Earlier I wrote about learning to trust my daughter’s knowing. I easily fall into the trap of “mother knows best” when that is clearly not always true. Today I’m reflecting on another trap that I often fall into in my parenting…and that is not allowing my kids to have their feelings.
I don’t mean that I tell them not to feel things or that feelings are something you’ll get in trouble for. I mean I’m a therapist….I love talking about feelings! I encourage my kids to talk about their feelings and praise them when they do. But I can fall prey to trying to change their feelings or hurry them through it. I struggle to just let them feel what they need to feel or want to feel without rushing them.
I started to notice this with my 42 day abundance program that I’ve been working on. The idea is to get in touch with the resistance, desire and gratitude that we feel in our lives. I have been doing this for 14 days now and I’ve noticed something surprising. I thought for sure when I started to pay attention to the resistance or the icky feeling in my gut it would get more and more powerful. What I found though was that it did get a little worse, but then quickly dissipated. If I tried to pull it back it would come back. But if I just allowed myself to feel it and let it go then it would go. And much more quickly than I expected.
I did an experiment similar to this about a year or two ago with my son. He would often call me to complain that someone in the house was making him angry. I often tried to talk him out of it or tried to get him to see their side of the story. It rarely worked and often made him more angry besides. Finally I decided to use my therapy skills on him and just validate and allow him to have his feelings. (Why it took me so long to try this is beyond me…) I’d say things like, “wow that’s awful!” Or, “I can’t believe someone said that!” And this was the most effective one: “If someone said that to me I’d totally be mad too!” When I did that within a few minutes he’d calm down and then let his frustration go. I was completely surprised at how effective this was!
When I just allowed him to feel angry as long as he needed to feel angry with love, support and validation the feelings passed more quickly. Then he was open to my suggestions about how to fix the problem. But the key was that I needed to just allow him to feel what he needed to feel FIRST. Before he was ready to make any changes.
Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotions, because the body always follows the mind.
Bruce Lee
I’d also offer that if we try to ignore or push away our emotions we will also lose ourselves. We must find a balance between not allowing emotions to rule over us and still listening to them and giving them their place. When we look away we actually give the emotion more power over us. We must practice sitting with the feelings that are uncomfortable and get really good at making space for how we feel. If you’re hoping for peace and mastery…we can find those when we learn to…
