Emotional Safety is Crucial for Us and for Our Kids

Damaging Our Kids

How much damage are we doing to our own kids? You may think that it is only your toxic partner that is hurting them, but you will be surprised to find that you are perhaps adding to that damage too.

“I was SO wrapped up in trying to keep peace that I pushed my own kids’ feelings under the rug right along with everything else.”

I used to say to myself, “Why can’t my boys just do what is necessary to keep their dad happy?” Because they were kids!

I used to wonder, “Why don’t the boys get it? Can’t they just do what he says? It would be so much more peaceful.” Because that is not their role in life. They are allowed to be kids, and they are allowed to express themselves. They are people too!

They were good boys just being kids, and I was asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking why the boys didn’t get it, I should have been asking why doesn’t my husband get it? Why can’t he let them be kids? Why doesn’t he accept them as they are?

My focus was all wrong. I was trying to keep peace with the elephant in the room. I made my priority to keep my husband happy because he was the meanest to everyone when he was unhappy. We paid a high price when he was upset.

In trying to keep peace, I pushed everything under the rug as fast as I could. I quieted and corrected the boys, even when they were doing no wrong. I jumped on them quickly simply to beat their dad to it, knowing that he would be unreasonable. All because I wanted to keep peace with their dad.

I paid a high price for this mistake. My boys learned that their feelings didn’t matter. They couldn’t be angry. They couldn’t be happy. Any and all of their feelings were pushed down due to emotional fear.

Feelings Matter

One thing I learned in all of this is that feelings matter! Emotional safety is hugely important! Without it, we will simply go crazy. If our pushed down anger doesn’t kill us, then our own stress level will. .

Emotional safety is crucial! What is emotional safety?

-Feeling free to express yourself, free from judgment and criticism

-Being free to feel your own feelings

-Having the freedom to get mad and work through it on your own

-Having the freedom to be happy and silly

-Being internally relaxed

-Feeling safe to let your guard down

-Openly free to share our hurts, fears, dreams, tender feelings

-Free to be vulnerable and non-defensive

-Knowing that you are not responsible for the other person’s feelings

Without this emotional safety, we build defenses. We defend ourselves against potential criticism, blame, shame and rejection. We defend ourselves by being critical of others and minimizing their needs and feelings.

How do you give them emotional safety?

The absolutely best first step is to work on emotional safety yourself. Are you emotionally safe? Do everything you can to put yourself in this safety first. As you do, your own defenses will come down. Work on being internally relaxed, both mentally and emotionally. This is the single best thing you can do for your own kids’ emotional growth.

Let your kids express anger. Don’t be afraid of it or quit to shut it down. If they are expressing it, then they are not bottling it up inside them. This is a good thing! They need to learn that there are boundaries for expressing anger. Throwing things or hitting people should not be acceptable. Give them safe ways to release that anger. Hitting a workout bag or pillow, throwing a tennis ball forcefully at a safe wall, and kicking a beach ball are some great examples.

Don’t judge and criticize them when they express their dreams. Don’t superficially praise them either. Be open to their ideas, and at the same time be honest with your own opinions.

Remember that your kid is a fellow human being. Yes you brought him/her into this world. But they are still a separate human being, with their own ideas, thoughts, dreams, fears, feelings, and life. Look at them as such. See them for who they really are.

Explore this emotional safety further. Help your kids to develop emotional skills and emotional health. For more information on helping your kids’ emotional development, check out my ebook devoted just to this.

Don't Over-Compensate for the Narcissistic Parent

A huge mistake often made by the non-narcissistic parent is over-compensation.

When our co-parent is abusing our children in any way, it is extremely easy to over-compensate by trying to erase all the bad feelings in our child. Our intentions are good. We know that those bad feelings are coming from the way they are being treated. So if we can erase those bad feelings, then maybe we can erase the damage they are suffering. However the results may not be quite what we hope for.

One definition of a narcissist is an empty shell wrapped in a façade of grandiosity. That empty shell comes from all the abuse, but the façade of grandiosity comes from the over-compensation.

Empty Shell

Kids cannot emotionally comprehend the abuse of a parent who is supposed to love them. They internalize it, believing that they themselves are to blame. This leaves them feeling worthless and hopeless. These feelings are too overwhelming for kids and leave them numb and closed off to their own feelings. In other words, an empty shell.

Façade of Grandiosity

When the other parent over compensates by telling them how wonderful, beautiful, amazing and so on that they are, this does not line up with the empty feelings they are experiencing. But it feels better, so they try to cling to this. However, this then becomes a false sense of security for them. It is often easier to ignore bad internal feelings than it is to face them. So it is easy to cling to those feelings that they are great and wonderful, even though they don’t truly believe them. They become that empty shell wrapped in a façade of grandiosity.

So how do we help them instead?

Obviously we can’t always or even often change the behavior of our narcissistic counter parent. So we have to focus on our own parenting skills. The goal is to create a healthy sense of self in our child. What does that look like?

·        Self-awareness

·        Self-perceptiveness

·        Self-value

·        Acceptance of personal strengths and weaknesses

·        Acceptance of one’s humanness

Emotional Muscle Building

Kids need emotional muscles in life. If you carry your child everywhere, they will never learn to walk on their own. Their own leg muscles will atrophy and, over a long enough period, walking will never be an option for them. If you “fix” everything for them so they never build emotional muscles, then this same thing happens.

Quit protecting them from ever feeling disappointment or sadness. Quit protecting them from feeling shame when they deserve it. Quit making them believe that they are above others. Quit rescuing them from the consequences of their actions. Start calling them out on their self-centeredness. Start holding them accountable for their words and actions. Take away their emotional handicaps and create emotional resilience. They are stronger than you think they are. Have confidence in their hearts and in their potential.

Fill the Inner Emptiness

So how do you fill that inner emptiness? Let’s start by looking at how many of us try to fill it and fail. We tell them that they are wonderful. We tell them how great they are, how smart they are, how handsome or pretty they are. None of this ever seemed to work for my kids. They blew it off and never believed me anyways. This is empty praise and does not make help them to fill that emptiness.

I teach martial arts to kids. I see this empty praise often at my school. A parent will sit in the viewing chairs, with their nose in their phone. They don’t pay any attention to what their child is doing in the class. In the meantime, I am having to correct their child repeatedly, calling them out for bad behavior and lack of focus. Much to my surprise though, as we dismiss and the child leaves the floor, the parent will happily exclaim, “Great job today son/daughter. You did great!” I want to say, “Did you see the class? Were you watching how they did?” That child knows they were called out and corrected. They may not be able to verbalize this, but they feel that parent’s empty praise for what it is. While they can’t put it into words, they know that it doesn’t feel right.

Empty praise makes us feel even emptier.

Teach them the feeling of mattering

When my oldest son was around the age of 10, he had a day that was feeling particularly off to him. He was down and completely unmotivated. He was home all day and completely bored, adding to his lack of motivation. I gave him a small list with a few options of productive things to do. On that list were things like bathe the dogs, vacuum the house, wash the windows, and so on. He decided to bathe the dogs. I was extremely glad he chose that one because it was one chore that I really did not like doing, as it was hard on my back. When he got done, I told him how much I appreciated him doing that and how much it helped me. He actually told me, at that young age, that it had really made him feel better. He felt like he had done something very useful and beneficial. I used this opportunity to teach him about the value of productivity.

On his own, he applied this later in his childhood. As any normal kid does, he had other days when he was off. But he noticed it in himself. So, on his own, he chose to go bathe the dogs. He felt the value of this action and felt like he mattered in our world. He did not need a reward of ice cream, money, or anything else. In fact, sometimes those rewards interfere with a child feeling the more internal rewards. He needed to FEEL productive, helpful, and appreciated.

Your kids need to feel that they matter in your world. Don’t do this through excessive praise. This so easily gets shallow and meaningless. They need to have chores and responsibilities. They need to feel like a necessary and valuable part of the family. If it is their job to feed the pets, then they need to feed the pets. When they forget, simply remind them and have them do it. Resist the temptation to just do it for them. I know that is quicker and easier, but it does not teach them responsibility and value. Those pets are relying on your kids for their nourishment. Explain that to your child. Most pets will show great appreciation to the one that feeds them. Let your child experience that. It helps them to feel like they matter, which of course, they do.

You are NOT a superhero!

One final note here. Please remember that you are no different than any other parent struggling through parenthood. I got wrapped up in trying to make sure I did everything right for my kids. I so badly wanted to, as I’m sure you do. I don’t question your desire to be a great parent. That is a wonderful desire. But it is easy to get so caught up in trying to do everything right that we end up making a complete disaster of it.

Give yourself permission to be human. You can’t fix everything. You can’t help them with everything. This isn’t all bad. They NEED to learn some things for themselves as well. They NEED to learn to rely on themselves as well. That’s okay.

If someone would have just told me what to do in order to ensure my boys have a bright, healthy and happy future, I would have walked through fire for them. Trouble is that there is no blueprint, no sure way, no guidebook with all the answers. You do the best you can and then let them go. Trust your heart and learn to trust theirs too!

How to Turn the Table on a Narcissist

How to Turn the Table on a Narcissist

One extremely effective tactic for when you are forced to communicate with a narcissist in your life.

Narcissists absolutely hate for the other person to be right. Especially if that person is a spouse, significant other, parent or child.

They will disagree with you simply for the sake of disagreeing. Their immediate reaction to most of what you say is to tell you that you are wrong. Then they will explain their own point of view, saying the exact same thing you did. If you try to tell them that is the same as what you said, they will adamantly deny that and explain their point of view all over again. They will put words in your mouth, saying, “No, you said….” Those words will often not be anything like what you said. If you confront them on this, they often have a standard cop-out, “Well, I don’t remember exactly word for word, but it was something like that.” Their insistence of explaining how they were right and your were wrong is never-ending. You will go in infinite circles around and around. You will get absolutely nowhere!

When a narcissist does occasionally find themselves in a place where the other person is right, they absolutely will not admit it. They cannot simply say, “Hey, you are right” or “I never thought of it like that.” They may actually get to a point that they admit you are right, but only in a back-handed way. They will make it very clear that what you are saying is stuff they already knew. Their knowledge must be greater, faster and stronger. You will hear things such as,

• “I know! I had that thought a week ago. Glad you caught up.”

• “You’re right, you must have been listening to me.”

• “I knew that was the case.”

• “I already know that, and I’ll take it a step further….”

A simple “Hey, you have a good point there,” is not within their capabilities. It threatens their ego too much. For that tiny instant, they would feel inferior to you. To admit that you are right means, internally, they have to admit that they were wrong. There simply is no in-between ground. Don’t forget, for them, this isn’t conversation. It’s combat! Every interaction has a winner and a loser, and they must be the winner, no matter how insignificant the conversation really is.

Use Their Own Game Against Them

So what do you do if you are in such a relationship and you can’t walk away, at least not yet? How do you avoid these combative interactions and their narcissistic rage?

One very effective tactic is to beat them at their own game. Anticipate their irrational reactions before they happen and call them out on it ahead of time. Use their own desire to always be right and to always prove you wrong against them.

Let me explain. Let’s say you know you have a tough conversation coming with your narcissist. Before the conversation even starts, simply say, “Now I know you are going to react hard to this, but I need to tell you…..” Then tell them. Their own burning desire to prove you wrong will keep their reaction in check. If they blow up now, then you will be right, and they CANNOT allow that to happen.

Some examples of these pre-emptive statements:

• I know you are not going to like this, but ……

• I know you are going to get mad, but …...

• I know this is going to set you off, but …….

As soon as the words “I know” come out of your mouth, their mind is already triggered to prove you wrong.

Yes this is a bit manipulative and purely intentional. But it is also a way of self-protection. Often, we still are caught in interactions with these narcissists. Maybe you have kids together and are co-parenting, otherwise known as counter parenting. Maybe you simply aren’t out of the relationship yet. Maybe it’s your parent, and you don’t want to completely cut ties. If you must keep interacting with them, then you should start finding ways to do it without losing your own mind.

Whatever the circumstances, use this tactic and watch them nearly bite their tongue in half just to prove you wrong! Enjoy it!