If we haven’t healed needing our own parents’ approval, we will project this onto our kids….
Part of becoming an autonomous, healthy adult involves a healthy separation from our parent’s ideals and belief systems and needing their approval.
In short, we need to become independent thinkers, challenge what doesn’t feel good or resonate with our most authentic selves, and embrace what does. (Even if this goes against what our parents believe. This can be terrifying to our own ego/survival mind.)
When we haven’t yet created this for ourself, or don’t know how to
do that, we have a co-dependent relationship with them.
This can become toxic and unhealthy and unconsciously limit us in so many ways.
We can become scared to speak up and share our own opinion, or set healthy boundaries when we need to.
We may become stuck in jobs and careers that we don’t like or enjoy, but that we know our parents approve of.
It severely limits our capacity to truly live our most authentic lives and be our truest selves.
If we have not yet discovered and defined who we are as individual people, and feel capable and able to express that, we may still unconsciously be operating from our fawn trauma response and needing to find ways to please others.
This can massively impact our own ability to parent in two ways.
OR
These two things can truly impact our ability to parent, to stay present with our child and to not become reactive to their emotions, or to help them express their most authentic self and express their own opinions.
It can create huge opposition, where we may move into a more authoritarian/controlling style of parenting, especially if our child is rebelling against our own emotional reactivity, creating a huge rift in the parent/child relationship, or we will create another people-pleaser in our child, by them adopting the coping strategy of people pleasing as a coping mechanism, leaving them incredibly susceptible to guilt-tripping and being manipulated by others.
I believe it’s so important to be conscious of these two things because both will impact your child’s ability to have healthy relationships later on in life.
It’s natural and normal to feel hurt at times by our child/children’s behaviours, we are human after all, but if we have not learnt how to shift this, and to process our own inner hurt and trauma-based reactions, it can create massive challenges in our relationship with our children.
I personally had to do a tonne of work on myself in order to remain present and attuned to my own children’s needs, without my own reactions and emotions getting in the way of that.
I absolutely have not done it perfectly.
There were so many times as a parent that I wished I had shut my mouth, or not reacted or responded in the way that I did, parenting shame can be pervasive in how it shows up and in our responses toward our children.
But what I am also most proud of, was that I took immense ownership of my feelings and reactions. I’ve done years and years of inner work on myself, to heal the pieces of me that expected my children to appreciate me and love me at all times, that expected them to also speak to me respectfully at all times, that believed that they should and shouldn’t do particular things.
And because of that inner work, of realising I needed to appreciate and love myself and speak to me respectfully and to let go of my own judgments towards myself, it has allowed my girls to show up much more authentically, for us to have truly open and honest conversations and for them to express themselves as they’ve needed to.
I’ve been able to heal my own inner child and give her the love, validation, and approval she desperately craved from others. Setting both of us free from needing to conform to and appease others.
This means:
So much of what causes burnout is from the expectations of WHO WE BELIEVE WE NEED TO BE TO BE LOVED and needing others’ approval. It causes us to become dissociated from our own needs and truly being able to ascertain what is and isn’t ok for ourself.
We end up losing ourself entirely in our relationships with others or constantly over-giving as a way of attempting to feel valuable and worthy, from external validation and pleasing others.
This is exactly what we heal in my 28-Day Mini Thrive Program.
In the 28-Day Mini Thrive Program you will learn the following:
And you can get access to all of that today by clicking the button below!
I’ve shared these processes with thousands of clients over the last 13 years and they are literally shocked at how much and how quickly this has transformed their lives.
Not to mention I’ve used this same process to question disempowering beliefs about money, about relationships and especially about men. I had so many disempowering beliefs that kept me creating the very things I didn’t want to experience, on repeat.
I got so tired of the cycles, I knew I had to find a way out, to unlearn all the things I’d taken on in my earlier years that were no longer serving me.
If you would love some of the most powerful processes that I’ve used over the years to “unlearn” who I thought I needed to be for everybody else, and learn how to embrace my truest most authentic self, you will love my 28-Day Mini Thrive Program.
Grab access to all of this and more, by clicking the button below!
Love and Blessings,
Sal x
Abundant Heart Coaching, 538A The Esplanade, Warners Bay NSW 2282, Australia
Email: admin@sallyholden.com.au
Phone: (+061) 428 316 546