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Underneath the wall of rage, we walked through last week, are early, early feelings of abandonment, rejection, powerless, and helplessness.

These are the precious feeling jewels you stored away as a young child believing they were somehow dangerous since when expressing them through your behavior you were punished or shamed.

Unfortunately, in our culture ‘good behavior’ is the gold standard which in turn means there is very little compassion or support for the tender feelings that drive so-called ‘bad behavior’.

Those precious feelings got a bad rap and therefore you trained yourself to relegate them to the basement of your psyche.

This was a smart move as a child and yet when you have children of your own, and they express those tender feelings through behavior- it triggers those repressed feelings in you.

No wonder you want to protect your child from having those feelings if you still believe they are dangerous! Without even questioning your belief you’ll find yourself doing to them what was done to you and wondering how this happens?

You committed to being a conscious loving parent and yet hear your mother’s harsh
voice coming out of your mouth when your children behave in triggering ways.

Or on the other side, you find yourself feeling held hostage by your child’s BIG emotions and forget you even have a personal boundary or could possibly take care of yourself.

In Purejoy the definition of a personal boundary is -what’s ok and what’s not ok with me about how I treat myself. A personal boundary is not about how others treat me- ultimately I only have personal empowerment, I cannot control what others think, feel or do. So I bring that boundary inside and make it about how I want to treat myself.

When controlling my child’s behavior, I am binding the expression of her present moment feelings, in hopes, she’ll take care of me keeping those dangerous feelings inside repressed.

On the flip side, giving up and giving in, I refuse to set a healthy boundary, being unwilling to feel selfish, abandoning and rejecting with my child.

Have you ever heard yourself say, “I don’t want my child to feel (insert feeling)?”

Why not?

Feelings are like waves in the ocean. They come and they go.

They are not who your child is.

And yet, if as a parent you identify your child as rude or mean when they are feeling powerless or aggressive and defiant when they are feeling afraid your child will identify that they ARE mean and rude or aggressive and defiant.

They’ll learn to hide their precious jewels away just like you did as a child.

This story gets passed down from generation to generation and now it’s time to rewrite the story.

The way to do this is to open your vulnerable heart to all the waves of feelings you learned to repress as a child.

Stop, identifying those feelings as being WHO you are.

They are the doorway to your HEART and through committing to your SafeSeat practice you create a safe space to turn towards those feelings with loving-kindness instead of shame and guilt.

Eventually, you become the act of kindness watching the waves come and go knowing who you really are is the OCEAN itself.

 

Listen to Podcast Episode 84: “Embracing Tender Feelings”