Am I inhibiting my own emotions?

May 27

Written By

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

How are you feeling today?

How honest with yourself can you be?

Are all the feelings welcome within you or are there some that get pushed outside your awareness?

I’m asking because I recently had an experience that humbled me and made me feel pretty hypocritical.

I was talking to my son about anger. I tell him constantly: All feelings are welcome and it's okay to be angry. While not all behaviors are okay, all emotions are okay. Blah, blah, blah. All the good things.

But in this conversation instead of our usual subject of his anger being okay, we were talking about my anger. And I realized that when I’m in my authority role as mom, I feel really uncomfortable admitting that I get angry. I didn’t know that about myself. It was outside my awareness.

I’ve been okay with my son’s anger. I’ve been okay with my anger in the context of other relationships. But when I was trying to model a healthy display of my anger in front of my son, I shut down.

I felt myself inhibiting my anger: A mom shouldn’t feel anger, so I shouldn’t feel angry if I want to be a good mom.

I was shocked to become aware of this in myself because I know better!

My first (not very compassionate) thought was, “I am so full of it!” I write a weekly blog about being an EQuipped adult who models emotional intelligence for kids. Why am I so bad at this? Why can’t I talk about a time I got angry while my son is looking up at me with his sweet, doe eyes? Why am I shutting down?

More and more, my son is asking me to give him concrete examples from my own life about how I handle feelings, and it makes me so uncomfortable.

I can tell him all day long that it’s okay for him to feel [anger, sadness, frustration, fear…], but if I shut down when he asks to hear about a time I feel those things, what am I really teaching him?

This has been one of the hardest parenting lessons for me to learn. I think as long as I say and do the right things with my son, that’s what matters. But more and more, I realize, how I treat myself is really what he’s paying attention to.

I can say I will have compassion for his emotions, but when I inhibit myself, he learns that’s what I really believe. I can say, “All feelings are welcome.” But my behavior tacitly communicates, “Unless they are inconvenient, or make me feel like a bad parent, or are too scary for me to face.”

More and more, I have to accept all the parts of myself in order to make space for all the parts of my kids.

This came to head in another eventful moment this week when I accidentally ran over a turtle in our driveway and became a murderer in my son’s eyes. He was so sad that the turtle was dead that we held a beautiful and pretty elaborate funeral for it. At one point, I told my son, “I killed the turtle, but I’m still good inside.” He paused and looked serious. Then he looked up at me and asked, “So you’re just bad on the outside?”

Kids are SO brutal! So honest!!!

I responded the only way I knew how, “Yeah, I guess to that turtle I am bad on the outside, but I know I’m still good on the inside even when I mess up and do something bad.” He didn’t look convinced but he didn’t ask me any more incriminating questions.

Later that week, my son was upset about a mistake he made. He said desperately, “I always make mistakes, and you never make mistakes!”

I perked up. “I make mistakes too. Remember last week when I killed that turtle?”

His face brightened, “Oh yeah! I’m okay now. Let’s go play excavator recovery!” And he happily grabbed my hand and pulled me off to play.

I couldn’t believe it. That one reminder of my “badness on the outside” was all it took to help him forgive himself and move on.

I felt proud of myself. I felt like for the first time in a long time, I was honest and kind with my son at a deeper level because I was being honest and kind with myself.

I get angry sometimes. I accidentally murder cute turtles sometimes. I make mistakes. I'm a human being.

So even though I’m still pretty bad at talking about my emotions with my son, I’m trying. I’m growing. I have compassion for myself.

I hope you have a happy [and all your feelings] weekend. No matter what you’re feeling or what adorable creature you just accidentally murdered in your driveway, you are a worthy and lovable and good human being. Just as you are. :)

Better EQuipped Together,

Elizabeth