Our children don’t want us to fix them – they want to be heard

One of the hardest things in my life is being with the people I love the most in the world and seeing them in pain.

Especially with my children, seeing them go through the ups and downs of life can feel like a lot to hold.

When we have such deep, beautiful and tender love for others – it can feel unbearable to watch them experience any torment or grief.

Even though we know that life is a rich tapestry of a myriad of experiences – not all pleasant.

The pain of even small torments has felt, in the past, almost unbearable to me.

I wanted more than anything to be the kind of parent who can hold the emotions of my children.

Who can be truly useful in guiding them through the ups and downs of life’s many experiences.

A parent whose child comes to them and asks for guidance.

But most of my parenting was not guiding, holding and being present. When my kids would show up with a problem or big emotion and my reaction was mostly –

How can I fix it for you?

Or – how can I cheer you up?

Or – if I am honest, and this makes me shiver with SHAME, I can’t deal with this now!!!! I am too stressed already!!!!

I didn’t know how to sit with my child and just HEAR them. Hear all of the emotions, the anger, rage, fear, sadness, loneliness, despair – whatever it was, and in whatever quantity it was showing up with.

And guide them through it.

Actually – I didn’t know how to be with ANYONE, including myself, in the big, messy, feeling, painful states that we can often find ourselves in.

My kids’ emotions would most certainly activate my own emotions – and in my discomfort I would often try to surgically remove their pain.

Their pain was my pain. And oh how that SCARED THE LIVING S**T out of me.

But when I learnt how the brain works and responds to emotion, I learnt that when emotions become too much for me – which was often and VERY common with my kids because I felt so much discomfort around their emotions – I would go into APPEASE survival strategy.

All survival strategies are emergency states – and they feel like it.

APPEASE is the sensation that other people’s emotions feel incredibly scary – like something urgent and terrible is happening.

I would have an overwhelming urge to FIX their problems because how out of control and frightened it made me.

We can also use other survival strategies when emotions are activated – like FIGHT, FLIGHT or FREEZE.

As illogical as it sounds – a child can bring a parent an emotion like FEAR and it scares the parent so much they go into fight survival response, and what looks like anger comes lashing out.

Or they can go into FLIGHT – seeing the emotion of the child, and there is a disconnection. Like the parent is saying – I am NOT dealing with that.

Or for me another common one was FREEZE – just shut down because my body was saying – I can’t cope with any more emotions! Leave me alone!

And in all of this the child is left alone with their emotions – a place that they aren’t meant to be.

Children aren’t wired to know how to respond to emotions alone. They need us – their parents, adults, caregivers – to help them learn how to process emotions.

To learn how to be with emotions – see them, feel them, hear them.

Which can be so heartbreaking because so many of us don’t know how to do that.

Because as children, we were left alone with our emotions.

We weren’t held.

We weren’t given love and empathy and attention when big emotions arose.

Because our parents didn’t know how to be with their emotions. And so the patterns go on and on and one.

Dealing with my children’s emotions in a healthy way – both for me – and for them – is the hardest part of all the work I do. Because it goes to the very CORE of me and how I feel about them and myself.

And I am still learning.

My kids are more important to me than anyone in the world. And I want to both repair how I have been with them and keep guiding them with the knowledge I now have.

The BEST FEELING in the world is when I have been able to sit with either of my kids and just been able to totally hold them in an empathetic and loving space. To just let their emotions out.

When I have been able to be non judgemental and understanding.

When I am fine with whatever they bring me.

And in all of that, to be able to help them to a space where they have released and integrated their emotions – and know what to do about whatever felt so difficult in the first place.

The best feeling in the world is when my kids come to me and say – I need to talk.

And I know they are going to pour their heart out to me, and I know that I can help them, not with advice and comments – but pure empathy, pure love and deep emotional safety.

Through that emotion they can get to a place where they can see their genius, their potential and their ideas. They know what to do. From a state of confidence and strength.

When we are able to move through our emotions – we get access to our executive brains – which is the truly awesome brain state where we have the best ideas, the ability to make good decisions and to be open to ideas and input.

That’s why it’s very important to help our kids with emotions, so that they can get to that brain state where good decisions are made

I don’t always get it right. I don’t always say the right thing. I get activated still and pushed into survival strategies.

But I know that I have shifted our relationships so much compared to how they used to be.

They are my heart and I love them so much.

I hope these thoughts and ideas feel nourishing and informative in some way. And I hope that it shows that we are all using the tools that we were handed (as were our parents, and their parents, and so it goes back.)

We are trying our best, and being empathetic and tender wit ourselves is the first step.

If you feel like this stirs something in you and you would like to know more.

If you would like to learn the theory and techniques that I use every day – I am teaching a new online course that starts in January.

This is the foundation of knowledge I use when I am coaching my clients, when I am in the trenches with my kids and their big emotions, when I am communicating challenging things with my husband, when I am recognising and experiencing shame when something happens with a friend – ALL of it.

Details of the course are here.

Love to you, always,

Di