How to stop taking on your teen’s emotions as a Highly Sensitive Parent
Written by Lori K Walters a Master Parenting Coach
When most parents say, “I feel bad about what my teenager is going through”, they mean that they have empathy and compassion. There is a sense of care for their child’s experience.
But when a Highly Sensitive parent says that phrase, they mean that they FEEL their child’s feelings. They’re actually experiencing emotions, physical symptoms and energies that are not their own.
“When my son’s upset, I can feel his pain. My body feels like I’ve been injured. I cry a lot and I lay awake thinking about what happened,” said K in her coaching session. “In my head, I know it’s not my problem but I get pulled into the energy of it, whether I want to or not.”
K’s story is common when it comes to HSP parents. You absorb your child’s emotions like a sponge and try to hold yourself steady while waves are coming at you from every direction. You feel like you’re in a storm of someone else’s energy.
Absorbing your child’s feelings causes all sorts of problems:
You’re exhausted and unable to do your parenting job well.
You’re confused about what’s your responsibility and what’s not.
You’re over-giving and become over-involved in your kid’s life OR you’re annoyed and blaming them (directly or secretly).
Your child resents your over-involvement in their life and wishes you would just f- off.
They start doubting whether they can handle their own emotions.
They unwittingly expect others to ‘fix’ their upset and fall into a pattern of blaming others for their feelings.
Communication becomes stilted, combative or non-existent. And this makes the teen years more difficult for both of you.
So how can you be loving and supportive and witness your kid’s emotions WITHOUT taking them on?
Learn how it works
Absorbing your child’s emotions is an ingrained default behaviour and one of the most important steps in changing an ingrained behaviour is catching yourself in the act. That requires you to be self-observant. I don’t mean berating yourself when you realize you’ve done it again. I’m talking about detailed, objective self-observation. Like a bird watching the scene unfold play by play.
In that moment when you notice your child's emotion arising in you, name the emotion and describe what’s happening. Write it down or say it out loud. For K, it was, ‘I’m feeling sadness. There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach and my head’s kind of heavy and cloudy.’
The only way to evolve out of an old pattern is to get to know the pattern and see how exactly it works. Each time you identify the specifics of an experience of absorbing your child’s feelings, you’re building your understanding of how this pattern plays out for you. And that kind of awareness is gold.
There’s a part of you that’s accustomed to absorbing your kid’s feelings so pay attention to the kinds of situations in which that part of you likes taking over.
K discovered that her primary trigger was a certain look on her son’s face. As soon as she saw that angst and disappointment, she was feeling upset and disappointed.
Ask yourself, what had that part of me part coming forth just now?
While your first answer might be, “I just want them to be happy,” I encourage you to go deeper in your explorations:
What makes that part of you uncomfortable with your child’s discomfort?
What are you imagining will happen if they’re unhappy or frustrated?
And what have you been assuming that means about you?
The part of you that absorbs your child’s emotions is motivated by something important – some need, some past experience or some belief about how you must be in the world. So, this is the essential question: What does that part of you seem to GET out of taking on your kid’s feelings?
Interrupt the pattern
When you catch yourself feeling emotions that aren’t yours, do something to shift your physical energy - raise your stop hand, turn around, sit down, stand up, anything. This sends a message to your body: we’re going to do something different this time.
When you interrupt the automatic sequence, you give yourself the space to delineate whether what you’re feeling is yours or theirs.
That’s not always easy, so say it out loud, maybe something like, ‘They are feeling distress and frustration. I am not actually distressed or frustrated. I am feeling worried and sad.’
Go on the record that there are two different people with two different emotional experiences.
Be present
When we’re pulled into an old pattern, we must bring ourselves back into the present moment:
Close your eyes for a few seconds. Take a gentle, deep clearing breath. Then open your eyes and adjust your focus to take in the scene more clearly. What exactly is occurring in front of you? Not what you were imagining or expecting but what’s actually happening.
Notice where in your body you feel the most grounded. Sense into its serenity and stability. Visualize a gentle light glowing there and spreading out into the rest of your body. Remember, having one calm place in your body can serve as a resource when the rest of you is feeling overwhelmed.
Breathe. Let your in-breath bring space and ease into your body. Allow your exhale to release tension, toxins and distracting thoughts. Your breath is always what’s happening right now – trust it.
Return what’s not yours
I love creating rituals to align my intentions with the workings of our universal heart.
Choose a quiet time and light a candle. Call in your spirit guides, if you like, and begin with some mindfulness, chanting, dancing, meditating and/or stillness, whatever feels like your own way.
Visualize your child’s emotions – feelings they need to experience in order to learn and grow - and pour your love into them. This might look like infusing them with pink light or singing lullabies into them. Let your love flow.
And then give those emotions back.
Let your intuition guide you to find your way of doing this. You could imagine wrapping them in a soft blanket that you leave at the foot of your child’s bed. Or visualize those feelings as wisps of clouds you gently blow back their way with a, ‘You’ve got this.’. Or picture yourself placing your hand on their heart as you return those feelings to them.
Finish with gratitude and step gently into the rest of your day.
Reflect and learn
You already know that absorbing your kid’s feelings isn’t doing either of you, or your relationship, any good. If this is the right time to get to the core of it, here are some questions to reflect upon:
Is getting over-involved in your child’s feelings a way of avoiding your own?
Did you grow up believing your worth was based on making everyone calm and comfortable?
Was yours a household where big emotions were unacceptable, ignored or punished?
Is part of you trying to prevent your child’s feelings from getting too big in order to feel safe within yourself?
Do you need help learning how to handle your own emotions?
Answering these may take you to some tender and uncomfortable places but they are the key to being able to stay separate from other people’s feelings. Go gently as you seek answers within yourself.
Dear parent, as you learn to witness and support your child’s emotional experiences without taking them on, you give yourself space to feel your own feelings – to experience the rising, peaking and falling of emotions in you and to learn from those feelings.
And you make space for the young adult in your life to do the same. They build confidence in their ability to navigate their own emotional landscape and develop healthy relationships with others.
Being able to delineate your emotions from their clears the way for you to develop a clearer, deeper connection with your wonderful, unique kid.
Written by Lori K Walters a Master Parenting Coach who guides anxious, overwhelmed, controlling mothers to become composed and intentionally build strong, accepting relationships with their teen and young adult children.
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