Studying psychology has taught me many things about people.
Why we behave the way we do. How our experiences shape the way we think. How emotions influence our reactions. How differently people communicate, cope, and express what they need. But perhaps one of the most personal things psychology has taught me is how to understand my own parents.
Not because studying psychology suddenly made me understand everything about them. In fact, the more I learned, the more I realized that people are much more complex than any theory can fully explain. I began to understand that my parents also have their own experiences, fears, beliefs, limitations, and ways of making sense of the world.
They grew up in a different time. They learned to communicate in different ways. They experienced things before I was even born. And perhaps, just like me, they were also learning how to become parents while raising me. This changed the way I communicate with them.
I learned that the same message may need to be delivered differently depending on the situation.
Sometimes, my parents need me to explain something clearly. Sometimes, they need me to listen first. Sometimes, correcting them immediately will not make the conversation better. Sometimes, I need to choose the right timing. And sometimes, the most helpful thing I can do is simply understand that they may see something differently from me.
Psychology taught me that communication is not only about what we want to say.
It is also about whether the other person is ready to hear it, how they interpret it, and what kind of communication allows them to actually receive the message. I also learned to be more careful with the assumption that because I understand something psychologically, I automatically understand my parents.
I don’t.
Knowing about attachment, defense mechanisms, emotional regulation, family dynamics, or communication patterns does not give me permission to put labels on the people I love. It gives me a different lens to approach them with more curiosity.
Instead of immediately thinking,
“Why does my mother react like this?”
I might ask,
“What might she be experiencing right now?”
Instead of,
“Why doesn’t my father understand what I’m trying to say?”
I might wonder,
“Am I communicating this in a way that makes sense from his perspective?”
This does not mean that everything my parents do is automatically right. Understanding someone does not mean agreeing with everything they do.
There are still moments when I need to communicate my boundaries, express disagreement, or have difficult conversations with them. But I have learned that how I communicate disagreement matters.
There is a difference between trying to make someone understand me and trying to make them feel wrong. And perhaps adulthood has taught me that I don’t always need to win a conversation with my parents. Sometimes, I just need to make sure that we understand each other a little better than we did before.
The older I become, the more I also realize that my parents are not simply “my parents.” Before they became my mother and father, they were two individuals with their own stories. They had dreams. They made mistakes. They had things they were still learning. And perhaps some of the things I once interpreted as simply “the way my parents are” were actually parts of their own unfinished stories.
Studying psychology did not make me more distant from them. If anything, it taught me to approach them with more patience. To choose my words more carefully. To understand that different situations may require different ways of communicating.
And most importantly, to remember that psychological knowledge is not meant to make us feel superior to the people we understand.
It should make us more compassionate. Because at the end of the day, my parents are also human beings trying to navigate life with whatever knowledge, experiences, and capacities they had at the time. And perhaps I am doing the same.
So, if there is one thing studying psychology has taught me about my own parents, it is this:
Understanding people is not always about knowing why they behave the way they do.
Sometimes, it is about learning how to meet them where they are and finding a better way to reach each other from there.
—Atika Meilani.