One mother I was working with was very anxious every time her children went out to play with dad. He was a responsible dad who wasn’t doing anything risky with the children and mom knew that. But something about the situation was really troubling to mom. She didn’t want her husband to stop playing with the kids, but she seriously wanted to wrap the kids in bubble wrap before they went outside to play.
As we made space for what it felt like for mom, she starting thinking about growing up in New York City and some of the unsafe situations she had experienced growing up. Her body started to react visibly, she started to shake and cry. After she had allowed the feelings to move through, she was able to differentiate her own story of growing up from her kids’ experience. They live in a safe neighborhood where everyone watches out for everyone else.
While she didn’t consciously remember the experience of growing up, it was showing up unconsciously in how it was feeling for her kids to start exploring the world, even with their dad. As she made her experiences more conscious, it was easier to discern her body’s memory of her being unsafe from what was actually safe or unsafe in present time for her children. Once she differentiated her experiences from the past, she was able to start to create some positive feedback loops with her kids and their exploration time with their dad.
