Struggling with your teenager struggling?

Hello beautiful soul! 

If you have a teenager that's struggling... whether it be with anxiety, depression, self-harm... self-esteem...

Here's how you can help them.

1. Don't make it about you.

It's not about your parenting. It's not your fault. It's not about you. If there is an experience that you're taking on their emotional pain, they will continue to push you away.

It feels unsafe to be going through something really vulnerable... and if a parent is taking on that pain, the child will continue to shut down.

2. See them as whole.

Right now, you're seeing them as helpless, hopeless, and broken.

That there is something wrong with them. You might not say it in those words, and it's the energy you're putting out.

Especially if you're into self-development and "Spirituality"- there may be a tendency to think, "I'm doing it wrong" and "life shouldn't be this way". Your journey inwards is all about how you can hold space for them...

Their transformation isn't yours to claim.

Your child wants you to care for their pain, not carry their pain.

When you carry their pain, you disempower them.

3. LOVE THEM UP!

They are going through their initiation and their own dark knight of the soul.

Like every "first", it's daunting, unfamiliar, and gut-wrenching.

They need your Love and acceptance - not your control or your judgement.

Meet their Fear with your Love. Get clear on what Love is. Love isn't fixing. Love isn't trying to make them feel better. Love isn't taking ownership of their pain.

Love is space. Love is clarity. Love is complete and utter acceptance of what is... and meeting each moment as is...

To be able to be the kind of parent that can hold space...here's what is needed of you:

1. Meet your own Fears with Love.

If you went through anxiety, depression, mental health challenges when you were younger... there might be an experience of "I don't want them to go what I went through...." and that "protective" parent instinct will come across as judgement, shaming, fearful and enmeshment.

Own your stuff. Your stuff is your stuff. Their stuff is their stuff. They are NOT you. And their circumstance is NOT yours.

Sympathy and empathy are not the same things.

2. Heal your Inner Child and Reparent

To be able to hold space for your children, especially when their challenges are a trigger to you - what's needed is for you to heal your inner-child AND reparent.

Most people only do 1 and not the other.

They are distinct processes that are about the movement of energy.

When one is done without the other, you keep the story alive, and the same energy circulates. And ....that's why it's a trigger for you when your teenager is going through their dark night of the soul.

3. Wholeness

Wholeness is a process of forgiveness, acceptance, surrender and receivership.

Wholeness is an active and conscious embodied experience of the truth of who you are and the compassion for your humanity.

Wholeness is when you stop running away from yourself.

Wholeness is the complete experience of being able to be in your body.

Wholeness is to be able to trust yourself so you can trust life.

...and Wholeness is the access to your Heart.

When you are whole - you genuinely do see the divinity in others - and you let go of judging their journey.

This is what your teenager, who is in pain, desperately seeks from you.

They don't want you to judge their pain.

They are asking you to see them in their Wholeness with the pain... And you can only do that when you can do this for yourself.

When I was that teenager.... and had no one to turn to that could hold space... I turned away from my Heart... and I used my Mind to navigate my own dark night.

This doesn't work. It took years of unlearning and trusting to return to my Heart.

Your teenager, and this initiation, is all about cultivating the practice of trusting themselves.... so that they can trust their Heart.

Navigating the dark night of the soul from your Mind is torture. Lonely. Debilitating. ..... you and I know this.

The Mind will tell you to toughen up, be strong, build the walls, guard up.... and the Mind will convince you to block your Heart.

There is no freedom there.

If you really want to help your teenager and their dark night of their soul... here's how.

Create space so that they can trust their Heart... and return to their Heart.

Sending Love,

Yummii xx

PS It's a tough time to be a parent. Really tough. And your children need you more than ever to be in your Heart. Reply to this email and share with me what's going on... I can provide some suggestions. I know you want your child to break free from this. I can help.