DR. SHEFALI: Culture tells me, go ahead.
One person you can put your expectations on is your child.
OPRAH: Yes.
DR. SHEFALI: In fact, you're expected to have expectations. Right?
OPRAH: Yes.
DR. SHEFALI: So now if my child is not going to fulfill my expectations,
I am going to panic. And my panic will quickly become control.
OPRAH: Can I share with you just how this showed up for me?
After I did our last interview a couple of years ago,
I had one of my girls in a school and she was having difficulties
and she really didn't like the school.
And I realized that I had talked her into going to that school.
DR. SHEFALI: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
OPRAH: And I had to actually say to her, I made a mistake.
DR. SHEFALI: Right.
OPRAH: I made the ultimate mistake.
I wanted to be able -- I, when I was your age, wanted to go to that school.
And I couldn't go to that school.
And so I put my hopes and my dreams on you.
DR. SHEFALI: Yes.
OPRAH: And that was wrong.
DR. SHEFALI: Now, let's deconstruct this.
OPRAH: Yeah.
DR. SHEFALI: And show parents what you just did.
OPRAH: Yeah.
DR. SHEFALI: You first had the awareness.
OPRAH: Yes. I had the awareness.
I said, oh, my God. I am trying to get you to live my dream.
This was not your dream.
DR. SHEFALI: You went all the way back.
OPRAH: Yeah.
DR. SHEFALI: To that -- that mother.
OPRAH: Yeah.
DR. SHEFALI: Who only longed for the best for her child.
OPRAH: Mm-hmm.
DR. SHEFALI: But beneath the longing were the chains of an expectation.
OPRAH: Yes.
DR. SHEFALI: You thought, who wouldn't want to go to this school
OPRAH: Absolutely.
DR. SHEFALI: This is the enmeshment that occurs.
OPRAH: I actually said those words.
DR. SHEFALI: Yeah.
OPRAH: Who wouldn't want to go there?
DR. SHEFALI: So you just slapped onto her a desire that was completely
coming from your state of lack from your childhood.
OPRAH: Absolutely.
DR. SHEFALI: This is where all projection, all dysfunction,
all conflict in relationships come from, from the parent putting
on to the child something from way back.
OPRAH: Way back.
DR. SHEFALI: That is a slivered sense of their self,
an incomplete part of them, that we just automatically assume the child will want.
But you, because you had a moment of awareness, and your ego
was reigned in, you went, maybe it was me?
OPRAH: Absolutely.
DR. SHEFALI: Who just sent her on the wrong path?
OPRAH: Absolutely.
DR. SHEFALI: Set her onto the slaughter house of my spirit?
OPRAH: Makes me want to cry because I did that.
But you helped me to see that that's what I was doing.
So in the moment of her, you know, despair, I thought, I did this.
I projected what I wanted onto this.
And the realization of it, the consciousness of it, actually,
changed me with every other girl.
And so now my entire approach, my entire philosophy,
is that I can open the door. And you can walk through.
DR. SHEFALI: The way you wish.
OPRAH: The way you wish.
DR. SHEFALI: I paved the path maybe. But you may walk how you wish
OPRAH: Or choose not to walk.
DR. SHEFALI: Manifest the way you wish.
OPRAH: Or choose to not even walk through the door.