What self isolation and COVID showed me is that I react to everything and it’s honestly exhausting. 

I react to the rain falling.

I react to the dishes in the sink.

I react to the toys on the floor.

I react to having to make dinner.

I react to my husband’s wet towel on the bed.

I react to my toddler yelling at me for food.

I react to my dog barking to go outside.

I react to everything and not in a good way.

Why do I react to everything? Why do we feel the need to react to everything? One reason is because that behavior has been modeled for us as a child and now it’s in our subconscious and becomes part of our identity. As it’s part of our subconscious, when we are stressed, overwhelmed, anxious and dealing with a global pandemic we revert back to our childhood and what we were conditioned to do.

If this resonates, you are not alone and it’s not our fault. We were parented by parents who saw their world through unhealed trauma and unconsciously passed down these patterns and adapted behaviors. When we are parenting from a place of trauma we react to everything because we are wired to react. We, as children and now adults are unaware of this till we are aware and in this awareness things change. We are able to slow down our reactions, we are able to see our conditioning and we are able to choose differently.

As a conscious parenting coach, I know that we have to return to our inner parent and healer to remind ourselves that we don’t have to react to everything and if we do we have compassion for ourselves because this reacting is from modeling.

This is what I do when I find myself reacting to everything …

1. Pause. Just Stop.
2. Ask myself why am I reacting to this?
3. What story am I attaching to this reaction?
4. Is this my story? Is this my parents’ story?
5. Choose. I choose to parent myself with love to a choice that creates ease and is my truth.

This takes time but in the practice is how we move from conditioning to consciousness [aka awareness] and parent from a place of ease. As we begin to create awareness, we start to break the cycle for our children and future generations.

So even though COVID19 has shown me how I react to everything from a place of conditioning it has also given me time to create awareness as a conscious parent and an adult reparenting her inner child.