For decades I gave away my power.

I've done real work on owning my triggers. I can step back now. I can hear difficult feelings and hold them, I can genuinely sit with my children's difficult emotions.

But because of my own past, there are still moments where my judge creeps in. She's upset - that means you're failing. He's made a bad choice - you are not a good mother. Old judgements, not new ones. I still have to work hard on it, because the conditioning runs deep.

I'm still letting go of perfect daughter, perfect wife, perfect mother, with the perfect career on top. It doesn't come easy. The judge rears up and I can feel her trying to protect me and tear me down at the same time. But this is the last thread of the emotional codependency. I've shed so many layers. The self-critical one is the last piece.

Your child might be the first person you have loved that refuses to make you feel like a great person - and that probably explains more about your parenting than you realise.

Perhaps you have stepped back too, and understood that your child triggers something in you. Perhaps you're not trying to change how they feel anymore. The problem is you're trying to change what it says about you - and you still can't stop creating a story about what that is. Their anger makes you feel incapable. Their disappointment feels like your failure. If your child has to be ok for you to feel ok, then their feelings are still interlinked with yours - and it goes both ways: your feelings about theirs become theirs too.

Once we become enmeshed with our children's feelings, we are in a codependent relationship. And this is where parenting gets really, really complicated. "You made me so angry….”, “You made me so upset…..”, " You made me..." No one can actually make us feel a certain way - they don't have that power. But every mother we work with has given hers away. I did too.

I’ve slowly learnt to step back into my own power. And when a mother does that, there is literally no stopping her. We have the incredible job of witnessing that journey every day, every week.

If you want to do the same, join us for a live workshop where we walk through emotional codependency using a proper psychological model. We’d love to see you there live, or catch our recorded version if you can’t make our sessions.

Laura & Emma The Emotions Lab