Claudia Chan

Sometime, we may believe that our parents “should” love us, have the patience for us because they are our parents. 

And because they don’t… we somehow believe that it’s because we didn’t do enough, we are not worthy enough. 

But what if they actually don’t have the capacity for it? 

What if, when we stand up for ourselves, they make us feel guilty, because they personally were made to feel guilty? 

What if, when we do something amazing, and we turn to them hoping that they will celebrate us.., but they brush us aside… make us feel disappointed, because they are disappointed in themselves? 

What if all these guilt, disappointment, pain that they give us… is not ours to carry? it’s just simply a reflection of their lives? 

One of my mentors talked about the concept of ice cream machine. 

You stand in front of an icecream machine, hoping that it’s chocolate. But when you pull the lever, it gives you vanilla. 

And when you look at the label, you see vanilla.  You don’t pull the lever again to expect chocolate… 

So the question is, how long are you going to stand in front of the icecream machine, hoping that it’ll give you chocolate? 

Similarly, how long are you going to stand there, expecting your parents will give you the love, the support, the affection… when they don’t have the capacity to? 

How long are you going to keep holding onto the guilty, disappointment, pain… when these are what they’re personally carrying… and it is not yours to begin with? 

It is a deep concept, and at the same time, when you are ready to let go… you’ll be so much freer. 

Ready to do this work? Book a time with me. It’s time to live your life according to you. Let’s do it together. 

The one most important thing I learned from being married for 10 years, together for 15, is the art of communication. 

The two parts are 1) how to connect so we can initiate a conversation, and 2) to validate the other person feelings, without feeling attacking or without taking it personally. 

And we have to keep remembering that we’re always a team. We’re here to work together to make things better for us. 

We’re always choosing each other. And we choose to choose each other. 

Sometimes we believe that our emotions is based on what other people do to us. 

Oh  because they keep saying I’m a bad daughter, I’m selfish. Because they keep yelling, or they keep giving us the cold shoulder, so I feel guilty, I feel bad. So I have to change myself to make things better. And I feel so powerless. 

So we need to build our own emotional independence. 

When other people are having their storm, and causing us to feel a certain way, we can do the following three steps.

1 take a moment to notice, “Hey I’m feeling guilty, or upset”

2 Then we can process the feeling. Calm ourselves down.

3 Then we can ask ourselves, “what is the best thing I can do that is most aligned to me?” 

Once you can calm yourself down, without needing other people to change, this is how you take back your control. Thus gain emotional independence. 

Which is extremely powerful, because they can try to rattle you, but you can always come back to yourself and what you stand for. 

So whenever you’re ready, book a time with me, and let’s build your resilience to take care of any emotions that come your way.

Today I’m going to touch on some of the signs of emotionally immature parents. 

One of the meaning is, they treat you as an adult when it’s convenient for them, but treat you as a child when it doesn’t serve them. 

Some examples for treating you like an adult: they keep asking you to take responsibility for your younger sibling, or pay bills, or translate for them. 

Anything that passes their responsibility off onto you. 

Some example for treating you like a child: maybe you want to give less money to them because you want to build up your savings, or you no longer want to put in as much effort to take care of the household. 

Or anything that inconvenience them, and they say things like, “You’re selfish”, or “I know what’s best for you.”

Now of course there is a spectrum. And yet, emotionally mature parents will still try to do their best and put in a lot of effort to take care of themselves as much as possible. And when they really need help, they will ask for it. Or they understand that the parents’ job is to raise our kids to become independent. 

And of course, we are all humans, so we’re not pointing the fingers at them to blame them. 

Yet there is a balance between putting in the effort into the collective household, verses ourselves. 

So this is to raise the awareness, to take ourselves out of the relationship, so we can examine what is happening, and recalibrating where we stand within this. 

So we can say, this is the amount I am willing to give. Vs, this is too toxic and I need to remove myself entirely. 

This is definitely a difficult situation to be in. So whenever you’re ready to go on this journey, book a time with me, and we’ll go on this together. 

You’re not alone. Sending you lots of love. 

With more people knowing about self love through social media, people are getting frustrated because they’re like, I don’t really know how to love myself. 

Here’s something I want to share with you. Knowing about self love, is like knowing of a language. 

You know may of French (that’s if you don’t know French), but you don’t know how to speak it yet if you have never practiced it. 

Self love is the same thing, if you have never practiced it, how can you be good at it? 

So I’m going to show you a practice today, not doing affirmations, or go to to spa. 

Exercise : acknowledge your feelings. 

Set a timer for 5 min, in the comfort of your own room, sit down, and breathe in and out. 

Turn your attention inside your body, and notice what you’re feeling. 

If you’re at an early stage and you don’t know what the feeling is, notice how your body feels like. 

Maybe you feel short of breath, or tingling in your chest. Or energy going down your arms. 

And once you notice it. Repeat this sentence, soft enough only to yourself, yet loud enough for you to hear: 

“It’s ok for me to feel this way”

Or if you know the feeling, “It’s okay for me to feel (anger, disappointment, frustration, sadness)”

Repeat until that deeper part of you felt heard and understood. 

Maybe tears may come. Or maybe you want to scream or hit something. Whatever comes, let them out. 

Don’t stop yourself, let it finish. 

Then to finish, thank yourself for doing it. 

“Thank you for seeing me, thank you for acknowledging me, thank you for being with me.” 

Try this and see if you have any questions. You can always send me a message or comment. 

Sending you lots of love. 

When we grow up, there may come a time when our decisions are going to conflict with our parents’.

But a lot of times, our parents ended up saying a lot of horrible things, like, “You’re selfish!” “You’re a sl*t” (for those of us who end up with a bf) or even threatening that they’ll unalive themselves.

Because we grew up in that environment when we were young, so we may think that it is “normal” or acceptable. Or we may think we deserve it, and the only way is for us to change.

But just because it’s always been like that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it acceptable.

No one, including our parents, has the permission to treat us poorly.

In order for us to deal with such situations, we will need to learn to deal with the mixed emotions, ie guilt and fear, so then we can figure out where we stand to set boundaries.

Because here’s the truth, if we don’t stand for ourselves, if we don’t respect ourselves, no one ever will.

Want to go on this journey? Get my free ebook, “5 Steps to stand up to anyone”.

You can also send me a message or book a time with me.

You’re not alone, let’s do this together.

I’m no stranger to comparing myself with others, I’d to deal with that since I was a teenager. And since working on it for the past 6-7 years, with being the age of 45, I’m at a place where this inner critic is less harsh on me. 

To give you a better understanding of how it feels like. It’s as if a monster leaps out from inside my chest, and it would drag me down this deep hole where I couldn’t get out for days. 

And many times, when other people achieved something, I just couldn’t get myself to celebrate them or be happy for them. 

So here are 5 things I worked a lot on. 

1 process my disappointment. To be able to sit with the part of me that constantly wish I’m “over there”. No matter how much I worked, it’s still not enough.

2 learning to deal with the pain and hurt from my parents’ interactions with me 

3 found people who were genuinely happy for me and are proud of my achievements

4 be able to fully receive those compliments given to me by said people 

5 I had to celebrate my efforts (not the result). 

Want to get out of the comparison loop too? Here are two exercises I would highly recommend.

Learn to acknowledge your feelings and process them, esp the disappointment in yourself 

Practice celebrating your efforts daily. 

I hope this video helps you. 

Sending you lots of love.