31/10/2025
In childhood, were you seen, heard, validated and affirmed? Were you listened to? Did you feel safe?
These are all connected to deep emotional feelings that could be at the root of your anger. Because anger doesn’t evolve from nothingness getting to the root is important. Then processing it is the next step.
When we’re angry it’s easy to loose control of ourselves because it completely takes over our thinking and actions.
Parenting makes us confront repressed anger, ours and our child’s. Perhaps much of our anger is unprocessed anger from childhood that rears up and even surprises us because we didn’t realize the depth of anger in us. It can be very scary when this happens and it will be scary for your child.
Unless you were taught how to process emotions, anger being perhaps the most volatile, you will carry your repressed anger into parenting and then find yourself having big reactions or even exploding when triggered. It can be an extremely hard cycle to break.
So instead of accepting “this is how you are”, break the cycle by confronting your repressed anger. Sometimes we don’t even know where to start. If you find that you’re unsure, I suggest you begin by noticing what it is that your child does that triggers you; you can even journal to become aware. Then when you notice patterns, reflect to better understand how you experienced this in your childhood. Then take the next step and really think about what you needed in those moments.
Were you told to be quiet? Go to your room to think about what you said or did? Stop crying? Don’t make that sad face? Or just flat out told to not be angry or there would be some consequence or punishment. Whatever the message was that told you to push your anger down has now left you with unprocessed anger.
It can be scary when you discover, while parenting your child, just how much anger you have been unknowingly holding on to. And worse yet, no one has told you that this would be a challenge you would face or how to overcome it. Then when your child gets very angry, yells, screams, kicks, bites and you get triggered, your anger rises and your emotions take over.
Continued 👇🏾