Were your emotions dismissed, minimised or belittled?
If you grew up in an environment where your emotions were dismissed, minimised or belittled:
You may struggle to identify and understand your emotions. When your emotions are dismissed, the message you receive is that your emotions aren't important, so you learn to dismiss them yourself.
You may struggle to know what you want e.g. who should you date, what career should you choose etc. This is because when our wants and needs are dismissed, we learn to silence them which makes it hard to know what we want and need as a result.
You might feel unsatisfied with your life. This is often because you might make choices based on how you think your life should look, not what you actually want. You might feel like you lack direction or don't really know who you are.
You may struggle to express your wants and needs to your partner. This is because in the past, your wants and needs were dismissed, teaching you they weren't important.
You may have difficulty regulating your emotions. This is because you learned to push emotions away, rather than how to express them appropriately.
You may put everyone else's needs before yours. This is due to feeling like you were unimportant as a child because your wants and emotions were dismissed.
You may not trust yourself, your gut, or your intuition. If your instincts were dismissed, you start to question them, especially if they were directly contradicted or belittled.
If this sounds like you and you want to make a change, it starts by learning to tune in to your own wants and needs. How do you start doing that, I hear you ask?! Here are a few simple strategies to help you begin that process:
Respond to yourself the way you hoped your parent would respond. Notice your feelings, allow them, and look deeper. What are they telling you?
Dig deep. Check-in with how you feel while making decisions. Start paying attention to how you're feeling in your body.
Listen to yourself. Don't push those gut instincts away. Listen to them and start acting on the small ones to build confidence for the bigger ones.
Start communicating your wants and needs and remind yourself they're important.
Start exploring. Take time to really get to know yourself. What do you enjoy? What do you dislike?
Set and maintain boundaries with those who are dismissive toward you and your emotions.Spend time with people who love and accept you and those you feel like you can be totally yourself around.
Work on developing and improving your communication around emotions, wants, and needs.
Identify any beliefs from your childhood that you're ready to let go.
Explore any aspects of parenting that you'd like to do differently if you are a parent.
Practice responding to your emotions as they come up rather than pushing them away. There are classes that can support you with this if you need extra help.
Take good care of yourself.
Show yourself compassion and forgiveness. Be kind to yourself and forgive yourself for any behaviours or traits resulting from being dismissively parented.
Growing up with dismissive parents can be really challenging. It can result in you learning and believing your wants and needs aren’t important because they were dismissed. This leads you to push wants, needs and desires away and to later find it difficult to connect with them again and truly understand yourself as an adult.
If you’re reading this as a parent, and getting concerned that you’re dismissive, don’t worry, all it takes is doing it differently about 40% of the time to help kids develop emotional intellegence and awareness. For more on how to do this, look up Emotion Coaching from the Gottman Institute.
If you’ve resonated with this post and think you were raised in a dismissive environment, and you want to learn to connect with your wants, needs, and emotions, try some of the strategies above. Taking small steps to honour yourself and your needs will accumulate over time and make a big difference in helping you better know yourself, understand and respond to your emotions.
I hope this helps!
Lucille
