What it Really Takes to Raise Emotionally Healthy Families Series- Day 18

Consciously Parenting: What it Really Takes to Raise Emotionally Healthy Families
Book 1 of the Consciously Parenting series
Principle 6: All individuals have a right and a responsibility to learn to express their feelings appropriately. Feelings allow us to connect to our internal guidance system.
Few parents find navigating the landscape of feelings to be easy. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of parenting, we all need guidance to understand the language of feelings and what our role is in helping our children to find their way.

Most of us received messages about our feelings being inappropriate or perhaps something that must be “fixed,” yet feelings are also the place where we can truly connect to one another in a deep and meaningful way.

Feelings have an important place in our lives. They let us know when something isn’t right or that all is well. The expression of feelings is normal. Feelings let us become aware of situations where action may be needed.

From the book Consciously Parenting: What it Really Takes to Raise Emotionally Healthy Families

A great place to begin with exploring your feelings is looking at how feelings were handled when you were growing up. What happened in your family when you were angry? Sad? Scared? Happy?

What happens now when your kids are feeling those feelings? What’s hard for you? What feels easy for you?

When we weren’t allowed to express something as children, it may come out really loudly as adults. And sometimes parents will create lots of space for those same feelings when their children are expressing them. And sometimes parents will shut down a child who is expressing something they weren’t allowed to express.

What’s happening in your family right now? Who is expressing what feelings? Is there room for your feelings or is the space seemingly taken up by someone else’s expression of feelings? Or are you expressing a lot of feelings and so your kids are quiet or they need to be really loud to be heard?

Feelings coming up can let us know that we are impacted by what is happening in present time. It can also let us know when there are old unresolved experiences that are being touched in present time when our reaction feels out of proportion to what’s happening right now.

Feelings can let us know when something needs attention, needs a boundary, or we have an unmet need. When we can remember that and share the reasons we have feelings with our children, it is the beginning of changing transgenerational patterns around feelings in your family and in our world.

Author

  • Rebecca Thompson Hitt, MS, MFT is the founder and executive director of The Consciously Parenting Project (2007). Rebecca loves supporting individuals and parents to grow themselves up in their current relationship challenges. She delights in empowering people to find peace and connection with their loved ones, supporting the transformation of the way we understand our connections. Her holistic approach, which includes our earliest experiences and nervous system patterns, her gentleness and compassion, and her deep listening without pathologizing, helps us to see ourselves and those we care about with new eyes, supporting the transformation needed in the world starting with our closest relationships. With over 30 years of professional experience working with individuals, couples, and families, in addition to her own personal healing work raising her now young adult sons, Rebecca is dedicated to transforming our relationships stories, one relationship and one family at a time.

    View all posts Holistic Family Therapist

Rebecca Thompson Hitt

Rebecca Thompson Hitt, MS, MFT is the founder and executive director of The Consciously Parenting Project (2007). Rebecca loves supporting individuals and parents to grow themselves up in their current relationship challenges. She delights in empowering people to find peace and connection with their loved ones, supporting the transformation of the way we understand our connections. Her holistic approach, which includes our earliest experiences and nervous system patterns, her gentleness and compassion, and her deep listening without pathologizing, helps us to see ourselves and those we care about with new eyes, supporting the transformation needed in the world starting with our closest relationships. With over 30 years of professional experience working with individuals, couples, and families, in addition to her own personal healing work raising her now young adult sons, Rebecca is dedicated to transforming our relationships stories, one relationship and one family at a time.

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