What if I told you…it’s not personal?
- October 7, 2023
Ever found yourself squaring up with your child cos they’re experiencing BIG emotions and you’re TRIGGERED beyond your wit?
I’m not proud to say that I have 
And after one time too many, I decided to learn how to do/be better!! Cos my behaviour wasn’t it!
However personal my son’s emotions/behaviour/actions felt…they weren’t about me! The realisation that his body is dysregulated and his brain is communicating to him and affecting his behaviour was actually a relief. Understanding that I now had to learn how to be his safe space and SHOW him what regulation looked like…not so much!
In those moments where he was going off, he was simply NOT in control of himself but the real question was, was I?
Was I capable of sitting with my own big feelings and processing them in a healthy way so that I could show him how to do the same?
If your child is having a tantrum and experiencing big feelings AND you are feeling especially triggered – that makes sense if.
You weren’t given the space to feel and express how you felt as a child?
During one episode of EXTREMELY big feelings, that legit did not make any sense to me, it hit me on a deeper level that it’s really not personal. His behaviour. The volume. The sound. Is not personal to me.
Of course this isn’t some free ticket to just carry on however which way he pleases whilst I sit and act like it’s ok. But I needed to be able to detach his behaviour from my own feelings. I was highly triggered because of my own unresolved issues and in accepting that it wasn’t personal meant that I could do this in that moment and instead hold space.
No, the journey to me resolving my childhood issues and building his tool kit for emotional regulation (and mine) isn’t an overnight process.
But each piece of the puzzle makes a huge difference for the both of us.
Instead of “rah I thought we had grown out of this already” it can be “well, you’re still learning to emotionally regulate at 35 so give him some grace”
As a 7 year old, who’s still in the baby stages of LEARNING emotional regulation, this will be a process. Up until now he hasn’t been taught or shown what that looks like. So my expectation that after a few convos he should have it down pat were unrealistic.
How many adults do you know who can get upset and not explode or become passive aggressive?
Even if we haven’t taught them, we can expect a lot from our young ones and it’s so unfair but then most of us are only replicating what we know.
The depth of sadness I feel for my younger selves can be immense when I realise that they had zero empathy and compassion awarded to them. I was highly sensitive as a child and felt my emotions rather deeply.
Those feelings were invalidated, dismissed and mocked.
Whilst I understand that my parents/carers didn’t know/learn how to regulate their emotions, so couldn’t teach me how to, I can stop this cycle now.
I have a choice to create a new way of being and doing things.
I’ve noticed that this can be taken as a “oh look at me you were shit and I’m doing it better” thing.
When it’s simply a “oh yh, I do have a choice and I’m going to exercise that for the betterment of myself and my beautiful babies”.
I know that giving boys grace and space to feel their feelings is something we debate a LOT about in this world (and a whole post on its own!), so today I won’t tell you to “debate wit yo mama” but I will say this: If boys become men, how are you CHOOSING to raise yours?
As the first women our boys encounter, how we deal with them emotionally is the foundation of their lives as adults. It’s taken me a while to become aware of and accept this but now it’s something I feel strongly about and am 100% putting in the work to rectify.
I still make mistakes and lose my cool, but it does happen less AND I ALWAYS let them know that my behaviour/volume/actions were not ok and they didn’t deserve to be spoken to like that, etc.
A child’s behaviour towards us is not personal but our behaviour towards them most definitely is. It is on us to learn how to self-regulate and rewire our brains and heal our traumas so that we can guide them to be healthy and the best versions of themselves possible.
