Through a personal retreat you can learn how to allow your kids to have feelings and not let it upset you as well.
How often do we really allow ourselves and our children to feel what we are feeling? A client of mine was expressing how nervous she gets when her 7-year-old son tells her he is worried. When she asks him what he is worried about, he says he doesn’t know. Then she really gets worried and tries to fix the situation by telling him there is nothing for him to be worried about. She tries to distract him from his worry with ice cream, TV, or calling a friend over to play. Does telling her son not to worry make him not worry? Well, it didn’t stop him from worrying. The anxiety kept building.
My suggestion was to tell him that it was okay to be worried and that everyone feels worried at one time or another, including her. I also suggested that she ask him what it felt like in his body. Was it a contraction or perhaps a nervous stomach? What was the sensation he was feeling? He described the feeling as shaky and sick. Then I asked her to just let him be with the shaky and sick feeling and to ask him if he was okay being with those feelings.
At first, he said he just didn’t want to feel those feelings and he wanted it to stop. But after a while of feeling it, he said it went away. Every time he got those feelings, he would do this, and the bad feelings would go away. He had learned that the feelings and sensations weren’t going to hurt him.
This exercise teaches our children how to be with their feelings. If we start medicating their feelings when they are young and they can’t be with the feelings, then how will they ever learn? Feelings are normal. Worry, anxiety, fear, sadness and anger are all normal feelings. If we are always trying not to feel them, they don’t go away.
Pretending not to have them actually makes them stay longer.
Teach your children how to be with their feelings and let them know they are a normal part of life. Life is up and down. If we can only be with the up parts, the good, then we won’t be able to sustain our joy in life.
How hard is it for you as a parent to allow your kids, no matter what age they are to suffer a bit and be with their feelings? Most parents say it’s almost impossible!
In a personal retreat, you will learn the importance of being with your feelings and letting others be with theirs.
