by Roma | Mar 24, 2019 | anxiety, parenting, relationships, trauma
So often, I’m amazed by the power of this therapeutic parenting work, to shift not just tricky behaviours, but entire patterns that I had written off as just being part of my or my child’s personality. I’m very close to my kids, but they’ve always been kinda avoidant with me. Wanting physical contact but wriggling away from it after a few seconds and pretty much always choosing daddy over me – since they were babies. I just assumed it was how they were. Last spring I undertook some very deep emotional work on early separation in my listening time over several weeks. It was a huge emotional project that has involved lots of protesting and crying for my mummy and it culminated in working quite intensively on this theme for a few days with my Listening Partner. The work we did felt profound and left me feeling freer, more myself and bigger in the world. My posture changed quite noticeably and I became much more assertive. And seems like my kids could just feel it before they’d even seen me. When I picked them up from school after this emotional intensive, they both flung themselves into my arms for the first time ever! Except of course, I realised the distance had always been… in me. They were squabbling over who got to sleep in my bed or cuddle me, my daughter wanting me to constantly play with her. It’s like the channel for my love getting to them was blocked, I was going through the motions but it wasn’t getting through. Our children’s issues...
