PSA: your kids don’t need to be guilted or shamed in order to grow into who they are meant to be. And neither do you. Changing thinking and behavior towards what you desire is a natural and logical part of being a human. And when it seems like it’s not, we can bet that there is some trauma or block that is keeping the person from their more true expression.
In these cases we focus on what is under the surface (the unmet need) to help adjust behavior. There is still no need for guilting or shaming the surface behavior.
If you find yourself using guilt as a tool for motivating behavior it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, it just means you believe that on some level guilt is serving you.
Here’s a tool that that helps us see past the need for guilt:
Every time you get a guilty feeling, remind yourself that you’re just learning along your path home and you don’t need punishment to motivate you to think or do differently in the future. All anyone needs is this experience to show you what you really prefer so you can move in that direction.
As you allow yourself to feel better, see how even without guilt you are still guided towards adjusting your thinking and behavior. As you show yourself how natural your evolution is without the need to feel bad, you will see less and less reason to shame and guilt everyone else, including your children.
On a deeper level, your expression (even when you get distracted from your true self) is on some level helpful to everyone. We are all co-creating our experience of each other. Trust your unfolding in relationship to those around you. From this perspective, the seeming negative behavior we see in our children also always offers us some gift. The initial reaction to change the behavior might miss why it is appearing for you in the first place. What negative beliefs is this behavior activating that make you feel negative to begin with? These are the perspective shifts that YOU (through your child) are inviting yourself into.
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