Hello!

Have you ever wondered why you’re comfortable with feeling some feelings and not others?

For example, you might feel comfortable with feeling curious, or sad, but you notice that when you start to feel anxious, you’ll do anything to avoid it.

Or perhaps you’re comfortable with frustration, but not with feeling exuberantly happy.

 

And you may have noticed that you feel comfortable when you see your child feeling excited, but uncomfortable when you see them sad.

Or perhaps comfortable when they feel disappointed, but uncomfortable when they seem exuberantly joyful?

So, do you know why it is that you’re comfortable with certain feelings and not others?

 

I believe it’s because of how adults were with us when we felt those feelings as babies and children.

I believe that we need to feel a sense of connection with an adult when we are little, and are feeling feelings, for us to stay connected with that feeling in ourselves.

Let me give an example. Say your mother was really uncomfortable with sadness and loss.

And one day you’re feeling sad. Perhaps your best friend has moved away, or your pet mouse died.

You’re feeling sad, and you go to your Mum/Mom, but she’s really uncomfortable with sadness. 

And perhaps she tries to distract you from your feelings, by giving you a cookie, or perhaps she tells you that there’s no need to cry, or perhaps she tries to explain away why your friend moved away.

If this happens regularly, then you don’t get to feel connected when you feel sad.

You don’t get to receive empathy, and mirroring.

You don’t get the sense that sadness is an important feeling to feel.

You don’t get to feel your sadness and feel it some more, until you come out the other side of your sadness and feel different.

You don’t get to experience that feeling sadness, and having connection, leads to the sadness moving eventually.

It may be that your Dad was comfortable with sadness.

And if that was the case, you’d probably realise after a while that when you were sad, the person to go to, to receive empathy and connection from, was your Dad.

But if none of the adults around you were able to be present with their own sadness, and thus your own, then you wouldn’t have felt a connected sadness. 

And sadness probably become something scary, something slightly unknown, something to distract yourself from or judge yourself fro, or talk yourself out of (usually learnt from how your parents responded to it).

 

 

So, we need to regularly feel connected when we feel feelings as babies and children, in order to be able to stay comfortably connected with those feelings as adults.

These patterns can get passed on from generation to generation.

Some family lineages will be uncomfortable with sadness, others with rage, others with exuberance, others with joy, others with fear.

I wonder if you’ve noticed anything like that in your family lineage?
 

I was thinking about this again the other day for myself.

I have been learning to stay connected with myself when I feel fear. And even when that fear is intense and starts to turn to terror.

Connecting more and more with my Inner Loving Mother has been really helpful for this. 

She says things to me like, “I know that you’re scared my darling, and I’m right here with you. I won’t leave you alone with these feelings. I love you.”

Over the years, I’ve learnt to stay more and more connected with myself through a variety of my feelings.

And I still notice that I can still start to feel uncomfortable after a few days of intense joy.

So I keep practicing staying connected with myself more and more.
 

 

The beautiful thing is, then, that we can learn to stay connected with ourselves when we are feeling feelings.

And the more we are able to stay connected with ourselves when we feel a particular feeling, the more we can stay connected with our child when she is feeling that kind of feeling.

And of course, that means that she is then more comfortable with staying with that kind of feeling.

She gets to know that she isn’t alone with that feeling.

She gets to know that the feeling isn’t as scary as perhaps she thought.

She doesn’t associate that feeling with being alone.

She gets to experience that if she stays with that feeling for long enough, it moves (e-motion – motion), and another feeling arises.

That feeling isn’t unknown anymore. 

She knows what it’s like to be in that feeling, AND to come out the other side.
 

I wonder if there are feelings that you feel uncomfortable with, that you’d like to learn to be more comfortable with.

Before even having connection with ourselves, being connected with another adult when we’re feeling that, especially another adult who can be with that feeling in themselves, helps us to feel more comfortable with our feelings. 

 

Connection is the key.

And the more we have that external connection, the more we can internalise that, so that we can feel connected even when there’s no other adult around.

Would you like to explore certain feelings with another adult who can listen?

Would you like to feel more comfortable when your child feels frustrated, or sad, or scared?

Learning to be with a wider and wider range of feelings in ourselves is a huge gift to our children.

Is there one step you’d like to take about this?

Perhaps you’d like to arrange an empathy buddy, or to meet up with a friend, or arrange a session with a counsellor. 

Each of us has our own particular way.

 

What’s on in my courses at the moment?

I wonder if you’ve heard of my two membership sites – the Aware Parenting Virtual Village and the Aware Learning Community?

In the Aware Parenting Virtual Village, you receive regular small audios, generally between 3 and 7 minutes, every 2 to 5 days.

And Month Two is a lot about what I’ve been talking about here.

Here’s an outline of the first two months:
 

If you’re into Aware Parenting and would like regular snippets in your in-box, for inspiration and to remind you things, and perhaps deepen your practice, then you might like to find out more. 

It’s AUD$36 a month, for a maximum of 8 months. CLICK HERE or on the image below to find out more.

 

 

And what about my Aware Learning Membership site?

That’s for parents who are practicing Aware Parenting and who are also home schooling (or home educating, or natural learning) and who want to apply Aware Parenting to their journey.

There are 7 months of material in total, this time you get sent the video, audio and notes once a month. 

The audio and video are usually between 20 and 40 minutes long. 

And there’s a Facebook group too!

Here are the first five months:
 

 

It costs AUD $18 a month, for 7 months maximum.

CLICK HERE or on the image below to find out more!

 

Love,

Marion 

xxx