When a parent or parents are experiencing ongoing painful emotional conflict within a relationship with an adult child, here is a “NEWS FLASH” This unrest conflicting connection usually started way back when your child was small. Did your emotionally painful relationship with your adult child start when they were little? How to do shadow work to heal your relationships?
Shadow Work Journaling; Shadow Work Techniques
Ask these questions to yourself and write down your perspectives of your child as they were growing up.
- Did your child rebel against you, and seemed fine with others?
- Constently mouth back?
- A drama queen or king?
- Throw emotional outbursts or fits, and cry?
- Did he or she fight with their siblings constently?
- Did you feel the child was being a brat, not getting their own way? Yes, in some instances that is the very case, but if this behavior is consistent there is usually within each and everyone of us, a much deeper truth hidden.
Now Ask Yourself These Questions: Shadow Work Journaling
- Picutre yourself, the age you were, what you looked like, at the time your child started his or her behavioral distress.
- What type of relationship were you in, healthy, unhealthy, codependent, abusive?
- Where were you physically, mentally, and emotionally at the time your child started acting out?
- Did you deal with your childs behavior the same way your parents did?
- When your child had emotional outburst of crying and truly upset and you didn’t know why. How did you handle it?
- What did you do to stop them fighting or disrupting the other siblings?
Ask yourself as many questions as possible. Try to remember your life situations and the said child’s surroundings as much as possible. When we start looking for answers, we usually find deep emotional pain the child experienced and continues to experience during shadow work. Not only their emotional pain but ours also. The adult child has carried this pain throughout their life. A parent may or may not want to admit or has complete unconscious awareness of how the inflicted emotional distress happened in the first place. I will explain how you can find the answers within yourself by the end of this post. As a result, hopefully, you can reach out to your adult child; healing can take place for your adult child, yourself, and your relationship.
What is the Adult Child’s WHY?
Most parents are aware their painful conflict between themselves and the adult child began back when they were small. Still, you may be entirely unconsciously aware of the “WHY” Therefore, the “WHY” you may think or feel is the farthest from the truth. The parent may connect the adult child’s actions, reactions, and behaviors with emotional trauma experienced while growing up. For example, a parent may see that the relationship’s issues, problems, and painful conflict have grown much more assertive with the said adult child. Trust that this can happen in the most loving parenting homes, and not just in the homes where parents don’t give a shit about their children. Emotional trauma can occur from many diverse experiences while growing up.
My Own Story of The Emotionally Painful Conflicting Relationship With My Adult Child
I am the parent of four children. Two boys and two girls, the first three were four years apart, then came my youngest daughter two years later after my first daughter. My oldest son lived with his father, and my second oldest son and two daughters resided with me.
My oldest daughter is the child I had an excruciating painful relationship together. I considered her the middle child because my oldest son visited each weekend and took vacations off from school. My oldest daughter was very emotional at all times. She would throw fits that came out of nowhere, so I thought. She was always considered the drama child right into adulthood by myself and her siblings.
My Drama Child is Extremely Intellignet
Except this drama child was extremely intelligent, she graduated from high school at sixteen. She was a bridge student in community college at fifteen during her senior year of high school, which she had only one class left to graduate.
The high school counselor set up a meeting between myself, and my daughter with the Dean at the community college for her to be enrolled, for you must be at least sixteen. The Dean saw her grades, and every class was advanced; his reaction was, “she must be bored out of her mind.” So therefore, he let her enroll right away. So she did her morning class and then went to the college for her classes there.
Ever Hear the Saying “the child must have great parents to be doing that good in school”?
She was so bright that most children’s first words were dad-da or momma; my daughters’ first words were “thank you.” So why would I ever think that I had or hadn’t done something to hurt my child emotionally, right? Wrong, I was hurting my child emotionally and never, ever thought for a minute that I was doing so, but unfortunately, I was, and I did. My newfound awareness was one of the most painful realizations I have ever had to face, but I am so grateful I finally brought this into my understanding.
As I see it now, she always needed to be the best at what she was doing, and she still is today. She says, “I can’t fail,” but I was failing her. As a result, she didn’t receive the attention and emotional support from me that she needed so desperately. She constantly felt she was not loved or as vital to me as her siblings, which was a significant failure on my part. Therefore, she strived to be the best at what she was already good at, and she did. She felt that if she were perfect in school, it would bring her the attention, recognition, and love she needed from her perspective. I made her feel this way. I did this to my child.
When You Can’t Take the Pain Any Longer
My daughter is now in her thirties, and our relationship was still on edge all the time. I constantly asked her over the years, what have I had done to make her act this way towards me? I would continuously reach out to her, but she always had a wall between us. She would never give me an answer. I asked her brother and sister many times, why does your sister hate me? I truly felt like she had hate towards me. We could not have a conversation without her becoming defensive and hostile towards me.
Thanksgiving dinner, I asked her siblings again, “what did I do? Please help me; please tell me. I would try to explain to them if I know, then I can fix it” The both of them would tell me, “mom, we don’t know, she has always been this way with you, we don’t know why either.”
I finally could not take it any longer. It was tearing my heart out over and over again. I knew my daughter had to be hurting, but I truly needed to know the “WHY” if I could ever fix our relationship. I love her with all my heart; the pain of our tattered relationship had my heart in pieces.
Finding the Adult Childs “WHY” Within Ourself, The Parent: Shadow Work
Mercury and Venus in retrograde was a perfect time to deep dive within and meditate; you never know what realizations will come into your awareness. Since Thanksgiving, the relationship problem between myself and my daughter has been at the forefront of my mind. Two weeks prior, from our last unfortunate ruins, as a result, the reason she was not present this past Thanksgiving dinner. Not being there was her choice, not mine. I wanted her there with us more than anything, as did her brother and sister.
How to Do Shadow Work to Heal Relationships?
About the week after Christmas, my daughter was still on my mind. I would walk around the house in tears, pull myself back together, then move on, but it continued to come up more strongly than it ever had over all these years.
Once I gathered myself, I decided to sit, relax and meditate. It took a bit, for I was focusing on painful stuff. As I sat, I went into my heart space and felt how much love I held for her. Then, I started picturing my daughter as a small child in my mind’s eye. I imagine myself at the age I was when she was little. When I looked at myself, I saw how broken I was. I had MS, overwhelming stress, anxiety, and depression. In a horrible abusive personal relationship. I was not doing well physically, mentally, or emotionally. I would then picture my daughter, then back to myself.
Patterns in my awareness started to form, for I could see myself in her and her in myself. Not as with looks because she is my daughter, but as a scared child, feeling insecure, not understanding what was happening to her mom, witnessing her mom’s abuse by her relationships. Such as, I was at that age, saw my mother and older siblings’ suffering from physical and mental abuse from my father. When I was six, I found my sister overdosed in her bed and saw her with her wrist cut when I was eight. I was terrified, I love my sister more than words can express, but I was always afraid of what she would do to herself again. Scared and full of insecurities because of my childhood trauma. These two incidents with my sister were not even scratching the surface of our childhood experience.
How to do Shadow Work for Beginners? I Was Living The Same Life as My Parents, and Hurting my Children in the Process
Therefore, I started to see my daughter like me and me as my daughter. Awareness of where my childhood trauma inflicted my daughter, and I was unaware of it. Receiving clarity where I subjected my daughter and her siblings to the emotionally painful childhood I encountered, not to the same degree, but emotional pain is. I could not see that she was a scared little girl who did not understand what was going on with her mom health-wise. I stayed in my patterns of unhealthy personal relationships for years on end. She was not getting the emotional support from me she needed by holding her and letting her know that everything would be ok. I never asked her “WHY” she acted out as she did, and I should have.
My son is four years older than her, and he would always help his mom out, more than I can even put into words here. So, therefore, we always had a close bond. If my son were not there for me, I probably would not have survived. My youngest daughter was the baby, so of course, she received more attention; that’s just the way life goes when you have children.
Middle Child
Therefore, my daughter was the middle child at home. She was not getting the security and emotional support she needed. Finally, I started to see her clearly and all the emotional pain she carried. As the emotional pain raised inside me, it was one of the most painful experiences I have ever encountered. For all of my own suppressed childhood pain came flooding up at the same time as I was observing hers. I cannot express the horrible pain I felt, knowing how much pain I inflicted on my child as a mother.
She was not receiving the attention, emotional support, or the feeling of security and love she desperately needed from me, her mother. A mother she needed so desperately was unaware of her needs and pain. She was me at that age and living her mother’s dysfunctional patterned life. I could see all the emotional pain inside of her. Seeing the pain on her little face, my beautiful little girl. I did that to her, yes unconsciously, but I did that to her. I inflicted that emotional pain on her from such a young age, festering, mounting, and no release in sight. She was me, and I was her. I cannot explain my experience any clearer than that.
We Were Mirroring Each Other with Suppressed Pain that Neither of us Understood
I can only explain it in terms; we were mirroring each other. My daughters’ childhood pain was as suppressed as mine was. She knows she held anxiety and anger towards me, but she did not completely understand why. Therefore, she could not answer when I asked her over the years. I did not see nor understand either until those moments in shadow work.
I cried for the rest of the day, releasing so much suppressed pain, fear, anxiety, and insecurity that had come up for me. Once I came to a peaceful state, I realized I could hopefully fix our relationship. The following day I asked her if I could please have a few minutes with her. I honestly had something essential to express to her. I told her that I hoped what I needed to speak would heal our relationship. Thankfully she said ok; it was still a week before we could get together because of schedule issues.
Finally, Healing My Relationship With My Adult Child: Shadow Work
My 59th birthday was by far the best birthday I could have ever imagined. On January 8th, 2022, my daughter came over that morning. We sat face to face on the couch, and I just began pouring out my heart. Opening up and expressing to my daughter how her perspectives and the emotional pain I inflicted on her were authentic and valid. I did fail her! Clear awareness I experienced where I had hurt her by my actions and the lack thereof. Ignoring her emotional outburst, I could genuinely see from her perspective how her mother didn’t care, love, and make her feel safe in her dynamic view of me.
Utterly blind to her pain, for I, too, was suffering in my own. I don’t make this an excuse, just the truth. I also had to accept that my suffering was from my choices, and I inflicted pain on my children because of those repeating patterns of life I was stuck in. Life patterns I continued to repeat that eventually caused my health issues. Expressing to my daughter how much I loved her and was genuinely sorry for the pain I inflicted on her. I honestly never meant to hurt her or make her feel unloved and feelings of lack in her security. I wasn’t and couldn’t see it from her perspective, but now it was evident. Her “WHY” was as valid and authentic; I did fail her.
My Adult Childs Respone
She told me she had to be loud and act out, for she didn’t know any other way to be heard. For she felt like she didn’t matter, no one cared, she didn’t exist. Her perception at a young age believed only her brother and sister were loved and acknowledged by me. My daughter expressed that she was trying to be seen and recognized through her unrest behavior, but she believed it made her become seen by everyone as a bitch or the wrong kid, and she was only trying to stick up for herself. She was trying to express her feelings her emotional pain.
She told me she completely understood why her brother and I had a close relationship. He was my rock, even my protector at times while growing up. But, he, too, should have never had to be put in those types of situations.
She Also Acknoledge Her Repeating Patters in Her Relationships. She Was Living Her Mother’s Life: Shadow Work
My daughter said, mom, I was doing the same thing. I was living repeating abusive relationships. Her relationships were also vicious and chaotic. She said this is why I have been single for three years. I was living your life; I was living the same repeating patterns. She went on to state, “I am single and working on myself, taking care of me” I was so happy to hear that she too was aware of her repeating patterns and that she learned them from me, as I lived the same ways of my parents. I am so grateful she is on her path to self-healing and loving herself. She, too, has been working on herself with shadow work.
She and I talked for hours; we heard each other; we held each other and cried together. The best birthday any mother could have had. She told me she forgives me, and her last words as she went out the door were, “mom, I am good now, now forgive yourself.”
Breaking The Cycles From Dysfunctional Homes
If we come from a dysfunctional home, we must bring awareness to our living patterns. Ask yourself truthfully, am I living in the exact alignment of that dysfunction, for example, growing up within a family of physical, mental, or emotional abuse, or perhaps all three from our parents. We need to take a deep look at our own lives as adults, especially when we have children. Break the patterns of dysfunctional families. Once we recognize these destructive patterns, we must go within and heal our broken parts. Stop the dysfunctional family patterns for ourselves, our children, and future generations.
How to Heal Childhood Trauma https://1111newme.com/2022/01/12/heal-childhood-truma/
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