When our children trigger us: how to handle what bothers you most

0:08Welcome to Motherkind, we are sponsored by Stokker. It is me your host Zoe. This is the show that's going to take you by the hand, validate how you feel and give you the support and tools that you need to create a more easeful, joyful and empowered motherhood, even in this crazy world that seems to be getting crazier by the day that is constantly throwing expectations at us. I am so happy you are here. Thank you for pressing that little play button. This episode is going to be a bit of a game changer. The last solo episode I did, we talked about matrescence, the process of becoming a mother and identity and getting to know yourself again in motherhood.

0:49And today I want to take us to the next level of that self-awareness because I know that I'm ready and I know that you're ready because here's what I know to be true. Any change first starts with self-awareness. You actually can't change something if you're not aware of it. And I know that you're here because you want to change. You want to feel more confidence. You want to feel more self-worth. You want to feel more empowered. You want to feel happier and more joyful and more easeful in this season of your life. So we have to start with self-awareness. It's really counterintuitive, but if we want to change and we want to have more of those qualities and we want to feel more of how we want to in our day to day, then we have to first look at all the places that we don't feel that way.

1:41Why? Because that's where the clues are. So if you feel really calm and then boom, your child has a tantrum and suddenly you find yourself having a tantrum true and we have all been there and you are not handling how you want to, then that is a clue. If you feel really confident and you're walking up, you're walking to school, you're walking into the playground to do pick up and someone looks at you funny in the playground and then boom, you start overthinking, you're suddenly feeling insecure, your body language is becoming smaller and smaller and your shoulders are rolling in and you're questioning yourself.

2:16That is a clue. If you feel really clear on what you need and then you discuss it with your family or you talk to your partner about the logistics of that, maybe it's going out to a class or whatever it might be, and your partner eye rolls you and grumbles about it and you suddenly decide, oh it wasn't that important anyway. That is a clue. All these things are clues. When we look at where we don't feel how we want to, when we look at what's getting in our way, that is the key to creating change. All change first starts with self-awareness. So what I'm going to give you today is a map to yourself so you can get to know yourself a little bit better because self-awareness honestly is the biggest gift you can give yourself in this season of life.

3:10So today we are going to look at this self-awareness through a very specific lens. We are going to look at it through the lens of the things that bother us most. In therapy language, this is called a trigger. I call it the things that bother us because it just feels more accessible that way. And this is where the growth is.

3:35This episode is sponsored by Joma Jewellery, the destination for thoughtful gifting. When your little ones ask what you'd love for Mother's Day, or perhaps you've got a mother in your life you want to celebrate then I need to tell you about Joma jewellery. Their jewellery is beautifully designed with heartfelt sentiment making it the perfect gift for any occasion however big or small. The Mother's Day collection features the best-selling A Little bracelets that can be personalised with children's initials or birthstones making it a perfect gift. All gifts come with a free personalised gift bag so you don't need to worry about wrapping it is ready to gift.

4:10Hurrah another thing off the list. They also have a personalised photo card to add to your gift to make it even more special and unique. Joma believe that beautiful gifts shouldn't cost the earth so the jewellery is under just£20. Joma Jewellery offering listeners of Motherkind an exclusive 15 % off with code MUM15. That's M-U-M-1-5. So just head to jomagewellery.com to get your perfect gift in time for Mother's Day using the code MUM15. Joma Jewellery, the destination for thoughtful gifting. I'd like to take this moment to thank our headline sponsor Wild Nutrition, who are offering MotherKind listeners 50 % off for the first three months.

4:51When I was pregnant with my first 10 years ago, I asked a few nutritionist friends, what's the best pregnancy supplement? And they all said the same thing, Wild Nutrition. So I listened and these incredible supplements have kept me feeling great through two pregnancies, starting this podcast, writing a book, a relocation and everything in between for the last decade. So it's magical to me that I now get to tell you about this incredible woman founded brand every week. So the food grown pregnancy and new mother multi is expertly formulated to support you from conception right through to postpartum and beyond.

5:25And food grown magnesium is backed by a gold standard scientific study that shows it has the potential to help you sleep an extra 42 minutes a night and increase sleep quality by 32%. Yes, please. I know how much of a difference Wild Nutrition has made in my motherhood journey and we want you to experience it too. That's why they're giving Mother Kind listeners an exclusive 50 % off for three months and a free personal consultation with a nutritional therapist. Just go to wildnutrition.com forward slash motherkind to get started. That's wildnutrition.com forward slash motherkind so you can feel a difference yourselves.

6:02Start 2026 rooted in wellness. T's and C's apply.

6:10So much bothers us in motherhood, right? So we have two choices as I see it. We can walk around a ball of frustration and resentment. We can feel that tightness and that stress in our body and just kind of have that energy of annoyance, like we're constantly kind of tutting or eye rolling, even if it's internally. Or we can take on a totally new perspective and I would argue a way more empowering and productive one, which is with bags and bags of kindness and self-compassion, we can turn our focus back to ourselves away from what everyone else is doing and think, huh, I wonder why I am so bothered by that.

6:57I wonder why is one of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself. I wonder why that bothers me so much. I wonder why that other mum eye rolling me made me feel insecure. I wonder why I suddenly went back on what I wanted to do when someone else complained about it. I wonder why my kids melt down, make me feel like there is complete emergency in my body. This is a perspective shift. It is. And I'm not saying it is easy. It is absolutely not easy in many ways. It's countercultural, but it is the things that bother us most can actually be an amazing gateway to more self-awareness. I remember when I first realized that looking at the things that bothered me most or my triggers was going to change my life and how much my children would actually be an accelerated crash course in doing that.

7:56And when my youngest was two, I talk about this before, I've talked about it in the book, Mother Kind. When my youngest was two, she would have these huge meltdowns. And honestly, I couldn't handle it. Not just a normal level of, well, this is intense. I would wander off in my mind, almost dissociate. I found it so difficult. So instead of trying to control her, which of course I tried for a while, then I realized there is something deeper going on here. She is actually, there's nothing wrong with her. Two-year-olds have tantrums. What is going on with me? And I grabbed my journal and I asked myself, I wonder why, what is going on with me?

8:39What does this remind me of? And you know, it was actually life-changing because what I realised was that I've never had been able to handle emotions very well. I'd just never been taught, especially not big ones. It was actually nothing to do with my daughter and everything to do with me. So when she was two, I went on a mission to understand and learn everything I could about emotions. It's all in the book it's in chapter 10 and I started practicing and applying what I was learning and to say everything changed is actually an understatement because over time her meltdowns my children's emotions and actually everyone's emotions in my life just stopped bothering me as much someone could be in front of me having an adult tantrum or a toddler tantrum and I was able to stay grounded.

9:27I was able to stay in my adult and react and respond in a way that I wanted to. I was so used to just reacting, reacting, reacting and doing this work, asking myself this question, I wonder what is going on for me here, enabled me to see what was happening, make some changes and then start to respond exactly how I wanted to. So I've actually come to learn this hard one wisdom from my own life. It's the things that bother us most that actually have the most potential for us to change and grow. This is really one of those mind blowing penny drop moments. And I want for you to feel confident. I want for you to feel self-worth.

10:18I want for you to feel more and more peace and ease and just self-trust more and more and more. I want that for you. And this, even though it's hard looking at the things that bother us most, is one of the best ways I know how to get there quicker. So let's dive into it. What is a trigger? Well, in therapy terms, a trigger is a stimulus that elicits a reaction. but here is the key it is usually disproportionate to what's actually happening I like to think about triggers like a thorn in your side it kind of bothers you and it irritates you disproportionately to what's going on in front of you so here's some examples your child throws a tantrum and you instantly feel impatient and angry and it's not just once it's a pattern you notice this it's a pattern that is happening or your children are sad or maybe your partner's sad and instead of being able to hold space for that and just listen and trust that they'll work through it you feel completely overwhelmed with sadness yourself and you rush in to fix it and again that doesn't just happen once it is a pattern and you notice yourself doing it over and over and over again and maybe you're even getting fed up of your own shit maybe you're like I just don't want to do this anymore.

11:38Or maybe your teenage is moody and it triggers something in you and you start to feel insecure and you rush in to overcompensate with trying to cheer them up and being cheerful and drag them out of it. And you again, just once you notice that that's a pattern. So the question to ask yourself when you notice one of these patterns is, is this the reaction I want to have. And if you are thinking about the right sort of patterns, most of the time, the answer is going to be no. Because if you're having the reaction that you want to have, all is good. All is good. It's where things bother us and we don't respond.

12:18We don't react how we want to. Okay. And here's the next big idea that is often because these triggers, these things that bother us most are often old stuff resurfacing. Just like in my example, I already had issues with feeling emotions, issues with being able to hold big emotions. I just wasn't that aware of it until my toddler came crashing into my world with her big feelings. I couldn't handle it. And that was nothing to do with her. That was my past. That It was a skill gap that I had. So here's the key. Often these triggers are things that bother us most are showing us a gap in our skills or a gap in our own emotional development or something that we need to fill in.

13:11I often think about walls with holes in. You know that I love a visual analogy. And these triggers are kind of the map of the wall. They show me, okay, which bits do I need to fill in? Where do I need to get some filler and do a little bit of work on that? I might need to understand it better. I might need to do some research. I might need to read a book like Mother Climb, whatever it is. Okay, so we've talked about a lot. We are going to look in this episode about three-step process to managing the things that bother you most, triggers, and how you can use those to feel more and more of how you want to feel, to feel more and more adult in your life, more and more grounded in your life, responding to life more and more how you want to, as opposed to lurching from trigger to trigger to trigger.

14:03So step one is in the moment. If you notice in the moment you are triggered or something is really bothering you, if you can catch it, you've already won in my eyes. If you can catch it, you've already won. And I want you to breathe. The first step is to breathe. It really is the most powerful tool that you have. Why? It's always with you. It's scientifically proven to be in one of the most effective ways to get your body out of that alarm state back into calm. So deep breath in, hold the breath at the top and long exhale for as long as it feels good. Okay. Then I want to remind yourself, this is not an emergency.

14:42I am safe. this is not an emergency I am safe because something has been awoken in you that is going to make it feel like an emergency when their children won't put their shoes on and you think you're going to be late that used to be a huge trigger for me around being on time and trying to be perfect and so when my children wouldn't get out the door on time to my perfect schedule I would find it hugely triggering there was so much growth for me there about accepting in perfection accepting that I can be late and I'm still going to be lovable and okay in the world and then the third step is to repair first with yourself particularly if you have reacted how you don't want to maybe you've snapped to the children maybe you've snapped to your partner maybe you've been a little bit passive aggressive with the work colleague whatever it be first of all repair with yourself I'm human I'm learning I'm growing this is okay this bothers me there's something bigger here for me.

15:37It's okay. Really speak to yourself like a kind parent would and then repair with whoever else you need to, whether it's your child, your partner, your colleague. So that is in the moment. Okay. Breathe. It's not an emergency. Repair with yourself, repair with your child. Then that is not where I want you to leave it. Because if you want to be able to grow from these things, we have to take it a little bit deeper. We have to ask ourselves one of the most powerful questions that we can, which is, I wonder why? And you have to approach it with the two C's, compassion and curiosity. Okay. So with lots of compassion and lots of curiosity, you're not saying what's wrong with me.

16:21Why am I like this? I wish I wasn't like this. I'm such a bad mother. No, none of that. We are looking at it with nothing but compassion and curiosity. It sounds like this huh I wonder why my children not putting their shoes on every single morning for school bothers me so much is there something deeper there and of course it may be that there's nothing deeper there that's okay too you might be like no that just is really annoying but it might be that there is something deeper there and then it's your sort of job to be the detective of yourself to figure out what that is so that you can handle your mornings better.

17:04Okay. So the triggers are like a map that you're going to give you clues about yourself. So here's six questions, jot these down because these are the six questions. If you want to dive deeper, if you want to get a little bit more of that growth, these are six questions to ask yourself. The first one is what did that situation make me feel? What does that remind me of? What does this situation make me feel? what does it remind me of what belief or story does this bring up what age does this feeling remind me of so as I was talking about earlier often not always but often these are things from our own past so I want you to have a think about that what age does this bring up in me does it feel adult this does it feel teenage does it feel toddlerish what what's going on here and what words maybe did I need to hear when I was that toddler, I was that teenager, or what did I want to happen?

18:01What did I need to happen? And can I give myself that now? Okay. So those are the six questions to ask yourself. These are the questions that are going to give you that map of yourself. And here is step three, which is to go a little bit deeper on this. And this is the wild thing. when I learned this. I learned this from Philippa Perry on the podcast. We are often most triggered, most bothered when our child is at an age when something significant happened to us at the same age. So if your toddler's tantrums really trigger you, how were your tantrums handled at the same age? If your teen struggles with friendships, did you struggle with friendships at that same age?

18:52There is an incredible episode that we'll link to in the show notes with Louis Weinstock and he talks in the whole episode specifically to this one idea, how our children, he actually says, he wanders and kind of pontificates if our children are actually in some way designed to do this because they want us ultimately to heal and grow. I don't know about that, But I think it's a fascinating lens that the things that bother us most in our children are the very things that we were going through similarly at that same age. I have done lots and lots and lots of this. I've done lots of looking back at my own childhood and the age that my children's were.

19:35And I can tell you it is such a shortcut. it's almost a hack I hate that word but it is almost a hack to deeper self-awareness because we get to fill in those holes as I was talking about so there is so much conversation about healing isn't there and growth and but this is it this really is healing and growth in action and I know that it doesn't always feel like it but as parents we do get a little bit of a shortcut because our children bring up so much in us. If we know what to do with it, which is exactly what we're talking about now, it can be a shortcut to really quickly getting to, okay, that makes sense.

20:14That happened to me. I was left out in the playground. Okay. No wonder my child getting left out too is bothering me so much. And what holes do I need to fill in about that? What beliefs do I need to update? Do I still believe that I'm not really lovable? Do I still believe that my friends don't really like me because so many of my friends might have backstabbed me at school, for example. And those questions, just asking yourself those kind, compassionate questions is how you can start to grow. You can start to update some of those beliefs now that you're an adult, now that you're a parent and think, do you know what?

20:49I'm likable. Some people aren't going to like me, but at my core, I'm likable and that's okay. So every time you reflect on a trigger, instead of just reacting. Even if you reflect later, months later, years later, it doesn't matter. You are filling in an old gap. You're rewiring. And to me, that is what healing is. That's what it is. It's when we look at, okay, where are my blind spots? What do I need to do? What do I need to update about myself? Is it a belief? Is it some knowledge? Is it a skill gap? That is what growth is. So the best part about this is that any personal development, any growth that you do as a parent, and I know that because you're here listening to this episode, you are completely invested and interested in growth, in becoming your most adult, most confident, most self-worth, esteemed version of you.

21:45I know that you are interested in that because you are here and I want to just honor that I think there's nothing more important that parents can do than this work because you benefit you become more grounded you become more confident you become more self-aware you get to update your beliefs about yourself and your children benefit because they experience a more self-aware parent they experience a parent who isn't going to kind of unconsciously react and keep that cycle going they experience a parent who can say huh i wonder what in this dynamic is my part and that oh my gosh that is the gold that is so powerful and this is actually how we break cycles it's actually how we break cycles so maybe your sadness was dismissed as a child so now your child's sadness triggers you and you might be in a pattern of just shutting it down stop crying stop crying stop crying but when you do this work and you think I wonder what it is about that crying that bothers me so much how was my crying handled do I remember an age when my crying was shut down that even asking yourself that question next time your child cries I'm fairly certain you will notice a different reaction in yourself even that self-awareness just shifts your reaction to your child so this is big stuff and it is important stuff and I hope that you are tracking with me one more thing to say before we wrap up today is that it is never too late to give yourself now what you might have needed then so when we're doing this reflection work and we're thinking about, you know, huh, what did I really need around my emotions when I was younger?

23:33It is never, ever, ever too late to give that to yourself now. So if you realised, you know, I just needed a lot more love and a lot more affection, you can give that to yourself now. And you can ask for that now from the people who do love you. If you realise, you know, I needed a lot more fun and a lot more play you can give that to yourself now if you realize i needed to be seen and validated i was always invalidated growing up being told to be quiet or that children's voices don't count you can validate yourself now you can listen to yourself now you can trust yourself now if you realize you needed more support and less criticism you can offer yourself kindness now you can stop the self-criticism now if you realized gosh you know my children resting bothers me so much because I was never allowed to rest you can break that cycle in your home now and give yourself all the permission to rest I'm so passionate about this about growing and learning alongside our children so that we can create a different mood in our home a different environment in home the environment that we want to create not just kind of unconsciously recreating what we had as children and by the way we have to do this all deeply deeply deeply imperfectly because life doesn't stop for us to do this so even if you do this in a one percent way even if you look at one thing that bothers you and ask yourself that gold question i wonder why this bothers me so much that is a massive win take it it's a huge win you're already winning because you are the type of parent and you're becoming the type of mother who can self-reflect who is interested in growth and self-awareness and that is incredibly powerful doing this work alone is hard and that is why I have created mother kind and our community and that is why support is everything so let me support you our next mother kind masterclass we do two every month on a thursday at one o 'clock our next one is on march the 13th and it's about this topic i'm going to be taking a lot of the information that i've given you and shown you how to apply it day to day so you can absolutely listen to this episode and start to make changes but if you want more support if you want to hear other people's experiences in our community with this, then come along.

26:05It's just£20 to join, which basically just covers our costs. It is one o 'clock on the 13th of March. If you can join us live, that's amazing. I do it at one o 'clock, so it might fit in with a nap schedule or if you're working in your lunch hour. If you can't make it live, then you can watch the replay at any time you want, you know, late at night in your PJs, instead of scrolling your phone, you can actually watch something and engage with something that is going to move you forward in your life. So please do join us. You can click on the show notes or visit the website to sign up. I'm going to link in the show notes, a couple of episodes as well that link to this episode, but take it even deeper.

26:48So there's one with Philippa Perry, where she really dives into our children reigniting what happened to us at the same age and the one that I mentioned with Louis Weinstock where he talks about how looking at your own triggers transforms not only your parenting but your life so those are linked and I am sending you so much love and hopefully I will see you on the 13th if not I will see you next time

27:26Thank you.