Emotional Safety
I've wrestled with this for so long only because they failed to meet my expectations as parents. When they should have nurtured me, they called me emotional and immature. When they should have let me emote safely, they told me to suck it up and stop acting like a baby. When they should have taught me to be fearless and have courage, they dumped their fears onto me and made me hold their emotional trauma
Chelsea Hanawalt
@allowthesun · 1:08
Hi, Jessica. Thank you so much for sharing this. I really resonated with it. And I don't know if I've ever heard the term emotional safety. I really like that. I feel similar about my parents providing for me and keeping me safe, but emotionally, I don't know if I can say the same, at least with one of my parents. But I think this is such an important conversation to have and I appreciate you sharing that and talking about your discoveries through therapy
Shanée Adams
@Shanee1219 · 4:19
Whether a sound, whether a red flag that comes up, whether a comment from a friend or a significant other, it's just so sad. And parents, the biggest thing that a parent can do is admit that they were wrong and admit that they messed up in certain ways. It just makes everything so much better. It's actually like, wow, I'm not crazy. You did do these things
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Hi, Chelsea. I want to thank you so much for responding and for adding the things that you said. Yeah, I first learned the term emotional safety in therapy. This is all still fairly new to me as well
And so, yeah, like, I really hope one day I'm able to have a conversation with them, but I know that I can only have that conversation with them if, one, I don't have any expectations of them as my parents, and two, if they don't have any expectations of me as their daughter. That's something that I've had to kind of come to terms with, which is why I haven't reached out to them just yet
Shanée Adams
@Shanee1219 · 3:30
Wow. Wow. It's so crazy that you've literally had to deal with that your whole life, being someone's glue as adults and growing up that way. But I just wanted to just touch base on the last thing you said about being able to differentiate. I had to do that with my dad. It came to a point where I didn't understand why he wasn't in my life. I didn't understand why he didn't want to be a dad. I didn't understand
Brianna B
@briaNNA099-._ · 5:00
But then emotionally, I just never felt I didn't even know, like, it was allowed for me to talk to my parents about things that matter to me emotionally. Oh, my word. I didn't know that was allowed. It didn't seem normal because it was just like, you eat, you sleep, whatever you need for school. Can I go to the neighbor? Can I go to that family member house to play? And then you come back and you rings and repeat
And so I don't know if that made any sense, but just responding to you, I totally hear, even as you're parenting your child, that's got to be difficult. It's a scary world, and we experienced in so many traumatizing things as kids, and you don't want to pass it on. I get it. But thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate that
I don't want to associate them as or associate them to the name of their bad behavior. Right. So, like, my dad's adultery or my mom's emotional and manipulation. Emotional abuse and manipulation. Sorry. I hope one day I can just look at them as, this is who they are. Like, this is what they know. Even though I can sit here and wish that they could just be better, unless they try to be better, they're not going to