Parent Guilt
I had an Irish friend once tell me, “when that sperm hits that egg, a decent dose of guilt goes in with it!”
This is a popular topic in our Thriving as a new mother groups.
I remind them that it comes as a result of a high ‘care factor.’
We care!
We want to get it right!
Or the flip side;
We are scared, the role is so big.
We don’t want to mess up our kids.
I have some great news for you – you will mess it up! Often!
I have been a hypnotherapist, who works with a modality called Rapid Transformational Therapy. I help people get to the root cause of their patterns of thought, feelings and overcome these limiting beliefs and patterns of behaviour. I work a lot with parents who have discovered that their own reactivity is something they want to change and comes from the past – their own childhood.
What I have learnt is this – even the best, emotionally regulated parents get things wrong. At times, the most dysfunctional parenting can lead to powerful learning for a child and cause them to grow exponentially. In other words, both good parents and bad parents have the capacity to imprint limiting patterns of behaviours into their children. Life is like that.
The lessons from childhood set the stage for that child to grow and learn. I think this might be mother nature’s plan – to help us to grow and become wiser.
I learnt as much from my parents’ challenges and weaknesses as I did from their strengths – in fact maybe more.
So my darling hearts – enjoy the ride, forgive yourself when you get it wrong, repair with your children to demonstrate self-compassion and learning.
Guilt is not something you get rid of, in fact you wear it always – it’s another way of saying, ‘you care!’
Put guilt into your pocket and use it to motivate you to grow and get better.
That’s really all that matters.