The Conscious Parent

Is it possible I don’t know how to respond to my child’s
temperamental nature, and that this engenders anxiety in me?
Do I pressure myself and my child to behave in the “right” way, to the
point that when things don’t go according to plan, I lose my sense of
perspective?
When we aren’t conscious of our own feelings, we blame our children
for “making us” feel a particular way, which triggers in them the feelings
we are carrying within us. To the degree we unleash our anxiety on them,
they will carry our unprocessed emotions within their body, which means
they too will act from an uncentered state. Their state then catapults us
into an escalated reaction—and so the cycle of pain continues down
through the generations.
Though each party’s emotional energy arouses emotional states in the
other, we have to be clear, as pointed out earlier, that no one can cause us
to feel a particular way. No matter how it may appear on the surface, at a
more elemental level no one has this power. If the seeds of irritation,
helplessness, frustration, or tension weren’t already within us, they
couldn’t bloom. But as long as we feel helpless and somewhat out of
control, the slightest suggestion we aren’t being listened to will cause us
either to feel disempowered, and hence ineffective in handling our
children, or lead us to unleash our frustration on them. The degree to
which we become emotionally agitated by our children reflects the
degree to which we are already agitated within ourselves. Once we
understand that no one has the power to cause us unhappiness, we can let
go of our heavy investment in our life scripts and emotional imprints.