One of the things I loved doing as a child was making creative things for my parents. I would spend hours designing and building wonderful cards with little poems in them, and make special pieces of jewelry for my mother. The only problem was that, while my mother would receive her gift graciously, she never received it with her heart. She would smile and tell me how lovely it was, but I never felt her love coming back to me. My mother did not know how to open her heart, how to smile at me with love and cherishing in her eyes. My father would never even notice his gift.
I wanted to connect with my parents, to share love with them, to know their hearts, but their hearts were hidden. Sadly, my mother died at the age of 86 without ever being able to share her heart with me. My father died at 92 and his heart was always closed.
Your children need to feel your heart and soul. They need you to take the time to stop what you are doing and just be with them. They need you to really see them – to see who they are beneath their outward ways of being.
One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is to see their essence, their true Self, the individual expression of Spirit within them. When children are deeply seen and valued by their parents, they learn to see and value themselves. All children need this profound mirroring from their parents to feel intrinsically lovable and worthy.
The challenge is that we cannot see the souls of our children and embrace their intrinsic worth unless we see our own intrinsic worth. If you suffer from core shame – if you feel intrinsically unworthy, unlovable, not good enough, unimportant or inadequate – then you cannot energetically communicate to your children their inherent worth. Your own feelings of unworthiness will be projected upon them, no matter how loving you try to be with them. You can let them know in many ways how wonderful they are, but when they energetically pick up your core shame, they will either integrate that shame into their own beings, or move in the opposite direction, believing that they are superior to you, which can cause entitlement issues.
In order to meet your children’s need to be loved and cherished, you need to love and cherish yourself. The greatest gift you can give your children is to embrace a daily Inner Bonding process of healing your own core shame.
Core shame comes from three different sources:
- If you were shamed as a child for who you are, you may have absorbed these false beliefs about yourself and continue to act as if they are true.
- If you were not loved in the way you needed to be loved, you might have decided at a young age that it was your fault that you were not being loved – that you were flawed, inadequate, unworthy, and so on. Core shame is often connected with a need to have control over getting love, so a child may decide, “If it’s my fault that I’m not being loved because there is something wrong with me, then there is something I can do about it. I can try to become the “right” way and then people will love me.” Sometimes we stay attached to the belief in our core shame to maintain the illusion that we can actually control how others feel about us and treat us.
- If your parents felt they weren’t good enough, then you likely absorbed this false belief. It’s difficult for a child to believe they are good enough if their parents don’t see themselves as good enough.
If you commit to a daily Inner Bonding process of loving yourself and letting go of trying to get love from others, you will find that your core shame gradually resolves. Core shame resolves when we let go of believing that we cause others to feel and behave the way they do. As you heal your core shame, you can love your children from your true Self, your own individual expression of Spirit within. When your children experience your love for them from your true Self, rather than from your wounded self that carries your core shame, they will feel your heart and know that they are truly lovable and worthy of being loved.
Why not commit to learning to love yourself so that you can deeply share love with your children and with others? There is nothing more profound than the sharing of love that comes from an open heart. Your children need and deserve to have this sacred experience with you. Because children often project their experience of their parents onto God, their ability to stay spiritually connected as adults is greatly facilitated by your own heart connection with them.
Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her new 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.” To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with your partner and others, take advantage of our Free Help, and take our 12-Week home study eCourses, “The Intimate Relationship Toolbox” and“Dr. Margaret’s Permanent Weight Loss Course” – the first two weeks are free!
Connect with Margaret on Facebook. Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah, and recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette.
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