Kids have a way of triggering emotions in their parents. This morning as I was giving my daughter a shower, her lack of listening skills really got to me. Lately, I feel that I have been having to repeat myself one too many times. By one too many, I mean it’s literally like 6-10 times before I get through the wall that seems to be my daughter’s head. It feels like everything is a battle and honestly, it’s driving me insane. As you know, I’m on this journey of self-reflection and so I have to ask myself, “what is this really about?”
This year, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I have never felt truly heard and had been emotionally stifled a lot as a child. When my daughter chooses to either willfully ignore me or is preoccupied in her own little world, it triggers the little girl in me who is crying out to be heard. Having a child who doesn’t listen really pulls the worst out of me to the point where admittedly I feel like shaking her until I get a response from her. I want to shake her silly and say, “Will you fucking listen to me?!!!! I’m not speaking some foreign language that is unfamiliar to you. What the fuck is your problem?” Thankfully, I suppress this urge and consciously walk away to regroup. Regardless, until I face whatever it is that this situation is asking me to see, I’ll keep encountering it. Because it is so infuriating and threatens to bring the monster out of me, I am desperate to learn whatever the universe is trying to show me in these moments so that I can make it stop.
I don’t want to be a person who looks at their child with eyes of hatred at times. I want to be the calm, cool, collected parent that teaches emotional control by their actions and yet, sometimes, I am so challenged to respond appropriately. It takes everything I have within me not to lose it. Even with the practice of yoga and having grown in my emotional awareness and knowledge this year, it’s still quite the feat to remain outwardly calm when the storm inside me wants to rage. Bottom line is it doesn’t feel good to be ignored. It doesn’t feel good to be invalidated. It doesn’t feel good to be willfully disobeyed. It doesn’t feel good to feel unheard. Nobody wants to feel invisible. Yet in making these statements on paper, I now realize they are all ego based.
I am convinced that our work in life is to undo the ego if we ever want to be truly free and peaceful. Seeing my ego in action allows me to study it and hopefully dismantle it piece by piece. When we are operating from ego, our statements tend to be about what the outside world is “doing to us.” It’s about how the external occurrences are “making us react.” They are “me” centered. The fragile ego within us starts fretting that things are not going the way we need them to go in order to feel safe. The fragile ego feels threatened when it cannot control a situation and gets a surge of energy in order to protect itself. This energy is often described as anger, resentment, fear, tightening, and gripping.
I realize, in these situations with my daughter, that my ego is at work steadily freaking out because it feels as though it is losing control and feels powerless. Like a parent, my ego believes that it’s goal is to keep me “safe.” However, by attempting to keep me “safe” it threatens to build a false sense of reality around itself. My daughter is not acting maliciously toward me when she doesn’t listen, or at least I’d like to believe that she isn’t. As a 5, almost 6 year old, I’m sure she is just focused on what she wants to do or what she doesn’t want to do and isn’t in the least bit concerned or aware of how it makes me feel when she chooses not to listen. Her intention is solely to accomplish what she wants in that moment without regard for the next moment. She is learning to explore boundaries and trying to make sense of what happens if she behaves in different ways. It is most likely not about me! However, in that moment, my ego is in total panic mode worrying about keeping me safe and working in overdrive to throw me into fight mode because I’ve encountered some adversity.
My ego desperately wants to “defend my honor,” yet by doing so can sometimes throw me into a misguided fit of anger, which will leave me feeling awfully guilty if I am not watching it closely and practicing awareness. The statement “defending my honor” is funny considering we are talking about a situation with a 5-year-old, but within each of us lies our own 5-year-old who feels fragile and delicate, under-prepared for life’s unpredictable circumstances. I like to think of the ego as the older sibling of that 5-year-old within us that is doing everything in its power to protect and defend. When we think of the ego in this manner, we can start to love it for its misguided attempts at protecting us instead of making it an enemy that needs to be killed and overcome. After all it is a piece of ourselves, so it is not productive to dislike any piece of who we are and as my grandmother always use to say, “We get more bees with honey than we do with vinegar.” We can consciously practice love toward our ego, remind ourselves that we are not a fragile 5-year-old any longer, and that we have the power to handle difficult or adverse situations without the ego’s help. As we start to lovingly own our power, the ego, being the older sibling of our inner child, can start to loosen its grip and relax in the knowledge that it’s parent has evolved and can now operate effectively in the world without it raising the “call to arms” every time something is a bit shaky in its outward environment.
The challenge is to remain nonreactive in the moments where the ego feels threatened and wants to break out into fight/flight mode. That is what the practice of yoga has been helping me to learn. It’s when the asana becomes painful and really challenging that our protective mechanism kicks in and in stillness and a safe environment, we get to witness it attempting to pull us out of the pose and out of our calm sense of peace and purpose. On the mat is where I’ve been practicing loving kindness toward the ego within me, reminding her that I am ok and I am safe despite her concern and desire to pull me out of the situation or in the case of yoga, the pose. The same applies to life. Many of us were not taught the skills necessary to maintain our sense of peace and inner security in times of adversity. As a result, we allow our ego to take over and jump into fight mode, which does not usually result in anyone’s highest good.
The challenge is to go within when we feel the rise in emotion so that we can begin to understand what it is really occurring. When I say, “what is really occurring”, I mean the reality is that the situation only has power if you give it power. Rises in emotion usually mean that you are giving away power to an external situation. When we can learn to be fully aware of our emotions, we are free to choose how to respond and can take the route that will result in a utilitarian result (the highest good for the highest number). When we allow ourselves distance and space from the situation, we can see more clearly what is at play within us. It may not be the situation we are in that is causing us pain, but that the current situation brings up unresolved feelings that stem from an adverse experience you had somewhere along the way. This is especially true in cases of trauma.
I’ve been on this journey of unraveling my inner pain and doing my inner work for the past year and have been inspired to write about it in hopes of helping others on their own journeys. Trust the process, read the signs, and know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not there yet, but I’m sure as hell not where I used to be.
Does any of this resonate with you? Parents, what experiences do your children bring up for you in times of tension? What practices do you have for learning how to manage your own reactivity? Tell me about a time that you reacted out of emotion. How did it make you feel afterward? Comments are always welcome!
Namaste! May we journey into our highest selves together!