Hello!

 

I’m fascinated in learning to understand human beings, and as part of that I sometimes find myself curious about the lives of the famous, and in particular, their parenting styles.

And I’ve found myself reading about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and their surprise divorce, and the possibility that his parenting might have something to do with it.

I want to preface what I say with two things:

1. What we read in the press may have no reflection on the truth;

2. My passion is compassion. I’m not interested in judgment or passing blame. I AM interested in understanding relationships, feelings and healing.

Given those two, what I found interesting was the suggestion that it was Brad Pitt’s responses to their oldest son that led to Angelina Jolie-Pitt wanting to get a divorce.

So I thought about that.
 

We know that their son was adopted as a baby. And we know from an Aware Parenting perspective that however loving the family is before and afterwards, that babies have big feelings when they are adopted. 

At that age, they don’t have the cognitive understanding of what is going on. What they experience is the loss of everything that was familiar, to be replaced by everything that is completely new. 

Babies live in a sensory world. When they experience completely new people, environment, language, smells, sounds, etc., that is a lot for them to deal with emotionally.

And then there are feelings of loss and grief – of the life that they have left behind – even if it wasn’t such a nourishing experience; it’s still all they’ve known.

The wonderful thing is that babies and children can heal from this experience, through sharing their feelings with loving adults.

The way that they can do that is through crying in arms, when all their needs are met.

For children, that means crying and tantrums with loving support.
 

Unfortunately, we live in a culture that doesn’t really understand that.

Our culture tends to believe either that all crying indicates an unmet need, and so we must do whatever we can to stop the crying.

Or, that crying and tantrums in children are some kind of misbehaviour that we need to stop through harshness, ignoring or punishment.

And thus, children often don’t get the opportunity to heal from early painful experiences.

And it’s not just adoption by the way; all babies and children experience uncomfortable feelings at times, however loving we are as parents.

But what happens to those feelings?

Well, they don’t go away if they aren’t expressed.

There are three options with feelings: expression, repression or aggression.
 

They are repressed through things like thumb or pacifier/dummy sucking, clutching on to a blanket or soft toy, eating when upset, moving when upset, and as children get older, into nose biting, nail picking, screen use, hair twirling, and incessant movement. 

And into teenage years and adulthood the repression can morph into frequent screen use, online shopping, muscle tension, coffee drinking, alcohol and drug-use (depending on the severity of the original painful experiences).

Or they come out in aggression. 

For children that’s things like biting, throwing things, hitting, lashing out, and shouting. Into teen and adult years and for parents this can become judgment, shouting, harshness, arguing, punishing, threatening.

The thing is, neither repression nor aggression feel enjoyable.

Our children or teens aren’t actually feeling comfortable when they’re doing either of these; and neither are we.

And it doesn’t feel enjoyable for adults or children to have accumulated feelings either. 

I’m sure you’ve had times when you felt antsy and agitated, and you found it hard to sleep and didn’t want to play when your child asked you?

And our children are just the same. 

When they are being antsy; jumping up and down, not able to sleep or sit still, and certainly not wanting to cooperate, they aren’t enjoying it. 

They aren’t deliberately doing it to annoy us. They aren’t choosing to be like that. They are simply feeling the effects of accumulated painful feelings.
 

The other thing is, that our psyche WANTS to heal.

That means, that every time something in the present moment reminds us of something painful in the past that we didn’t get to express the feelings about, those feelings come up NOW, with the intensity of the first time that we felt them, IN ORDER FOR THEM TO BE EXPRESSED AND HEARD THIS TIME.

That explains why, when our child won’t cooperate, we can sometimes feel HUGE feelings of powerlessness, along with thoughts like, “WHY WON’T HE JUST DO WHAT I ASK?” 

Whenever we have feelings that seem out of proportion to the present situation, that tells us that our psyche is trying to heal. We are feeling feelings from the past that this situation is reminding us of, SO THAT THEY CAN BE HEARD WITH EMPATHY THIS TIME.

When we feel really powerless like this, it’s likely that we are reconnecting with feelings from our own childhood, when our parents or teachers wouldn’t help us or do what we asked for help with. 

And our children are the same. When they have a huge cry or tantrum in response to something seemingly small, they are also expressing feelings from the past that need to be lovingly heard so that they can be released.

And when our partner does something and we have a huge reaction, it also means the same. Feelings from the past are coming up to be heard this time.
 

Given all of this, I am curious if something like this perhaps happened between Brad Pitt and his son.

It seems unlikely that the family know about the healing power of tears, as I’ve often seen some of the younger children carrying around blankets. (Again, I want to remind you that there’s no judgment here. I’m simply wanting to understand what might be going on.)

So it seems possible that the son didn’t get to express his feelings around being adopted.

And it also seems likely that as he is now 15, and increasingly separating out from his family, that feelings around being separated from his first family might be bubbling up in him.

And it’s possible, if big feelings are coming out of him, that maybe he’s been behaving in more challenging ways, as some of those signs of accumulation or aggression might have been showing up.

And perhaps that’s why Brad Pitt had a big reaction. Perhaps interacting with his teenage son is also helping him reconnect with experiences of powerlessness when he was a teenage boy.

Of course all this is total speculation!
 

The beautiful thing is, that it really is never too late to heal.

Yesterday my 14 year old daughter cried with me and her Dad and her Dad’s partner.

She used to express her upset feelings a lot, until, when she was 8, her Dad and I separated.

After that point, if she got upset, she would hold it in and try to hide it.

But in more recent years, and especially in the past year, and even more especially in the past month, she has been crying more freely with me again.

I imagine she has quite a bit to catch up on – as we all had big feelings around all the changes that happened.
 

Yesterday, I took her to her Dad’s to stay the night, and we heard news that one of their chickens, who she loves, had been attacked by a goanna.

I could see that she was upset, and straight away she said she didn’t want to stay with her Dad; she wanted to come home with me.

I knew it was about the chicken, but I also knew that it was about more than that, because last week, when I was going to take her to her Dad’s after ballet, she changed her mind and then started crying, and cried with me for about an hour.

I imagine that the feelings that are coming up now are feelings from the past; perhaps around her Dad and I divorcing.

And that going to his place reminds her of the times when she first went there. 
 

I was incredibly moved, as she sat there in the car, tears streaming down her face, with me on one side, her Dad on the other, and his partner (her ‘sibling-mother’), all listening, all staying present with her, all with a hand gently on her, telling her that we are listening and that we love her.

I was so deeply touched.

And I’m so glad that she is letting it all out now. For a while I wondered whether she ever would.

The reason I’m sharing this is because it is NEVER TOO LATE to express painful feelings from the past so that they can be lovingly heard, and released from our bodies, so that they don’t get in the way of us leading fulfilled lives and having beautiful connected relationships.
 

As I wonder about the six children in the Jolie-Pitt family, and their parents too, I send them loving compassion and the hope that they get support to express their feelings around the divorce.

As I do for all children and all  parents around the world.