Are Some Kids Born More Anxious, Angry or Sensitive?
Are some people born more anxious? Yes.
Are others born with a shorter fuse? Yep.
Are some born with a faster trigger button to cry? Yup.
If you or your kiddo seem more emotional than your peers, there might be a reason that has nothing to do with them, or your parenting.
Reason #1 We inherit the stress levels of our mother in utero.
If your mom was going through a stressful time during pregnancy, your womb self shared her blood, and her stress hormones.
That means if she went through a major life transition, divorce, move, or financial stress, that excess cortisol passed down to you.
As a mom, this stressed me out. Is my stress hurting my baby? I mean, my son is a COVID baby. We moved to a new city. My husband’s work dried up. My pregnancy was a stressful time.
Here’s the deal. You can’t control life’s random stressors, but you can teach yourself and your kids how to reverse the effects of that stress.
To curb my own stress, I teach my son simple tapping techniques that even a two-year-old can do to counteract any stress I passed down to him in the womb.
Antidote to big feelings #1: Teach your kids to breathe, tap, and counteract stress.
Reason #2 We inherit emotions from our ancestors.
Last year I took a genetic test called Happy Genes. It tests for thousands of genes that relate to mental health. Turns out, I have genes that make me more likely to struggle with anxiety, OCD, PTSD, anger, substance abuse, and risky behavior. Welp, thanks, grandpa.
If it seems like certain people are just born more emotional, it’s because their genes are more emotional!
The gene test validated why I felt like I have to do more to maintain my mental health compared to say, my husband, who seems to have inherited a better set of mental health genes #nofair!
If you, or your kids, feel equally handicapped by bigger emotional swings, there is hope.
You are not the victim of your genes.
Epigenetics: the study of how genes turn on or off based on lifestyle factors like stress levels, diet, environment, and exercise. Put simply, you might have a gene for Alzheimer's, but if you lower your stress, eat well, and exercise, that gene might never “turn on.”
In the same way, you or your kids might have a gene for anxiety, but if you learn tools to lower anxiety, that gene won’t control your life.
If you, or they, have a gene for anger, you can learn tools to regulate your emotions, so anger doesn’t control your behavior.
Get the idea?
You can’t choose your genes, but you can choose what you do with them.
Teaching preteens anger management with EFT
Back in 2013, I was nannying an emotional preteen who couldn’t help but hit his little sister. I had recently attended an EFT Tapping training and remembered that tapping can help kids with anger management. All you do is teach them the tapping points. Then, when they feel angry or anxious, instead of whining or venting, they start tapping.
I taught him an EFT Strategy called the Choices Method. It’s simple. You voice your feelings plus a positive choice.
When that preteen wanted to explode on his sister, I pulled him into the kitchen and tapped:
Even though I’m so mad at my annoying little sister, I choose to not let her see that she’s getting to me.
When he whined about his homework, we tapped:
Even though I hate math homework, I choose to just do it so I can play video games sooner.
When he got nervous about a school presentation, we tapped:
Even though I really don’t want to give this science presentation, I choose to have fun with my friends as I do it.
I don’t teach kids about genetics, but I teach them about emotions:
We can’t control how we feel, but we can control how we act out our feelings.
Antidote to big emotions #2: Teach your kids that they are in control of what they do with their feelings.
I wish I knew this as a kid but now I can pass the wisdom on to my son and other kids in my life.
I also wish I knew that we don’t just inherit anxious genes, but we inherit trauma.
#3 We inherit the trauma (and fearful emotions) of our ancestors.
Some of you saw my article on ancestral trauma but if not, I told a story about my great-grandmother.
“Lillian Degrasse” was the youngest of 8 children in a poor Irish family that was living in an attic during their first year in America.
She woke up one day and her parents and siblings were gone.
Too poor to raise her, they abandoned her.
My grandmother was adopted by a responsible family, but she carried a fear of being abandoned… again.
Do you know what one of my core anxieties was as a kid?
I was scared my parents were going to leave me.
When my mom hired a babysitter for date night, I would sit by my bedroom window pretending to be asleep. I didn’t let my eyes close until I heard her pull up the gravel driveway and pay the sitter.
I was afraid of being abandoned.
The fear didn’t come from how she raised me, but from who raised my great-grandmother.
It’s wild that I, my clients, and their kids, carry the weight of two, three, (and according to some studies) even four generations.
While study after study says you inherit trauma, even more studies are proving that you can counteract your inheritance with somatic therapies like EFT Tapping.
Every time I teach a child, a parent, a teacher, or a social worker to tap, I imagine I am teaching them to break free from generations of pain and fear.
Maybe it’s called Emotional Freedom Technique for a reason.
I don’t have to pay the emotional toll of my great-grandmother’s choices, and either do my children.
Antidote to big emotions #3: Teach your kids the difference between their feelings and others feelings.
The next time you wonder, Why is my kid so defiant? So angry? So easily upset? Now you have three new answers.
If you want to give them new solutions to manage their stress, I am honored to be teaching a group of parents, teachers, and healers how to do just that.
If you want to learn how to tap with kids and teens, even strong-willed emotional ones, I’d love to share my EFT for Kids course with you.
Want to learn how to heal and chat her to trauma, I’m so excited for my intergenerational trauma healing workshop check it out here !
Jackie Viramontez
Have questions? Email me at jackie@theeftmasterclass.com
If you are new to EFT, the course comes with my EFT 101 Training that equips you in the EFT essentials.
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