As children, we were often made to feel ashamed or scared of how we felt – we cried too much or got angry or laughed too loudly or made too much noise playing around the house (read: kids having fun).
As a parent, I’m guilty of telling my kids off too. This is part of what is called the tribal cycle – the rules that applied to me growing up were then applied to my children.
I seriously think parents and parents-to-be should be educated on how to take care of our children’s emotional needs as well as their physical needs, and how to break unresourceful tribal cycles.
When we deny our children’s emotions (anger/sadness/frustration/joy), we’re pretty much telling them that we cannot accept them as they are. Which is exactly what our young minds told us when we were kids. My parents won’t accept me if I’m angry. My parents won’t accept me if I’m sad a lot. My parents won’t accept me if I make too much noise.
All negative self talk, poor self esteem and insecurities stem from this – fear of not being accepted for who we are. This in turn is a result of not being given an opportunity to express our emotions.There really is nothing wrong with ANY emotion. All our emotions serve a purpose. Expressing our emotions and feeling them to completion means they run their full cycle and then leave our body. When we interrupt this process, the emotion stays within our body as trauma – something we’ll have to deal with sooner or later.
Now as adults, we have options on how to move forward. We can’t go back in time and tell our parents to allow us to feel, but we can go through a healing exercise and find peace within. Once this is done, we can then make a conscious decision to allow ourselves to FEEL all our emotions to completion.
When we can accept ourselves for who we are, we communicate to the world that we WILL be accepted for who we are.
