ML Interest Tag: emotional-baggage

Parents, Watch for These Signs of Stress at Back-to-School Time

By Dr. Bradley Nelson

Kids are getting ready to head back to school, and many are feeling stressed. They may feel pressure to make good grades or feel anxious over social pressures such as dealing with bullies or making new friends.

Common signs of back-to-school stress include crying, headaches, and expressing fears about social situations or failing grades. Some stress is normal and to be expected. However, chronic stress can have lasting effects on children as they grow, studies show.

When kids exhibit ongoing dread, fear, or worry, it can indicate an underlying emotional issue—what I call “Trapped Emotions.” Trapped Emotions are unresolved emotional energies from negative life experiences that can affect a person’s health, happiness and ability to learn.

For instance, one of the most common emotions kids feel when it comes to heading back to school after summer break is anxiousness. This is quite normal; however, if a child expresses persistent and ongoing dread or worry as the start of school approaches, it may be a sign the child has a Trapped Emotion related to some trouble they have experienced.

Children can develop Trapped Emotions from events at school and family situations, or they can pick up on the emotions and stresses of others around them. Trapped Emotions can have an effect on children’s behavior, family relationships, performance in school, and health.

Some signs a child may be experiencing stress due to Trapped Emotions include:

  • A child who is normally happy and eager to learn grows angry, disobedient, and distant.
  • A child continually expresses dread about the start of school but refuses or is unable to explain why he or she is feeling this way.
  • Frequent complaints about stomachaches, trouble sleeping, and disinterest in activities that the child once enjoyed.

Children who have stressful and difficult lives are prone to having Trapped Emotions. But any child can have Trapped Emotions, no matter how much love they receive or how favorable their home environment may be.

Parents can help their children overcome stress related to Trapped Emotions by learning to identify and resolve this emotional baggage or energy. The Emotion Code™ provides simple ways parents can help their kids:

  • Determine if a Trapped Emotion is present.
  • Identify the emotion.
  • Release each Trapped Emotion and verify that it is gone.

To help adults and children identify and release Trapped Emotions, we developed a formalized process that involves asking a series of questions and getting the answers from the subconscious mind through muscle testing, a simple form of biofeedback.

Muscle testing enables us to tap into the subconscious mind. Answers are determined by measuring minor changes in resistance to pressure on a subject’s arm. Using flow charts from The Emotion Code™ we ask questions to determine if a Trapped Emotion is present, identify the emotion, and ultimately release it.

Another technique we use for identifying Trapped Emotions is the “sway test.” The person using this method stands still, with feet slightly apart and eyes closed and attempts to remain motionless. The practitioner then goes through phrases and questions organized in the flow charts. We can detect and identify Trapped Emotions by the motion of the subject’s body swaying forward or backward in response to these questions.

Parents can use these very simple and non-invasive techniques to help determine if their child has one or several Trapped Emotions, and to permanently release these unwanted feelings. Free instructions are available at www.emotioncodegift.com.

Helping kids identify and release potential Trapped Emotions can improve their overall happiness and ability to learn. Getting rid of emotional baggage can help kids shift out of fear of starting school or a new grade, stop worrying about upsetting incidents from the past, and be more relaxed, confident, and happy in the year to come.

 

Dr. Bradley Nelson
Tinybeans Voices Contributor

Veteran holistic physician and author of The Emotion Code, Dr. Bradley Nelson is an expert in the emerging fields of Bioenergetic Medicine and Energy Psychology. He has certified thousands of practitioners worldwide in helping people overcome unresolved anger, depression, anxiety, loneliness and other negative emotions and the physical symptoms associated them.

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Letting Go of Emotional Baggage to Become a Better Parent

By Dr. Bradley Nelson

Photo: Unsplash, @gcalebjones

Have you ever thought about mistakes your parents made when raising you and swore that you would not repeat them? Many parents do, and yet they find themselves reacting the same ways their parents did when family challenges arise.

The reasons for this may go beyond habits we pick up from the way our parents raised us. Most of us carry emotional baggage—what I call “trapped emotions”—from difficult or traumatic circumstances we have faced in our lives.

Everyone experiences strong, negative emotions from time to time. Sometimes, for reasons that we do not fully understand, emotions do not process completely. So instead of moving beyond an angry moment, or a temporary bout with grief or depression, this negative emotional energy can remain within the body, potentially causing significant physical and emotional stress and coloring our interactions with others.

Fortunately, it is possible to identify and release trapped emotions using The Emotion Code, a system we developed for this purpose. To do this, we ask a person a series of questions in conjunction with a simple form of muscle testing that allows us to get answers from the subconscious. This process allows us to:

  • Determine if an emotion was inherited or is a result of a person’s life experiences.
  • Discover the origin of an emotion, whether from a mother, father, grandparent, or even earlier generations.
  • Permanently release emotional baggage, wherever it came from, for improved wellness and relationships.

The Emotion Code allows us to determine more information about a trapped emotion, including when it occurred, what it was about, and if it was absorbed from someone else.

Because we are connected with each other, we are also vulnerable to the emotional energy of each other. This is particularly true in close family relationships. We can take on other people’s feelings sometimes, and that energy can become trapped in our bodies and end up affecting us.

A mother can be feeling bitterness, and her child might pick up some of that energy, or a friend might be going through a difficult episode, and you may absorb some of their emotional energy.

Trapped emotions can be created by circumstances that are quickly forgotten. Say, for example, that one day everything just seemed to go wrong. We can become pretty upset at times when things aren’t going our way. The intense emotions we may be feeling on an occasion like this may leave us with a trapped emotion or two. But a year later, you may be hard pressed to remember this event, particularly if you chose not to dwell on the bad experience.

If a number of years have gone by, the trapped emotion will still be there, but consciously recalling the event may now be very difficult if not impossible.

Whether you actually remember what occurred and what created your trapped emotion is not critical to the releasing of the emotional energy.

One of the most beautiful aspects of this process is that trapped emotions, once released, are gone forever. In the decades that I have been teaching the Emotion Code, I have never seen a single trapped emotion return after being released.

On the other hand, it is possible for people to have more than one occurrence of a particular trapped emotion. Therefore, you might release many trapped emotions of anger, but each emotion will be a separate and distinct energy, trapped during different emotional events in the past. It’s also possible to trap several distinctly different emotions during the same stressful event.

If you or a loved one are struggling with a specific problem, it’s important to determine if trapped emotions may be playing an unseen role. Discovering and releasing trapped emotions can make you a better parent. You can also use these techniques to help your children get rid of their own emotional baggage.

When trapped emotions are identified and released, people often experience a profound improvement in their lives and relationships, as they are able to finally be free from the burdens of the past.

 

 

Dr. Bradley Nelson
Tinybeans Voices Contributor

Veteran holistic physician and author of The Emotion Code, Dr. Bradley Nelson is an expert in the emerging fields of Bioenergetic Medicine and Energy Psychology. He has certified thousands of practitioners worldwide in helping people overcome unresolved anger, depression, anxiety, loneliness and other negative emotions and the physical symptoms associated them.

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Why Don’t We Talk about This More Often?

By Brooke Brown

Photo: IECL

Why do I tear up every time I hear or read a good parenting book? There’s no way to experience transformational growth as fast and as intensely as when you parent a child. No one told me parenting would not only be physically and emotionally challenging, but also so psychologically revealing. I have cried, scoffed and resented my parents in every parenting article and book I read. It puts a spotlight on my own unhappy inner child and forces me to reconcile with the push-over, permissive parenting of my mother with the autocratic, demanding punitive st‌yle of my father. Learning how much they didn’t get right or better said how much I was committed to changing the dynamic and how I wanted to show up differently for my son, has not only made me a better parent, but also helped me re-parent myself and heal old emotional wounds.

No therapist has been able to trigger me and target my emotional baggage and unmet needs as quickly and as effectively as raising a child has.  In an ironic twist of fate, my kid is often just like me—forcing me to look into the mirror over and over again until I dig deep for compassion or see beauty in what may initially be hard to watch. For me, those are really inspiring outcomes. Yet there are many days when it seems like brain surgery to rewire neuro pathways and retrain my instinctual reactions that I have to activate within seconds of an unexpected fire drill.

How do you keep it all together during a sleep-deprived, rushed morning and positively manage a whining, clumsy, non-compliant, sensory sensitive kid? How do I not feel shame and embarrassment when my child darts out of the airport security line and runs for the automatic doors towards on-coming cars? How do you ignore the head-shaking disgust from other onlookers and not want to shame yourself and your child? It takes a lot of internal work, stamina, self-restraint and re-parenting to summon your composure, find a way to connect and then sternly correct the behavior with your kid and in you. That’s the honest truth that no one talks about at baby showers, in hallmark cards or even in parenting workshops.  This kid is hitting all your hot buttons and triggers that was traumatic to you growing up and fragmented your own identify and feelings of self-worth. Yet you’re supposed to leap over that land mine, summon your Martha Stewart manners and smile like a lucky Stepford wife. Ha! Juggling so many strong emotions all the while loving yourself is the magic trick of parenting.

I may never be able to get my aging parents to change or apologize for their parenting faux-pas. Instead I can choose to replay the tape inside and softly connect with that child that so desperately wanted to belong and be understood just as I would my own son.  So I am really parenting two kids at the same time and when I don’t get it right some days I remember to be just as compassionate to myself as I would my son. There will always be more opportunities to try again and change the conversation from within or with my son. I thank my effort, forgive myself, remember I can only control my reactions and then try again using my own elastic bubblegum brain. If I model this, even if it means giving myself a time out for some deep breaths, my son will also model it for himself.  With some success, I’ve learned there’s nothing more valuable than teaching my kid that mistakes are “beautiful oopsies” or opportunities for growth and connection. I don’t always lean into the vulnerability, but when I do, I make best friends with both my inner child and my son.

Some days are a roller coaster ride. There are days I feel overwhelmed, inadequate and unequipped to even handle my own juvenile emotions, and moments when I am elated to redefine what parenting means.  Inevitably my mom shows up in me and feelings of distaste come up from her permissive, unstructured parenting st‌yle and I want to scream and grab back control, but I also remember there was independence and creativity in that freedom. When my dictator dad shows up, I remember there was some security and respect in structure, rules and in saying no. I also like to remind myself that I don’t own the whole parenting process. My son will also be taught and parented by his teachers, friends, neighbors and even by nature, so I don’t need to feel like I need to lay down the hammer that hard. I never have to play the same role exactly as they played it, but I can re-frame what their roles meant and find a happy middle between the two that’s all my own and connects both me and my kid. Outsiders may judge from time to time, but I get to set the pace for my growth and know intuitively what feels right as I work to make it look easy pulling the rabbit out of the hat and other tricks of illusion.

Holding the honorable position of parent, gives me an opportunity to not just re-frame the role, but also re-experience it in a new way. For instance, instead of being thrown into the pool against my will and forced to learn to swim with anxiety at my side, I can teach my son at his own pace and nurture him with encouragement along the way. I enjoy watching him get playful in the water because when he’s playing, he’s also learning and letting go of his fears and some of mine too. When I share the outdoors with my son and point out all the beauty along a long hike, I get to let my own playful kid outside and share my appreciation for nature as I had dreamed my parents would have done with me.  Like a choose-your-own-adventure book, I get to recreate my past and turn the sour memories and experiences into fuel that nourishes myself and my kid in a much more rewarding way. Parenting is a gift in this way—forcing you to shake hands with your enemies, confront your fears and accelerate your growth and emotional maturity.

I’ll never again underestimate the job of parenting and stay-at-home parents. Working a corporate office job may be taxing at times, but parenting is relentless and so much like the environment of an emergency room where you’re triaging a constant barrage of emotional and physical wounds day and night with often no staff to help delegate or offload the work to. I have great appreciation of the parent who squeezes in self-care along with thank you notes, visual reminders, checklists, routines, habits, schedules to maintain sanity, consistency and prevent the bleeding. I read about their perfectionist ways on revenue-generating blogs, see their Pinterest pages of immaculate play rooms with white couches and watch their assembly-line, perfectly timed mornings on YouTube, but I know that structure will eventually be tested and break. Why? Your kids will eventually find a way to shine a mirror into you and cause the inner child within to breakdown. That means screaming profanities, bawling in the shower, late-night drinking, or thinking up ways to run away and quit.

They want you to grow up and branch out too. I’m convinced they push to help you define your own boundaries and values for your own inner kid. Perhaps it’s the cycle of life or it’s evolution or it’s the process of uncovering your divine purpose, but I like to think my son is really in the stands with all my role models rooting for me to get on the field and take advantage of this opportunity for transformational growth. Intuitively they know, on the other side is an experience of pure joy, confidence and self-love—the same hopes we have for them.

I am a single working parent of a differently wired son with ADHD. We go on many adventures together and are always teaching each other new ways to love and find compassion for ourselves. I love learning about parenting and connecting with other parents.

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How Parents Step Back & Create Harmony When They’re Feeling Overwhelmed

By Dr. Bradley Nelson

One of the best things about being parents of young children is the time you get to spend playing with them and having fun. There’s nothing like that first trip to the park to try out the bike with the training wheels, unless it’s when you go back a while later to take the training wheels off and see your little guy or girl racing the wind.

They say having young kids keeps us young and playing with your kids is one of life’s great joys. At the same time, having little ones can be exhausting. You have all the responsibility of providing for a family along with everything you were doing before becoming parents. It’s not unusual to feel stress, even during fun times—like those (supposedly) relaxing family vacations!

When you feel tired, exhausted or overwhelmed, whatever emotions you have been carrying around can boil over with your spouse and kids. Emotional drama can sweep through a family faster than the sniffles kids bring home from school.

When tempers flare, there’s usually more going on than the words or behaviors that seem to trigger the disagreement. More often than not, there are unresolved feelings from previous difficult or hurtful experiences lurking beneath the surface—what I call trapped emotions.

­People frequently sense that they are burdened by emotions from their past, but they don’t know how to get over them. Trapped emotions can damage family relationships and lead to anxiety, depression and a host of physical, emotional and psychological problems.

Something that commonly occurs in family relationships is feeling triggered: when you become overly upset, emotional or defensive in certain situations. When this happens, usually there are underlying feelings contributing to the emotions you are feeling. Emotional baggage from past traumas (and perhaps inherited from earlier generations) can make us more likely to feel certain negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, disappointment, frustration and sadness.

Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to help you better handle daily stress and disagreements, become more accepting and forgiving and bring more joy and harmony to your family life. Here are a few:

Discover what’s behind your own triggers.

When you find yourself feeling upset, overly emotional or defensive about something a family member says or does, you are most likely feeling the effect of old trapped emotions as well as the ones that come up in the moment.

Establish boundaries.

If you have a family member who leaves you feeling drained and upset, the best way to protect yourself is to create boundaries. You can decide in advance what you will and will not tolerate. Whatever boundaries you create, you need to stick with them and respect yourself, even if the other person doesn’t.

Feeling beat up? Disengage.

It takes two people to have an argument. You can always just turn around and leave. One of the things you can say in this situation is “I love you, but I need to honor myself by leaving.”

Make strategies for better family interactions.

Consider your past interactions with difficult people and how they normally act. Do they have frequent outbursts? Do they complain a lot? Are they unpredictable? Then come up with a plan. Decide in advance how you are going to act and react when that person misbehaves.

Practice acceptance and love.

Look for the good in people. This is especially important with children, who tend to live up to our expectations of them. If you are looking for positive things, you are more likely to find them. You’ll be less likely to blow up—and blow things out of proportion—when something rubs you the wrong way.

Forgive

In any disagreement, forgiveness begins with letting go. If you have trouble forgiving, seek for the divine and ask for help in prayer. Look for ways to see the person who offended you in a positive light. You might focus on something you love about them. Forgiveness brings freedom and peace for you and for your family.

Our families are a place where we can learn and practice healthy ways of recognizing, acknowledging and expressing emotions. No one is perfect. But by being more intentional about choosing how we act and react in emotional situations, we can give our kids skills that will help them grow into emotionally healthy adults.

Dr. Bradley Nelson
Tinybeans Voices Contributor

Veteran holistic physician and author of The Emotion Code, Dr. Bradley Nelson is an expert in the emerging fields of Bioenergetic Medicine and Energy Psychology. He has certified thousands of practitioners worldwide in helping people overcome unresolved anger, depression, anxiety, loneliness and other negative emotions and the physical symptoms associated them.

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Staying Organized as a Mom Is a Labor of Love, Chaos & Joy

By Alana Green

Photo: Alana Zavett Green

On Nov. 26, I gave birth to a pink-skinned, black-haired, 8-pound beautiful baby boy. My husband, Steven, and I were so grateful to welcome our second son after a swift delivery and agonizing, yet blissful natural labor. In addition to feeling tremendous relief that we avoided delivering on the Golden Gate Bridge (the second labor is as fast as they say), I was thrilled that I was able to give birth the very same morning my in-laws flew to town. Steven joked that with my propensity for organization and planning, I willed it all to happen. 

The weeks leading up his birth, I was overcome with worry. I spent most of my days listening to my hypno-birthing app on repeat to distract me from checking the abysmal air quality index from the Northern California wildfires. My family zeroed in on the fact that bringing a newborn into the smoke-filled air and having family members with preexisting breathing issues travel cross-country for his birth were less than ideal scenarios. 

In an effort to find peace in an utterly anxiety-inducing situation, I looked to my organizational skills to help me with the things I could control.

I shifted my focus to what we would do with my four-year-old when we went into labor. With our families on the other side of the country and a sneaking suspicion that my baby would make his debut in the middle of the night, I needed to devise a master plan. It had cells and rows and different colors and contingency plans of who would step in when, depending on the onset of labor. I was determined to be ready for any scenario thrown my way.

Friends reassured me that with such a stressful end of pregnancy (did I mention the gestational diabetes?), surely I would be blessed with an “easy newborn.” While we certainly consider ourselves very blessed with this perfect child, my postpartum experience has not been without its share of challenges. 

Delinquent milk supply coupled with a short tongue and one adorably sleepy eater meant that my baby boy lost significant weight in his first few weeks. No matter how much I wanted to will the exclusive breastfeeding to happen, my baby’s need to thrive came first. So supplementing with pumped milk and formula became our reality and days of pumping turned to months of constant work to boost my supply. 

I considered throwing in the burp cloth, but just kept living my motto “one feed at a time.” I became laser focused on getting through each feed rather than getting defeated by weeks of hard work ahead of me. If I had a goal of eventually ditching the bottles and the pump, I would have to get really organized. 

Taking herbal supplements, staying on a restrictive diet, doing tongue exercises and pumping seven times a day became the hallmarks of my routine. Figuring out when to squeeze in feeds every 2.5 hours, coordinating them around preschool drop offs and pick ups, making sure that bottles and pump parts were always clean and prepped, and remembering to bathe and feed my family felt like I was constantly performing magic acts that no one would ever pay to see. But my desire to stay on track to ultimately breastfeed my baby was my end goal and with the aid of a very supportive and hands-on partner, Lactation Consultant, and wonderful group of friends, I was able to persevere.

Recently, in between late night feeds, Steven and I started binging the Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. The show features a Japanese organizing consultant who works with American families to streamline their home and help get rid of belongings that don’t “spark joy.” While the show is about decluttering physical belongings, I think her philosophy can translate to help us eliminate emotional baggage in our life, as well. 

For me, getting emotionally organized means approaching life by the sum of its parts rather than being burdened by the whole. Just as Kondo tackles one room at a time, we as parents can only tackle one obstacle at a time. Whether navigating a birth plan, pumping schedule or carpool coordination, the times I feel most successful as a parent are when I compartmentalize issues and customize individual goals. 

Being a second-time mom, I know all too well that organization can only get you so far; we can only control so much and when living with little ones, plans fall apart more likely than not. However, I find the more prepared I am emotionally, the more likely I am to let go and accept situations when challenges arise. 

And anytime my kids are involved, joy is inevitably sparked in the process. 

I am a passionate non-profit professional who believes that the power of individual stories can lead to more cohesive and compassionate communities. When I'm not advocating for boards or fundraising as a consultant, I'm spending time with my two favorite boys—ages 3 and 36. I love libraries, parks, food trucks, music, travel, photography and family. 

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