2. When you get angry, hit the pause button
Shift your attention away from your child, move away, and turn inward. Notice where the anger is in your body. Breathe into it. Hold yourself with compassion. This won’t feel good. In fact, you might feel like you’re going to hyperventilate, or even vomit.
But every time you can breathe through that unbearable feeling without lashing out, you’re emptying your emotional backpack so you won’t get triggered as easily in the future.
3. Empower yourself
When you start feeling stuck about some issue with your child, stop focusing on your child’s behaviour and focus on your own reaction. Write in your journal. Vent to another parent, making sure you focus on your feelings rather than your child’s behaviour, so you get to the deeper tears and fears beneath your anger. Explore your childhood connections to this issue. How is past trauma or current stress playing a role? What can you do to make things different?
As you unlock your own turmoil and become able to notice the physiological sensations of your emotions and breathe through them — without taking action — you release the stuck places in yourself. That means you’re unplugging emotionally from the drama with your child.
The result? Your child begins to change, too.
The paradox is that the child seems to be creating the problem, but when we work on our part of it, the problem always diminishes.
- Is that because once we come to peace with the issue, we can set firm but kind limits and help our child with his emotions, instead of adding fuel to the fire?
- Or because when we love ourselves more, we can give our child the unconditional love she needs?
- Or because we’re in a spiritual relationship with our children, and they bring us the issues we need to heal inside us?
- Or simply that once we stop pushing our children to be different, they’re free to stop resisting, so they start to change?
Regardless, once we melt the tangle in ourselves, our child so often makes a breakthrough too. We both heal and grow.
So today, when you get triggered with your child? Don’t lose it. Use it!
And say thanks to your little Zen master, at least in your mind.
Find the original article here.
Dr. Laura Markham is the founder of AhaParenting.com and author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings and her latest book, the Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Workbook.
