Caring without Collapsing: Notes for Moms of Teens
It’s been such an exciting week for me. I spent it as a class assistant in the Integral Coaching classroom, which is very much like going Home. I felt soooo happy and hopeful to see another group of caring souls learning these skills to take out into the world where so many people need support.
Immersed in the teachings again, I couldn’t help but recall when I was first learning how to be present with stressed, despairing clients without taking on their emotional state. And that’s the focus of today’s essay - how to do that with your kids. I hope it’s helpful for you.
There’s no way to effectively support your young adult child if you’re living in their emotional world and not grounded in yours.
I know that’s hard for many moms to hear.
That’s because we’ve gotten confused about what it means to want our kids to be happy.
We used to cry when we saw their toddler tears and we got outraged on their behalf when their elementary school friends ditched them. We got used to feeling what they’re feeling, in our natural biological quest to ensure their happiness - it felt like love. And we just kept going into their adolescence, instead of learning how to separate our emotional experience from theirs.
And that causes problems.
Because when you climb onto their roller coaster of feelings with them, you leave some of your own capabilities on the platform - the inner resources you need to meet them in their emotional state, offer useful guidance and be a steady, safe place they can return to for support and comfort.
Having Empathy without Folding Into Them
Empathy is the ability to understand someone’s feelings and care with them without collapsing into their problems or folding ourselves into their emotions. It’s connecting deeply with another human while maintaining our own sense of self.
And that can be especially difficult to do with your children, especially when you’re anxious about them. That’s when you’re most likely to slip into trying to predict or manage what they do and how they feel and prevent them from having and learning from their own experience.
Many moms of young adults see their actions as caring but, looking more closely, I see their anxiety masquerading as care and manipulating their kid’s experiences, either subtly or overtly, so they can feel less anxious. It’s an important distinction – they’re controlling their kid as a way to control / soothe their own nervous state.
Staying in Your Own Experience
To nurture your relationship with your young adult child, a most loving and powerful move is to develop your ability to stay in your own experience while being empathetic to theirs.
This doesn’t mean being detached or uncaring. It means understanding what they’re feeling and connecting to it but not taking it onboard or downloading that energy into your system. Identifying with their ache – “yes, that would be so infuriating” or “I was really hoping that would work out for you” - while being aware of yourself as separate from it.
It also means allowing them to experience their own life events, emotions and interactions. To let them go through their own experience, feel it, engage with it, be in it - without being rescued, fixed or manipulated. Allowing them to live their life.
Reconnect with Your Own Experience
When there’s something big going on for your teenager, pay attention to your thoughts. Have they become overly focused on their feelings or behaviors, guessing how they’ll respond or strategizing how to approach them?
If so, you’ve left your experience and slid into theirs. You can steer yourself back into your own lane by pausing right there and then, and reconnecting with your own experience, physically, emotionally and/or energetically:
Physically
Use a physical gesture that brings you back into your body. Rub your palms together, shimmy your shoulders, put your hand on your heart, blink your eyes, tap your teeth together, smell the air, do 5 heel drops, pinch your arm, stomp your feet or take in a 360 view.
Bring yourself back to your physical presence: Oh, right, I’m right here.
Emotionally
Attune to your own emotions. Because when your son experiences grief, for example, you might not really be feeling grief at all, but something more like worry, confusion, powerlessness, disappointment or apprehension.
Name your emotion clearly: Ah, yes, I’m actually feeling __.
Energetically
Dear one, what are your ways of gathering your energy back to you? Is it taking gentle slow breaths, closing your eyes, widening your stance, activating the roots on the soles of your feet, invoking White Tara or your grandmothers, lighting a candle, visualizing your inner column of light or singing your way back to your steady state.
Sometimes the most important thing we do as parents is simply to stay.
It’s an essential parenting skill, staying. It requires us to be in a steady state and know how to return to it when our nerves are jangled, our hearts flooded and we’ve veered off course.
To return to our calm center.
Be still and quiet.
Be curious.
Be there.
Building a heart and soul connection with your young adult doesn’t require you to trek into their emotional landscape, collapse into their angst or merge with them in their experience.
Instead – and this can be hard - you are called to trust the space between you. To tolerate the space. To see how your role is changing from conductor to audience member, from architect to consultant, and let them have space to feel their emotions without trying to make it different for them - or easier for you.
This the space where they build their confidence to navigate their life AND sense your loving support nearby. You develop the freedom to be in your own experience and trust them to be in theirs. It’s in this space between you where an beautiful, authentic connection can flourish.
Related Articles:
How Do I Resist the Urge to Jump In and Fix Things for My Teenager?
Practices for Cultivating Your Steadiness in Parenting
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