You cannot break out of the box with the tools in the box
I was listening to a podcast featuring the therapist Jerry Wise who had these parting words:
Remember that you can't solve the problem using the thinking and emotional dynamics that have caused it. So you cannot break out of the box by using everything you know in the box.
Of all the things he said, this stayed with me. In the interview, he was talking about how dysfunction is passed on in families, until someone decides to step out of the family dynamic and break free — not just for themselves but also for their family. Wise reminds us that we cannot use the same broken tools we may have learnt from our families to break ourselves free. For instance, if you have an aggressive member of the family who antagonises, it might be tempting to out-aggro them into submission. Maybe you learnt that anger is to be met with even more anger. But using anger in this way will just enmesh you further in a dysfunctional pattern. Instead, a far healthier approach might be to stand your ground with calm.
If we want to break out of our boxes, let's look outside what was given to us. And let's pass down better tools to the generations after us.