Navigating Needs and Triggers

My daughter graduates from high school in six weeks.

Even as I type this sentence, I find myself pausing to let that sink in fully.

Conflicted feelings flood my awareness: sadness, delight, loss, excitement, fear, and deep, deep love. It’s a complicated moment for me.

Looking Back

Like many parents, I found myself reliving my own childhood memories as she grew up.

I wanted to change the shame, blame, and domination-based parenting practices that I found painful as a child so that she didn’t have to suffer in those ways, and I also wanted to bring forward the creative, empathic, and relational practices that nurtured my growth and development. I found myself wanting to protect her from pain while helping her connect with her strength and resilience to face life on its terms.

Whenever I felt lost, I’d ground myself in my deep belief that my daughter’s behavior was a direct reflection of her met and unmet needs at various developmental stages interacting with and activating my conscious and unconscious triggers as a parent.

Essentially, I always have two places to look when I want something to change: her (met and unmet) needs and my (un/conscious) triggers.

What I’ve Learned

I was not a perfect parent by any means, but I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons about the deep shifts needed to transform domination-based parenting into authoritative, life-affirming parenting that honors our children’s dignity and souls.

As I healed my own pain, as I became more conscious of my own triggers, as I resourced myself more as a parent, I noticed how my daughter’s behaviors and reactions to me also changed.

I learned how to let go of controlling and micromanaging all outcomes and to relax into loving her on her own terms. I learned how boundary problems “out there” were often a reflection of boundary problems “in here” and how to navigate that more effectively.

And, I realized that as I was parenting my daughter I was also being given an opportunity to parent my own inner children. Sometimes, I realized, I was trying to fix something “out there” in my child, that actually needed to be embraced and healed inside of myself first.

Coming Up

Navigating this dance between our internal triggers and our children’s needs is at the heart of the parenting course that I am offering for six weeks starting in May.

If you’re looking for guidance and support to shift your own parenting paradigm, I hope you’ll consider joining my Relational Parenting Masterclass.

Every Wednesday, May 5 to June 9, we’ll come together as a community via Zoom to explore how we can rethink, reinvigorate, and refine our approach to parenting.

Registration is now open, and I encourage you to sign up by this Sunday, April 25 if you want to take advantage of the early-bird rate. I’d love to have you join us for this deep dive into parenting.

Looking for a supportive, empathic, and growth-oriented community for learning and practice? Consider joining my free weekly calls, Conversations from the Heart. We meet every Wednesday at 10am CT via Zoom. Click here to learn more.

Dr. Yvette Erasmus is a psychologist, teacher, and consultant who specializes in transformative education for human healing and growth. Synthesizing mind-body medicine, somatic experiencing, diversity and inclusiveness, nonviolent communication, and integral-relational-cultural psychology, Dr. Erasmus integrates core insights from multiple wisdom traditions and offers various programs for community learning as well as one-on-one consulting. To learn more, visit yvetteerasmus.com.