Your day starts with hopes and intentions for harmony, yet conflicts get sparked!

You start your day intending to stay calm and avoid getting annoyed with your child. But before long, you’re in that impossible bind where you NEED your child’s cooperation and they’re just not on board! You feel frustrated, stuck and powerless. You implore, you beg, you resort to raising your voice or threats. Only then does your child seem to take you seriously and come on board, but the atmosphere is awful! They feel awful! You feel awful! You feel shame, they feel shame. You’re angry, they’re angry. You feel defensive, they feel defensive. This is SO HARD for you both!

So how CAN a parent break this cycle? 

When parents resort to yelling or threats, it creates the dynamic where the child tends to be unresponsive until that point is reached. This is because even the mention of that activity that often leads to this tension becomes a stress trigger for parent and child alike. Parent asks their child to get ready for school and the child goes into an emotional shut down in anticipation of the looming tension. 

Breaking the cycle involves creating more time for this challenging activities, identifying and caring for our activated emotions, then caring for our child’s activated emotions by truly maintaining a warm connection and helping them feel emotionally safe.  From this place of genuine connection and a warmer atmosphere, you can work together. You can make a plan, you can write the list of what needs to be done, you can make it playful, you can problem solve, or you can hold a loving limit that supports their self-discipline in a warm supportive way.

Identifying when your stress levels are rising as early as possible and then taking action to gain relief is essential if you’re to  avoid reaching the overwhelm that leads to yelling or being overly impatient and controlling.

The person who grew up in a relatively relaxed and emotionally safe environment … 

will generally be better able to identify that their stress levels are too high and will be less tolerant of living with such discomfort on an ongoing basis, hence likely to be more proactive about meeting their self-care needs.

The person who grew up in an emotionally stifling, demanding or chaotic environment …

became accustomed to the regular high peaks of stress and anxiety and rushes of adrenalin.  Eventually the child’s physiological resting state, even when there isn’t an apparent threat, remains in a state of heightened stress and low (or high) level anxiety.

The result is always living on the edge to one extent or another.

Yet because this was normal as a child, it’s difficult for the person, as an adult, to recognise that they need and deserve to generally live in a more relaxed state.  When living constantly with stress, the point of overload will be reached easier and faster than someone with an overall more relaxed nervous system.

If this is the case for you, it’s helpful to think in terms of slowly but surely lowering your stress levels.  Making the decision that you are someone who just has to avoid becoming overloaded can make a big difference and effect the choices you make, what you say “yes” to and what you say “no” to.

You might also like to read “Why we explode and how to prevent it“. 

The inner journey of a mum weighed down by self-hatred

I was talking with a client lately who was truly celebrating with me that she finally no longer dislikes herself.  She hadn’t previously been aware that she disliked herself so much, yet there was actually a lot of self-hatred and shame which made enjoyment of life nearly impossible

Through our parent coaching work with me, she explored her identify (sense of herself and core beliefs). These deep rooted limiting beliefs and painful emotions were getting activated deep down inside in stressful moments at home with the kids.  She’s an incredibly mindful, loving and dedicated mother, who would experience nothing short of anguish if she didn’t manage to live up to her very high expectations. Much of these high expectations were being driven by her deep feelings of self-hatred.

Her inner critic manifested in her having a very high need to control every aspect of her life and her parenting.  Initially, the more she learned about peaceful parenting, the more anguish and guilt and fear she experienced, “have I damaged my children for life by doing cry it out when they were babies?”, “has my girl learned to repress her emotions and will she ever regain her full sense of trust in us?”, “why couldn’t I get my kids to sleep on time last night, what am I doing wrong?”.  

When she first contacted me, I identified that attempting to parenting with more focus on validating the children’s feelings without addressing this inner tension was verging on being counterproductive . We talked about how essential it was for her to bring in the balance of developing more compassion for herself.  For this committed mum, learning to identify when she fell back into self-berating and then working to come back to a warmer softer connection with herself allowed her a lot more clarity and headspace to be more mindful and connected as a parent, which in turn made the less than ideal parenting moments or days much less scary and debilitating. 

What helps you soften towards yourself?  

For some it’s through meditation, journaling, yoga, exercising, counselling, date nights with partner, time with friends, giving time to your passions and interests.  For others time in nature recharges their battery, creating an hour of self-reflection sitting outside relieves tensions.

Take time each day to slow your breathing down, focusing on releasing stress on every out breath and letting your awareness drop into your body sensations.  When you do this, you’ll naturally become more aware of where your body is holding a lot of stress, which naturally brings about an urge to relax those muscles. The tracks on my Stress Relief for Parents CD can help you develop simple relaxation skills and help you explore the source of your emotional triggers.

Breaking generational cycles of abuse and neglect

Honouring and caring for one’s emotional needs can be very difficult for parents if their feelings were not tuned in to with compassion when they were a child.  When emotions were not taken seriously or empathised with in childhood, that person is trained to minimise, invalidate or hide their true feelings in shame.  Learning to change these patterns and give ourselves more compassion than we received as a child can feel like slow progress, but so essential and ultimately so rich and rewarding.

An essential element of self-care is to develop connections with those who are sincere about being real and truly listening to each other.  It’s the elements of feeling truly heard and understood with compassion that allows a person to move from talking about their problems to talking from and showing the underlying feelings, which can lead to satisfying emotional release and resolution.

Crying can feel so very cleansing and relieving

Allowing ourselves to have a cry can feel overwhelming or it can feel releasing and healing. What makes the difference is whether we can blend feeling those deep old wounds with some compassion. To achieve this, we can bring in our adult self to speak to the hurt child inside; “I’m here, I’m listening” and just work to be validate those feeling; “oh wow I’m feeling SO sad and overwhelmed”, “I notice how tight my chest and shoulders are when I’m triggered”.

Listening heals

It also helps us develop self-compassion and develop the experience of relational emotional safety when the space is held by a calm, patient, and empathic listener.  Their acceptance of your feelings helps you listen to yourself to glean the deeper insights and resolve feelings that may have previously felt so unmovable like the big rage and grief or shame that can otherwise compromise your clarity and confidence daily.

Genevieve Simperingham is a Psychosynthesis Counsellor, a Parenting Instructor and coach, public speaker, human rights advocate, writer and the founder of The Peaceful Parent Institute.  Check out her articles, Peaceful Parenting eCourses, forums and one-year Peaceful Parenting Instructor Training through this website or join over 90,000 followers on her Facebook page The Way of the Peaceful Parent.