Raising children is not easy. It's so easy for parents to allow their own emotions and reactions to affect their children because children take it personally. Since the children are dependent on their parents, and since the parents are 'so-much-larger' than us... it's easy to make any parent's action or reaction about us.
Today as I felt a pang of anxiety (for the things I have to do), I also felt some shame. This is in part due to the belief that my worth is only valued by productivity.
Feeling this, I sought to reach out and understand it through a healing meditation. To which, I am now feeling some relief, but to work through my thoughts toward the event I have come here to write about healing. And about how to re-parent our inner child when we've never raised a child!
My feeling of shame brought up a memory from when I was a child, as the healing meditation I used is meant to dive backward to where the emotion derives from.
When my stepsisters and I visited a community pool/water park. We were having fun, and then we decided that we would get ice cream. As ***** went up to get us some, we all looked at the glass that was atop the kid's table we were at. We noticed it spins and laughed. We noticed we could put our finger under it a little. Except... when we all did a very bad thing happened. The glass broke in two and nearly everyone looked at us. *****, after noticing, came back to the table and started yelling at us. I can't remember what they said, other than it may've been along the lines, "I can't go anywhere with you guys! What were you thinking? Look at what you did!" After arriving back home, ******* (who I wasn't incredibly fond of for their serious and harsh approach as it felt) lined us up and said we were writing letters of apology to the park, and they gave us each three spankings before we went up to write. I lay there in my bed feeling like a terrible, terrible child. However, as I wrote I also felt anger.
Diving into these feelings, I found my inner child and saw what it was feeling. I stepped outside the scene to try and see it more objectively. I saw what was happening more clearly and then I approached the child. I approached the child, but it didn't trust me. The feeling she had was, "Who are you? You think you're so much smarter than me, you don't know what I'm going through. Stop treating me like a kid. You're an outsider, you don't know what's going on. Why should I trust you?"
In other words, my childhood self saw me as a threat. It saw me as judging it for what it was feeling and where it was. She saw me as if I were thinking I was larger than her and thinking I was better than her, and thought I 'knew what was best for her'. Little did I know I hadn't chosen what form to approach her in! She was reacting because I hadn't given myself a form comfortable enough to her. I asked the deeper part of that child what it would need to trust the guide approaching it. As it came up, it had to be myself and not only did it have to be myself, but I had to tell her that I was her. I also first assumed a younger form (her age) to show her this, then showed her my larger form. She then became open, knowing now that I was but a reflection of herself and was completely compassionate and understanding to where she was.
We walked through the event of what happened. As ***** walked back to the table and began yelling, I paused the scene and pointed out to her that others were staring. I told her, "***** is reacting angrily because they are embarrassed. They are punishing their children because they want to feel 'good' and 'right' to those around them. They are afraid of judgment. What they are saying and how they are saying it is coming from their own feelings about what is occurring." We went forward to the spanking and the letters. I again said to her, "This is a reflection of how your parents have learned punishment is the correct behavior to take when children make a mistake because that is how they grew up." As we went forward again to her feeling angry, I told her that it was perfectly valid that she felt that way. I sat down with her on the bed as she felt both shame and anger and stroked her hair and face. (Surprisingly, I've realized I was touch deprived and she really needed physical affection.) However, I am still seeking to understand why she felt this anger. (Since this is back when I actually let myself feel anger, haha... Due to other traumas, anger eventually became unacceptable in my psyche)
So many people will narrow this down in children and teenagers to 'pure rebellion'. But children and teenagers don't rebel unless they feel that there's something they need to rebel against. What makes a child feel the need to rebel against something is when their own integrity and sense of self feels threatened. Instead of feeling powerless, anger is a manifestation of feeling the need to protect, justify, and take power in any way we can... This is why anger is the response to boundary violations.
Looking at the situation, what may've inspired the reaction of anger was that I felt my boundary had been violated. The emotional boundary that defined my own happiness and curiosity was violated by being punished for it. She may've seen it as having to apologize for being 'curious', or upset that her parents thought she would ever break something on purpose. She may've also been angry because--ah, yes I can feel it now--because being punished told her there was something 'bad' about her rather than the action that wasn't good. It made her bad for performing the action, rather than seeing the mistake of what happened. She was angry because she was hurt that her own parents would believe or think that about her. Shame is about being wrong, while guilt is about doing wrong.
One thing that prevents us from moving on from shame the most is misunderstanding that how we were treated when we made mistakes makes us wrong. Anger likewise comes from this misunderstanding that our parents are trying to devalue us. Punishment is a result of societal constructs, and parents reacting in less-than-loving ways to events that occur. Current parenting methods tend to add punishment to mistake, which only adds a sense of shame and devaluation. In reality, the mistake should itself be the teacher for what should be done better. To this extent, we can explain to children lovingly why some things are not a good course of action so that they can learn to see and understand the better paths, rather than raise children who are obedient that have a terrible sense of self-worth.
Mistakes are themselves the teacher, not punishment. Mistakes are only made because we don't think it will be a mistake.
Reparenting our inner child is an intense process because it truly is as if we are becoming a parent. This is so important, however, if we want to truly raise a child. We will remember and understand what children feel, expect, and react to. We will not repeat the cycle of socialization that raises children to adopt negative beliefs and expectations about the world they live in. We will raise children that do not suffer from panic or stress to meet expectations. We will raise children that have a sense of identity, worth, and purpose in the world.
Most importantly, we must remember that we have much to learn and remember from children. We make the mistake of thinking children are unknowledgeable and helpless. Measure wisdom, knowledge, and expansion in experiences, not in age or years.
Peace and love.
No comments:
Post a Comment