the grime of negative parental conditioning. Isn't it time to uncover your true self and allow its brilliance to shine?