Whenever you were becoming an adult, did you ever wish that the parents were happy? Did you feel safe once they were happy and peaceful?
My mother was rarely a happy person. More often than not she was anxious, angry and felt overburdened, despite the fact that I was her only child. She rarely laughed and was often upset with me, or my dad. Clearly, she made both of us accountable for her happiness and that we consistently fell short.
I would have given almost anything to have experienced a contented mother – a mother is not how to take responsibility on her own happiness and pain. I would have loved to have had a mother who showed me how to get loving proper care of myself instead showing me how to be an unhappy martyr.
Often, during my counseling use parents, I question them if their parents were happy. More often than not they say no. I question them when they wanted their parents to become happy and invariably they are saying, “Yes, I’d have loved it.” Yet these same parents are not taking responsibility to make themselves happy now. They’re acting just like their parents – anxious, angry, depressed, withdrawn, resistant, or compliant. They are controlling with each other or using their children in the same ways their parents were controlling.
“As parents,” I say for them, “it is your responsibility to learn steps to make yourselves happy to help you be role models for your children. Just how can your children learn how to take emotional responsibility if you don’t? At this time, you are role modeling being a victim of the circumstances instead of being an emotionally responsible adult. You’re using your anger, upsets and unhappiness to control your children, or else you are putting yourself aside to take care of everyone but yourself. How can they learn how to take care of themselves if you are not implementing proper care of yourselves?”
Many parents take care of externals: they keep your house clean, they are promptly, they pay their bills, and they earn money. Some parents even care for their physical health when you eat well and getting enough exercise. However , many parents neglect to take care of their emotional wellbeing.
Taking care of your emotional wellbeing means that you recognize that you cause your own feelings with your thoughts and actions. When you think and behave with techniques that are unloving to yourself or others – that aren’t inside your highest good – you’ll be unhappy. When you think and behave in ways that are loving to yourself yet others – that are inside your highest good – you will be happy. Your negative or positive emotions are completely the result of your own thoughts and actions.
Should you operate in the belief that how your children act, or how your lover acts, or how your external every day life is, causes your feelings, then you are operating like a victim. As a victim, your happiness depends upon others doing what you need them to do and on obtaining the outcomes you would like. If this sounds like your belief system, then you are teaching your children to become victims.
Taking emotional responsibility means staying tuned into your own feelings and immediately shifting your thought process and actions when you’re feeling negativity. It means that you simply learn to access a spiritual supply of inner guidance that will help you know how to take loving care of yourself. You need to learn to use your spiritual guidance that will help you think the thoughts and go ahead and take actions which are true and in harmony with your soul, rather than operating from the false beliefs that cause you pain.
Don’t kid yourself into convinced that as long as you are there for the children you’re following your rules parents. You also need to learn to become there for yourself so that you can be considered a happy and peaceful parent.