Recently I was talking with a parent of a teenager who ‘hated school.’   I would love to use this example to share some important highlights around emotions and feelings in relationships.

In my coaching lately…I’m hearing more and more how kids in general tend to say, ‘I hate math or I hate school or I hate that teacher.’  It seems we as parents ‘buy into’ the ‘collective attitude’ that hating school or whatever it is in that moment of expression is something they actually feel.  They may hate school…but what specifically do they hate about school?

If I may use an example of people in general…..we may have said we hated school when we got to a stage where we were finding it hard to move through an emotion of some kind….maybe a challenge we didn’t quite know how to deal with.  Saying we hated school……kept us from ‘going into that feeling’….we maybe never really had to go into those feelings growing up (well I didn’t anyway).

Then we get to adulthood and maybe we hate our job!  There again…what specifically do we hate about our job.  If we sit in the ‘hate the job’…we really don’t go into the ‘what actually is challenging us in this moment causing us to hate it’.  We ‘rest’ in the feeling of hating our job and…..well there we sit…hating our job.  There is no movement around what we are feeling.  Those feelings now ‘pile on’ or accumulate along with the other feelings of hating going to school….and stay locked away!

Then we may get to the stage where we hate men! (let me just use this example)  We hate men…yup had couple of experiences with men and they didn’t turn out and now we hate men.  Well what specifically is causing us to hate men?  Do we actually go into what doesn’t feel right or good in our relationships with men….maybe maybe not.  If we don’t go into those feelings….we again ‘pile on’ and accumulate more hate around hating school…hating our job…hating men….and those feelings stay locked up inside!  Then we wonder how we could have so much hate!

Consider this……if we hate something as a “whole” then we don’t have to like any part of it….then we don’t have to really get specific as to what ‘part’ we don’t like. That may or may not serve us.

When it comes to any feelings or emotions that come up for you…come up continually…can you start to ask yourself, ‘I keep saying I hate when they do that, what is this showing me? What specifically makes me mad about what they are saying?  If i may share….those feelings are not going to just fall of the end of the planet…or disappear because you don’t want to feel them.  Moving through one uncomfortable set of ’emotions’ may be one step in the direction of finding peace within.

My vision now is to go into the schools to work with teachers and students and parents…..helping them to become aware of how feelings and emotions play a part in everyday life.  My vision includes RESPECTFUL COMMUNICATION between people regardless of their position or age.  Maybe one day I may help people like the teenagers who say they ‘hate school’ and really don’t, as well as other children and young adults in the current school systems to be more excited about what they are learning by attending school….and it may not be the subject of math for example!

Wishing you so much love and light as you journey forward…..Sheila Unique, Relationship Coach