Healthy Parenting - Leave a Legacy of Healthy Emotional Living

Mental health and wellness is one of THE most important legacies you can leave to your children and generations to come. If you look back on your own family of origin,  take notice of the emotional health of your own parents, their parents, and their parents. Do you notice any patterns? Were there healthy communication and relationship patterns? We're there unhealthy patterns? Do you remember having a depressed or anxious mom? An angry father? Do you remember your parents fighting being out of control?  Did your parents share about how your grandparents were abusive toward them as children or how your grandparents suffered abuse themselves? How have these patterns affected you?  Have they bled into the way you interact with those you love? These effects and patterns are intergenerational...the good, bad, and the ugly. 

The good thing is that we seem to often have a natural inclination to make life better for our kids than what we had.  So there is some level of healing that happens naturally from generation to generation in many cases. We do our best to keep the healthy patterns and do our best to rid ourselves of the unhealthy ones. 

However,  often times growing up and in our adult years we say to ourselves,  "I'm going to do it different", "I'm going to do better than my parents did for me", "I will never do that to my kids."  Yet you notice things coming out of your mouth that your parents said to you.  You notice yourself reacting the way your parents did with you. Feeling guilty and ashamed, we tell ourselves, "I can't believe I just did that", "next time I'll be more patient", "Next time I'll be kinder." Next time...

At the heart of what I do as a therapist is help parents feel whole and connected to themselves and God, so that they can create healthy connected relationships with their children and families.  I want children to grow up feeling secure in knowing they are loved so they can go out and love on the world around them!  Not just knowing intellectually, but knowing to the core of their being.  We as parents know to the core of our being that we love our children, but our unhealthy relational patterns can cause children to question this.  Children can develop a sense that love is conditional, so they begin belief patterns that say: I will be loved when I am good.  I will be loved when I accomplish great things.  I will be loved when I can excel at sports or activities.  I will be loved when I don’t make mistakes. I will be loved when… 
These belief patterns follow us through life and limit us in astounding ways. But if you’re a believer in what God through Christ Jesus has taught us, you are aware that there is nothing we need to do to earn love.  We are loved because we are HIS!

The reality is that we all have our blind spots and challenges with how we handle stress and adversity in our lives.  It takes a conscious and intentional effort to go deeper into ourselves for better understanding.  Once we have a better understanding of ourselves, we then have choices.  Choices about our thoughts,  choices about our feelings, choices about how we communicate, and choices about our actions. We become better "responders" instead of "hot headed reactors". We then get to become more intentional about how we connect in relationship with our spouses,  our children,  our families. We become empowered to truly live as God has created us to be.  And we live in God’s grace when we don’t get it right. Over and over, we live in God’s grace.  And this my friends is the legacy we can strive to leave generations to come.  

If you are interested in leaving a legacy of healthy emotional living in God’s grace and you’d like some help getting there, well, you’re in the right place.  Therapy helps unravel these underlying belief systems so that we can LIVE IN GOD’S GRACE and teach our children to do the same.

Call me for a free 15-minute phone consultation to see if I can help or help you find someone who can. I provide in-person therapy for those locally and Online therapy for those anywhere in California. (530) 913-8545

Happy Parenting!
Sabrina