Sick and tired enough of being sick and tired of being fearful and helpless about your life with challenging children?
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Do you ever really consider what fear is? Do you ever experience it? Do you know what it really feels like in your body? Where you experience it? If so, how do you deal with it?
Bryan talks about fear a lot as you know. Fear vs love for example is not the “horror/scary story” fear – although it can feel like that at times. Like when you know school has ended and it is about time for your child to be walking through the door and your reaction is one of “oh – no, here we go again”. I used to feel this when driving home from work every single day.
You can feel it in your stomach — it is real, it is visceral and it is not fun. Fear that your child will never survive their teen years let alone adulthood. For many of us, it is not what university they might attend but what prison will they be in — and that is if they are not dead. I remember feeling glad when people asked about our RAD poster child son that he was neither dead nor in jail after he finally graduated from high school (four different high schools including two “special behavior” schools and numerous home schooling attempts later).
Yet for many of us, fear keeps on repeating itself day after day after …
And these are just our fears as a parent. Not to mention our child’s fears which may make ours look like a “walk in the park” if we really knew their experience.
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So it is with this in mind that we share something that offers an invitation few of us would accept, but just maybe we are just sick and tired enough of being sick and tired of being fearful and helpless about our lives with our challenging children!
“If you want to know the true nature of fear, look straight into it. Fear, anger, envy — any afflictive thought or feeling — cannot withstand a direct gaze. But if we look at the story and feed on the story we tell ourselves of our fear, anger, envy, etc., affliction thrives. Affliction feeds off the noise of the commenting chattering mind.” — Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird.
What is the take home lesson? Parents, watch what you think and say to start with, then watch if any behaviors extend from these and just stop them. Yes, just like that. Any behavior that does not come from love comes from fear. So parents, just say “stop”. You will find your child responding more like this the more you respond more like this. To read more about this interesting book and approach, click here.
