Being Present and Seeing Toddler's Emotions

A child just needs consistency with the inner and outer reality, as he can see people's true moods easily because children are all emotion. They can see when a parent is stressed out or angry, and not really present with them. Therefore it is important not to fake being happy or present when you are not.

This is what I have been doing with my daughter, because I feel the need to be there for her even when I am feeling up to it. I was raised this way, with my borderline mother self sacrificing because that was the only way she felt worthy of love. She did not let her true feelings show, and they festered in her until she abused us physically and emotionally, all in the name of "sacrifices" and love for her children. She cannot admit her fault in it, because she says she was only doing what she felt was best and still feels was the right thing to do. To ignore her desires and wants in order to please her children and husband. And then have her children grow up not trusting love because they felt the tension and anger from her when they were not behaving the way she expected. 

Children need spontaneity and feelings allowed. This is very hard when parents are under pressure and not truly present. Since starting my recovery and allowing myself to be myself more, I am able to know what I feel and respond to it more, being more present than I ever was capable of being. I used to not understand the concept of being present, it seemed like a foreign and impossible dream, one that only happened in fairytale. I would be doing one thing, like a presentation or chatting randomly with people, and my mind was always on a million other things, having no steady path. Now, I have more control over how I feel and think, and can chose which thoughts are good or bad for me. I saw that my mother was extremely codependent and unsure of herself today, seeming to not have a sense of self. I remember that I used to be like that, too, always self-conscious and trying to mold to what was needed of me, but never truly feeling I could fit. 

Like my mother said, "Was I a good person? I think so." Indicating that she truly was not confident in this aspect. Everything I said, she took in and did not seem to truly believe in anything she said as certain. Like one minute she agreed with me that children have emotions that impact their life, and the next she was saying that she didn't think it would have helped if we spoke about our feelings as kids and gotten validation for it. I truly think she has no idea that she is right or wrong about anything, and only tries to cater to anyone she speaks to according to what they need.

Tonight, I was down after the meeting, and was ignoring my daughter a bit because of my uptight-ness. I watched Rinda from Family Tree Brand Life Coaches' weekly show called Church for the Narcissitically Abused, and they spoke about how stress from your abuse causes you to freeze up and not know your true feelings, because as a baby you had to have hypervigilance to survive getting love or abuse at any moment. I was glad to be part of the show, we need a sense of safety in order to heal our brain's dysfunction as I heard somewhere. I saw my daughter's tension from how she acted unsure of herself and repeated words as if she was spaced out, and I could not even look at her it was too overwhelming. A few hours later, after we took a bubble bath and I watched her and was present with the play and enjoyed seeing her expression through it, we watched some old baby videos of her and I enjoyed seeing how cute she was but troubled at how unseeing of her pain I was back then. I let her cry a ton and her face balled up in anger and I knew it was because of the day. I accepted it, and showed my presence and love. I yearned to make up for the past, because I realized that I truly cared. It was not fake because I wanted her to love me, it came from my heart and was pure. I cried a bit and told her we would do this every night to help her release her tension. It is most important that I see her reality, because she is affected by the reality outside and I know how painful it is.